Author:

andrewed

tao te ching chapter 38

Posted by andrewed – 2012 May 15

The Master doesn’t try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.

koloni

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Apr 28

The koloni is my great discovery about Sweden this year. There is nothing like it in the States, really. That you can legally live somewhere that costs as little as one month’s salary to OWN is beyond belief can be had for as little as 9000:KR
(See blocket.se. Here is a recent one. The whole rent thing is such a ridiculous drag.

It is maybe the greatest thing I have heard of in an industrialized country in my whole life. While kolonis are often near loud roads, trains, and electrical stations, there are nice places, too. It’s actually how people should live: in small houses surrounded by gardens, other people who are basically there to relax, no cars, minimal fencing, compost toilets, little or no electricity.

Of course, as a way of life, it is a big secret, because Swedes seem conditioned to see kolonis as vacation/summer/second homes, not primary residences. Some places are fairly closed down in the winter, and some places are not legal to live in in the winter due to insufficient insulation. But there are others where no one cares if people stay all the time. Houses can be properly insulated. Rainwater can be harvested. Power can be had from the sun and wind. Composting toilets are practically free to build.

Again, I can’t believe this is right under peoples’ noses, and the government allows it. You pay 500-1500 yearly fees for basic services, keep your garden nice, your noise level down, and you’re in. One could grow a tall hedge over time, I think, for pleasant privacy. It is instant freedom from the slavery of school/work/rent/distraction.

There are deals like this everywhere in the third world, of course. But, boy. What a miracle to find it in the first. It makes me think of developing a whole koloni with curved paths, round stugas, permaculture, etc. It would be a real village over time, with its own economy, etc.

Hmm. Except when the children are 6, they are all confiscated by the state for brainwashing and family destruction. Bummer.

brainsdamaged

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Apr 19

Modern psychology will fail to help anyone as long as it uses the terms, “mental health” and “mental illness”. This is because the psyche—consciousness—is not just mental, but emotional and physical as well.

Various spiritual traditions have posited this for ages. Gurdjieff, a sufi, said, “Man is a three-brained being.” He also called these brains “centers of intelligence.” In addition to the thinking center of intelligence, there are the feeling and moving centers of intelligence.

A very useful and easy to learn typology is based on the three ways that injured people go through life psychologically defending themselves. Some people live in their heads. Others are really emotional. Others go with their guts. It’s right here in our language. Intellectuals. Sensitive artists. Athletes and fighters (stereotypically dumb but nonetheless able to do amazing things with their bodies, obviously a form of intelligence).

Now, large amounts of neural tissue, comparable to the amount in the cerebrum, have been found in the heart and the alimentary canal.

So psychological illness and psychic trauma must be seen not just in the mind or intellect, to be worked out in an intellectual way, but also in the heart and gut, to be worked out in a whole, vital way, by an organic process. We have more than one brain, and they are damaged. We are brainsdamaged.

new stuff

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Apr 01

A handful of new and changed things have appeared in the last months without announcement:

  • Three new retreat reports under “four darkness retreats”
  • Updates to “make darkness” and “retreat manual” based on my latest findings
  • Categories for both posts and pages

More to come.

