Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Droppin' Science-ology
THE BEINGNESS OF MAN
(From Scientology 8-8808, 1952, by L. Ron Hubbard)
Any study of knowledge could not but be intimately connected with the beingness of Man and the earliest axioms of Scientology began to predict and the later developments eventually discovered the highest level data so far obtained on the identity and capability of life.
The well-beingness and, indeed, the continued survival of mankind depend upon an exact knowledge of his own capabilities; and thus, more particularly, of his own relationship to knowledge itself.
The basic goal of Man which embraces all his activities is apparently survival. Survival might be defined as an impulse to persist through time, in space. as matter and energy. The impulse to survival is found to contain eight sub-impulses. These are, first, the urge to survive as self; second, the urge to survive through sex in the procreation of children; third, the impulse to survive as a group; fourth, the impulse to survive as mankind itself; fifth, the urge to survive as animal life; sixth, the impulse to survive as the material universe of matter, energy, space and time; seventh, the impulse to survive as a spirit, and eighth, the impulse to survive as what may be called Supreme Being.
The above sub-impulses are called dynamics; combined, they form the overall urge towards survival, but each one of itself plays its important role, both in the individual and in the wider sphere named as a part of each impulse. Thus we see the inter-dependency of the individual with the family, with the group, with the species, with life-forms, with the material universe itself, with spirits, and with God; and we see the dependency of each one of these entities upon the individual as a part of it.
The human mind might be conceived to be the recorder, computer and solver of problems relating to survival. Scientology introduces new and more workable ways of thinking about things. It has found that an absolute is unobtainable; neither zero nor infinity are as themselves discoverable in a real universe but, as absolutes, may be posed as symbols for an abstraction which could be supposed to exist but which does not exist in fact. Therefore, there would be no absolute good and no absolute evil. A thing to be “good” would depend on the viewpoint of the observer, and the same condition would exist for “bad.”
Several new concepts germane to the fields of science and humanities almost independent of its own work have been introduced by Scientology. The first of these is the proper definition of a static. The next is the first actual definition of zero and its differentiation from infinity in terms of mathematics. Another is the basic definition of space which hitherto was omitted from the field of physics except in terms of time and energy.
An optimum solution to any problem would be that solution which brought the greatest benefits to the greatest number of dynamics. The poorest solution would be that solution which brought the fewest benefits to the least number of dynamics. And here a benefit would be defined as that which would enhance survival. Activities which brought minimal survival to a lesser number of dynamics and damaged the survival of a greater number of dynamics could not be considered rational activities.
While there could be no absolute right or absolute wrong, a right action would depend upon its assisting the survival of the dynamics immediately concerned; a wrong action would impede the survival of the dynamics concerned,
Thought is sub-divisible into data. A datum would be anything of which one could become aware, whether the thing existed or whether he created it. Creativeness could be found to exceed existence itself; by observation and definition it is discoverable that thought does not necessarily have to be preceded by data, but can create data. Imagination can then create without reference to pre-existing states, and is not necessarily dependent upon experience or data and does not necessarily combine these for its products. Imagination could be classified as the ability to create or forecast a future or to create, change or destroy a present or past.
Cause is motivated by the future.
Scientology as it applies to life is seen as a study in statics and kinetics, which is to say a study of the interplay between no motion and all motion, or less motion and more motion. In thought itself at its highest range, we discover the only true static known. In physics a Static is represented as a body at rest but it is known in physics that a body at rest is yet an equilibrium of forces and is itself in motion if only on the level of molecular motion. A true static would contain no motion, no time, no space and no wavelength. To this static in Scientology is assigned the mathematical symbol theta. This designation means solely a theoretical static of distinct and precisely defined qualities with certain potentials.
The all-motion or more-motion kinetic is termed MEST. This word represents the material universe, or any universe. It is combined from the first letters of the four words: matter, energy, space and time.
The interplay between theta and mest results in activities known as life, and causes the animation of living life forms. In the absence of an interplay, the life form is dead.
The beingness of Man, by which is meant homo sapiens, derives its impulse toward thought and action from theta and takes its material form in mest.
Man, homo sapiens, is a composite being of four distinct and divisible actualities: these parts are termed the thetan, the memory banks, the genetic entity and the body.
