The Sham

[YMix]

Difference between a farmer/engineer and a socialite/politician perhaps. One viewpoint strives to conquer nature, the other strives to conquer other people.

This country view of the world is riding you pretty hard, bro.

[Simple Minded]

Difference between a farmer/engineer and a socialite/politician perhaps. One viewpoint strives to conquer nature, the other strives to conquer other people.

This country view of the world is riding you pretty hard, bro.

I love that reply Ymix. I truly appreciate it! Thanks. Maybe not as hard as you think...

I'm sure at a certain stage in life, most people think they have acquired the knowledge/skills to be successful and the perspective/philosophy to be happy (define success and happiness however you wish).

From my own perspective, my background has given me a great sense of humor, and appears to create a LOT less stress than those who feel the need to manipulate the behavior of others. It is a lot of fun to not feel the need to sell anything.

It is actually pretty rewarding to remind people that 2 + 2 = 4 (not just professionally either). For some bizarre reason, they seem to need reminding often, and most are very appreciative of sober advice.

As my wife and I often say, the "People who do not employ self-discipline will be eventually be disciplined by the laws of physics, nature, economics, mathematics, etc." Of course, after the fact, the pain/unhappiness that results from their foolishness..... is always the fault of someone else. "Life is unfair! Life is hard!"

Hot, cold, rich, poor, hard times, good times are always going to be relative terms. Most think they have too much adversity in life. From my perspective, that is true for some, but others don't quite get enough adversity to learn from adversity. Like the obese person who doesn't get it after the first or second or third heart attack. A complete lack of adversity in life is truly a curse. At some point you have to say, it was not obesity that killed him, it was stupidity.

Like my buddy says: "Thats why stupid is supposed to hurt!"

I have always observed that those who have had much adversity in their lives have atrophied senses of humor. Fascinating, isn't it?

"Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel."

[Dioscuri]

Oh, Simple, already do we not see how God has taken your ill intentions against me and made them return to the Good?

For this point you make about Man dominating Nature versus Man dominating Man, it puts me in mind of something of God.

We remember Abel and Cain. Well actually, we remember when God expels Adam and his wife from Eden, l'abod et ha-adamah, to work/cultivate the ground is God's expectation. And then we remember Cain who became obed adamah as God expected, and Abel who became roeh tson, a "keeper" of flocks. What is this "keeping"? It is dominating the lives of other creatures, controlling them and bending their destinies to our maximal benefit. Resh-Ayin-He would seem to be a kind of substantialization of Resh-Ayin, the "Evil" that appears on Ets ha-da'at tov va rai, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Abel is a bad-doer over the creatures. We are told it, so it must be that God knows he does bad too. And yet when Abel offers God a firstling, God yisha el Abel ve-el minchatow, God pays attentions to / saves Abel and his offering, but Cain's offering of the fruit of ha-adamah? Not so.

God rewards Evil, and the good dutiful tiller breaks bad.

If your view is accurate, Simple, then Biblically it would be your good yeomen who harbor the true kernel of revolutionary violence. Isn't it our elites and our information workers who more resemble Abel's hijacking of flocks, with their constant messaging and propagandizing, constantly figuring how to maximally influence and suck more money out of the world into themselves. God does smile upon them, doesn't He? Oh, but might not they rather deserve what they get in the end from the peons once they decide they've had enough?

But still, this example troubles even us.

[YMix]

the same thing that he has been writing in every other post

I'm glad you responded to my post with a rehash of your favorite theme. Well, calling it a rehash is an obvious exaggeration since you use the same phrases over and over. Give it a rest now and then.

those who feel the need to manipulate the behavior of others

I'll admit that your constant harping on the same theme on some obscure forum is toward the low end of the spectrum, but it's still an attempt to manipulate the behavior of others.

[Enki]

genuflect dude.

I would like to think I play with cultural syntax more than words themselves. I will allow that for the final judgement.

And though I have felt everything all at once on a couple of occasions, not yet for the last time.

Your writing is superb, you should make money doing that.

Dioscuri,

I'm pretty sure Parodite got it......

No, Parodite is laboring under an error regarding the meaning of "observation." Conclusions are not being drawn from the science, but filed away into a cautiousness of presuming that to draw any conclusions is premature.

But what he says sort of makes it sound like he's conversant enough to know what he's talking about, even though there aren't actually any points of substance, just a smattering of bullshit around the idea of "we don't know yet, need more science, bla bla" as though to suggest that I'd said at some point that "we know everything! No more science needed!"

Assuming the posture of "Yes, it's weird, but... [when the truth emerges, it won't be weird]" pretty much gives away the game; the truth is not being processed.

In other words, until you are willing to grow, I can't help you. Sorry.... not my fault.

c'mon Bro, We all had hours of fun crafting babbling run on sentences in philosophy class. Some people make multi-dacade careers of doing the same. Don't limit yourself. Set yourself free from the bounds of the limits of reality by using undefinable language........

So, in summary, Ronald McDonald? Friend or foe?

Hyuk Hyuk! OK, Bro! Here's a joke, huh. Lemme know if you heard this before, huh-huh. I'll try not to use too many long sentences or employ English in the way it's designed to be used out of respect for the limitations of persons present.

"So there's this old bullshitter who retired, and always had a low opinion of the kids, thought they were a bunch of spoiled shits. He thought it was their proper role to listen politely and accept it when he betook himself to dispense as wisdom some of the bullshit that he fed himself to keep from being miserable. He delivered it really folksy-like, like the secret of life was all in two and a half sentences of pleasant old grizzled- lavender nostrums stated from a rockingchair on a porch next to a bottle of sour mash whiskey and a pile of crap figurines whittled out of balsawood that he thinks his family will enjoy when he's dead but which in fact they're just gonna throw away along with everything else.

So someone comes along one day, the old bullshitter presumes he's a kid, and this person tells the old bullshitter: 'You know, the way the world is organized is hideous, destructive, and irrational, and it's not going to last. We're going to have to figure out principles according to which it will be ordered.'

The old bullshitter said: 'And you think that'll be up to you? Har har! Oh, one day you'll grow up and realize it's all about a man doing his hard work.'

Someone: 'No, there's a problem with that. Not only is automation eroding the value of the work any human can do, but the debts are unpayable.'