gift economy basics

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Apr 01

Here’s a letter I just wrote an elder about the gift economy.
~~~

Dear…,

I have news about the gift economy that should blow your mind. It has blown mine, anyway. I’m hoping you’ve heard of David Graeber by now, the author of Debt: The First 5000 Years. If not, it is an amazing anthropological study of money. Haven’t read it, just the basics online.

Here’s the gist: the gift economy is not made up of people just giving things to each other without expectation of return. This is a completely mistaken notion spread by a few lucky people who somehow pull that nonsense off (or pretend to). The gift economy is simply letting people you know and trust have things of yours when they need them, with the mutual understanding that when you call on them, they’ll do the same. You say, “You like it? Take it!” and understand, “You owe me one.”

It is because this understanding among traditional people is unstated, deeply engrained, even obscene to verbalize that modern civilized observers didn’t notice it and assumed theirs was the same as our system of unconditional gifts. Which, you’ll notice, often has a strange charge of propriety around it, a stale remnant of our past decency.

So the gift economy consists of an endless series of:

  1. delayed exchanges of
  2. unequal values
  3. according to customs of evolving complexity.

Some cultures actively discouraged equal exchanges to help people stay on good terms with each other. (Thanks to Eli Gothill, aka webisteme, creator of #PunkMoney for points 2 & 3.)

Graeber also exposes the barter system as a myth. There are no examples of it among established people. Spot trades of equal values are only found between:

  1. strangers
  2. people who have temporarily lost their currency system (and haven’t developed a gift economy yet due to conditioning)

Graeber’s more general discovery about money is that before there was gold or clams or whatever people are said to have used as money, people had mutual credit systems. For example, tally sticks. Money was a *unit of account*, not a commodity-based *medium of exchange*. These credit systems were just formalizations of the old gift economies. Commodity-based money like gold or wheat came much later. And it came by force, too, like our current central bank-issued monopoly monies.

I think what the mutual credit systems I have found are really good for is reorienting people to this way of seeing a local economy while maintaining the familiarity of accounting and limited debt exposure. Once a basic reorientation occurs, the system can become informal. In other words, not written down with arithmetic.

When I was learning a new diet that had me counting calories (to make sure I got *enough* of the right kinds), I got into it for a couple weeks, then I just knew. It was like a skill. Once acquired, there was no need to keep exact record anymore.

Here is the interview that finally got it through to me:
An Interview with Economic Anthropologist David Graeber

I’m telling you because you and I have both struggled with money and with the gifting idea for a long time, and we ought to have a solution to it finally. I think we were basically right. We have been broke because we didn’t really want to have anything to do with regular money. It’s got blood all over it. It’s a tool of enslavement. To hell with it. Better to eat out of dumpsters.

But in 24/7 unconditional gifting, we were offered a false alternative. Historically, it is bizarre. It is a purely civilized invention. We wage-slaves evolved it to get a break from the cold, even exchanges we have to make most of the time. The real gift economies kept people obliged to each other, preserving relationships and work—peace and prosperity at a reasonable level.

Like I said, the exemplars of the unconditional gifting lifestyle whom we have met are just lucky. It’s not learnable. It’s unnatural and unnecessary. It’s a sham.

Hope this helps.

Best regards…

http://www.webisteme.com/blog/?cat=40

poetry of rapture

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Mar 25

Here is a poem I read at age 17. It prefaces one of my favorite books, Magical Child Matures by Joseph Chilton Pearce. It took all this time to start seeing the meaning. If ever there were a poem of rapture, this is it.
~~~

If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That is Near Madness

Richard Eberhart

If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness
When everything is as it was in my childhood
Violent, vivid, and if infinite possibility:
That the sun and the moon broke over my head.

Then I cast time out of the trees and fields.
Then I stood immaculate in the Ego;
Then I eyed the world with all delight,
Reality was the perfection of my sight.

And time has big handles on the hands,
Fields and trees a way of being themselves.
I saw battalions of the race of mankind
Standing solid, demanding a moral answer.

I gave the moral answer and I died
And into a realm of complexity came
Where nothing is possible but necessity
And the truth wailing there like a red babe.

tech communication

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Feb 27

Very off-topic note about how I have come to think of long periods of silence and repeated non-responses in text communication with computer technicians. When it happens I assume one of the following:

  • the issue:
    • was addressed before
    • is so basic I should already know about it
    • is easy enough in their minds for me to work out on my own
  • they don’t know
  • they would like to but can’t
  • they aren’t interested
  • the answer is no

As long as my message contained no interesting requests or instructions, why would they respond? It’s like a logic circuit. Or, at least, my idea of one.

I have read forums. There is simply too much data to respond to. One must not suffer fools or welcome the cloying “friendship” of a zillion strangers.

It took me awhile, but I’d like to think I get it. Here’s to the techs. I’m on your side. Thank you for making computers happen.

dominant assurance with a twist

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Feb 16

I came up with a twist on Dominant Assurance Contracts. Which is economist Alex Tabarrok‘s game theoretical extension of the all-or-nothing Assurance Contract popularized by Kickstarter. In an assurance contract, if pledges toward a financial goal are insufficient by the contract’s deadline, then pledges remain uncollected. With dominant assurance, everyone who offered to contribute gets a bonus. “Thus contribution becomes the dominant strategy,” says Dr Tabarrok.

