Taomeow

By the way, whoever feels that their appreciation of the snow leopard superpowers may have been rekindled by this thread, and can afford to donate a few dollars to a worthy cause, please consider donating to the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation https://www.fondationensemble.org/en/news/ or the Snow Leopard Trust https://www.snowleopard.org/our-work/where-we-work/mongolia/ There's only between 2,800 and 6,300 snow leopards left in the world.

And now we come to the Sumerian abstract counting system, the beginning of the writing system. The character illustrated below means "one." It was produced by firmly pressing a blunt reed into soft damp clay, then directing it down with decreasing pressure. The same technique, only with an ink-dipped brush on paper, is still used in Chinese calligraphy (if done the classical way). And when I was being taught to write in the first grade, we also still had the classical calligraphy style pen-and-ink requirements and strict demands on the fine motor skills that had to be developed in order to do it right. Pretty soon abandoned though, to conform to the newer way that no longer expects, much less encourages, a child's brain to develop in harmonious coordination with her hand and the rest of her body. Aside from calligraphy which was the last opportunity for something like brain-hand coordination development in children who were no longer making arrowheads or fishing hooks or weaved baskets, etc., for a very long time, the rest of such developmental opportunities had been long eradicated from schools even before they did away with calligraphy, so in a math class children were mocked if they used their fingers to assist counting, and when reading silently, harassed for moving their lips until they stopped, to make sure that the brain and the facial responsiveness/expressivity are properly discoordinated as well... but don't let me digress. The same symbol that meant "one" to Sumerians also meant "sixty" (in the appropriate context.) That's because sixty was their understanding of a full circle, perfect completion, the end that was the new beginning -- after 60 the cycle started again, and 60 was the same as 1. (Visualize an analog clock, please.) The human life was calculated as two complete cycles of 60 and a normal life span deemed to be 120. Of course most people no longer lived out this full lifespan, for reasons the whole thread is about. Sumerians didn't count the age of people in years though, only the age of cattle was counted like that. As for humans, they merely differentiated between several life stages that didn't exactly correspond to any particular specific ages: inseparable from mother; young; mature and in full strength and vigor; on decline of strength; weakened by old age, illness or hard life.

What a wannabe. He may have worked on the coastline of Norway for all I know, but the snow leopard was definitely my project. Recently, a friend of mine who's an artist even illustrated one chapter of that endeavor:

You aren't thinking that British movie, "About time?" The main protagonist has some of these abilities. It's sappy but nice. I have always been fascinated by time manipulations as well. One superpower I would like to have would be to go far back in time -- tens or even hundreds of thousands of years -- and live a regular human life there. I have this feeling that the garden of eden, the lost golden age every mythology on earth retains a memory of, was just that. Of course I would get there to the beginning of that life, as a baby. Sometimes a sly baby who remembers this-here life for shits and giggles. Sometimes, as a baby who remembers in order to undertake, upon growing up, certain superheroic deeds that will prevent civilization from ever happening. And sometimes, a baby who remembers nothing. Just starting from the slate wiped clean, before all the epigenetic drifts. Another superpower I would like to have, also involving time travel, concerns creation of live things. I believe in co-creation, which must be similar in nature to the kind of creative work we know in art. To wit, no work of art is ever created "from scratch," without all that went before, other artists who went before developing a particular vision, tools, media, methods -- everybody who takes the next step is co-creating with them whether they're aware of it or not. I would like to get somewhere to the early stages of that process in nature. Not the earliest, but early enough. I would want to design the cat. I mean, felines, not just the domestic cat but the saber-toothed tiger and then the regular one, and the snow leopard, my favorite, and all the rest of them.

I'm no organizer by nature or I'd be heading a worldwide revolution by now, not a report to admin. (I know what to do, I know how to do it, but I don't know how to go about securing organized support... cats and taoists, you know... not great at organizing.) Would be very grateful if anyone volunteered though.

If we all agree to report him, that would be solidarity at its best. But waiting for his next post for that to happen... who knows when he'll strike again? And whether people reading this today will still be foruming on that occasion, and remember what it was about? No time like right now, as some like to point out. ?

Love your definition of that kind of contributions! I usually think of it as "verbal diarrhea." What has always stopped me from using that feature is the thought they will still do it to the thread even if I don't see it, and the thread will still go the fubar way even if I hide my head in the sand? What I wish existed is perhaps the extension of "delete" privileges to the OP. The derailer would thus wind up deservedly ignored by everybody, for lack of physical presence in the thread.