The thetan, which will be described later in greater detail, has the impulse of theta itself and can exist in matter, energy, space and time, but derives its impulse from the potential of theta itself and has certain definite goals and behavior characteristics of its own.
The standard memory banks and the reactive memory banks compose the memory banks of homo sapiens. These in the analogy of an electronic computer, are the file system. The standard banks can be said to contain data of which Man is easily and analytically aware and the reactive banks are those which contain stimulus-response, in other words experience the action of which is below the level of his awareness. The content of the reactive banks was received during moments of lessened awareness such as the unconsciousness of early life in times of weariness, severe pain or heavy emotional stress, such data operating automatically thereafter to command the person without his consent. The standard memory banks are those in which experience is stored for use in the estimation of the effort necessary for survival and are concerned with analytical thought. There is an additional storage of memory itself in a purer form than in these banks, but this memory is contained in the capabilities of the thetan.
The genetic entity is that beingness not dissimilar to the thetan which has carried forward and developed the body from its earliest moments along the evolutionary line on earth and which through experience, necessity and natural selection, has employed the counter-efforts of the environment to fashion an organism of the type best fitted for survival, limited only by the abilities of the genetic entity. The goal of the genetic entity is survival on a much grosser plane of materiality.
The body itself is a carbon-oxygen engine which runs at a temperature of 98.6°F on low combustion fuel, generally derived from other life forms. The body is directly monitored by the genetic entity in activities such as respiration, heart-beat and endocrine secretions; but these activities may be modified by the thetan.
The human mind could be said to be the primary activity of the thetan with his own memory and ability plus the analytical standard memory banks, modified by the reactive memory banks of the genetic entity, and limited by the mechanical abilities and adaptabilities in action of the body itself.
These four parts of homo sapiens are detachable one from the other.
The personality and beingness which actually is the individual and is aware of being aware and is ordinarily and normally the “person” and who the individual thinks he is, is the thetan; and this awareness can continue, is clarified and is not interrupted by a detachment from the body which is accomplished by standard processing.
The thetan is immortal and is possessed of capabilities well in excess of those hitherto predicted for Man and the detachment accomplishes in the sober practice of science the realization of goals envisioned but questionably, if ever, obtained in spiritualism, mysticism and allied fields.
The anatomy of the beingness of Man is one of the lesser studies of Scientology where the beingness relates only to homo sapiens, for the detachment of the thetan by standard operating procedure is in common practice a simplicity, and it is therefore unrewarding to explore to much greater depths the remaining combination of the standard and reactive banks, the genetic entity and the body, since the last three are a specialized combination. Nevertheless the development of the technology necessary to bring about a complete state of beingness of that which a man actually is found to be, has provided considerable data and technology in the field of memory recordings, the peculiarities of energy behavior around and about the body, the history of the evolutionary line, the identity of the genetic entity and much of the construction of the body itself, as well as the construction of the real universe. The bulk of the data which concerns homo sapiens, other than the beingness of the thetan, has been covered adequately earlier and elsewhere.
The beingness of Man is essentially the beingness of theta itself acting in the mest and other universes in the accomplishment of the goals of theta and under the determination of a specific individual and particular personality for each being.
Scientology is the science of knowing how to know.
Scientology is the science of knowing sciences. It seeks to embrace the sciences and humanities as a clarification of knowledge itself.
One studies to know a science. His study is without avail when he does not know the science of study.
One lives and learns of life but life is not comprehensible to him, no matter how much he lives, unless he knows the science of life itself.
One studies the humanities. If he does not know how to study the humanities he often fails.
The physicist and the fission bomb expert know physics but not the humanities. They do not conceive the relationship and thus physics itself fails.
Into all these things—biology, physics, psychology and life itself—the skills of Scientology can bring order and simplification.
One lives better with Scientology since life, understood and controlled, becomes liveable.
A civilization could fare better with Scientology since that would not be pock-mark with Unknowns and rendered null with chaos.
The only richness there is is understanding. That is all that Scientology has to give.
