Prometheus 6

Q: Why is there a Black Entertainment Television and no White Entertainment Television?

A: Because the market a White Entertainment Television would serve was saturated long before anyone thought to use that particular name.

Said response can be adapted to fit any parallel argument. 

An inane idea in any language
By Dennis Byrne | a Chicago-area writer and consultant
August 27, 2007

As I read this I thought, "He's kind of excessively bent out of shape over bilingual signage in chain stores." And as I finished that thought I encountered this.

These folks want to dump English as the national language because, to them, anything that smacks of English-only suggests that "assimilation" is a good idea, when they believe that the whole concept of assimilation is a bourgeoisie, white-bread, if not racist, idea that no longer has a place in America. And anyone who disagrees is a "nativist," "hater" or racist.

Whoa.

No one is trying to dump English as the national language. It's not even possible to dump English as the national language. But the bilingual signage isn't his problem. 

I've considered posting this commercial before. I really feel it sums up the whole "People of the Word" thing in practical terms.

I feel the appeal of this model

(via The Fishbowl, and the guy whose actual decision process it represents)

On the other hand

The purpose of this diagram is not to be mean, not to be a bringdown. We're not trying to make sensitive little girls depressed. The purpose of this diagram is to convince you earnestly and in all sincerity that there is NO HOPE so that you will be transformed by the cold hard truth. Once you accept the reality of NO HOPE you can begin to approach your life in a new way. Now you can take your head out of the clouds, quit looking to some illusion of a perfect future [P6: or past], and start living in the present [P6: keeping in mind the edges of now are contextual, and a little blurry at best]. Knowing that there is, in fact, NO HOPE, and feeling this great realization wioth your whole being will slam you back to the real world like you've never been before. Come on! You can handle it!

(linked because posting one big enough to examine would screw up the layout , and both via Boing Boing )

“In a sense our reality is virtual,” Dr. Gazzaniga said. “Think about flying in an airplane. You’re up there in an aluminum tube, 30,000 feet up, going 600 miles an hour, and you think everything is all right.”

Sleights of Mind
By GEORGE JOHNSON

The reason he had picked me from the audience, Apollo Robbins insisted, was that I’d seemed so engaged, nodding my head and making eye contact as he and the other magicians explained the tricks of the trade. I believed him when he told me afterward, over dinner at the Venetian, that he hadn’t noticed the name tag identifying me as a science writer. But then everyone believes Apollo — as he expertly removes your wallet and car keys and unbuckles your watch.

You have these reasonable discussions, make clear observations, and you reach a point where someone makes an untestable assertion to explain an open question...and part of the assertion requires you to actively reject other possible explanations. Talking to such people is tedious and frustrating, in turns.

Secularists, what happened to the open mind?
Many of the leading voices among atheists and the ‘unreligious’ reveal a disdain for religion that can only damage today’s dialogue. Speaking with people of faith, instead of about them, would enrich both sides of this philosophical divide.
By Tom Krattenmaker

Critical thinking might be to secularism what faith is to devout religious believers. Thinking rationally, questioning assumptions, embracing complexity and eschewing the black-and-white — these habits of mind are, to the champions of non-belief, a keystone of the secular worldview and a crucial part of what separates them from religious people.

Criticism would be appreciated. Some of this may be familiar.

Being a Black Partisan, I find the most difficult issues to discuss are those fragmented by class issues. I would like to share my understanding of how class fragments the issues of any in-group you can define (other than by class, obviously).

We assume a hierarchical human society; we assume two social classes (U[pper], M[iddle]) for simplicity's sake. The nature of human hierarchies is such that the dominant class get first crack at all the resources. So Class U indulges freely, consuming resources, possibly replacing them with the output of its consumption (the phrasing here intentionally leaves open the possibility that output could be shit as well as goods).

When Class M comes to the table, it too freely chooses the resources it consumes. However, it does not have the same field of options Class U had. In particular, that which Class U has consumed, which fraction may approach 100% of any given resource, is no longer available for Class M's consumption. Also, the output of Class U's consumption is in amongst the field of options (with all that implies).

"Anything external to you (on the planet) that is associated with you (in the world) will take on the importance of an aspect of self; anything internal to you (on the planet) that you deny (in the world) will still be an aspect of self that you must support. . . and as such, demands energy and attention that you are not prepared to give. It is therefore important to be sure that you (in the world) include all things that you (on the planet) include. . . and no more. Do you understand?"

I think most folks' consciousness is involved in analysing what just happened instead of deciding what to do. In my more despondent moods I call humans "meat robots."

“When it comes to our behavior from moment to moment, the big question is, ‘What to do next?’ ” said John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale and a co-author, with Lawrence Williams, of the coffee study, which was presented at a recent psychology conference. “Well, we’re finding that we have these unconscious behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is considering and often acting on those, all before conscious awareness.”

Dr. Bargh added: “Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and sometimes they’re not.”

Who’s Minding the Mind?
By BENEDICT CAREY

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

More stylistic experimentation from the past.

