Karl

'Tongue in cheek' why Sir, you surely mistake me ;-) The whole Global warming scam was always a socialist pipe dream for smuggling communism in through the back door. Of course those that footed the bill to get it going have made a nice fat profit, and the research scientists get lots of tax payer grant funding. It's obvious to anyone with an ounce of intelligence, that the Eco warriors commonly conflate pollution with global warming and construct a story around 'destroying the planet' in order to destroy capitalism and reduce everyone to living it mud huts and aurtarky. They must view Maos agrarian China of total labour and starvation as a minor miracle.

So this means that we can grow more food just by increasing the carbon dioxide ? That's brilliant. Why didn't the scientists know that. All we need to do is to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we can spend less time farming and feed more people. Could there be a way to accomplish this miracle by doing some kind of activity that would create the carbon dioxide as a by product. That woukd be sick if we could think of such a solution.

I don't think he had a hip operation. From what I read he is a JW and refused treatment-although I'm not clear why, from what I could glean from a JW colleague the only issue is blood transfusions/organ replacement. A hip is an artificial medical joint and he could have had artificial blood plasma during surgery ? I'm not that up on these things, but that seems possible ?

Or that he had epilepsy from childhood, both of his hips had disintegrated and he had just returned from hospital following a severe bout of flue ?

Does it clear out all the baggage, or only allow the baggage to come to the surface ? If the conceptual hierarchy is blighted with falsity and error, then you must first know what that error is before it can be corrected, otherwise the result will be a reaffirmation of the previous error. It's also not always wise to bring deep trauma to the surface. Re-living trauma as a flashback can be very disturbing, often becoming a source of emotional over load in the present. A general desensitisation from the emotion is a better option, but in the case of severe trauma, it's best not to begin by trying to unearth it. Meditation can dredge things up which are better remaining hidden. Maybe a good Master who is also a skilled psychiatric practitioner would help with these things, but I doubt there are many who fit that bill. Also, being alone with thoughts has a tendency to magnify them greatly. If there is not an outlet, or the person is unwilling, or finds it difficult to talk it out with a confidant, these thoughts can become powerfully energised and that can certainly lead to psychosis if they become obsessive.

It's about the damage done during the intervening years. I agree with you, already there is a hardening across the West to this incessant creeping corporatism mixed with authoritarian government with its mass surveillance and dumbed down media. I can see what is intended for us which is to spread to corporate net into every area of public service and combine it with some kind of service industry. However, I know my economics and the philosophy that underlies it. The reality is that the state is creating a hybrid socialist/fascistic economy which will, in the end result in its own demise through stagnation.

They can. A political system which imprisons the body, imprisons the mind. It's difficult to pursue rational self interest in a 8'x6' cell, if you will excuse the straw man analogy. Our financial system is dominated by the state, if we vote to stay we will invariably end up with the Euro. As Greece discovered, when you surrender your financial system to a foreign power the economy quickly goes beyond the power to control. It's bad enough with the BoE and the Pound, but imagine how much worse it can become with the Euro.

Bohemian Rhapsody ?

I question, questioning everything. :-)

It should have at least made it obvious that Britain has no 'special relationship'. Indeed it hasn't had any special relationship since we defaulted on our First World War debt. By the end of the Second World War the USA had its revenge. We lost the empire, virtually all our Gold reserves and most of our major assets. We were squeezed as dry as a bone. The US did not go to war for us or Europe, it went for its own purposes of empire expansion. Britain spent over a century doing precisely the same thing. Obama is looking after the interests of the USA-quite rightly. I don't blame Obama in the slightest, if only our erstwhile leader had that kind of front. Unfortunately we have a pudgy, privileged, posh boy in charge of a group of average achievers who are incompetent, corrupt and cowardly. They have decided that the British people aren't good enough to prosper-and he may well be correct, but we must at least try to get off our knees. What we require is a shot of adrenalin, some stiff upper lip and British resolve fired in by the Government leaders, but all we get is doom, gloom, fear and acquiescence. It's like watching the crew climbing into a lifeboat and announcing that the ship will be steered by a committee of drunken passengers. Never have I felt so depressed about our prospects. It's like we just gave up and are waiting for the priests to give the last rites. There is never any mercy for the cowards who refuse to fight. They get taken as slaves or put to death. I suspect that will be our fate. We never tried, we just cowered liked whipped dogs too scared to bark.

