zondag 29 mei 2016

Count on yourself and the people you know

Don’t count on regular media, governments, corporations, legislation or the police to improve the world. Count on yourself and the people you know. Count on jointly search for what causes our fear of the unfamiliar or of losing control. Count on seeing our urges to oppress others and wage war, to exploit others and create poverty, and to be shortsighted and destroy the planet.

Count on understanding how subconscious abuse of infants perpetuates misery in their later lives and as a consequence brings misery to others. Count on jointly learn how to reduce that cause of misery. Count on jointly learn how to take responsibility for that reduction. Count for that reason on jointly let love surface and integrate it with practical thinking and acting.

Don’t count on the pundits of ‘hardware’ or ‘software.’ Learn to see the connection between the 'soft' and the 'hard.'

Don’t count on top-down or bottom-up approaches

As long as the alienated, rationalist, top-down, control type of approach is used to reduce the misery created by that same approach, Sisyphus will never reach the mountain top.

As long as the emotional, loving, small-scale, bottom-up type of approach is used to reduce misery away from large-scale, hard action, Sisyphus will never reach the mountain top.

zaterdag 28 mei 2016

Governments as destroyers

Gaza, Homs, Sur, Fallujah, Sirte – cities in the Middle East that are destroyed by nation state governments. While orthodox marxism only blames private enterprise, and regular media call freedom fighters ‘terrorists’, armies of governments go on with mass murder and mass destruction for the purposes of control over territory and people.

zaterdag 21 mei 2016

Ten Rupees: The Story of a Blind Eye

‘Sir, sir, there is a white man sleeping in the roadside. Shall we bring him to your house?’ I agreed, and the village boys came back with him, John.

All he had was a shirt, short pants, a hat and his sleeping mat. He came from England, where he found his family too narrow-minded, over-occupied as they were with money and their printing business. He had left them without notice, flewn to India, and given away his belongings, including his passport.

After he got spiritual relief in Pune, he started walking, bare feet, along the western coast of India and wanted to reach the southern tip of the country. He had gone from church to church where the priests gave him food, drink and shether if needed, until he arrived in the southern state of Kerala and the village where I conducted anthropological fieldwork.

We talked and I took him along on my visits to poor households where I did my research. They depended on labor of the man who, if he found employment, earned 8-10 rupees a day. It was just enough for them to buy food and perhaps some medicines. In-between the visits I offered John drink and food. He asked politely for extra salt in his food, explaining that he had been sweating a lot during his walks.

By the end of the day we had a long talk at my house. I lit a candle and poured tea. He spoke about his family and his unhappy childhood. He said: ‘I swore to myself to never mind material affairs. It is my mission to live without money. Look, here is a ten rupee note. I got it from the last priest I visited. I’ll show you what I do with it.’ He took the note and held it over my burning candle until it had mostly turned into ashes. The last piece he dropped in his cup.

It was in the days that I gave priority to science, at the cost of my emotions. So, I did not react to his demonstration and showed him the spare bedroom that I had offered already.

When on my own, I tried to digest his aversion of money being so strong that it blinded him for the agonies of poor people he had seen the whole day. Afterall, it is the task of an anthropologist to understand people. But I knew then already that the incident would chase me for the days to come.

Dark Clouds of Bali Paradise

Bali is a refuge for spiritual seekers but, so sorry to say, I don’t like it there. It gives me ominous feelings.

The traffic is terribly dangerous, noisy and hot, and pollutes the air to levels of suffocation.

The Balinese people don't strike me as particulary cheerful. The frequent rituals seem to me more conducted with drudgery and unhappiness than with inspiration and delight.

Violence is engrained in Balinese prehistory. And let us not forget the demons of trauma and revenge still roaming around after the political massacres of 1965. The rivers were colored red with blood not only in Java but also in Bali.

‘It is possible that over one million people were imprisoned at one time or another… The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history textbooks and have received little introspection by Indonesians, due to their suppression under the Suharto regime, which ruled for over three decades. Satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence have challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366

zondag 15 mei 2016

Prisons of Travel

By sunset we took off for hang glider trips over The Hague to the North Sea coast. We started in the dark and rose to the light, seeing landscapes and human life diminish along with our daily concerns at the air force base where my friend R was also a private glider pilot and I came as his passenger. At evenings without military flights, hang gliding was allowed and we used the opportunities. This flying felt like utter paradise, there, high up in the air. But we could not step out of the cockpit. Well, we could, but death was eagerly awaiting on the ground. Paradise and hell were just one handle away from each other.

This thought often occurred to me again when I traveled continents for my holidays and ninety foreign projects. Travel is hard work and I fear nervous airports with their long queues and missed connections. I fear hotel rooms without my personal energy at lonely evenings and weekends. I fear jetlegs that grow longer with aging. I fear food poisonings. I fear plotting taxi drivers. I fear pickpockets in rushy cities. I fear long, hot hours in the traffic. I fear for accidents that take a 1,4 million deaths each year. I fear the police in countries where they tell me: ‘Stay away from the government, and most of all from the police.’

Travelers best learn to stay in the cockpit to protect their sense of freedom.