Category: Geopolitics

Saint Hilarion of Gaza

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Hilarion (291–371), also known by the bynames of Thavata, of Gaza, and in the Orthodox Church as the Great was a Christian anchorite who spent most of his life in the desert according to the example of Anthony the Great (c. 251–356). While Anthony is considered to have established Christian monasticism in the Egyptian Desert, Hilarion, who lived in the coastal area near Gaza, is considered by his biographer Jerome (c. 342/347 – 420), to be the founder of Palestinian monasticism – regarding this claim see also Hilarion’s contemporary, Chariton (mid-3rd century – c. 350), founder of monasticism in the Judaean Desert. Hilarion is venerated as a saint exemplifying monastic virtues by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Origin and life as a hermit

Hilarion was born around 291 to pagan parents in Tabatha, a village five miles north of Gaza. Hilarion was at least bilingual, speaking both Greek as well as Aramaic which was common around Gaza. His pagan parents sent him in his youth to study with a grammarian in Alexandria, where he gave, according to Jerome, a remarkable proof of his ability and character and became an accomplished speaker. While in Alexandria, he heard of the hermit Anthony and set off to study with him. After two months of learning the ascetic life from Anthony, Hilarion started to feel that the many visitors who came to Anthony for healing or exorcism were too much to bear and he decided to set off in the wilderness of Palestine to live alone as a hermit.

Hilarion returned to Gaza where he found his parents dead and subsequently gave away his goods to his brothers and the poor. He then established himself as a hermit in the desert inland from the coastal road, seven miles from Maiuma, the port of Gaza. Though he went on one occasion to Jerusalem to venerate the holy sites, he chose not to live in the Judaean Desert as he did not wish to appear to confine God within prescribed limits, believing he could be close to God anywhere. Around 308, he built a hut where he lived in solitude for 22 years and which survived into the time of Jerome. Hilarion wove baskets as he had learned in Egypt where this was a common monastic occupation. Here he also struggled against fleshly desires and Jerome said that the devil tempted Hilarion by igniting the “flames of lust” in the young man. Hilarion fought this sexual desire by mortifying his body with hunger, thirst and strenuous labour.

Life in Gaza and attributed miracles

After the 22 years he lived in his solitary hut, Hilarion was approached by a brave woman who sought a cure for her sterility. First, he resisted, but soon he prayed for her upon which she was healed. From then on, Hilarion spent his life surrounded by disciples and people in need of healing and exorcism. Jerome reports several episodes in which Hilarion heals people, drives out demons, foresees the future, performs miracles and speaks divinely inspired words of wisdom. In one instance, Hilarion was able to heal the three children of Helpidius, who would later become praetorian prefect. In Bethelea, Hilarion healed miraculously a certain Alaphion, which led to the conversion of the prominent family of the historian Sozomen.

As there were no monasteries in Palestine or Syria at the time, people began to flock to Hilarion for spiritual training. Sozomen, possibly due to his local sources, singles out Epiphanius and Hesyach as the two most outstanding in the circle around Hilarion. Epiphanius, who is known by the bynames ‘of Eleutheropolis’ and ‘of Salamis’, became his disciple after returning from Egypt and would later go to Cyprus where he introduced monasticism and was elected bishop of Salamis around 367/368. With many more people seeking his guidance, Hilarion established a monastery during the reign of emperor Constantius (337–361) which, by the time he was sixty-three, consisted of a large community with many visitors.

Final years and death

Hilarion remained in Gaza until three years after the death of Anthony (around 356), upon which he went to the place where Anthony had died in Egypt in order to escape the crowds that visited him. While he was there, the pagan Julian became emperor of the East in the winter of 361/362 and the city authority of Gaza attempted to arrest Hilarion who then had to flee. Jerome’s and Sozomen’s account differs slightly as Jerome writes that Hilarion escaped arrest in Egypt and lived there until Julian’s death before travelling to Sicily, Hilarion went according to Sozomen directly to Sicily. From there, he went soon to Epidauros in Dalmatia where he was said to have stilled the sea during the tsunami of 21 July 365 by drawing three crosses in the sand. Immediately after that, he went to Cyprus.