This is the issue. My Father in law was always a fighter, a proud man, a man who worked hard was kind, gentle but never afraid to intercede if needed. He was courageous in spirit and, even when his wife died of cancer he carried on enjoying life. He had a great social life and friends who liked being around him. Then to see him struggle and fight for breath for several long minutes was heart rending. He clearly wasn't ready to give up the fight and couldn't tell anyone that he wasn't ready to go. It always makes me sad to think of it. Funny you should mention animals as I couldn't take our cat to be put down, my wife had to do it. I think I would have just nursed it until it died.

A true act of love would be utterly selfish. So, this is a very interesting situation. The final act is to let the physical perish, yet retain the spiritual value intact. To let a loved one suffer when they do not wish to suffer and you do not wish to have your value destroyed. My wife faced a situation with her father. He was unconscious and on life support. She was asked to consent to the doctors shutting down the life support and she agreed with reservations. My wife is a nurse, she has seen a lot of death and final moments. She trusted the doctors, but when they took away the life support he began fighting for his life and the death was not at all peaceful. The decision she made has haunted her ever since, her memory of her Father is blighted by the unpleasant moments she endured. It was there and then that she gave up any belief in God- she had been a lapsed Catholic from a very religious family, but had not questioned her faith- just put it in the background-until that point. What do we call that ? Was this an act of Love ? Was it rational ? Did she hope to lessen her own suffering ? Were the Doctors too hasty in their beliefs that he Father was willing to give up ?

An act of kindness.

I don't know anyone who fears death, but many who fear dying and the causes of dying. 'The flowering of darkness' sounds like an oxymoron. The petals of doom, or the sweet smell of hatred.

The animal has no concept of defence, war, or freedom. For the animal the sound is no more or less important than thunder, a falling tree, a chainsaw or the crash of a predator through the undergrowth. Personally I love the sound of a powerful jet as much as I love the wind through the branches of the forest. All is balance :-)

For the terminal proggy lovers. The brilliant musicianship of porcupine tree doing it live.

At one time I would have passionately disagreed with you MH. I joined CND when I was younger and had nothing but contempt for the people who appeared to celebrate the mass destruction of a city and its inhabitants. Now I see it as an inevitable consequence of a vicious war and a people who were entirely prepared to give their lives of themselves, their parent, children and friends in the pursuit of victory. The only way to end it was for the people themselves to force the emperor to surrender. It also showed the world where warfare was headed. That it was no longer troops in trenches, conventional iron bombs and air raid shelters. That prosecuting an aggressive act against a nation was potentially disasterous for those who supported the action through taxes and physical effort at home. It's an unpleasant kind of peace, but a necessary one.

Ah well, it depends how something is meant and there can be several interpretations of 'inner nature'. The intrincisist holds that our true nature is innate. That we need only listen and we will hear the underlying message. This is the form of religion that believes in revelation. I would suggest this is the most likely interpretation. This is Neo platonic in form: Plato tells us that the memory of perfect forms (entitities), which men knew in a previous life, will gradually return. In the end he thinks that the mind need only remain motionless, passive, receptive, and the light of truth will be revealed in the form of perfect intuition. Inner nature then is divine knowledge, that comes when the mind is still as perfected intuition. Eventually this belief in the form of Kants 'duty' has come to dominate Western society. God has been ousted along with reason. What is left is a collectivist subjectivism. A belief in the worker bee that need not bother with reason, nor God, but to carry out his intuitive duty according to the inner nature of the entire collective.

People often ask why I am here, but really you should answer that question too ;-) Exactly, one cannot extinguish a life lovingly. There are no values that can be obtained by killing another person. The most that can be achieved is to retain your own values. War is the same. There are no winners, it's the best that can be made of a situation in which another nation has embarked on a course of action which will result in loss of values for the nation to which the aggression is directed. You can only do so much to dissuade the action of initiation of force, but in the end, any appeasement will only be taken as a sign of weakness. I go further. Any nation that poses a direct, verifiable threat to my life and those of the nation in which I live should have no mercy. Neither the innocent or the guilty should be spared beyond what is needed to accomplish the ending of any further hostility. That means the use of nuclear weapons if no other means will dissuade them. This is not action which is undertaken in a blind of patriotic fervour, or to cheered over, but to be undertaken with utter solemnity and the seriousness of an executioner engaging in a necessary but unpleasant task.

