The Protocols of the Open and Secret Society of Free Plumbers

The following is the recently discovered introductory minutes of a secret meeting of an internationalist society devoted to world revolution known as 'The Plumbers'. Whilst it is understood that further chapters are extant, nothing is known of them apart from their titles: governance and communication; food and distribution; population, environment, resources, and sustainability; trade and the means of exchange; science and technology; education and knowledge; love and sex; music, art, and literature; and finally, the metaphysical, belief and non-belief. Should they come to light they will be published in turn.


The Protocols of the Open and Secret Society of Free Plumbers

We are a secret society. We divide the world into us and them. 'Us' is we who seek fraternity amongst all. 'Them' would be most correctly viewed as those we wish eventually to join us. 'We' seek the banishment of 'them' by having only 'us'. 'Us' will be we who are devoted to no small thing - the changing of the world. Above all we embrace the truth of the continuum of selflessness. We want only the truth in all things for the benefit of all - a united humanity of compassion.

We are an open society. Amongst ourselves we honest in all affairs. Goals, activities, ambitions, decisions, everything that defines who we are will be openly shared and open for participation by all members. Everything may be questioned and all knowledge will be shared. The only secret will be of our existence from those who are otherwise, and who subordinate the truth for the self.

We are exclusivist. We will assist each other in earning livelihood. We will assist each other when one is attacked by injustice. All will come to the aid of one.

We are expansionist. Since the world has always been this way, we act in today. And yet we seek a goal - our Time of Revelation. As the 'us' becomes ever greater in number we will naturally arrive at our wished for Tipping Point. At this point the secret will be exploded, the them will become us, and we are all together. But we expect this no time soon. Our work may take countless centuries. We are undaunted by time. Instead we are here and now.

We are internationalist. Given as we are to becoming an 'all' we seek to throw down those things that divide. We do not view the world through a lens of race, nor of sex, nor of religion or culture. We discriminate against only those who revere the self over the all.

We will seek to free the minds of 'them' with subtle positive messages. To this end we will control the means of discourse, education, and entertainment. Schooling will involve inculcating the young with the means to think for themselves and to revere curiosity above all things. In the media we will make celebrities of modest and well balanced people. Those espousing messages of self obsession will be choked out of the industry we will control. Gradually the adoration of the self will be seen as an animalistic trait.

We name ourselves in acknowledgement of the disdain of the self-obsessed for their slaves whom they call 'carriers of water'. Those who subordinate the 'truth of all' to the 'falsity of the self' deserve to have their definitions taken from them. Thus their dismissal of the slave is turned into a celebration of those who do the most worthy work. We are the carriers of water, plumbers bringing the means of life. We do not hold water lightly: we view it as the stuff of life. And as water is, so shall we be. We are without interest, we are gradual, we seek equilibrium, and we are clear. Water is a symbol for everything we do.

Our lodges will be full of open symbolism. Our central ceremonial hall will be an open circular plaza with grass under our bare feet and open sky above. We revere the earth, the air, the sun, and water. All symbolise life and we assert that all belong to no man, and to all men.

On initiation every member will be given a 'true name'. This is a play on words and we admit this as we admit everything. Members of the order will have their own name sure, and that is their name. Their true name is the name wherein they may participate in the free conveyence of truth between equal members. However we look forward to the Time of Revelation which is also called the Time of One Name when we shall no longer need a 'true name' and they will be consigned to the past.

All initiates will be explained our full principles and receive a copy of them to be learnt by heart. All conversations will be recorded and open to all who are within the cabal. Within the cloak of secrecy nothing will be secret. Further, there will be no esoteric knowledge held by those who rule. Indeed we have none who rule - all merely serve. Above will be as below, and all knowledge will be shared. We disdain the concept of nobility as based in its Indo-European root of 'know' - those who 'know' are 'noble'. A fig for that: all will 'know' and all will be 'noble'. Our hierarchy (for there must be one) will be based not on knowledge but on ability, ability to give the most and require the least. Our greatest leaders will be men and women with no desire for themselves.

Initiates are only asked to swear to a single thing - the rightness of selflessness as a goal. We have no opinion on other beliefs as long as they are not at odds with the rightness of selflessness.

We hold with ceremony and symbolism. Our ceremonies acknowledge various aspects of selflessness, truth, and fearlessness. All initiates will be inducted with full symbolic ceremony - the giving and receiving of food and water, the communion with soil, the planting of a tree, the washing with water, the sea of hands, the giving of thanks. That these ceremonies sound familiar is entirely intended. What we do is not unfamiliar. We do not reject what has come before, nor what will follow. All things are judged under the timeless rightness of the continuum.

What we seek is ambitious, never before done. We seek these things because we can and because in and of themselves they are worthy. The gift we as humans possess, mindfulness, is a treasure not to be misspent in pursuit of the animalistic, the adoration of the self. This would be a precise denial of its greatest virtue. To seek a beast-like dominion over a world of slaves is to seek the easy, the obvious, the stupid, and the unworthy. We disdain such ignoble ends as we disdain the ignoble means of fear, lies, and selfishness. We aim for the only thing worth having - a world of selflessness, truth, and compassion: a world without fear. We are not beasts: we are human. We are not mindless: We are mindful. As mindful humans we offer love, compassion, and truth for all who seek to join us on our journey without end.

Hitler and the Big Lie - the magic trick explained

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler explained the Big Lie. Paraphrasing now - regular people tell lots of little lies and expect to hear little lies in turn: but the concept of a huge lie, a really monstrous lie, a lie bigger than Ben Hur (ha ha ha), is something so alien to regular punters that it's effectively beyond their ken, and thus they are unable to dismiss it as a falsehood. The logic is: it's unimaginable that anyone, or any group, would tell a lie that big, therefore it must be true.


