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Survey: College A Bad Investment?

A Pew Analysis Middle survey confirmed a majority of People now imagine that greater education and learning is not a good financial investment. Ana Kasparian and Jayar Jackson go over.
Video clip Score: 4 / 5

My Ego, My Higher Power, and I – Part 4 of 5 – with Dr. Jerry Hirschfield

The lectures, the remedy I apply and my textbooks help my consumers and visitors to discover the Loving Heart which exists in every single of us, and to turn their egos in excess of to this Heart of benevolent, imaginative electricity so they might lead joyous, harmonious, and inventive lives. Dr. Hirschfield considers his lifestyle as a series of miracles. He was born in France and when aged eleven, arrived to the United States with his family at the beginning of Planet War II, crossing the U-boat infested Atlantic unharmed. He grew to become a US citizen in 1946 and lived in New York Metropolis for 10 a long time. Jerry did his undergarduate operate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies wherever he earned a BS degree in electronics engineering in 1950. Jerry turned enamored of Southern California while on a summer season trip for the duration of his college many years. He made the decision he would make his home there as shortly as attainable immediately after graduation. Via another wonder, Jerry moved to California in 1952 and was employed in the aerospace sector for the following twenty a long time in engineering, management, and consulting positions. Throughout that time, he acquired a Grasp of Engineering Management degree from the Engineering Govt Plan at UCLA. As time passed, he grew to become much more interested in the human aspects of administration and progressively disenchanted with the navy/industrial intricate. In the course of the economic downturn in the early seventies, Dr. Hirschfield misplaced his occupation in the aerospace industry (yet another miracle) and went by means of a significant mid-daily life disaster …
Video Score: three / 5

