Krugman is intellectually honest and cares about the country. His elaboration today of the original comment on Moore was dead on. Gupta called Moore a liar when, in fact, Gupta was full of it. That should take him off the list.

The other point, critical, is that Gupta isn't even close to qualified by the standards normally used. He has no public health experience to speak of. His commentary on public health on CNN is really weak and sometimes wrong. He's a TV doc.

I had the privilege of working with C. Everett (call me "Chick") Koop on a project for several months in the mid '80's. He was remarkable and firm in his commitment to public health, particularly getting the truth out about HIV AIDS. Despite his imposing demeanor, he was also very gracious.

When I saw Gupta as Surgeon General, I thought it was a joke, quite literally. Then, remembering Koop, I was literally outraged at what spectacularly cynical move this was.

This is actually worse than Rick Warren because Warren wlil leave town after ruining the inauguration. If Gupta gets in, he'll do some serious damage. I don't ever see him taking on corporate health interests, polluters, or anybody that might damage administration ratings. He would not challenge the White House, as Koop did.

Hopefully, someone will come to his senses.

Conyers Says No to Gupta - Detroit Free Press

Leave it to Conyers, which is what a lot of folks on The Hill have done for a while. It's a good move on Conyers part and also a good point to make to the insiders who come up with these hair brained ideas.

Gupta will do just fine. But we won't if we've got a corporate shill calling the shots. Scary stuff.

...nails him exactly. Gupta's a media darling and his performance in his debate with Moore was shameful. Thank god Moore called him on his "Maird". :D

Very astute set of observations. I would only want to add that it seems that it is Obama's intent to let the Dems and Reps in Congress somehow decide what the future will be. Sort of like throwing a bone between two hungry dogs and watching what will happen.

that someone who hasn't yet held the office has ever done.

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"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My reply was not necessarily meant as a criticism of Obama. It was meant as a description of his emerging governing style as was the comment I commented on. We still don't know the details of how he intends to play this process. If Obama uses this technique to duck responsibility and avoid leading (claiming he tried but those damn dems and reps just couldn't get it together) he will be a collossal failure as president. If, however, he plans to shape and mold the debate and eventually (and hopefully) move it in a progressive direction after congressional Dems and Reps show their hands he may have come up with a style of governance that could be brilliant.

I am afraid that his appointments suggest the former but truly hope that it is the latter that emerges. As with almost everything Obama we will just have to wait and see.

Barack Obama is one smart guy. He has apparently chosen a strategy of herding cats deliberately, because his overarching policy is bringing unity out of diversity. (E pluribus unum). He knows how divided this country is, and he apparently feels that we cannot succeed on this basis. So he is going to do everything possible to overcome it. He may be correct in this estimation.

It seems that the model he is using is not an adversarial one but that of the family. The president is the father and the citizens are the family members on one hand, and one the other the president is the father and the government officials are the family. There are squabbles in every family, but family unity is preserved by the strong leadership of the father. Obama seems to think that he will be able to keep the squabbling family together not so much by imposing strict discipline as by letting different personalities express themselves to a degree and then bringing the focus through leadership. It's a bold idea and maybe he can pull it off. It's certainly possible, and he has a lot of political capital and goodwill.

The problem with this model is that it is based on the authoritarian father to establish unity, even though not through strict discipline. This is a model that conservatives relate to more than progressives. For example, in the Bush administration the president was the authoritarian father (the decider, the unitary exec, the commander-in-chief) and the family members were the Republican Party and the government officials. Strict discipline was maintained, and there were the usual enforcers.

Progressives relate more to the nurturing model of the mother, providing not unity (uniformity) but harmony. Indeed, conservatives accuse libruls of wanting a nanny state, and progressives accuse conservatives of wanting a big daddy state.

Obama seems to want to come down between these two traditional models. Can he reconcile these models in a model of the president as a parent who combines both roles? Not impossible, but it's a juggling act.