Footnote
In earlier efforts to better his state of beingness, Man has considered homo sapiens as an inseparable unit which was either alive or dead. Further, Man has thought it necessary, when he thought about it at all, to address and reduce the inroads of the past before the individual could assume any high level of beingness in the present. In Dianetics it was found that the mind was sub divisible into two parts, the first was the analytical mind which did the actual thinking and computing for the individual but which, in the present civilized state of Man, was almost submerged. The second was the reactive mind. The reactive mind was considered to be a stimulus-response mechanism which derived and acted upon the data of experience without thought. The Content of the reactive mind was found to be the accumulated bad experiences of the organism not only in its current lifetime, but in the other lifetimes which it apparently had led in order to accomplish the task of evolution and to arrive at its present state of structural beingness. The reactive mind was the blueprint but it was also the stimulus-response dictator of action. The formula which described the reactive mind was that everything is identified with everything. Dianetics accomplished a great deal in the elevation of beingness by reducing the most violent incidents in the reactive mind by a process known as the erasure of engrams. An engram was a period of momentary or long pain and unconsciousness such as would occur in an injury, operation or illness. Such incidents could be reduced simply by “returning” the individual to the moment of the accident and then going over the accident step by step, perceptic by perceptic, as though it was happening again. After this had been done several times, the accident was found to have no more command value upon the individual. The reduction of the command value of the reactive mind was found to be necessary to a proper resolution of aberration. Understand that the reduction of the command value of the reactive mind was the goal, not merely the reduction of the reactive mind. When one is addressing the problems of an individual or group of men, the reduction of the command value of the reactive mind is still the goal where Scientology is used as a process to eradicate aberration. But two other methods are available for reducing this command value. The first of these lies in the removal of the analytical mind from proximity to the reactive mind and the increase then of the potential of the analytical mind until it can command and handle any reactive mind with ease. The second is simply the rehabilitation of the analytical mind by permitting it to use its creative ability in the construction of a universe of its own. It was found that there was no purpose in reducing incidents out of the reactive mind beyond the point where the analytical mind could step apart from the reactive mind, and then command it. Dianetics is a science which addresses itself directly to the reactive mind to reduce the command value of that reactive mind. Scientology is an embracive subject, much wider in application. It has as its goal the beingness that can exist without an energy or matter, which is to say, without time, whether homo sapiens or not. Dianetics was an evolutionary step, a tool which had use in arriving at a higher level of knowledge; its use, however, produced slower results and much lower goals. Further, Dianetic processes were limited in that they could not be applied more than a few hundred hours without the reactive mind assuming a very high command level over the analytical mind due to the fact that the reactive mind was being validated continually in the process, whereas the better process was to validate the analytical mind. Medicine and psychology, as practiced today, have absorbed and are using many of the principles of Dianetics without caring to be aware of the later developments in the field of the mind as represented here. Thus, the society absorbs and very often misunderstands knowledge.
(From Scientology 8-8808, 1952, by L. Ron Hubbard)
Any study of knowledge could not but be intimately connected with the beingness of Man and the earliest axioms of Scientology began to predict and the later developments eventually discovered the highest level data so far obtained on the identity and capability of life.
The well-beingness and, indeed, the continued survival of mankind depend upon an exact knowledge of his own capabilities; and thus, more particularly, of his own relationship to knowledge itself.
The basic goal of Man which embraces all his activities is apparently survival. Survival might be defined as an impulse to persist through time, in space. as matter and energy. The impulse to survival is found to contain eight sub-impulses. These are, first, the urge to survive as self; second, the urge to survive through sex in the procreation of children; third, the impulse to survive as a group; fourth, the impulse to survive as mankind itself; fifth, the urge to survive as animal life; sixth, the impulse to survive as the material universe of matter, energy, space and time; seventh, the impulse to survive as a spirit, and eighth, the impulse to survive as what may be called Supreme Being.
The above sub-impulses are called dynamics; combined, they form the overall urge towards survival, but each one of itself plays its important role, both in the individual and in the wider sphere named as a part of each impulse. Thus we see the inter-dependency of the individual with the family, with the group, with the species, with life-forms, with the material universe itself, with spirits, and with God; and we see the dependency of each one of these entities upon the individual as a part of it.
The human mind might be conceived to be the recorder, computer and solver of problems relating to survival. Scientology introduces new and more workable ways of thinking about things. It has found that an absolute is unobtainable; neither zero nor infinity are as themselves discoverable in a real universe but, as absolutes, may be posed as symbols for an abstraction which could be supposed to exist but which does not exist in fact. Therefore, there would be no absolute good and no absolute evil. A thing to be “good” would depend on the viewpoint of the observer, and the same condition would exist for “bad.”
