Brandon Peele's Musings

What is This Site?

It is an exploration into existence as well as some more mundane ruminations.  It seeks to find and eradicate everything which is not 100% true, thus false, in the Absolute Sense.  It is the journey of one person as he encounters various life experiences, books, films, etc. which shed light upon perception, existence, liberation, enlightenment, etc.

Please Defriend/Unfollow Me!

After linking my twitter and fb accounts and then getting feedback, that folks aren't interested in philo/spirit/intellectual matters on fb, I delinked them in deference to their unwillingness to be molested by such abstract matters.  Well, I'm relinking them.  So if you don't like it, I urge you to defriend/unfollow me and go back to sleep. I suffer your endless monkey brained vomit of baby pics, reactions to TV shows, digestive occurrences, etc. Perhaps try reading and listening more, and watching less TV and gossipping with friends about matters of zero importance or complexity. My friend Paul's sentiments express this decision beautifully...

"Educated people morally ought to be intellectual for the reason that we are a democracy, and shallow voting decisions, as we have ample evidence, go far in destroying the world.

"Personally, I have no sympathy (or mercy) for educated people who 'don't like all the intellectual stuff'.  Perhaps a special interest group will be started called 'Please Do Not Break my Concentration on My Hair/Lincoln Navigator/McMansion with Ideas; I am a Well-Educated Evil Drone Trying to Maintain an Illusion that I am Intellectual, and Morally Good; Please Respect That!'.  Well, perhaps that won't happen because the acronym would be unmanageable...  But I would think twice about pandering to the shallow. If anything, bug them.  What would Socrates do!"

If you feel judged or condescended to, it is entirely intentional.  Consider yourself judged.  Take this judgement and either throw it back with a defriend/unfollow or look at your suspect self-image in the mirror and swallow it whole.

Inspiration, Uncertainty and Joy

Or should I say infinite inspiration, gross uncertainty and subtle joy.  These terms seem to define my experience these days.  I receive what I think to be brilliant ideas - a museum to visualize the great aphorisms of philosophy and an academy built up around it populated with the general public and those seeking truth; a comprehensive and immersive learning and discovery engine based upon the work of a great living philosopher.  These ideas are coupled with the urge to take a heavy courseload in the humanities - esp theology, creative writing, poetry, anthropology, psychology, law.  Further I am moved to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, satori in India, wine and women in Argentina (I'll regret having written this especially this last part), a bookstore on the Oregon coast, a barkeep and author in a Mexican fishing village.  I must admit Hemmingway has inspired a good deal of the latter.  I am however mostly inclined to continue with my life as is and become something of a businessman, husband and father.

The gross uncertainty should not require explanation.

However the subtle joy does.  2 minutes of mystic expanse as I cross the Golden Gate each day.  The morning cup of coffee and a great peice of mystical fiction (Murakami, Robbins, etc.).  My home, wife, my surrounding mountains and sea.  Pure blankness and infinite energy of the void.

Extraction Economy -> Civil Rights -> Gender Equality?

Can women's liberation and empowerment, as currently conceived, exist without an extraction economy?  Women's liberation as well as other advances in civilization are heavily reliant upon the excesses that a booming economy offers (e.g. there is no equal opportunity in the 3rd world).  Economic power in this instance represents two phenomena:

1. The consolidation of wealth, as a result of our current extraction/globalized economic schema, whereby rich nations extract carbon (wood and oil) and mineral resources from all countries and concentrate the consumption of said resources in the rich countries.  This surplus of wealth, matter and energy enables rich countries to cultivate and manifest human ideals, such as equality, liberty, compassion, etc. and build churches, universities, public buildings and pass laws to enable equal rights to economic opportunities.  Without said extraction, there is no mental and economic bandwidth to allow this cultivation.  Generally speaking, wealth yields the expansion of culture and tolerance (e.g. UK, Scandanavia, Japan, pre-WWI Germany, Roman Empire, British Empire, U.S. metro areas) and economic contraction yields intolerance, genocide and exploitation (e.g. Third Reich, KKK, Darfur/Taliban/Islamic Fundamentalism throughout the Arab world, Rwanda). Virtually all industries in the U.S., U.K., Japan and Scandanavia (CPGs, construction, electronics, defense, telecommunication, IT, energy, etc.) require massive amounts of matter difficult to find in these countries. http://www.storyofstuff.com/
2. In wealthy nations, women are able to earn substantial amounts of money themselves, absolve themselves of the economic/survival need to couple with men, due to both the schools that educate them and the laws that protect women's legal and economic status.  The choice to marry often though not necessarily includes relinquishing or reducing one's commitment to career.

