15-08-2011, 05:15 AM
Thank you, Magda. My experience and my reading suggests that coming from the hrit, the hara, and the self is the only functional way to approach things; otherwise you get twisted up in psycho-dynamic games, word games, intrigues, lies and secret nuances and understandings, all of which are sure -- over time -- to trip you up, screw you up, and screw you over. As for the cultural indoctrination, you are likely right on, from an educational POV, a social/cultural/mediated POV, from the fact that my father was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican.
Gary, I'm not sure I was a hippie of the 60's, but I probably was. I didn't dive too deep, turned back east instead of traveling to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 67, didn't understand or like the Grateful Dead for a very long time, sampled them later, liked some of the improvisational/jam nature of the music, dropped them in favor of more sublime things like Keith Jarrett, etc.
At the tale end of 1966, I was enrolled in a student ROTC unit that was a "wannabe" Green Berets outfit, volunteered as a writer for the student newspaper and as a news director at the student radio station where I heard and interviewed a lot of people in the middle of the ongoing daily debate (and protests), and roomed with a fellow who was a conscientious objector, a Christian, the son of a German engineer who escaped Nazism, and a member of SDS. He and I traveled with a group of kids to a famous event in New York which featured the burning of a draft card. One might say the room mate had a profoundly deep effect on me; one could call it transformational. He (with a final swat from my high school English teacher) convinced me to not volunteer for that ROTC unit again. Its activities and the results of its training seen in the flesh in another individual convinced me to turn away from war and violence of any sort. I named my first born son after him.
But in all that time (certainly two years at its most intense stage), I never once heard anything about Marx or Marxism or socialism beyond a simple mention. If there was a presence, it was not a strong one, or "marketed" very effectively.
The very idea that someone should have to have two lives strikes me as quite possibly destructive in a psychic, somatic way at a personal (internal) level; it is akin to self-compartmentalization, a very distant relative of disassociation, quite possibly a source of dis-ease. [Please assure yourself that there is no hidden inference in that statement.]
"All secret societies are conspiratorial factions aimed at achieving goals that, by definition, are contrary to the public interest as determined by citizens in an open society. As Madison says, no faction can be allowed to be a judge in its own cause, because his interest would certainly bias its judgment and corrupt its integrity. And, as Karl Popper says, freedom is impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state; any secret society that weakens the rule of law, creates inequalities among citizens by illegal means, or frustrates legitimate aims of Democratic policy weakens a democratic republic and its objective of guaranteeing freedom to its citizens. Logically, then, secret societies are threats to democratic societies.… The real threats to the American democracy… come from the misuse of political and economic power by an undemocratic wealthy elitist clique of materialist ideologues in secret cabals at the highest levels of Merrick in society."
I'm sure to draw the ire of Charles Drago when I point out that the author of the above quote is Ralph E Bunch
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Bunche ], an emeritus professor of the department of political science at Portland State University, who served 16 years his book review editor for the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. The quote comes from pages 70 and 71 in Millegan's "Fleshing Out Skull and Bones", in a short essay entitled "Secrecy in our Constitution: Whom Do They Serve?", and whose epigraph contains the following language: "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings…" Bunch was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1963 for his role in the formation and administration of the United Nations. He served as contributing editor of the journal Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly.
In 2004, Ralph Bunche was posthumously honored with the William J. Donovan Award from The OSS Society.
Gary, please take none of this as a personal attack on you or your beliefs or political leanings. Today, in this United States, we can get into a lot of trouble by simply growing our own vegetables in a front-yard garden, or by selling someone raw milk. You have heard of the many lists; I am probably on at least one of them.
The question postulated by Millegan in the preface to his edited "Fleshing Out..." asks the question "Do these secret societies create and play both sides in controlled conflicts to produce outcomes to further [the designs of a small unknown group?]" (Yes, he calls it the New World Order.)
