The Amazing Neo Donut Machine

The Amazing Donut Machine

All your great desires are but monstrosities                                                                                                               And all your wildest fires trivialities 

Somehow the following seems appropriate in a refractory canonical dialectic way.

 The mystic core is humorous unless it reveals itself

Next is the religious ethos, which is serious until the mirror breaks

After that is sitcom mentality   which laughs everything off

Finally there is dementia or the endless controversialist

The four components of being are present in all of us all of the time, along with their opposites

WE have already established myth as a link between the real world of  and the idealized world, which is either distant or yet to be. It also serves a function something like humor in that it allows us to contemplate the   effect of possible realities without  actually paying the cost.

      The Great Game

  Is very much dreamlike, The technostate pretends it loves us and we pretend we believe them.

All characterization, be they laws or mere pronouncements – are illusion  Meant to further the cause of one side or the other. 

                    It’s general accepted that the beverage of choice among computer hobbyist’s is coffee- and the stronger the better. Premium brews are often sought out   and   small glasses of espresso mixed with regular coffee to make caffeine “boilermakers”.  (This is not an informative article but for the record the strongest cup of coffee is the Havana brand you can get on 9^th street and 54^th in Manhattan. The best coffee on earth is from the Blue mountains of Jamaica.)

         But we concern ourselves not with transient reality, rather with eternal myth.  During the last depression coffee  naturally rose to prominence as “The five cent meal” Down and outers spent hours in automats nursing that cuppa coffee and Irving Berlin, chronicler of the era stated                                           “Mr Herbert Hoover says that nows the time to buy                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            so lets have another cup of coffee and let’s have another piece of pie”

                  Especially when the world has gone to he’ll the myth may be the only reality capable of sustaining us. Among  gearhead the legendary GTO’s and Shelby Cobras’s live on in song and dream even though their four hundred horsepower engines are long gone.

              The number of economic tragedies made possible by the coming  of the technostate has never been counted. Note don’t take what I say as gospel I make no claims etc, but apparently a few years back  someone realized that Dunken donuts was undervalued – in part because donuts are a “must have” food. Late at night, early tin the morning.  So they did an LBO. Note not to be rude but if you don’t understand the mechanics of this little financial instrument , get off the website, in fact  I prefer readers with at least several graduate degrees and six figure income otherwise it doesn’t pay for me to dumb down  and lose the important readers.

           I probably should have said this long ago.

           What few care to be aware of is that sixty years ago everyone dunked their donuts.  Today it would be consider the sign of a boor; a person of poor taste, especially when the brown fluid dripped down the front  of one’s shirt.   One’s style of dunkin was considered indicative of one’s social class.   The elite dunked with two fingers extended, the hoi polloi slurped.

           Essentially no one has dunked a donut in a long time, but we have not noticed – and that tell’s you something. In legals terms it’s called good will and it often accrues to a specific locale  and workforce   - that it could match up brand is less to expected.

               I think I’ll stop here.

Ps    I wasn’t one of those completely enamored of Steve Jobs. There had been cases where really creative people were let go – but what happened to him when he was fired was a modern tragedy.    I trust you are aware that within five years the company was on the verge of bankruptcy .  This because the stockholders wanted more money out of the firm.      What the hell did they do to deserve more?

            As I say, it was a tragedy and now Steve’s gone and once again the   stock has plummeted.

    I remember in the days of the bogus leaders of Apple I was one of the die hards because  I had grown up with the product. Then the CPU and OSX scandals happened  - which could have been handled in such a way as to not make the Motorola cpu obsolete over night – but always theres that underlying motive and that little bit of chiseling  was  enough to push me to invest  in windows.