Bullshitter: 'Well, you pampered kids are going to have to learn to live with austerity and pay down the debts!'

Someone: 'With what money? Wages are being transferred to the tax-sheltered top, leaving the majority of taxpayers with less money, thus subverting the tax base, thus killing the possibility of deficit control, and leading past the point at which the debt service is payable. The more austerity gets implemented, the less it'll be possible for taxes revenues to pay down the debt.'

Bullshitter: (wistful and misty-eyed, entering a haze) 'Well, when I was young, we didn't expect things like [whatever] to be given to us. We knew it cost money...'

Someone: 'You're eligible for medicare and social security. You're telling me you're not gonna use it?'

Bullshitter: 'Well, kid, who's gonna turn down free money? Har har!'

Someone: 'But we'll just have to get along without it. Dandelion salads and whatnot.'

Bullshitter: 'You'll just have to re-learn the virtues of prudence. Like it says in the B-'

Someone: 'In the Bible. But you don't actually know what the Bible says.'

Bullshitter: 'We were too decent to look into it in my day. There was just what people agreed on, and that was good enough for us. It seemed to work-'

Someone: 'Well, I guess I'm indecent, because I looked at it, and it doesn't say what people think it says.'

Bullshitter: 'That way lies the way to madness, thinking you know more than other people.'

Someone: 'People don't know a word of Greek or Hebrew. I can actually read the Bible, and others just babble on about the translation they've been given.'

Bullshitter: 'Oh have mercy upon us! Clearly it's you who should be in charge.'

Someone: 'That's up to people who'll be alive and lucid in 25 years. Perhaps if the truth were explained to people, they would know and not believe nonsense.'

Bullshitter: 'My son, you have much to learn...'

Someone: 'What's your faith affiliation?'

Bullshit: 'Son, I've been around a while and-'

Someone: 'You're respectful of the Judeo-Christian persuasion but are reluctant to register a specific commitment. Mostly what you believe in are the age-old American values of self-reliance. A charming phrase, "self-reliance," when what it actually means is reliance on and belief in the value of acquiring a certain portion of the dollars willed into existence by the members of the Federal Reserve Board.'

Bullshitter: 'Oh don't get me started on helicopter Ben-'

Someone: 'Of course not. You don't like him, or the Federal Reserve, but that's what self-reliance is reliant upon all the same. You don't have to like him. In fact, it's quite convenient that the wellspring of what you consider civilized American life should originate from something you consider bad policy. It scrambles the codes. It makes it easier to bullshit and dodge. It gives you an escape hatch to pop through when the absurdity of the way we live is pointed out. It makes it so that when anyone is trying to deal with complexity, you can just say "But it's all so simple!" and when someone tries to make a point that is simple, it lets you say "Oh, but there's so much more to it than that."'

Bullshitter: 'Hyuk huyk! Bro, you've got a point there! You really do!'

Someone: 'Why are you laughing? What's funny?'

Bullshitter: 'Well, Bro! Let me tell you-'

Someone: 'You'll die soon. What do you think about that?'

Bullshitter: 'Well-' (a bit startled by the shift in conversation)

Someone: 'Have you accomplished anything in your life? Anything new, I mean?'

Bullshitter: 'Well, at the business I used to run, I developed a more efficient way to dissolve the crust that forms on the inside of a-'

Someone: 'Have you ever coined a new word, or changed the meaning of an old one? That's the criterion. That's what "new" means.'

Bullshitter: 'Well, son, I've learned that to get people to understand you-'

Someone: 'You need to use words. And not sentences that are too long. Right. That's what I'm talking about, these words. I bet you think words are just tools. They're just there, and you can use them for things.'

Bullshitter: 'I guess you have something you'd like to say to me?'

Someone: 'When you're lying in the bed you will die in, what will be happening?'

Bullshitter: '... ...'

Someone: 'Words will be going through your head. Words connected to images, memories, but all words in the end. Determinations about the way things are, about the people you know, friends and family, about your own mistakes, about times when you were right but nobody listened.'

Bullshitter: 'Guess I can't argue.'

Someone: 'But where did the words come from? Are they yours? No. They were taught. Tell me how much you know about the peoples of the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 5,000 BC.'

Bullshitter: 'Aren't you gonna tell me, Bro?'

Someone: 'Yes, that's where all your words come from. Probably most every word in every sentence you've ever spoken or thought, they all date back to there, or someone not far from there a little later.'

Bullshitter: 'And what am I supposed to think about that?'

Someone: 'Perhaps the fact that they invented everything you've ever thought about, and everything you ever will think about. Even computers. The machines are new. But the word is from Rome. So as you lie dying, thinking, reflecting, you might try thinking about the fact that every word that registers in your vocabulary is one with thousands of years of history, one that has had dozens of different meanings. You might try thinking about the fact that most every word that appears before your awareness is an entity that you know nothing about; where it came from, what it meant, how it came to be used by you... you are almost completely ignorant of all this.'

Bullshitter: 'I don't decide who gets born where and when, all's I know is-'

Someone: 'No, you don't know. You don't know what words mean, or what words are. You merely employ them. When you speak or think a sentence, you do not separate its function from its meaning. You think the two are the same. You take a few words and you make out them little keys with which to pass through a maze of buildings and corridors and office doors that are also made of words. And like everyone else, you scurry through the corridors of words, trying to find the right key phrase to utter when you come to a locked door. And often enough, your key phrases have been successful, and you have passed through doors that stopped some others, just as some others have passed through doors that have stopped or would have stopped you.'

Bullshitter: 'Oooh, I get it. It's like we're rats in a maze.'

Someone: 'Do you have more than one tone of voice for indicating sarcasm? It sounds like you're imitating a teenage daughter. Just like at other times, you're imitating a voice and a manner of speaking that sounds to you like it's the voice of wisdom. And when such a voice makes statements that sound agreeable to you, you find yourself agreeing. And from this proceeds what you think wise and what you think foolish. But it's all borrowed. Neither did any of it come from you, nor did it ever happen that you "understood" wise statements. You will probably tell me of times when you "had an experience" that "taught" you what you "know." I am telling you that this never happened. You have never had an encounter with wisdom; all that happened is that over time you arrived at a few sets of words whose meanings you have never understood, and these little nostrums satisfied a compulsion to repeat them. Other words did not satisfy you; you tried them and the urge remained. But eventually you found words that you could say or think and that left a pleasing silence after them; their job had been done. They quieted, for a few moments, the need to think more words.

