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 there is no point here, only zuel! 
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Chibi-Czar

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Location: Dallas Texas USA
Post there is no point here, only zuel!
well, I'd like to be in a more serene state of mind as the new year approaches, but every time I look at the news it seems like the fuckery in the middle east keeps getting more idiotic. I'd rather prefer fewer signs of the Apocalypse in my reality, but I don't have much luck with wishing.

wishing is sort of like praying. you want reality to cut you a break, so you concentrate really hard and hope and when you open your eyes more often than not there's nothing going to change there. things keep ticking along and you just proved a hundred folk sayings (like: shit in one hand wish in the other and see which one fills up first) dead right. of course sometimes things might spin your way either due to random chance or because you're looking so hard for the break that you're paying enough attention to pull though on your own.

so does the universe ever cut us a break? is there a Tao or a god? fucked if I know. there is a lot of very interesting talk about this thing called 'entanglement' in the quantum theory stuff. seems that some of the physics people have come to the conclusion that similar things affect one another. there's a a concept. it'd be a lot more impressive if people who practiced the golden-dawn type hermetic magic shit didnt allready call that sort of thing 'sympathetic magic'.

great. you got your fucking peanut butter in my chocolate!

no, wait, you got your science in my magic!

two great tastes that have hated each other since before Rome and shit. for the terms of this rant I'd like to point out that i classify much of religious faith in the same category as I do most 'occult' beliefs. just because your belief is popular doesn't mean it's above the pagans in the eyes of the opposition.

oh,a quick aside to people of faith: materialists do think you are deluded. don't ever forget that. don't take it as an insult ( except of course for when it is) but do bear it in mind. this is a unfortunate result of being associated with fucking nutjobs like Robbert Tilton, and a long list of catholic priests as of late. and all those people who hoisted up a religious banner to justify some atrocity... like a jihad or something. so lets deal with that. because just because you don't want to face up to it does not mean its not important.

anyway, this whole thing with magic and science has bothered me ever since I was a kid. how exactly is a nuclear explosion not magic? lets see, requires lots of complex calculations in obscure fields... uses rare components from distant parts of the world to achieve its effect... oh, and it affects the very fabric of reality, causing such a friction within the molecules of the region that the heat and energy lingers for hundreds of years after detonation. I don't know how that part's magic, exactly but it freaks me the fuck out and I wanted to mention it.

but there's no actually way to know if a lot of shit's true or not. we don't know who actually wrote the bible, or what happened that brought the universe into being. why? cause a lot of it happened before we had youtube. we weren't there, and no matter of forensic theory or documented records of who was in prison in Rome are going to change that. there are folk who'll tell you the math proves shit, but the math breaks down after a certain point. they cant even predict the weather more than a week ahead but they want to tell you they know that a dead critter they dug up from the Jurassic period was a good daddy. right.

but the thing that bothers me more than the whole argument of 'the thing i believe is right and the thing you believe is wrong' is more basic, and seems to be the root of a lot of the world's problems.

I think the problem is: Lies.

lets set aside the big shit like is there a god or a bigfoot or WMDs in Iraq. I've babbled about that enough for the moment. this thread is now about everyday life.

reality is in our heads. we interface with it with our bodies, but all the processing and mapping and the other neat cyberpunk lingo happens in our heads. we hold little models of reality in our head. these are built out of our memories and our impulses tend to reflect how we feel about those memories. you have one really bad hangover and the smell of tequila makes you nauseous for two years afterward. any situation you felt bad about you might avoid not to re-feel that feeling.

so, think about this. everyday, people lie to one another. I've been lied to a hell of a lot these last couple of years.

last year a friend of mine and the girl who was living with him had a baby. I was excited. I cheered them on. then there was weirdness. for example; he didn't move in directly with her when she got a new apartment. I'm thinking- why are you leaving the mother of your child alone in a shitty neighborhood? then almost a year later I find out it wasn't his kid. so much of what went down made more sense after that. things fell in to place. the lies were discarded and my model of the universe became more accurate.

so I'm still going through the files in my head, weeding out lies and trying to tidy up. and I wonder- how many people don't do this? how many people around me are not only working off shitty information they were given, but are distorting the info in their head to make themselves feel better? is it really as many people as I fear?

there was this bit in 1984 called 'doublethink' it was where a person was trained to hold two contradictory thoughts in their head at the same time. it was driving people kookoo for coco puffs in the book and I cant help but wonder if its why we see so many manic depressive types about these days. cant seem to listen to the radio for an hour without hearing advertisements for new medications for it.

an example of doublethink. just to give you an idea. Porn is the number one industry on the web. late night television is flooded with ads for girls gone wild and sex chat lines. tits and ass are plastered on every third billboard on the road.

and yet, there's a number of people out there (many of them on talk radio) who will rant and rave if you somehow suggest that the USA is anything less than a moral christian nation. saying this can and will result in being called 'unpatriotic' or just plain mean. we're horny in this country, but we're socially ostracized if we're open about it. you can download porn for free, and for twenty bucks a mostly naked girl will grind in your lap in certain nightspots, but prostitution is illegal.

why? because its okay if you only go most of the way over the line?

you might call it a double standerd.