What has a lot of progressives upset is that Obama has chosen a number of people who got it wrong, and he has passed over many of the people that got it right. Can these "experts" who were so wrong get it right this time? What's to argue for this?

IN addition, these picks send a message. For example, the message that the consideration of Dr. Gupta is sending is that single payer is off the table and will not even have representation at the table. That's what Rep. Conyers and others are steamed about since it is not really possible to do an adequate restructuring without including things like single payer. The money isn't there to shower on the private insurers.

The essence of it is opportunity cost. If you put money on one option, you take away from another. Under present conditions of adversity, and facing the retirement of the boomers, the US needs to get the biggest bang for the buck instead of promoting the continuance of privateering.

...insurance companies out of health care; we're fucked! It's just that simple. You don't even want to hear how good my health care "insurance" (government sponsored) here in Thailand is for $12.75 (USD)/mos. America should be ashamed; but then America knows no shame, no more, forever! Sorry Chief Joseph.

...to being fed shit and told it's Caviar: We are forever given the least and sold a bill of goods explaining that that's the best the country can do. You know, we're broke; I mean hell, we're fighting a war, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ad infinitum. Come on, "they" wouldn't treat you so badly if you didn't accept it would "they"? I mean, it's actually funny if one can step back just a wee bit and really look at it. If I seem harsh, well, maybe it's because I got tired of the crap and just left it all behind. I'd like to think Obama isn't going to get the free pass the shrub has gotten. As with everything; time will tell, peace. :D DISCLAIMER: Out of my mind, back tomorrow.

Amongst all the gloom and doom, I'm prepared to wait quietly in anticipation of Obama's inauguration. Who knows, he might surprise us all. The turbulent period between his election and inauguration has given him ample time to reflect. Let's hope he governs wisely.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

I got the "metaphor" of the family from cognitive scientist George Lakoff, who applies discoveries in his field to progressive politics in The Political MInd: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Mind (mentality).

Lakoff's point is that we think on the basis of concepts that are not purely mental essences or classes, as previously thought, but rather metaphors that are structured in brain circuitry. The family is one of the most powerful metaphors, and it applies to political and religious thinking, often unconsciously. These metaphors are the basic frames from which models are built and narratives constructed. It is important to realize that these are not only psychological but also physiological. They are structured into brain functioning through neural pathways. We think the way we do because of the physical channels through which thought flows.

If we are to to think differently, we have to open new channels, and most people aren't going to do this without serious prodding. In addition, someone has to come up with the new way of thinking first. This is the power of vision in effecting change. Otherwise, thinking is only a variation of established frames assembled into a different narrative based on a different model. But the bricks and mortar are the same, so the building looks pretty much like previous ones.

For example, Lakoff observes that many people oppose "gay marriage" not because it is the moral violation that they consciously suppose, but because unconsciously it threatens their model of the nuclear family as the "cell" of the social body or the "thread" of the social fabric. Ultra-conservatives do realize this consciously and oppose gay marriage on this ground.

But many other who oppose gay marriage are not aware of the brain circuitry involved. In order to overcome these biases, one needs to become aware of them and take charge of correcting them. In the '60's and'70's, this was called "consciousness raising," and feminists, for example, were big into it to change the stereotypes about women and their social roles.

... just a few points to ponder.

If we are to to think differently, we have to open new channels, and most people aren't going to do this without serious prodding.

I guess children don't need any prodding as they usually imitate their parents' belief system. I prodded my children many times to choose their own belief system. If they chose to believe in God that would be fine with me as long as they wouldn't try to convert me. But they would have none of it. They're both contented atheists. (I guess I may have been acting out 'the protective mother', since I didn't want my children to face the usual condemnation of the God fearing/loving people).

Do you believe we could design a system that would speed up the process of transforming channels transporting conservative, patriarchal, restrictive etc. thought into channels that would transport more liberal, civilized, and advanced thought?

Also, how much of thought is psychological and how much is physiological?

