Let us inhabit the open space of “contradiction”

February 19, 2025

I’ve been stretching my sore brain wide, W . . .I . . .D . . .E! — in continued attempts to surrender my current point of view to vistas beyond my current limits . . . and this effort, as usual, tends to result in an ever larger, thicker, conceptual helmet!

Here is an example of one “contradictory” set of world-views I’ve managed to begin to absorb in the past few days. First, check this out, a short excerpt from what I found myself listening to late last night, Donald J Trump and the End of America: Richard Wolff, someone completely new to me, and fascinating in his own right, making fun of my hero, historian Victor Davis Hanson.

 

In fact, I had just purchased VDH’s latest book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation,  and, two days later, find myself already gripped by his detailed tale of subtle and not so subtle historical factors that eventually triggered the sudden destruction of Thebes.

I consider historian Victor Davis Hanson a truly wise elder, very much appreciating that, as a more and more prominent public intellectual, he is also a fifth generation farmer. In other words, his very point of view embraces a living contradiction.

 

I think I’ve already told the story of what happened in the spring of 1966, when I naively asked a question of my logic professor in graduate school, Boston University, first year on way to PhD. Suddenly, during his seemingly straight-forward lecture, I found myself puzzled. Raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“But what’s wrong with contradiction?” I asked, hoping he would clear up my confusion.

Instead, he turned from the blackboard to look at me closely, as his face turned beet red: “BECAUSE FROM A CONTRADICTION, ANYTHING FOLLOWS, ANYTHING!”

His fervid response shocked me to the core (probably shocked both of us!). Instinctively, I knew I was on to something. But I had no idea how to mentally process it. The point is: whenever there is an emotional reaction to something that seems merely mental, take note!

Our endless mental quest for certainty in knowledge masks our real need, for emotional security in the body. Given the still-prevailing Cartesian body/mind split, in this 3D materialistic world we tend to view the body as a machine; but in fact, it’s the part of us that knows. (In fact, one could say that the body itself is coterminous with the mass unconcious mind.)

 

Then there was the moment when I raised my hand in first grade, to blurt out, “But what’s a number?”  My first grade teacher, Sister Bernita, turned from the blackboard, to stare at me. My question had stopped time. What now?

Finally, she said to me, in no uncertain terms: “THAT IS NOT A QUESTION, DEAR.”

That is not a question, dear. What I asked had just blown in from outer space and did not penetrate our cultural conceptual helmet that she was busy, as an obedient teacher, attempting to instill in our still feral minds. Not that she knew what she was doing. Not that she meant ill. Of course not!  She too had been indoctrinated, unknowingly passing along what had been done to her.

I consider it of great value to consciously notice that the circumference of every circle, its edge, or boundary, separates inside from outside; and that, as in permaculture: “the edge is where the action is.” Think of human knowledge as enclosed in a circle, however expanded one wants to make it. That becomes obvious now, when AI is being constructed to absorbek the entire, ever expanding, linguistic corpus of what humans map as “knowledge”; all in order to respond to questions we ask of it.

(Hmmm . . . Hey, AI! What IS a number? What’s WRONG with contradiction?)

Yet, the circle of knowledge, no matter how large, always has this edge. Some questions fly in from nowhere, and cannot be “answered” from what’s inside the circle. Indeed, they break the circle, turn it into a spiral, stretching both ways, up into the heavens, down into the soil: toroidal.

 

So now, back to contradictions.

Richard Wolff vs. Victor Davis Hanson.

Note: Economist Wolff has been doing youtube videos since 2011; Historian Hanson, only since 2019. That meshes with my discovery of Hanson, relatively recent. Wolff however, despite his apparently greater popularity, has been completely out of range of my own siloed conceptual helmet. No wonder. This old ’60s radical has detested my former socialist/Marxist point of view for decades.

Yes. Richard Wolff sees my chosen wise old man, Hanson, as a fool! — because he does not look at economics as foundational, but instead speaks inside the rural vs. urban dichotomy. See video excerpt above.

But hell! What’s foundational, in a world informed by Godel’s incompleteness theorems, where the bottom always falls out of any so-called foundation our all-too-human brains can mathematically conceive.

Hermes Trismegistus: “God is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

This mysterious ancient Hermes quote was updated by Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, to read:

“Nature is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

Both carry the same utterly mysterious significance. GOD AND NATURE ARE ONE AND THE SAME.

It helps to consciously dwell within this vast, open space of mystery when attempting to embrace contradictory points of view.

All this, in an effort to turn back the clock on myself, to erase 82 years of mental conditioning, to begin anew. So that I might be ready for anything. Because, remember, Ann: “Anything is possible, ANYTHING!”

Check this out. An insightful view of what destroying the federal Department of Education might make possible: real learning!

https://eko.substack.com/p/breaking-school

 

 

 

Re: DOGE: Oops! Sudden Switch from Ecstasy to Compassion

February 18, 2025

Until sometime yesterday afternoon I was in a near-continuous state of inner ecstasy as I contemplated the ongoing extraordinary deflation of the administrative state balloon, thanks to DOGE. Day after day, one rogue agency or other bloated federal construct investigated and drained!

