New Orliens and no end...

[harsi]

I must say that by seeing and hearing what is going on in this area, I ask myself what happened to this great country USA by not beeing able to help its own people? Or so slowly.
Is it only that because this catastrophe hit such a big area with such a big population or are there also some racistic feelings and mentality envolved that the human aid, food and water is reaching so slowly the needed population of this city. I heard that 68 percent are black there.

[pamu]

The fact that people are looting TV-sets in the middle of all that chaos is telling, isnt it? Worlds greatest superpower indeed...
Yes, why do things happen so slowly? Why were there so many people left in the area when Katrina came? I am not a fan of conspiracy theories and I do not think there is one in this case, but the whole scenario gives me a pretty bleak picture of America.

[Janus]

I must say that by seeing and hearing what is going on in this area, I ask myself what happened to this great country USA by not beeing able to help its own people? Or so slowly.
Is it only that because this catastrophe hit such a big area with such a big population or are there also some racistic feelings and mentality envolved that the human aid, food and water is reaching so slowly the needed population of this city. I heard that 68 percent are black there.

Blacks in America are predomanently Democratic, why would Bush want to save them?
My daddy was from Lousiana, born down in the Bayous in fact, and his father was a half breed river-boat gambler. Neither he, nor his father, nor his fathers father ever experienced or believed that the U.S. government gave a damn about them, or about anything other than increasing their own wealth and social satus. Why would anyone expect Bush to be different?
It isn't as much about race as it is about class. I do not believe Bush cares about the color of the skin of the boys and girls dieing now for him, as long as their blood increases his fortune and power. I doubt that he is sufficiently evolved to care about anyone.
Americans are in general good people but I believe that they have been kept stupid so that they can be easily manipulated. Most cannot differentiate reason from rhetoric and because they are good people tend to believe that everyone else is also good, including the President. They do not even realize that belief is ignorance.

[harsi]

Janus wrote:

"Why would anyone expect Bush to be different?
It isn't as much about race as it is about class. I do not believe Bush cares about the color of the skin of the boys and girls dieing now for him, as long as their blood increases his fortune and power. I doubt that he is sufficiently evolved to care about anyones."

I guess dear Janus this you must explain somehow better for us not living in the USA. I dont understand so well what you mean by this?
Or maybe let us asume that in this catastrophic situation everyone is doing and responding to the situation acording to what he thinks is best .

"Americans are in general good people but I believe that they have been kept stupid so that they can be easily manipulated."

Sounds interesting to me taking into consideration the Society I was involved for many years. Although I must say that I allways felt myself under the protection of the Supreme Lord.

[Janus]

Janus wrote:

"Why would anyone expect Bush to be different?
It isn't as much about race as it is about class. I do not believe Bush cares about the color of the skin of the boys and girls dieing now for him, as long as their blood increases his fortune and power. I doubt that he is sufficiently evolved to care about anyones."

I guess dear Janus this you must explain somehow better for us not living in the USA. I dont understand so well what you mean by this?
Or maybe let us asume that in this catastrophic situation everyone is doing and responding to the situation acording to what he thinks is best .

"Americans are in general good people but I believe that they have been kept stupid so that they can be easily manipulated."

Sounds interesting to me taking into consideration the Society I was involved for many years. Although I must say that I allways felt myself under the protection of the Supreme Lord.

Dear Harsi
Because you are a good person you presume that everyone else is a good person also, and that they share with you the same ethics and values.
Locke, one of the founders of the predominant World View proposed that God was "unknowable" by definition, that he thus did not and could not form the basis of human society, it's center. THe Machine Age World View sees consciousness as a product of matter, life as soleless and nothing, including life as being sacred. Thus to those expressive of this world view human beings are no more than machines, useful but no more special that toasters. The difference is that an over production of toasters can be stored away in a warehouse and left unplugged while human beings when overproduced do more than take up space, they take up valuable energy and resources. When this amounts to a reduction in profit why would a material fundamentalist regard them with compassion or care when such feelings are considered to be unrealistic.
"The death of an individual is a tragedy, the deaths of milllions is a statistic" Joe Stalin.
Bush is abount as morally evolved as a monkey in my estimate. I do not believe that he gives a crap about who dies as long as it either supports the interests of those whose I believe him to be or doesn't make him look bad. He's quite an egotist.
Very few of Dr. Kings speeches from the last three years of his life are played over here because he had by then realized that it wasn't about race but about class, that both poor whites and poor blacks were victim of a society, both East and West that served the interest of the very wealthy and which refarded all other human beings as resources and commodities for their exploitation, as human excrement.
The other internalized World View which reaches oral values in its religious expression supports the consideration that Go is unknowable by definition in the here and now to the degree that one's life and that of societies can be centered around a living and active relationship with him and is contaminated by Gnostic considerations that create a false dichotomi beween the material world and the realm of spirit. Life is not to them ingerently sacred in and of itself but only useful as a vehicle by which one can attain to a life after death. It is a third class religion based on blind faith and ignorance that offers nothing to the chickens in the hen house except distraction while the foxes creep in.
Religion in the West has long been the whore of the rulers and is not loved by them although it has long been their allie in the exploitation of the masses. It still it serves their need, just like sports by distracting us and by professing that there will be pie in the sky by and by.It teaches that its ok that you are exploited in the here and nowe as God will reward you after death and "they'll get theirs".
These two internalized world views, the one which teaches cut throat capitalism and the other which teaches oral values do not mix and cannot be reconciled internally, so most people do not try or setlle for hypocracy, or they act out of one from Monday through Saturday and go to Church every other Sunday and drop a few nickels in the collection plate assured that that, an "I believe", a "Glory Hallelujah" on key will succicient pay offg their cheap insurance policy