         What can you say. Fresh I out college I was commissioned todo a report   for the Criminal Justice dept about hand guns . Here’s an issue where both cops and liberals agree. I did everything on a strictly factual basis and came up with the same results as always and the pols took the report and threw it away – because it did not say what they wanted it to say

   So now you can buy a cup of coffee and muffin and get a dollars change from a five dollar bill

Gidget the Widget goes to Mexico

   There was a guy who invested in amalgamated widgets. Everyday he’d call the company and ask how they were doing. The answer was always the same.  -  “Great”

        One day the answer was different. It was, “We’re  bankrupt and  have been taken over by Universal  Skateboards”

                This illustrates a law of business which is “Tell ‘em the bad news last.” It also calls to mind something I’ve hoped to discover for many years about the technostate which is gradually incorporating all aspects of our lives under its banners.   Just in the nick of time I’ve found what could be called “The humorous aspects of Cybertronic Society,” or “Computers do the darndest things!”

                   For example if you lived in Berlin in 1945 you could go to anyone of the few remaining movie theatres and see the latest  War News. Row after row of super bombers flew through the sky to deliver their cargo of death  to the criminals  and Non Nazi’s  It was beautiful and awe inspiring.  It didn’t exist, but that’s where the funny part comes into play. The streets outside were pure ruble and could not be transverse by an auto but in propaganda land all was well.

                   I confess it takes a certain macabre sensitivity to see the annihilation of twenty million humans in it’s comic context, but you don’t have to go so far as to actually laugh.  When Ronald Reagan threw a half million people off of social security we may well  believe that some of them were negatively impacted in the extreme.  If ten or twenty thousand lives were lost nevertheless to identify which one’s  remains impossible.  This allows democrats to sleep at night and after all – they kept their jobs and homes.

                       One other thing that only recently has crossed my mind is that most readers don’t have the slightest idea what I am talking about.   They are used to hearing stories about some aspect, often dysfunctional, of a system  that they would never dream of replacing. I too am not clear as to what the replacement will be  but am not happy with the thought of things remaining as they are- because that might translate into things getting worse.

                 One translation of this is to say that the people in charge of fixing things like to tinker around the edges in the basic belief that the system as a whole, does it’s job  and actually I can kind of agree with that. Others would suggest that the passing years and era a calling for a system wide solution – top to bottom. I can agree with that too. I’m a pretty agreeable guy. 

                  Here’s where the real confusion comes. Actually I think we need even more then a system wide solution – more then a revamping from top to bottom. Increasingly it begins to look like a sort of reformation.

                        A big part of the difference between these viewpoints is I don’t see the problem as one of greed or incompetence or immorality.  Essentially we have a system that forces people to break the ethical laws. I mean do you think all those black men in prison became dope dealers out of choice?  If we value people according to their wealth then where do we get off if they streal and cheat to gain it?

                       This means I see the shadow where others see light.

Here’s an example, comparatively harmless.  I bought a set of headphones online a few weeks   ago, the money was transferred and that was the end of the soty the company said it had no record of anything – although I have the CC info.  I’ve since expended many hours trying to track the item down.  Fortunately for me I enjoy this sort of trackin  but it can be nerve wracking.

                 What in a store would be a ten minute transaction her has occupied many hours of my and other searchin – Including a three way conference call with the bank  that  ended with my phone breaking up  and the store employing the age old expedient of giving out the wrong connect number.

                   Plus this is the THX 1138 scenario  .

          There are two prime scenarios in the war between the humans and the cybertrons.   One is the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which was the name of a test in the first Star Trek movie.  Essentially the Kobayashi Maru  was a spacecraft that, given the factors the Captains had to work with  would crash in the battle sims. The object was to discover how potential captains would act in futility creation scenarios.  A secondary goal was the administration of purposeless punishment – meant to  demonstrate to the subject the omnipotence of the Code.

               Another scenario is Thx-1138  which simply put says that technocode being  binary and finite  there is a point beyond which  gains can never exceed losses and therefor systems must terminate.  It is not, for instance, that the RIAA  can’t catch those music pirates  that prevents them from doing so – it is just that the cost of doing so far outweighs the cost of letting it pass  that it is no longer profitable

           Returning to the present case  I don’t know how large the profit margin on a pair of head phones is.   I imagine a few dollars.  This means that after a while it no longer pays them to stall you  but rather it’s worth their while to solve the problem.   A corollary to this is much more often utilized, often in statements of privacy   which are so complex they are worthless..