We are certainly getting there. Still clinging to the stupid notion of an EU superstate customs union with open borders, with a booming corporocracy that is trying to milk the population dry and a welfare system that is unsustainable. Too much Government, taxation, cronyism, red tape, all allied to a sense of guilt over the past which must be paid for by self immolation. A rusting hulk with a barely functioning engine and a crew who are deliberately filling the engine room with water.

I respect that position.

You have to add your own style to it. I never try for a direct replication, but to get close to the feel of the piece and then, y'know, do it honky tonk or bar singer. :-) As Eric Morcambe so memorably said "listen sunshine I'm playing all the right notes, though not necessarily in the right order"

I nearly gave that a spin last night, but ended up with Led Zep so I could listen to Kasmir. Love that line: "and I'm hovering like a fly, waiting for the windshield on the freeway" Not sure it works so well if you exchange windshield for windscreen and motorway for freeway. :-)

You are mixing up rational error with purposeful abandoning rationality. For instance people believe they are entitled to claim a portion of someone else production. They are not acting irrationally, they are acting in error because they are under the impression there is a social contract and that they have accepted this contract and the privileges that go with it. I am not talking of that kind of error. I'm talking about someone who says "I will have it and I mean to have it by any means at any cost to myself or to others". A man who has a psychotic episode is not voluntarily giving up reason. His rationality is in error. This is a very narrow define, because a psychotic has no right to make the excuse that his rationality absolves him from responsibility, he is still responsible for the crimes he commits and the law must exact justice for any victims of his psychosis. A man who takes a powerful drug, goes nuts and kills someone in a fit of blind rage is still responsible for his actions of taking the drug in the first place-here he abandoned reason by not thinking carefully about the consequences of his actions. However, a man who was tricked into taking such a drug would not be responsible for his actions, these would fall on the trickster. You must ascribe to your own moral values, I will decide if I want to interact with a person who has those values. You are judging me, I accept the judgement, but in turn I judge you and your value to me. I cannot foist my values on you, neither would I, nor can you foist yours on me. This is far from myopic, it is objective and you have proven it. Despite claiming moral fluidity you are acting on fixed moral values yourself. You are judging me against those values and finding me wanting-indeed proving that there isn't moral fluidity at all, otherwise you could not call me myopic and lacking in human understanding. Yet you see, I understand very well.

That's a far more open minded stance Lerner. Of course I will judge, but I voluntarily give up the right to extract justice by living under the rule of law. I've said that this is the true purpose of Government in the final analysis. They have the monopoly on force. I recognise that there must be a completely objective law who's scales weigh in the balance of justice and who's eyes are blind. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. You can call people criminals if you wish, but criminality must be linked to morality and morality to the value of ones life as the measure. An individual, group or state that has explicitly initiated violence against peaceful people, groups or states has given up their rights to freedom and life. Their fate-what justice is extracted-I hand over to the law under which I voluntarily live. I make the point about legalise because states are not objective or entirely moral, but as it stands I can certainly judge to accept the current state I live under as preferable to one in which pure totalitarianism is enacted. I'm clear where I am better off even if it isn't perfect. However that's a different argument. To return to your initial paragraph. Many of us are capable of a small degree of sadism. However, our prospective victims can choose not to participate with us. I don't have to cooperate with thieves, kidnappers, or cut throats-except where I'm forced into doing so by a state-that I do cooperate in the case of something worse, I am not doing so because I wish to turn over a portion of my wealth to a thief who threatens me with a knife. I am not making a voluntary exchange. Where a thief threatens you with violence if you do not cooperate, or a hijacker takes over control of the plane you are a passenger in, or a jihadhist sprays bullets into an audience for no other reason than to take life-then these are not avoidable, voluntary interactions. You cannot walk away from a country that is threatening to annihilate you with an atomic bomb, the thief aiming a gun at your head, or the jihadhist intent on destroying your life in a place where there is peace. You are at liberty to leave your country. Walk into a war zone. Volunteer to be a combatant. You could strap on an explosive vest, or become a violent thief. What prevents you from doing so ? I don't have that kind of violence within me, unless I am under duress. Only if things have become so intolerable that death is a price I would be prepared to pay, but that is not where we are for the moment. The West is still incredibly free compared to many places around the world and where the law is not as objective as it could be, it functions passably and is not intolerable.