[harsi]

Dear Janus, I thank you that you took the time to explain a little bit moore what you meant. I will come back soon, to this interesting topic you mentioned in your reply.

Until then, I guess the question remains, how much state we need and how much state we dont need?
It seems the expectations to the way one is responding to the needs of the people during such catastrophies are showing that there is a strong desire also for a strong state under a strong leadership.

But is only George W. Bush "the state" in your country, Amerika?

[Janus]

Dear Janus, I thank you that you took the time to explain a little bit moore what you meant. I will come back soon, to this interesting topic you mentioned in your reply.

Until then, I guess the question remains, how much state we need and how much state we dont need?
It seems the expectations to the way one is responding to the needs of the people during such catastrophies are showing that there is a strong desire also for a strong state under a strong leadership.

But is only George W. Bush "the state" in your country, Amerika?

Many Americans did not vote in the last presidential election simply because they saw no choice, so yes, there is only one state and it is a police state, although George is only a puppet, a figurehead, an appearance of feality to a national sovereignity that does not in fact exist, that does not in fact make sense in a value system that accounts all values in dollars and cents.

Near the end of WWII the U.S. State Dept. dicovered that U.S. Oil was selling more to the Axis through Spain than it was to the allies. The State Dept. became angry and went to threaten them at which point the Oil Co. countered that they couls stop selling oil to the U.S. As a consequence the Oil Co, was only fined 1,000.00 dollars while they in turn increased the price of oil for the allied D-Daay invasion by 300%. Just goes to show you where the real government is.

And Hitlers rise to power, P.S. was funded by U.S. companies and his selection was deliberate, so Hitlers dead but what put him into power is stonger than ever.

It is only an illusion that a Government of the people, by the people and for the people continues to exist. The Americans are suspicious but they are so abysmally uniformed and ignorant that they presume that it is individuak fault rather than concerted effort, deliberate, cold and calculating that has taken over this contry and has had control of it for many years.

Perhaps its better for just as telling the turkeys that they were going to be Thanksgiving dinner would only make them miserable and not enable them to change their future, educating the American public would only result in a change in the timetable, not in the effect. Those who objected would just be rounded up and put into concentration camps earlier. Such camps are already built and in place all around the U.S and could have indeed been used as centers for the evacuates from the Hurricane. I guess though that they don't want to draw to much attention to their existence.

This all makes sense from the perspective of material fundamentalism. The world simply cannot afford another America, it cannot evehn afford one. Thus it is simply not possible to maintain the living standatds that americans have gotten used to and completly impossible to bring up Third World countries to the Economic prosperity that Americans enjoy. The difference however is that people in Third world countries would be content ifd they enjoyed a tenth as much prosperity, or even less.

American was useful for a time as a host while this virus of material fundamentalism still was contained by a lack of technology, but now it is airborne, it doesn't require a host country anymore and it has no favorates based upon sentiment. r It is vampiric. and all of life everywhere is what it feeds upon. It sucks out all of the resources and then moves on leaving detruction in its wake, its sucking the U.S dry now in the form of artificially inflated gas prices, etc. and neither of its two political parties have the guts to challenge the business interests as they have all sold their souls to it.

There are only two types of people, tho demoniac and the devotees and the demoniac rule the world. The only cure is to make more devotees, because its very hard to fool someone who is transcendental and very difficult to counter the influence of one under the direction of the Supreme, in actuality, not in belief.