               I confess there were times when, viewing the complexity of the task and the assumed ignorance of the involved firms I lost heart  but I remind the reader this is a useful skill. Amateurs get on the phone, feeling they’ve been ripped off and start screaming, but a pro will seduce the phone operator into looking up and divulging whatever information is needed.

                         It’s been a long time since I had a personal secretary but the best ones  were masters at gaining information informally.

               And finally consider one Rich Feynmans informal laws of safe cracking. Humint  (Human intelligence) is always best.  This raises a question that can’t be answered.

                          It’s critical as well.  Eg NY Times  - is it technostate propaganda  or human intelligence?  Fox news – same question.

                 There’s a kicker – when we had multiple media  sources,

Newspapers, Radio stations – most intelligence was human intelligence  and then consequently the real kicker which is, from a systems point of view I don’t give a hoot what the information is  - if it is coming from one source then that source has got to go.  Actually this makes things simple for me in that for instance I don’t have to ask if fox is fair and balanced.

                    Another way to look at it is the king must retire – he might be a swell guy but still he’s a king and that’s not good.

                In a way it’s good be cause it helps to keep people in ignorance and thus keep commentators employed.   It’s basic Chaos. Heat water and wait for bubble to appear  with the question being where and when. In the meantime do lines of heroin, get blow jobs by the pool and make sure your political friends are happy.

   Above all – relax   for it is the relaxed mind that is  ever alert to entrepreneurial opportunities.

             Pay no mind to the dark winged angel.

           Begin here----------

   On of the aspects of technology we are becoming away of is how it creates dark tech.   The universe itself, if you try to add it up reveals that the majority of it is not present – it is called dark matter.

                This is not  your run of the mill darkness. It is specific, as in the case where a descending Space shuttle loses radio contact with earth on descent, or where money, in the form of electrons is trading so rapidly that no one can tell for sure were it is. It's an offshoot of chaos and happens when things are moving bigger and quicker then one is prepared to recognize.

               The old school boy joke is theres good news a hand grenade that blows everything up for a quarter mile. The bad news is no one can't throw it more then three hundred feet.   Hence we have a case where technological advance is very costly.

         (Very)  roughly the US   economy is about 3 trillion a year but in any given year there's seven or eight trillion in circulation.  Go to the third world, or even Europe and everybody loves the dollar.They don’t love the US – that’s another story.  Theoretically it’s POD – plain old dollars  but it effects the state or context of the chaotic  situation.  One and one is two but a bird in the hand is not the same as a bird in the bush.  What I am saying is that we can at least imagine situations which would precipitate a sudden change in the social order.

               Because that’s the basic problem isn’t it?   We want change but no one has the slightest real idea on how to bring it about or what to bring about..

                 I include myself in this category.  Even Cornell West, noted socialist, doesn’t quite know where we’re going.  Some call it the virtual state  where somehow the freedoms of democracy are preserved in the presence  of the all knowing and indifferent technostate. The technostate ultimate has one answer to every problem – the concentration camp.  Even further down the line it’s goal is annihilation of biological life forms on planet earth.  We don’t want that, at least some of us don’t want that  and admitting acceptable losses will occur to the majority of humans have to find ways around the current and coming difficulties.

              I am not alone. There have been many of us for decades with eyes opened.  Even global warming people recognized they were going to have to set up independent means of dealing with the problems  because (see paragraph A)

               How for instance do we plan to distribute human dna advances? At present it’s shown in harmless “testing” measures  but what is a gene supplement that will keep you free of cancer worth?  Or one that will increase your IQ several fold. Do we help the smartest?or the the not so smartest?

Do we make it a matter of who can afford it?    Who has control the government or the corporation?