TED402 Ed Psychology Session One 01/27/10

TED402 Ed Psychology Session 1 01/27/10 Guest: Amanda Skeeter

Manufacturing Consent

Thoughts on the Documentary “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media”           For those of you who may have never heard of Professor Chomsky, the New York Times has called him ‘arguably the greatest intellectual alive.’ And this is ironic because the New York Times, ‘the paper of record’ i.e. they set the standard for all the rest of the newspapers in America, & according to the conservatives, it is the bastion of the liberal media, is a lapdog to the powers that be, in Chomsky’s opinion. By the way, this is a good place for me to confess that though I tried to capture Chomsky’s words verbatim from the film, sometimes I failed and so occasionally I will paraphrase his words but I have tried to be true to the spirit of his words. I will note whenever possible, my paraphrasing of his exact words. For example, he didn’t say ‘the powers that be’ in reference to the New York Times above. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the documentary, I want to also inform you that “Noam Chomsky is one of the ten most-quoted writers of all time. The Chicago Tribune has called Professor Chomsky ‘the most cited living author,’ adding that among intellectual luminaries of all eras, he ranks eighth, just behind Plato and Sigmund Freud.” (Chomsky For Beginners, by David Cogswell, pg. 1) Moreover, on that list of the ten most-quoted writers of all time is Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, & Socrates. Chomsky in my opinion is a one-man revolution and if you are new to the world of liberal, progressive, & radical thought, you couldn’t pick a better place to start than with Chomsky. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that if you read no one other than Chomsky and did a thorough study of his prolific writings, books, lectures, interviews, videos, & audio tapes, you would acquire an education equivalent to a Ph.D. and you would be a very enlightened individual. Chomsky would probably disagree with such flattery and that’s one of the things that especially endears him to me i.e. he is a very humble man. Okay, let’s get down to the brass tacks of this piece of mine.               The term ‘the manufacture of consent’ was coined by Walter Lippmann in 1922. Chomsky states, “Walter Lippmann coined the term ‘the manufacture of consent’ and he basically said that the common interests are above the heads of the public and that a separate, specialized class, would have to manage or regulate society. And this is the opposite of our common understanding of democracy.” Since Lippmann’s term is the title of this film and of Chomsky’s book, I am going to give you some background on Lippmann along with some pertinent quotes from him. I hope this will help to shed some light on the significance of this pernicious concept ‘the manufacture of consent.’ It’s absolutely mind-boggling that Lippmann is held up as some sort of champion of the ‘free press’ and ‘liberalism’ and after you read the following, you will see why I feel this way.               “Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was a political philosopher and journalist whose writings constitute a sustained and close commentary on American public affairs for a period of nearly six decades. He brought to the discussion and analysis of current social and political problems a degree of learning unprecedented in American journalism. Throughout his career he retained an independent, critical stance on foreign and domestic issues and combined a rigorous commitment to democratic principles with a deep sense of the pragmatic limitations of real political situations. He is certainly among the most thoughtful and cultured newspapermen of all times…               The main focus of Lippmann’s thinking in the 1920′s was on the relation of knowledge to public opinion in mass society….Lippmann became doubtful whether citizens could be adequately and objectively informed of the knowledge required for self-government, conceived along Jeffersonian lines….An Enquiry into the Principles of the Good Society  advanced the principle of disinterestedness on the part of statesmen as a cure to the excesses of majority rule and as an antidote to the dangers of elitism.” (Alan Waters in Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, St. James Press, 1987)               And now Lippmann’s words:                           “That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough.               The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on the rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.               Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise…It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.” (Public Opinion, by Walter Lippmann, Free Press, 1965; first published in 1922, page 158)               And more from Lippmann:                           “The lesson is, I think, a fairly clear one. In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality. This class is irresponsible, for it acts upon information that is not common property, in situations that the public at large does not conceive, and it can be held to account only on the accomplished fact.” (Public Opinion, page 195)               Boy! Talk about fancy, double-talk. Lippmann sounds more like a lawyer than a journalist. And fortunately we have someone as brilliant as Chomsky to decipher this gobbley-gook. I could see Chomsky’s basic assertion that Lippmann was saying in a nutshell that the public is too ignorant to understand the larger issues affecting society. And one thing that jumped out at me in the last quote from Lippmann was ‘this class is irresponsible.’ He was clearly referring to this ‘specialized class’ who he felt were the only ones fit to run our society. But it seems to me that he revealed his true convictions in this sentence i.e. this ‘superior class’ is above the law and above the peons of our society which means the vast majority of us who aren’t multi-millionaires. Of course when you first think of the word ‘irresponsible,’ you probably think of an irresponsible teenager or an adult who doesn’t pay his bills or hold down a job. Well, check out this definition from Webster’s; irresponsible (not answerable to higher authority ) Freudian slip? Or perhaps the unvarnished truth? And how apropos because as I believe Chomsky shows us in this documentary, what we call a democracy here in America is all but gone and we are sliding towards a variation of a fascist or totalitarian state—my description. I am going to come back to more quotes from Lippmann later on because I don’t want to belabor the point here. The next person Chomsky mentions in the film is Reinhold Niebuhr.               Chomsky summed up Niebuhr thus; “the average man follows faith not reason because of his stupidity and therefore society needs to be run by cool, reasoning men. He was a big influence on the policy makers of the 1960′s. Now, I’m not sure to be honest with you if the next two phrases were Niebuhr’s but they are in the same paragraph of my notes from the film. And they are ‘Necessary Illusions’ & “Emotionally Potent Oversimplifications.” I wrote that these are needed to herd the sheep, in the margins of my notes. And the film showed an example of the S.D.I. (Strategic Defense Initiative i.e. Star Wars) program that Reagan launched with simplistic animations of a ‘protective umbrella’ over the U.S. and satellites that could shoot down incoming missiles. And these ‘necessary illusions & emotionally potent oversimplifications’ definitely contribute to the dumbing-down of the American public. The hypocrisy is phenomenal in that as Lippmann and Niebuhr charge the public with being too stupid to participate in the democratic process and at the same time, contribute to keeping the public ignorant. In other words, they’re blaming the victims. And speaking of ignorant, once again if it hadn’t been for Chomsky’s insight, I would’ve gone on thinking Niebuhr was a champion of the oppressed. I believe I even have a book or two of his in my garage somewhere? I wanted to refresh my memory regarding Niebuhr so I went to my Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia and here is a bit of what it has to say about him.               “Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892-1971) American theologian….he took an active interest in labor problems, Niebuhr joined the faculty at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he taught from 1928 to 1960. Allied with the socialist movement in the 1930s, Niebuhr dealt with questions of political morality and with the failure of Christianity to confront social problems…the moral irresponsibility of those who fail to come to grips with the problem of power. Following World War II, Niebuhr’s earlier radicalism was replaced by what he called ‘conservative realism’; but, in Christian Realism and Political Problems (1953), he maintained that the church was actively sanctioning social ills by refusing to confront them. He persistently emphasized the reality of sin and its bearing on the tragedy of man and saw the modern world as one to which power and technocracy have brought confusion and meaninglessness….Always invigorating, usually controversial, Niebuhr was one of the most influential thinkers of his day.”               As a matter of fact, somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to recall that Niebuhr was a big influence on President Kennedy? And since nothing is so damning as a person’s own words, here are some of Niebuhr’s words:               “God give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” (The Serenity Prayer, 1943) I knew there was always something that I didn’t like about that ‘prayer.’ It’s used at AA meetings and in the context of this essay & Niebuhr’s insults regarding public stupidity, I interpret it to mean, just accept your lot in life e.g. being screwed by the status quo.               “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 1944) Then why did you promote the undermining of democracy by saying people are too stupid to participate in democracy and as a theologian you preached the virtues of ‘faith’ and then have the audacity to turn around and say the public is too stupid and believes more in faith than in reason?               “Life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.” (Faith and History, 1949) And you consider yourself an exemplar of responsibility when you promote faith over reason and then blame people for being too ignorant to participate in the democratic process?               “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.” (The Irony of American History, 1952) I’d say the hypocrisy of American history rather than the irony. But then it is sort of ironic that Niebuhr chastises the public for follows faith not reason when as in this quotation he says ‘we must be saved by faith.’ I can see how the public policy makers loved him because by praising the virtues of faith in public, you make it that much easier to manipulate the public and cloud the issues affecting their lives with such ‘necessary illusions’ as hope and faith. And with ‘emotionally potent oversimplifications,’ you continue to keep the public distracted and off-balance e.g. George Bush the Lesser’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” and “I’m going to lead the country to understanding the value of life—the preciousness of life. Life for the living and life for the unborn.” (THIS WEEK, ABC, January 23, 2000)               Next in the film, Chomsky says “indoctrination is the essence of a democratic state. In a totalitarian state it doesn’t much matter what people think because you have a bludgeon over their heads. But, in a democracy you need to control what people think. People may become so curious and arrogant that they don’t submit to a civil rule.” I am reminded of that glorious period of the 1960′s when people—mostly university students & hippies—were definitely not ‘civil’ and how wonderful a feeling it was! We rejected the crass materialism of the day and which has returned today, stronger than ever. We fought for civil rights, women’s rights, the protection of our environment, & against the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. Chomsky also protested in the 1960′s and risked going to prison for many years. Chomsky goes on to say “the standard way to control people’s thoughts was in the more honest days called propaganda. There are various ways to either marginalize the general public or reduce them to apathy. And the role of the mass media is to mobilize public support for the special interests.” Of course the major special interests which he is referring to are the banking, financial, and corporate interests. And our current occupation of Iraq clearly serves the interests of the corporate oil industry and the financial & banking interests because as I have learned, the dollar was devaluating significantly around the world. Saddam’s real threat to America as some scholars have said was because he threatened to start selling Iraq’s oil using the Euro dollar instead of the American dollar and that would’ve possibly plunged the U.S. into hyper-inflation. And so, as soon as we ‘conquered’ Iraq, our ‘leaders’ immediately switched the oil currency of Iraq back to the U.S. dollar.               What’s more, as Chomsky points out, “investment, production, & distribution decisions are made by and are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of corporations and they are also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government & they’re the ones who own the media.” Indeed! And don’t think this just pertains to the oil industry, it applies to every major industry you can think of. Have you ever heard of the ‘revolving door’ between government and the corporate sector? I could give you a long list of examples but the most glaring one currently is Dick Cheney and his flagrant conflict of interest because he worked for Halliburton before he became vice-president and he now financially benefits to the tune of millions from that relationship because Halliburton was given the sweetheart deal of a no-bid contract for the majority of the ‘rebuilding’ of Iraq—should more accurately be called the raping of Iraq & the enrichment of the greedy hogs of corporate American oil. George Schultz and Bechtel, another major war profiteer from Iraq’s destruction. James Baker and the Carlyle Group of which King George the First is a member and which benefits not only from Iraq’s misery but also benefited handsomely from the devastation of 9/11 and Baker has the balls to legally represent the Saudi Royal family against the surviving family members of 9/11 who are suing the Saudis. Don’t forget that 15 of the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11th were Saudis and that Osama is Saudi and the Bush bastards are not only friends of the bin Laden family but whisked them out of the U.S. immediately after that terrible day when all other flights around the country were grounded. Coincidence? Yeah, right! Yep, I’d say Chomsky is right on the money and I’m also reminded of President Eisenhower’s warning regarding the military-industrial complex except today as Chomsky has shown us, it’s also the media serving these cold-blooded robber baron class. Recall that Chomsky has called the New York Times their lapdog. And also bear in mind the recent scandal of Judy Miller, who almost single-handedly led us to war in Iraq because she relied on Chalabi, that suspected double-agent for Iran, embezzler on the run from Syria, and hated Iraqi exile whom the Iraqis would never accept as their leader—though the Bush cabal tried to install him. Judy Miller was a star reporter for the New York Times, remember that bastion of the liberal media according to the rabid right-wingers, and she went to jail not to protect a whistle-blower protecting the public’s interest but rather to protect a White House whistle-blower who publicly revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent who happened to be the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Why? Because Ambassador Wilson actually believed that the truth should be spoken and refused to rubber stamp Bush & Cheney’s phony pack of lies which they spun to suck us into the Iraq invasion and quagmire.               In addition, Chomsky goes on to say that “within the economic system by law and in principle, they [the concentrated network of corporations] dominate. They control our resources. The need to satisfy their economic interests places very serious constraints on the political and ideological system. There are two targets for U.S. propaganda; 1)the political class who are relatively well-educated, make up about 20% of the public, & play some part in the decision making as managers or cultural managers e.g. teachers, writers, and so on. Their consent is crucial and they have to be deeply indoctrinated. 2) the other 80% of the public whose main function is to follow orders, not to think, and not pay attention to anything. And they’re the ones who usually pay the cost.” As soon as Chomsky mentioned the ‘cultural managers’ such as teachers, I immediately thought of my wife. She sincerely believes she’s doing good and she’s very dedicated to her work as an educator. And we’ve been arguing for years about our educational system. I tried my best to convince her that we should home-school our son but she’s been too-well indoctrinated with the critics of home-schooling’s mantra of ‘socialization.’ It’s been a very painful and frustrating experience to have to sit by and watch my own son be destroyed by our public educational system. And my wife, just as blind as the majority of teachers, laments how he has turned out i.e. self-centered, materialistic, angry, lacking in compassion or empathy for the downtrodden, cussing too much, etc. When we get into heated arguments I hurl at her ‘well, you wanted him to be socialized and he’s indeed just like the majority of the angry youth.’ I shouldn’t be surprised at this sad state of affairs even in my own family because I have been a lone voice of dissent from the common wisdom ever since I started educating myself in my twenties. I have been mocked, ridiculed, intimidated, etc. by strangers, my own relatives, friends, etc. for so long that it feels natural to me now. Because I read people like Chomsky and most people read the t.v. guide, the Reader’s Digest, or the National Enquirer, and other such ‘quality’ material. And because they have never heard of the great thinkers words or seen them on their televisions, I must be a nutcase in their minds and they smugly put me down and call me a loser, a quitter, a failure, etc. Yes indeed, I have paid and continue to pay a very high price for daring to challenge the myths and propaganda we have been raised on. And the dearest price has been the loss of my son’s respect. He won’t even read an essay I wrote for him trying to warn him of the manipulations of the military propaganda in an effort to save his life. So far he doesn’t have any desire to join the military but I also fear that they will be forced to reinstate the draft due to the chicken-hawks in the White House and their designs on world conquest for their corporate cronies bank accounts.               Because you probably believe like I did when I was in high school and still ignorant of the lies & manipulations of these masters of the universe and their diabolical schemes, you might still think that it is only ‘evil empires’ like the former Soviet Union and Communist China who use propaganda on their citizens? Well fortunately, scholars like Chomsky show us that ‘our government’ is equally guilty of manipulating us with its own propaganda. I mean, Jesus Christ! Isn’t it as clear as the nose on your face that this junta occupying the oval office have blatantly lied us into invading & occupying Iraq? Let me remind you of the constantly shifting sands of deceit they used to sucker us into this ‘war.’ By the way, some ‘war,’ after ten years of sanctions and bombing, and after daddy invaded Iraq in 1990 and had its infrastructure almost totally destroyed so that it’s children & elderly have died because they have no power, no medicine, no clean water, lack food, etc. and over 500,000 Iraqi children have died because of it, and our weapons inspectors made sure there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction so our mighty military could be sure that it wouldn’t be able to put up hardly any resistance whatsoever, we attack? This is nothing to be proud of and in fact quite the opposite. It’s something all decent people are deeply ashamed of. Our conquest of Iraq and the bragging of that little Bantam rooster who couldn’t even serve out his military duty in the safe and stateside, Texas Air National Guard that daddy got him into, is like me boasting of having beat up a kindergarten student.               To demonstrate how propaganda works U.S. style, Chomsky provides us with a ‘propaganda model’ in this brilliant documentary. Chomsky like any who dare to critique the powers that be, is often labeled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ but as he states, ‘no, what he does is institutional analysis.’ The intellectually lazy and dishonest try to dupe us and to marginalize those who reveal their dirty tricks with terms like conspiracy nut, anti-American, etc. Without reservation though, I challenge you or any who would like to argue against my opinions or my quotes from Chomsky to prove me wrong. And I am not ashamed one bit to clearly state that I’m riding on Chomsky’s coattails. This is a man who as I said at the beginning & to rephrase, an intellectual giant and the rest of us are mental midgets in comparison. And Chomsky religiously lists his sources, so any of you would be intellectual assassins put up or shut up! Prove him or me wrong if you dare and you must cite your sources or else you’re just a coward like that bushwhacker in the executive office who hides and shoots people in the back. To illustrate his ‘propaganda model,’ Chomsky starts off with saying that there are filters which are used in the propaganda assault (my word).               “The elite media set the agenda. Some of the most prominent among them are the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major television stations such as ABC, NBC, & CBS, etc. They set the general framework and the local media around the country more or less adapt to their structure. The elite media set the agenda in all sorts of ways e.g. by the selection of the topics to be discussed; by the distribution of concerns to be covered; by the emphasis they place on topics; by the framing of issues (I strongly recommend reading George Lakoff on the critical importance of ‘framing of the issues’); by their filtering of the information they provide us with; by the bounding of debate (the limits as to what can be discussed); they determine, select, shape, control, & restrict what news items or stories we see, hear, or read in order to serve the interests of the dominant elite groups.” Again my friend, I added some of the details of the factors or items Chomsky listed in hopes of making it a little more explicit or clear to whomever may read this essay.             Furthermore, Chomsky goes on to argue that the New York Times is the most important paper in the U.S. and arguably the entire world and it creates history. Because the New York Times again is the ‘paper of record’ and publishes ‘only the news that’s fit to print,’ which it proudly displays on every copy. It creates history in the sense that it is the paper which people go to when they want to know what happened in the past.” I want to inject here that when I heard this, I was immediately reminded of that nightmare world George Orwell described in his classic 1984. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a horrific portrait of a future society in which one of the primary ways of controlling the public is done by a government department called the Ministry of Truth. Those who work in this department, including the protagonist of the novel, Winston, spend their days rewriting history. They delete inconvenient facts from past editions of the official government news and insert new ‘facts’ which fit the current claims of the government. And the spooky & relevant quote from Orwell’s book is “Those who control the past, control the present. And those who control the present, control the future.” Can you see the power and the significance of this quote? In brief, those who control the media of a country, control what the people think and believe and its an easy matter after you have this kind of control, to get the public to do just about anything you want e.g. go to war against an imaginary enemy (Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.); give up their rights (the Patriot Act); resign themselves to being permanently unemployed or underemployed (Globalization); etc. etc. etc. And the New York Times clearly has the power to shape the past because its editors decide which stories to print, how to shape them, etc. as Chomsky delineated above. And they maintain a storehouse of all their past stories. Researchers, scholars, government and business leaders go to the New York Times if they want to find something out about a past event. In fact, I just pulled a book off my bookshelves titled The New York Times Guide To Reference Materials: The Indispensable Handbook, Updated and Expanded, For Anyone Who Needs to Know How and Where to Look Up Almost Anything by Mona McCormick. Pretty arrogant wouldn’t you say? Sounds like they’re so full of themselves that they actually believe their own hype.               In any case, Chomsky goes on to point out that “it’s important to have an impression of a liberal bias in the press so as to make people think there’s a counterbalance and not dare to think of going beyond the so-called liberal left which the New York Times is suppose to represent. And because of the pseudo-far Left that the Times is suppose to represent, nobody goes further to the Left because they’d be written off as nutcases from outer space because they have gone beyond what is acceptable in terms of debate and critique of our society and its institutions. I added on considerably to Chomsky’s words but its close to Chomsky’s intent I believe. For instance, in order to prevent the real truth seekers from getting too close, the elite media restrict the debate and therefore the presuppositions of the ‘liberal media’ are sacrosanct. In other words, if the New York Times, that ‘bastion of the liberal media’ is indeed liberal, adversarial, and all those bad things, how can I go beyond it? They’re already so extreme in their opposition to power that to go beyond it would be to take off from the planet i.e. to leave rationality, reasonability, & reality behind. (my description) The media thus say in Chomsky’s words “Thus far and no further!”               Equally important to remember is the fact that “the major media are large corporations sometimes integrated with even larger corporations e.g. General Electric, Westinghouse, etc.” And a very important side-note here from me is recall that Ronald Reagan, that champion of the conservative cockroaches and who started the war on the poor and the environment with the Reagan Revolution, spent twenty years as a spokesman for G.E. before he got into politics. And in those 20 years he toured the G.E. plants around the country giving the same speech i.e. the Commies are Coming! And G.E. is this country’s largest producer of nuclear energy amongst other lovely things. I forget if they’re in the weapons industry but I heard recently that Lockheed-Martin is the largest weapons manufacturer. In brief, megalithic corporations like G.E. have a total lock on us i.e. they produce the weapons of mass destruction that threaten our very survival, they sell these weapons even to our ‘enemies,’ they poison our environment, they are funded by our tax dollars, they downsize us by moving overseas, they take away our pensions, and just about every labor law is gutted, and by owning the ‘elite media’ they keep it all hidden from the average American who watches their news and believes it as objective fact.               I know this is all terribly depressing but you can either bury your head in the sand and hope it will all go away or that I’m just a paranoid nutcase or you can stand up on your hind legs and like in that classic movie Network from the late 60s or early 70s in which the central character, a television anchorman, told his audience in an apparent nervous breakdown on air, “go to your windows, open them up and shout, I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Obviously, I am kidding in a sense but I do believe we must get mad and we must inform ourselves as Chomsky himself counsels people who come to him for some magical answer. He tells them again and again, I can’t tell you what’s right. And he tells them that he could be wrong. He basically says that we have to do our own work and it’s tough but there’s no easy way. Next Chomsky touches on how advertising fits into the manufacturing of consent and this would be a good spot for me to go back and share with you a bit on Edward Bernays whom some have called the grandfather of the Public Relations industry in America, I believe? I am bringing him up because I believe that public relations and advertising are closely intertwined and responsible for a large part of our manipulation by the power elite! I am going to quote a lengthy portion on the subject of public relations from a book I have dissected and am using in my own book. And while I am using this book, I believe the author, John Taylor Gatto, may have a hidden agenda in support of Christian fundamentalists which I utterly detest. Nonetheless, Gatto is useful and does provide some great information and occasionally some brilliant insights.               “Four hundred years after Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his treatise on scientific deceit, Edward L. Bernays began to practice the scientific art of public deception, trading heavily on his uncle Sigmund Freud’s notoriety. A decade earlier, Ivy Lee’s publicity savvy had rescued the Rockefellers from their Ludlow Massacre disgrace. Public Relations as political science was off and running on the fast track.               