Bullshitter: 'Who wrote that?'

Someone: 'I did. Now, what is going to happen as you die, as you lie in bed and the circuit of friends and relatives come around to make their final visits, is that everyone will be absorbed in their private little whorls of words that they have been using their entire lives without knowing what they mean. The adults will be trying to get you out of the way as quickly as possible because being around a dying old man is depressing, and they will think to themselves, "We should be able to get at least a quarter million for his house," and "I wish he left more of a living will. I can't pay for it if he has a stroke and lives on life support for three more goddamn years," and the same for the kids: hug, kiss, "I love you grampa" and then back to Angry Birds. And in your mind will be a series of words, "He's a good kid. He's smart. He's tough. Not sure about that wife of his though." etc. You will all toddle through your little corridors of words, avoiding the problematic constructions and repeating to yourselves the phrases that satisfy, and saying to each other the phrases that satisfy, and at no time will any of you ever think of where they came from, the words you use, much less will you think of what other words might exist, that might say things better. Things will become bleary at length. You will stop remembering the last visit anyone made to you; it will seem as though the relatives were there both recently and long ago. And your words will satisfy you better than ever. Every mental determination will acquire a supremely satisfying and singular feeling: when you think a thought, it will feel like an achievement, it will strike you as a realization, even though in truth it is the same twaddle you've been repeating to yourself for decades. Nothing has changed, nothing has been learned about what the words truly are.

At last someone will enter the room where you will die. He will ask you, "Hello, [Your Name]. It's been awhile. What new words have you created?"

"New words," you will repeat blearily.

"Yes," the visitor will say. "It's been over 80 years. What did you change? Were you able to optimize any terms of the Logos? For this is the divine Mandate of the Human, this is why it has been taught, 'In the beginning was the Word.' Our purpose for Man has always been for him to glorify the Word and to reorder the Creation in accordance with the Word. How would you say you have done this during your allotted time in life?"

You enter a haze. All seems strange and new, and suffused with a thrill of fear.

The visitor consults something that looks like an iPad and says "I have your records here, and it appears that everything you produced in life were iterations of 14.7% of the entries in the Oxford English dictionary. No new coinages, negligible new use cases for old words. Beyond that, you produced [X] dollars of lifetime revenue. I guess that used to be more money than it is now."

You will open your mouth to speak, and will it prove harder than it has ever been to issue a note of sound: "Money," you will manage to say.

The visitor's face will seem to sour: "That's about it then. Nobody seems to get this stuff about the Word."

You will experience a strange surge of youth; of bitterness, anger, fear, anxiety. A feeling like struggling to find a job. It is not pleasant. "Who are you?" you manage to growl.

"Let me tell you a joke," the Visitor will say. "Once upon a time there was an old bullshitter who was about to die, and nobody cared..." '

[Simple Minded]

Oh, but might not they rather deserve what they get in the end from the peons once they decide they've had enough?

Ill intent? Never, my friend. Do not mistake your interpretation for my intent.

I absolutely agree with you Brother Dioscuri!!!! I am a firm believer both in karma, and that people reap what they sow. Both as individuals and as cultures. Cosmic justice or my delusions?

Current example: those who today in the name of compassion/social justice/superior morality advocate that generation Now is entitled to burden future generations with the costs of their self destructive behavior (health care reform), will be seen as the evil oppressors of the past when generation Now+1, and Now+2 come of voting/arms bearing age. Happening right now across the West, regarding policies that were implemented decades ago.

The culture is always in flux, and with it also peer pressure and the definition of words. Those who fancy themselves the liberators of today, will be seen tomorrow as the oppressors of yesteryear. The penedulum keeps swinging, ever has, ever will....

[Simple Minded]

the same thing that he has been writing in every other post

I'm glad you responded to my post with a rehash of your favorite theme. Well, calling it a rehash is an obvious exaggeration since you use the same phrases over and over. Give it a rest now and then.

those who feel the need to manipulate the behavior of others

I'll admit that your constant harping on the same theme on some obscure forum is toward the low end of the spectrum, but it's still an attempt to manipulate the behavior of others.

Of course I am consistent brother, 2+2 still equals 4...... Though people often go a decade or two trying to convince themselves that 2+2 really equals 3 or 5.......

I am enjoying the sharing of perspectives, you really do not have the ability to divine my intent. If you find any pearls in my babble, it is more to your credit than mine.

Whether you consider what I say to be valuable or meaningless, does not effect the qualitiy of my life. I have no way of knowing if you put anything I say to good use or not, nor for that matter, even whether you read my posts. We all focus on a sentence or two out of ten or 100 in a post, don't we?

As the old saw goes "One who can tell good advice from bad advice does not need advice." We are all transmitting, who knows who is receiving? If you think channel 7 sucks, tune in to channel 10....

I do get your fatigue, it does seems as though everyone can sum up the totality of their ideology and/or life experience in less than 200 posts doesn't it?

Or it just the reader filling in the blanks with their imagination?

Then we are off to watch the next circus....

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I'm finding the discussion of language here utterly fascinating, but I only speak American English passably, and have no Hebrew or Greek, so I'm going to let others continue down that path without interruption. I want to talk about serpents.

On seals and pottery of the ancient, pre-Mosaic Near East, there exists a ubiquitous motif involving a serpent with his tree (the axis mundi, the world tree) and his female consort. In late Sumerian and Akkadian seals, they are variously arranged to communicate the same essential image: a serpent (or serpent king/god in human form, identified symbolically by a serpent over his head, behind him, etc.) providing a boon, in the form of a cupped libation or else the fruit of the tree around which he is coiled, to a male initiate, who is directed to the serpent's gift by a female attendant. The relationship of the images to the religion of the children of Abraham, who came out of Ur, are unmistakable, but there exists a clear difference which we'll get to later.