My idea takes off from there.

~~~
Dear Mr Tabarrok,

Thanks for your idea of the Dominant Assurance Contract. I thought of a way to extend it to further open up opportunities in investment and value creation and possibly make crowdfunding more interesting than gambling. Maybe your students have already come up with all this and more, but what the heck.

I call it the Open Dominant Assurance Contract. Basically, it allows supporters of a proposal to:

  • help fund the bonus pot
  • adjust their positions throughout the game.

Here are the rules:

  1. The proposer:
    • sets the monetary goal and deadline
    • seeds the bonus pot, which counts toward the goal. (hmm: increasible? for how long?)
    • sets the maximum bonus rate between 0% and infinity in case of failure
    • sets the maximum profit rate in case of success
    • and can increase both these rates until the campaign’s deadline
  2. A supporter sets her bonus rate from –100% to infinity. She can increase her contribution and decrease her rate until the proposal’s deadline.
  3. In case of failure, the pot is divided amongst supporters in proportion to their contributions and according to their final bonus rates.
  4. In case of success, a supporter with an average bonus rates of less than 0% is treated as an investor who can eventually profit from the proposal in proportion to her average rate (–bonus rate x maximum profit rate).
  5. Supporters can make multiple contributions with different bonus rates.

Thus someone with an idea but little seed money could still create a Dominant Assurance Contract. Whole-hearted supporters (those with <0% rates) could profit from the risk of enticing the half-hearted (>0% rates). The higher the maximum bonus rate, the wilder the game gets. It could be a spectacle of brinkmanship between the whole-hearts and half-hearts more compelling than a good craps game. Half-hearts would help attract attention to the proposal initially. Whole-hearts would help continue to attract half-hearts as the deadline approached. Just as in webisteme‘s #PunkMoney, participants could tweet changes in their positions, and a program could track variables, calculate totals, display graphs, and keep accounts in real time.

Examples

  • Due to Rule 3, a sole supporter of $1 with an infinite bonus rate toward a failed proposal with an infinite maximum bonus rate would win the entire pot.
    • A second such supporter of $99 would take away 99% of the pot.
    • If the proposer set the maximum bonus rate to 10%, then the first would only get back $1.10 and the second $108.90, regardless of pot size.
  • Due to Rule 4, in a successful proposal with a 20% profit rate, a supporter whose bonus rate was –40% for 10 days and –80% for 10 days would have an average rate of –60%, earning her 12% on her contribution (to be paid when the project actually profits).
  • Due to Rule 5, a supporter can try playing the game all three ways: whole-hearted,  half-hearted, and neutral (0%, the same as in an Assurance Contract)

What do you think?

The game theory in your paper was stimulating but over my head. So I thought, How about letting the participants decide the variables? Coming up with it was fun and exciting.

Which is ironic because I came across your uber-cool dealio while looking for ways to finance my recovery from exhaustion-depression. (Take something worse than chronic fatigue syndrome but better than death and combine it with clinical depression. A real kick in the pants!) I have less-than-zero confidence in medicine or its common alternatives. So I spent 21 years looking for a way to deal with it before hitting upon darkness retreating. It’s relatively cheap ($2500), but money-making is not my strong suit. So thanks for the ideas and,

Cheers,
Andrew Durham

~~~

EDIT: I removed this sentence from the third to last paragraph: “And I could not decide what to call this variant of DAC: Self-Funding, Autonomous, Automatic, Inclusive, Cooperative, or Viral DAC? DA Orgy?” I decided on “Cooperative”. If you think of a better name, please let me know.

EDIT: I renamed the contract again to Open DAC and heavily edited the letter, including removing one extra-complicated rule about reimbursing the proposer.

EDIT: added bit about #PunkMoney

five day retreat

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Feb 09

I had a depressive breakdown in December and let out a cry on my personal facebook page for help with a darkness retreat to recover. Within a few weeks, and with the help of a small, far-flung team of supporters, I did a five-day darkness retreat. I am feeling much better. (Fourteen days as planned proved impractical in the location, so I am still psychotic :) )

[BEGIN new section]
The retreat began Friday about noon local time, two days late due to technical difficulties, which is typical. Then I must have slept 16 hours a day for 2-3 days until I started feeling better.