It seems there's a curious logic going on here. Let's imagine Hitler as a magician - a magician who explains the trick before he does it. "Ladies and Gentlemen, for my next trick I shall perform the 'Floating Phantom'. In this trick I shall, with great flourish, drape a cloth over a black felt-covered steel frame that will be lowered in as my lovely assistant drops into the box you see here. The frame was always there but you couldn't see it what with the black curtains and dim lighting, and not forgetting me and my lovely assistant doing our best to distract you. I next proceed with a bit of hoop-la - with a hoop! - and then for the big finale, I shall whip the cloth off and, believe it or not, the frame will be right there in front of you! But since you expect the girl, and she's not there, and what is there is impossible to see, you will be 'delighted and amazed', ha ha! And now on with the show! Ladies and Gentlemen! For your delight and amazement I shall now perform the wondrous Floating Phantom!"

And there you have Hitler as the creator of the Big Lie - the mad, where's-the-sense-in-it magician who tells you how he's going to trick you. Absurdly, no one ever wonders at this. Yes, we get the concept of the Big Lie, and yes, Hitler told us about it. But why do we imagine that it's his gig he's talking about? How does that make sense? And what was his big lie exactly? In any discussion of Hitler and the Big Lie, madly, no one ever does the obvious thing and cites an example of one of Hitler's Big Lies.

Okay, why don't I do it for them? How about the burning of the Reichstag? This was a false-flag attack blamed on 'terrorists' for the purpose of implementing a fascist roll-out. Um... perhaps we ought not to mention that? Shades of 911, with the Reichstag fire looking like the runt of the litter. In fact, purely in terms of casualties, and desired outcome (the nuking of Cairo), even the attack on the USS Liberty has it beat hands down. Sure enough in any public discussion of the Big Lie, the Reichstag fire will not be cited. Perish the thought! God forbid we end up in a broad Big Lie discussion about a government faking a terror attack to trick the population into accepting a variation of totalitarian rule. Thus we may discuss the Reichstag fire as false, and we may discuss Hitler as the proponent of the Big Lie, but we may not connect the two. Hitler may only be discussed as the epitome of evil one step below satan and the thought of him as an also-ran may not be countenanced.


But let's stop beating around the bush - Hitler, sure enough, was not that impossible creature, the magician who ruined his own trick. Rather he was the mythbuster of his day exploding the technique of those other tricksters, the people who owned the banks, the media, and most of commerce; who declared war on Germany in 1933; who ran the weimar printing presses; who backed and otherwise comprised the Bolsheviks; for whom the opium wars were fought; who ran and then commodified the slave trade; who posited God as supplicant under their own talmud; and who were, way back when, the only people Jesus ever got angry with. In case anyone missed it, that would be the Jews and specifically the dozen families who control international banking.

That was then, this is now, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. The media, which is to say, the place where all public discussions take place, is still entirely in the hands of Jews. If anyone wants to argue this, take it up with the gleeful-to-the-point-of-intoxicated Joel Stein. (Poor old Joel! Imagine the size of the shut-the-fuck-up he'd have been on the receiving end of! Ha ha ha, suffer in your jocks, Joel!).

Along those bracketed lines, it should come as no surprise that any discussion about the Big Lie, by the people who were accused of it, should posit the accuser as its inventor and chief practitioner. It's blame-the-victim meets shoot-the-messenger. If you think about it, this irony-free circularity is pretty much inevitable. It's QED territory - as if anyone given to the Big Lie, and who lie like they breathe, is going to throw their hands up in the air and say, 'We confess, it's true!' Ha ha ha ha - an abject impossibility.

Hmmm... an interesting thought, that. Let me have a cig on the balcony whilst I think about it.

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For me, everything comes down to the continuum of selfishness and selflessness. The people for whom the phrase the Big Lie was coined are upside-down paragons of selfishness - they're anti-Buddhas, the opposite of 'at one with the universe' who embrace utterly the collective mindset of 'us and them' with its individual expression of 'me uber alles'. Again, if you want to argue, include me out of any parlour games. Just go read the talmud.

Whilst the Big Lie is a thing worth discussing, obviously it's subordinate to this anti-Buddha mindset. Or to put it another way, given the mindset, and the degree of it, the Big Lie is inevitable. Keeping in mind that 'selfish behaviour' equals 'sin' (with 'selfless behaviour' equalling 'virtue'), a lie, whether small, medium, or big (or as they say in America - medium, large, and extra large, ha ha) is just another sin, one amongst many. For the anti-Buddhas at the furthest end of the continuum, all of their sins are 'Big', Lies included.

The problem with sins this great is that they cannot be walked away from. Sure enough, this is Shakespeare territory, specifically Macbeth:

By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er


Onya Bill! Like he said, as sins increase in magnitude, indeed to epic proportions, the sinner can no longer return to the embrace of those sinned against. Put mathematically, let's just call sin 'desire' (for the self) and plot it on an xy graph. As desire increases, 'fear' (of retribution) will inevitably climb in an identical fashion. Ha! Euclidean proof that Buddha was right in declaring fear and desire to be the same thing. Hats off to the Buddha and Euclid both.

Anyway, bare-headed now, let's just say that under this logic, the Big Lie can never be admitted, walked away from, or any other thing. Lies will follow lies, one on top of another, until an absurd unsustainable edifice is constructed that can only have one future - collapse. Hmm... it seems I'm in Les Visible territory here. Back to the specifics.

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There's been more shit said about Hitler than any other man in history. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have copped a lot of shit but he's got a long way to go to match the sins that have been concocted for Hitler. The bloc-media has perpetually depicted him as a villain whose only rival is Satan. BTW, I don't want anyone confused about me being an apologist for Hitler - best I can make out he was a crypto-gay paedophile racist, and probably a satanist to boot. Even on a purely technical realpolitik basis, Hitler is the guy to look to if you want a lesson in how to fail. (*And he was a vegetarian! This is ipso facto proof that vegetarians are clearly very wicked people. Hi John!)