Serpents have nearly always been associated with the moon. Campbell was fond of pointing out that the serpent sheds its skin and renews its life, even as the moon sheds its shadow to become new. Many myths exist that make the relationship explicit, such as the Native American story in which Man forgot to attend the meeting at which the Creator would choose who might live eternally: the serpent was present and accepted the offer, and that, we are told, is why man dies while the serpent sheds its skin. On one of the Sumerian seals, the cup being offered by the serpent king to the initiate has the symbol of the crescent moon above it. And on carvings as far back as the paleolithic, we see that there was an awareness of the relationship between moon, woman, and menstruation - such as the famous carving in which a typically fat woman holds up a crescent bull horn with thirteen marks on it, and points to her belly with her other hand. The relationship of serpent, woman, and moon goes back far, then, pre-existing even the archaic river civilizations.

For the serpent and woman are the cthonic representatives of the seething, pulsing powers of pure life, of nature, of the timeless birth and death of generations. As someone said, people are merely a gene's way of replicating itself; and it has also been pointed out by some who probably go too far that the ancient symbol of the serpent coiled around the world tree, the precursor to the cadueceus, resembles the double helix of DNA... but I digress. Some of what we know of the ritual and symbolic life of the pre-invasion civilizations of the serpent and his woman comes from the surviving cults of the field, and from the descriptions of the eventual conquerors of their vanquished predecessors. Jane Harrison in her Prologomena, made an excellent case that the mystery cults of the Mediterranean were vestiges of the pre-Homeric past. She describes rites that are not practiced in the shining Apollonian light of day, but at twilight or dawn, in a mood of dread. Offerings are made, always by women, in a spirit of riddance or pacification, to dark and indefinite deities that might be sated, but never brought under control. The offerings, it is important enough to reiterate, are always made by women; in one particular Orphic rite, offerings of sweet cakes are made to actual serpents, and the reaction of the serpents was thought to portend good or evil for the coming year. As in the Mesopotamian seals, it is woman who is in direct contact with the serpent god.

Woman is the consort of the phallic serpent, and their liason, from Mesopotamia to Polynesia, has served as a mythological world-founding. For just as Eve's interaction with the serpent of the tree began the narrative of Biblical history, so did the eel come to the maiden in Polynesia to make her an offer that would begin the story of man (the motif traveled well, even to islands with no snakes, where the eel served as an easy replacement). And why not? Woman herself is a symbol of the deep, unfathomable mystery of life. She is the beating core, the actual main event, of everything we see going on. The cities we build, the art we create, the stories we write... these are all just a decorative shell we build around the pulsing heart of life begetting life. And this fact, of the woman's primacy and the man's secondary, playful, part in the production, did not go unnoticed, even in the most ancient times. Paleolithic and neolithic art has two interesting characteristics that demonstrate the fact: first, images of women are always naked, while images of men are always clothed, adorned, or costumed. Second, the two-dimensional paintings (when they represent humans) are nearly always of the costumed men, while the three-dimensional carvings are always of women.

The meaning of the first point is obvious. The naked images of women, with ample breasts and hips - and occasionally holding out a breast and pointing to the belly or vagina, presumably for viewers who need to be instructed directly - have no need of outer vestments, for their identity is derived from the same unfathomable well as the mystery of life itself. She needs no induction ceremonies or rites of passage, for her first menstruation is a more powerful initiation than they could ever be. Man, on the other hand, relies, for his identity on the construction of symbolic social roles. He is pictured as costumed because he is nothing without a mask. Woman needs no language to articulate her purpose or fashion her identity; man cannot do without it. Woman's destiny exists within her from the time she is born, while man must fashion his own. This sense of the precarious nature of man's identity and the secondary nature of his purpose, is a source of deep anxiety that soon becomes apparent.

Margaret Mahler was a psychologist specializing in early childhood development. She describes the various stages through which a young child passes as a little ego begins forming out of the undifferentiated union with the mother. Around two years old, individuation has progressed to a point where the toddler is testing limits and has begun to process the trauma of the initial realization that there is more going on than just the nurturing interpenetration of himself and mother. It is a point of extreme tension, with ramifications that last a lifetime. For the anxiety of standing alone for the first time is immense, and it is accompanied by a desire for re-submersion into the amniotic embrace of the mother (Freud identifies this desire for re-absorption as the source of all religion, and though he was part right he, as usual, goes too far). At the same time, the growing ego defends itself. It has developed enough that the annihilation implied by re-absorption is a source of terror. The emerging self wants to survive, and the threat causes the desired mother to take on a double aspect as the cannibal ogress, or cannibal witch, we all feared thanks to the Brothers Grimm and others. The ambivalent desires to be reabsorbed into the comfort of wholeness, but also to remain oneself, occasionally leads to total panic, and an irrational tantrum is the result, as the little guy simply lashes out and explodes with rage in an undirected attempt to make a stand and assert his own reality.

With the descent on the Bronze Age civilizations of the patriarchal hunters and herdsman of Aryan and Semitic stock, this threat of the cthonic, primordial pair of the serpent and his woman become the primary mythological foundation of the new world order; therefore, Yahweh slays Leviathan, Marduk takes on Tiamat, Zeus kills Typhon, and Indra puts an end to Vritra. Out of their fallen corpses, the new gods fashion the world. That is, the seething, timeless mass of natural life is consciously arranged and set to order, opposites are seprated, the focus of life now on the consciously contrived level of the symbolically costumed male and his culture, with the female and her consort now associated with the most dangerous and aberrant evil, as we see with the Biblical version of Eve and the serpent, with Medusa the Gorgon, or with Indian Kali. And yet, in the examples of Medusa and Kali, if not, perhaps, as strongly with Eve, we note the ambivalence and insecurity of rational man once again: for Athena instructs Aesclypius how to draw blood from Medusa, using that from her right side to kill, but that from her left side to heal and restore life. Or with Kali, wife of Shiva surrounded by his serpents, as she who holds a sword in her right hand, but offers a boon with her left. And even in the Biblical version, we see that Moses wields a serpent staff, that YHWH employs serpents to do His will: both to kill the Hebrews and to heal them when the image is cast in bronze. But we'll get back to that in a moment.