Several new concepts germane to the fields of science and humanities almost independent of its own work have been introduced by Scientology. The first of these is the proper definition of a static. The next is the first actual definition of zero and its differentiation from infinity in terms of mathematics. Another is the basic definition of space which hitherto was omitted from the field of physics except in terms of time and energy.
An optimum solution to any problem would be that solution which brought the greatest benefits to the greatest number of dynamics. The poorest solution would be that solution which brought the fewest benefits to the least number of dynamics. And here a benefit would be defined as that which would enhance survival. Activities which brought minimal survival to a lesser number of dynamics and damaged the survival of a greater number of dynamics could not be considered rational activities.
While there could be no absolute right or absolute wrong, a right action would depend upon its assisting the survival of the dynamics immediately concerned; a wrong action would impede the survival of the dynamics concerned,
Thought is sub-divisible into data. A datum would be anything of which one could become aware, whether the thing existed or whether he created it. Creativeness could be found to exceed existence itself; by observation and definition it is discoverable that thought does not necessarily have to be preceded by data, but can create data. Imagination can then create without reference to pre-existing states, and is not necessarily dependent upon experience or data and does not necessarily combine these for its products. Imagination could be classified as the ability to create or forecast a future or to create, change or destroy a present or past.
Cause is motivated by the future.
Scientology as it applies to life is seen as a study in statics and kinetics, which is to say a study of the interplay between no motion and all motion, or less motion and more motion. In thought itself at its highest range, we discover the only true static known. In physics a Static is represented as a body at rest but it is known in physics that a body at rest is yet an equilibrium of forces and is itself in motion if only on the level of molecular motion. A true static would contain no motion, no time, no space and no wavelength. To this static in Scientology is assigned the mathematical symbol theta. This designation means solely a theoretical static of distinct and precisely defined qualities with certain potentials.
The all-motion or more-motion kinetic is termed MEST. This word represents the material universe, or any universe. It is combined from the first letters of the four words: matter, energy, space and time.
The interplay between theta and mest results in activities known as life, and causes the animation of living life forms. In the absence of an interplay, the life form is dead.
The beingness of Man, by which is meant homo sapiens, derives its impulse toward thought and action from theta and takes its material form in mest.
Man, homo sapiens, is a composite being of four distinct and divisible actualities: these parts are termed the thetan, the memory banks, the genetic entity and the body.
The thetan, which will be described later in greater detail, has the impulse of theta itself and can exist in matter, energy, space and time, but derives its impulse from the potential of theta itself and has certain definite goals and behavior characteristics of its own.
The standard memory banks and the reactive memory banks compose the memory banks of homo sapiens. These in the analogy of an electronic computer, are the file system. The standard banks can be said to contain data of which Man is easily and analytically aware and the reactive banks are those which contain stimulus-response, in other words experience the action of which is below the level of his awareness. The content of the reactive banks was received during moments of lessened awareness such as the unconsciousness of early life in times of weariness, severe pain or heavy emotional stress, such data operating automatically thereafter to command the person without his consent. The standard memory banks are those in which experience is stored for use in the estimation of the effort necessary for survival and are concerned with analytical thought. There is an additional storage of memory itself in a purer form than in these banks, but this memory is contained in the capabilities of the thetan.
The genetic entity is that beingness not dissimilar to the thetan which has carried forward and developed the body from its earliest moments along the evolutionary line on earth and which through experience, necessity and natural selection, has employed the counter-efforts of the environment to fashion an organism of the type best fitted for survival, limited only by the abilities of the genetic entity. The goal of the genetic entity is survival on a much grosser plane of materiality.
The body itself is a carbon-oxygen engine which runs at a temperature of 98.6°F on low combustion fuel, generally derived from other life forms. The body is directly monitored by the genetic entity in activities such as respiration, heart-beat and endocrine secretions; but these activities may be modified by the thetan.
The human mind could be said to be the primary activity of the thetan with his own memory and ability plus the analytical standard memory banks, modified by the reactive memory banks of the genetic entity, and limited by the mechanical abilities and adaptabilities in action of the body itself.
These four parts of homo sapiens are detachable one from the other.
The personality and beingness which actually is the individual and is aware of being aware and is ordinarily and normally the “person” and who the individual thinks he is, is the thetan; and this awareness can continue, is clarified and is not interrupted by a detachment from the body which is accomplished by standard processing.