As such, the empowerment and independence of women is correlated with high concentrations of wealth, the extraction of unreplenishable resources from the earth and the unsustainable transport, manufacture, distribution, consumption and disposal of said resources.

The question is - can women's empowerment exist under the context of a local economy whereby the global transfer of goods and services does not occur?  If we were able to switch to a renewable energy economy and agree as a planet to avoid disrupting the natural carbon and nitrogen cycle (nitrogen fixing, fossil fuel extraction and clear cutting are prime examples of this), would we be able to remain as detached from the land and our own food supply as we are now?  Would we have the economic and cultural resources that permit women to economically contribute beyond homemaking and subsistence farming? Could women remain economically independent of men under such a schema?  Would a drastically shrunken global economy degrade women's empowerment, economic capacity/contribution and status?  Would women have reason to fear for their physical safety and therefor need men more than they do now?

Lastly, are sustainability and environmentalism economically antithetical to gender equality?

"Cosmos & Psyche" Book Review

I recently read Richard Tarnas' "Cosmos and Psyche".  Very interesting book, and does achieve its purpose of convincing the reader to take another look at astrology.  That is not to say, we should believe in astrology, but we should study our environs for patterns.  This has been done since the beginning of man and looking to the skies for patterns and correlations with earthly and human phenomena is only one type of data retrieval for the discernment of patterns.

Tarnas's primary point is that synchronicity exists.  Jung's original coining of the term was result of merely slowing down long enough and examining every thought, situation and observable phenomena to see a pattern.  I predict that one day synchronicity, synonymous with the Chinese understanding of the Tao, Greek conception of cosmic sympathy, Hermetic doctrine of macro/microcosm, medieval concept of unus mundus, will be as commonly accepted and discussed as gravity in the collective culture.  Many choose to go fast and ignore pattern, merely dismissing all unexplainable pattern as coincidence.  Whereas coincidence is merely what is left over after a bad theory.  As such all "coincidence" should be studied and folded into one's worldview.

Synchronicity requires data, and given that all the data mankind has accumulated was observed and derived from earth, representing less than 1/1000th of the cosmos, ought to ignite the curiosity of any sentient being.  More data can yield new patterns and new conclusions.  I'm not necessarily saying that the traditional field of astrology ought to be accepted wholly, just that it ought to be practiced in its most literal sense (study the stars) and remain open to the possibility of cosmic synchronicity.

Tarnas begins by noting that astrology is like any other field or theory in that in goes in and out of favor over time.  We're currently in a very objectivist, science-driven, phase of humanity and it is only reasonable that it has fallen out of favor.  But like Aristarchus' idea of a sun-centered cosmos, it went out of favor, and experienced a massive resurgence after Copernicus was able to utilize the modern observation techniques and geometry to prove that the earth was not the center of the universe. Even after proving it, it would be hundreds of year before this idea was accepted. 

Also, important to note is that after Copernicus, a worldview that does not consider the cosmos must be totally errant.  We must resolve the issue that we are apparently the only life form amidst a very cold (literally and perhaps figuratively), violent and centerless universe. 

I think Tarnas' primary contribution is in exposing the fallacy of the prevailing objective worldview, as objects absolutely cannot be perceived without the subjective framework of the observer.  That is, we have a massive disconnect occurring between our objective understanding of physics and our subjective understanding of psychology.  The result of which is that we project patterns and do not earnestly observe them.  Failure to understand this removes the mystery from the cosmos, as each scientific advance only furthers the utter lack of meaning in the vast void of space.  Keeping in mind the subjectivity of observation allows us to ask questions regarding why we see a particular pattern.  Failure to do so yields a robotic and incomplete understanding of reality.

This "objective" worldview that seeks to de-anthropomorphize the cosmos is itself of anthropomorphism (conforming space to just another human idea of objectivism).  It is dangerous to employ massive amounts of data, that we now have thanks to the Hubble and others, utilizing a limited, self-isolating set of assumptions (i.e. that the objective physics/subjective psychology doesn't need to be resolved).

In this regard, Tarnas agrees with Jung in stating that depth psychology is the direct successor to philosophy (and science, I believe), in that it seeks to extend the rational mastery of the cosmos to the inner world of psychology.  It extends the range of inquiry dramatically, if not infinitely.