No, I haven't reported it. It's ironic but anyone (not necessarily me) who might want to engage a few bums in any meaningful discussion might wind up either having to tolerate a prompt and decisive series of derails that will put an end to anyone's interest in the subject (beginning with the OP losing interest -- happens to me all the time) -- or else looking like someone who complains too much if you do complain about it. Once you engage, you give a field of application to anyone who only wants to throw monkey wrenches, out of impulses and drives I'm not going to try to guess at. Whereas if you don't attempt to go for opening a discussion on anything meaningful (or god forbid controversial) for bums' consideration, then no one will be tempted to derail you and you will have nothing to complain about! I should probably take a better cue from people who don't have a reason to complain about anything because they "don't even start."

Will you help with that? I'm not techno savvy, I don't know how to handle an "Everything" that behaves as a bot. I never argued with them, I only asked them to stop posting what has nothing to do with the OP subject -- but that's probably their programmed cue for "escalate." What do you suggest? They is writing imaginary dialogs now, with me as a protagonist. I get it for wanting to stick to the subject. But I still want to stick to the subject. But they is programmed to not let that happen. Any ideas?

@Everything Please see my post from October 14th in this thread addressed to you personally. You saw it and ignored it? Or, you didn't see it and that's why you're at it again, but now that I've pointed it out again you will notice and act accordingly? I sincerely hope it's the second option. Out of the goodness of your heart, please pay attention!

Depends on who you ask, and what time period you're comparing to what other time period, and where exactly. Every 1 in 200 people living today, according to only the known statistics (the real numbers may be much higher), is a slave. Not metaphorically, literally. There's more slaves in the world today than at any prior period in human history. (Yes, even in percentages of the population, not just in absolute numbers. Yes, even in Sumer, thousands of years ago, slaves constituted a smaller percentage of the overall population.) Modern slavery includes forced labor, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, debt bondage and forced marriage (impossible to refuse or leave). Most victims (71%) are women. 1 in every 4 modern slavery victims is a child. Children are found in every type of slavery from labour to sex trafficking to forced marriage. Profits from modern slavery per victim are higher in developed economies. In 2014, the EU and other developed economies made an estimated $46.9 Billion USD in profits from modern slavery. Tip of the iceberg though. Most people in conditions that don't formally met the definition for "modern slavery" are not much better off. I think there's a few prerequisites for believing that the world is "getting better": one has to be perfectly indifferent to the plight of the overwhelming majority of the human, animal and plant life in our world today; belong to the 16% of the world population living in the so-called "developed" countries; belong to the about half of that 16% that doesn't live in poverty, i.e. to the lucky 8% of the world population. So, the lucky ones who are all right, what about the remaining 92% of the world? Oh... you should see it to believe it. I've traveled, and not just to where the 8% can't stop counting their blessings. I've seen quite a bit of the remaining 92%. I assure you that it's a hell of a wonderful world for anyone too young, too old, too sick, too poor, too powerless to matter. Key word "hell."

@Never Mind That's a good demo. A more challenging version would be to touch the toes to the wall and actually slide your nose along the wall. That's what my teacher showed me when I asked him. He said, wear shoes to cheat a bit, they will provide some space between the toes and the wall. Duh. Not enough of a cheat for me. Shoes, plus a couple more inches of space like in the demo, that works. He also showed me the opposite wall squat, facing away from the wall. Both are a kind of qigong, the second one is known as the Beggar's Squat. The story told with it is that it was the position beggars used to sit in to keep the butt off the cold stones (you are not supposed to sit on anything cold in China, it's thought of as not only uncomfortable but unhealthy), but more than that, to heal any stomach issues, which the beggars were very prone to because sometimes they got offerings of good food and sometimes of the kind of food ready to be thrown away, plus very irregularly -- one day they might eat a meal that's too big when someone has been generous, and go without another day. So, this is the stomach-healing squat, apparently. It also compresses the calves, but instead of impairing circulation it supposedly stimulates it, the calves are known as "the second heart" and this compression is training them to pump blood more vigorously. The explanations, with references and contexts, were given while we were both sitting in that position, at opposite walls. I discovered that when you sit like that for a long(ish) time rather than do "reps" the impact is way more pronounced. I didn't feel the pose was tiring me out, but then when I got up to do taiji, I discovered, to my surprise, that my legs felt as though I just ran a mile.