The thetan is immortal and is possessed of capabilities well in excess of those hitherto predicted for Man and the detachment accomplishes in the sober practice of science the realization of goals envisioned but questionably, if ever, obtained in spiritualism, mysticism and allied fields.
The anatomy of the beingness of Man is one of the lesser studies of Scientology where the beingness relates only to homo sapiens, for the detachment of the thetan by standard operating procedure is in common practice a simplicity, and it is therefore unrewarding to explore to much greater depths the remaining combination of the standard and reactive banks, the genetic entity and the body, since the last three are a specialized combination. Nevertheless the development of the technology necessary to bring about a complete state of beingness of that which a man actually is found to be, has provided considerable data and technology in the field of memory recordings, the peculiarities of energy behavior around and about the body, the history of the evolutionary line, the identity of the genetic entity and much of the construction of the body itself, as well as the construction of the real universe. The bulk of the data which concerns homo sapiens, other than the beingness of the thetan, has been covered adequately earlier and elsewhere.
The beingness of Man is essentially the beingness of theta itself acting in the mest and other universes in the accomplishment of the goals of theta and under the determination of a specific individual and particular personality for each being.
Scientology is the science of knowing how to know.
Scientology is the science of knowing sciences. It seeks to embrace the sciences and humanities as a clarification of knowledge itself.
One studies to know a science. His study is without avail when he does not know the science of study.
One lives and learns of life but life is not comprehensible to him, no matter how much he lives, unless he knows the science of life itself.
One studies the humanities. If he does not know how to study the humanities he often fails.
The physicist and the fission bomb expert know physics but not the humanities. They do not conceive the relationship and thus physics itself fails.
Into all these things—biology, physics, psychology and life itself—the skills of Scientology can bring order and simplification.
One lives better with Scientology since life, understood and controlled, becomes liveable.
A civilization could fare better with Scientology since that would not be pock-mark with Unknowns and rendered null with chaos.
The only richness there is is understanding. That is all that Scientology has to give.
Footnote
In earlier efforts to better his state of beingness, Man has considered homo sapiens as an inseparable unit which was either alive or dead. Further, Man has thought it necessary, when he thought about it at all, to address and reduce the inroads of the past before the individual could assume any high level of beingness in the present. In Dianetics it was found that the mind was sub divisible into two parts, the first was the analytical mind which did the actual thinking and computing for the individual but which, in the present civilized state of Man, was almost submerged. The second was the reactive mind. The reactive mind was considered to be a stimulus-response mechanism which derived and acted upon the data of experience without thought. The Content of the reactive mind was found to be the accumulated bad experiences of the organism not only in its current lifetime, but in the other lifetimes which it apparently had led in order to accomplish the task of evolution and to arrive at its present state of structural beingness. The reactive mind was the blueprint but it was also the stimulus-response dictator of action. The formula which described the reactive mind was that everything is identified with everything. Dianetics accomplished a great deal in the elevation of beingness by reducing the most violent incidents in the reactive mind by a process known as the erasure of engrams. An engram was a period of momentary or long pain and unconsciousness such as would occur in an injury, operation or illness. Such incidents could be reduced simply by “returning” the individual to the moment of the accident and then going over the accident step by step, perceptic by perceptic, as though it was happening again. After this had been done several times, the accident was found to have no more command value upon the individual. The reduction of the command value of the reactive mind was found to be necessary to a proper resolution of aberration. Understand that the reduction of the command value of the reactive mind was the goal, not merely the reduction of the reactive mind. When one is addressing the problems of an individual or group of men, the reduction of the command value of the reactive mind is still the goal where Scientology is used as a process to eradicate aberration. But two other methods are available for reducing this command value. The first of these lies in the removal of the analytical mind from proximity to the reactive mind and the increase then of the potential of the analytical mind until it can command and handle any reactive mind with ease. The second is simply the rehabilitation of the analytical mind by permitting it to use its creative ability in the construction of a universe of its own. It was found that there was no purpose in reducing incidents out of the reactive mind beyond the point where the analytical mind could step apart from the reactive mind, and then command it. Dianetics is a science which addresses itself directly to the reactive mind to reduce the command value of that reactive mind. Scientology is an embracive subject, much wider in application. It has as its goal the beingness that can exist without an energy or matter, which is to say, without time, whether homo sapiens or not. Dianetics was an evolutionary step, a tool which had use in arriving at a higher level of knowledge; its use, however, produced slower results and much lower goals. Further, Dianetic processes were limited in that they could not be applied more than a few hundred hours without the reactive mind assuming a very high command level over the analytical mind due to the fact that the reactive mind was being validated continually in the process, whereas the better process was to validate the analytical mind. Medicine and psychology, as practiced today, have absorbed and are using many of the principles of Dianetics without caring to be aware of the later developments in the field of the mind as represented here. Thus, the society absorbs and very often misunderstands knowledge.