Strangely, it was not deep sleep. I had a lot of dreams, and only a few vivid ones. I was so tired, I barely noticed at first. But by Thursday, when I woke up from a noisy, nonsensical dream, I started feeling angry and frustrated that I was not resting deeply as I always have in retreats, that yet again I was failing due to foreseeable factors. My instant sense was that in this 17-unit, 4-story modern apartment building, the disturbances were caused—not sonically as expected—but electromagnetically by tons of steel and electrical wiring in the building and psychically by the 30 other crazy people in the building. All of which fairly doomed the retreat for my purposes.

I calmed down after taking three naps and eating. It occurred to me that feeling angry and frustrated were a step up from depressed and resigned, as I would have felt a week before. It was a sign of significantly increased vitality. By that night, however, continuing the retreat seemed pointless. I could not do all I wanted in the room, I had done what was possible with what was available, and it had helped me enough to carry on in the light. So I exited the darkroom after 5.5 days of lots of rest, a few good epiphanies, good frugivorous food (raw fruits and greens) carefully prepared by Sanna, and lots of new ideas for proceeding.

The main thing I gained from this retreat was seeing how I have kept so many things out of my life as a result of my shame about my illness: health, love, money, a home, etc. Nothing good could possibly be for me (thank god some got in anyway). Because I could not accept much for myself, I presented the darkness conjecture itself as a idea to be tested for worldwide salvation rather than something I needed personally. Therefore, for example, I could not accept two offers in Guatemala to build a 6-unit retreat center because I was not sure of the idea and did not want to mislead anyone.

The truth is, darkness retreats have helped and interested me and others a lot, and this is sufficient grounds for making a retreat center. It’s that simple. Should it prove as wildly beneficial as I project in my writings, groovy, but that is not necessary to proceed.
[END new section]

The lesson: approaching darkness as something I needed personally worked a whole hell of a lot better than approaching it as a world-saving idea in need of testing. Shame about my own psychosis, based on early bad experiences with expressing my suffering, had led to this charade. People, it turned out, care a lot more about me than my big ideas.

The major thing I learned this time about retreating itself is that scheduling sufficient time afterward to absorb its value and readjust to light is critical to a retreat’s overall success. So while I did not complete a 14-day retreat as planned, neither did I waste one learning about this, either. Instead, we spent only $285 discovering this final big piece of the puzzle.

Along with with this major lesson, I learned some useful minor things to be carefully applied in future retreats:

  • having warm fresh air is a lot more comfortable than cold air combined with a powerful heater
  • even a small amount of exercise really helps the whole process
  • audible and psychic noise from the building’s 35 other occupants, and electromagnetic distortion from the building’s steel and wiring have a huge, negative effect on the quality of rest possible in a darkroom.

Will soon commence 12th attempt at a long darkness retreat, somehow, somewhere.

[EDIT: new section added Mar 5]

money without debt

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Feb 08

Hey, I just came across this excellent web-based credit clearing system:
Community Exchange System [EDIT: I no longer dig this system. It's popular but messy.] CES* is international, free, simple, compatible with paper systems, thorough, and cool.  It’s just about what the godfather of new money, Thomas Greco, calls for in The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, chapter 17.

Other worthy systems I’ve come across in the last couple days:
payswarm.com web technology-based, multiple-scenario payment system. Big vision.
opentransact.org similar goals as payswarm, different architecture
picomoney.com clever, based on opentransact
cyclos.org open source software to run your own bank, complete with free hosting; soul boggling!
villages.cc**is the best implementation of ripplepay.com, a compelling solution to LETS accountability concerns.
e-flux.com/timebank hip and simple
friendlyfavors.org 2nd largest after CES, social, clever, but aging and a bit complicated
johnturmel.com/uniset.htm very simple, start alone now. Improved by showing account as a ledger using a web-based spreadsheet
JEU/GAME paper system (compatible with CES), very elegant, semi-private, decentralized accounting, best for when the lights go out.

CES is (NOT*) the most accessible, practical, and mature, though some of these systems, especially payswarm, have much greater potential. Open source money has finally gotten legs, wings… and teeth.

*EDIT: I gave up on CES because of issues with its design and management. So I am exploring two other systems now: Community Forge, based on Drupal Community Accounting/mutual credit module, and Villages. It’s Ripple base is better, but CF is much more developed. The insides of it look great so far.  Open source, delegated authority and responsibility. Kind of a weak social network, but it is there.