                On a related matter what about so called Bitcurrency.  The US left the gold standard years ago and nowadays sll money is a sort of consensual agreement – it has value because we want it to have value.   The fact that currency value can change via printing more is a form of contamination.     

               These current issues are directly related but most don’t see it because they own stock in amalgamated widgets – eg greenbacks  What is more and more dangerous is they cannot conceive of anyone  not wanting amalgamated to go on forever.

                 Certainly the surest way to preserve Amalgamated  would be to spread it out – but this is not the case.

             Don’t put democracy down. It is fast to adopt – fast on it’s feet   and very useful in a variety of productive environments- almost like a code.  And what is more people have *not*  lost their minds.  The darkside of democracy is not so bad as long as it stays inert.  Many political philosophers, such as Plato, believed that sooner or later all democracy would be taken over by a small ruling elite  and devolve to tyranny.

                 The irony of Jefferson is that this fellow who has been adopted a libertarian idol   could never balance his own books.

               All this has little impact on today.  The thought crosses my mind that the real anarchists – the real threats to the economic order are the large capitol interests  because they seek not competition but market domination

                        To put it as bluntly as possible-  anything that replaces any aspect of the current food. knowledge information processors is to be  looked on favorably.

I can’t in all decency urge the buying of bit currency. It’s too bogus, but it is a beginning. It’s like hopscotch -  a stupid game that serves no purpose-  it doesn’t need a purpose. It is given value by what it is not.

              I try to keep non aligned  but one could as well say that anything that weakens my enemy is my friend. To reiterate – I don’t  know what’s wrong with capitalism but it’s not fixing itself.   Maybe we’ll enter a Star Trek world where money is essentially obsolete. It’s disturbing because people like to have one up on someone else.

Wooden Dragons

                   “But Don Quixote   - you are seeing things!  “     Sancho Panza

                 I glad to see that I no longer have to resort to hyperbole to describe this web site a as the most important on the world wide web. What others speak of will effect some, or many of you – what I speak of will effect some, and is,  effecting, all of you.

                Let me speak briefly aside for a moment however, in lieu of greater credentials.  The mere fact  that Miquel De Cervantes  was able to create  such a complex and multifaceted  work  as the story of the Misfit don Quixote ought, in a sane world, have proven to someone that here was a man of some intelligence.   It did not, as his near contemporary Machiavelli  might have commented, the world is divided into not only the prince and the commoner,  but those  of ill intent as well as good.  Not that I would complain of being hounded,  it’s nice to be loved, but it’s nice to be treated fairly  and the powerful of our world often cannot resist a little exploitation here and there.

                  But of course the kicker for me is that  the Don may have lost the  battle but he certainly won the war  and I hope and trust someday some victory as was and is his shall grant wings to my efforts as well.  Even more then that it   is my prayer that such thoughts as awaken in you may preserve you and your loved ones in the insanity .

                The term   technology has to be given a wider definition then most contemporary usage.  We uses it tin the original Greek sense of technos – which is roughly, “the means by which things are made.”  As such one the first tecknos was the  creation of cities.

               The discovery of the subconscious  as rarely given the import it deserves, but never  the less  we have to communicated n the conscious world.

                 In this long saga the fifteenth century is  notable for the discovery of cannon balls, which ended the rule of castles and hence the middle ages, and at the same time the advent of capitalism in Italy, which allowed for long voyages of explorations sn colonial   expansion.  What I just said is nothing new. I wouldn’t even mention it  except for the fact that Cervantes uses the Dragon, subtly as a symbol.

                The repeat a long stated premise the dragon is the life force, to some extent it is civilization, but more properly it is a symbol of the dross seeking the empyrean ,of it’s own accord.  Like many element symbols the dragon is so complete in it’s psychic emphasis   that it’s difficult to think of many other things to say about it.   Immediately one calls to mind Fraziers work, “The golden Bough”   which at times reads like a phone book.  The symbolic behaviors are widespread but they are not very complicated.