MOVING TO LIC SATURDAY..NEW CHAPTER :)
Granting Beingness
We are all alive. If you look around you, you will find life in all of it's glory and splendor. Whether you use physical or spiritual perception, all that you see, in every direction that you look, you will find life in all of it's infinitude. Life does not survive, it exists. The physical manifestation may come and go, but this is only a demonstration of life, and is not life itself. Life IS.
If we momentarily pretend that the physical life around our bodies is life itself, to that end will we pretend to 'survive'. And in that survival we ensure our right to live by overcoming all the other life we may imagine or come into contact with. But this is not surviving, it is pretending.
Granting beingness has no pretense. There is no veil in which we filter our perception with. Granting beingness is recognizing, acknowledging, and enhancing the existence of others around us. We are not alone and in sharing existence with others, when we acknowledge the existence of others, we find that life contains the wonderment that is completely missing from the pretension of survival.
If you are worried about your survival then perhaps it may be to your benefit to find out why. We are not alone, and if you busy yourself with surviving, then be assured that others are doing the same. The enemies you create will either force you into slavery or they will provide the impetus for you to overcome the survival game itself. Granting beingness releases the enemies you have created and sets you free.
It's easy to spot those who grant beingness. They make you feel good, not only about yourself, but about the world at large. They view the universe without the veil of perception, and this comes across in their communication to you. You catch a glimpse of something far greater than yourself and when you do, it makes you want to get it. Surviving the game of life requires that you attain it, you can't win otherwise. To survive is to kill yourself off as a player. Granting beingness takes chess playing to a whole 'nother level. :-)
The way to spot the survival game in action is to watch for the signs. Refusing to understand another's perception is one. Another sign is when someone denigrates someone else's perception. Surviving the game is considered dangerous, and to overcome that danger it is customary to deny your opponent's right to their thoughts. A sign of surviving is how well you have forced your thoughts, ideas and considerations upon others. A sign of granting beingness is how easy it is to accept another's position on an issue. The time track is quite long. It is really, really, long. Do you actually think that those thoughts of yours have never been addressed before. You already know the answers, all you have to do is let someone else know theirs. Granting beingness gives another the right and privilege of finding out their own answers, in their own times. Don't you deserve that right as well?
You can't give another what you do not have. I wish for you to recognize, acknowledge, and enhance yourself so that you may pass the gift to another. Sooner or later it's going to happen anyway, so why fight it? :-)
We are all alive. If you look around you, you will find life in all of it's glory and splendor. Whether you use physical or spiritual perception, all that you see, in every direction that you look, you will find life in all of it's infinitude. Life does not survive, it exists. The physical manifestation may come and go, but this is only a demonstration of life, and is not life itself. Life IS.
If we momentarily pretend that the physical life around our bodies is life itself, to that end will we pretend to 'survive'. And in that survival we ensure our right to live by overcoming all the other life we may imagine or come into contact with. But this is not surviving, it is pretending.
Granting beingness has no pretense. There is no veil in which we filter our perception with. Granting beingness is recognizing, acknowledging, and enhancing the existence of others around us. We are not alone and in sharing existence with others, when we acknowledge the existence of others, we find that life contains the wonderment that is completely missing from the pretension of survival.
If you are worried about your survival then perhaps it may be to your benefit to find out why. We are not alone, and if you busy yourself with surviving, then be assured that others are doing the same. The enemies you create will either force you into slavery or they will provide the impetus for you to overcome the survival game itself. Granting beingness releases the enemies you have created and sets you free.