Greco says a proper system needs:

  1. a marketplace
  2. a social network
  3. a means of payment
  4. a measure of value or pricing unit

Both have all four criteria. So it’s a toss up for me. I hope Villages works out.

complementaire-economie.startpagina.nl huge list of currencies, systems, and software, some defunct
Open Transactions open source digital cash, transmittable through tons of media, needing no third-party record keeper.

Two cool sites about money ideas:
MetaCurrency
Webisteme inventor of #PunkMoney, a twitter-based currency. fricking brilliant.

typable e-paper breakthrough

Posted by andrewed – 2012 Jan 23

At my request, xda developer, verygreen, with support from ros87, has done in 24 hours for $10 and a $109 donated device what tens of companies could/would not do in four years with all their resources (like the $500,000 one company told me it would cost).

Watch him type on the Nook Simple Touch on youtube:
Nook Simple Touch usb host support

Development thread with instructions:
(Nook Touch Android Development) [WIP] USB Host support (working)

There are still some bugs, and the instructions are over my head at this point. But the basics are there now for people who know how to use them. Once the bugs are worked out, I plan to simplify the instructions for everyone’s use. Maybe even offer microSD cards with everything pre-installed.

Here we go.

breakdown

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Dec 15

Something important started to changed for me last week. I have been hiding my need for darkness by trying to make it happen for others. Here is a reprint what I wrote about it on my facebook page this weekend:

1. (Status on Thursday night:)
Dear Family and Friends: I am very sick. For the first time, I feel
that I am slipping, that I might not make it. Please help me realize
the solution I found. Not because it could be a solution for you, too. But simply because you care about me. This is what I have been trying to say for three years. Andrew.

2. (Friday, in response to 20 people who wrote in support of me:)
I am relieved to hear from each one of you. I also got supportive emails.

What I need is help in arranging and paying for a long darkness retreat.

It needs an empty, functional house and people to bring food and say
hello to me each day. And I need to not return to the US, where I feel very unsafe, to do it. There are places to rent here (Sweden) and new friends who could help.

The thing is, my 25 years of studying the absolute depths of both my
condition and the world’s made me good at solving extremely complex
problems, but not good at making money or simple arrangements like
this. I cannot overstate how much shame and embarrassment I have felt
about this. But I can state the truth about it.

Please do not let my articulateness fool you into thinking that I am
ok. No matter what, it seems, I am able to talk.

3. (Sunday)
Thanks to everyone who wrote. My immediate problem is solved. Nearly
undetectable poor air quality where I have been staying wore me down
over the last month. I am making arrangements to move into a proper
apartment tonight.

The wider issue of why I ended up in that situation in the first place is also getting addressed by rekindled support for the darkroom and other unforeseen means.

4. (Yesterday, in response to a Swedish friend who asked how I was doing:) I’m basically okay now, Maria. Still edgy, but not as bad as
yesterday. It was nice to be able to walk with you the other day. I
had been slowly suffocating (literally), and then I suddenly crashed.
It felt like I’d been run over by a train.

5. By the way, I never identified my sickness here, so I will now.

I view it as functional psychosis manifesting as a rigid dependence on my mind. This has numerous ill effects on my life, some of which some of you know all too well. For example, unconsciously setting myself up for periodic breakdowns like the one this weekend.

At 16, I had only a vague sense of my sickness. But it was strong, and it motivated my long search for the root cause of rapture: sanity. My discovery of darkness as an irreplaceable condition of psychological health ensued. This is why I have confidence only in darkness retreats as a means of healing from my sickness and why my wish to do one has finally found its way to the top of my priorities.

illuminati it may concern

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Nov 21

Dear Illuminati,

My understanding is that there are two factions of your organization: both people who try to use their power and wealth to free humanity, and those who use it to enslave us.

To both groups within your vast network, I wish to say that I understand and accept that you are each sincerely trying to handle our collective mess the best way you know how. For a long time, I thought that you were my enemy, and hatred and sadness about your activities consumed me. But now, as a result of my long search for understanding, I am extending both forgiveness and the offer of a way to handle our situation differently.

Since this subject is your main interest, please read my darkness conjecture. Then write me if you would like to help make this deep way of healing possible for yourselves. I could use your help, you could probably use a break, and working together would be a nice change from our previous isolation.