Finally, what do you make of Julian Jaynes theory? He is a psychologist who wrote "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Nearly everyone seems to agree that this is either a work of profound genius, or of profound crack pottery although the consensus now is on the genius side.

This is the crux of his theory

Human consciousness (which Jaynes describes and defines in considerable detail) is a relatively recent development, dating back at most only about 3,000 years or so.

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_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

We've had cities for 5000, and agriculture for 12000.

From Wikipedia:

Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not access conscious (did not possess an introspective mind-space), but instead had their behavior directed by auditory hallucinations, which they interpreted as the voice of their chief, king, or the gods. Jaynes argued that the change from this mode of thinking (which he called the bicameral mind) to consciousness (construed as self-identification of interior mental states) occurred over a period of centuries about three thousand years ago and was based on the development of metaphorical language and the emergence of writing.

It's drivel...

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

So you belong to the "He is a crack pot" camp :-)

I don't know enough about him to have an opinion. That's why I asked tjfxh.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

but this "interesting theory" didn't make sense to me even then. We have a two sided (left and right) brain - and other apes don't - so are they driven by "auditory halucination"?

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

A lot seems to have originated in Mesopotamia and ...

According to Jaynes, consciousness — as he carefully defines it — is a learned process based on metaphorical language.

Lakoff's point is that we think on the basis of concepts that are not purely mental essences or classes, as previously thought, but rather metaphors that are structured in brain circuitry.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

I don't have any problem with Lakoff's "wired metaphors".

And honestly, I haven't read Jaynes' carefully crafted definition of consciousness.

But its quite a leap from "a lot seems to have originated in Mesopotamia" to "prior to this time humans were automatons, subject to auditory halucinations". Too far a leap for me without some substantial evidence. It's a far more parsimonious explanation that we'd gathered in cities now, and had some leisure time to invent (and the trading activity to support) writing, which allowed for more pleasant lives, and time for reflection.

We had art (personal decoration) and symbolic thought (cave paintings, tools, burial of the dead) at least 40,000 years ago.

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Jaynes' Consciousness: self-identification of interior mental states. This sounds very similar to the current idea of "theory of mind" that we see in consciousness studies today, when applied to other animals. An animal is considered to have a theory of mind when s/he attributes to another an internal mental state. Some researchers seem to use this as a marker of consciousness. Some researchers seem to hold that only humans have this internal mental model which recognizes internal mental states in other people and animals.

I am not in this camp. Humans are not alone in attributing mental states to other beings. Humans are not the only conscious beings.

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

From Julian Jaynes website's overview:

Jaynes's theory can be broken down into four independent hypotheses:

1. Consciousness — as he carefully defines it — is a learned process based on metaphorical language.
2. That preceding the development of consciousness there was a different mentality based on verbal hallucinations called the bicameral ('two-chambered') mind.
3. Dating the development of consciousness to around the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. in Greece and Mesopotamia. The transition occurred at different times in other parts of the world.
4. That the bicameral mind is based on a double-brain neurological model.

Consciousness is a "learned process"?

The "consciousness transition" happened at different times at different places? Suddenly, perhaps because we were living in cities, we somehow became self-aware? ...or our brains coalesced into modern form?

Ugh.

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

ive read some more development on the bi-caramel mind thing.ill break it down as i understand it.

the basic idea is that before full consciousness (or whatever) we operated more on instinct and thought was precised to be external. literally thought was believed to be the gods themselves. illustrated somewhat in direct interpretations of original homer have every part where we would read: "and then odysseuss thought..." as "and then athena told odysessus..." they did not realize the voice in their head was their own.