Lastly, Tarnas did a great job of saying that astrology is not prescriptive, but descriptive.  There are patterns in the sky that correlate with personal and cultural events.  Many attempt to use these patterns to predict, but ultimately astrology fails at this in a specific sense, but succeeds in a more general achetypal sense.

A Letter to My Unborn Child

You sit there in my testes prepping for the big show.  Like a boxer getting his knuckles wrapped or a rock star lining up a fatty before a packed arena, you are fully prepped ready to go, just waiting for your cue to unleash hell.  I want to let you know my intention for the next 2 decades. Regarding human life, there are a number of ends humans choose to align their actions, thoughts and words with.  There is no definitive manual, and as such all these ends are arbitrary.  The ends I seek for myself are the same I seek for you.  That is I'm doing my best to understand the human experience in abstract, such that I can embody this understanding and help you achieve the same ends.  I do not want you to become me, however I have a 3-decade head start on you, and the way I currently see it is as follows:

Fulfillment and autonomy represent the fullest expression of human life.  Now this personal understanding will change overtime, but this is the initial stake in the ground.  In order for you to achieve fulfillment and autonomy numerous things needs to happen.  You'll need a variety of life experiences.  You'll need to test yourself in every activity, experiencing a broad spectrum of pleasure and pain.  You'll need a well-cultivated intellect and faculty of reason.  We'll force you to read and hone your powers of reason through algebra and Socratic dialogue.  You'll need to experience timeless, selfless states of flow/fulfillment and to know its opposite - the desire/aversion trap of gratification and addiction (chemical, emotional, etc.).

While I will do my best to nurture you, there will be many times I will function more like a hot poker, than fleece blanket.  You will go through periods of affinity and disgust with regard to the role I play in your life.  We will play, read, travel, eat, goof off, do chores and walk together.  There will be structure, rewards and punishments and eventually responsibility, autonomy and if you're satisfied with you efforts, fulfillment.  I'm not your friend, but your steward.  You are my ward.  If you choose to evolve this relationship into a friendship in your third decade, that is your choice and I would be elated.

Dancing Bear

The Dancing Bear is a technique employed by a reasonable person when dealing with an unreasonable person (an unreasonable person is one who has identified with a negative emotion and is acting accordingly).  As Sydney Smith said, "Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.”  As such, one only has three choices when dealing with an unreasonable person - violence, escape and appeasement.  Violence and escape are self-explanatory and tend to produce undesirable consequences.  Thusfar, the only appeasement technique I've found that has worked is the Dancing Bear.

I learned about the Dancing Bear from a friend at my wedding, when I asked him for advice.  A circus bear stands erect on his hind legs amusing the audience, giving them what they want, dancing around like a moron, with full knowledge that he could destroy them or rid himself of this situation at any moment.  He does so because that is what the audience wants. It is because he loves the audience that he doesn't maul them and wear their skin as a cape.

Many will express or experience the Dancing Bear as "Yes, dear." or "I was wrong, dear." In essence the Dancing Bear is akin to shining glowsticks in front of an x'd out raver, or buying a toy for a whining toddler. If this sounds patronizing, it is.  But it works.

Mind Rape

Mind Rape
Def. To assault the experience of one's life via exploitative audio and visual efforts upon the consciousness, whereby party A does so without the consent or against the will of party B.

There are two widespread epidemics of mind rape coursing throughout humanity.  The first is advertising, which slithers past the critical reasoning capacity of the neocortex with about a 60-80% success rate.  That is, 60-80% of images, brands, messages, etc. are not first categorized as advertising and further categorizes as useful or useless.  "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" provides plenty of research in this regard, suggesting that of the 30 frames per second on TV, only about 50% are registered by the neo-cortex, the remaining enter the mind unmolested and influence our norms, values, etc. which eventually influence purchase decisions.

The second one is more interpersonal, whereby person B has made the case clear that he/she is not interested in topic X, and person A continues to talk about topic X.  I've seen this most often in heterosexual relationships whereby the female, not only exceeds the daily word count of the male by 5x, but feels it important to mind rape the male with topics the male finds no interest in, e.g. gossip, fashion, emotions/venting, thinking out loud, worrying about the future, etc.  Yet even knowing the conversational proclivities and intellectual interests of the male, the female continues to rape his brain on a daily basis, prioritizing her need to talk, process emotion, feel connected to the male, etc.  Whereas, if left unmolested the male could be free to think about things that interested him, such as sports, machines, books, explosions, boobs, etc.  Alas, he finds himself engaged in matters of absolutely no importance to him, as a unfavorable deal term, offset by other more favorable ones - sex, children, food, domestic services, companionship, etc.