In the earliest Mesopotamian seals depicting the serpent/woman/tree/fruit motif, in which the woman is inviting the male initiate to partake, there is no apparent sense of guilt, or that the act is sinful or disobedient. It is the god himself to whom the male is often being directed, and the symbolism makes clear that even the images where we see only the serpent, he is representative of the god. Guilt comes later, in the Hebrew version, and I suspect it has two sources: (1) The inversion of an existing mythological motif, turned on its head to serve the interests of an invading people. Thus the power of the invading storm god is asserted over the prevailing deities of the subjected people. This first part is obvious. (2) On a deeper level, I think we are seeing here the first intimations that man, in his hubris, by deciding to step out from nature into self-consciousness, breaking from union with God (with whom he only shortly before walked in the cool of the evening), may have overextended himself.

Indeed, as Jaynes pointed out, most of the history of western religion is the story of man losing contact with the gods, lamenting the loss, and searching out ways to re-establish contact (flocking to prophets, playing with guts, beseeching oracles, etc... things that were not necessary when God walked by his side). You need not follow Jaynes to his conclusion that self-consciousness came about in the second century BC, but he establishes that basic idea about religion beyond refutation, in my estimation. I will go further than him and say that the history of eastern religion tells the same tale. Historical religion begins with the advent of self-awareness, the toddlerhood of mankind, and is the effort of man to deal with the fallout. As Mahler also makes clear, toddlers, in the critical time, go one of three directions:

1) they opt for re-submersion, giving up the work of individuation as too dangerous or difficult
2) they make the leap and sever the tie, allowing further ego development
3) they remain caught in an ambivalent, unresolved state, even as biological imperatives move them out of a place where this is a viable mode of being

Each carries consequences that shape an individual's development throughout life. The eastern religions have chosen the path of re-submersion. Confronted by the suffering attending individual awareness, the east simply denounced the ego altogether, viewing individuation as the primal mistake that gave rise to all other delusions and attendant suffering. The west has embarked upon the process of individuation, enshrining the individual, with all the suffering and messiness and testing of limits and tantrums of panicked self-assertion that this implies. This path cannot be taken without guilt arising from fear of one's hubris, and the anxiety of standing alone. Our entire history is peppered with tales of demons, nature spirits, trolls, and dragons lurking at the periphery of our civilized lands, pushed out by man's ordering of the natural landscape, and looking for revenge whenever they can get it. Our great heroes are those who stand against these threats and return to tell the tale.

An attack of snakes on the Hebrews must be viewed with all this in mind. It is the terrible fear of the old gods rising back up in vengeance - for they come at a time when the Hebrew people are grumbling, beginning to doubt the promises and power of Yahweh - threatening the fragile Hebrew egos, only recently won and still coalescing, with annihilation.

The greatest saints of India, for example, are the egoless wanderers in whom no self can be found, transparent to the rest of the universe. We, on the other hand, have Jesus the Christ and his fishers of men, originating in the fishing villages of the Near East, whose era curiously begins at the end of the Age of Aries the Ram, when the Lamb of God is slaughtered, and at the dawn of the Age of Pisces the Fish; Jesus, who walks on water, that ancient symbol of the unconscious, associated with the serpent who, in archaic cosmology surrounded the world ocean, associated with woman, who spills water before giving birth; Jesus, who walks on this water without being submerged, and who plucks out drowning Peter, as he offers to fish out each one of us. Jesus, who is lifted up, as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so that men may see it and live, and not be pulled back down into the waters, bitten by the serpents, thereby attenuating the ancient anxiety that becomes panic if left unchecked.

The bronze serpent, incidentally, was worshiped in Israel until King Hezekiah smashed it, as we drop our crucifixes in jars of piss today. Things got worse for the Hebrews after he did that, and that old anxiety seems to be creeping back up on us as well.

[Enki]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

I think I've mentioned before, I actually agree with you, but I think there is a world upheaval between here and there. Such transitions have never taken place without a mess.

[Enki]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

I think I've mentioned before, I actually agree with you, but I think there is a world upheaval between here and there. Such transitions have never taken place without a mess.

Oh, I know it. I am on the front lines of that battle seeing the Babylonian shells of those others on the frontlines and watching as we step out of those shells together.

[Parodite]

Totally does not follow - it is the opposite. Double slit quantum behavior, as weird as it may be, can do very well without the screen of our consciousness.

What makes you sure that this is so?

Because it is a fact.

That's a fact, huh?

Indeed.

I guess you better tell me about the results of that double-slit experiment that was done with no apparatus, no measurements, and no people. I hadn't heard about that one.

Anybody can do an experiment and report the facts that occurred. Try spit somebody in the face on the street the next time you walk on the pavement and have the opportunity. He or she may start to curse you or give you a upper cut punch. Then report the facts of how that feels. And any other facts that follow. This is how the word FACT is used and how it is meaningful, also in the double slit experiment. As weird and unexpected as the results may be. The facts reported are not of a different type or nature than the facts reported in the face slap experiment.

Thusly it seems to me that your assertion that human consciousness, or consciousness in a more general sense, or "observation" is required is as true or untrue for any experiment or situation where people report facts.

No no no no no, complete misunderstanding. It makes no difference whatsoever, it is completely immaterial, whether people are "in the room" or "watching"; whatever the apparatus is that is making the measurement is an extension of observation. Having no people present does not make the situation "not observed": the entire situation is one of observation. People don't have to be in the room for an observation to be occurring: the room itself, the apparatus itself, is already the locus of observation.

So it seems that after all your view does apply to any situation we report on. From a slap in the face and what follows to the results of a double slit experiment. They are occurrences of observation no matter what. Is this what you are saying?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

...Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a somewhat similar effect in physics, called the observer effect,[4] which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the systems. Heisenberg himself offered such an observer effect at the quantum level (see below) as a physical "explanation" of quantum uncertainty.[5] However, it has since become clear that quantum uncertainty is inherent in the properties of all wave-like systems, and that it arises in quantum mechanics simply due to the matter wave nature of all quantum objects. Thus, the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology.[6]. It must be emphasized that measurement does not mean only a process in which a physicist-observer takes part, but rather any interaction between classical and quantum objects regardless of any observer. [/b]

It's all in the equation: reality is divided by two. For any discrete event in the universe, there are two ways it could have happened; the wave way, and the particle way. Thus, any discrete event, any One that can occur, has two possible states. Every One is 0/1. Reality is dual-natured. "Bit before it."