the change comes with the indtroduction of drugs. most especially through religion, notably early india, egyptian, babylonian,sumerian,and greek religions (among others but considering they are all basically related to some degree...) they each had rituals associated with sacred plants(as the tree of life/tree of knowledge)the most likely candidate for this sacred plant (if you haven't guessed by now you probably haven't read any of my other rare posts) cannabis.
this is of course predicated on the idea that drug use can lead to expanded consciousness. evidence today of this is in abundance given the multitude of professionals,engineers,physicists,mathematicians, musicians, writers, ect. that partake of the drug with no professional ill effects and indeed some partake to help them with their work as attested posthumously by carl sagan.(something about hash and showers)
historical evidence is the rise of the cannabis using religions/cultures within their own timeframes and geographic areas. india, now noted as the true cradle of civilation and center of the worlds oldest still practicing relgion. cannabis is an important part of the sacred drink bhang, among other uses.
in sumeria/ babylon(again both noted ancient cultures) civilisation is credited to the help of the deity Ea/Enki/Dagon/Oannes who again is associated with a sacred plant that was a part of rituals of the faith.
even judaism adopted cannabis ritual use, as noted in exodus in the recipe for the holy anointing oil(the mistranslations of fragment cane or calamus are in actuality cannabis), and this ritual use would continue into the age of kings until prohibitions against other religions led to its ban. the use is believed to be continued by early gnostics/ Essenes and eventually handed down to jesus who used cannabis as part of his healing(cannabis noted for its many many medicinal properties)though thats another story.

The Axial Age occurred from around the 9th-3rd centuries BCE. At this time, many of the great "thinkers" of humanity first arose and history was born. Reading things purportedly previous to this period along with works from the Axial Age seems to indicate a shift in modes of thinking. Even reading Plato in comparison with Aristotle shows a shift in mode of thinking, with Aristotle sounding much more familiar to our "rational" minds.

I think that Jaynes argument can be tested by comparing modern modes of thinking with anthropological studies of Stone Age people that have recently been discovered. This is difficult, however, because we are caught in the web of our own mode of thought that sees such thinking as "primitive." The idea of history as linear and progressive is one our favorite presuppositions, but it is an assumption, and I am suspicious of it.

i will have to look more into the axial age, but i think it fits in with what i get so far. the wine they talked so much of wasn't always fermented grapes,

but definitely agreed, history so far has been rises and falls, pinnacles and pitfalls. though, cant it be said that while the direction might not be forever upwards we are still taking two steps forward one step back so to speak. barring global disaster(as frighteningly possible it may be) i dont see what is going to take us back as far as something like the dark ages did to the thinking that came out of the axial age. a friend of mine takes everything as a sort of karmic positive/negative balance, for every action an equal but not necessarily opposite or connected action occurs in balance. for every bad action there would also be a good one and vice versa.

BBC, January 14

People who drink too much coffee could start seeing ghosts or hearing strange voices, UK research has suggested.

People who drank more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than those who took just one, a study found.

A Durham University team questioned 200 students about their caffeine intake, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reported.

However, academics say the findings do not prove a "causal link".

They also stress that experiencing hallucinations is not a definite sign of mental illness and that about 3% of people regularly hear voices.

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"Instant Coffee"? Are we sure that it's the caffeine that's causing the hallucinations?

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

Do you believe we could design a system that would speed up the process of transforming channels transporting conservative, patriarchal, restrictive etc. thought into channels that would transport more liberal, civilized, and advanced thought?

This is what "liberal education" in the classical sense is supposed to bring about.

Also, how much of thought is psychological and how much is physiological?

This is a false distinction, I believe, and it has led to a lot of faulty thinking. It seems to me that there is a single unmanifest "stuff" from which subjectivity and objectivity manifest. Materialists call it "matter." Spiritual people call it "spirit." Idealists call it "mind" or "consciousness." Philosophers call it the Absolute. These ideas are all not only abstract but indeterminate. Are they simply words with different connotations that will turn out to have the same denotation, like the morning star and the evening star of Venus?