Awakening Within vs. From

I feel like a coward sometimes, like I'm doing everything wrong.  In the context of awakening, I feel like I've made some great progress awakening WITHIN the human experience.  Though I have emotions and an socially constructed ego, I don't feel a particular attachment to them.  I don't have much emotional charge around my parents, and generally can appreciate them and everyone else for who they are - quirks, challenges and all.  When emotions arise, I take space watch them, root out their sources, which is always some ignorance/unreasonable expectation, register them and let them pass.  If I have any attachments, they are to ideals, specifically reason, truth, efficiency, beauty, unity, etc. and these attachments manifest as psychological aversions towards their opposites.  Drives me batshit to see someone shun reason, or lie, or take the long way, or be so helplessly caught up in their own ignorance and the human drama so as not to see the beauty and unity of each moment of existence.  Paradoxically, that it drives me batshit, is such an example.

However, when I read folks like Plotinus, Nisargadatta and Augustine, I feel like I have made such little progress with respect to awakening FROM the human experience.  Though I've had more than my share of peak states of no-self mystical union, I'm not even close.  I've worked with a proven teacher who has brought through a handful of folks to the otherside, but not me.  I think we both failed to realize how unprepared I was for it.  I'm not sure how prepared I am now, only that it would be really cool.  I haven't suffered from the human drama to the extent that I see my only option as a way out/up.  However, I feel that I for whatever reason will feel the desire at some point.  Maybe I do already and am just making excuses to stay in the dream

One-Day Work Week

In an effort to one-down Tim Ferris' 4 Hour Work Week, I humbly offer my One-Day Work Week, in three steps.

1. Accept that all your needs beyond food, safety and shelter* are illusory/mental errors.  Consult any psychological, philosophical or spiritual text or radically employ reason in your life and you'll see evidence for this dictum.  Embracing this insight absolves you from errantly trying to solve psychological problems with social, material and technical solutions.  That is, beyond providing inputs and a safe environment for your body, there is absolutely nothing to do and that the choice to do more is luxury (social acceptance, things, drugs, grooming, etc.).
2. So all one really needs to do is to provide food, shelter and safety for oneself.  To do so, you need access to water and 1 acre of land (in an area with multiple growing seasons; 4 acres with only one growing season) per family of four to raise grains and vegetables that nourish life.  With this land, you can work 1 day a week (on average) to tend the crops.  Read "One Straw Revolution" for the how-to.  Spend a couple hours erecting a shelter out of tree branches.  Whittle a spear.  Bingo, your work is done.
3. You now have six days to goof off, appreciate nature, contemplate existence, watch the river, watch the fire, sing, dance, etc.

*You could even argue that an earnest philosophical inquiry will even absolve these needs as well.

Establishing Existence

I haven't been able to establish existence, that is, the existence of something discretely know as me or anything else.  And having tried numerous sources on the same issue.  Dead people, books, living people, etc.  Nobody has been able to prove there own existence.  In fact, the wiser the source, the less certain of existence they tend to be.  Indeed, the doubt of existence might be a good measure of progress of any human.

But why does this matter; it doesn't.  But without existential certainty, all ascribed importance to any issue, thing, situation, etc. is in error.  That is, the primary concern of every human should first be establishing existence, for without it, there is no need for any other effort.

I've asked this existence question on numerous forums and here is a sampling of the responses...
- I think, therefore I am. [common, but flawed and insufficient answer; based on perception; Descartes' argument is flawed because he forgets to mention that he perceives he thinks.  His perception could be flawed and likely is.  All that can be inferred from Descartes is that perception of thinking exists and that something or things might be perceiving, but this does not establish the existence of an individual, God, etc.]
- Honestly , I don’t. [great answer]
- As long as someone can see me and be able to touch me. [common and intellectually lazy answer; based on perception]
- I don’t, but if I didn’t it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Nice delusion, I like it around here. [awesome answer]
- It doesn’t matter whether I know or not. It doesn’t matter whether I exist or not. I continue to behave as though I existed. That seems to me to be the most rational way to proceed. [bad/lazy; paradoxically, the least rational way to proceed.]
- I watched Waking Life and I figure I couldn’t make that shit up. [great answer]