Bernays was only a solitary word magician at the time, of course, but he was in an ideal position to capitalize quickly upon his rhetorical talent and to set his stamp on the new science’s future. In 1928, Bernays published two books in quick succession which planted his flag in the dream terrain of the ‘unconscious.’ The first, Crystallizing Public Opinion, the second, Propaganda. Adolf Hitler is said to have displayed both on a table in his office under a poster-sized picture of Henry Ford. The new world was blazing a trail into an even newer world than it imagined.               Both of Bernays’ books argued that language could be used successfully to create new realities. Psychological science was so advanced, he claimed, it could substitute synthetic reality for natural reality, as urban society had successfully replaced our natural connection to birds, trees, and flowers with a substitute connection to billboards, cars, and bright lights.               Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda had much to say to the newly minted administrative classes burgeoning all over American schools and colleges. In Propaganda, Bernays redefined democratic society, in the interests of the mass-production economy. I’ve selected three short excerpts from Bernay’s classic which enriched him with corporate work in the seven decades of life he had left—he died in 1995 at the age of 105—after its publication.               The first assertion of Propaganda was that common people had to be regimented and governed from behind the scenes. Here are Bernays’ actual words:               The need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the             Technical means have been invented and developed by which public opinion             May be regimented.               The next important contention was that the critical pollution of language necessary to make this work was already in use:               We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,             Largely by men we have never heard of. We are dominated by a relatively small             Number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of             The masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public.               Finally, Bernays attempts to provide a ‘moral’ justification for proceeding as he suggests:               The conscious manipulation of organized habits and opinions of the masses is an             Important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen             Mechanism constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in             This country.               This attitude of manipulation as an important component of ‘democratic’ management entered the urban factory-school classroom in a big way at a time when psychology was taking over from academics as the tool of choice in America’s German-inspired teacher-training institutions.” (The Underground History of American Education, pgs. 354-55, John Taylor Gatto)               And from the same website where I got the Walter Lippmann quotes:               THE ENGINEERING APPROACH This phrase quite simply means the use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs. Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal…The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process the freedom to persuade and suggest. The freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly, the freedoms which make the engineering of consent possible, are among the most cherished guarantees of the Constitution of the United States…   Today it is impossible to overestimate the importance of engineering consent; it affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. When used for social purposes, it is among our most valuable contributions to the efficient functioning of modern society…The responsible leader, to accomplish social objectives, must therefore be constantly aware of the possibilities of subversion. He must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest.               From The Engineering of Consent, by Edward Bernays, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1947, pages 114-115 See also: pages 16-17                           Well, I don’t know about you my friend but I feel like a rat in a lab experiment after learning this? And I am absolutely stupefied that both Bernays and Lippmann could call this manipulation of the public ‘democratic?’ That is some twisted & perverse logic more closely resembling Alice in Wonderland than scientific or rational thought. Something occurred to me as I was typing the date of the last quote from Bernays quote and that is that 1947 was also the year that marked the beginning of the National Security State i.e. Allen Foster Dulles wrote the National Security Act and we began the Cold War with Russia. Food for thought? Think about it in terms of the manufacture of consent. I’m not sure if it was Allen Dulles or his brother, John Foster Dulles in regards to writing the National Security Act? At this point in the film, Chomsky states that “what keeps the media functioning is advertising, not their readers (in fact, the newspapers devote something like 40% of the paper to advertising). What comes out is a picture of the world that satisfies the needs of the corporations and conglomerates. They exclude, marginalize, or eliminate dissenting voices just like any institution because dissenting opinions are self-destructive to institutions.” I would add though that dissenting opinions are in fact healthy for an institution, organization, government because if you surround yourself with nothing but yes-men, you are missing out on some opinions that can sometimes make the difference between failure and success.             Chomsky continues “In a democracy, before we go to war, the media’s obligation is to provide background and offer peaceful resolutions or alternatives by presenting differing points of view in a public debate.  This didn’t happen in the Gulf War, 99% of the media just went along with President Bush. And every time Bush said there’d be no negotiations, there’d be a hundred editorials the next day lauding him for going the last mile in diplomacy. Bush said aggressors can’t be rewarded but he invaded Panama and was head of the CIA during the East Timor genocide and the media applauded. The media kept us from knowing we didn’t have to go to war and that means we went to war very much in the tradition of a totalitarian state. Equally important is the fact that the U.S. has vetoed almost every UN resolution against aggressor states (Gee! I wonder why? Could it be because the majority of those aggressive invasions have been committed by the U.S. & our number one ally, Israel?)               “The purpose of the real mass media i.e. not the elite media, which is aimed at the top 20% of the ‘relatively well-educated’, but the media aimed at Joe six-pack, is to dull people’s brains. The main thing for the 80% of the public is to divert them, to get them to watch the National Football League. And to worry about the motherless child with six heads, astrology, fundamentalists stuff, etc. (The National Enquirer, the ‘largest selling paper in America’) In brief, the true purpose of the mass media for the lower classes is to get them away from things that matter. It’s important to reduce their capacity to think. Sports is another crucial example of the indoctrination system because it offers people something to pay attention to that’s of no importance. To keep them from worrying about things that matter to their lives, that they might have some ideas of how to do something about. High-school students are urged to root for their team even though they don’t know them and they mean nothing to them. This is a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind the leader i.e. training in irrational jingoism.”(note the often used sports metaphors in business and government e.g. the CEO or the president & etc. are often referred to as the coach or the quarterback and we’re the team. And also note the similar tactic used in ancient Rome with the Bread & Circus routine rituals of gladiators in The Coliseum used to distract the citizens from the political acts of the Emperor and the Senators e.g. taxing the hell out of the citizens, etc.)               “Pol Pot, Cambodia’s bloody dictator and engineer of the Killing Fields which decimated somewhere around 750,000 of his own citizens, was covered in great and gloriously gory detail in our media but at the same time, the U.S. support of Indochina’s genocide against East Timor had no or barely any coverage or mention in the media. East Timor was our ally because they had oil and they were next to a very deep section of the ocean perfect for U.S. submarines to pass through in that region of the world. Indonesia invaded East Timor, the former Portuguese colony, because they were much more powerful and therefore could, and because they didn’t want a small, independent country which was very egalitarian and treated its citizens fairly, to serve as an example and possibly inspire other countries in the region. President Ford & ‘Killer Kissinger’ visited Jakarta, Indonesia and asked them to delay their invasion until after they had left because it would be embarrassing in terms of world opinion (remember, the U.S. is supposedly the ‘beacon on the hill i.e. the bright, shining example of all that’s good in the world). Less than twelve hours later, Indonesia invaded East Timor (December 7, 1975) and simply slaughtered East Timor’s citizens without stop for three weeks. The UN called for resolutions, sanctions, etc. but the U.S. was clearly not going to allow anything to interfere with Indochina’s campaign of genocide. And that great democratic leader, Daniel Patrick Moynihan proudly led the way in blocking the UN sanctions for our State Department. The U.S. supplied 90% of the weapons and right after the invasion, the shipment of arms was stepped up. This went on for years and Indochina’s military slowly starved the people of East Timor to death. When some who had been hiding in the jungle would come out under a white flag of surrender, they would be murdered—men and children. The women were taken to Delhi to ‘service’ the military of Indochina i.e. raped repeatedly!”               “In 1978 when Indochina was running out of weapons and ammunition, the Carter administration increased sales to them as well as England and every other nation that could profit from munitions sales (remember that Carter is supposedly the champion of Human Rights & also note that weapons and drugs are the two largest businesses in the world). As the genocide reached its peak in 1978, the coverage in the U.S. media and in Canada’s media dropped to zero. Before this, there was some coverage but always from the point of view of the State Dept. and the Indonesian army, never from the people of East Timor and this was exactly at the time of Pol Pot’s genocidal campaign in Cambodia. And there was great protest and moral outrage in the press regarding Cambodia. The level of atrocities was comparable relatively but it was considerably higher in East Timor. From 1970 to 1975 there was also an atrocity for which the U.S. was responsible i.e. the bombing of Cambodia. CIA estimates were that our bombings killed somewhere around 600,000 Cambodians and the aftermath of our bombings killed approximately another million innocent civilians . The U.S. bombings of Cambodia played a significant role in building up peasant support for Pol Pot’s Khymer Rouge who implemented the genocide against their own people. And within a couple of weeks of the takeover by the Khymer Rouge, the New York Times was accusing them of genocide but mentioned nothing about the five years of bombings by the U.S. And  from then on it was a drumbeat, a chorus of genocide by our mass media. Time, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, etc. etc. etc. all jumped on the bandwagon decrying Pol Pot but not a word about East Timor. Our media lied outrageously about Cambodia, vastly exaggerated the numbers of dead e.g. anywhere from 1 to 4 million, doctored pictures, never provided any evidence nor was it required, claimed that Pol Pot bragged about killing over 2 million, etc. The lies would’ve made Stalin cringe. The difference between the genocide in East Timor and Cambodia was that East Timor’s killers weren’t Communists!”               “Whenever the U.S. media did cover East Timor, it was a systematic, consistent whitewash of U.S. complicity. Indonesia killed a third of the people of East Timor and put them in concentration camps. Women were forced to use birth control and whenever any dared to protest, they were massacred. (Amy Goodman of America’s best alternative news media program Democracy Now!, was there & was severely beaten) The slaughter in East Timor exemplifies that the U.S. media isn’t merely subservient to corporate power but are complicit in genocide. The reason atrocities like this can go on is because nobody knew about them. If we did, we could protest and pressure them to stop. American people would be horrified if they knew of the blood that’s dripping from their hands because they allow themselves to be manipulated and deluded by the media. The courage of those in the Third World who continue to struggle and fight for freedom is awe-inspiring and they rely on the assistance from dissidents in the First World. Freedom and Democracy are prerequisites for survival.” (Chomsky is often charged with being a Conspiracy Theorist but he’s doing the complete opposite i.e. an institutional analysis) “The charge of being a conspiracy theorist’s effect is to discourage institutional analysis. Chomsky is marginalized in U.S. media because he primarily criticizes the U.S. but in other countries he’s given a lot of access to their major media because he’s not so much of a threat to them. And here’s the paradox, the freer a society is, the more necessary it is to induce fear (Note how effectively and how consistently Bush has used the tool of fear since Sept. 11th to manipulate public opinion e.g. to invade Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11).               “And Chomsky’s freedom to speak in other countries like Belgium, Holland, Canada, etc. is partly because their opinions don’t matter i.e. the U.S. is the world’s sole superpower! The U.S. is ideologically narrower than most other countries. The structure of the U.S. media is to pretty much eliminate critical discussion. FAIR’s (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) analysis of ABC’s Nightline revealed that of 1,530 guests: 92% were White, 89% were Male, & 80% were Professionals, Government Officials, or Corporate Representatives. Defenders of television like Jeff Greenfield of Nightline, say that people like Chomsky don’t work on t.v. because he’s not concise enough i.e. able to provide sound-bites of a sentence or two between commercials. The beauty of concision is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts. You don’t need any evidence e.g. Khomeni is nuts!, Quadafi is a murderer!, etc. Everybody just nods in agreement. They just spew the standard regurgitations of conventional pieties. On the other hand, if you say something like ‘the biggest international terrorism operations that are known, are run out of Washington D.C.’ or ‘what happened in the 1980s was that the U.S. government was driven underground’ (Iran Contra Scandal), or ‘the U.S. is invading South Vietnam’ or ‘if the Nuremburg Principles were applied, then every post-war U.S. president would’ve been hanged,’ or ‘the best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt,’ or ‘the Bible is the most genocidal book in our total canon,’ or ‘education is a system of imposed ignorance,’ or ‘there’s no more morality in world affairs fundamentally than there was in the time of Genghis Khan, there’s just different factors to be concerned with,’ people will demand that you give evidence. And a lot of evidence if you make such statements that startle them and which they’ve never heard before. But you can’t give evidence if you’re stuck with concision. That’s the genius of this structural constraint. In fact, if they’d let the dissenters on more often, they’d sound like they’re from outer space and that would serve the propagandists much better.”               In another case, “The number of guests in sixteen years of the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour was over 10,500 & the number of interviews with Chomsky on this program was 1. He was given 11 minutes & 52 seconds to speak. Chomsky was asked why if everything is so bad here in regards to the U.S. media, he lives here? Because it’s my country, it’s the freest country in the world, and there’s more possibility for change here than anywhere else. And comparatively speaking, the U.S. is the country where the State is the most restrictive. The U.S. is a scandal in point of view of its wealth, it’s resources, its lack of enemies, etc. The U.S. should have a level of health, welfare, and so on that’s on an order of magnitude that’s beyond anybody else in the world and we don’t! The U.S. is last among twenty eight industrialized societies in terms of infant mortality. ”               Furthermore, “there’s virtually no correlation between the internal freedom of a society and its external behavior e.g. ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy & its citizens were amongst the freest peoples of the time yet it was an imperialist power that invaded other nations. ”               To return to the subject of the media, “the only way to make the media or corporations more democratic is to get rid of them. If you have concentrated power, you can slightly affect it by protest but you can’t really affect the structural power of the corporation unless you’re ready for a social revolution. It’s not to say one shouldn’t keep on trying. There are internal contradictions in institutions such as in the media i.e. the media’s support of the powers that be & on the other hand, the striving for journalistic integrity on the part of some journalists. For instance, Sarah McClendon who was an independent journalist who tore into Presidents at press briefings for over 40 years. Most reporters simply internalize the values of their corporate bosses and then regard themselves as acting freely. Self-censorship vs. formal censorship! The ways things change are because lots of people are working all the time in their communities, or wherever they happen to be and they’re building up the base for popular movements e.g. the end of slavery, democratic movements, Civil Rights in the 1960s, etc. History books give a very false notion of this i.e. there are a couple of leaders like George Washington, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, etc. who caused the changes to come about & this is not to say that these leaders aren’t important. But it’s all those who we never hear of or know the names of, who are building up the pressures against the social wrongs until a point is reached i.e. Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, and that spark ignites a wildfire. (my description of the phenomenon) “When you have active activists, then people like me (Chomsky) can appear and we can appear to be prominent but that’s only because somebody else is doing the work! His giving hundreds of lectures, spending 20 hours a week writing letters, writing books & etc. isn’t directed towards politicians, intellectuals, etc., it’s directed toward what are called ordinary people. (earlier in the film it was revealed that Chomsky comes from a blue-collar background & has always championed the working class) And what he expects from them is exactly what they are i.e. to try to understand the world and act according to their decent impulses. And that they should try to improve the world and many people are willing to do that but they have to understand that in these things, I feel what I’m trying to do is help people to develop courses of intellectual self-defense! (I believe this to be the central message of Chomsky?) It means you have to develop an independent mind and work on it! That’s extremely hard to do alone. The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube. (note the age-old military strategy of ‘divide & conquer,’ food for thought?)               What’s more, “it’s hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances, some people can but it’s very rare. The way to do it is through organization. It makes sense to try and look at what the institutions are trying to do and then try to combat that. They want to isolate us and we’re trying to bring people together. (I am writing a book in which I’m analyzing the educational institutions, the media, the corporations, anti-intellectualism, & fundamentalists) The right answers are what you decide are the right answers. I can’t point you to particular media for the right answers. I could be wrong about everything I’m saying. But that’s something for you to figure out. There isn’t any reason why you should pay attention to what I think is right. I’m not God. The alternative media is what’s keeping people together. For example, Z Magazine has a staff of two, and no resources but because of the incredible amount of effort on their part, it’s a national magazine. Or South End Press, a small collective (six people) but they put out a lot of good books. The information is out there but it’s for somebody who’s a fanatic and will spend the time and energy comparing today’s lies and yesterday’s leaks and etc. to find out or discover.               The 1960s didn’t change the way our institutions function but it has led to very significant cultural changes and they expanded in the 70s, 80s, & 90s. Changes or things that seemed outrageous in the 1960s are now taken for granted e.g. the feminist movement, the ecological movements, Third World Solidarity movements, etc. were student movements in the 60s and now they’re mainstream America. And even though more people realize the government and the media don’t reflect their views, they go outside the mainstream to inform themselves and to participate and be heard. And most don’t bother to even participate by voting or writing mainstream media, etc. Somehow people don’t see how profoundly contemptuous of democracy it is for them to hold these stage-managed elections where PR people determine what will come out of the politicians’ mouths and etc.               The point is you’re going to have to work and that’s why the propaganda system is so successful because very few people are going to have the time, energy, or commitment to carry out the constant battle that’s required to get outside the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Dan Rather, or somebody like that. The easy thing to do is when you come home from work, it’s been a long day, you’re probably tired so you turn on the t.v. and watch the news and say it’s probably right. You read the newspaper and the Sports section and that’s the basic way the indoctrination system works. Sure the other stuff is there but you’re going to have to work to find it. Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. And the driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain! It’s accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation. It’s long been understood that a society that’s based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as its possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and the world is an infinite garbage can.”               I have to interrupt Chomsky here because what he’s saying hits home for me in such a personal and deeply felt way. As I said earlier about my family, friends, & even my own son not understanding or respecting what I have been doing for most of my adult life. And Chomsky is right on the mark when he said that most people are too tired after a day’s work and simply switch on the boob-tube for their ‘news.’ I have heard this excuse a million times from people I was trying to get through to on the importance of reading serious books about what’s going on. And I still think it’s bullshit that people can’t even take twenty minutes a day to read something challenging. They can spend eight hours in front of the t.v. but always claim they don’t have any energy for the crucial stuff affecting all our lives? I read recently that back around the turn of the century, factory workers in the woolen mills would hire people to read to them while they were working because they wanted to be informed and they’d read serious stuff. Why were they intellectually curious and why are people today so intellectually lazy? Chomsky is so right also in that we have become so obsessed with material things. Consider the popular bumper sticker ‘He who dies with the most toys, wins!’ I have had people say things to me like ‘you always talk about your education but what good has it done for you?’ or ‘so what are you going to do with a degree in philosophy, sit on the beach and meditate?’ And my friends both in L.A. where I mostly grew up and my friends up here in Portland, Oregon where I have lived since 1992, can’t understand why I’m not interested in Sports. They are obsessed with it and watch it ad nauseam, but won’t read a book or even an article I plead with them to read, if their lives depended on it. It’s very depressing and again is why I often feel like a stranger in a strange land to steal the title of Robert Heinlein’s book. And because of the general apathy, indifference, & ignorance of most of the Americans I know, I love to leave whenever I can and Europe is my favorite destination. My experiences in Europe have usually been very intellectually stimulating to say nothing of the thrill of seeing places that I had just read about in school or in books. I don’t mean to sound like a braggart but I am proud to say that I have been to Europe eight times so far and I’m always plotting my next escape to return there. Yes, the almighty dollar reigns supreme in this land of consumers not citizens. And I worry that we won’t wake from our zombie-like slumber until it’s too late and we have become a police-state totally. I just hope that I’m in Europe or somewhere else when they lock the doors for good? Finally, Chomsky is indeed correct in his assessment of why this state of ignorance can go on. Most Americans have swallowed completely and without any reflection whatsoever that we are the righteous, God-chosen people destined to rule the world and we do nothing but good in the world. And because of their blindness to the long and sordid history of our government, business leaders, & military, they can’t connect the most obvious dots which are staring us in the face today e.g. we’re losing jobs by the millions, we’re losing our pensions, our health insurance, we’re being forced to accept ever decreasing wages, our environment is being poisoned, we’re led into war after war by deceitful politicians and media talking heads, we live in the most violent society on earth, etc. etc. etc. I just don’t know what it’s going to take to wake up the slumbering giant of America’s people?               In addition, Chomsky adds that “at this stage of history, either one of two things is possible; either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests guided by values of solidarity, sympathy, and concern for others or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy favorable to the special interests it serves. But conditions of survival, let alone justice require social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, that means the global community. (tragically I fear that we won’t appreciate how precious Democracy and Freedom are until we’ve lost them, if only we would talk to those who have lived under dictators maybe we could wake up?) The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must. Namely to impose ‘necessary illusions’ to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and to remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether Democracy and Freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided.               In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, Democracy and Freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival! (I am reminded of a quote by H.G. Wells that I often tell people about when arguing about our species continued existence i.e. “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” How true!) At this point, an interviewer, David Barsamian (he’s well worth checking out), asks Chomsky: ‘You deal with the genocide in East Timor, the murders in El Salvador, on and on, it’s pretty horrific stuff, what keeps you going? What keeps you from getting burnt out?’ Chomsky: “It’s mainly a matter of being able to look yourself in the mirror I think?” He was then asked if he’d ever thought of running for president and he smiled and chuckled slightly and replied “if I ever ran for president, the first thing I’d do is tell people not to vote for me.” This is where the film ends but I want to add a couple more points which I discovered in the special features section of the DVD.               To illustrate the power of the mass media and its tragic consequences when its power is used in service to the military/industrial complex, recall the mostly hidden lesson of Vietnam. “Because we’re not a totalitarian state (yet!), we don’t have a fixed propaganda line but the presuppositions of the ‘liberal media’ i.e. the limits of our debates, are the propaganda line here in the U.S. e.g. Vietnam—the presupposition was that we began with blundering efforts to do good. (and hardly no one, even on the Left, questioned this supposition) Chomsky then goes on to point out that terms like ‘anti-American’ are absurd and is the type of accusation that would be only made in a totalitarian state. States like Russia would make such charges and it was considered a terrible crime. It was and is used to intimidate people and to prevent them from committing the ‘heresy of honesty’ and applying the same standards of morality to ourselves that we do to other nations. In conclusion, Chomsky states that the most dangerous propaganda systems of the 20th century have grown out of the most democratic states i.e. England & the U.S. The first Public Relations institut

