Taomeow

Don't strain yourself into being amused. Sometimes it's easier to just get the message intended to illustrate a point. You did understand that it wasn't a literal invitation to herd the population of the earth into Texas, didn't you?.. C'mon, admit it. You are a bright guy.

Overpopulation is yet another myth... https://wearechange.org/overpopulation-myth/ Quote: "Today, there is approximately 7,268,730,000 people on earth. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 square miles (7,494,271,488,000 square feet). If we divide 7,494,271,488,000 square feet by 7,268,730,000 people, we get 1031 square feet per person. This is enough space for everyone on earth to live in a townhouse while altogether fitting on a landmass the size of Texas. And we’re not even accounting for the average four-person family who would most likely share a home." It's not an overpopulated planet. It's a planet overburdened by mismanagement of unimaginable magnitude. The recipients of this mismanagement have had too much wool pulled over their eyes.

Yes. If you want to take a closer look at how I arrived at this conclusion, here's the books that provided some of the first stepping stones for me, many moons ago: Eco Homo: How the Human Being Emerged from the Cataclysmic History of the Earth Noel T. Boaz (ISBN 0-465-01803-3) Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World Is Making Us Sick by Noel T. Boaz (ISBN 0-471-35261-6) The author, Noel T. Boaz, is a biological anthropologist, physician, and founder of the Virginia Museum of Natural History, the Integrative Centers for Science and Medicine, and the International Institute for Human Evolutionary Research.

Infections that kill significant numbers of people are the result of urban living, according to paleoanthropologists. And then urban dwellers drag them into a tribal setting and indigenous people who have no immunity to cramped-living-bred urban pathogens they'd never been exposed to proceed to die from everything the "civilized" man dragged in. And the "civilized" man says, see? -- you can't survive and thrive by your way of life, you need ours. Except the moment he's there, "their" way of life is contaminated with "our" pathogens (to name just one factor) and it's a travesty to extrapolate the conditions "after" the contact onto the conditions "before." For a quick read, check this out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-546608/Four-members-lost-Peruvian-tribe-die-infected-common-cold-British-TV-crew.html and this: http://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3106-uncontacted-tribes-the-threats This tragic story has always been the same everywhere. Something to be proud of I guess... we have hospitals. We no longer have people who didn't need them for a million years, but that's OK. The important thing is, we are proud of our accomplishments and feel superior to those we wiped out.

In body and mind alike, from Siberia to Eastern Europe to Western Europe to the east coast of the USA to the west coast of the USA and from there to China I roamed, and mind you, I kept moving westward all the time -- and still wound up as far east as you can get.

Thank you. Yes, no matter what "civilized" source you go to, the party line is always the same -- to create a picture of the blessings of civilization and perils of natural ways of life. How else would they justify exterminating them nearly everywhere, and thwarting and damaging them everywhere else. My question was rhetorical.

"You realize" because you were told by... who exactly?

Oh, I believe air quality matters tremendously, absolutely. I just doubt that what you measure from your cigarette and what I experienced in traffic in Beijing are even remotely the same thing to measure. I think it's about the way a personal meter is designed -- depending on the size of the particles, you can expect quite a lot of false positives and false negatives, basically it measures "something," but not the level of health hazard of what you breathe. I'm told Shanghai is unlivable air-wise and I believe it, and Beijing air horrified me enough -- but even pretty much anywhere I lived, including the most pollution-free areas, I can attest to the air quality being nothing like what I breathed in the depth of the Amazon rain forest. Has to do with the level of oxygen in the air -- the rain forest produces 20% of all oxygen in the world, and you feel it in every cell. Also, the native inhabitants there smoke wild rain forest tobacco, rolling little quick cigarettes and huge cigars out of it, so they don't get a dose of toxic chemicals that are added to our commercial cigarettes. Those added chemicals (some 2,000 of them), I know, are indeed quite dangerous. But instead of insisting on banning those, the FDA and the EPA go tweaking with people's minds. Secondhand or first-hand, it's not the tobacco smoking, it's what they lace it with... But any objections from our "protectors" to those gifts from the "better life through chemistry" megacorporations? Any attempts to stop them from doing this? I'm yet to see any. They carefully avoid the real issue and instead make up a bogus one. I.e. they make the individual believe that he or she is the one responsible for what in reality is the doing of giant, and untouchable, chemical and pharmaceutical corporations. This way everybody is kept dutifully guilty or alternatively dutifully paranoid about what they personally do and what ordinary people around them do (that's how you control the population -- make them blame themselves or each other), while the corporations do what they do with impunity. Polluting both the air and the cigarettes and the mind of the individual buying into the narrative.