Orwell would have called it doublethink.

I call it a dirty lie.

unless you face the lie, unless you realize that you are telling a lie, unless you let the lie go and face how things really are, you are working under a false reality, and it will probably fuck with your head a little.

but once you do that, once you face the lie and the possible consequences of the lie? well, it's a wondrous thing to feel the truth slide in place and the fractures the lies cause heal within your mind.

I wonder what a mind built on absolute truth would be like. I don't think it'd be like the computer's we're building. I don't think we can conceive of it. we might as well call such a mind a god. or a tao.

funny that.


T.L.Webb 12/2008

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Post Re: there is no point here, only zuel!
Good stuff in here.

A few points: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" I think is the quote that keeps popping up in my head.

And really, when it boils down to it, magic and technology are simply expressions of human will on the world and in nature. The difference is quite simply that one follows one truth, reality or mindset...the other has a different one. "Truth" for a magic user is finding symbolic connections. "Truth" for a scientist is "proving" a logical natural series of connections and interactions. The key, the link, and the genesis of both, however, is imagination. Human thought. Desire.

When you sit down and begin to think: "Why would one wish to form a hypothesis based on that observation" or "why do these things happen together/in sequence in nature?" you can start to see that it is the search for truth that is so fundamental and important to our lives, our souls and our survival, regardless of the method used to seek it.

Truth is important, even to those you might not believe seek it out. Truth means you know something. You understand the things that are scary and the things in the darkness that you think (truthfully or not) that can hurt you. Truth is power. Truth is salvation. Religions, Science, Societies, Teachers and anyone trying to sell you something will tell you that they know the truth, if only because it's such a powerful, atomic building block of human need, and it is relatively easy to pretend to have the truth to those who wish to have it, but not seek it out.

This is why I believe in God, and subsequently the connections God needs to make to Humanity. This is why I respect other faiths and science and religions that at first glance turn my beliefs topsy turvy: Because those who are actively searching for Truth are fulfilling a great need in themselves and others, even if I don't see it myself in their search. I believe that we are made to have this hunger, this need and this ability to seek out the Truth, and we are given a double-edged sword with the free will and imagination to question even absolute truth and so-called "obvious answers."

Going into the idea of lies and the endless web of bullshit out there, you have to wonder just how many of the lies out there are simply people telling themselves they have the truth and can stop looking?

"Global Warming doesn't exist, I'm not doing anything wrong by driving my car."

"Voting doesn't matter, the polls are already decided by the time it gets to me"

"Smoking doesn't hurt me, that's just the health nuts freaking out."

"Of course the earth is flat, look at outside, you can see for miles!"

"Those priests were set up! Holy men would never think of sexual deviancy!"

"The Jews are to blame for the state of my homeland!"

"Man will never learn to fly! Otherwise God would have given us wings!"

Somewhere, each and every one of those phrases is, was, or will be said by someone believing it to be the 100% unchallengeable, unassailable Truth. Each can be proven easily by a narrow band of logical reasoning. Each can be argued against so-called modern thought and 'common sense'. And those who believe they have found the Truth...well...they'll fight tooth and nail to keep it.

Truth is easy to manipulate, universally accessible, and more potent than anything else we know. Nirvana? Enlightenment? All methods to the Truth. God's Word has been labelled The Truth, and thus Truth has also been associated with Light, Warmth, Understanding, Love...and the list goes on and on.

So why is it that when we all have this unquenchable need for it, the curiosity and imagination to hunt for it, and the universal desire to have, hold and protect it...do we all succumb to so many things that aren't Truth?

Well, if you ever needed a sure-fire metaphor why Sin distances you from God; why lies trap and ensnare you; why physical and worldly attachments drag you away from enlightenment, you have it. Lies and Truth can't mix. Simple as that. And worse...all the examples in the Bible, in the Scientific Method, and in colleges of thought across the world since time antiquity warn you:

Lies are not always easy to discover. They're just as tasty as the Truth if you believe them to be the Truth. I can't believe it's not Enlightenment! The same taste as regular Truth, with only 300mg of Transfat per ounce! You'll never even know the difference...

unless you keep looking, and you have to do it before the lies kill you.

No wonder we need divine providence just to get by. :)

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. —John 8:32

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