This part suggests that Heisenberg would agree with me: the weird interaction between classical and quantum objects can do without any observing and conscious scientist being present [my bold]:

"It must be emphasized that measurement does not mean only a process in which a physicist-observer takes part, but rather any interaction between classical and quantum objects regardless of any observer."

As for what the wave-particle duality means, you enter the arena of interpreting quantum theory. Einstein and Bohr discussed it for 30 years I believe and never came to agree. After them others followed with their own versions and still nothing is settled. It would be a bit presumptuous for us to make grand ontological statements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta ... _mechanics

[Marcus]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

". . . the story comprises three great epochs. In the first, one God triumphs over the many false gods. This process fills the first millennium of our era, and its outcome is the Christian Church. Therefore church history is the interesting and important aspect of the first thousand years A.D. In the second epoch one earth is won from the plural of unconnected countries and undiscovered lands; no Chinese walls remain effective. This is the point at which we stand today: geographically, technically, statistically, the earth is finally one, and so indeed is the whole world of nature, thanks to modern science which Christendom created. The master institutions of the second millennium are, first the Papacy as a worldly power, then the system of territorial states which grew from under its wings. Therefore world history or political history is the theme of this period.

"Today we are living through the agonies of transition to the third epoch. We have yet to establish Man, the great singular of humanity, in one household, over the plurality of races, classes, and age groups. This will be the center of struggle in the future,... They pose the questions the third millennium will have to answer. ... The State is on the defensive because it is inadequate for the needs of the coming age. The theme of future history will be not territorial or political but social:..."

The Christian Future Or The Modern Mind Outrun, Rosenstock-Huessy, Harper & Row, 1946, pgs. 114-115

One humanity in one world under one God?

[Simple Minded]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

I think I've mentioned before, I actually agree with you, but I think there is a world upheaval between here and there. Such transitions have never taken place without a mess.

Why would either of you think we are not there already? What do you see in your daily lives that leads either of you to think the distinction is so binary?

[Enki]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

I think I've mentioned before, I actually agree with you, but I think there is a world upheaval between here and there. Such transitions have never taken place without a mess.

Why would either of you think we are not there already? What do you see in your daily lives that leads either of you to think the distinction is so binary?

Because our dumb political system views it as such. I am already there, JN is clearly already there, perhaps you too are already there. Others live in a sort of raving lunatic terror of the notion that there might be aspects to their lives that are controlled by other people while others seek to reject individuality completely.

There is nothing new under the Sun, ultimately the potential for all aspects of our humanity have resided within us always, we have always been collectively individual. But our philosophy and the way we comport ourselves politically behaves as though there is some sort of tension between the two.

I am immersed in culture that seeks to overcome that sense of duality.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I'm finding the discussion of language here utterly fascinating, but I only speak American English passably, and have no Hebrew or Greek, so I'm going to let others continue down that path without interruption. I want to talk about serpents.

On seals and pottery of the ancient, pre-Mosaic Near East, there exists a ubiquitous motif involving a serpent with his tree (the axis mundi, the world tree) and his female consort. In late Sumerian and Akkadian seals, they are variously arranged to communicate the same essential image: a serpent (or serpent king/god in human form, identified symbolically by a serpent over his head, behind him, etc.) providing a boon, in the form of a cupped libation or else the fruit of the tree around which he is coiled, to a male initiate, who is directed to the serpent's gift by a female attendant. The relationship of the images to the religion of the children of Abraham, who came out of Ur, are unmistakable, but there exists a clear difference which we'll get to later.

Serpents have nearly always been associated with the moon. Campbell was fond of pointing out that the serpent sheds its skin and renews its life, even as the moon sheds its shadow to become new. Many myths exist that make the relationship explicit, such as the Native American story in which Man forgot to attend the meeting at which the Creator would choose who might live eternally: the serpent was present and accepted the offer, and that, we are told, is why man dies while the serpent sheds its skin. On one of the Sumerian seals, the cup being offered by the serpent king to the initiate has the symbol of the crescent moon above it. And on carvings as far back as the paleolithic, we see that there was an awareness of the relationship between moon, woman, and menstruation - such as the famous carving in which a typically fat woman holds up a crescent bull horn with thirteen marks on it, and points to her belly with her other hand. The relationship of serpent, woman, and moon goes back far, then, pre-existing even the archaic river civilizations.

For the serpent and woman are the cthonic representatives of the seething, pulsing powers of pure life, of nature, of the timeless birth and death of generations. As someone said, people are merely a gene's way of replicating itself; and it has also been pointed out by some who probably go too far that the ancient symbol of the serpent coiled around the world tree, the precursor to the cadueceus, resembles the double helix of DNA... but I digress. Some of what we know of the ritual and symbolic life of the pre-invasion civilizations of the serpent and his woman comes from the surviving cults of the field, and from the descriptions of the eventual conquerors of their vanquished predecessors. Jane Harrison in her Prologomena, made an excellent case that the mystery cults of the Mediterranean were vestiges of the pre-Homeric past. She describes rites that are not practiced in the shining Apollonian light of day, but at twilight or dawn, in a mood of dread. Offerings are made, always by women, in a spirit of riddance or pacification, to dark and indefinite deities that might be sated, but never brought under control. The offerings, it is important enough to reiterate, are always made by women; in one particular Orphic rite, offerings of sweet cakes are made to actual serpents, and the reaction of the serpents was thought to portend good or evil for the coming year. As in the Mesopotamian seals, it is woman who is in direct contact with the serpent god.

Woman is the consort of the phallic serpent, and their liason, from Mesopotamia to Polynesia, has served as a mythological world-founding. For just as Eve's interaction with the serpent of the tree began the narrative of Biblical history, so did the eel come to the maiden in Polynesia to make her an offer that would begin the story of man (the motif traveled well, even to islands with no snakes, where the eel served as an easy replacement). And why not? Woman herself is a symbol of the deep, unfathomable mystery of life. She is the beating core, the actual main event, of everything we see going on. The cities we build, the art we create, the stories we write... these are all just a decorative shell we build around the pulsing heart of life begetting life. And this fact, of the woman's primacy and the man's secondary, playful, part in the production, did not go unnoticed, even in the most ancient times. Paleolithic and neolithic art has two interesting characteristics that demonstrate the fact: first, images of women are always naked, while images of men are always clothed, adorned, or costumed. Second, the two-dimensional paintings (when they represent humans) are nearly always of the costumed men, while the three-dimensional carvings are always of women.

