Long Term Temporary
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Focus, to obsession, should be applied But, as a practical matter, if this is done, I focus, to obsession on procedure, reasoning: using waiting theory as a fallback position, when The procedure/schedule is a device not to be (which I use, waiting, to occupy my time, Meanwhile, schedules wane as time passes by, caught up, in marathon episodes when priorities done, so that I may get back to the control I feel of
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People often interject fantasy into an analysis of what is free.
Or maybe it's just me, and all else is normal. People think I'm strange. I imagine. I imagine my neighbors think I'm strange. I imagine everyone, at one time or another, thinks I'm strange. (Or maybe it's not really my imagination, but intuition.)
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(Or My Own Self)
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Where does my past go, when
I am, enraptured in present
re-identification, forgotten?
Paranormal experts say that deja vu is true evidence of reincarnation. However, many psychologists think otherwise, believing that deja vu is a process whereby the unconscious mind is stimulated to recall events that have previously occurred elsewhere but are now associated with the new location.Parry Normal[I've read this before somewhere, I think. But I don't buy it. It's been more generally explained that deja vu is the misrouting of an electrochemical trace in the brain. Okay, maybe that's a better--a not so (im-)precise--explanation. (If an explanation is wrong, then the more imprecise it is, the less wrong it is.)]
Emazing 'fun and games' newsletter
Once known, people never die in your mind. They're always there, until you die yourself, when you still exist in someone else's mind. The idea of you is always stronger and more resistant to extinction that your physical existence. First and foremost, we are each an idea, which is composed of a vast collection of other ideas that we accumulate as we age, borrowing them from each other.
The free exchange of ideas is an ideal held in high esteem by the democratic world. Pitted against this ideal is the idea of intellectual property rights. One may, it seems, under specific circumstances (which can be quite ubiquitous), own ideas. The universe, acting in its own wisdom that is often a counterpoint to that of this world, evolves toward a situation where we, as individuals, are able to contact each other, in a dynamic psychism of suprapersonal thought/experience. This is not radical theory. This is the conclusion, not of science, but of most theology, although theology tends to want to put it in terms of an afterlife, whereas I, in my "scientific theology" place it not only in this real world, but even in the here and now, if only we but knew it.
To restrict the free exchange of ideas in the name of intellectual property rights is to attempt to restrict spiritual nature. This is becoming a religious issue, although it may take quite a while for the (capitalist) world to see it as such. Actually, this has always been the case, but we have not chosen to see it in this way. Our history is one of repressing ideas as a hedge against the loss of assets of the rich and powerful. Modernity has tended to even out the playing field, it's true, by affording the same rights to "lesser" individuals that the rich and powerful have always claimed as their own. Even to this very day, "peasants" can become "landowners," at least in the more civilized areas of the world, via their ability to assert and maintain their rights, intellectual property rights being among them. So I would not say that the idea of intellectual property rights is a bad thing. It is rather a developmental idea, which is just now being called into question. [Well, maybe not just now; Thomas Jefferson questioned it.] It has had its day. It is as transitory a long-term phenomenon as capitalism.
As we evolve, we come to know the nature of others' minds more profoundly. The study of psychology and the other human sciences leads us toward a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe every bit as much as does physics and cosmology. As we learn of our inner workings, as we intuit more deeply, we evolve to the point where we begin to know more directly what is in others' minds. At this point in our evolution, we do this very imperfectly. We struggle, even with the belief that this is true, despite the proliferation of "psychics" in our midst, even because of them, when we feel that their ability is non-existent, not only because we do not understand, but because we are so ingrained in our capitalist/instinctual way of thinking that we see (with good reason, when they will take advantage of their meager orientation so as to use it for commercial purposes, but even when they are legitimate, i.e., non-commercial and altruistic) in their activity a scam, or at best, a capitalistic enterprise. So we have come as a "modern" society ostensibly to disregard what might otherwise become our new religion, because it conflicts with our more commercial nature. This is not the first time this situation has existed in our history. As a matter of fact, it is more the rule than the exception. We experience the usual conflict between our spiritual and material selves, but aided by the insights of modern science, the spiritual nature is developing, despite ourselves.
We are arriving at the point where the thoughts we think are not so sacrosanct as they have been, because they are so much closer to the communal surface. What we think is what anyone else is capable of thinking, which has always been the case. But now, as a result of the new technology, this process occurs with a rapidity never before known. Thought spreads around the world almost instantaneously. The computer is an adjunct to the human brain. It is not so hard to see it, even in the near future, becoming a plug-in module. It's a quantum step from holding cell phones with modems connected to the Internet to having them permanently installed in our ears. And then, what next? Wired directly into the synapses of our brains? Why not? Anything is possible. And with this technology, we will be in touch in a way that it will become impossible to police. It is already impossible to police the interaction. Advances far outpace the ability of clunky governmental operations to monitor and control. The best that they can do is play along, as when the FBI uses Carnivore to illegally monitor e-mail. If the FBI can do it, you can bet the average citizen is not so far behind, especially as changes in technology and mass production occur so rapidly.