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Love

Love

My body is built for love

Hands tongue thighs

For love only love

You who are closest

Never fall close enough

I would press my heart into yours

So I will talk philosophy

Chop and tie ruthless definitions

And dose my heart into drops

I will give you always

An ounce more than you give me

I am deluge

I could drown you

The love that knits flesh to my bone

Skin unto skin, nerve unto nerve

The yearning damming urge of love

Like atom bound to atom

—No! I withhold that from you.

I will shine a little, like the sun upon the moon

My shining I

Will gather for brains clouds and thunderbursts

To filter the full

Lightning tips to carve out books

forbidden to your eyes

I’m honored to die unread.

You see grammar and form

But do not see

Amidst the threads

the love I’ve mingled insatiate

Tongue and thirst of Love

Lick of tooth

Bite of Lip

I say you

Without echo.

What is love and how shall we characterize it? Greek has four words for love. Sanskrit has fourteen. In this, English surpasses both Greek and Sanskrit, for English has only one word for love, and so unites all that is love into one idea. What is love?

There is love for ourselves, love in sex, love of parents, love of children, love for friends, love for neighbors, love for enemies, love for art, love for food, love for money. All these loves are the same. How?

In action? Love is not action. Kindness may come from cruelty, affection may destroy, love may devastate. A wife may unknowingly cook her husband a meal lethal to his allergies and, though she spent the evening making it just right, he died nevertheless. Her cooking came from love. For love is not an action, nor a result. Love is a passion. What then is the nature of this passion?

Love is habitualized enjoyment: habitualized, structured, systemized enjoyment. Enjoyment is the combination of pleasure and desire we place around an object and the activities we habitualize to get at that object. Love enjoys the object, be it thing or person, which fulfills our need. Therefore, we love most what fulfills most. We love peanut butter for fulfilling our nutritional need. We love brother for fulfilling our companionship need. We love enemies for fulfilling our kindness need. We love our own virtues to fulfill our self-esteem need.

Love is not simply enjoyment, but habitual enjoyment, for enjoyment is a specific instance, whereas love is continual, delighting in the here and now, as well as the memory of the past, and the hope for the future. A man loves his girlfriend by enjoying memories of their first kiss, by harboring hopes of further intimacy, by developing loving habits of kindness, decency, courtesy, concern, sympathy, by sharing time and conversation with her. For love seeks the loveliest relationship with his beloved. If kindness and service heighten the relationship, he clothes himself in kindness and service. If in disciplining, as a mother or father, then in disciplining. If in sharing fun, as a friend, then in sharing fun times. Thus love builds relationships that heighten enjoyment. For this reason love does lovely things to the beloved. Only through kindness can we fully enjoy our friends. Only through kindness can we fully own anybody. Love is systematic enjoyment.

Do not confuse love with his conceptual partners. First, love is not value. Value recognizes the goodness of an object, whereas love feels it. I may respect the vaccine for its medicinal value, but I do not love it. Second, love is not concern. Concern attends to the necessary, and thus is a thinking habit. Problems concern man. Once a man solves himself, he no longer is concerned, though he still loves himself. Thirdly, love is not justice. To demonstrate justice, one gives what is appropriately due. Love gives more than what is due, or rather, what is due to himself as giver. Not owed, but appropriate. Fourthly, love is not pity. Pity is a desire to fix a problem that another is too weak to fix. Pity the pitiable, for few things are pitiable. Fifthly, love is not mercy. Mercy is a form of justice. The merciful man does himself good, the cruel man does himself harm, but the merciful man thinks also of the good of the criminal: will his mercy help or destroy? Sixthly, love is not altruism. Altruism is meeting the needs of the needy because they are needy; this requires no love. Last, love is not regard, which is seeing the best in others and hoping to see the best future for them.

Though kind acts require no love, no love can avoid kind acts. If I love my friend, I will seek a bond with him, and do whatever altruistic deed I can to maintain or amplify that bond. If his car breaks down at night, I go to get him, and complain none. If somebody tries to yank our rose from your hand, will you not bleed to preserve her?

Love is always intimacy. We do not love vagueness; we do not kiss shadows. Nor do we love strangers, though there is potential. We do not love society, but the parts of society we touch. Love seeks union with the beloved. Therefore, love knows no abstractions. Rather, love knows through abstractions: for even if we enjoy the idea of justice, this compares nothing to our love for the just men before us.

Intimacy is presence and conversation. Presence seeks to be near the girl, familiar with her memory, upon the lake, hopeful of being upon the lake soon, filled with life, remembering ecstasy.Conversation seeks to interact with the beloved, to speak and move her mind, to excite her emotions, impress her, to instruct her, to touch the lake, to swim in its waters, to revere ourselves, to seek that height. Sex is conversation, a conversation involving the utmost in presence. Union is conversation in presence.

If I do not seek present conversation with another, if I do not meditate on what I like about her, or plan on how I can please her, then I cannot claim love. If I am not enjoying her in the way she ought to be enjoyed, then I am not loving her. I may enjoy her superficially, massaging my need for attention, admiration, or physical touch, and so halfway meet my need for intimacy, but without the relationship of respect, interest, hope, kindness, the relationship is half alive, not infant but zombie.

How do you enliven love? There is a trick to act as if you love, so that you will soon really feel it. William James says, “acting teaches the heart,” and the very title Imitation of Christ, publishes this mistake. For of all the prigs who donate to charities or volunteer their services, I remain skeptical. To act as if you love dodges the chore of establishing a genuine love. This is supposed to reduce our apathy, giving half of a whole. Rather, by building the second floor without the first, we must grab whatever support lies nearest. As if your hatred lacked meaning! As if your indifference were as accidental as the fall of your hair in the morning! No and no: do not act. First think, “why do I lack love, and what does this habit mean? How is it right and good, and can love improve it?” Find your foundation and you cannot help but love the lovely. You do not need to be tricked into loving: you need to know what is lovely and why. For love flows when honesty faces loveliness. To act as if we love, without love, inaugurates a life of hypocrisy. Pretending denies capacity. Reason must precede the act, to choose love for her loveliness, not because you ought or are good to do so. Hate can be more divine than love.

Only pretense is made by pretending. Imitatio Christi? As if Christ imitated another. Be true to yourself, and you rise higher than myth. For of all the herd, I find scarcely a Paul-per, let alone that fool upon the hill. If acting made virtuous, than celebrity worship would have soul. But no, actors are no clue to virtue, for they play at appearances, nothing more. Acting, the bastard art, what can it teach us? To lie even to ourselves. “Act as if you believed and you will”—I know of no more despicable formula. It is playing a part that breaks apart. For the effort of masking, against the tension of abyss below, this prevents deeper living.

What is the deepest love? Love begins as Narcissism. It grows into greed, the love of things. Then it grows into Philia, the love of friends. Then it grows into esteem, love of worth. Then it grows into kindness, the love of improving. Then it grows to Eros, love of co-creation. Then it grows into creativity, the love of transfiguring. Every love flowers from the previous. All love grows from the narcissistic foundation.

For love is identification. If there were something beautiful in the world, and I recognize that beauty, it must correspond to my preformed valuations. It is beautiful to me, so I love it. And we love in others what we love in ourselves. Love is identification. One identifies himself in others, and changes himself to more fully identify with others. What began as self-recognizing ended in self-changing. For in narcissism there are five: I love what I once was, what I am, what I wish to be, what was once part of me, and what is the opposite of me, the balance and complement of me.

“Love without judging.” But love can only love what he judges lovely. You make it out not to love at all. I say judge. I say love people conditionally. If we do not love a man because he is good, then we do not really love him. If I claim to love my wife’s bad cooking for her sake, I am loving her through the cooking, and the cooking not at all. In the same way, if I love a sinner for the sake of righteousness, I really love myself as righteous, but not truly do I love the sinner.

So love your enemies: from their threats, learn what is important, from their insults, learn what is improvable. Love them for what they are, or else you are deceiving yourself. Love them as you would a teacher. Choose for yourself only the strongest and brightest as your enemies, and love them as exemplars of honor. Love your enemies for their virtues. Man is made of nobility; every man can be known and loved. Would you love gold more than the depraved man? He is a mind and a soul; if you can own him as you own the gold, so much more you can gain. Even his depravity springs poetry. Every man is lovable. What does “unconditional” mean? Unconditional love is coward’s love. Whoever must love unconditionally is afraid to love the good. For in seeking goodness, one is whipped and warded off; love requires such work from the lover that he must be strong enough to love the depraved man. If you cannot love him, do not pretend.

A mother’s unconditional love must be balanced against a father’s conditional: I love you if you honor me. If you dishonor me and my family, we will cast you out.

What presumption that love must be afforded dime for dime, “give and get in measure”—no. It is love and lose to gain new heights as lover. If the scales are uneven, then blind justice has her sword, but love was always a hit or miss archer.

Earn your love! Unmerited love slaps the face of love. What? Unconditional love? Then what am I truly loving? I am loving myself as a kind person, through you to justify my vanity? Yet with this twisted love I do not even see you, let alone do I unite with you. Do I love my enemies or do I love God through my enemies? Where is love’s reward if I only love through my enemies? Shall they debase love even more by calling it “action”? So they tear out the heart of man.

“Love every man as yourself”––no no! Cease to preach to me that promiscuous love, a love that doesn’t even see people for what they are, but loves all men equally. Love is as unequal and ranked as men are unequal and ranked. My love is too perfect to be spent equally: I give my goodness to the good in their good portion. Love knows only the lovely. I do not even know what it is you feel for these men you are kind to. “Be kind to every man as befits his person”––yes yes, you are getting closer. And rudeness is kind. And slaps are kind. And insult is kind. All things are kind from a kind heart, if only in the right context. And so I say treat kindly according to each his kind, loving the lovely, and giving no love unmerited.

Be cruel and slap? Always abstract. And don’t totalize a mere part. Sometimes slaps and criticism are needed in the beloved. Have you ever seen a marriage without them? Even the fullest love sets boundaries, and must enforce them. The full heart is a complex set of feelings at once. The more we idealize one idea for love, rather than a full experience, the more emaciated and painful she is.