The meaning of the first point is obvious. The naked images of women, with ample breasts and hips - and occasionally holding out a breast and pointing to the belly or vagina, presumably for viewers who need to be instructed directly - have no need of outer vestments, for their identity is derived from the same unfathomable well as the mystery of life itself. She needs no induction ceremonies or rites of passage, for her first menstruation is a more powerful initiation than they could ever be. Man, on the other hand, relies, for his identity on the construction of symbolic social roles. He is pictured as costumed because he is nothing without a mask. Woman needs no language to articulate her purpose or fashion her identity; man cannot do without it. Woman's destiny exists within her from the time she is born, while man must fashion his own. This sense of the precarious nature of man's identity and the secondary nature of his purpose, is a source of deep anxiety that soon becomes apparent.

Margaret Mahler was a psychologist specializing in early childhood development. She describes the various stages through which a young child passes as a little ego begins forming out of the undifferentiated union with the mother. Around two years old, individuation has progressed to a point where the toddler is testing limits and has begun to process the trauma of the initial realization that there is more going on than just the nurturing interpenetration of himself and mother. It is a point of extreme tension, with ramifications that last a lifetime. For the anxiety of standing alone for the first time is immense, and it is accompanied by a desire for re-submersion into the amniotic embrace of the mother (Freud identifies this desire for re-absorption as the source of all religion, and though he was part right he, as usual, goes too far). At the same time, the growing ego defends itself. It has developed enough that the annihilation implied by re-absorption is a source of terror. The emerging self wants to survive, and the threat causes the desired mother to take on a double aspect as the cannibal ogress, or cannibal witch, we all feared thanks to the Brothers Grimm and others. The ambivalent desires to be reabsorbed into the comfort of wholeness, but also to remain oneself, occasionally leads to total panic, and an irrational tantrum is the result, as the little guy simply lashes out and explodes with rage in an undirected attempt to make a stand and assert his own reality.

With the descent on the Bronze Age civilizations of the patriarchal hunters and herdsman of Aryan and Semitic stock, this threat of the cthonic, primordial pair of the serpent and his woman become the primary mythological foundation of the new world order; therefore, Yahweh slays Leviathan, Marduk takes on Tiamat, Zeus kills Typhon, and Indra puts an end to Vritra. Out of their fallen corpses, the new gods fashion the world. That is, the seething, timeless mass of natural life is consciously arranged and set to order, opposites are seprated, the focus of life now on the consciously contrived level of the symbolically costumed male and his culture, with the female and her consort now associated with the most dangerous and aberrant evil, as we see with the Biblical version of Eve and the serpent, with Medusa the Gorgon, or with Indian Kali. And yet, in the examples of Medusa and Kali, if not, perhaps, as strongly with Eve, we note the ambivalence and insecurity of rational man once again: for Athena instructs Aesclypius how to draw blood from Medusa, using that from her right side to kill, but that from her left side to heal and restore life. Or with Kali, wife of Shiva surrounded by his serpents, as she who holds a sword in her right hand, but offers a boon with her left. And even in the Biblical version, we see that Moses wields a serpent staff, that YHWH employs serpents to do His will: both to kill the Hebrews and to heal them when the image is cast in bronze. But we'll get back to that in a moment.

In the earliest Mesopotamian seals depicting the serpent/woman/tree/fruit motif, in which the woman is inviting the male initiate to partake, there is no apparent sense of guilt, or that the act is sinful or disobedient. It is the god himself to whom the male is often being directed, and the symbolism makes clear that even the images where we see only the serpent, he is representative of the god. Guilt comes later, in the Hebrew version, and I suspect it has two sources: (1) The inversion of an existing mythological motif, turned on its head to serve the interests of an invading people. Thus the power of the invading storm god is asserted over the prevailing deities of the subjected people. This first part is obvious. (2) On a deeper level, I think we are seeing here the first intimations that man, in his hubris, by deciding to step out from nature into self-consciousness, breaking from union with God (with whom he only shortly before walked in the cool of the evening), may have overextended himself.

Indeed, as Jaynes pointed out, most of the history of western religion is the story of man losing contact with the gods, lamenting the loss, and searching out ways to re-establish contact (flocking to prophets, playing with guts, beseeching oracles, etc... things that were not necessary when God walked by his side). You need not follow Jaynes to his conclusion that self-consciousness came about in the second century BC, but he establishes that basic idea about religion beyond refutation, in my estimation. I will go further than him and say that the history of eastern religion tells the same tale. Historical religion begins with the advent of self-awareness, the toddlerhood of mankind, and is the effort of man to deal with the fallout. As Mahler also makes clear, toddlers, in the critical time, go one of three directions:

1) they opt for re-submersion, giving up the work of individuation as too dangerous or difficult
2) they make the leap and sever the tie, allowing further ego development
3) they remain caught in an ambivalent, unresolved state, even as biological imperatives move them out of a place where this is a viable mode of being

Each carries consequences that shape an individual's development throughout life. The eastern religions have chosen the path of re-submersion. Confronted by the suffering attending individual awareness, the east simply denounced the ego altogether, viewing individuation as the primal mistake that gave rise to all other delusions and attendant suffering. The west has embarked upon the process of individuation, enshrining the individual, with all the suffering and messiness and testing of limits and tantrums of panicked self-assertion that this implies. This path cannot be taken without guilt arising from fear of one's hubris, and the anxiety of standing alone. Our entire history is peppered with tales of demons, nature spirits, trolls, and dragons lurking at the periphery of our civilized lands, pushed out by man's ordering of the natural landscape, and looking for revenge whenever they can get it. Our great heroes are those who stand against these threats and return to tell the tale.

An attack of snakes on the Hebrews must be viewed with all this in mind. It is the terrible fear of the old gods rising back up in vengeance - for they come at a time when the Hebrew people are grumbling, beginning to doubt the promises and power of Yahweh - threatening the fragile Hebrew egos, only recently won and still coalescing, with annihilation.