Hmmm. I rub my hands together, eager. Where are we as of this morning?

https://dogegov.com/dogeclock

But then, something happened to me late yesterday. All of a sudden, I noticed myself focusing on the spreading consequences of these extreme cuts to the average Joe. Not the ones making $500K a year who live in large houses in DC that are now massively devaluing, as their owners desperately try to sell the house, find a criminal defense attorney that is not overbooked, and get out of town.

No. I found myself focusing on the workers in factories, the secretaries and nurses aides and teachers and garage mechanics, and so on. How the fallout from this undoubtedly exciting sudden, drastic shift in the economic/sociological landscape hits them. Hits the ones who don’t have the leisure to focus on Making America Great Again, but are preoccupied with day-to-day survival —  a roof over their heads, not too much debt, gas for the car that they’re still paying for, health insurance hopefully, and enough more and more costly food to feed their families.

Focusing on the workers in any federal agency, 1500 of them, say, or 15,000, who find out tomorrow whether or not they will be the ones to be cut. Can you imagine their anxiety? Workers who, like so many people in this unhealthy-in-body, -mind, -soul culture, rely on fast and processed food and medications for body and mind and soul to stave off dying. To keep their bodies and minds with some semblance of functionality in this increasingly chaotic atmosphere.

What about them?

Oh yes, many will be able to collect unemployment for, what is it, 9 months? (Or will that too, be cut?) That will help, for those who remain functional enough to have time to seek employment elsewhere, either where they live now or somewhere new. But how many companies will be actually hiring in this uncertain atmosphere? And how many people will be competing for just one job? Just imagine! Increasingly chaotic human flows, from one state to another; and I’m not talking about immigrants, but about those who have lived on this great land for generations!

And how many, in their desperation, will resort to crime?

This is not to say that I’m now against the DOGE phenomenon, for I know damn well that it’s utterly necessary. And that for it to be successful, it has to be done as quickly as possible, before the deep state enemy can shift out of PTSD and organize.

I remember,  years ago, hearing about the SES, Senior Executive Services, how it fostered the continuity and stability of the administrative state by moving top executives, who were immune from being fired, from agency to agency, with no cut in exorbitant pay and lots of corruption everywhere.

I was appalled. It was one of my first indications of how the federal government had become an unaccountable monster.

Obviously, Trump knew about it. On the very day he was inaugurated, January 20, this:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/

Then there’s the phenomenon that obviously, simply will not change, given human nature. Namely: whoever gets a job in any hierarchical organization, aims to go up the ladder, to become “more successful,” i.e., to gain more money, power, reputation. How is this accomplished? Mainly, by figuring out new programs “under them”, for which they hire new people “under them.” Thus, it’s inevitable. Any hierarchical human structure, in order to be successful according to our current materialist value system, tends to expand. Period.

Obviously, the solution is to shift from Capricornian hierarchies to Aquarian nodal networks, with independent entrepreneurial individuals. And primal, death/rebirth Pluto HAS now entered Aquarius.

But the problem with that, and it’s huge, folks, huge! is this: in order to work on your own, you have to unleash your creativity, discover your passion, and then be willing to trust — to forge ahead without assurance, without knowing for sure — the reach of both your mysterious higher self and the equally mysterious universe! (Hint: the one is a fractal of the other!)

It’s not easy to trust your self. To follow your dreams and press them into action. Will you “make it”? You have to start  small. You have to network with others in the same fragile boat. Through ups and downs, good days and bad days, often (usually?) depending on circumstances outside your control. How to plan when the future is so uncertain? Forget that big car. Forget that second home. Forget that expensive vacation. Just concentrate on survival: having a roof over your head,  food to feed your kids.

The big difference between entrepreneurs and lackeys in the administrative state? They are following their own counsel, have their own mind; they have not sold (or snatched back!) their soul. In short, they are FREE: Each of us a SOVEREIGN SOUL AT ONE WITH ALL. 

Let’s face it: Most people do not trust, either themselves or the universe. They have been indoctrinated to trust the government, or their employer, to keep those paychecks coming.

Well, I guess it’s time for all of us to find out just how much we can open to both our mysterious capacity for full-on aliveness, as well as our compassion for one another. Because, except for the oligarchs, we are all in that same fragile boat.

Remember: Whenever we get stuck, just notice how nature does it. Her aliveness courses through, no matter what. Dropping into the ground and waiting patiently, gathering energy, during frozen winters; rising up from roots to trunks to branches to leaves, waving to the heavens during the bloom of summer.

We’re dropping into the ground during this frozen winter. Spring, and then summer, follows; then winter, then spring again . . . There is no end to seasonality in our human lives.

Let us drop into that larger, fuller self that exists both below and above the administrative state which has managed to hold us in its vice grip for far too long.