Northern Overexposure

Is opiate now the opiate of the people?

12/4/2021

Karl Marx famously said that religion is the opiate of the people. By that he meant that the promise of a heavenly life after death kept the oppressed from uniting, revolting, and changing the economic system such that the workers received the fruits of their labours from the oligarchs.

Many of the poor in North America are addicted to opiates and the opiate epidemic is a very real problem in society.

The question now is with the proliferation of opiates, are opiates themselves becoming the opiates of the people sedating the poor such that they are not in a position to politically mobilize? If so, the tragedy is that opiates are now the opiate of the people.

To close, as Jesse Jackson said, "we need to start putting hope in our young peoples brains and stop jamming dope in their veins"

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The Meaning of the Event - Roger Chartier on Covid 19

11/19/2021

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Roger Chartier has a great article on Covid 19 and the meaning of it as an event. As he states, there has been so much written about Covid from health care advice, origin, debate about responses, debate around interventions, debate around treatment.

There has also been much written about what this portends for the future. Will we build back better or will we descend into a dystopian world? Will lockdowns, masks, remote working be the new normal or will we inexorably move towards a normality that was seen almost two years ago.

He draws on the work of Foucault's famous work, the Birth of the Clinic where an event is "an eruption, an emergence, a birth". In that sense there really is no origin as Covid it is an event that has always been present but has erupted into full consciousness and marks a change in history. From that point of view, the pandemic is a prefigurement of our world.

He does have a contrasting view from another philosopher who is more optimistic and argues that "right decisions and actions will not only be able to tame it, but also to influence or reverse the process that made it possible"

Which of these scenarios will be the one we live with is impossible to know as we are living through it. But this living through it is creating free floating and expressed anxiety and depression.

We need to find a way to come together peacefully, with understanding and with compassion as this pandemic has had profound effects on our collective psyche. But is is interesting to read reflective works of this type that help us think about if differently and perhaps make different choices and enter into constructive dialogue.

Roger Chartier - On Covid 19 - The Meaning of the Event

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Ballad of Ira Hayes - Indigenous Veterans Day

11/8/2021

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We honour the Canadian Indigenous veterans in Canada and it seems fitting to share this clip from Bob Dylan singing the classic song, The Ballad of Ira Hayes, the Native American veteran. Moving and powerful song. Listen to the whole piece here: Ballad of Ira Hayes

Below is a clip of Bob Dylan performing the song at the Tuscaroro Reservation.

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Hope is the thing with feathers - Emily Dickinson

10/17/2021

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Joe Dispenza on Mindfulness properly understood

10/16/2021

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The video below is an excellent one on the cognitive processes involved with how we can alter our state of being. If we believe that our thoughts are our destiny, we are thinking in the past. Consequently, we are constantly doing the same thing repetitiously and this becomes the routine and program. When change happens, subconsciously we become hardwired to believe certain things. While we can say, I want to be happy and free, our body says otherwise as it is the repository of past and triggers our mind. He argues that you have to get past the analytical mind in order to be truly free. In order to get past the analytic mind, one has to enter into a meditative state and calm the body.

All of us relive traumatic events, the more we connect to that event we connect to those emotional experiences and we then feel within our body the intensity of those events. That, then, creates a mood and emotional reaction. If we keep that going that creates a temperament and if it continues it becomes a personality trait.

Most of us therefore live 70 % of time in that space and live in fear. We prepare for fear. We are not been able to move from that event and we become addicted to them. We then connect to those events and the chemistry of the brain unloads and this has an impact on our body.

The hardest part of change is making a different choice and that is going to feel uncomfortable. Emotions trigger thoughts which connect to the body. The body then influences the mind in a reciprocal pattern which creates the same experience. Our body becomes connected to the unconscious. Being in the unknown is fearful for our body.

The best way to create the future is to create it. Rehearse the action of what you want. Most of us our addicted to our environment and past. To get past this we need to disconnect from bodily senses. Less sensory information means less sensory environment and this can help us become free.

Waiting for something outside of us means that we are always living in lack. The Newtonian model is about predictability. The Quantam is when you start feeling whole and free. You then create your world and reality.

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Epicetus and the Enchiridion

10/13/2021

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Epicetus is among the most interesting and earliest of the Stoic philosophers. His name is translated as "acquired one" and he was a slave. Thus, when he discusses overcoming setbacks, his lessons are wise and worthy of reflection. One of his most famous works is the Enchirdion.

He sounds an almost Buddhist when he argues that dropping desire is the key to interior freedom and ultimately happiness (a problematic term). While all is transitory and passing and suffering is part of life, our attitudes towards these can have a great impact on our well-being.

Difficult to practice but at time circumstances require that we do just that. I won't comment more on it except his famous distinction between what is up to us and what isn't is a very challenging and difficult exercise. Combined with surrendering to fate (different than fatalism) and the overall philosophy contains some valuable kernels of wisdom. Although not perfect, it is a precursor to the dominance of psychology in the contemporary era.

Psychology and philosophy are more related than the positivist empirical tradition of contemporary psychology might wish to admit.

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Minting a Trillion Dollar Coin

10/12/2021

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Most interesting idea that is being floated in the US regarding the minting of a Trillion Dollar coin. The US Constitution gives authority to the federal treasury to mint coins and values and, theoretically, the minting of Trillion dollar coin would pay of the country's debt.