Love the lovely, loathe the loathsome––what could be clearer? Why has common sense been so smeared? If you meet refuse, politely refuse him; if politeness fails, then harshly reject, for this is the kindest act. To feign friendship with what you have no part, to pretend acceptance and tolerance, this is the profound lie. Love the lovely in proportion to her loveliness to you. I love not by duty, but by sight.

I take the pretense to love from the so called “religion of Love.” The whole repertoire of Jesus sayings, though often borrowed from the rabbis of the time, fills our literature. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we are told. Why? Well no need to bother with whys: it sounds good. “If only we would follow this command, the world would be heaven,” a pastor once said in my presence. I reflected. Something was amiss here. I sniffed and pawed the roots of this tree, never satisfied with fruits alone, and came to realize: no! I do not love my neighbor as myself. I do not love my family as myself. I do not even love my lover as myself. Why? As simple as the sun: they are not myself. I love my brother with brotherly love, my other brother with brotherly love, but even then, I love each differently. To love all men, all my neighbors, equally is promiscuous enough. To love them as myself? Absurd!

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” but love requires intimacy. Love requires a breaking of defenses, a knowledge of, an appreciation for, respect and admiration of. Would I love any Joe with the same fervor I reserve for my child? Then corrupt is my love! The way I love myself is unique. I care for my needs, I pride my deeds, I search and research my depths, and concern myself with myself. To invest this energy and intimacy into any other person–supposing they even wanted it, which they shouldn’t–would waste my time and dull my blades. No, I love every man as a self unto himself. I love my mother as mother, my brother as brother, my friend as friend, each according to his kind, and each to the degree I choose, free from command and order.

Not that Deuteronomy, the source of Jesus’ command, really meant that Samaritans and Gentiles are neighbors, as Jesus is said to imply. They meant fellow Jews. But if the statement is supposed to have any philosophical worth, beyond a Hallmark how-do-you-do sentiment, then we must ask “What is meant by love? What is meant byMyself? What is meant by ‘in the same manner’?” Try as I may, I see no real program here. None is provided. Why should love be commanded? Why should I be threatened to love? My heart is my own. (As a side-note, I have heard preachers say, as if they were surprised, that Jesus intended us to first love ourselves. This appears to be a sort of revelation to some of them.)

Often hailed as a stroke of brilliance, and a sentiment known by all great men, from Confucius to Hillel, is the so-called Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. C. S. Lewis, in his Mere Christianity, claims that the entire “natural law” presupposes this sentiment. But again, we have all dress and no depth: Jesus gives no argument, no system, no proof. Yet this sentiment hardly proves itself, nor is “wisdom proven by her children” but by arguments and reasons. Why should I do unto others as I would they did to me? Are they me? I expect treatment as Daniel, you as Mike, Jill as Jill: Do unto others as deserved!

Consider a simple reading: every teenage boy should think twice before applying this to his date: maybe the kisses you would have unto you are unwelcome to her. So the Christian counters: “Do unto others as you would if you were them”; but now it is “do unto others as they wish you to do”–both compromising to do, and removed from the original precept anyway. And further, this assumes that they know what they want, and that what they want is also what they need. The criminal wants a break from the law, but doesn’t deserve it. He probably doesn’t need it either. Jail may be the best thing for him. The fact is, we do not always know what we want. Perhaps you need slaps, insults, criticism, sooner than kisses and forgiveness.

For to do-as-you-would-be-done-by overlooks the question “And what should I desire from them?” So much for the simple eloquence of this command.

Do unto others as they deserve. The whole law lies on this command. Deserts are not all punishment. Every man deserves respect and polite treatment as a man. Do unto others as you deserve to do. Perhaps the criminal deserves justice, but not from me the bystander. I am not the judge nor the police. I do not deserve to have to punish. In the same manner, I deserve to give gifts and be kind because I am a lover, not because the other deserved love. I may give gifts greater than your deserts, because I deserve to do this.

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” the Jews made God say to them, and they meant Jewish neighbors, certainly not Samaritans or the Goy.  But let’s pretend Jesus was an improvement on this ethic when he said, “everybody is your neighbor, love everybody as yourself.” No, this is much worse, despite its hallmark sentimental appeal. Why love others as myself when they are not myself? I love myself in a way different then I love anybody, I love myself as the only self I can directly experience. There is no substitute for this. Furthermore, love is based on intimacy; therefore I literally cannot love all others as myself, because intimacy is a risk that requires much effort, and my mental effort is limited. Love those who are like you, be politely distant from everybody else. These neighbor-lovers are God’s prostitutes—promiscuous love!—love for whoever asks for it, agape, and my God hole agape for any man to love me, God as celestial pimp, and Christians the whores for divine reward.

Do unto others as they deserve to have done; how golden to include justice in our love. Do unto others as you deserve to do; as lovers we deserve to love. Do unto others as deserved. For why should I demand anybody treat me beyond my deserts? Would I really expect pity to negate justice? Pity, for love cannot. Only fear denies justice. I desire punishment, not mercy.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is therefore repulsive. Should a masochist follow this? Should a horny teenager? Then nobody should. Or rather, should we not treat them as they deserve to be treated, fairly, and if we care for them, tenderly. Do unto others as they deserve to have done to them, and do unto them as you deserve to do—do unto others as is deserved.  We cannot say, “I will treat others as they should treat me,” because my wants and needs are unique to me, theirs to them. Nor can we rationalize a more abstract formula, “I will treat others as I would be treated if I were them,” because they might not know what is best for them, might not know how they ought to be treated. Once we get practical, moral, virtuous, and reasonable with this formula, we realize the cheap sentimental version of “do unto others as you would have them do to you,” is immoral and disgusting. Be kind to others according to their kind.

Those least interested in being saved are those most worthy of heaven.

The less you need others, the more you can love them. Whom one depends upon, he can never love.

In this mud and guts world of relationships, I limit myself. Lovers hide their loveliness. Beauty is shy, and this is her shrewdness. The public makes common what passes through common hands. The innocent is not a man of the people, by the people, and is only for the people as he emerges from his haven. A secret garden is too delicate to lose her high stone walls. And even when the lover emerges, he is as a man who walks above the waves––mature and holy. That is to say, he is independent. He who emerges entrusts his dearest to none save the dear.

I am lonely, and so make heaven in the image of love. What I lack I paint into eternity. For those who need love, they make love into God. You seek love? Rather, seek life. I say life is the fullness which plants love in its right place, but will not be transplanted thereby.

See the sun that nobody can sees but you—the inner man. Secrecy: to do deeds nobody will ever know, to think and create for yourself alone. Do this from your secret love of your own beauty. Never share your best: save that for yourself.

“Because I have the power to shred you to pieces, my tenderness is that much more real.” Thus do theologians think of their God, and indeed, a weak lover is an oxymoron. For women, who seek power and confidence in their lovers, a great lover who will pulse with power, with “The arrow poised and ready to be made drunk on your blood.” To trust such a man enlivens, exhilarates. Men, who prefer to be tended and cared for, frown if their beloved holds claws. Rather, men wish claws on their kittens—a miming of power, vulnerable in her attempt.

Love seeks love even from those hiding in fear. A man exudes angers, fears, frustrations, sarcasms, rudeness––all defenses. We fear intimacy, real intimacy. To gain it from another: a long and slow process. To win trust, we must exemplify honor and honesty again and again, to prove we are worthy of trust. There are, however, shortcuts. As one psychologist said: “Realize that every personality is so multifaceted that we can each relate wholly with one facet of another. Find one thing both you and he cherish, and give full excitement to that. Show that you think like him, for who resists his own thinking? Reason as he reasons, celebrate as he celebrates, and he will love you as he loves himself.”

I look at the world and call her Sherry, cherished, intoxicating, beautiful: my world is Sherry: I burrow into her soul and lap the honey from her hands. I am in love and lovely.

All relationships are a play of defense and intimacy. One must reinforce right defenses, undermine wrong defenses, initiate right intimacies, prevent wrong intimacies. Men defend themselves against the world, and this is psychological health. Yet to unite, you must seek intimacy. You must excel at recognizing and dismantling defenses without frightening him whom you seek. Intimacy terrifies. You trust, you open, you allow, you give, you serve, you identify, and what? He destroys you. You hope in another and he cuts you. Or just as dark, he yawns and is silent. Thus the inveterate defense system. It allows no spontaneous intimacy, nothing novel and hope-ridden, but allows small intimacies, calculated and regulated, for being practical we know we must not starve.

Yet for the lover, he is given to intimacy, instant intimacy, he swifts through a barrage of defenses, skirting them with grace and finesse, playing through to a raw moment of nearness. For we are unaware of the myriads of defenses, jades, and traps we set, the little withholdings, the walls and masks: they are far too easy and regular to be felt at all. Interacting with others requires no conscious dance; consciousness peaks only as the smallest cusp. For he who wishes practice in relationships, he must realize that relationships are the plays of intimacy and defense, identity and variety, unity and alienation. An intimacy is you and me together, a defense is you and a not-me, a part of me that is not my own person. Thus a boxer differs from a lover, avoids touch, blocks it, presents the toughest parts of himself in defense; the lover wishes his most personal, most sensitive parts touched.The most common defense is silence, absence, averted gaze, nothing.

There are certain tricks for instant intimacy that work on most people, breaching the basic defenses. To break through and sustain, however, requires a unique method in accordance with her unique machinery.

You must feel the fighter’s fancy, the warrior’s will which opens and allows love. If he says “I am a lover not a fighter,” believe him not. Anybody who has achieved intimacy realizes that you must be brave enough, strong enough for it. A true lover overcomes. Amor her hammer, Eros her heroes. Give peace a chance? Peace must fight for her chance. And thus the exultation in the my of strength and possibility. I am a lover, therefore a fighter.

For intimacy is a horror meant for snapshots, not endurance. So much focus, so much energy, so much concern is in intimacy, utter intimacy. Few maintain it. That is to say, it takes strength to maintain, an ability to relax and sustain that relaxation by a strength that does not feel like strength. I have seen the greatest pains in those who permitted this touch. I love them for it. And those who maintain this, despite devastation, these I admire. Intimacy requires great power to control, is in fact uncontrollable. Thus we fear it. Yet with intimacy we deeply teach others and direct their lifecourse.

And so, sustained intimacy begs for pauses, distances, breaks, absence. The sweetness of honey nauseates if supped at every sup. The soul loves intimacy, but dances from one to the next, returning to the first when the time is ready.

“Love your fellow man,” they say, and the intensity of intimacy is flippantly implied. Between men there is distance. Between men there is coldness and hardness. Give us a tender man, a mother’s touch for his fellow man. For if we fear him, we build walls between men. “Tender to women,” you say, for it is easy and you are unashamed. Yet women have learned this well, to be sisters. So then be brothers.

“Love is not all”—and that’s where the poem should end. What is love if it puts no bread on the table?

For what shall we say of Platonic love? Is it pure love? Yet all the deepest friendships have a tickle of eroticism. Irrelevant of whom the friendship is between.

In any love, nobody wants to be dissected. A woman wants to be kissed for her flaws as well as her virtues. It is for this reason that somebody who has worked to perfect himself is so much more loveable then somebody lazy. Love the whole person. Love the scar upon the soft cheek. Love the “vice” for advising the virtue. For what you dissect grows from the same plant. What if the lotus grows from the mud? Shall we despise the mud? No lotus flowers without it. Therefore, take the bad as source of the good. You cannot have the smile without the girl, nor the purr without the cat.

“Sometimes it is hard to love,” and you misunderstood altogether. Hard to love? What is it you really want from this person? You set the anvil on his back and now you want to hammer out ideals. Love is not hard. Love is not a gift. Love is not kind. If you struggle, it is not to love, but to know. I say hate me if it perfects you. I would be hated by all if I knew it would help. In the same way, then, do not say it is hard to love, because then you are farthest from love. You do not convince yourself to love.

For there is something greater then love, and that is life. We love to live, but we do not live to love. Life. The life of your heart, the life of your mind, the life of your body is not going to be allowed, opened, or transfigured through somebody else’s text. Your own heart is the text, and every other book mere commentary. Man lives. And therefore, man is all.

Kindness is not love, is not wedded to love only, springs from many soils and from many seeds. For the teenager, still swirling in her sexual soul, she finds romance a pretty option. “Are you the one to love me and only me? Are you the one to love me and always me?” These questions are symptoms. They are not really asked, not really meant. They mean by not meaning. “Love me as long as there is me, love me as long as long as there is love.”

No love wants to convert another. Hate wishes to convert, and uses love to subdue. But for the one that is me outside of me, there is no conversion. I love as the sun loves, because my light creates. Be my sister sun, and us in mutual orbit.

Love frustrates. Consider Milton’s Satan. Satan flies free from hell and lights upon Eden. Finally, naked from hell’s fire and alone from his minions, he considers his place. The sun reminds him of his lost glory: why did he rebel? Unclouding his self deceit he realizes ambition and pride lead him to do so. Yet why? Why rebel against a good and fair God? He reasons through the dreaded words “subjection” and “gratitude,” and realizes they were not his true concern. Finally, he comes to the crux of the problem: “Who has thou then or what to accuse, / But Heav’ns free Love dealt equally to all?”

Satan loved God stronger than any other, wanted to be loved by God first, to be loved eminently as the eminent, as the greatest he was. Most lovely yet not most loved. Since he could not have God’s greatest love, he revolted in his heart against love. Satan’s love: unmatched in all of history and time, without compare, epic and unmitigated, with a heart like a bird which, when given full wing, flies straight for the sun. Only individuals can be loved with all our being, concepts never. Only God could consume and overwhelm a mind like Satan’s. Not to share, but to take all, to be all, to deserve all, to own all. And unable to find return for his love, revolt. Without that which he loved, he became hell, his heart is hell. Satan loved God the most and for that he is given hell. For an orthodox lover is a contradiction. And indeed, when Lucifer became Satan, he also became God.