But that being said, Hitler did a single extraordinary thing - he named and described the Big Lie. Has anyone else done this? Best I can see, everyone plays within the rules of the Big Lie parlour game, with no one ever calling a halt to things by simply naming the game. The game by the way is 'usury'. Even JFK, who followed Hitler in trying to retake control of his nation's money, did so in silence. What? Was he hoping the owners of the Fed wouldn't notice? Either way, he explained nothing and unsurprisingly no one has heard of executive order 11110.

Meanwhile on the telly, God knows how many discussions I've sat through with politicians pleading with the Reserve Bank not to raise rates, and never once have any of them wondered at its 'independence'. Likewise, the opposition will attack the government for getting into deficit by way of borrowing money from the Reserve, but never mention that the Reserve just pulled the money out of thin air. Even Ron Paul, the US's chief opponent of the Fed, will discuss inflation, the gold standard, all manner of things, but will never bag out usury as crap from the get-go. Not forgetting the left, where everyone from John Pilger to Naomi Klein will heap shit on the IMF and the World bank as wicked institutions but never wonder who owns them or whether the whole thing is a con.

And yes, I do get it that there are sundry other Big Lies entirely unconnected to banking, but for mine, none of them seem to be possessed of banking's ancient voodoo power. The central core to the banking Big Lie is the absurdly simple, and yet ultimately daft, idea that money is possessed of some kind of planet-like gravity and that merely by existing should attract more money as interest. For mine this is the heart of the matter stripped down to its rawest, most impenetrable kernel. From this flows everything else - fractional banking, reserve banking, monetary policy - and upon which such perfectly vicious entities as the IMF and the World Bank are then constructed.


Let's not forget that these other Big Lies are arguably connected to banking as well. Why did the world jewry declare war on Germany in 1933? 1933 was pre-Kristalnacht, pre-yellow stars, pre-Wannsee conference, pre-everything except Hitler's discussion of the Big Lie and his wresting of Germany's monetary policy from the Rothschilds and their very good friends. If we're prepared to acknowledge Judea's declaration of war on Germany, who but a fool wouldn't include follow-the-money in explaining it?

Following that, it's only a short step to viewing the current War On Terror in the same terms. We all know that the stories about Saudis and 911, Iran and nukes, the Taleban and opium, Pakistan and the Mumbai bombings, etc. etc. ad nauseam, are lies. And they're pretty big sure, but might they have something in common? A single, really Big Lie that explains all of them? Okay, how about the fact that all of these countries declare usury sinful and otherwise do not submit to a privately owned reserve banking system? It works for me.

Whatever you might think of Hitler, you'd have to admit that at the very least he did one worthy thing - he gave name to the Big Lie and explained the means by which it functions. But on this topic we can also fault him for not having explained clearly enough quite how big the Big Lie can be. Perhaps we can put that down to chaos theory (and its ideas on the infinite nature of scale) not having been invented yet? Regardless, in much the same way that 'big' is a concept that has no end, the Big Lie, under the auspices of its chief magicians, will always be greater than we who are used to little lies can imagine. Even as we shift our sense of scale and come to terms with the enormity of any given Big Lie, above it will be another.

Sure enough, the high priests of banking would have this seen as the ultimate voodoo spell, invested with numerological occult power. But this is arse-about. The fact that a Big Lie of this magnitude can be rendered hidden-profane-occult isn't proof of it's magical power. Quite the opposite, it's proof of its pathetic frailty - if it weren't hidden it would collapse in a screaming heap.


Back to our magician now - the easiest way to ruin his trick would be to turn the house lights on. 'Occult' means hidden - unhide what's hidden and the magic evaporates. Suddenly everything changes: the magician frozen on stage with a horrified expression on his face; the crowd's 'delight and amazement' gone like a puff of smoke; the whole tableau as un-magical as can be.

'Boo! Get Off!' says the crowd, as the well-deserved tomatoes fly.

Love

Following on from the last self-indulgent piece with me venting my spleen about my father, Susana said the most extraordinary thing in the comments. She put me and the word 'love' in the same sentence. When I read it, my eyebrows went up and I froze in disbelief. But only for a second. Then I tilted my head back and laughed.

Truth be known, I have no idea what love means. You don't need to take my word for it. You need merely search this site for the word 'love'. Whilst I couldn't be fagged doing it myself, I'm prepared to bet that it will only appear in the phrase 'peace, love, and understanding' which I use not so much as a banner to rally around, but rather as a cudgel to beat things with.

The word, in and of itself, as a stand-alone description, I, um... 'dismiss'. Which is to say, I dismiss it from my vocabulary. Honestly, what the hell does it mean?

Never mind love, here I'm far more interested in lies and lying. Actually the word 'lie' is just as fraught as 'love' and I tend to avoid it as well. Let's just say that I ponder the nature of misrepresentation. But regardless, if we were to take every lie ever uttered and analysed them to see which one predominated, I'd bet money that the phrase 'I love you' would win hands down.

And go figure that more than a few women have made it clear to me that, but for the want of me saying it, they'd have slept with me. I'm a strange cove, sure, but women who do this always fall in my estimation.

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A while back in Shanghai, there was a woman I fancied. I was directing and she was my producer. She was smart, funny, and sexy. And she told me of her travails with her laowai boyfriend who came to Shanghai every couple of months for business. In between times he lived in Belgium with his wife and kids (Urgh! No one here I hope!). And once or twice a day he would send her an SMS saying some variation of 'I love you'. This made her all gooey. Me, I shook my head. Between words and actions, words are cheap. Hell! He sent these words by SMS, the cheapest means there is.


Me to her - "If I said you were just something to occupy his time when he's here in China and all it cost him was an SMS every day, would I be wrong? Forget his words, what does he do? What is there to say that this guy isn't just some bullshit artist? Men lie you know. Forget his words. What are his actions?"