http://www.cfact.org/2013/01/22/chinese-air-episode-exposes-epa-fraud-on-pm-2-5-levels/

I'm just listening to people. Story number 1. A man who has "normal" insurance had a bothersome cough a few months ago. Went to the urgent care to check it out. They said, you need to go to the ER. He said, OK, I'll drive myself there, it's a 10 minute drive. They said, no way, you need to go in an ambulance. No explanation. He's someone who "does as the doctor tells him." Was taken to the ER, waited a few hours to be seen. The doctor said, you have a cough. Take some cough drops. My friend had to find someone to drive him back to the urgent care place where his car was still parked. A few days later got a bill from the hospital for the ambulance ride. $2,800.00. Spent the next two weeks on the phone (mostly on hold) with the hospital disputing the bill. They finally agreed to review it. Got a new bill. $1,400.00. Story number 2. Psychotic breakdown, in someone with no insurance. Picked up by cops, hospitalized for three days, under mandatory observation. Seen by psychiatrist, discharged -- crazy as a bat, but uninsured, no treatment required. Story number 3. Old woman, Medicare, on many meds, at least two of which "may cause difficulty breathing," if someone bothers to read the fine print on the insert. Develops difficulty breathing. Gets hospitalized. Sedated, put on a ventilator. Sedation used "may suppress the breathing center of the brain," if someone bothers to read the fine print. They don't bother. Three days later, they take her off the ventilator and she can't breathe on her own. And is very confused -- well, a powerful cocktail of drugs to keep you down will do that to you, but they say, hey presto, she has dementia and she can't breathe, how about take her off life support? The family agonize over it, say no. The woman sedated into "dementia" pulls the tubes, the family are asked, well, do you want them put back in? This goes on for a month or so, back and forth, but she's never taken off meds to see what might happen if the breathing center and other centers of the brain aren't being suppressed by drugs by any chance. Funeral last week. Story number 4. Someone very happy with her coverage. She has the best insurance in the country. One company, in New York, provides the best insurance in the country. Always did, before obamacare and after. The insurance covers everything, even acupuncture -- a lot of it. Her husband who works for this company is not happy there. He wants to look for another job. Any other job means losing the best insurance in the country. He is not changing jobs. Only because of that, no other reason. What am I driving at? I don't know. Which of the four stories cited sounds like "health care" to you?..

This is the traditional image of many Russian folk tales. The hero, in his or her travels, comes to a stone that bears this inscription: "If you go right, this and this will happen... If you go left, this and that... If you go straight, the outcome will be..." The versions of what exactly will happen in each scenario vary from tale to tale, but the stone-of-trifurcation situation is archetypal. "If you go right, you lose your horse. If you go left, you lose your life. If you go straight, you find happiness but forget who you are." Or, "To the right, you find yourself a wife. To the left, you find yourself wealth. Straight, you find glory." It's never easy to choose. I have a personal strategy though. Whenever I can't make up my mind, I ask the I Ching. Sometimes the choice becomes clear, but sometimes the advice is along the lines of, "learn to tolerate ambiguity." Then I don't choose and wait for the cosmic process to take me elsewhere, somewhere where the choice, the crossroads, etc., simply dissolve into nonexistence. Or take me to a new crossroads... whoa, how did I get here?.. And how do I get out of here... or alternatively, how do I stay here?.. Good luck.

I only care what taoist classics think about it. What happens to the corporeal body when it dies is a question as broad as "what happens to the corporeal body when it lives."

Where's that post you mentioned? I'd like to read it. "If you ever have doubts about the fundamental goodness of human beings, these are the people you should meet." Never had doubts since I understood that the fundamental nature of the human being is the tribal body. Unfortunately for us all, there's no real, visceral, spiritual, physical or mental goodness without it. "National," religious, cause-centered, "country," etc., herding of people into any which non-tribal groups is all about faking assorted make-believe substitutes for the destroyed tribal bodies. In a sense, everything that happens to people in the world after the latter have been dismembered is after-death experiences.