I have tried to see a way through our conflict that makes a place for everyone at the end, especially those of you that many in my position would wish to exclude (if not summarily execute). In my opinion, you are hurt by all this worst of all, and I believe the way I have found would serve you in an acceptable manner. I really believe there is place for all of us, even you.

Welcome.

Sincerely,
Andrew Durham

conspiracy

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Nov 21

Here is something I wrote a friend about conspiracy theory following a conversation we had recently on the subject.

~~~

…I had a thought during our conversation about 9/11 that there wasn’t time to voice, but which I think you would like to hear. So I am writing you with it.

I think the reason that the idea of a conspiracy can be hard to entertain is that it seems to mean that the people involved are evil and consciously do evil things.

This, of course, is nonsense, and people are correct to reject it. The nature of human consciousness is such that it is impossible to do what one considers evil. But it is a simple matter to do evil that one considers good.

Any honest observer of history and current events can see that it is possible to justify anything (including the justification itself). For example, listen to professional political commentators of any persuasion. What is obviously evil to ordinary people can be seen as good and even obligatory by someone in power. Hitler and his helpers thought they were doing the right thing. Even on the stand in Jerusalem, Eichmann never really got what all the fuss was about. Some National Socialists (NAZIs) actually disliked the program, but they believed in it. It is only people’s basic innocence combined with their great naivete that enables them fail to make this distinction.

All this is aside from the fact that the ultrarich and powerful are psychologically damaged to a degree almost impossible to believe. I hesitated to mention the other night—and it is horrible to think about—but in many established families, children are subjected to ritual sexual abuse from a young age. If you imagine a boy who is sexually molested in group Satanic rituals from the time he is less than a year old, with the knowledge and even participation of his own parents, then maybe you can see that his view of right and wrong might be a little bit distorted by the time he is forty years old and running a bank, a corporation, or a country (or these days, all three).

If so, then you can also see how it is possible that if the interests of enough organizations require, for example, the events of 9/11, then as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, those events will take place. Obviously the people in power are deadly serious about making omelets, and it matters to them not one whit that you and I happen to be the eggs.

That was the thought. As I write, it leads to a few similar ones.

Exactly why any organization would require such events as 9/11 has a lot to do with the debt-based monopoly money system I tried to describe to you. Since money as we know it comes into existence as interest-bearing debt, the money available to pay back the debt is always less than the amount owed. So as some pay their debts, the economy must expand to provide others more money to pay the mounting debt. This is why there is never enough money and why we are destroying the earth.

Imbalances in the system grow. People begin to borrow just to stay afloat. This inflates the money supply beyond the wealth that backs it and thus devalues cash holdings. Just to stay even, individuals and groups must always be climbing upward financially, stepping on others as they go. We know how desperate the situation is at our level. Imagine the wicked cut-throat tactics necessary to stay at the top of the game, where there truly is never enough.

Poetically, the naive resistance to the idea of an inside job on 9/11 rests on the same benevolent metaphysics as conspiracism. To the conspiracist, the universe is a friendly, life-supportive place and people are basically peaceful and just. Therefore, the horrors we witness in our culture must be engineered. So to those we consider denialists, we conspiracists issue this challenge: prove how the material beneficiaries of 9/11 did not perpetrate it.

Lastly remains the simple fact that government has ever been a tool of the elite to control the (admittedly infantile) peasantry (including the managerial “professional” class). That government could one day benefit the peasantry is merely popular propaganda. Since the job of the state consists of subjugating us—since that is what we pay it to do and as quietly as it can—9/11 is precisely what was required of it at this critical juncture in history. So, again: prove that it failed to perform its function.

With convention stood on its head like this, you can see the difficulty that conspiracists and denialists have in communicating. It is not just about the facts. It is about what a person considers humanly possible. Philosophically, it is a metaphysical difference. This is usually unbridgeable.

Everyone experiences what I am talking about, but as part of a whole lifetime of conditioning in resignation (hospitals, TV, industrial food, school, the legal system) and at a low level where the causes are invisible. This is especially true due to the common preoccupation with survival. Few have the time, stomach, or resources to even consider events in these lights, let alone understand or do anything about them. We issue bitter little complaints as we accept it incrementally.