Anyway, she threw him over. For me, ha ha! Well that was the theory anyway. What with assorted cultural confusions and a plot straight out of a bedroom farce, we didn't sleep with each other. But that was cool, she was going to come to Sydney for Chinese New Year and stay with me. After that I was going to go back to Shanghai and become an in-house director. Sounded good to me. But! - it all went to hell. For reasons that weren't clear she didn't come to Sydney and when I flew back to start up with the directing gig, it was if we were complete strangers.

I had failed apparently. Specifically I had failed to send her an SMS every day telling her that I loved her. God help me! What with her last boyfriend using this precise process to lie his way into her bed, here she was angry with me for not having done the same thing. I shook my head and wondered if she and her Belgian didn't deserve each other. But truth be known, my part in a mad farce aside, I was pleased. If she was that undiscerning, that incapable of distinguishing between words and actions, then she wasn't the chick for me. I never saw her again and packed in the directing caper shortly thereafter. And a good thing too.

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The above was but a single 'I love you' anecdote from dozens. And I don't doubt that you'd all have your own. Truthfully, there are more stories of lies and lying with 'I love you' at the centre of them than there are stars wheeling in the sky. For mine, the phrase is so utterly devalued that it's worthless. There's a lot to be said for saying nothing.

Like the Japanese! The Japanese are their own variety of laconic. They are not a gushy people. Whilst the younger generation, deeply steeped in Hollywood, are changing now, the older generation do not prate on with heartfelt drivel. If you want to see a perfect example of what I'm talking about, go see 'Hana-Bi' by Beat Takeshi. He's a legendary director and Hana-Bi is arguably his masterpiece. And sure it's dotted with action and violence, but mostly it's a 'love' story. Everything that takes place in the film is an act of devotion by our hero for his dying wife. Astoundingly almost nothing is said. No speeches, no declarations. Actions are all. And the actions are unambiguous. The truth lays in what is done, not in what is said.


And if anyone does watch this film on my say-so and wonders, "What sort of a crummy 'love story' was that? No one even kissed anyone!", you'll actually be making my point for me. Your dissatisfaction will say far more about you as a Westerner than it will about the Japanese.

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And then there's the Maori and the Hawaiian people. Culturally, since they're both Polynesian, their cultures are as close as could be. Curiously they seem not to know very much about each other. In conversations I've had with Maori about Hawaiians, and vice versa, no one seemed to know anything. But whatever, they have many many things in common. As a complete dilettante I'm pretty sure I won't get in trouble for saying that the concept of 'breath as life' is central to their shared culture. In Hawaii, this breath/life is the 'ha' in 'aloha'. (It's also the 'ha' in 'haole', their word for white person. There's a fabulous story in that, but I'll sling it in the comments.)


The Maori likewise acknowledge the importance of breath in their custom of touching noses. This functions for Maori like the handshake does for white people. The handshake is an expression of 'peace' insofar as it's a demonstration that one isn't carrying a weapon. Three cheers for white people. Compare that to the Maori, who touch noses so that they might exchange the breath of life. But here's the crucial thing - the breath is always from the nose, not from the mouth. This is not because the nose is special but because the mouth is considered 'corrupt', or perhaps more correctly 'corrupting'. The stink of food is part of this but that's actually the least of it. Breath from the mouth is spurned because what comes from a person's mouth, words sure enough, cannot be trusted. In words lay falsity.

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And then there's that Brazilian chick. This is a looong story, but there I was in her marvellous ramshackle house smack dab in the middle of a picturesqe but down-at-the-heels town two hours from Sao Paolo. She was a Rudolph Steiner devotee and was in the arduous process of setting up a Rudolph Steiner school cum arts-and-craft co-op. And I was going to join her. My head was there. But that too came a cropper. Story of my life. If anyone out there is familiar with the Tora San movies (uber-famous in Japan), that's me. I never get the girl.


Whilst the whole thing was complicated with family and a boyfriend etc. a key moment came in a discussion about 'love'. She looked me in the eye, grasped my hand and told me of the most important thing there is. That being love, sure enough. She even quoted the Beatles to me. And hats off to the Beatles, but between them and my continuum (at the top of this page) with selflessness as the only thing counting, I was, ahem, dismissive. I tried to explain the distinction but got nowhere. It didn't help of course that I didn't speak Portuguese, her English left a lot to be desired, and the Japanese which we both spoke (she being sansei Japanese) was ill-suited to philosophy. But the language didn't matter. She said love and I shook my head. "No, you don't understand," I said. Yeah yeah nobody, just face it - you blew it. Time to do that Tora San thing and smile, wave, and hit the road.

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Bloody Hell! Do I have a point or am I just blathering? Both, ha ha! The point is that for me, words are worthless, with 'love' at the top of the list. And yep, I just used a thousand words to say that. The irony runs rampant.

Never mind me as cleverpants wordsmith - a blog, an audience, and a huge pile of words being put in some kind of order. Bully for that. But back at the house of geriatric indulgence, with me and the old man, it's positively Japanese. Every day is like a scene from Hana-Bi.

Perhaps I brought it with me from the temple - "shiraberi wa dame" - chit-chat is bad. And there, there was a lot to talk about. Here at home there is nothing to talk about beyond Fox Sports and doctors. And I haven't much time for either beyond needing to know what channel to change to and when the appointments are.

Here there is no love. Or certainly no declarations of it. The only thing that counts is 'doing'. For me (or perhaps for an ideal me) all my actions should be an embodiment of selflessness. And I ain't in that picture. And nor are such messy things as emotions. Like 'love' etc. If I was to start in on that, the whole thing would fall in a screaming heap. It would turn the picture into one that was about me. And if it was about me, it wouldn't be about me because I'd be gone.


But here's a picture of me. Or me as played by Vincent Cassel in the movie of my life, that is. Nothing in his head. Nothing in his heart. No thoughts, no love, no nothing - just emptiness. Dig it, it's like Camus' Stranger albeit with a happy disposition and no Arab monkey business. And when Cassel wants to know what his motivation is, he'll be told he hasn't one. "Just go through the motions. Attempt to embody selflessness. Don't ask us what that would look like since no one bloody knows. Just do your best." Says our Vincent - "But why am I happy?". Sorry Vince, no answer to that one neither. You just are.