The world needs Uttamas and Middle class devotees in actuality, it needs the sum-total of all of the demigods. But it doesn't seem to be getting them through Krsna Consciousness, or maybe Krsna is just huding them as just lkike Herod, if they believed in the existence of such saviors and expected them they would have then slaughtered or vivisecred in hopes to discover a material source of such power.

I wonder sometimes. Krsna Consciousness should work, don't you think? It should promote those who follow its practice to transcendence and attain them to personal loving relationships with God consciously, while they live. If it isn't doing this why waste ones time with it when you could be working for and saving up money to move to some nice third world location.

[harsi]

So yes dear Janus, let us speak about the present value system of Amerika which is, in essence not different from that of Germany, or I think any other country of this world. Maybe slightly different from the arabic world.

But as I see Amerika and its allies are trying nowadays and are making a great effort even militarily to change the value structure of this area and in a long run to make it possible to connect the values of a nonfundamentalist Islam with the values of the westerly Enlighenment.

Of course about the results until now one cannot be so happy but can this endeavor not also help the world and its citizens to come closer to each other and thus to live moore in harmony with each other and with God? I think from an integrationalist point of view this could well be possible, you dont think also?

[Janus]

So yes dear Janus, let us speak about the present value system of Amerika which is, in essence not different from that of Germany, or I think any other country of this world. Maybe slightly different from the arabic world.

But as I see Amerika and its allies are trying nowadays and are making a great effort even militarily to change the value structure of this area and in a long run to make it possible to connect the values of a nonfundamentalist Islam with the values of the westerly Enlighenment.

Of course about the results until now one cannot be so happy but can this endeavor not also help the world and its citizens to come closer to each other and thus to live moore in harmony with each other and with God? I think from an integrationalist point of view this could well be possible, you dont think also?

"Western Enlightenment/" Whatever are you referring to dear Harsi? Is it to Francis Bacons 1620 publication of Novus Organum, which dismissed the thoughts pf Plato, Aristotle, and Homer that humans should be in any way contemplative of nature (human and otherwise) in anyway otherwise than in the development of methdologies for controlling it?

Or are you referring to Decartes, who dismissed God and any other non-mathematical explanation of reality as being false?

Or is this Western Enlightment that you refer to the product of John Locke who presented an argument that has come to dominate the modern world view down to the present, that having dismissed God and any relatiionship with him as central to siciety that the only purpose left at all was to increase individual wealth by the complete conversion of nature to to dollars and cents?

Is this Western Enlightment that you refer to contemporary with Adam Smith, the founder of modern day economics, who followed Loche a step further. Just as Locke had removed any notion of morality from social relations, Smith removed it from economics, regarding any moral attempt at curtailing the exploitation of the environment, ETC., to be inhibiting to human progress and development.

I fear dear Hari that the Western Enlightment that you refer to will be very very much like the enlightment that the Turkeys experience just before Thanksgiving, the swift and terrible enlightment that they experience as they see the axe descending towards their necks. In that brief moment of terror all of their fond illusions will be erased.

You are still seeing a gross material abode as being the center of this atheistic, anti life and demoniac world view, but Americans are also only grist for this terrible mill, they too are being exploited, they also are regarded as exploitable commodities.

Srila Prabhupada did indeed consider America to be the very heart of darkness, if you culd change Consciousness, the World View here then the rest of the world would follow.

But consciousness has not changed and with the dumification of education in America since the 60's, etc., the darkness has only gotten darker.

Had the devottes changed, had they become themselves enlightened and had one of them become qualified here in the West with the two qualifications to set the acharya's chair, it might have been different, but it didn't happen and I have lost that youthful hope that the sun will ever shine again through the darkness.

PS As far as "converting the values of non-fundamentalist Islam", as long as Moslems are willing to condone and accept the rapacious exploitation of their countries natural resources, for even perhaps a bit of the share, then sure, but any religion, Christianity, Islam, country, America, Germany, etc., that poses any barrier to the the conversion of the world to the profits of the richest must be either converted or regarded as the enemy by the forces that blindedly are guiding t human race now to its most probable annialation, or to an eternal condition of slavery.

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, 1984, etc., when asked to draw a picture of mankind's future drew a picture of a boot upon a human face and supplied a one word comment; "Forever".
Hari bol

[GPandit]

I'm now slightly depressed. (NOTE TO SELF: don't read posts by person called Janus)

[harsi]

GPandit " I'm now slightly depressed. "

I am sorry for that.

Acording to Wittgenstein as to Spinoza joy should be the whole point of doing philosophy. He writes: "The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man". and in his Tractatus 6.43 "Philosophy that connects to non-philosophy is making people happy with philosophy in a sense that philosophy that doesn`t connect is clearly not."