And then there is the successful propaganda campaign about our masters’ being too stupid and incompetent to pull off something like 9/11. It is an impressive conceit that we are smarter and more capable than people who coordinate transnational corporations, global wars, and mass media. Those who deny conspiracy have underwhelmed me with their snide ignorance of basic facts of the case. In my few brushes with the ruling class, even average members impressed me as sophisticated and whipsmart. Now they have accomplished the additional feat of convincing most of us they are otherwise.

For the benefit of both us and our tortured masters, I hope that my work can help bring an end to the madness I describe. Like most people, I believe that each of us, underneath the exhaustion, resignation, and damage, is still innocent at the core. I cannot believe that anyone really likes or is satisfied with what is happening. Surely we can find another way to be here together. But surely we cannot find it without first seeing things as they are, both in our souls and in our society.

Well, it was nice seeing you, again. Thanks for dinner.

Best regards,
Andrew

facebook page up

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Nov 21

I made a facebook page called Darkness Conjecture. There you can read about the latest goings on, including current public talks in southern Sweden.

Swedish darkroom news

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Sep 12

Location secured for world’s second hygienic darkness retreat: newly remodeled small cabin in quiet neighborhood of Swedish resort town. Modifications commence tomorrow; first retreat within two weeks.

EDIT: the above attempt failed. Taking a bare cabin with only electricity and heat and trying to make even a simple bathroom, kitchenette, and ventilation proved overwhelming. No, the thing is to start with a fully functional building, darken it and start retreating, already. This will require taking the message to the people again.

bodhisattva math

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Jun 26

Let us say Bodhisattvas are both sincere and realistic in their vow that, after their own personal enlightenment (which will free them from the necessity of reincarnating on this planet) they will keep reincarnating here anyway in order to help liberate all sentient creatures.

Let us further say that they, combined with those of equal realization and commitment in other traditions, manage to liberate a million people a year until the job is done. At that rate, it will still take them 7,000 years to finish. That’s if population remains constant from now on.

Keep in mind this is a 2,500 year old tradition. And that all spiritual traditions combined are not pulling off more than a hundred genuine liberations a year. Which, according to some wise men I once knew, is an extremely generous figure. How are we to make sense of the Bodhisattva’s project? What are they counting on?

Maybe they are banking on an exponential effect of their efforts. Maybe we are only a few years or generations away. The results come faster as time goes on and the task gets easier, because its enormity nonetheless is shrinking, while their collective power grows.

Maybe they, like the Mayans, are merely holding out till a cosmic event completes the task in one fell swoop.

So they’re not worried. Maybe I should not worry so much, either. Many people have said as much, and lately, I have begun to notice what they’re talking about.

And, maybe it is time to review the effectiveness of the method of liberation. Or maybe we could just eliminate the need for it.

greece

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Jun 05

I moved to Greece, partly as a result of my darkness retreat in March (more on that soon). My new friend and final client in Guatemala, Ajna of Yoga of Beauty in San Marcos La Laguna, Solola, Guatemala, is taking over the darkroom. Contact her through her website. I will be building a business here in Greece to open more darkrooms around the world.

limitless

Posted by andrewed – 2011 May 29

Just saw this movie. Awesome. But just for the record, darkness is going to make NZT-48 look like potty training.

new page: register

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Apr 06

Now you can register for your retreat online.

line in the sand

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Mar 24

If the Problem results from error, then virtue is the solution. If the Problem results from injury, then convalescence is the solution. Either I am sound but mistaken, or I am unsound and malfunctioning. Let us stop equivocating.

syllogism

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Mar 24

Here is my clearest articulation yet of the conjecture’s chain of causation, in the form of a seven-line syllogism:

Suffering comes from a catastrophic injury to the psyche;
the psyche is a system of an organism;
organisms are self-healing;
healing requires vital energy;
vital energy accumulates during rest;
psychic rest is most profound in absolute darkness;
therefore, darkness is the solution to inordinate suffering.

[Note 1: See end of basics for updated version of this.]

[Note 2: I learned this is not a syllogism, just a regular old argument. Syllogisms have only three propositions.]

14 day darkness retreat cut short

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Mar 16

This post is now a page called six-day retreat. It is a sub-page of . Look for future reports of retreats in the same place.

cool site: photoperiodeffect.com

Posted by andrewed – 2011 Mar 13

photoperiodeffect.com

This site talks about the effects of light on health and the use of darkness to reverse many illnesses. The author, Russell Johnston, who has used darkness to significantly heal from a serious malady, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, is a dogged researcher and a very clear writer.