Truth is, living with my father has been a brilliant experience. The only way anyone could cope with the old man's utter self-obsession is to let go of one's own desires. I'll admit that there's a certain 'reactionary' aspect to this. And I know that no one likes that word - to say, 'I am not that' is full of negative connotation, a thing to be avoided. But if one is seeking selflessness it's no such thing. Everything I wish to shed is here precisely depicted in the closest genetic template imaginable. It is what I am leaving behind.

And Susana, apologies for using you as a prop, ha ha. It's not you, it's just my brain turning a word around. And what a word! A word so fraught, so plugged into insecurities and self-worth, replete with uncountable meanings, stories, variations, and use and misuse, I reckon we're better off without it.

Do or don't do. Actions over words. That's where the truth lays.

the beginning of the end for the continuum

Wow, illustrations. Can you guess what they denote? Oh, all right, I'll tell you. They are representations of the reality of the continuum. I don't expect that that will actually clarify things, but all will be made clear.

As impressed as I have been with the continuum, I'd always been nagged by a simple question. How come I'd never seen it anywhere else? It's so simple and so elegant that there's no way known I'm the only person to have thought of it. (Perhaps it does exist elsewhere. Feel free to fill me in if you've seen it.) But I suspect it doesn't exist and the reason is simple. The continuum is flawed and must be rejected.

But before the big picture, let's attack the small stuff. There were certain technical problems that came clear to me as I wrote the anti-buddha piece below. The continuum is obviously asymmetrical. The two ends are not alike. The selflessness end is straightforward. Achievement of selflessness and arrival at Buddha-dom is a full-stop. There is nothing beyond oneness with the universe. I may change my mind on this matter later, but for now, it's what I think. Let's wait until I'm Buddha, ha ha.

The selfishness/antibuddha end of the continuum is fundamentally different. For starters, it has no full-stop. Any ultimate act of evil you can think of, I could top it. And sure, you could then top me. When Michael Palin in Life Of Brian said that crucifixion was very terrible, Eric Idle replied that it wasn't as nasty as something he just thought of. Exactly. There is no end to the variety of selfish behaviour and there is no end to the magnitude of it. Anti-buddha is an abjectly imprecise term.

Do the pictures make more sense now? The selfless end of the continuum now comprises a single centre. The selfish ends are beyond counting. This depiction illustrates the singularity of selflessness and the multiplicity of that which is not selfless. As I rolled this image around in my head it became clear to me why no one has bothered with a continuum that gives equal time to selfishness. Selfishness (which is to say sin) is without end. To dwell on it is to never find selflessness.

Monks in zen monasteries are given a series of koans, or riddles. Invariably the first of these is 'mu' or nothingness. I met a fellow who had spent three years contemplating just this first one. I look forward to doing the same thing. And in contemplating nothingness it really doesn't do to give proportional time to everything-elseness. And that's what the selfishness end of the continuum is - an outsize distraction. Here's a thought - If you're trying to figure out where you're going what's the point of thinking about all the places you don't want to be?

So. The continuum is too complicated. One end of it is unnecessary. All that's required is the pursuit of selflessness. Dwelling on selfishness is worthless. Ha ha ha ha, the obvious question now is - whither this blog?

anti-buddhas

How to explain the evil fuckers of the world? Over at smokingmirrors there's been talk of a 6% of people as being psychopaths. Apparently there's a book called Ponerology that explains the science of ponerology, which is to say 'evil'. I haven't read it. I've merely read about it. But I have to be honest and say that I have trouble making this concept gel. There's something that's a bit too 'either/or' for mine.

Selfishness_______________________________________Selflessness

This is my continuum. No one cares for it. Never mind - It's as fine a means of judging behaviour as any I've encountered. And you can't say it ain't elegant.

Human behaviour is very messy and many factors come into play. Determining the rightness of one's actions on this continuum is not simple. The middle ground between the extremes is huge and ambiguous. There are no simplistic do's/don't-do's here. Thought is required. But two aspects of it are simple - they being the extremities.

Any person who can perfectly embrace selflessness is Buddha. They become one with the universe. This does happen but it's a tough gig. It's not made any easier with every aspect of our media devoted solely to making the population as selfish and self-indulgent as possible.

The other end of the continuum is less spectacular and far more common. People at this end are what I call anti-buddhas. For the record I shall state that an anti-buddha is not the Antichrist, whatever that is. Anti-buddhas are merely wicked paragons of selfishness. An anti-buddha has the least regard for others and the most regard for himself. An 'us and them' mindset is necessary. Dig it - 'us and them' is the opposite of 'one with the universe'. Interesting, no? Anyway, given that the above continuum goes to the nth degree, this ultimate selfishness would ideally comprise the enslavement of all living creatures to the benefit of the fewest people possible.

An anti-buddha is a psychopath, same-same. Except it's not that simple. An anti-buddha is not an either/or proposition. There is no either/or on a continuum. Between a baby-killer and a baby-beater and a baby-neglecter and someone who just doesn't like kids very much, there's a linear path travelled. At what point does one cross that threshold and become one of the 6%? And is there truly no turning back? And is this alleged either/or psychopath irredeemable? Is there nothing to be done with a psychopath apart from locking him up forever or killing him?

What then to make of this fellow? Have a read but give equal attention to the Chinese. The Japanese soldiers that the Chinese locked up were precisely anti-buddhas. And somehow the Chinese thought them worthy of redemption, and succeeded at it.

It wasn't easy. It took years of unrelenting psychological pressure. No self-serving bullshit was permitted. Nothing short of completely admitting to the full wickedness of their behaviour was accepted. There was no time limit. Whoever it was, was stuck in jail until they made a full confession that the jailers decided wasn't bullshit. I don't believe any human could defeat this process.