Hilarion was welcomed in Cyprus by his old disciple Epiphanius who encouraged him to stay. He initially settled near Paphos but later retired to a more remote place twelve miles away. Here, Hilarion died at the age of eighty and was buried. Ten months after Hilarion’s death, his disciple Hesyach stole his body, which was perfectly preserved and smelled sweetly, and interred it in his own monastery at Maiuma.

In literature

Johann Gottfried Herder wrote the poem “The Paradise in the desert” about the teacher-disciple relation between Anthony and Hilarion in 1797. This motif was also taken up by Gustave Flaubert in his The Temptation of Saint Anthony, though changed, as Hilarion attempts to tempt Anthony away from his faith by creating doubt.

Hermann Hesse adapted a biography of Hilarion as one of the three Lives of Joseph Knecht, making his Nobel Prize–winning novel The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi).

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Excerpted from Wikipedia

It Is a Long Way from Kansas – Cardiology

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The world is pretty fucked up right now. When the butcher of Khan Yunis is nominating B2- “Obliteration”- Boi Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize things are more than a little topsy-turvy. This is perhaps a new(ish) if twisted reality for our times. If you remember Franco, Mussolini at al., the unpleasant people, once formed a bad-boys club before and that turned out well…

The world is heading into a very nasty phase. Brutality is holding dominion over compassion and humanity. Rife me-first separatism is being propagated, decency {and common sense} is subdued by the practice of domination, coercion and forced submission. The disproportionate exercise of power is once more in flow. Waving cocks is once again sadly de rigueur.

It is along way from any idyllic Kansas of ere.

Today I get to find out if I have a heart amid all the high iron rust in my arteries and veins. They will probably plug me into the mains and look for traces of Fe2O3 in the pre-operative electrocardiogram. They may look for signs of a still pulsing muscle with an ultrasound device.

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By the 18th of July I will have had 13 medical appointments in a little under three weeks. I will have given blood, had a CT and separate radionuclide scan {bonus CT also included}, a colonoscopy and test for sleep apnoea. I will have seen GP, implant dentist and consultant orthopaedic surgeons, a cardiologist, an osteopath, a rheumatologist and a lung specialist. That is a fair clustering of appointments. My dance card has been and is still full. In August I get to see a urologist for an update on my high prostate specific antigen levels. The next line of attack after the high res MRI I already have had is a prostate biopsy. Yippee!!! That will be fun. You can see from the look on my face above when they try to put a finger on it.

And on the TV in the news we get to see a stage managed travesty as mentioned in the first paragraph…

Are we really in this parallel universe. How the hell did we as a humanity get to this low low place. How much lower must we sink?? When this sort of thing seems quasi-normal?

This stinks, it smells real bad…

The Old Guard and Toltecs – Speculations

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The second instalment of the Old Guard series has recently hit Netflix. It has a shared plotline of sorts with the Highlander movies of ere. In this Old Guard dramatization physical plane immortals exist adjoint humanity and interact to either good or bad effect depending on mood and predilection. In Highlander in the end there can be only one in the battle between good and evil. In the Old Guard series “Andy” the main protagonist has fought to help, aid and otherwise nudge humanity in a “better” direction. Instead of reincarnating she has one contiguous and very long life in which she preserves her super model looks despite getting slashed and shot. A magical and miraculous healing occurs. She loses her regeneration powers and then regains them.

In each the burden of endless longevity / immortality is touched upon. They do not dwell overmuch on the boredom aspect rather the action and power angle. The omnipotence may appeal to the burdened and downtrodden. It may titillate the sociopath and the narcissist.

For dramatic impact pivotal points in global {human} history are referenced. An allied them is to be found in the “Assassins Creed” franchise though in this case reincarnation is invoked and a DNA bloodline is the bearer and propagator of ongoing conflicts.