Subjectivity is identical with objectivity in the nondual state of awareness reported by mystics worldwide from time immemorial. Most spiritual teachings, as distinct from religious ideologies, is based this realization. Dualistic states of awareness exhibit differing degrees of comprehensiveness. Ordinary human awareness is at a rather low level, so it seems "intuitive" to most people that subject and object are separate and distinct. When this is accepted uncritically, all sorts of problems arise with it.

subjectivity and objectivity (I know I can look it up in the dictionary but I would like to know your definition in the context of your argument). Could we have it both ways? For example, the two entities of subjectivity and objectivity can be fused at times and separate at other times? I don't really understand your answer to my question. I have a difficult time deducting thought from your starting point unmanifest "stuff"? I tend to belief that my question is not a false distinction.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

Subjectivity is the knowing subject, "I," a conscious mind. Objectivity is that which is known, "the world," "facts, "events," "others," or "objects.'

Most people subscribe to the commonsense view of the world that philosophers call naive realism. It is the idea that knowing subjects are separate and distinct from the world that they know, although we know things pretty much as they are, directly.

This view involves a lot of contradictions that philosophers have been dealing with for thousands of years, and which scientists are now trying to find a theoretical answer for, in a form that can be corroborated empirically. So far, no explanation has been forthcoming that compels assent either rationally or empirically, so the search goes on.

Realism is a form of dualism (of subject and object). Nondualism holds that there is only one stuff and the knowing subject is the subjective pole of this stuff, while the known object is the objective pole of this one stuff. The one stuff is behind the curtain, so to speak as matter/energy (science), spirit (spirituality), the philosophical Absolute, etc.

Because this one stuff is "behind the curtain" it is said to be unmanifest. For example, the quantum field from whose least excited state, all states of energy excitation emerge is unmanifest. We know only the effects, and the field itself is theoretical. Scientific materialists think that this will eventually provide the explanation for everything.

On the other hand, idealists hold that everything emerges from consciousness rather than matter, while Absolutists, e.g., Vedanta and Taoism, hold that the Absolute is the basis for both consciousness (mind, spirit, intelligence) and matter (energy, intelligible). Various panentheistic theologians have equated the Absolute with "God" (Allah, YHVH), e.g., Eckhart, Ibn Arabi, Cordovero.

And Materialists invert the idealist idea, and say that mind comes from matter, rather than matter from mind. This seems to be unsettling to just about everybody. It, also, is a monism, dark matter and dark energy notwithstanding (Ha!).

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

The reason I said that the psychological and physiological is ultimately a false distinction is because most experts think that a unified explanation will be forthcoming eventually, rather than a dualistic one.

Dualism is inelegant and it also raises too many questions that must be overcome, such as how knowledge is possible if mind and matter, subject and object, are totally distinct and separate from each other. Some third thing would be necessary to link them, and then that just leaves more links to be accounted for, ad infinitum.

These issues have been debated for millennia, so what a good solution would look like has been considered. A monistic solution is the most promising candidate philosophically (rationally), and science is heading in the direction of a unified field explanation (empirically), too. We just aren't there yet.

The philosophical question, then, is about the nature of the one "stuff." So far, all candidates are indeterminate - matter, mind, spirit, Absolute. So I suspect that all theoretical candidates that reduce reality to one stuff are variations on the same theme, and a good deal of the argument is semantic, about words, rather than substantial.

Clearly understood.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

tjfxh gives an excellent description of the philosophical background of the above distinction, but I thought I'd add a few more thoughts, since, far from being just another alternative among many philosophical points of view, I think “realism” lies at the very foundation of our own Western (mostly Anglo-Saxon) world view, bequeathed to us from the European Enlightenment. I think the more we understand it, the more we understand our own culture and its challenges.

As tjfxh noted, realism includes the belief that reality is definitively split into two parts: on the one side, the world of the subjective, conscious observer and, on the other side, the world of external material objects. The former is where you supposedly find “subjective” values and faith-based beliefs, and the latter is where you supposedly find cold, hard, “objective” facts.