Remember the end of 1984? As the bullet entered his brain, Winston Smith loved Big Brother. Smith's understanding of the rightness of 2+2=4 was broken down and rebuilt until he embraced 2+2=5. What I'm suggesting is the inverse of this process. One would take an anti-buddha and give him the opportunity to abandon his delusion of us-and-them, of 2+2=5. He would then be free to embrace the truth of selflessness. Breaking down a false proposition is easier than building one. Even a six year old can learn that 2+2=4. The replacement for delusion requires no fabrication. It exists already as truth and need merely be seen with a mind unclouded.

I have no time for aliens, lizards, or non-humans with a DNA of 'evil'. I view them as metaphors for people who have utterly embraced selfishness. That they should do this is neither unlikely nor difficult. In fact it's a certainty. Of course there are people like this. As sure as there are Buddhas there are anti-buddhas. This state of being, of delusion, is not irremediable. That's not to say that such a remedy is easy, quite the opposite, it's tremendously difficult. But it can be done. If Pu'yi with his life-long inculcation can be rehabilitated, so too can a Rothschild. Lock a Rothschild up in prison and I guarantee you he could be broken.

Denial and resistance. Nervous breakdown. Reconnection with humanity. And, believe it or not, gratitude. Even for the worst of the worst, redemption is possible.

PS. But just to be on the safe side, our Rothschild would be banned from possessing any money, restricted to a cloistered community and (sorry folks) sterilised. After a multi-generational succession of anti-buddhas, it's better safe than sorry.

Don't believe anything they tell you about nihilism

Those nihilists are nuts aren't they? Take me for example. Here I am tapping away at a keyboard that I don't even believe exists. I'm madly putting words in some kind of idiot order that can't possibly make any sense for non-existant people whom I don't believe can read, since there's no such ability. You'd wonder why I bother.

That's what a nihilist is, isn't it? Someone who madly thinks nothing exists? Has anyone met such a creature? Roll it around in your head - 'a person who thinks nothing exists'. Does that make any sense? Does it sound sustainable? How does it work on a day-to-day basis? Why would this mad fellow eat? Or scratch his arse? Or bother living at all? Honestly if you're prepared to entertain such a thought you really should wonder at yourself. The whole idea is idiotic on its face. And yet that's what I get accused of being. Since I choose not to believe in things, somehow nothing is real.

What nonsense. Real things don't require belief. They just are. The butcherbird singing a song on my windowsill in the hope of getting a piece of ham doesn't require a stretch of my imagination. It doesn't require me to take someone's word for it. I don't have to dispel doubt that he's there. No belief is needed because he's Right Fucking There, singing that berserk song. G'day mate, yes I know you're there, and no, you're not getting any ham. I'm a cruel man but fair.

What other things apart from butcherbirds don't require belief? Well, it's simple. Everything you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste is completely unconnected with the idea of, or the need for, belief. To attack an otherwise rational person on the basis that he can't tell the difference between what is and what isn't, is, gee whiz, I don't know... I just shake my head at the stupidness of it. But believe it or not, ha ha, I've encountered it many times. It's the standard sleight of hand employed by religious types to conflate a belief in a thing (ie. religion) with an absence of belief (ie. atheism/nihilism). Says they, these are equivalent 'beliefs': a Christian believes God exists; an atheist believes no god exists; whilst a nihilist goes further and believes that nothing exists. God spare me. It's a crap argument but crap arguments is all religious types have.

Perhaps when arguing with mad Christians it's better to concentrate on shared disbelief. Do Christians believe that that blue-headed elephant guy is a god? No? Okay cross him off. We could go through god after god in this fashion and have a lovely time agreeing with each other over and over. Cross, cross, cross. Yay! We smash fake gods! If we were to come up with a complete list of gods, the Christians and I would be in complete agreement over the non-existence of 99.99% of them. Go figure why they'd get all huffy about a single god amongst this uncountable multitude. Apparently this one god is special. But aren't they all? Who would worship a god that isn't special? Christians shouldn't take this personally. This line of logic is not specific to any particular religion. It's a 'catholic' argument, if you like, ha ha.

Anyway let's say we've arrived at the obviousness of atheism. Then there's the unavoidable question - why stop with gods? If I'm prepared to make that final tiny step from 99.99% atheism to 100% atheism, might I not cast my jaundiced eye at everything else I'm meant to believe? There's no shortage of these things. They define us and bind our society together. For instance, I am meant to believe that it is right that one should have unlimited desires and go to great lengths attempting to satisfy those desires. Apparently I should base my life on this. To moderate my pursuit of this self-gratification, there are certain fear-based proscriptions on my behaviour. All our laws pivot on the assumption that I shall not do a thing because I will be fearful of the punishment that will result. Is that the best we can do? We geniuses? We white men? Honestly?

What bullshit. I reject desire. I reject fear. A fig for arranging society thus. See if I can't do better, ha ha. I gave it a try just to the right here with my abjectly unsexy continuum. Between self and selflessness no belief is required. The less cluttered it is, the better. There are no proscriptions, no rules, no loopholes - merely an ideal to be aimed for.

Think about it. Nowhere here do I ask anyone to believe in anything. Nowhere do I say, Take my word for it. In fact, for the record I say, Don't believe it. Belief is not required and will not help you. Sure enough, in the meeting of the pursuit of selflessness and the mindset of perfect nihilism, there is no clash, only harmony. In fact I'll go further and state, right here, right now, that they are the same thing. True nihilism involves embracing the ultimate truth that there is no self. There is only a self if you believe that it is so. A person who can abandon this belief will know the mind of Buddha. You, me, anyone. If other people choose not to think about this, to use it as a self-serving straw-man argument, turn it arse-about, or any other goddamn thing, a fig for them, ha ha.

PS. And then there's the Buddha - "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". Now that's nihilism.

Saying sorry is bullshit

Here in Oz, we're thick in a discussion about saying sorry to Aborigines. I shall confuse things initially by declaring that white people saying sorry to Aborigines is bullshit. Don't wig out yet, just keep reading.