It has been suggested to me that the so-called Toltecs were incarnated around pivotal times and played a role behind the scenes in the evolution of human and planetary history. Given that the technique of erasing personal history is part and parcel of the training, it is not surprising that little historical refence can be found. In the Old Guard Andy tries to avoid publicity. However in this day and age and thanks to internet monitoring and various intelligence services it is impossible to leave no trace. The times have changed.

In the Toltec tradition there is such a thing as a nagal being. The word Nagual in Spanish American is similar. The word Naga in the Indian tradition does not differ in root. In the hagiography of Buddhism Siddartha is protected by king cobra, a naga-raja, from the rain. These nagas live in the place or world of the nagas, naga-loka. Wisdom can be elicited from nagas and naga-loka. Serpents are the dreaming symbol for wisdom.

This suggests via speculation and extrapolation that a nagal being was a contemporary and perhaps companion of Shakyamuni Buddha.

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“There is unanimous agreement that Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 CE) is the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of Indian philosophy. His philosophy of the “middle way” (madhyamaka) based around the central notion of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) influenced the Indian philosophical debate for a thousand years after his death; with the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, China, Japan and other Asian countries the writings of Nāgārjuna became an indispensable point of reference for their own philosophical inquiries. A specific reading of Nāgārjuna’s thought, called Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the official philosophical position of Tibetan Buddhism which regards it as the pinnacle of philosophical sophistication up to the present day.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Nāgārjuna (नागार्जुन). – Name of an ancient Buddhist teacher of the rank of बोधिसत्त्व (bodhisattva).

Wisdom Library

The name also appears in the wider Hindu sources predating Shakyamuni Buddha

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Typically a three pronged nagal is said to distribute knowledge widely. Like a stone thrown into a pond.  If Nāgārjuna is a wider term for a nagal teacher in the Indian sub-continent then this suggests that the core Toltec and Vedic / Buddhist teachings are similarly sourced and may differ only in method of expression and verbalisation. The term is a generic and not a specific and personal name.

I personally have not found any huge glaring clashes between these philosophies. There is a marked difference in emphasis and the cultural refence points and metaphors employed.

The entertainment mentioned above is not completely inconsistent with a hierarchy of spiritual “masters” on overwatch of humanity. However in order to make it dramatically appealing they must have meaty bits and interpersonal relations such as love with hints of corporeal hanky-panky.

Too abstract and the film would not sell. The immortals have to be beautiful people if good and have ugliness if bad. One is not allowed a minger of an immortal. They must be L’Oréal advert fresh out of the shower from time to time.

Having a “hot” teacher can badly detract from learning.

It is not difficult to see that the course of human history did indeed pivot around relatively small and local acts. The execution of Jesus ended up being a game changer. The invention of antibiotics added number density to humanity.  An assassination was used as a pretext for the first world war. If there is tension a simple fuse is all that is needed to ignite. A miscalculation in a Bay of Pigs might cause a nuclear winter. The simple protection of a Buddha from the rain enabled the propagation of the teachings for mind.

Humanity is prone to flying off the handle in rage and “self-righteous” indignation. Humanity has a “cob” on and is very prone to fits of angry pique which kill hundreds of thousands.

In the absence of overwatch might the history of humanity have been even more bloody and brutal?

We are heading into unknown territories with AI and Drone-robotics. What are the two biggest markets? War and sex. Thus humanity will expend effort into developing these for profit applications. Since the theoretical abolition of slavery humanity seeks a replacement.  I read yesterday that progress toward in vitro spermatogenesis is advancing, if the same continues for human eggs it may be possible to make a human-like foetus. A synthetic human is unlikely to have an indwelling Soul. This biological dabbling and getting a blind boner for technology represents a Pandora’s box the lid of which humanity will find difficult to resist. What is unleashed now and later in this century may cease to be readily controllable. The temptation of cash and the arrogant appeal of God-like potential may lead humanity down a very dark path indeed. It may regret…

How might Andy and the Highlander come to the rescue?