"Spiritual" (which has always been a code word for that which we do not in the present understand) insight and ability is aided by advancing technology, which is further developed by the insight, which is... It's a vicious, ever-escalating spiral, upward. (Some ignorant fundamentalists say downward, toward the era of the Beast.) The gates are open, and the flood is raging, and it is not ever again to be contained. Does the government or business really believe they are going to collar the Internet, to make it subserve the corporo-governmental complex's interests? They may slow, but they will never again control the free exchange of ideas. They may harness Napster, to choose a prominent example, but they will not stop "illegal" file-swapping. (A new definition of illegal activity may eventually become that which, not only present laws prohibit, but that which laws against are capable of being enforced. Even now, if a law is incapable of being enforced, the activity it proscribes is tacitly legal, the law being moot.) As existing ftp technology (not to mention future refinements and developments) becomes more available to average users, the sharing of personal files will escalate. And encryption is becoming a joke as independent software developers, devoid of conscience and/or not leashed by corporations' greed factors, write software to circumvent security codes. Yes, folks, there actually are (many) programmers out there developing sophisticated software and giving it away for free, and there are many more who are simply copying it and redistributing it. More and more musicians give away their music for free, hoping of course that the practice will get them noticed and open doors into the big money, but they are already living in the past. As more and more musicians (and there have always been far more of them than could ever make a living at it, let alone get rich) strive to be heard and put their work on the net, less and less listeners will feel that it is necessary to buy music. The stuff available for free legally is already as good as the stuff for sale.
The same is true of writers. Egalitarianism is rampant, to the point of non-commercialism. If you think that writers have been undervalued and underpaid thus far, just wait. It is just as easy now to read great writing for free on the net as it is to purchase a book. Why pay for it when it's available for free. Internet magazines of excellent quality proliferate. They cannot afford to pay their contributors, yet they have no problem getting high quality material. And this is only the beginning. The underground is expanding far more rapidly than ever. The overground, commercial publishing, represents a lesser and lesser percentage of the written word. Ideas are being exchanged at a faster pace than ever, and after all, this is the purpose of writing, this is why books were invented. Everyone has been saying, you hear it all the time, print is not dead, but "everyone" is publishers who fear the inevitable: ideas exchanged en masse for free.
Print may not yet be dead, but it is weak and dying. The "press" will more and more come to represent the established society, the politicians, and media moguls. In fact, it already does to a great extent. Who publishes books? Newt Gingrich. Hilary Clinton. Tom Clancey. John Grisham. Steven King. (Sorry Steven, but it's true, although I have the feeling you are sympathetic.) Publishers want only best sellers. Little authors, those who are content with a small readership, find it more and more difficult to become published and distributed (although e-books and POD may be a solution to this problem). Bookstore chains crowd small presses out of a market share.
What happens when the publishing industry's primary representee is "the establishment?" Non-establishment opinion becomes disenfranchised (more than it has already been. It has always been somewhat disenfranchised, but the situation has been steadily worsening for half a century.) But there is already a solution: the Internet. As it continues to develop, as it resists the commercialization by the corporations (there is far more to the Internet than "meets the eye"--and ear), as it feeds back into the minds of its more dedicated users, the net evolves, not instead of, but with the users, into a conglomerate supermind of which the smaller part is the global corporate attempt to capture its potential. The sophistication of the Internet users is outdistancing the marketing experts, who are more easily than ever seen for exactly what they are. They become less able to hide behind their machinations. This is the real reason why Internet sales are down and companies are going out of business all over the place. The net is becoming, despite all attempts to make it otherwise, a free market, and not in the usual sense of the phrase. Like intuition is the driving force of the phenomenon that appears to be "psychic" experience, so the Internet is the driving force of the free exchange of ideas. As the technology/mind develops, the two become more unified, until the days when "we are one, and life flows on within you and without you."
Click on footnote number to return to that respective point in the text.
1. Most of the difficulty I have with creating websites has to do with how I might appear in public (this is also most of the difficulty I have with life in general), when I will be seen in a way I do not want to be seen, either as the truth I don't really know or am only vaguely aware of, or as an out-and-out misperception. (Social feedback creates self-image, and I spend so much semi-conscious time self-programming my own self-image, trying to negate social feedback, which can be true or false, that I feel defensive when I get inklings that people, even those I do not know or only know very casually, are messing with my mind, getting in there and moving things around behind a wall where I can't see what there doing, but only slightly feel it. When I'm promoting my book on the web, I get these feelings, that people at even a great distance, who otherwise would not know me at all, are determining my self-image, because I've dared to reveal myself, my motivation--because, when it comes right down to it, I maintain a website to promote interest in my books, ala my self, to a public I would be otherwise isolated from. This is the evil I see:---------------------------------------------
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