B12 can be injected in the butt -- OTC in some countries (e.g. Mexico and Canada), and doctors in Europe used to be big on that, don't know about now. B6 and B12 injections prescribed for everything the doctor couldn't diagnose and the patient couldn't tolerate. And for prevention too. E.g. for teens who started developing nearsightedness. Good old days. These days I eat liver though. Folate can make a huge difference for people with MTHFR gene issues, which are not that uncommon and can range from very mild to very debilitating. I recall a thread about it sometime ago but wouldn't know how to find it. (MTHFR is the abbreviation for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, but if you thought it stands for "motherf..r" you wouldn't be incorrect either.)

I think for the first part -- why you felt pain but no itching -- a plausible explanation might be found somewhere in the realm of skin receptors being specialized. We have different ones for tactile, thermal, pain, itching etc. perceptions, and flooding one kind of receptions with input may suppress the other kind. (A school time example I recall regarding mutually canceling excessive impulses went as a rather cruel experiment where they dipped one hind leg of a frog in acid, the frog jerked its leg in avoidance -- then they pricked the other leg with a needle, the frog jerked that leg -- and then they simultaneously dipped one leg in the acid and pricked the other and the frog did nothing.) Perhaps you flooded your itch receptors into nonresponsiveness, which may have simultaneously enhanced your pain receptors. For the second part -- the effects lasting -- I don't have an explanation except the one you offered, "unpredictable and marvelous things during practice." I once experimented with applying moxa over a slice of garlic on an acupoint on my arm, it was a long time ago and the procedure was from books, I never saw a demo, so I didn't quite know what I was doing and how much of the burn I was supposed to tolerate. After a while I smelled roasted garlic and the pain became unpleasant enough for me to think of stopping, but just then I felt the flow of qi, very strong, pulsing through the meridian I was targeting (forget which), and so intense and interesting and marvelous -- while the pain disappeared completely. So I let it go on for a very long time, enjoying it very much. Then I smelled burning coals where garlic used to be and decided to stop. Well, imagine my shock when I saw a huge blister, growing in front of my eyes, pretty much engulfing half my wrist. No pain yet. But after all was said and done, I just had this horrible burn that behaved like any other, i.e. when I failed to protect the blister from being damaged it did hurt, for quite a long time, and took a long time to heal. Still, whatever I was trying to cure probably did get cured, since I don't even remember what it was.

Not my personal definitions. I try not to define what the taoist tradition prefers to infer. Merely trusting the tradition. Qi--energy interactions are harder to define than most think. My statement about what depends on what was perhaps more linear than I would like it to be, but then, no linear statement about nonlinear phenomena can do them justice. Some statements though, often repeated here and elsewhere, "qi=energy," "qi=particular sensations I feel," "qi=what one can make someone else feel," etc., are just plain wrong. Not that it matters much if whatever you do and whatever you call it benefits you and those around you. I for one wouldn't be able to combine "qi" with "chakras," because the way my qi is educated (sic) does not include "chakra fluency," it relies on a different frame of reference. Wouldn't know how to stick my dantiens in between chakras, and what for. And not because I'm "wrapped up too tightly" or anything. But because qi is systemically meaningful, and to someone not educated in a particular way (I don't mean just in the head) they are systemically meaningless. Like I said, it all depends. Be well yourself.

What I call it always. Meaningful. "Negativity," "bliss" -- those are your meanings for this energy, or this energy's meanings for you. Is it qi you're feeling? Well... What you are definitely feeling is whatever it is that gets you to interpret that energy as "obliterating all negativity" and "total bliss." If that "whatever" is a reconfiguration of the pattern, the increase of a particular type of qi or decrease of a different type of qi or transformation of qi, then qi is involved -- as it is involved in absolutely everything else you do, feel or think. What kind of pattern of qi in your system generates those sensations and those interpretations is a separate inquiry. There's many kinds of qi. There's much fewer kinds of energy. Energy without qi is meaningless. Energy without change is impossible. Qi is the medium and message of meaningful change. Energy depends on qi, qi does not depend on energy. Qi is the kind of pattern that makes sense in a particular context, and is at the same time created by a particular pattern. This process can increase or decrease energy or leave it well alone. If your "obliterating all negativity" and "total bliss" were the outcome of taking a psychoactive substance -- e.g. cocaine -- it would be decreasing your energy while you'd feel it's being increased. It would be entangling and depleting your qi and yet feel as blissful, or more so. It all depends.