The Problems of Should

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Many problems arise not because things are but because people think they should be different. This enforcement of conditional opinion about how things should be is directly causal of conflict and of angst. There is another level to this where problems arise out of people thinking that things should meet expectations. Expectations are a mental-emotional construct of largely human origin.

To give a trite example.

Data collection suggests that for the western European male population an average life expectancy is a tad over 80 years. Nevertheless many die in their sixties. People kind of think they should live to 80. There is even planning to that target. I am largely convinced, in my opinion, that it is very unlikely that I will live to that age. I should not have that opinion and it can make people uncomfortable that I do. Many people like the idea of a long life and the expression that X left us too early is not uncommon. You should not die that young. It is a tragedy.

If you say such a death is natural and therefore not a tragedy you are speaking heinous. You should not be so cruel heartless and frank. Because of opinion like that you are a problem. You do not comply with the social should. Should makes you a problem and a right bastard to boot.

Wanting things to be different, access to the green grass on the other side of the fence is a human notion of change according to how things should be. The notion of “rights” in a democratic society is currently being widely eroded. This is because people think that others should not have opinions which differ from theirs. There is suppression and on occasion violence because people should agree, have the same colour skin and follow the same notion of deity as the noble and omniscient US.

“If you convert to our religion, we will not slay your ass painfully! You should follow our God, the only true God!”

This should causes death and bloodshed.

I live as I do, it does not really impinge on the outer world over much. Theoretically there may be opinions that it should not be thus. I should not live like this. The holders of those opinions have created a problem by the notion of should. It does not gel with the reality.

There is a disconnect between should and is/are. Which can be viewed as problematic. If you drop the imposition of should-based opinion any notion of problem evaporates.

I am now prepared for no hip operation in the rest of this foreseeable calendar year {As a starter for ten}. There is no problem outside the compound with this. It will limit some of my gardening and I will be taking pain medication. As a thought experiment others might imagine that this should not be the case. Yet despite the should, it is. A problem in this kind of gedankenexperiment arises solely out of a contrast between notions of should, an aspiration to the contrary and some idea about what is right for me to bear.

“In this day and age…”

In the UK news people harp on about waiting lists for appointments and operations as if these were some God-given right. They are not. I am not owed, due nor do I particularly deserve an operation. Were it not for modern medicine neither the wife nor I would be alive.

Viewed from one angle a bit of end of life pain is no big deal. It is only a problem if people deem that it could be and therefore should be different.

Problems often arise out of attempts to alter reality and the unfoldment of life. People try to steer things towards how they think they should be, how they ought to be, of how they want them to be.

The infliction of people’s opinion of should is one of the A number one causes of strife.

Israel thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons so they coerce Trump into using big bombs. It is OK for US to have nuclear bombs but THEY should not.

There is a part for me which thinks that if Israel had been a lot more friendly and cooperative helping local economies to develop a comfortable middle class over the last few decades, all the simmering anger and bile might have faded. However that is not the case. A different suppressive ideology has held sway. Oppression has no sell by date; it must be continued until revolution. The mind set of they should be taught a bloody vengeful and punitive lesson has endured.

It has not brought peace, it has not brought love, it has not brought harmony.

A little thought shows that should is a key component in many problems, local, relational and in terms of geo-politics.

Arguably should is more dangerous and destructive than nuclear weapons.

The So-called Externalisation

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If you swing by this blog from time to time you may note that I write a little on the blue books opus. These are written, so the story goes, by Alice Bailey acting as a telepathic amanuensis for the master Djwhal Kuhl a.k.a. the Tibetan. Whether or not you believe this story or the contents of these books, it is fair to say that a great deal of effort was made and that the contents, should you read them in entirety, no mean feat, have a marked internal consistency.

He suggests that the spiritual “hierarchy” may incarnate and live among humanity as a whole in preparation for the New Age and the coming of the Christ given impulse by the Avatar of Synthesis. I personally am not fond of any nomenclature which uses the word hierarchy. His thesis is these beings have guided humanity for millennia. An incarnate example being perhaps Comte de Saint Germain {still} who was “seen” at various European courts around the time of the French revolution.

