The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

[L i n d a]

[...]

[...] When doing so we come to the point where we do not look anymore at ourselves as objects IN the world, but as subjects transforming the world we are WITH. Try to find out what is like to be. You would be coming back from seeing the world for the first time. After that moment when all that was was that moment. When all your senses came all together into one and you could be you and not you at the same time -- you that was being looked by you, with all the reasons for being you having been rendered irrelevant. At that moment you cannot even imagine having some kind of need to rely on illusions to justify your place in the world. [...]

Consider someone who has lived their entire life in a place like Alaska... Do they consider the weather there cold? I know I would be freezing there, at any time of the year. They, however, without experience of any other kind of weather, consider that weather normal. Cold would be farther north for them. It works vice-versa as well. I from Texas, do not consider the weather here that hot, but bring someone from Alaska here and they would probably get sick from the heat. After you have that concept firmly in your mind consider a person in a white room. Completely and flawlessly white, and that person is suspended in the air so they cannot touch the floor or walls or ceiling. There is no sensory information coming in at all, just white. Now suppose that person was also white, all over, the exact same shade as the room, and they are the consistency of the air. There is nothing in that room for them to compare themselves to at all.

Can they even know they exist? By what means? Are they the room? Where do the boundaries of theirself begin and the rest of the room begin? There is no way for them to know themselves without information about other to compare themselves too. Did you grasp what I was trying to say? God words are so limiting sometimes. There is one being in the universe. God or whatever. It is one being. There is nothing besides that being, not even empty space. Simply being. That being is nothingness, taken even farther than the person in the white room. That person doesnt even have the boundaries of self to compare to. There is absolutely no otherness. That being divides itself into an infinite number of things, creating the universe we know. The universe doesnt exist seperately from the Being, except as illusion. Within the illusion Being is everything, because there is other. Outside of the illusion being is nothingness.

[ysa]

Can they even know they exist? By what means? Are they the room? Where do the boundaries of theirself begin and the rest of the room begin? There is no way for them to know themselves without information about other to compare themselves too. Did you grasp what I was trying to say? God words are so limiting sometimes. There is one being in the universe. God or whatever. It is one being. There is nothing besides that being, not even empty space. Simply being. That being is nothingness, taken even farther than the person in the white room. That person doesnt even have the boundaries of self to compare to. There is absolutely no otherness. That being divides itself into an infinite number of things, creating the universe we know. The universe doesnt exist seperately from the Being, except as illusion. Within the illusion Being is everything, because there is other. Outside of the illusion being is nothingness.

Very interesting, Linda, could you expand a bit on the issue?

[episio]

When I get bored I go to a 7-11 and ask for a 2-by-4 and a box of 3-by-5.

What answer do you get from them?

[resume]

Democratic socialism, along with libertarian socialism, can be seen as forms of anti-authoritarian "socialism from below," in contrast to Stalinism and social democracy, variants of authoritarian state socialism. It is the active participation of the population as a whole, and workers in particular, in the management of economy that characterises democratic socialism. The state would be a centralised government, although anarchists and some libertarian socialists favor decentralized communes and other forms of non-statist social organization.

The free market is socialism for the rich — free markets for the poor and state protection for the rich.

Can you expand a bit, ayn?

Me too would be interested..

[Cafe Cargo]

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

LOL resume!

[al so]

{useful information starts here} 10101011110011011010101011111 1
01010101010000001100110100110 1 {useful information ends here} {useful information starts here} 1011111100000111 {useful information ends here}

[...] This approach may also be easy to decipher because it mimics the way information is coded in biological systems, and therefore may look familiar to our distant recipient (assuming biological information is encoded in something similar to DNA on other planets, which it may not be.)

There you go!

[I Still Have a Pony]

A WOMAN RECENTLY ASKED HOW I could, in good conscience, write an instruction book on murder.

"How can you live with yourself if someone uses what you write to go out and take a human life?" she whined.

I am afraid she was quite offended by my answer. It is my opinion that the professional hit man fills a need in society and is, at times, the only alternative for "personal" justice. Moreover, if my advice and the proven methods in this book are followed, certainly no one will ever know.

The book is so effectively written that its protagonist seems actually to be present at the planning, commission, and cover-up of the murders the book inspires. Illustrative of the nature and duration of the criminal partnership established between Hit Man and its readers who murder is the following "dialogue" that takes place when the murderer returns from his first killing:

I'm sure your emotions have run full scale over the past few days or weeks.
There was a fleeting moment just before you pulled the trigger when you wondered if lightning would strike you then and there. And afterwards, a short burst of panic as you looked quickly around you to make sure no witnesses were lurking.

But other than that, you felt absolutely nothing. And you are shocked by that nothingness. You had expected this moment to be a spectacular point in your life...The first few seconds of nothingness give you an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh out loud. You break into a wide grin. Everything you have been taught about life and its value was a fallacy.

To Those Who Think,
To Those Who Do,
To Those Who Succeed.
Success is nothing more than taking advantage of an opportunity.

[Olay]

A WOMAN RECENTLY ASKED HOW I could, in good conscience, write an instruction book on murder.

"How can you live with yourself if someone uses what you write to go out and take a human life?" she whined.

I am afraid she was quite offended by my answer. It is my opinion that the professional hit man fills a need in society and is, at times, the only alternative for "personal" justice. Moreover, if my advice and the proven methods in this book are followed, certainly no one will ever know.

The book is so effectively written that its protagonist seems actually to be present at the planning, commission, and cover-up of the murders the book inspires. Illustrative of the nature and duration of the criminal partnership established between Hit Man and its readers who murder is the following "dialogue" that takes place when the murderer returns from his first killing:

I'm sure your emotions have run full scale over the past few days or weeks.
There was a fleeting moment just before you pulled the trigger when you wondered if lightning would strike you then and there. And afterwards, a short burst of panic as you looked quickly around you to make sure no witnesses were lurking.

But other than that, you felt absolutely nothing. And you are shocked by that nothingness. You had expected this moment to be a spectacular point in your life...The first few seconds of nothingness give you an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh out loud. You break into a wide grin. Everything you have been taught about life and its value was a fallacy.

To Those Who Think,
To Those Who Do,
To Those Who Succeed.
Success is nothing more than taking advantage of an opportunity.

Looks like carpe diem all over..

[GSSG]

[...]The most effective crutch is the analogy with one lower dimension, a trick perfected in the novel "Flatland," written by the 19th century minister E. A. Abbott. The book is the story of A. Square, who lives in a 2-dimensional world. Mr. Square describes his world, with some not-so-subtle criticism of Victorian society, and then is visited by a sphere from the third dimension. You can imagine a 2-dimensional being as an amoeba trapped in a microscope slide, or as an ink spot moving on a piece of paper. Often it's easier to picture him as very flat and living on the surface of a table.



Let's use this analogy to explain Slade's feats of four-dimensional dexterity. Consider a challenge for a two-dimensional spiritual medium. We present him with a rubber band and a penny, and challenge him to put the penny inside the rubber band. You too, can play this game, but as a 2-dimensional being you'll need to keep the penny and rubber band flat on a table at all times. Clearly, it can't be done. However, using the third dimension you can pick part of the rubber band off the table, slide it over the penny, and set it back down. The 2-dimensional being would see part of the rubber band mysteriously disappear, then reappear on the other side of the penny.

Awesome illustration of the concept!

[A T P]

Exactly GSSG, a very good way to put it!