The art of love is a subtle and rare art. I have never seen a convincing manual for it, though I have seen a few artful instruments. For those who can love like a virtuouso plays a cello—well, I am yet to see it. You will not see it in the pity fiends and feeders on the sick such as are the saints. True love transfigures the beloved, does not get him worshipping ghosts, but makes him into a man. For the kind soul, he knows the subtlety of making others into heroes. The brilliant lover knows how to make his friends’ souls sing. Call not love a duty or a command, or if you do, expect to get what the last two thousand years have given: mediocrity. Some men (not all) are called to be lovers and I would to see them Men of love, and virtuosos of her.

The saints are bad examples of lovers. Getting flayed for believing absurdities is gross, disgraceful, weak, and stupid. But evidently, to be a saint you must do magic tricks and die painfully. Consider the myth man himself: a Canaanite woman requests to Jesus that her daughter be healed, and he says No, he will not help her because she is not Jewish, being therefore not a child of God,  but a dog. All he had to do was twinkle his nose to cure her, since the depth of his love was the cheap and easy magic-show miracles, by which he earned his bread, but even this seems too much for him. She persists by saying that dogs eat crumbs. Outwitted, he does twinkle his nose, and her daughter is cured. This is not where we learn the art of love. The only kind thing he seems to do is kill himself, no good example for us. Love is much more decent and honorable than that. Live is not melodramatic morbidity. It is perfect subtlety. The myth man and the myth saints that followed him are distasteful. The excellent art of love requires a new teacher.

Believe not that myth prince either. The Buddha contradicts himself whenever he utters the word “loving kindness.” The calm of meditated enlightenment contradicts generosity, kindness, intimacy, and passion. Those others are praised purely for advertisting. What religion can sell itself on isolated meditation? Human beings love to love, and any religion that is going to survive the market must make love into duty. Yes, this destroys the basis of love, but it is a flashy ad.

“There is no self” they tell us, and then contradict themselves to tell us to love others. Other what? Nonselves? I am not to love myself, but I am to love other selves? What exactly is it that loves? There is no self to do the loving. Is it love itself that loves? Then what is being loved? Love itself? Yes, the annatta “anhilated self” is a riddle, rich like manure for fertilizing the lotus of meditated enlightenment, but it contradicts the Dhamma. What does love have to do with nirvana? Be yourself, Buddhism. Don’t copy the Christian charity. You don’t believe in God or sacrifice—keep yourself pure.

Love enjoys, fear pains. To fear something is to pain at its presence, its memory, its concept. Love acts, fear freezes. Whereas love is intimacy, fear is ambiguity. Love has knowledge, fear willful ignorance. Fear seeks to not know, not think, not address its object. It is for this reason that you must always do what you fear to do, for love knows no other birth.

“So you see,” says Alex, who is such a shadow friend to me, “Alive and choosy, I choose the lives that best complement mine. My few friends deserve my love, everyone else my mere respect.”

“Aha!” says Amanda the passionate. “You fail to recognize your own history. You love yourself, and those who look and talk like that self, but see beyond your manhood and see mankind. To love one thing is to love all things. To convert to the full lover means you love all things in all ways you can. Let me tell you a story. Percolating in her eternity was Goddess All. But in her great one-itude, she felt lonely. For you see Alex, she was only one. And so she spread a carpet, called it cosmos, and reincarnated herself a trillion times throughout history. Which is to say, we are all the same person. From the swollen headed professor to the thinly mittened beggar, we are all the exact same person. Only we don’t recognize ourselves. I traded my omniscience for ignorance in order to feel friendly, and friendfulness is a sort of ignorance. For you see, I am you, you are me, we are all the same person, all the single All, the Alicia called Goddess.”

“Yet again,” chimed the third, “Man’s focus finds limit in time. Love is from intimacy is from focus; therefore, I cannot love all things, but only those I take into my intimacy. I can only love these by pushing those away. And a little cruelty goes a long way in amplifying love.”

You need love. You need to feel love for others, express that love through kindness, witness the acknowledgement of your love and the gratitude for its gesture, receive similar expressions from those you love, and consider yourself loved by them.

This is obvious to most people. Others would do without it. After all, love takes work. Participating in a community, completing a family, pleasing a spouse, these all take commitment, devotion, and daily practice. Are they worth it? Perhaps, perhaps not. If your place is to sculpt like no man has sculpted, or write a poetry that scars the face of history, if you are a man among men, then you waste your breath submitting to love. You are not the lover, and would do love injustice by pretending.

Yet there is a sense that those who value love and friendship less then still need it, and can still make an art of it.

Then there are those men and women who make love a skill and art. I do not mean charity workers or missionaries. I mean the men and women who are virtuosos of kindness, the geniuses of friendship, the powerhouse fathers. These people make love their top aim, and bend the rest of their life to it. This is good, as long as they don’t demand it of everyone. To each his own. But if they would be an example, let them practice at love and make it into skill. Let them be as Pagannini on his violin: masters and Gods of love.

Not that they will grandstand. Love is, after all, a subtle art. Those who make a show of it, those who insist you admire them, those who give to charity in open, or go to save poor lost souls, what have they to do with love? They merely mime the most obvious forms. A true lover is as subtle as the night, and deep and rich as her. He is well practiced at kindness, at cruelty, knowing them to complament each other, to allow the full force of love. True love can pluck a butterfly from the sky and smudge no dust from her wing. True love can fetch an eyelash from his lovers eye without a tear. Yes, and true love sets a second sun in the sky. It is a great art, and one I have not seen practiced well enough by those around me. Yes, love does minimize its show to avoid scabs and parasites. Leeches to Venus, that’s what they are. Thus one must not advertise, nor give unfittingly.The greatest lover knows to be the cruelest. He is cold in his judgment, and does gives no love where love is undue. Promiscuous love given to any neighbor whores love. Love must be fitting.

This book will attempt a manual at the art of love. It assumes perfection, which means freedom from self-deceit, the best my best in every situation. I also assume Love will return my efforts. For the composition of this book is an experiment and a new way for me. My passion has thus far been for writing and ideas. Now I will try a new way, and balance love against philosophy, as on the back edge of a sword.

Let us break open the heart.

The greater the reverence, the less the understanding, the louder the praise, the quieter the knowledge. For if you truly know something and have become it, you have already given it the greatest praise, worship, and blessing: you have become it. Rest assured then that those who praise love are the farthest from knowing it. They praise to hide their ignorance, and indeed praise is the song of camaflouging ignorance. They sense that love is great, but they cannot say why it is great, why it is divine, or even what it is. You curse me when you praise me.

What is love? I have defined love elsewhere by looking at the essence of every use of the word. Love is habitual enjoyment. Love enjoyes a lovely relationship with the beloved, loving in the way the beloved should be loved.

Since love is a feeling, it has many possible outlets. I may feel love for my wife, but there are many ways I can express (and thus amplify) my love. Kindness is one means, and cruelty another. My love may choose any and many expressions; some will be appropriate to my beloved, but some are not. Love, like all emotions, is an activity of the heart, and thus requires constant infux and outflow. I need constant fuel from my beloved,  and I need to pour that activity out in my participation with my beloved. That is what it is to love.

The heart of love is creativity. The first thing a self creates is itself, first as a creative principle, and then as everything else. Therefore, the basis of all love is narcissism, selflove, selfishness, the truest, greatest, deepest love, which in fact exists in all people, though obscured from som. From this grows the necessesity and glory of greed, greed for a healthy body, for extensions of the body, called property. From this grows love of family, love of friends, called philia. From this grows esteem, the love of greatness. This includes the love of the imagined greatness of Gods, and also the perceived greatness of the self. From this grows kindness, which is the love that brings out the greatness in others. From this grows Eros, the highest of loves, the partner’s joy in creating. It is the love of couples in their shared creation of a third thing. And higher then this, but is the special form of eros called Mother Love, crea, the love of a couple not in creating a third thing, but in creating each other, of a mother’s love for her children and spouse.

Love progresses from narcissism, to greed, to philation, to esteem, to kindness, to eroticism, to creative love. Each step is inclusive. One does not step beyond narcissism, beyond greed, but deepens them, opens them up, makes them more profound.

Narcissism is self love in the purest sense: I love I, whatever I am, exactly what I am, because I am me, my very me-ness, I love eternally and unreservedly.

Greed is the love to own, to possess things, to possess people, to possess knowledge, to be able to control it, to have the right to control it, to own it. A very beautiful love. The professor, insofar as he seeks to be the most learned man, is greedy for knowledge, the saint, insofar as he seeks treasures in heaven, is greedy for spirit.

Philial love is the love for family and friends. There is no essential difference between family and friends other then family is looked upon as permanent, and friendship as less so. This is the love of those who live with you, among you, share time and space with you, because they are like you.

Esteem is the love of greatness, of loving the greatness in yourself, and hating the weakness in yourself. You love others because they are great. You love God because you imagine him to be great.

Kindness is loving those of your kind, and loving them in such a way as to bring out the best in them. Kindness is giving and receiving.

Eros is sex, eros is romance, eros is the divine love for which mankind exists. The hightest love, no love can be complete without the sexual element. And sex is about sharing the joy of creating a third.

Crea is the most refined form of eroticism. Creative love is to mutually create each other, like twin suns, orbiting each other, making each other more profound. Creative love is maternal love, is the full embrace and never letting go of what you have become and bound yourself to.

Narcissism is a mytho-psychological term with a history and a series of meanings. I use the term to mean all forms of self-love. It is a mode of loving, one with its own stages and forms. An infant loves itself in that it loves for itself. It seeks for itself. Its world is itself. The other is directed at itself. This is the way I understand infantile psychology. I look at the purpose of love to be to satisfy human needs, and therefore, self love is a deepening of what love is for, to love for yourself. It was necessary for me to center love on this for a series of reasons which will become clear later. Suffice it say that you should view these loves as a series of consecutive circles, as the world of the infant, as its self, expands. Technically, the child loves his mother first, before his toys, but I make the next step of the progression “greed” in that I believe the child loves his mother greedily—infants get jealous. The child at first does not love her for her desires, for what he is to her, but for what she is to him. Also, the things that belong to him become important to him. Family/friend love (philial) rises when one no longer looks at the world as something to own or disown, but to share. Therefore, this could be called the joy of sharing, the love of sharing. At what point the child loves the mutualith of ownership, I do not know. I believe that the ability to share and the awareness of others as other persons, arises at the same time. Therefore it is only after one realizes there are other selves, and thus knows what a self is, that he can esteem himself, especially in respect to the other selves, and, when he is older, in terms of his own self, based on his previous self, and his future potential selves. Kindness arises from esteem in that once we have esteemed what a person is, what he is worth, what is worthy to him we can treat him according this kind, and we can decide how to treat others we esteem worthy of our love. Erototicism is the desire to mutually please, and is greater than kindness in that it is a shared and mutual venture, wheras mere kindness is not. Eroticism is mutual kindness in respect to both sharing creating a third thing—a child, a relationship, a coupling, a project. Creative love is no longer sharing the creating of another thing, but the creating of each other.

All beings are situated within the whole. Consciousness itself is situated between needs and world, and exists in order to relate the two in a fulfilling way.

We are all narcissistic in that as a self we love, and we love for ourself. Our love is not a commodity for others; love is a function for fulfilling the self. There is no disembodied love. Love too is situated.

May some people love others and hate themselves? You must never take talk of “self-hate” too seriously. Self-hate and suicide are means of preserving the self in a certain shape, of avoiding growing pains.

It might be noted that Christianity, which is touted as the religion of love, isn’t, and that Buddhism, which is called the religion of compassion, also isn’t. Christianity fails to understand love, views it as self-sacrifice, and even makes a sacred symbol out of a torture device. The joke is on them in their constant mockery of mankind, the crucifix. I spied one in a hospitol room, which was an irony and contradiction that didn’t fail to make me sick.

Romantic love is one step below crea, mother love. Christianity misunderstands eros. It stops at a lower love of pity (not kindness), and the Godawful charities are an example of what Christianity is all about. Mother love, or the love of mutual devotional creation, is necessarily an outgrowth of romantic love, which is the love of adventure. The adventurer cannot create. He must risk all to gain the materials to create. Thus, romantic love transfigures into family love, mother love.

Sympathy, compassion, and pity are the opposite of Buddhism, which, in a word, is nonattachment. Nonattachment, means, above all, that one is uncaring of all things. For to care is to be attached. The benevolance that later Buddhists added to the doctrine for respect of human nature, must always be understood as disinterested compassion, as an abstract benevolance. If this “kindness” is taken too far, it destroys the original Buddhism.

For the primary virtue in Buddhism is disattachment, and the primary virtue in Christianity is guilt. Insofar as all these other virtues allow these centers to unfold, they are good. Insofar as they don’t, the ruin the religion.

Eros is the highest love, the joyful self affirming creativity. Yes, and creativity is the height of this in the joy of creativity, and not mere unity.

Eros is the attraction of like to like. By eros all that is of the same is underconscious of all the like in the entire universe.

Ask a man what he wants most of all and it is never “altruism.” Who could live off altruism. A world of altruism and we all commit suicide. He wants eros: mutually creating each other in joy.

The child becomes a binding mirror of the adult love, the fulfillment of romance, the creative parentage.

Love because it fulfills you. Any other reason is hateworthy. Do not love because it is the right thing to do, because you ought to, because it is your duty to love. That leads to self-rape. You love because you are a lover and this is what you choose to do.

Kindness to any asker is waste, and is not true kindness. Gift no penny. Trade only, for this is love.

Love because it is your style. Do not counteract your own style. If you have pulled off an artful coldness, don’t negate it for the sake of duty. For duty is deceit. Duty is the word they put on owning you. You owe no love, nor can love be owed, but only gratitude. Your love chooses which values to give loyalty to.

A strong, noble, manly devotion and support of his family need not be romantic in nature, nor even intimate. It may maintain its nobility without becoming sentimental. It may be duty and this is good, but it is not love. You may be loyal without love. But for love, devotion and loyalty are the easy path, the only path, and there is no temptation against them.

Love is habitual enjoyment. That is, it is structures, systematized, enjoyment, implying, of course, a commitment. One cannot love without commiting himself to it. There is no selfless love, there is no disinterested love.