In the works the Tibetan became a master taking the fifth initiation in the body of an old man in 1875 yet still writing books telepathically in 1950s. Such a statement is prone to disbelief.

This is not “Assassins Creed” and nor is this a Templar plot.

Nowhere in his opus does he mention that such an occurrence would be welcomed with open arms by the powers that be. In fact he is very scant on what that might look like. He does speculate on future schools of meditation and that various experiments would be undertaken. He mentions that Roosevelt was a disciple of the white magic and hints that Hitler and his evil gang of henchmen were dark and evil, dark adepts even.

Before I go further, I want to drop in a piece of nomenclature. This is the term karmic clusterfuck. A karmic clusterfuck is the biggest mistake that one can make in terms of messing up karma. In front lies a truly golden sparkly and shiny opportunity which you completely fuck up out of arrogance, power craziness and stubbornness. In seeking to control everything you turn it in a right royal, grade A karmic clusterfuck of gargantuan near cosmic proportions. The causal karmic clusterfuck will have huge ongoing effects and consequences rippling forward in space-time. That karmic clusterfuck has personal, racial and national impacts moving forward. The impacts can be global, geo-political and planetary.

It is noteworthy to examine the different treatment of Siddartha and Jesus. The resultant effects from these two karmic causes have differed, one characterised by blood greed violence and oppression the other more benign. One can draw own opinion from careful study.

Given the current obsession with espionage and “intelligence” it is not far-fetched to assume a few things. If the blue books opus is not written by the fairy godmother and has some measure of fact, then should such an externalisation happen it will be monitored. The likelihood of an open arms welcome is low. No powerful human would enjoy the interference of a bunch of beings with unknown provenance {to them}. The fatted calf would not be killed and put upon the great barbecue next to the Wagyu. Behaviour might be to observe and/or persecute. If threatened then incarnations could be encouraged to be short lived, truncated. There could even be partisan attempts to on-side the incarnating adepts and initiates, should they be discovered. Most likely there will be large intellectual resistance and this likely to emanate from the so-called scientific community as well as from churches of all flavours and creeds. Those with vested interests are the least likely to offer a heartfelt “Bienvenue”.

In clear simple terms, there will be shenanigans.

The tendency to try to double guess and assume would be difficult to resist. The basic assumption might be of motive, that the new kids on the block want to take over the ‘hood. To an enlightened being the notion of power over is an anathema. A concept difficult to comprehend for your normal powerful human being.

What is safe to say is that if such an externalisation were to occur it would be totally new and there would be zero precedent on how to approach it. Locking up an initiate in Guantanamo Bay, would be karmically unwise. It is however likely that humanity, some of its leaders, would react in a non-measured way. The new and unfamiliar can stimulate fear-dramas into those already mildly paranoid. No way would these enlightened beings be after the job of prime minister, archbishop, ayatollah or president. But people may fail to appreciate this. There would be psychological transference of motive. People would see their own reflection in the mirror.

Although a positional organisational chart was given out in the last century it would not be clear how to approach. Contact details are not available for Kuhl on LinkedIn. In 2025 he would be well in excess of 150 earth years old which is a bit of a mindfuck. Who might be the receptionist, the organisational gatekeepers? Where is headquarters? Why is their web site not SEO optimised? What is the protocol? The organisation has probably changed and evolved.

Any conventional corporate approach probably would not apply. One could not meet and share corporate PowerPoint presentations, handing out business cards with roles like Quartermaster, CEO, Secretary of State on. The concept of dealmaking may have zero applicability.

The world has changed since Kuhl was writing in depth.

I don’t know if Kuhl had envisioned how it might play out, probably not because when he was writing it was a long way into the future, a dream yet to coalesce. It would be a metaphorical minefield given that the vast majority of humanity is in no way soul-infused. The overarching psychology is that of the personality and its self-ish orientation. The interconnectedness of The One Life is not uppermost and goodwill to all men has been sadly much eroded as of late. People are self-centred and do not feel the One Humanity all that much. Separation and division are currently rife. People are not working together to face the real incoming crisis of planetary climate change; they are squabbling as “Rome” burns. They have pressed snooze on their smartphone alarm clocks.