             Speaking to circumstances we currently face I am not beholden to any one approach. I’m neither a survivalist nor a utopian..Let’s just say the opportunities before, in particular in terms o maniulain of human genosph0es are larger then they have ever been, and it is no time for hubris.

          I’d go so far as to say that these writings are informed by such Science Fictions stories as Logans Run, and Thx-1138.    To put it bluntly I do not think this is a friendly world  and what is more, without som sort of ethic compass the opportunity  for missteps grows larger.

             Has the world ever been friendly though?

             What need mentioning however is that Cervantes saw “el monstre”, the dragon    as  a windmill, exactly analogous to   Blakes Dark Satanic mills.  The irony is that superficially at least the dragon of

Quixotes world was the Catholic Church.

                  I don’t kid myself . Virtually no one today  understands what I am talking about.   What is critical to know is that I am no genius per se.  in there words the walls holding you back from understanding what I say are not   high not wide  - you simple cannot perceive them in the way humanity has always  been held back by delusions, and not only religious delusions.

                                      Too explain, in the British industrial revolution no one wanted to hear that air pollution and colonialism were bad – it made people rich, and rich is good and there for anything opposed to that was wrong.   Those who saw other with starved and that tends to silence one's voice.

                                  The same Ferdinand and Isabella who launched Columbus also launched the

Inquisition – in the same year,  1492.  They are merely two sides of the same coin.   

                   If any of us are going to survive   we are going to have to be aware as possible of the actual circumstances in which we live and not be seduced   by the Sirens of technological progress.

Shane! Come Back!

http

“Shane! Shane come back! Come back Shane!”

It is accounted among the wise that at any given moment we have an infinite number of possible actions available to us and further more each of these actions would bring into being any of an infinite number of universes. Add to them the many universes we have already traversed – some real, some not so real is in not unusual that a degree of weariness happens to weigh the psyche down and this, along with the dew covered wings of the muse bring moments of silence, however brief to the hills and valleys and halls of eternity.

Fortunately there are few aware of just the way things really are. We have seen many sights, I and the reader. Personally my flaw is to think, like a foreign speaking bachelor in Paris. It’s nice, but I wish there were some one to share these things with.

Let us rest our weary minds then for a moment. Though virtually no one is reading this blog I like to think that in al fairness someone, the even many, may catch up. I won’t be your friend. I won’t degrade the idea by pretending it is so. Machines are not your friends. The internet is not your friend.

And image I think of sometimes is the castle of the sleeping beauty, She was enchanted by a wicked witch, made to sleep for a hundred years. In the early versions of the tale much is a made of the castle she sleeps in, covered in corpses, bones sticking through torn uniform on thorn bushes . Finally Prince Charming comes along –a chap who’s sole virtue is a damn good sense of timing.

I’d like to look a little further into charming attributes. Yes, he had a good sense of timing, but he also survived when hundreds, thousands died. Remembering your lessons you know that the true heroic act is achieved not out of desire for however noble a good, but out of manifestation of the heroes being.

That’s the point isn’t it? Studies of front line soldiers reveal that the number who actually pull the trigger with intent to harm is very small. If you look at a generations worth of artists it’s much the same, a few produce some things of merit and the rest imitate them. It’s like the Bell curve and chaos theory.

And even as we observe ourselves in a mirror if we are too close all we can hope to see is the face with a foreshortened image of the rest of the body.

What we discussed in recent essays explains a great deal and I happy to discover that in fact I have been traversing terrain unfamiliar to other explorers, namely the creation of mythical advances in societies that parallel those in individuals. This however I don’t regard as the major element of the investigations. A key, but not sole element in the creation of myth is the retention of dignity.

It is incidentally crucial to define myth for our usage. I refer to myth in terms of Weapons of Mass destruction, Austerity Economic’s , Facebook, etc In other works these are old corporate interests tarted-up in the costumes of new corporate entities.