As tjfxh also noted, realism raises some serious problems. If these two worlds are separate realities, how do they interrelate? Even more problematic: if the external world includes not only physical objects but also other people (i.e. other consciousnesses), how do you reconcile that paradox? Such issues raise the question of whether this philosophical split personality is really valid, which brings us to the objective/subjective issue. For example, does it really make sense when someone criticizes a journalist for not being “objective” enough (that is, focusing on cold, hard facts) and instead letting “subjective” values unduly influence reporting? Even short of editorializing, don’t values in fact always come into play not only when people frame and identify a “fact” but also when they decide how to string facts together to produce a narrative (as any historian does)? Being "objective" is not necessarily the same as being truthful.

I believe that the historical persistence of “realism” in our society is, among other things, one of the major sources of the extreme individualism we often see around us. While it may be good for the entrepreneurial spirit, it also feeds the sense of alienation and loss of connection many people feel not only with each other (as is evident in the developments leading to the credit crisis) but with their own environment (i.e. Nature). It’s no coincidence that, in contrast to the more primordial view of Nature as “Mother,” Western civilization since the Enlightenment tends to view Nature as just another “external world” to exploit (until of course it finally turns on us).

As noted in other comments, there are far wiser and more humane ways of looking at the world (I would start with Socrates), but the main thing is that philosophy isn't just an academic pursuit. It really affects our everyday lives.

"..the main thing is that philosophy isn't just an academic pursuit. It really affects our everyday lives."

agreed !

Perhaps equivalent among those seeking to understand, not equivalent among those merely seeking an Answer.

To one who wishes everlasting life, or purpose, or even community, having "God" as the Absolute offers much that having "Matter" as the Absolute does not.

"All candidates are indeterminate" - perhaps, but the odds are very high that matter (and it's equivalent, energy) is all there is.

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

If you are up on theology, you will discover that virtually all theologians agree that the nature of God can be specified in only two ways, either negatively , through denying all limitation or anthropomorphically, by using analogies and superlatives. Theologians generally admit that the nature of God is indeterminate in the sense that humans are not acquainted with the denotation of "God."

Mystics claim to know God directly in mystical experience, but this experience is unique to them. Moreover, it involves interpretation, and there is considerable controversy over whether this can be known to be correct.

...by which you mean that God is ineffable, indescribable, passing all understanding?

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

.by which you mean that God is ineffable, indescribable, passing all understanding?

Yes, humans cannot know the nature of God by acquaintance with the physical senses or intellect. Therefore, what "God" denotes remains indeterminate, meaning ineffable, indescribable, passing all understanding.

Of course, people are free to believe what they want about such things, but belief does not constitute knowledge.

On the other hand, according to the testimony of mystics and the teaching of masters, human beings can feel the divine in the heart through love. This testimony and teaching constitutes what is called the perennial philosophy or perennial wisdom.

Perennial wisdom that there are different levels of consciousness, exhibiting different levels of experience. For example, many mystics report that God can be "seen" with the "eye of the heart" as all-pervasive. Moreover, other mystics report that God can be realized in the state of nonduality. These would be instances of knowledge by acquaintance, if the interpretation of the experience can be sustained. This is an area of controversy.

Since such claims are experiential rather than matters of belief, they can potentially be tested, and considerable scientific research is underway to investigate this. There is a lot of serious interest at the moment in developing a theory of consciousness that comprehensively accounts for all this. Transpersonal psychology is such an attempt. Ken Wilber's work is perhaps best known in this field, since he has been very prolific. Physicist David Bohm and biologist/neuroscientist interacted with the Dali Lama on ancient wisdom and modern science. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who graduated in physics, also inspired a great deal of research into the relationship of ancient wisdom and modern science.

Perennial wisdom offers the outline of such a theory based the testimony of those claiming to be established in the nondual state. Meher Baba provided a comprehensive account in contemporary terminology in God Speaks, and it is quite approachable without a lot of background. In it, he sets forth a mystical report of reality as essentially one, while displaying itself in ten states. This provides a conceptual model for understanding. It is testable by developing the requisite levels of awareness.