Is it even possible for humanity to engage in a calm intelligent fashion with such a putative externalisation were it to happen?

How would you bet?

The Repair Theme and Technology

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There is a reasonable chance that I may be able to have two total hip replacements. Hopefully if that goes ahead it will be under a general anaesthetic. When I had my Titanium pin fitted, I was conscious, if drowsy as they had given me a spine injection. That was a bit PTSD.  I can still feel the reverberation in my skeleton as a memory.

I will be hooked up to technology.

Last night before dinner I was able to watch a short version of a total hip replacement operation on video on YouTube. It looked pretty gory and they use a mechanical hemispherical reamer to shape the hip socket. It was attached to a common or garden battery style drill. They also did extensive work with muscle and flesh retractors. There was the sound of mallet on metal and it looked pretty barbaric. Not an easy watch.

Technology has come a long way and any joint should last perhaps a couple of decades. They will see me out before clog-popping time, should they be fit-able and fitted.

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In a real sense my incarnation may be prolonged by modern technology. Maybe I should stop complaining about ‘phone use….

It brings to mind a whole new raft of karma, due to our success in medical technology. On a philosophical level I have some reservations about overly prolonging life. I am more convinced that so called cosmetic surgery for vanity is karmically bad. It is a form of self-harm and obsession. It is a way of reinforcing the folly and illusion of obsession with appearance and form. People pay to have others cut them in order to look more sexually attractive. This is not the behaviour of well-balanced people.

I am not sure that the surgeons are free of karma in this transaction. They do something for money which is not demanded by health requirements.

If people need to find out for themselves, that is their business.

I am due {perhaps} a repair.

Today we took a laptop to get a new screen and our 2005 vintage sit-on mower needs a new drive belt. It is not a good design if it needs repair after at most twenty mows. It is wearing out.

The theme of being beat-up and in need of repair is active today.

I really cannot believe what the “Statesman” in the Whitehouse is alleged to have said about finding and killing the leader of a sovereign country. This is a new low in the personal and the petty. It is hard to imagine. Things are getting very toddlers in the sand-pit like. Unfortunately, one of these is armed with vast deadly ordnance

It occurred to me that I may be being operated on just as things really kick off. I may be vulnerable and incapable when the shit hits the fan. We have a fixed price propane tariff which is looking like a good thing today. Maybe we need to order some more wood, soon.

Maybe we will have a working mower, laptop and a partially improved repaired me. I don’t think that the Whitehouse or Tel Aviv can repair their damaged relationships easily. The seed of unreliability has been sown.

It is very sad, if people are shooting those queueing for food. Barbaric, uncivilised, retrogressive. Vlad the Impaler of lore would be happy, maybe we need to bring back mass crucifixions along the Appian way.

More brutal power and cruelty seem to be on the cards. Maybe we are back to the old Bush chestnut of WMD in Iraq…

Any excuse to kill, to maim and to explode…

Death and brutal maiming by “clean” modern technology takes the humanity out of murder. It turns it into a first person shooter video game. There is no blood spatter, no acrid cordite, no sweat, no smell of putrid wounds. No entrails to trip over. The dead are put in a white sheet and buried in a mass grave by some other bugger. TV and video is not in smell-o-vision.

It is inhumane….

… and very sad.

Let’s Ask Pontius Pilate to Kill the Ayatollah…

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It seems to me that there are groundhog elements at play. The Roman Empire had an outpost in Palestine two thousand years ago. It had power over life and death. Now the Americans are powerful and have proxy forces in the region. There is pressure to destroy any nuclear capability in Persia even though the whole recent shebang has been started against international law (these days). An act of manipulation to draw the USA in.

Will Pilate {Trump} succumb to entreaty and give them the bunker busting bomb they want or will he revert to trying to solve a diplomatic crisis about Uranium enrichment which he himself precipitated? Will he give succour to Israeli paranoia, cause a regime change and unleash another wave of mass migration?