It is therefore no surprise that Wittgenstein is concerned with finding an unproblematic ending-point as opposed to that of Hasserl`s unproblematic starting point. In his "Investigations" he writes "the real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to". Acording to him the practitionar of good philosophy must be able to stop philosophizing when they want. For him for example the end of philosophy is not a failure but rather a release into everyday life. Much the socaled preacher can learn from.

The lack of complitenes in philosophy turns out for him not to be a reason for moralistic despair about philosophy, but the very reason for the greatness of philosophy.
Questions we can already answer definitively are no longer philosophy, they are rather facts.

By the standards by which it itself judges religions much of nowadays academic philosophy is indeed another religion, because it needs no references outside itself to justify it. Heideger has noted the resemblance to magical thinking of the "ergo" in "cogito ergo sum" for those familiarized with this philosophical expressions. Wittgenstein on the contrary is allways substituting "must" by "can".

But in todays positivist paradigm a theory is not a theory if it does not explain every case with which it deals for example. Philosophy must be a panacea so called or is nothing. Todays academic philosophy almost always shuns the particular and the delimited and not just in the systematic philosophy, but even moore tragically in the philosophy of life.

We might consider in this regard William Blake who already predicted the scourge of the late 20th century philosophy in the 18th century. He wrote:
"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone destinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledges that idiots posses."

To take just one example of this, what whould it in practice take away from a skeptic to say "almost nothing can be known" instead of "nothing can be known"? Nothing. But it would strengthen his case considerably.
Today there is much fuzzy logic in the world but no fuzzy ontology, fuzzy epistemology or fuzzy ethics. Instead of an unequivocal startting-point there is just a vast mass of fanatical positivist antirelativism and an equally vast mass of equally fanatical relativism each with its own thought police and academic protection racket.

Dear Janus I enjoyd to read your posts I hope you are well and happy there in California. I can imagine there is now a nice sommer, or?

[Janus]

There is an old French saying that "Happy people do not make history", they don't make metaphysical models either. or philosophize. Wittgenstein
was probably not schooled in modern day psychology which relates the complexity of a persons model to how unhappy he is. The less complex, the happier. Bill Cosby, the famous American comedian commenting on the same human character trait said "Parents don't care about justice, they want quiet," ad your own Nietczhe said "people don't want challenging questions, they want comforting explanations."

Thank you for your good wishes harsi, but it is difficult for me to be enjoy a good dinner when I look through a window and see on the other side that someone is starving. "Don't go to those parts of town." some of my friends tell me, but I can't help it, like I said my Daddy came from Louisiana and I have a taste for turnip greens, hushpuppies and cornbread, and you really can't get a good gumbo up here in the Hollywood hiills.

Many people join some religion because they have an emotional need. Once blind faith satisfies that need they never have to think again. Those who are proceding out of a philisophical justification are otherwise, they do instead search for the truth and from the truth they do not hide their eyes.

Jesus said that this world was a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, Krsna that from the topmost planetary system down to the lowest that all were places of misery. Happiness here is trransitory, some product of material circumstance.

So yes, I should be happy considering my own material circumstances but only Nama shelters me from what I feel from what I see, only Nama sets me free and brings me to a place where material happiness and distress are one to me in the service of the soul of compassion. There is no other joy like it, not even in Hollywood. Las Vegas can come close though.

None the less I have Nama and Nama shelters me,

[GPandit]

harsi:"Acording to Wittgenstein as to Spinoza joy should be the whole point of doing philosophy"

I'm certainly in over my head in this discussion, because I've never read Wittgenstein, or even studied philosophy. But, the above statement is exactly my point in saying earlier that "I'm slightly depressed". I know a few people who obsess on the conspiracies and cartels that are running the world. I know this sounds corny, but to me, they are seeing the glass as "half empty". Yes, I am sad when I see the suffering of others. Yes, I know that America has elected a paper cut-out president. But I'm not going to let it overtake me. I learned from years of training that those people who practice while feeling angry, upset, or annoyed--they create a bitter fruit. It's a type of energy field I steer clear of. Plenty of so-called bhaktis are chanting holy names but if I'm in the same vicinity as them, my skin crawls. I can feel the negative.

Remember Ted Kosinski, the Unabomber? This guy was brilliant. He stayed alone in a shack in the wilderness, writing his manifesto. He pointed out how corrupt everything was, how the environment was neglected;he described the plight of the haves and have-nots. And, he sent neat little bombs to the CEO's of big companies, destroying the lives of many people. The guy stepped a little off center, and ended in a self-made hell.