'Sorry' is what you say when you bump into someone. For obvious, simple and accidental events such as this, one word will suffice. The saying of it implicitly acknowledges three things: the presence of the other; that a transgression has occurred; and the nature of the transgression, which in this case was nothing much.

It's the three acknowledgements which are important. The word 'sorry' is merely a polite shorthand to achieve them. In more complex events, a single word like sorry is insufficient. It might cover the first two aspects of the acknowledgement but the third is woefully unaddressed. And the third is the crucial pivot. Really it's the only bit that counts. If it is done correctly the first two are taken as read.

Just saying sorry is a piece of piss. Anyone can do it, even through gritted teeth. A teenager who has conducted a screaming match ruining a social occasion on account of not being allowed to go and hang out at the mall might, without too much difficulty, be able to say 'Sorry'. He or she might even be able to say, 'Sorry I ruined everyone's dinner'. Each of these steps is do-able without puncturing the teenager's delusional view of themself and the world. But imagine the teenager saying the following - 'Sorry I ruined everyone's dinner. I viewed my own petty needs as being more important than the harmony that existed here. I realise that all my life, things have been done for me and really the least I can do in return is to consider others and attempt to be pleasant.' It's an unlikely prospect isn't it? You can see how the word 'sorry' is almost superfluous now.

The reason one never hears such words is because it requires one to examine the nature of their delusion. Delusion defines the self - for everyone, that is, except Buddha (and Bodhisattvas, sure). But forget them - none of us is Buddha and delusion is who we are. A true discussion about a transgression against another is actually a discussion of who one is.

And that must be fought tooth and nail. Sure enough, here we are in Australia and everyone agrees that we should say 'sorry'. But instantly we're bogged down about what we're apologising for exactly. Should we include the phrase 'stolen generation'? What if we replace the word 'stolen' with 'taken'? How about 'mistaken'? How about 'accidentally misplaced'?


God spare us. Why don't we just tell those unappreciative, grog-soaked, bludging, black bastards to get off their arses and work. We made this country great and those fuckers think we owe them a living. And yeah, SORRY. Happy now?

Nobody says - self-impressed white people can go fuck themselves. People tell me I should be a teacher. Ha ha ha. No really. Okay then, cop this history -

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the continents of North America, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia had no concept of private ownership. They didn't travel great distances and steal other people's shit. How would that profit a man, said they. Until we killed them that is. And yes, they were humans and fought their neighbours. But us imagining their savagery was worse than ours is laughable. Never mind Mel Gibson's bullshit Apocalypto slaughter-fest, we made these people look like a bunch of saints. Their philosophies, their social arrangements, their music, art and poetry, and even their science were nothing in the face of our murderous certainty of our own greatness.



So, might a good starting point for us acknowledging our transgression (which, since we're saying sorry, obviously exists) be the fact that Aborigines' lack of a 'deed' showing ownership of this country was not a failure on their part. (Like we'd have paid any attention anyway). And us showing them how it's done was not a testament to our superiority. It was merely one state of mind meeting another. One acquisitive, one not. And acquisitive is not a compliment. In this spirit of acquisitiveness, we would teach the aborigines that: flora is to be cut down; fauna is to be shot; the earth is to be dug up; and the rivers emptied. We would render their way of life impossible. (And ours too soon enough). That they choose not to embrace our societal arrangements does not condemn them.

Me, I view their distaste for impossibly complicated arrangements of ownership, paper money, credit cards, shares, mortgages, bills, ID's and Bundy clocks to be perfectly understandable. What do these things have to do with humans and the astounding world in which they live? I'd happily argue that they're a denial of that. And yes, they have problems with alcohol. 40,000 years without alcohol, forced into a world-view that makes no sense to them and we expect them to just say no, to face this madness sober? Shit. Anglo-Saxons wagging their collective finger at others' misuse of alcohol is the height of hypocrisy. We're the drinking-est people that ever lived.

So. How about that for a foundation on which to build a discussion of our transgression? Let's now progress to how harmony might be achieved between people who must necessarily live with each other. Between a truthful discussion of who we are and an angry 'sorry' hissed through gritted teeth, there's a lot of middle ground. It's not an either/or choice. It's a continuum. How honest we want to be with ourselves is up to us.

Buddha v Darwin

I don't have much time for philosophy as such. Between the arcane vocabulary and various dialectics and epistemologies (did I mention the vocab?) it does my head in. I gave it a burl and came away none the wiser. I suspect if I was to spend my life pursuing philosophers and philosophy I'd end up knowing less than when I started. That says as much about me as it does about them.

I decided there were only two men I had any time for. They are Charles Darwin and the Buddha. There have actually been many buddhas but this particular one was named Siddhartha Gautama. When you hear of Buddha or Buddhism he's the one they're talking about. Darwin, of course invented evolution, which is to say he defined it for Westerners. What he defined had always been there but had always previously been explained in as many ways as exist in the human imagination and in none of them usefully.

But I had a problem with these two. I knew both of them were true. When I talk of them, Darwin and Buddha, I conflate their names with their 'philosophy'. This suits me. Just go with it. Anyway, they seemed at odds with each other. They couldn't both be right. One described a system without thought and one with. One seemed to embrace cruelty and one emphatically rejected it. They fought battles in my head and it wasn't until a particularly lucid and thoughtful joint that I reconciled them. But I'm leaping ahead.


There's a lot of shit written about these two and now it's my turn, ha ha. When I talk of them I'm really describing a distillation of my own making. This is necessary. Darwin first. Darwin, apparently extolled the concept of 'survival of the fittest'. Thus we should admire lions, tigers and other predators. They are the 'fittest' and therefore the best. Unfortunately this is a load of shite. Some other guy came up with the 'fittest' phrase and other people, whom I generically call motherfuckers, use it to justify war, eugenics, time-and-motion and every other fucked up thing they could think of. This is called 'social darwinism' and has nothing to do with Darwin.