Based on this, I would suspect that inner space is the next frontier.

http://www.egodeath.com/MysticStateIrrelevanceFallacy.htm

...but then i read things my way, whatever that is. (i.e.; walls down, we ultimately do actually share that 'inner' space.)

But we share it because of shared descent - or shared "wired metaphor" a la Lakoff.

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

As I recall, the idea that human beings can't know anything about God was one of the first things taught in catechism - then they go on to speak of all the things that are "known".

The most refined/intellectual Christian theology that I am aware of speaks of heaven not as popularly imagined, but as being in the divine presence - basically a state of abject unchanging awe or love.

Anyway, there is a lot of work going on about the experience of the transcendent in neurology - but that will not necessarily reveal anything about the transcendent - but may reveal much about the structure and evolution of our brains. (Which is just what you're saying).

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

Zen appealed to me. A mind undefiled ... no words or thoughts ... just emptiness ... pure.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

make fun of God.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

No one is making fun...

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

... somehow the link to the above image didn't make it into a link to the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Buddhism

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_{They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.}

Finally, what do you make of Julian Jaynes theory?

Study of philosophy of mind and a scientific theory of consciousness, along with related fields such as linguistics, sociology, and anthropology, reveals that there is much, much more that we don't know about consciousness than we do. And a lot of what philosophers speculate and scientists theorize about it is hotly debated.

Lacking a universally compelling rationale, choosing one position over another is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, and likely involves one's preferences and biases. So I wouldn't want to say that Jaynes is "right," although he makes many interesting points. Similarly, with Lakoff.

In my view, what is most important is recognizing that one's own presuppositions are just that — assumptions. As a result, there are a whole lot of possibilities out there that most people don't consider, because they erroneously presume that their way of thinking is the only correct one.

Several things are pretty sure. While just about everyone presumes that the map (their worldview) is the territory (reality), just about everyone's map of reality is incomplete and biased, too. As a result we are all groping in the dark much of the time.

Because we lack knowledge, markets are more efficient and effective than command systems. However, economics is not politics and so markets are not perfect either in the political sense of advancing the common good. That's why most of the successful economies are mixed economies.

That's why democracy is the most efficient and effective way of governing in such a way as to harmonize personal independence, equality of persons, and the common good. Democracy is messy, but it's the best system devised for balancing these key personal and social factors.

That's why we use philosophy and science, too. Informed decision-making is more efficient and effective than uninformed decision-making. Like democracy and market economics, philosophy and science are founded on competition of ideas to determine what is "best" based on criteria like correspondence to events, consistency and comprehensiveness of explanation, practicality through prediction, and economy and elegance of expression.

The enemy of philosophy and science is rigid ideology. Scientists know that scientific laws are tentative, and that black swan events do occur. Philosophers are also aware that their methodology rests on presumptions that are not universally compelling. However, ideologues presume incorrectly that the ocean is in their bucket.

So we are groping our way together, trying to construct a plausible account, the probability of which can be evaluated based on reasonable criteria. In this endeavor, some cognitive scientists have made some discoveries that stand up to empirical testing and can be incorporated with some confidence, event though no comprehensive theory has yet been able to dominate the field based on compelling criteria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

'the first principle is you must not fool yourself.' -richard feynman

consider yage (ayahuasca) and it's group effects that are corroborative and consensual as evidence of other possibilities both done and implied by such human consciousness.

the plant speaks more undeniably than most, but they all do.

everything is connected. there is no mind/body split. nor any body/planet split. thinking is a physiological act. (try doing it while starving and one sees that clearly enough to know how lucid and for how long a single cracker will get one.) we are what we eat, read, make, do, and what all else happens as well. the butterfly effect affects everything. everything affects everything.

