Revolution Through Good Vibrations?

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

This feels like a crazy time. Almost nothing political in this country seems to make sense. I feel a little crazy too. Maybe this whole diary is nuts but it comes from my heart.

I think there are reasons for this crazy time here are a few of them:  

1. There is little correlation between what is reported in the mainstream media and anything we might agree to call “reality”. This fact is true because there has been a deliberate attempt to mislead the public through mind-control techniques which are partly engineered and has partly emerged from the logic of public relations and advertising.
2. We have,right now, a population that is, for the most part, addicted to “entertainment” and amusements almost as if they were the essence of life. This creates a need for meaning as a matter of fantasy. If it feels cool then it is true or desirable. We take positions on public policy, for example, based on messages from our lower brain. While this is normal for human beings the fact that the stakes are so high right now makes this a catastrophe. We are headed for a world described by the movie Idiocracy
3. Those people who ought to know better and who have had a liberal education and are reasonably cultured have lost, as Yeats said, “lost all conviction.” In other words the educated are dealing with the influence of modernism and the scientific view of the world where you cannot, by definition, be convinced of anything. You must hold all judgement until you have all the facts and it is hard to know when that point arrives. So the point gets pushed somewhere far away and that becomes a habit. Ultimately this form of modernism is value-neutral. It is hard for a modernist or post-modernist to say “here I stand” even when the question is to abolish the modernist project. This can be seen by the astonishing quiet on the part of the American intelligentsia (other than derision and wry asides, with some notable exceptions) in the face of several decades of active and unrelenting work on the part of the right to institute a return to religious fundamentalism, American Exceptionalism and feudalism with all its comforting certainties.

So what am I talking about “Good Vibrations” for? This all sounds like bad vibrations. The right and what I call the “Stasi left” traffic in fear and bad vibrations. The right claims that we live in a “fallen” creation from which we must either attend to traditional Christian beliefs (Dark Ages style) or at least traditional beliefs of some kind as long as they are in the Judeo-Christian tradition and not influenced by Humanism or outside the European tradition. On the other side, are people we see defending the Democratic Party as  the only hope to avoid the Grand Inquisitor (who looks like Sarah Palin) even if it means that they must torture and kill hundreds of thousands (even millions) of people to prove that they are as nasty as the fundies and hoodlums on the right because they speak a better brand of English, drink fine wines and go out and eat tapas rather than huge plates piled with food that the right-wing favors. Of course this picture is bullshit. The right has no intention of creating a society that the Koch’s would find uncomfortable. They have nothing but contempt for the fundies because they’ve been manipulating the marks for decades. I’m sure just for fun that some scion of a wealthy family will soon install collection boxes on every corner in lower Manhattan and convince the suckers to put in their life-savings for the furtherance of the American Way which they are practically doing anyway. They will then spend it, as the usually do, on sexual partners (including underage boys and girls, drugs, and the whole panoply of pleasures reserved for the rich.

To live and work from the standpoint of “good vibrations” becomes, thus, the most powerful revolutionary act you can make at this point in history. Nothing specific needs to come of it though my guess is a lot will come of it. It is a stance we must adopt. Something must spur you to it–it could be utter despair or anger–it doesn’t matter other than the fact you have to face the truth about yourself and the world you live in and take responsibility for it even if you think you’ve done nothing to harm anyone.  A long as it it gets you to the point where you can look around with fresh eyes at the bullshit and see that being in the moment is an end in itself. We could be angry or loving or whatever if we are fully into it right in this moment which stretches out forever since there is never a “time” when we are not in this moment (this reflects the teaching of Krishnamurti, Eckart Tolle, Zen and Ch’an masters and nearly all the great esoteric traditions). It is only from the power we find in ourselves right now that change can come.

I believe any other path can’t work today. Revolution in the traditional sense is easily destroyed because it is fairly easy to take out any group of activists by accusing them of rape, crimes or any of the many ways people are killed by professionals. I think we all instinctively know that revolution is not possible at this time in the way it was a century ago unless it happens without central organization or central planning since that organization would, if effective, be easily disrupted with all the tools the security services have at their disposal including false-flag operations.

It is by saying “yes” to our situation and our world that we can have the power to change it. Once we are here right now and we say yes to it no matter how ugly it appears we can transform ourselves and those around us to create or somehow find ourselves as part of collectives, cooperatives, and communities who are going in the same direction. That doesn’t mean don’t plan or don’t consciously organize–but organize and plan from a position of relative equanimity. Because right now even if the left was more effective it would be demonized by the MSM and dramatically repressed. Note how even the relatively mild environmental movement has crashed on the rocks and is able to accomplish so little because people view it as restricting their choices and intruding into their petty pleasures which have been programmed through mind-control techniques mentioned above.

Really how do you deal with this person quoted by Ruth Marcus (story here) who attended the Beck rally last weekend.

Asked what had inspired her to fly to the capital from Colorado, Andrea Carrasco started with God and ended with light bulbs.

She came, Carrasco said, to “ask God to restore the country. Our freedom is lost. My freedoms are lost. To be able to preach anywhere we want, to have God in our schools, to drive any kind of car we want and if I want to drive a gas guzzler, I can, if I want to eat a lot of sugar and salt, and I shouldn’t be forced to buy medical care.”

Carrasco paused, but only briefly. “To be able to burn the kind of light bulb I want,” she added. “The list goes on.”

Now this is not a quote out of context or picking up odd people and making fun of them it is the new normal for the American right. In fact it is less ludicrous then many other statements I have heard from the Tea Party movement. For this woman her concern is solely for herself and her right not to be lectured by others about how to live. It’s that simple. In fact, she will risk her own health and that of her family and deliberately eat salt and fat and sugar and smoke just to thumb her nose at the intelligentsia. That’s how it is for much of “normal” America. That reality should prove that any left movement that has teeth in it will be mowed down without mercy just over salt and light bulbs. That is where we’re at ladies and gentlemen. And I don’t think those notions are limited to the right I see the same attitudes throughout our culture and even in myself–the style is just different but the attitude that I should be able to do what I like when I like and fuck you if you don’t like it is THE problem. Ironically this sort of narcissism is precisely the attitude that is enslaving us much like the boys who went to “Pleasure Island” in Pinnocchio were enslaved.

Therefore we have to break that mold by ourselves being less narcissistic not through repressing our desires necessarily but by being in the present moment as much as possible and discovering the richness of life all around us including that within the woman who wants to eat more salt.

Activism yes, but in the context of power and power comes from being centered in what the Samurai tradition as expressed by the martial art of Aikido call “one point” which is in essence being balanced in this moment saying yes to whatever blows come your way and redirecting them using the force of the opponent to draw the off balance and help them see the result of their blundering stupidity rather than kill or maim them. Of course if they persist in their error … you will know what to do. Each moment offers us the tools and the vision to know what to do as long as we keep strong and train. Then we are in a position to help our friends and punish our enemies if that’s what the moment calls for. Otherwise all alternatives are closed to us.