If you like somebody, you will forgive all wrongs they do; if you dislike them, you will fault them even their goods. I had a nurse who admired my intellegence. Despite her many mistakes, I still grudge her nothing.

Well then: what is kindness?

Framing love and kindness as “duties,” “obligations,” “Laws of God,” is the surest way to kill them. The servant knows no love. Love is love among equals. It is precisely the moral commands to love which make kindness the byword of freespirits. Yet no poet can disdain the passion of romance, the ardor of sex. These last ones were characterized as “low” loves, different from agape, the “Godly love.” But of course there are no “charity” songs, no passable poems about “agape,” but passion and romance are the endless muse of life, love, and art. Don’t command me to be human. And if you command me not to be, to hell with you.

In many ways, I am not the one to teach the art of love. I am too inward, too much in love with ideas—do you really ask the philosopher how to love? But of course the philosopher is the source of all knowledge. I too will try to understand this literary fountainhead.

Word massage. Put pressure on others, touch them lightly and painfully, but touch where it is tight, tense. Combine this with literal massage—and listen! We ought to be touching each other much more than we do; friends ought to hug, cuddle, clasp hands, kiss, and yet reserve their sexuality for their beloved—and we can achieve intimacy with others in ways no psychologist is allowed to. Put your arm around your friend as you chat, male or female of whatever age. How much we need to be touched and are not. But we can word massage—this alone being somewhat acceptable in our culture—although there is an incredible anxiety with intimacy. It is, after all, a subtle art.

Every child knows the true three sixteen: for mom so loved the world, that she lived herself within it, that none who believed or doubted her should be damned, but return at last to her; for he who does not believe has his reasons, and doesn’t need threats framed as “love” to interefer with his own plans.

Each man’s ultimate heirarchy of love, his pyramid of lotalties, is rarely exposed, rarely brought to light, nor does it need to be, and sometimes full disclosure would threaten the system, for the will to disclose is also the will to upset. If a man prizes his job over wife and son, he need not parade this, nor mention it. A famous quip has a man tell his wife, “I must you now for war, for I ceould not love you so much if I did not love honor more.” Perhaps she bought it. I would have said the same thing to my naval officers, and retreated to nature to work out some ideas.

So I am with Emerson: “Hate mother, child, Jesus and God before your own creative Genius” the modern twist on an ancient propaganda.

Wisdom is deeper than love. Love is foolish, leads to foolishness, unless it is limited by wisdom. Love of wisdom is nothing: one must be wise himself in order to know how to love wisdom or anything else. I am no philosopher: I am a sophist.

Just as judgment must be just, and justice is fairness and one cannot be too fair, therefore, as well, love leads to excess: love cannot be a first principle, the basis of morality, the law of the universe. Love can be foolish. Love can be stupid. Love can be suicide. Love must be completely controlled, allowed, contained within wisdom. Only idiots say “do not be too wise,” for wisdom can have no excess, since it is the basis by which we know and balance excess.

Some of the greatest loves of my life grew from much patience. Love at first sight is hate at final sight. The greatest beauties are subtle. They may take even a decade to be seen at all.

Christianity is called the religion of love, as if religion should be about love! “Love and power” and I would believe you. Jesus at one point says that greatest command is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, body (!), soul, and mind,” and since Jesus himself was later determined to be “full God of full God,” and one lacking this love will be “condemned to the eternal flames of burning shit (Gehenna) where the worm will never die”—too much, too much. Its all such nonsense.

I do not love Jesus. Because I do not see him as an equal. He seems too shallow and hung up on petty matters. Where is his “create such and such,” where is his “study this and that,” where is his “sing, dance, write, and be glad,” where is his “strive for greatness and excellence” nor do I see him as having achieved greatness nor excellence. He does not impress me, I would count it no acheivement to become more like him. At best he seems to have been granted magic powers and a sloganists wit for moral truisms. He was certainly no genius, and he was by no means deep. Nor do I find anything about him all that lovely, noble, beautiful, or divine. And so you command me, you impudent thing, to love you? And not only to love you, but with all my heart, soul, spirit, body (gross), and mind! But this is insane.

Who has my love? Emerson I love as I have loved no other man, and Nietzsche beside him, not with “all my heart, soul, mind” but with more love than I have for any other, and not upon anybody’s command, but because his voice speaks to me, sings to me, teaches me to be what I am deep down.

It is not a religion of love that commands me to love what to me is relatively mediocre. Socrates was more the saint than Jesus, and even him I distrust. Anybody who commands love has no sense of the nature of love.

You may speak of your love for God or Christ

But I have never loved a literary figure more than Nietzsche and Emerson. I love them because they speak to me. Nobody else does that, nobody else can. I read hundreds of books. Once in a great while I actually love the author. Quite exceptional when such a thing happens, not to be forgotten, not to be spoken lightly of, not to be dodged, denied, or suppressed: here my heart has made an exception! Such a hard and difficult heart still makes an occasional exception!

But of course, to even put Jesus in the same category as Emerson or Nietzche is ridiculous: he is much less: he writes nothing because he is a mythological creation from head to foot: insofar as there was an actualy Jesus of “Nazareth” we have not an ounce of him, he is lost to history. He is probably a complete fabrication. Is it any wonder then that the stories of him seem vacuous?

“God is love” was a Greek cliché, as the first God in the Greek Panthean was Eros (love) “the first and most beautiful of the gods” later reincarnated (strangely I think) as puckish Cupid.

So John was recycling Greek clichés. The idea that God is love makes less sense coming from a Christian than a Greek.

Love is desire and consummation, and the mindset that ever consummates his love with every part of her he has already consumed: her memories, her ideas, her possibilities. He is modelled his ME from her, redefined the parts of him he could still redefine to fit in her world, so that their combined WE was necessary and perhaps even forever after. For sexual love is the greatest and best love, and the precursor to love of children. In the same way all love for children is sexual, but nicely appropriate and decent, allowing the child to grow and be himself, without imposing a wrongful carnal relationship. For sex is much more than carnal knowledge. The sexual love between man and wife is every love they feel for each other, and without that sexual basis, every other love is merely a black duty.

The Christ, as a heavenly bastard – historically, the garden variety – was infinitely in need of love, of everybody’s love, of complete love, and insatiable. Such a longing for love ends in suicide. You fancy that such a one would remain virginal? That he would save himself for metaphorical sex with a metaphorical church bride? But haven’t you studied reality? If not, how can you read through the myth?

No, do not ask me to make love to the demi-Jew; were you to brave my face, I know he would cringe before a greater love than his. Granted, he preferred the love of whores to priests, and do not tell me he tucked his tail between his legs and thought of sheep, this man was too love-starved to be God’s eunich, but this cross-breed can find love nowhere, and is spiteful as a woman, grabs from the persions their hell and says: if you don’t burn with me you will burn without me. Christians do not talk to me of love, for I hear better then you speak, and I see better then you shine. Love triumphs over love, heaven conquers your heaven, and the hell you made is no bigger then to hold you her inventors.  Make love tot his Jewling indeed! Give me beauteous Eros! Let flirty Aphrodite skip a few rocks across my lake, but do not say Salvation and Mercy, my love is too gentle for S and M, my heart too large and too subtle for your histrionical “look daddy I’m dying!” I would prefer Mary Mara’s love to yours, or let Judas or John nuzzle my collar bone, but for the seven eyed lamb, my love would drarf your spite-spent love.

Desire is language. The tongue is forever the instrument of desire, to taste, to consume, to swallow up, to call out, to sing, to request, to speak the soul. Love is tongue. Such a quivering thing, love. When she needs she sweats, grows thick, aches to be filled. Beware the tongue! The best men choke on her. The tongue speaks the heart, and isn’t the heart also shaped like a yoni?

It is impossible to love a woman who does not love herself: she will turn against you and hate you. It is unwise to give your passionate to an unpassionate man, he will turn coward. Love a little more than you are loved, no more, and if your heart sings like the sun, you always have your art.

You theologians and sages are quick to speak of what you do not know. Perhaps you are a gossip? God this, profundity that. Perhaps you should speak of what you have seen face to face? When a man speaks from his direct experience, nobody in the world cares to dispute him. People fight and rant and rave about things they have no clue of. Sit next to a man or woman has has seen and you will not doubt.

Causality is an interpretation. Immediate reality does not feel caused but obvious only. Who knows why lovers leave, and friends deceive? There ar many causes in the world, and there are also must bes. Being is a perpetual becoming. Only what acts is actual, and so everything is made of force. Why do I now love you with such fierceness, when tomorrow I will nuzzle up into the vulva of my book?

Love is everything social, and half a man. The other half is mind.

I will speak of lust, since I doubt any man lusts as much as I lust, returning lust to his glorious throne of first meaning: pleasure. What pleasure I take in the beauty of others, in finding all the beauties of my friends. I will enjoy you in every way I can enjoy you. If I have pledged my body to my wife, so much more will I enjoy your ideas, your speech. There is no limits to my lust. If you do not lust after the woman in the street, pluck out your eyes—they are good for nothing.

People speak and gossip and groan of all the things they have no experience in, but I am interested only in direct experience, and my own, or if I have a friend, in her own, what she knows, and not what she has heard second hand, third hand. I interrogate you, dear one, I take your cheek and guide your eyes so I can see first hand what you have seen. What you know and what you truly I know I will know you for. What you gossip about I could care less: gossip is easy. Anybody can gossip. It would be more interesting if you were incapable of gossip. Such a one would tempt me, I might even ask a question.

The theologians are quick, are they not, to speak of things they have no experience of? I do not speak of God or Gods. If I experienced God himself, I would never say “God” but “what a delightful experience my self is able to make!” For everything I experience of is still owned as an experience to me. They gossip idly, do they not, all these peoples, and they speak of love. They don’t even feel the lick of tooth and bite of lip the word feels, not even the word they have, let alone the experience of love. Yet they do love. They do not know where they love, or what of them is truly love.

I will speak to you AA, though you are never there when I recognize you, and so you never hear me when I speak. I feel a great love for you as soon as I see you, but they love I feel is quicker then the love I say. It may be that I never even see you again, but for me, all the world’s a mask over the mask called AmA, and behind her the All herself.

My love is a sun, and the world will not know it. So I will riddle them with dark sayings. Its funny. Everything I say and write is eight times encoded, ten times a parable, and I laugh and laugh at everybody how they spin and do not guess at me, cannot guess at the mirth that is deepest in me. My deepest name is a laughing name.

So I love you and send you away. And you will never say a word to me again, perhaps, and that is funny too. Did you know crying and laughter are the same sort of thing? One let’s go. In laughter, he releases an imposition, in crying, a reposition.

My love for you is utter and ever. Obvious to me, never gone, never forgotten. I speak of no tempts or attempts. My love abides.

Abraham loved God more than children – but the Jewish religion just the opposite. I see him wasting not even a shrug when God told him to kill his second born son – “the son of promise” – and it is equally impressive if Abraham existed in some form and really did hear some schizophrenic voice telling him to kill his kid. Because God or no God, the message is the same: you must determine for yourself your ultimate priorities. That he resorted to such a literal and dramatic measure is, according to the story, not his fault, but God’s, for the entire charade was only for the sake of God, so he could say “now I see that Abraham is a loyal servant” – for the doubts and jealousies of God are cosmic, and has no faith at all in mankind or anything else, being the spirit of world class cynicism, and spite against mankind. Better still, the love Abraham had for God is more a God than Yahweh.

The same for Buddha when he abandoned his family to seek enlightenment. The legend has him make friends with his abandoned son, who becomes a disciple – that would be the Disney ending. It stinks of disciple rationalization. More likely, if Sid was a prince and decided to become a beggar, that he was barred forever more from his family – and this at least is poetic justice, for if you want to detach, you thoroughly detach, and give your full effort to that one high priority you belong to. But for most of us, high priorities require no detachments, but merely negotiation, subordination, and a graceful gentle drawing of limits. Buddha’s absolutist and extremist emphasis on disattachment shows spiritual immaturity, although meditative mastery.

Nata-lou: I love you

Nata-lie: you love I

Nata-bom: we love mom

Nata-bus: mom loves us!

My greatest asset and center of integrity shines through my persistent narcisissism, not merely my love of writing, but my adoration of my own writings, ranging from mild pride to golden orbed grandiosity, saving me the pain of many an inevitable rejection, and assuring me the wisest eye blinked from my eye, and history, insofar as he could see, would second my motion.

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Career Prospects in Community-based Mental Health in Maryland

There is a lot of prospect in community-based mental health careers both in the state of Maryland and all over the country. This is because for years now, there has been a lot of emphasis on prevention and reduction of inpatient hospitalization for all illnesses, including mental illness. This might primarily have been intended for cost control, it has also facilitated quality and access. The second reason why career prospects in community mental health are many is that there is currently a severe shortage of mental health workers in all sectors. The 2007 Maryland Mental Health Workforce White Paper revealed that the number and complexity of mental health problems experienced by children and their families have increased over the past decade. It further said, “At least one in five children and youth, or 20%, experience a mental health disorder. The crisis of mental health in the United States is such that 75-80% of youth with mental health diagnoses receive no services, and services received are often inadequate”. Thirdly, there is inadequate diversity among the few mental health workforce. For example, 28% of Maryland population is of ethnic minority but only 12% of mental workforce is of ethnic minorities. Furthermore, there is an acute shortage of African American males in mental health workforce.

 1. Outpatient Mental Health Clinics (OMHC)

Outpatient mental health clinics provide therapy, counseling, medication management, social skills teaching, and case management services to individuals with severe and chronic mental health problems. Career prospects available in OMHC include:

Therapists and Counselors: New regulations require therapists and counselors in OMHC to have a minimum of a Masters degree and a license (such as LGSW, LCSW, LCSW-C, LGPC, LCPC, RNC, APRN/PMHN) in nursing, social work, psychology, counseling, or psychiatric rehabilitation. Also, an RN without a Masters degree but with an RNC from ANCC can be employed as a therapist. Salaries are very attractive.

2. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Programs (PRP)

PRP programs are an extension of the services provided to the patient in the OMHC. A PRP may stand alone or be an additional service to an OMHC. The purpose of PRP is to promote the rehabilitation, integration and improved quality of life for the patient at home, school, work and community. It aims at helping the patient to function at his or her optimum best in life. The counseling can be done at the Program office (onsite) or at the patient’s home (offsite). PRP counseling could be about a wide range of topics, including anger management skills, social skills, assertiveness skills, medication compliance, coping with symptoms, managing peer pressure, taking a bus, determining bus route, drug and alcohol, gang prevention, sex education, STD education, accessing community resources such as food stamps, affordable housing, bus pass, ID card, driver’s license, job search, preparing for job interview, keeping a job, improving attention in school, completing homework and school projects, respect of authority, etc.     

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Even though a mere one-year work experience in a mental health setting or having an AA degree qualifies one to be a PRP counselor, PRP programs prefer to employ persons with a BS degree in any health or mental health related field such as nursing, social work, counseling, psychology and rehabilitation. PRP counselors are usually paid  or more per counseling session. Each client receives 2 to 8 counseling sessions per month.

3. Expanded School-Based Mental Health (ESBMH)

In addition to the school clinic, some schools also have an ESBMH clinic. A therapist assigned from an OMHC manages each of such clinics. Apart from providing therapy to troubled kids sent to the therapist’s office from the class or principal’s office, the therapist also serve as a resource person to the school staff regarding particular children, issues or topics related to mental health. 

4. Crisis Response Programs (BCRI, BCARS)

Mental health professionals are also needed in crisis centers where services are provided for anyone in mental health crisis. The two main centers in Baltimore are Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc. (BCRI) and Baltimore Child and Adolescent Response System (BCARS). For employment inquiries, please call 410-433-5255. There are positions that do not need a Masters degree.

BCARS website provides the following information about what they do: 

BCARS is a mobile crisis response service that provides emergency contact with mental health professionals throughout the city. Dedicated crisis clinicians staff the program as part of a continuum of clinical care provided by the Catholic Charities.  The Johns Hopkins Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry provide psychiatric consultations to the program.  BCARS assists children and families facing psychiatric and psychosocial crises by providing hospital diversion and immediate intervention and respite. For information or assistance, please call the BCARS hotline (410) 752-2272. It is available 24-7. 

BCRI web site provided the following information: about what they do:

HOTLINE: The telephone crisis “hotline” (410-752-2272) is available 24 hours a day and is staffed by trained counselors who have the ability to provide information and referral to the network of human services in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The counselors also provide supportive counseling, dispatch emergency assistance and link callers with more intensive BCRI services.  In FY 2004 – 34,852 and FY 2005 – 30,257 calls were received on the Hotline.

MOBILE CRISIS TEAMS: Mobile crisis teams are comprised of mental health professionals including psychiatrists, social workers and nurses who can be dispatched to community locations to provide immediate assessment, intervention and treatment. Teams operate from 7:00am till midnight seven days per week. Currently the teams average over 2000 responses per year.

IN HOME SUPPORT: Persons experiencing a mental health crisis can often be maintained in the community through regular visits from the BCRI mobile crisis teams. An average of 350 people a year is cared for in this manner.

RESIDENTIAL CRISIS BEDS: Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc. operates 18 psychiatric crisis beds. Crisis beds are not new to Maryland. However, since its inception, BCRI has operated with an average length of stay of 4.5 days compared with the historical statewide average of 16.5 days.

PUBLIC EDUCATION AND TRAINING: BCRI provide public and professional education and training on a wide range of mental health related topics including: suicide prevention, crisis intervention, mental illness, and stigma.  Training has also been provided to members of the Baltimore City Police Negotiation Team, over 3,000 patrol officers, Housing Police and Sheriff’s officers. Through special grants and contracts, BCRI has provided training to Baltimore City Public School teachers and guidance counselors, clergy, 911 operators, shelter care staff and others.  Public education is also provided via a cable television program called “Mental Health Matters”.  This program provides practical information regarding mental health issues and community resources.  BCRI has also offered professional training conferences, workshops and symposia.

ADDICTIONS SERVICES: In response to the growing need for addictions treatment services BCRI has expanded and now provides a 10-day residential detoxification program for chemically addicted and dually diagnosed persons.  There are currently 16 beds operated for this purpose.

5. Group Homes

Direct care staff and counselors are needed in group homes to manage, care and support the residents in the areas of activities of daily living, behavior management, life progress, and community living. Employment preference is usually given to individuals who have a degree related to health or mental health. Salary rates are very attractive. New regulations now mandate each group home especially for children to be managed by a Program Administrator (PA) who must possess at least a BS degree in any field but preferably in a health or mental health related field. Program Administrators are very well paid, depending on their education and experience and the size and intensity of the group home. 

6. Private Practice

There are a lot of prospects for licensed mental health professionals with at least a Masters degree to establish their own private practice. The practice could be in the area of clinical, research, educational, or consultancy.

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I started to work as a bank teller. All I read out is How are you? What can I help you? in nice means of access with smile, and many customers similar to me. But I want to be able to keep a conversation resembling other tellers. Any good websites? tips? How should I start conversation? Have any of you enhanced their conversation skill through customer service job before? Any judgment is helpful. Thank you!

Advice please! Pharmaceutical sale vs. assets equipment?
Hi. Thank you for taking the time to read my question. For many years, I hold been curious about pharma sale, but many insiders have told me to consider (medical) assets equipment sales. What are the pros and cons of such jobs. Additionally, I am concerned just about my ability to land any position, as I lack the 2 years of outside sales experience that is to say standard industrywide. I do, however, have two bachelor degrees, one surrounded by nursing (BSN) and one in communication. I am currenty working as a travel nurse and making over 100k/year, but I still belive I can reach superior levels of success within sales. I am very outgoing, hardworking, and especially competative, so I know that once I am given a opening I will do well. I am also ready, likely, and able to relocate and travel. Any and all suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Advice/Opinion of marketing/producing side of the entertainment industry?
I’m thinking about making a career move to the entertainment industry. I enjoy a sales background so i would similar to to be in the marketing or maybe even producing side of music/tv/movies etc. Has anyone worked within this industry? If so whats the best way to get involved? Any specific companies I should contribute my resume to?

Aeropostale Job Meeting?
I applied to work at Aeropostale today & had a quick interview near the manager, he said to come back on sunday for a assemblage & that they would pay for the hours. does that mean i’m hired? & does anyone know if they drug tryout you?

Affiliate Help?
I new at affiliate marketing. Looking for companies with a honest rate of success. Any recommendations?

Affiliate marketing job ( Affiliate Junktion) IS THIS A CON?
I have just come across a website explicitly making some amazing promises. Its called Affiliate junktion and they promise people who sign up could realistically earn 0 per light of day. It is all to do with marketing at hand software and generating leads for them, they apparently provide adjectives the software needed and offer support. There is absolutly no cost to sign up. I am normaly really sceptical with online promises because they other seem too good to be true and usually hold hidden costs but this site is definatly free to join. Has anyone here have any experience with this company and if so could you possibly tell me what it would involve on my quantity. Are these realistic earnings if I be to put in say 5 hours per morning? Or is it all just another online scam? Any suggestion or info would be great? check them out with this address to see for yourself. http://www.affiliatejunktion.com/?a_aid=…

‘affiliate marketing’, is within any randomness for me?
i checked on internet,it seem like 100 thousand folks do the affiliate marketing. some even turn to be a professional,writing there own experience,and show how success they are. i wonder that near are so many people already doing this living. so if someone (ex. me) wanna start this job,is it too late? or is it too tricky to get success,or even no coincidence to get success,’inflict the other 100 thousand people did it before and already clutch all the advantage and prospect?

Affiliate marketing?
can describe about this please i got some affiliate marketing as follows They nickname affiliatebot now i am working with them i don’t know what come about next Any one can get describe me please http://www.affbot1.com/link-607373-6533-…

After deduct 10.5% of the total sale as her commission, a salesperson deposited ,516.oo to the company.?
The acount now has received the $ 17,516 as I from the infomation from above, the ? is how do you find the total amount of her sale?

After doing mba(marketing) can i expect a sitting available job near elevated remuneration and no target system?
WHAT IS THE MINIMUM STARTING SALARY AFTER THE COMPLETION OF MBA(MARKETING)

After have 5 years of sale experience, how could I procure an inhouse assignment?
Hi , I’m 29yrs old. I’m having more than 5yrs of sales+marketing experience.Now I’m looking for within house job like marketing research analyst,marketing consultant,business analyst.Please suggest me the better walkway.

Age and entry horizontal marketing job.?
I 26 and seriously considering going to school to get an (undergraduate) marketing level. If I start now and finish in 4 years will I own trouble competing against people who are younger than me for entry level job? I don’t want to put in time, effort and money and not hold career when I’m done.

Age hamper for GAP force?
I’m looking for a job and I am 15. It has be hard finding something I want to do that allows 15 year olds to apply for. Does anyone know if I would be able to work at GAP? Or do you enjoy any job suggestions for me?

Age requirement at Tilly’s?
how old do i have to be to work at Tilly’s (in south CA)?, resembling to organize clothes help ppl find what they necessitate, or working at the cash register, that kind of stuff

Agency Sales Executive?
Hi All, Please, I really need your help. I am going for a markedly important interview, and I have to travel adjectives the way to New York for this interview, as i would move there if I procure the job. I am experienced in selling hype space online but not to Agencies and companies. I have now get an Interview with a company I admire, can anyone please pass me tips on the roles, funcition and target of a Media agency sales executive. I would be most grateful Cheers

Ahhh will i bring back surrounded by trouble?
Today at work i was only supposed to purloin a 15 min break and i got caught up and relized its be 30 min and i didnt clock in/out or anything. Will i get in trouble, do you mull over anyone will find out?

Alexa rankings are not moving since 6th of August’08, can any one tellme why TRAINING8M, Queensland, Australia
I am watching www.training8m.com, and alexa rankings are not changing since 6th August, can any one have clue to this phenomenon.

All light of day interview 2marrow HELPPP—TIPS?
Heres the deal– I have a background surrounded by sales/marketing/customer service never managed anyone AT ALL i sold anything from home loans when the industry was not hot to pen i have had a yrly average income of around 90k for the second 20 yrs by doing this type of work— 2day i had an interview for a manager position (a) an east coast company that have been around for a long time who recently land the majority of AT & T Marketing and they are opening up a ton of offices nation all-embracing strictly to do at and t stuff 2marrow i have my 2nd interview it is all morning more of a job shadow there are 4 other ppl simply like me doing the job shadow the 5 of us be picked from a pool of over 50 ppl my question what can i do or what should i do to make myself stand out?

All things anyone one and the same, would you fairly enjoy a 30/70 sale plan or a 40/60? base/commission.?
Considering a new job present here and trying to decide. If you are at quota at 100%, both plans would be equal. If you exceed quota, 70% plan seems to be better. Thoughts?

Alright, so I am a 22 year antiquated recent college graduate…and looking for work.?
I have a job beside my family at our restaurant making approx. ,000 gross pay (40-50hrs weekly). I am curious what I am missing out on? Could I be doing better…really? I hear adjectives these people saying old pupils make around 30-40k a year. I do not see jobs resembling this lining up around here…where is best to look? I live contained by upstate New York to clarify any questions with my monetary requirements. I have a AAS in Marketing and a BBA beside a minor in Financial Services. Am I missing something.or am I just the solely one not seeing these paying jobs when I search within NY? All help will be GREATLY appreciated!

Aluminium/silver foil marketing?
i make paper plates contained by guntur ,andhrapradesh.i want aluminium foil (9 to 15 microns)paper to stick on that plates.i want in big amounts(30 to 40 quintals) in judicious rates.can any one tell where it is available surrounded by india.

Am a high-ranking academy student and i want an intership surrounded by approaching bussiness or marketing around be i live any design ?
plzz if u know any high school interns website or anything plzz post !

Am a sale executive within dubai. Tell me everything related to job whether small or big contained by tennesse .?
Also jobs in pennslyvania. Can u also giv some geographical features of both the places. pliz folks guide me.

Am an MBA[marketing] student aspire to start ma trade at lowe lintas.?
are ther openings for MBA`s n how to prepare for the interview.pls guide me

Am I applying for the right job?
I graduated with a B.A. surrounded by Media Production in December and have be looking for jobs in promotion, media marketing, media planning and broadcasting (although the entry-level opportunity have been fewer). Media production be just the department’s new pet name for broadcasting so I figured that with that and flier campaign experience I could land an assistant errand in the industry. So far…I have have my resume viewed 3 times on the standard job boards contained by the 2 months, and not a single call. I thought it was my resume (and it particularly well may be) but now I’m also starting to reflect on I may be searching in the wrong grazing land. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Am i correct satisfactory?
im 21. i just graduated next to a bachelors in psychology and a major surrounded by women studies from an accredited university. i have no sale experience. i graduated with a 3.57 gpa. do you believe that a company looking for a pharmaceutical representative would hire me? please post your thoughts. ive done my research but would like to see what others think—hopefully someone within the industry.

Am I crazy to grant up this errand?
So I have my dream job..or so I thought. I’ve other wanted to work in Marketing for a top tier investment wall and travel the country on business. And here I am, a Marketing Manager for Morgan Stanley in Manhattan…My dream job. I worked so sturdy to get here, and now its be a few years and I want nothing more than to quit my job and work from home. My husband and I are starting a kith and kin and I want to stay at home with the kids, while still having some type of profession. So my plan was to start my own Marketing Consulting business, where I can set my own scheudle. I know the firm that I currently work for would make a payment me to their vendor list. What do you cogitate? Is this career suicide or a viable idea?

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Prison Race is a series of provocative interviews hosted by Cal Poly Pomona’s Dr. Renford Reese, Professor of Political Science. Prison Race examins recidivism, rehabilitation, and reintegration. Will Fields aka “Trey Devil,” former member/leader in one of the most notorious gangs in Los Angeles, spent six years in prison for three counts of attempted murder. He is the author of The House of Failure. See Part 1 here – www.youtube.com

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