I got this morbid world-view from a lot of people who are on "the spiritual path" (whatever that is). And it just doesn't work--seeing the garden of your life here as a place of horror and despair. Sitting alone and chanting on beads. Ultimately, that very thing you hate becomes your true master, and another beautiful summer has gone unappreciated.......

[Janus]

harsi:"Acording to Wittgenstein as to Spinoza joy should be the whole point of doing philosophy"

I'm certainly in over my head in this discussion, because I've never read Wittgenstein, or even studied philosophy. But, the above statement is exactly my point in saying earlier that "I'm slightly depressed". I know a few people who obsess on the conspiracies and cartels that are running the world. I know this sounds corny, but to me, they are seeing the glass as "half empty". Yes, I am sad when I see the suffering of others. Yes, I know that America has elected a paper cut-out president. But I'm not going to let it overtake me. I learned from years of training that those people who practice while feeling angry, upset, or annoyed--they create a bitter fruit. It's a type of energy field I steer clear of. Plenty of so-called bhaktis are chanting holy names but if I'm in the same vicinity as them, my skin crawls. I can feel the negative.

Remember Ted Kosinski, the Unabomber? This guy was brilliant. He stayed alone in a shack in the wilderness, writing his manifesto. He pointed out how corrupt everything was, how the environment was neglected;he described the plight of the haves and have-nots. And, he sent neat little bombs to the CEO's of big companies, destroying the lives of many people. The guy stepped a little off center, and ended in a self-made hell.

I got this morbid world-view from a lot of people who are on "the spiritual path" (whatever that is). And it just doesn't work--seeing the garden of your life here as a place of horror and despair. Sitting alone and chanting on beads. Ultimately, that very thing you hate becomes your true master, and another beautiful summer has gone unappreciated.......

What are you saying G.P., that anyone conscious of the reality of our material situation is a creep? Doesn’t that put both Jesus and Krsna then into the same category? Must one who is aware of the negative respond negatively, or can one respond positively to the negative by raising public consciousness through educating others, healing the sick, etc.,. You cannot save the world by blowing up G. Speaking of responding positively, we are collecting clothing for the hurricane victims relief.

[harsi]

Janus: " Or are you referring to Descartes, who dismissed God and any other non-mathematical explanation of reality as being false?"

Well yes one can say that the french philosopher Descartes is one of the figurehead of the Western Enlightement. His saying "Cogito ergo sum"
I think, therefore I am, is wellknown all over the world. His leading work in physics, mathematiks, optics, physiology, geometry and astronomy have been quite enough to mark him out as one of the founders of the Western way of thinking.

But this former soldier from La Haye in France decidet to round-off his career in this sciences by presenting to the world his thoughts on how it is, and why, we construct truth.

Thus he published in the year 1641 his book Meditations on First Philosophy, where he is trying to proof the existence of God and the soul as beeing distinct from the body.

He starts his writing with the following: "In the first Meditation I expound the grounds on which we may doubt in general of all things, and especially of material objects, so long at least, as we have no other foundations for the sciences than those we have hitherto possessed now, although the utility of a doubt so general may not be manifest at first sight, it is nevertheless of the greatest, since it delivers us from all prejudice, and affords the easest pathway by which the mind may withdraw itself from the sences, and finally makes it impossible for us to doubt wherever we afterward discover truth"

This Meditations begin thus by attempting to doubt everything, even the existence of God, and to build up from that to those few things which we know with certainty.

He writes: " I shall now close my eyes and my ears, and put away all thought of physical things, to try to better understand my own self. So far my only assurance is to accept those things which I perceive very clearly and very distinctly as true, yet I know that I have often been mistaken, it remains possible that God might deceive me, though I cannot imagine how he might persuade me that I dont exist or that two plus three are not
five. To remove such doubt I must enquire as whether God exists, and whether he is a deceiver."

Thus he goes further and further by writing in a very brilliant manner about God, His and our existence: "Those ideas which represent substances all seem moore solid than those that represent modes or accidents; and that idea of a supreme God, eternal, infinite, omnisciant, omnipotent, seems to have even moore objective reality. I recognize it as impossible that God should ever deceive me, (He developes here as I understand it by reding his book the concept of maya or ilusion and its origins) for fraud and deception testify to imperfection, malice or feebleness, which cannot be of God.

So my capacity for judjement as it is from God can never mislead me if I use it aright. The moore scilfull the artisan, the moore perfect his work, and God always wills what is best, is it then for the best that i should be subject to error? In the first place knowing that I am feeble and limited, while God is infinite, I recognize that some of his ends which seem imperfect, would be found to be perfect if we could but comprehend the whole."