http://www.truthout.org/011209ED

what diminishes our capacities is greater than we can know for we know not our full capacity's product and context [of the boundary dissolutions]. in short, thinking individually is the modern limit. sensitivity is disallowed by norm. ('i know what you're thinking.')

culture is not your friend. mere crosscultural peace is thus difficult, while crossing whole paradigms virtually transgresses some natural prime directive of Do Nothing. better one looks, feels, and listens.

we don't listen to each other, much less Others such as plants and animals. there are no or few 'Earth Whisperers'.

freedom of consciousness is the primal political issue. the nature of our relation to earth.

http://zuma.vip.warped.com/fotg-tie.png

it's all about earth herself more than anything. consciousness chauvinism works both ways, but if earth came first, we -it -would patently be doing better.

it's like the patriarchy issue extends beyond our human society, and without even that resolved, well... earth and us lunge toward the leveling attractor hence.

That is the emerging theme from Obama defenders. It started in the first wave of protest about the retreads in the cabinet. It's not a frontal attack yet, but it is troubling. Obama was elected, imho, on a protest vote against 8 years of fascism. His vote total was probably suppressed too but that's another story (can't move to the center with a mega protest vote).

A big element of his victory was Obama's inducement to voters to see him as a liberal ("the most liberal Senator"). The "fine print" line is now the defense. All those millions were supposed to read his books and follow the arcane rhetoric looking for the trap doors. That's not going to fly. The country is on the left as a review of the basic positions show in poll after poll.

This nonsense about "moving to the center" as a requirement is a conundrum, as you so well point out. Besides, nobody has to move to the center. They choose to in order to rake in the cash. But that's not the most important reason. The choose to in order to get a chance to be elected. If Obama hadn't "moved to the center," he would have been crucified, literally, by corporate media.

I want Obama to be a great president. I'd like to breathe, drink water, live in peace and have that for my daughter and all the others who will outlive me. So of Chu can do it and Panetta can make intelligence serve peace, then I say, way to go Obama. But if it's more war, more corporate insanity, and more Gupta, Warren, Summers, Geithner, etc. then we're in a world of pain.

Excellent comments. Bookmarked;)

or he is in for a long, hard road that will end in his departure which will be accompanied by some nostalgia about the historical significance of the event of the first black president and regret for what could have been.

He didn't win the nomination as much as votes for him represented a rejection of the Clinton era, although he had his fervent supporters in the primaries. The rejectionist movement grew in the general election to include all of those Clinton supporters who supported her candidacy in the context of rejecting 8 years of incipient fascism.

Obama's "positive" rhetoric counterbalanced the majority of his voters who were first and foremost rejecting the status quo, which has grown insufferably ugly.

But along the way, the campaign cleverly put out the "liberal" meme. In fact, looking at his voting record reinforced this. The people expected a bold shift to policies that favored the majority and were not blood drenched and embarrassing.

From the "FISA vote on, we've seen a rapid capitulation with the authors of our current discontent; Summers, Geithner, Gates, and so forth. The is the last gasp of the Bush theme of putting the "adults" in charge. In this case the adults aref those who got us where we are today.

This is clearly a violation of the expectations of those who voted for Obama. They're not at the same point as the politically focused "free thinkers" but they'll get there quickly. I suspect that will happen in bits and pieces and culminate with the reduction of troops in Iraq and the rapid increase in troops in Afghanistan.

I don't know what Obama's motivations are and I don't care. In fact, I'd have been happy with the election of virtually anyone who recognized the fact that we're broke, we can't afford empire, and we need to produce goods of services of value in order to continue as a great culture. If Obama is seen as insincere or as having violate dhis promises by being too cute by half, that won't change public hopes and expectations. The people will move onto the next public figure who promises the types of changes that they know are required.

If Obama is truly clever and has success as his main value, he will follow the people and use them as they use him to stop the rigid, counter productive, frighteningly unrealistic policies of the decadent elite who insist in running things just their way, which is really running the country right into the ground.