No, just one keyboard, but three or four ways to do it. On the phone, I can switch by just touching this sign under the keyboard -- 🌐 -- I pre-set mine to switch between the two languages I use. On the computer, there's sites that let you type on your normal keyboard but the text will come out in Cyrillic. The method is known as Translit, an informal romanization where you use English letters for sounds that have close enough Cyrillic counterparts, and a bunch of agreed-upon letters or signs instead of the ones that have no correspondences. So there's basically two different types of qi I store in my fingers for the same keyboard, and they are different enough for anyone who knows only one to not recognize the other. (Do I mention once again what I always like to point out about qi -- it is meaningful change, not mechanical "energy"? )

No one can have a toothache in someone else's tooth. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein No one can feel someone else's qi. -- Taiji Classics Only someone else can feel your jin. -- Taiji Classics To get someone else to feel your qi, you need to learn to focus and release it -- and as soon as you release it, it's no longer "your" qi. You can shoot an arrow but you can't feel what the target it hits feels. The martial way to do it is via fajin skill, the healing way to do it is via waigong skill. A trained taiji or classical medicine or waigong practitioner can feel her own qi when it interacts with yours and interpret what she perceives, much like your mind is trained to interpret words said in a language you are fluent in. If you are not fluent in that language, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or constitutes meaningless noise. It only means отсутствие владения грамматикой, словарём, произношением данного языка.

@Everything A request: could you kindly move your contributions to this thread to a separate thread of your own? Clearly you have much interest in talking about something of personal significance to you -- which, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with the very specific subject under discussion as offered by the OP in this thread and contributed to by others -- to wit, Sumer and the musings on the origins and repercussions of civilization viewed through the prism of its history and legacy. I would be very grateful if you do. Many thanks in advance.

.

Check out the first post in this thread.

"Abrahamic religions" is a recently invented term for what came thousands of years _later_ than the agricultural, city-building, and "savages" (hunter-gatherer) exterminating activities of Sumer and, after conquests, Akkad. All of it taking place within a polytheistic framework placing gods far above the earth. The arid conditions came next, agriculture came first. And there doesn't seem to be anything natural whatsoever about its advent. It was a power grab by the only method that could ensure it -- deforestation. Civilization=deforestation. "Abrahamic" people came thousands of years after the fact. The Sumerian world was divided along a very straightforward line (with no other lines drawn, whether religious or ethnic): the "civilized" (city-dwelling and grain agriculture practicing) and the "savage" (forests and mountains-dwelling hunter gatherers) line of sharp division. The former, the "civilized," took it upon themselves to exterminate (mostly) and enslave the latter, and did it consistently and relentlessly for thousands of years, in countless raids undertaken toward the purpose. The future "Abrahamic" people were originally whoever survived without being fully incorporated into the "civilized" fold -- though they transformed into nomadic herdsmen by then rather than hunter-gatherers. The conflict between the sedentary grain agriculturalists and nomadic herdsmen was never actually resolved, but it took a different shape over time, along the religious and ethnic lines. This is nowhere near where it originated though. The main conflict of the civilized Earth is the conflict between "civilized" and "Earth."

I applaud the will to resist. First thing that came to mind was all those pictures of all those Asians in crowded metropolitan cities wearing masks. In Japan it seems to be getting nearly as common as wearing sunglasses. I don't know how comfortable you would feel following suit, but it may be the single best protection against getting infected.

Animals. Every dog and every cat, squirrel, raccoon, possum, snake in your neighborhood wants to come up and say hi. Hawks circle over your head. White egrets and blue herons show up and gift you with their feathers. Hummingbirds zip in and out of your path. Dolphins, seals, and an occasional shark might join you if you go swimming. Pelicans will land in close proximity, you can even stroke one. You may spot a mountain lion, a coyote, or even the exceedingly rare ring-tailed cat (an animal that is not actually a cat but, rather, related to raccoons.)

"Breathe deep and expand," master Wang says, "to the edge of the universe."