Since the topic is about the Yijing (I Ching), it's this yi: 易 yi: change My books on the origins of Chinese characters assert it's a picture of a chameleon. This is what another ancient classic, the Shujing (Book of Documents, or Classic of History) has to say about it: "When in years, months and days the season has no yi, the hundred cereals ripen, the administration is enlightened, talented men of the people are distinguished, the house is peaceful and at ease. When in days, months and years the season has yi, the hundred cereals do not ripen, the administration is dark and unenlightened, talented men of the people are in petty positions, the house is not at peace. " This is what the Eranos I Ching (Ritsema/Sabbadini) Introduction has to say about it: "We have yi when things are off track, when chaos irrupts into our life and the usual bearings no longer suffice for orientation. We all know that such times can be very fertile -- and extremely painful, disconcerting and full of anxiety. Modern chaos theory pays particular attention to these murky transitions, by which forms transmute into each other."

Eukaryote

The pine cone is a metaphor, dude. Stands for the pineal gland. Stands for take a wild guess what in the Vatican: The "handbag" is also a metaphor. Might not be a handbag at all, some depictions look more like a bucket. Reading symbolic images verbatim is counterproductive. Recognizing the symbology in its ancient symbiotic embrace with ideology, anything but.

Yes, they are all over the place. They are worth exploring. I have seen bas-reliefs where they actually dip the pine cone into them before dousing humans with what they contain. Old school doctors used to carry the "doctor's bag" with them at all times. The one my grandaunt never left home without looked like this: Considering the pine cone involvement, I think those alien gods were "doctoring" our species to their specs.

Not fake Not fake Not fake

Here's a few tips for someone who might never find either a passion or even patience for spreadsheets and suchlike: Use magic. This includes money feng shui, spells, and assorted time-honored tips and tricks from the ancestors. I have two feng shui money frogs working for me, a jade plant aka money tree, a bent coin in my wallet, always cash in my wallet, not just plastic, and the wallet itself is never worn and tired, it has to look brand new, and its color is the phase of qi your own commands -- in my case, earth colors. I have a feng shui wealth vase. This is a bit of a project, but it's worth it. Alternatively, you can go with Tibetan buddhist wealth vase, which works even better but you would have to be prepared to deal with Nagas who are in charge of it. I wasn't, they are very efficient but can be a bit demanding. Frequent resale shops. Thelearner already mentioned them and shared the benefits. I want to add that, in case you didn't know, the second biggest pollutant in the world after big oil is fast fashion. Research. There's whole cities in China where people suffer from an incurable new disease -- denim lung disease, because they specialize in making and sandblasting jeans, and the blue jeans dust is what they wind up breathing 24/7. Landfills are choked with discarded clothes because fast fashion, a devil's invention, causes billions of people to keep discarding perfectly fine clothes in order to buy the latest trend. So buying everything new all the time is not only economically unsound but you are contributing greatly to global pollution when you make a habit of it. I invest in a few "timeless" pieces, which I don't mind splurging on because I know they will serve me for years and never go out of style -- a nice leather jacket, a black cashmere coat, stuff like that. I will never overpay for a "label" unless it's a thrift store find and costs me 1/10th of what it would cost otherwise -- and even then I'll have to think twice, labels brand you and I don't want to walk around advertising any particular company's product unless they pay me to. Research minimalism. It's a flexible trend and you don't have to become a minimalist fundamentalist, but many ideas have been accumulated by folks interested in minimizing their possessions for various reasons, including but not limited to financial benefits. (Warning: you will come across a few fundamentalists if you "go there," don't be discouraged, there's always people who will take any sound idea to absurd extremes. Find a way to experiment with it that works for you.)

My condolences. In our time Renaissance men and women are so discouraged that even the online thesaurus, when asked for the antonym for "specialist," gives only the insulting negatives -- "amateur," "ignoramus," "rookie," and the exceedingly ridiculous "general practitioner." It does not, however, mention Zhuangzi's "useless" tree that can't be exploited because it does not specialize in being suitable specifically for making furniture out of, or masts, or chopsticks.

Ten years later I'm still a whole-brainer. For better or for worse.

That's because they don't practice calligraphy. But humans who do have superb handwriting even if their bazi has Roosters. They also excel at marksmanship.

Chickens are also very efficient mousers.