The questions I have are simply these: How can an individual choose in a meaningful way a candidate for high office, the right economic or financial path for self or family, the right school to educate their child, or anything of meaning in life if it is already controlled by someone else for hidden designs and purposes? And what should an individual do in order to counteract this apparent truth?
Gary, I'm not sure I was a hippie of the 60's, but I probably was. I didn't dive too deep, turned back east instead of traveling to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 67, didn't understand or like the Grateful Dead for a very long time, sampled them later, liked some of the improvisational/jam nature of the music, dropped them in favor of more sublime things like Keith Jarrett, etc.
At the tale end of 1966, I was enrolled in a student ROTC unit that was a "wannabe" Green Berets outfit, volunteered as a writer for the student newspaper and as a news director at the student radio station where I heard and interviewed a lot of people in the middle of the ongoing daily debate (and protests), and roomed with a fellow who was a conscientious objector, a Christian, the son of a German engineer who escaped Nazism, and a member of SDS. He and I traveled with a group of kids to a famous event in New York which featured the burning of a draft card. One might say the room mate had a profoundly deep effect on me; one could call it transformational. He (with a final swat from my high school English teacher) convinced me to not volunteer for that ROTC unit again. Its activities and the results of its training seen in the flesh in another individual convinced me to turn away from war and violence of any sort. I named my first born son after him.
But in all that time (certainly two years at its most intense stage), I never once heard anything about Marx or Marxism or socialism beyond a simple mention. If there was a presence, it was not a strong one, or "marketed" very effectively.
The very idea that someone should have to have two lives strikes me as quite possibly destructive in a psychic, somatic way at a personal (internal) level; it is akin to self-compartmentalization, a very distant relative of disassociation, quite possibly a source of dis-ease. [Please assure yourself that there is no hidden inference in that statement.]
"All secret societies are conspiratorial factions aimed at achieving goals that, by definition, are contrary to the public interest as determined by citizens in an open society. As Madison says, no faction can be allowed to be a judge in its own cause, because his interest would certainly bias its judgment and corrupt its integrity. And, as Karl Popper says, freedom is impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state; any secret society that weakens the rule of law, creates inequalities among citizens by illegal means, or frustrates legitimate aims of Democratic policy weakens a democratic republic and its objective of guaranteeing freedom to its citizens. Logically, then, secret societies are threats to democratic societies.… The real threats to the American democracy… come from the misuse of political and economic power by an undemocratic wealthy elitist clique of materialist ideologues in secret cabals at the highest levels of Merrick in society."
I'm sure to draw the ire of Charles Drago when I point out that the author of the above quote is Ralph E Bunch
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Bunche ], an emeritus professor of the department of political science at Portland State University, who served 16 years his book review editor for the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. The quote comes from pages 70 and 71 in Millegan's "Fleshing Out Skull and Bones", in a short essay entitled "Secrecy in our Constitution: Whom Do They Serve?", and whose epigraph contains the following language: "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings…" Bunch was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1963 for his role in the formation and administration of the United Nations. He served as contributing editor of the journal Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly.
In 2004, Ralph Bunche was posthumously honored with the William J. Donovan Award from The OSS Society.
Gary, please take none of this as a personal attack on you or your beliefs or political leanings. Today, in this United States, we can get into a lot of trouble by simply growing our own vegetables in a front-yard garden, or by selling someone raw milk. You have heard of the many lists; I am probably on at least one of them.
The question postulated by Millegan in the preface to his edited "Fleshing Out..." asks the question "Do these secret societies create and play both sides in controlled conflicts to produce outcomes to further [the designs of a small unknown group?]" (Yes, he calls it the New World Order.)
The questions I have are simply these: How can an individual choose in a meaningful way a candidate for high office, the right economic or financial path for self or family, the right school to educate their child, or anything of meaning in life if it is already controlled by someone else for hidden designs and purposes? And what should an individual do in order to counteract this apparent truth?
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"