A Transcript of the Keynote Message Presented at the Convocation of Quantum Griots
by Earl Dunovant © 2096

Welcome to the first day of the 375th Annual Convocation of Quantum Griots. I am delighted that you've chosen to join us in our sharing and exploration of the Ways of Power. Please remove all your personae and put them in your Griot bag, for you won't be using them until you leave here tonight and they will just get in the way of our work.

Normally at this point, humans would review to the plan of the evening. From the material distributed at the door you already know we have an exciting program for you this year, so I feel no need to go into that...we are here, ready to work, and that is what is important. So rather than distract you, let me simply cede the platform to our Keynote Speaker so that we may begin. I give you he whom we all know so well...Chaos Lord, Bodhisattva Master of Time and Space, True Man, Manifestor through Speech...his titles are endless and fully appropriate. I give you...Alim Ra.

(Alim Ra walks onto the stage. He goes to the podium, reaches behind it, pulls out a wooden soap box, places it in the center of the front edge of the stage and stands on it).

Welcome, my people. It's good to be here where I can relax...walking the world amusing, but it's also strenuous. It is pleasant to abide in the Real once more.

We often wonder why people don't see the things we do, know the things we know, when it's all so obvious to us. We rarely reflect on the fact that our wondering means there is a gap in our knowledge as well. Though humans may be fools, they are a wonder as well and not to be lightly dismissed. After all, they have created most of the world on which we work our wonders. Yet many of us seem to want to dismiss them...which is a different matter than simply not joining them...and this indicates the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the nature of humans, even of that part of their nature that we share.

If I were a member of the shadowy cabal that is reorganizing the world under a single global economy, I know what I'd do about America. I'd set up a national service corp to be the employer of last resort during the transition period. They'd be paid in goods and services, plus a stipend. Same pay for everyone, let them rebuild their social hierarchy around their job titles. That will keep everyone fed and chasing status until global salaries equalize.

Another random thought. We track the state of our economy and interpret it as though it were a direct reading of the health of our society and body politic. It ain't. Look it up: the economy is the sum (product? log?) of all factors of production, which includes your labor and consumption but not you.

by Earl Dunovant
Copyright © 1995

Introduction
We've been having trouble with our white people recently. After over 350 years of trying to civilize them they are resisting the limited changes we've induced for their benefit, to teach them to be fully and compassionately human. Though this is frustrating in the extreme, we must remember that only rarely is the road to higher consciousness well paved. Bumps, potholes and blind corners abound, so it's only natural that our white folks should slip up now and again in their progress. Still, though we must be understanding, we must be firm with them as well, because we are their only hope.

The Black Agenda Report published an interesting article from Wise Intelligent's blog. [Later-P6:  I will never link a MySpace page again...three spams, that damn fast] Though it was actually watching 2007 Harlem Book Fair: Politics of African American Identity online yesterday that wound me up, I would like to take a couple of sentences out of context and launch a topical tangent.

The deeper problem, I find when building with young black youth in America is IDENTITY! This lack of identity is a direct result of slavery and its institutionalized, systemic method of stripping black people of their heritage, language culture, families and God.

I would genuinely like to know what "identity" means to people. I assume "blackness" is an example of the more general idea of "identity"...I'm looking for that general idea, not "blackness" (I actually avoid discussions of "blackness" as much as possible).

Kim fully explains the Fairness Doctrine debate and if you read it you'll understand why I didn't even go into it on News and Notes. If you don't read it or don't get it, it's because the problem isn't equal time, it's the willful spreading of lies and misinformation on hate radio.

Casey Lartigue, who was also on NPR, was surprised to find himself, ex-Cato dude that he is, cast as the moderate. In a way, he was...LaShawn wants God and Tom Tancredo to rule America. I want to prepare Black folks for the repercussions of America eating its young. Mr. Lartigue likes things pretty much as they are. He's not at the center of Black America though.

Having now agreed with him, I will now explain something else.

Isn't it funny how so many Social Conservatives rail against the very sins they commit? It's because they're trying to make up for their sins, balance the scales somehow.

Or they're trying to eliminate all that temptation. Get it out of their sight.

Too bad it doesn't work that way. The sin is within.

You know why Christianity doesn't differentiate between sins? Why it teaches good works can't save you?

Because if you give points for sins and virtues, you settle for being just good enough. You start saying things like, "So? She did it too..."

You hurt someone, do something nice for someone else and call it even.

There's practical problems with the teaching, of course. But that's what it's trying to address.

Blackness is...

An epiphenomenon.

The following is an attempt to illustrate this assertion.

We assume a hierarchical human society; we assume three social classes (U[pper], M[iddle], L[ower]) for simplicity's sake; we assume...okay, we lie like the humans are equal free agents, motivated by self-interest.

The nature of human hierarchies is such that the dominant class get first crack at all the resources. So Class U indulges freely, consuming resources, possibly replacing them with the output of its consumption (the phrasing here intentionally leaves open the possibility that output could be shit as well as goods).

When Class M comes to the table, it too freely chooses the resources it consumes. However, it does not have the same field of options Class U had. In particular, that which Class U has consumed, which fraction may approach 100% of any given resource, is no longer available for Class M's consumption. Also, the output of Class U's consumption is in amongst the field of options (with all that implies).