Will ISIS rise spectre like from the ashes?

What will Pilate do will he wash his hands concerning all the promises he made about stopping conflict?

Will he walk away from Ukraine?

Is he too aloof?

Who will he blame when it all goes pear shaped?

Spinning Plates and Losing Friends

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This morning, I am getting the sensation that in both Israel and the USA that the so-called leaders are so busy opening up new areas of travesty that they have too many plates in the air. They are trying too many things. They are spinning too many plates. Israel is relying on its “friendship” with the USA whose president is fickle and tantrum prone. If he does not get his way, he is not best pleased. He is a man who over promises and under delivers. He plays to camera and not wisdom. His thinking is not joined up in space and time, it is episode by episode, looking for ratings.

Many of the campaign trail boasts about his ability to solve international problems and his deal making prowess have not materialised. Both Israel and the USA by their confrontational exploits are losing friends. The USA is no longer considered a reliable ally and that will extend into the Pacific. The French must be well happy with doubts about the much heralded AUKUS pact, which is looking AWKS or awkward. Trump is the perennial deal breaker, pulling out of deals willy nilly. You cannot trust him.

If ever there was motivation to develop nuclear weapons in Iran, it has now been enhanced tenfold. The paranoid immediacy thinking of Israeli “preventative” destruction will not demotivate or deter. Abrahamic punishment thinking does not wash. The Zionists made Israel to avoid living in fear, it hasn’t worked. Fear, a sense of victimhood prevails. Being nasty does not win friends.

Everything has consequences and isolationism is rarely beneficial in the long run. I don’t think Israel is winning the popularity game in UK and Europe. Its tired propaganda is starting to creak around the edges, more than a little. Open too many fronts at peril.

I see a summer of discontent in the USA. If civil war happens the population will no longer be well vaccinated.

What happens next remains to be seen…

Maybe I will order that Geiger counter online after all…

Big Cheeses and Kudos

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I’ll speculate that Herr Trump sees himself as a big cheese and wants people to kiss his ring. The orange don, Donald, has a big army, navy and air force. I doubt anyone looks forward with unbridled glee at the notion of a public meeting with him. These meetings are a necessary evil. He is not a pleasant man. In societal terms he is a high kudos being, though some may not wish to brag about their associations with him. He is not universally good PR. He can be bad for business. He has a lot of power.

Kudos is context specific. To a MAGA wannabe an endorsement from the “don” is manna from heaven.

We are watching recorded University Challenges on YouTube. Quite often there are questions on Nobel Prizes and Laureates. These prizes are high kudos and should you win one it will boost an academic salary and secure your job. Universities like the kudos of bragging about Nobel Laureates.

“Look at us we are special!”

Even though I was recently incarnated as a scientist I struggle to recall who won, with whom and for what. I have even met a few of these winners.

According to Professor Google there are / have been around one thousand Nobel Laureates. This means that England football captains are less common and world cup winning England football captains a positive rarity. In some {most} contexts football is more important and more significant than someone boffinacious. Aside from a few like Einstein, people know the faces of Beckham and Lineker better.

Lhamo Thondup the Tibetan tulku also known as Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso or H.H. Dalai Lama is one of only 14 reincarnations. To many in the world he is a high kudos being and his face is easily recognised. He has met Bush, Obama, Cameron and Merkel inter alia. It is good PR to be seen in his presence. He is a spiritual big cheese. He gets invites.

People can speak in awe of people like Friedrich Nietzsche. You must be brainy to read him. Strangely he played a big part in my interest in Buddhism

“Goodreads” attributes the following quotations to Nietzsche.

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“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

“Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”


― Friedrich Nietzsche

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In academic circles it is more accepted to quote him than Padmasambhava. The latter is a very high kudos figure in Tibetan Buddhism, a supposed Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

Many big cheese are also legends in their own lunchtimes, others are not, they are humbler than that. In the UK, research assessment exercises have sought to measure peer esteem or kudos. This is such a subjective thing and wholly non scientific yet those keen to get research grants played along with something close to a convenient heresy.