In essence, under Darwin, things that self-replicate will deal with environmental changes or they won't. If you're eyesight is great it is precisely as great as is required to catch prey and not become it. If you're eyesight goes to hell when you're forty, that's cool. Once you're forty your offspring, to whom you've hopefully passed on your great eyesight, are either viable or not. If they're viable Darwin says you may become prey. He's ceased caring.

Don't be confused by things that have nothing to do with surviving and having kids. You can use those same eyes for star-gazing, admiring Matisse or looking at porn. Darwin doesn't care. Not everything has to be about the viability of offspring - it's just that it can't be against it. I briefly wondered about homosexuality under Darwin. I'm being clinical here you understand. How can he tolerate behaviour so contrary to offspring, never mind their viability? Clearly he does tolerate it. People who prefer members of their own sex have always existed and always will. But there will never be a population that is 100% gay. The percentage of gay people in a population must be less than 100%, a lot less, more like a few percent. Probably 2.1 standard deviations from the norm, ha ha. This is fine with Darwin. The population will carry on and our Charles won't bat an eyelid. Distractions don't matter.


You can see the cruelty in Darwin though. The shit that social darwinists prize is all there. I've seen adolescent bell magpies peck the weakest sibling to death. For an otherwise admirable bird it's shocking. But magpies will spend their entire adult life fighting for turf. There's only so many bugs and worms to go around. With inter-species negotiation impossible, tough guys only need apply. But apart from the aforementioned adolescent viciousness they're like every other bird and avoid a fight at all costs. They're not wantonly cruel. They're precisely as cruel as they need to be. Darwin doesn't advocate this - he just has no opinion.

And what was Buddha on about? A ton of things. It depends on who you listen to. If you've read this far you're listening to me. But don't worry, my opinion of Buddha is pretty unobjectionable. Buddha said there is no self. He knew this because he achieved selflessness. 'Selflessness - As used and recommended by the Buddha!' And the opposition brand is selfishness - as used and recommended by motherfuckers. Never mind the crap copywriting, this dichotomy, or continuum, can be as profound as any ever invented. It's got rules beat. Rules equal loopholes. And loopholes equal 'lying'. The rules about lying and the lying to justify it are, for fans of hypocrisy, exquisite. The four words 'Thou shalt not lie' has magically created an entire ornate edifice of nitpicking bullshit - "I didn't tell you because you didn't ask..." - "I never said that. My precise words were..." - "You asked me if I 'slept' with her. We never slept..." blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum. Under the 'rules' none of these people actually 'lied'. Bully for them and their sense of rightness. But what they inescapably did do is misrepresent reality for selfish purposes. And what of that old chestnut 'the white lie'? That's against the rules isn't it? Or not? Would a saintly rule-obeyer be compelled to tell someone they have a fat arse? To hell with it - forget the rules - forget the words 'lie' and 'lying'. They're worthless. Any discussion involving them inevitably disappears up its own oh-so-clever arse, fat or otherwise. Keep it simple. Did the person behave selfishly or selflessly? A continuum that has selfishness at one end and selflessness at the other is a knife that cuts through bullshit.


And if you ask me, I will tell you Buddha was not a god. He simply achieved complete selflessness. A person who does this becomes one with the universe. Even people a fraction of the way there are spooky. They are possessed of whatever it is that Shinto reveres. I won't describe it, but visit a Shinto shrine, be quiet and understand why the shrine is there. That's what I reckon anyway. But how about you and me - we aspirers to Buddha-dom? Relax. There's no need to leap in the deep end. Satori are possible but unlikely. Best to start small. Small acts of selflessness will do wonders for you and everyone around you. It's absurdly easy and yet it's absurdly difficult. In this world nobody wants you to be selfless. Everybody wants you to be selfish. The entire purpose of corporate media is to encourage you to be so - Buy that thing! You deserve it! Pamper yourself! Whatever you desire! - It's difficult to keep selflessness in mind when everything and everyone urges you to be the opposite. It comprises the air that breathe. In trying to become selfless a sense of dislocation is almost inevitable. But this is good. Go with it. It's the only way you'll know who you are. And if you do it right you become Buddha - but I wouldn't hold my breath. What's far more likely, in fact almost a certainty, is that you become a better person, make the world a better place, and find happiness. Don't look to me. I suck at it. I'm lazy, self-impressed and love to interrupt. Read carefully, it's obvious in every word I write. This 'easiest thing ever' requires perpetual mindfulness. It's hard.

But forget the bombast. This is Darwin v Buddha. A Battle to the Death! Darwinian cruelty versus Buddhist selflessness. One trumps the other. Aaargh! Stop! Forget social darwinism. It's bullshit, which is to say it's a self-serving misrepresentation of the truth. It's nonsense designed by wicked, selfish people to excuse their wicked, selfish behaviour. It conflates Darwin's failure to judge with an endorsement. Darwin Endorses Nothing. Forget the lions and tigers and magpies. Darwin equally addresses earthworms, peach trees and butterflies. A complete absence of cruelty and yet each of these species, and millions like them, persist successfully. Hats off, says Darwin. Whatever works is fine by him. On the subject of human selflessness as a method of dealing with the vagaries of survival he's neither for nor against. Darwin is not a social darwinist, ha ha. If a people can be selfless and have children that live to carry on in like fashion then that's fine with him. Darwin smiles serenely - if it works, it works.

And Buddha? Buddha is uninterested in magpies, worms or any other creature of little brain. These are animals of instinct not thought. None are capable of mindfulness nor can they achieve oneness with the universe. Only we can achieve, or even attempt this, and Buddha addresses us. That we can be cruel is beyond obvious. We can emulate thoughtless creatures if we choose to. Buddha stands shoulder to shoulder with Darwin in acknowledging this. But he goes one step further. He knows that humans can wake from mindlessness. Darwin, immutable avatar of life and death has no opinion. Buddha smiles serenely - selflessness is possible.