As has been noted the real tragedy is not the existence of a Reagan, but the inability of people to recognize it. To complain of the first does little good as long as the second is a viable myth.

There are so many post Freudian analysts that they have aman for the- the apostates. I don’t wish to vover familiar ground by hasten to remind the reader that the final perspective must be from two directions and they in turn stem from the inner and outer zones of being.

People will change by genetic modification, by chemotherapy and by enhanced learning conditions with the result of a world being torn apart

The environment will change as successively more experiences fall into the commodity description and thus creating a world of haves and have nots.

 

In order to help people deal with these changes, to assuage the pain new myths will be born. The simple minded will think that these new mythical world historical figures are created by charismatic personalities who draw and repel the minds and dedication of the neediest *and* the strongest among us. This is not the correct understanding.

The great myths are found in personalities that are empty. They are like valleys through which intermittent rivers flow. Propagandists liken the monadic elements to memes, information segments that need only the presence of a framework upon which to organize itself into order to coalesce into that which we call being.

The propagandists and mind shapers therefore believe one either control the information reaching the being , or the framework into which this information is shaped and attain the results in terms of control that one desires.

There are certain basic laws in this kind of scientific investigation. They cannot be proven because they seem to exist on such an elementary level. One could go so far as to say they are laws born of perfect equilibrium. Confucius, who was not a scientist, nevertheless says the key to existence is reciprocity.

It’s a story for another day and someone perhaps wiser then I, but nature, or God seems to have some set ideas and we trifle with them at our peril. The great law, As Above, so below can be put into gentler more inclusive terms basically ,you don’t get to take something without putting something back.

( It occurs to me that the entire difficulty with Satan stems from this. We may empathize with his good intentions but the fact is he did not make the universe and therefore…

I spoken to a few musical moguls who just don’t get it. I’d love to give them control – but it would be a bad idea)

It is for this reason I choose to avoid speaking in terms of memes, or realities dedicated to serving set purposes or ends when we speak of the factors that create and feed the mythical constructs of humanity. Although most of the time our attempts to control the thinking of others works, we just do not and cannot not if it will be permanent.

It is as if we get to talk to God he explains that the universe was a mistake. A product of the law of unintended circumstances. He wanted to build a garage for his second car and wound up with a greenhouse.

In any case it doesn’t seem to hurt to think of myth food as a form of chi”. This way when in conventional usage the propagandist err’s in seeking to create a virtual being we can explain it as being a problem, or miscoding , stems from the depths of the propagandist.

Note I use the term propagandist whereas in the past the term magician was used. Both gild the lily, which is to say that in the vast number of actual instances of this sort of thing what we are talking about is psychological conditioning - A parent wants their daughter to marry well, a factory owner wants a war to sell his goods etc

 

In conclusion I suppose I should be thankful in a way because my undergraduate psych experience was so unfull filling I never had my interest deadened by weeks of listening to people complain about their spouses, and bosses and ungrateful children. Complaints always directed at the wrong people.

I feel as if I am at a podium having finished the presentation – but sill here. In my other life as THE ALF I’ve experienced the phenomenon of submitting material, getting no response and seeing it used a few months later. That also happened – a lot- in media commentary. But I find myself surprising sanguine about the thought of any of this work being incorporated in to others.

The theme of myths as compensatory mechanisms is prefaced all through Mircea Ellliedes work – only he did say it. Campbell has done a great deal of work to bring the universality of myth to our attention but my reasearch probably owes as much to Freud who gives us an awareness both of the uniqueness of personal myths ( aka dream) and the , if you will, logic by which the means of controlling the individual can be used to control societies.

If Civilization is to be measure by it’s discontents might not we say the same thing around.

It shows you what an outcast Freud was because in actual practice one of the assumptions of civilization is that it has no outcasts – it’s is allegedly a big tent and to be branded an apostate, a discontent, to be excommunicated, is to forgo all claims to justice or the right to live.

Well I know that life