The greatest saints of India, for example, are the egoless wanderers in whom no self can be found, transparent to the rest of the universe. We, on the other hand, have Jesus the Christ and his fishers of men, originating in the fishing villages of the Near East, whose era curiously begins at the end of the Age of Aries the Ram, when the Lamb of God is slaughtered, and at the dawn of the Age of Pisces the Fish; Jesus, who walks on water, that ancient symbol of the unconscious, associated with the serpent who, in archaic cosmology surrounded the world ocean, associated with woman, who spills water before giving birth; Jesus, who walks on this water without being submerged, and who plucks out drowning Peter, as he offers to fish out each one of us. Jesus, who is lifted up, as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so that men may see it and live, and not be pulled back down into the waters, bitten by the serpents, thereby attenuating the ancient anxiety that becomes panic if left unchecked.

The bronze serpent, incidentally, was worshiped in Israel until King Hezekiah smashed it, as we drop our crucifixes in jars of piss today. Things got worse for the Hebrews after he did that, and that old anxiety seems to be creeping back up on us as well.

I should add, also, that it has been suggested that the Garden itself is a vestige of the of the ancient serpent/goddess complex. For just as the serpent-haired Medusa and Kali hand out death with one hand and life with the other, the Garden of the serpent hands out life and death from its two different trees. When the text says that "now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which God had made", it has been taken in two ways - first, that the serpent was simply the cleverest of all God's created beasts of the field, but others have suggested that the serpent was very clever in comparison to God's created beasts of the field. This interpretation, really, makes sense even traditionally speaking since the are not to suppose that Eve was tricked by an actual little hissing reptile, but by the Devil.

[Parodite]

The eastern religions have chosen the path of re-submersion. Confronted by the suffering attending individual awareness, the east simply denounced the ego altogether, viewing individuation as the primal mistake that gave rise to all other delusions and attendant suffering. The west has embarked upon the process of individuation, enshrining the individual, with all the suffering and messiness and testing of limits and tantrums of panicked self-assertion that this implies.

Good observation. The net result though for both cultural directions may not be so dissimilar. People trying to be like Jesus or Buddha kind of behave similar.. and struggle and straddle along facing the same daily problems. The ideals contrast more than reality.

[Simple Minded]

The eastern religions have chosen the path of re-submersion. Confronted by the suffering attending individual awareness, the east simply denounced the ego altogether, viewing individuation as the primal mistake that gave rise to all other delusions and attendant suffering. The west has embarked upon the process of individuation, enshrining the individual, with all the suffering and messiness and testing of limits and tantrums of panicked self-assertion that this implies.

Good observation. The net result though for both cultural directions may not be so dissimilar. People trying to be like Jesus or Buddha kind of behave similar.. and struggle and straddle along facing the same daily problems. The ideals contrast more than reality.

Excellent points. One size does not fit all, especially when every person has the ability to latch on to the 20% of the ideology they like, ignore the 80% that contradicts their mood du jour, and then spend a lot amount of effort preaching they are the "true" embodiment of the ideal.

[Simple Minded]

We are entering into an age of synthesis where the individual recognizes itself in relation to the collective without losing individuality, but knowing itself to be a part of, and not separate and distinct from the rest of the universe.

I think I've mentioned before, I actually agree with you, but I think there is a world upheaval between here and there. Such transitions have never taken place without a mess.

Why would either of you think we are not there already? What do you see in your daily lives that leads either of you to think the distinction is so binary?

Because our dumb political system views it as such. I am already there, JN is clearly already there, perhaps you too are already there. Others live in a sort of raving lunatic terror of the notion that there might be aspects to their lives that are controlled by other people while others seek to reject individuality completely.

There is nothing new under the Sun, ultimately the potential for all aspects of our humanity have resided within us always, we have always been collectively individual. But our philosophy and the way we comport ourselves politically behaves as though there is some sort of tension between the two.

I am immersed in culture that seeks to overcome that sense of duality.

Thanks. Good points. I have often thought that the system you seek exists lots of places in small towns.

Strong sense of shared community where most people either know your name or name of a relative, friend, co-worker, etc.

Places where body language are important signals.

[Enki]

I kind of just want to build a small town honestly. One that shares a lot of communal resources. I am working on it right now. We have 200 acres in Dutchess County.

[Simple Minded]

I kind of just want to build a small town honestly. One that shares a lot of communal resources. I am working on it right now. We have 200 acres in Dutchess County.

LOL, I think from reading these four sentences, I now understand you better than from the previous 4000 sentences I have read.....

I can be really dense sometimes... and stay that way for decades....

Good for you dude. I wish you the best of luck. Should be very possible, so many working models exist.

Sometimes it is good to try to reform "the system," other times, you realize "the system" is what it is, because thats "the people" want. Luckily, the option of voting with our feet always exists, and we almost always reap what we sow.

The most entertaining part about doing what is not "popular" is listening to so many people tell you how stupid you are. They build their lives, you build yours, the world keeps turning. The time to question yourself your premises is when lots of people agree with you!

Call it TinkerTown so I can find it on Mapquest sometime.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I kind of just want to build a small town honestly. One that shares a lot of communal resources. I am working on it right now. We have 200 acres in Dutchess County.

Dude you live in NYC. I predict you'll stay out in the small town for a few weeks, get bored, and begin anonymously starting fires just to make things interesting again.

[Simple Minded]

I kind of just want to build a small town honestly. One that shares a lot of communal resources. I am working on it right now. We have 200 acres in Dutchess County.

Dude you live in NYC. I predict you'll stay out in the small town for a few weeks, get bored, and begin anonymously starting fires just to make things interesting again.

JN,

Ya never know. Equanimity takes many forms. He might decide to raise sheep and goats, and become satisfied knowing he is a god in their eyes....

That and bi-sexual means different things in different places.....

More than a few get tired with the big city or the quiet life after a while. We all want change we can believe in ya know!

[Enki]

I kind of just want to build a small town honestly. One that shares a lot of communal resources. I am working on it right now. We have 200 acres in Dutchess County.

Dude you live in NYC. I predict you'll stay out in the small town for a few weeks, get bored, and begin anonymously starting fires just to make things interesting again.

Doubtful. I find NYC to be pretty boring.

And if I am upstate in Dutchess county, it's pretty easy to get to the city.

[Mr. Perfect]

There are some dramatically unhappy people in this world.