The ascribing of kudos is a very personal and hence subjective thing too. We have the phenomenon of fans who attach much kudos to their heroines or heroes. They may even pay for used clothing or bath water. Kudos is attached to corporeal relics of saints and Buddhas. The essence which may have once imbued the relic is long departed. Perhaps saints have way more than eight fingers and two thumbs so everyone can get a relic.

Despite the positional power which kudos affords in a socio-political sense it is not real. You cannot measure it with a laser and a detector. When you die you can’t take it with you.

People can make huge faux pas dancing upon the minefield of kudos. Kudos is another word for something we desire in a social-construct sense. We may seek recognition or affirmation from the herd, the shoal. Even if we are awarded with a measurable trinket, kudos is impermanent. One can fall from grace off one’s glittery platform shoes like Gary did. A fall from the lofty heights of kudos is difficult to bear.

We may hold things important which others do not. We may fail to attach importance to something revered by others. We may be arrogant in our notions of what is significant and to which we ascribe our personal kudos.

Trying saying kudos, kudos, over and over!! Very quickly is starts to sound silly.

Some people want to become important, significant big cheeses. Some imagine they already are. Many have a sense of grandiose entitlement.

Just as some want to be top dog others want to be a big cheese.

“If you thought $30 for a pound of blue cheese was expensive, wait till you hear how much this Spanish blue cheese just sold for.

Clocking in at $6,682 per pound, a wheel of Cabrales blue cheese from northern Spain earned the title of the world’s most expensive cheese after a 2.2 kg (4.85 lb) wheel was sold at auction for €30,000 ($32,408.10).

The auction took place at the 51st annual Cabrales Cheese Competition held in the Principality of Asturias. Bidding started at €3,000 and quickly rose as passionate turophiles battled for the right to own the first-place cheese.

In the end, restauranteur Iván Suárez won the prized wheel. Suárez told Spanish news outlet EFE that “the passion for the land” and “recognizing the work of all the cheesemakers” made him buy the cheese.”

New Record for World’s Most Expensive Cheese Josie Krogh | August 29, 2023

Stuck, On Hold and In Limbo

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

While the world is caught up in a Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” rose-tinted-sepia version {drama} of what America might once again become, not much is moving forward. The capitalist evangelist nation has admitted it is no longer competitive and is thinking sanctions to protect its internal markets. Your average American is unwilling to work for the same pay as someone less corpulent.

The war in Ukraine and the barbarity in Gaza continue apace. The world watches, sits on its hands and talks but does not. Humanity is very stuck and harping on about the Glory Days will not help no matter how many Bud Lights you refuse to drink. There has been no genuine lead from the USA for near a decade. Unsurprisingly the economic miracle foreseen by the Brexit soap-boxers has not propelled the UK into becoming a world economic superpower. Cunning plans may not be well thought out.

There is a huge leadership vacuum in the world today.

In my opinion humanity is need of an almighty wake up call to re-start the “save the planet” agenda and to overcome the for profit climate change nay-sayers. The equation is simple choose to be “comfortable” now and do fuck all, then pay very dearly later. This manifesto will get you elected in a “popularist” sense.

Here we have decided to see if it is possible to get anything done to ameliorate my hips. We have decided not to attempt to sell and move. The idea being that two new hips is about a year if the waiting time is a few months. I can’t find data on French wait times. Nor do I know if it is even possible. At the end of the month, we shall have a little more information. Best guess is the earliest operation would be after the summer. If it was UK best case scenario is six months wait with up to two years possible / probable. I could spend a huge chunk of remaining life savings and get it done privately in Hampshire, near the ferry port.

At the moment we are on hold and in limbo. Things are up in the air with no answers. We share that stuck-ness with the world. The news on television is very repetitive, a daily Groundhog Day. I don’t care who is on Love Island nor what percentage of GDP the UK will devote to defence.

Humanity needs an almighty wakeup call…