The only problem is whether the Federal Reserve would accept it. However, this would set up a showdown between the government and the Federal Reserve on who controls the government, currency and money supply. If they did not accept it, the US would have no choice but to establish a national bank thereby basically abolishing the Fed.

In many quarters, many argue that although it is constitionally legal and valid, given the inter-related nature of commerce and business such a move would de-stabilize confidence in the US dollar.

Ellen Brown disagrees (and did when Obama floated and researched idea) and argues that it is an idea whose time has come!

The current economic crisis cannot be solved with the thinking that created it. There is simply not enough money in the system to fund the services we desperately need, pay down the debt, and keep taxes affordable. The money supply has shrunk by $4 trillion since 2008, according to the Fed’s own website. The only solution is to add more money to the real, producing economy; And that means some congressionally-mandated entity needs to create it, either the Fed or the Treasury.

The Fed has declined. In flatly rejecting the Treasury’s legal tender, the Fed as representative of the banks is asserting itself as outranking the elected representatives of the people. If the Fed won’t acknowledge the coins created by the government, perhaps the government needs to charter a publicly-owned bank that will.

We have a chance today to end the charade of big money gridlock politics, as well as the reign of the big banks. We have the power to choose prosperity over austerity. But to do it, we must first restore the power to create money to the people.

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Giga-waabamin. ᑭᑲ ᐙᐸᒥᓐ᙮ 'I shall see you.' by James Vukelich

6/3/2021

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Many are grieving, mourning, and are in shock with respect to the finding of the children's bodies in Kamloops British Columbia. These children were community members of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc community who attended the school.

There are sacred fires, gatherings, and other forms of communal coming together across Canada and in my community of Thunder Bay

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provides the community with a roadmap on how to move forward and it is useful to re-read it.

At the same time, we can be active agents for envisioning and enacting a new present and future. It is never easy to achieve a new future and, for me, embracing what seems at first to be macabre paradigms such as Robert Burns' insight in his dirge, "Man was made to mourn" or the Buddha's insight that "life is suffering" is an effective way for us to recognize reality as it is. Buddhism, Islam, Christianity point to a reality.

But Indigenous spirituality also points to a reality. In the video below, James Vukelich provides an etymologic breakdown of the Ojibway word "Giga-waabamin". He explains that there is no word for good-bye in Ojibway. Instead, there is a phrase that means "I'll see you". That is not just a maybe but a clear understanding that I WILL see you. You will never be lost; you will never be gone.

As he says the phrase, there is no glossing over the pain. He says the "eternal is moving through the permanent" and that eternal will never end but our present life will end. We will die. This phrase acknowledge that reality. But it also acknowledges that this is not the end. While we suffer in the present moment, we WILL see each other and as he says, "and the Spirits will decide.”

Life is always subject to change, and this is now a change in our collective consciousness (in some way, depending on how we choose).

The understanding of that reality gives us a truth by which we should live our life. And we should live our life, according to the elders and the language with "truth, compassion, love, virtue, righteousness, honesty, humility, and respect for one another, acknowledging the sanctity of each others' lives, with strength of heart, with courage, with bravery, with intelligence" And when we do see each other again, we will certainly know how to treat each other. And the Spirits will decide.

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Marcus Aurelius - Meditation

5/30/2021

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Hard to believe that the meditation came from Marcus Aurelius in around 160 CE. There is no evidence that he ever intended these thoughts to be made public. The riches of his meditations have influenced thousands over the centuries. They ring as accurate to experience, for those on the path of enlightenment, two thousand years later as they did then.

When you wake up this morning, tell yourself: The people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him or her. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him or her: these are obstructions.

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The Meaning of the Creative Act

5/22/2021

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I am reading Nikolai Berdyaev, the philosopher of freedom (which he also refers to as creativity). I have embedded a useful video from a Russian philosopher who effectively outlines the ethics of creativity. In the video, ethics means the type of paradigm or framework the human person uses to direct their activity. For Berdyaev, the ultimate ethic is the ethics of freedom or creativity. She draws on his work in the Destiny of Man, but I am drawing on his work, The Meaning of the Creative Act. The quotes below are from it.

Freedom from law or convention does not mean anarchic chaos. “There is nothing creative in chaotic revolt: this is always reaction and deserves denunciation by the law. Creativity is cosmic, not chaotic, hence it lies outside any denunciation by the law which is always oriented towards the ancient chaos. Creativity is least of all anarch”. Creativity is a wellspring of life that emerges from consciousness and is completely subjective although it may have social and political impact.

"Only the creative epoch will lead to the human person’s positive consciousness of themselves, will liberate the human person from an exclusively negative self- consciousness. The ethic of creativity will give inspiration towards new and hitherto unknown life. This is life in the Spirit, rather than in the world, life spiritually free from reaction to the world and everything worldly. A new evaluation of the social, also, will flow from the ethic of creativeness."

In real terms if we adopt a new paradigm in our minds FIRST, changes in the world will follow and flow from that creative process.

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<<Previous

Is opiate now the opiate of the people?

The Meaning of the Event - Roger Chartier on Covid 19

Ballad of Ira Hayes - Indigenous Veterans Day

Hope is the thing with feathers - Emily Dickinson

Joe Dispenza on Mindfulness properly understood

Epicetus and the Enchiridion

Minting a Trillion Dollar Coin

Giga-waabamin. ᑭᑲ ᐙᐸᒥᓐ᙮ 'I shall see you.' by James Vukelich

Marcus Aurelius - Meditation

The Meaning of the Creative Act

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