It's easy to spot those who grant beingness. They make you feel good, not only about yourself, but about the world at large. They view the universe without the veil of perception, and this comes across in their communication to you. You catch a glimpse of something far greater than yourself and when you do, it makes you want to get it. Surviving the game of life requires that you attain it, you can't win otherwise. To survive is to kill yourself off as a player. Granting beingness takes chess playing to a whole 'nother level. :-)
The way to spot the survival game in action is to watch for the signs. Refusing to understand another's perception is one. Another sign is when someone denigrates someone else's perception. Surviving the game is considered dangerous, and to overcome that danger it is customary to deny your opponent's right to their thoughts. A sign of surviving is how well you have forced your thoughts, ideas and considerations upon others. A sign of granting beingness is how easy it is to accept another's position on an issue. The time track is quite long. It is really, really, long. Do you actually think that those thoughts of yours have never been addressed before. You already know the answers, all you have to do is let someone else know theirs. Granting beingness gives another the right and privilege of finding out their own answers, in their own times. Don't you deserve that right as well?
You can't give another what you do not have. I wish for you to recognize, acknowledge, and enhance yourself so that you may pass the gift to another. Sooner or later it's going to happen anyway, so why fight it? :-)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Africans in America
The essence of the African situation in the Americas, especially the US, is that largely speaking in a country where the reigning idea is that people from distant lands come here to make a better life in a free country, this group is the only one that didn't come with that idea or under their own volition. They were brought to a continent in the service of the free will and imagination of the Other.
This frames the crux of the so called "negro problem", a vastly illiterate, primitive people is vulnerable to total domination by a militarily and technologically superior group. This is the dynamic of European Imperialist Expansion.
However, in this narrative, the oppressing force develops "morally" along with it's material development. Domination becomes more and more costly and untenable and the practice is incrementally abandoned.
This leaves the Negro "stranded" in a problematic situation. The country that is now his home appears both as residual oppression and land of promise. With no will or grip on modern global capitalism, the idea of returning to his "homeland" is unthought of...to be cont'd
This frames the crux of the so called "negro problem", a vastly illiterate, primitive people is vulnerable to total domination by a militarily and technologically superior group. This is the dynamic of European Imperialist Expansion.
However, in this narrative, the oppressing force develops "morally" along with it's material development. Domination becomes more and more costly and untenable and the practice is incrementally abandoned.
This leaves the Negro "stranded" in a problematic situation. The country that is now his home appears both as residual oppression and land of promise. With no will or grip on modern global capitalism, the idea of returning to his "homeland" is unthought of...to be cont'd
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Robert Rauschenberg RIP
RAUSCHENBERG/WARHOL
by Charlie Finch
In 1962, Michael and Ileana Sonnabend took Robert Rauschenberg for his first visit to Andy Warhol’s studio. There on the wall, Rauschenberg saw something he had never seen before: Silkscreened paintings. He asked Andy, "Where do you send out to have those done?" Andy, terrified that Bob would steal his processes, hemmed and hawed.
"I’ve seen those before," Rauschenberg commented, looking at Andy’s silkscreened Coca-Cola bottles, an obvious steal of the Coke bottles Rauschenberg had employed in his Combines five years before. Generously, Rauschenberg suggested that Warhol leave some blank white space in the midst of his Coca-Cola frieze, an idea Warhol ignored. Rauschenberg merely went back to his studio, and immediately produced hundreds of silkscreen works.
Rauschenberg and Warhol were contemporaries, born three years apart, but Bob preceded Andy by a decade in the fine arts realm (Andy made his living as a commercial artist during the ‘50s) and, of course, Warhol predeceased Rasuchenberg by 20 years. Still, neither quite escaped the other’s protean shadow. Both arrived in New York from the coarse world of outland America, one in which, as Virgil Thomson, who grew up in Kansas City, wrote, "A young man can find violence if he wants it anywhere down the street."
Rauschenberg was Jack Daniels, a mess of mellow impressions dancing off each other. Warhol was Obitrol: speed, whip dances, car crashes, dead celebrities, getting shot. Bob was the kind of young gay male who outshone his hetero contemporaries in physical beauty and prodigious talent. Andy was leather and silver, drag and drugs. Each hosted all-night parties, at Bob’s Lafayette Street digs and Andy’s silver Factory, Bob jumping into the fray, Andy coldly observing. A natural homebody, Warhol forced himself to travel the world in imitation of Bob, while Bob created his own Factory on Captiva Island.
As he struggled to make it in the ‘50s, Warhol envied Rauschenberg his ease, sociability and good looks. There is no evidence that Rauschenberg envied Warhol’s market dominance, but art critics did it for him, as even today’s obituaries by Michael Kimmelman and Christopher Knight spotlight the unevenness and visual confusion of Rauschenberg’s body of work.
The ebb and flow of influence between Warhol and Rauschenberg was a lifelong phenomenon, beginning in the distant past when studio praxis outstripped prices and branding as the goal of contemporary art. Warhol’s last work, full of grocery brands mixed with images of Jesus, embraced Rauschenberg’s diffuseness. And Rauschenberg’s iconic screens of John and Robert Kennedy would have been impossible without the precedence of Andy’s celebrities.
Sifting through the art-filled maws of these two departed geniuses, perhaps some curator will cherry-pick further concordances between them, for Warhol and Rauschenberg were polymaths who embraced the fullness of the world. Jeff Koons, sending out his assistants to Toys "R" Us to buy a lobster or a balloon, seems small by comparison.
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
by Charlie Finch
In 1962, Michael and Ileana Sonnabend took Robert Rauschenberg for his first visit to Andy Warhol’s studio. There on the wall, Rauschenberg saw something he had never seen before: Silkscreened paintings. He asked Andy, "Where do you send out to have those done?" Andy, terrified that Bob would steal his processes, hemmed and hawed.
"I’ve seen those before," Rauschenberg commented, looking at Andy’s silkscreened Coca-Cola bottles, an obvious steal of the Coke bottles Rauschenberg had employed in his Combines five years before. Generously, Rauschenberg suggested that Warhol leave some blank white space in the midst of his Coca-Cola frieze, an idea Warhol ignored. Rauschenberg merely went back to his studio, and immediately produced hundreds of silkscreen works.
Rauschenberg and Warhol were contemporaries, born three years apart, but Bob preceded Andy by a decade in the fine arts realm (Andy made his living as a commercial artist during the ‘50s) and, of course, Warhol predeceased Rasuchenberg by 20 years. Still, neither quite escaped the other’s protean shadow. Both arrived in New York from the coarse world of outland America, one in which, as Virgil Thomson, who grew up in Kansas City, wrote, "A young man can find violence if he wants it anywhere down the street."
Rauschenberg was Jack Daniels, a mess of mellow impressions dancing off each other. Warhol was Obitrol: speed, whip dances, car crashes, dead celebrities, getting shot. Bob was the kind of young gay male who outshone his hetero contemporaries in physical beauty and prodigious talent. Andy was leather and silver, drag and drugs. Each hosted all-night parties, at Bob’s Lafayette Street digs and Andy’s silver Factory, Bob jumping into the fray, Andy coldly observing. A natural homebody, Warhol forced himself to travel the world in imitation of Bob, while Bob created his own Factory on Captiva Island.
As he struggled to make it in the ‘50s, Warhol envied Rauschenberg his ease, sociability and good looks. There is no evidence that Rauschenberg envied Warhol’s market dominance, but art critics did it for him, as even today’s obituaries by Michael Kimmelman and Christopher Knight spotlight the unevenness and visual confusion of Rauschenberg’s body of work.
The ebb and flow of influence between Warhol and Rauschenberg was a lifelong phenomenon, beginning in the distant past when studio praxis outstripped prices and branding as the goal of contemporary art. Warhol’s last work, full of grocery brands mixed with images of Jesus, embraced Rauschenberg’s diffuseness. And Rauschenberg’s iconic screens of John and Robert Kennedy would have been impossible without the precedence of Andy’s celebrities.
Sifting through the art-filled maws of these two departed geniuses, perhaps some curator will cherry-pick further concordances between them, for Warhol and Rauschenberg were polymaths who embraced the fullness of the world. Jeff Koons, sending out his assistants to Toys "R" Us to buy a lobster or a balloon, seems small by comparison.
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
Christie's Contemporary Sale Last Night
was walking thru that area in time to see all of the muckety mucks filing out. never seen so many black suv's and town cars in mah life. Saw Michael Ovitz and Kim Heirston. didn't recognize anyone else.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
recap since 4/28
ummm..Artwalk was cool, went to Susan Eley's opening , made up with an old friend, went to Chelsea..apparently no-one likes Mike Weiss of Mike Weiss Gallery..catty artworld stuff..love it..Mother's Day today
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