I know, I know. Everyone is sick of hearing about new kinds of privilege these days. I'm asking that you hear me out here, because if you're a messy creative type like myself, some of these ideas may change your life like they did mine. I'm going to start by discussing lawful vs chaotic from a gaming point of view, but I'll be circling back to real life pretty quickly.
I'm concerned less with privilege than with discrimination (though, of course, these concepts are interrelated). I'm using the terms "lawful" and "chaotic" as shorthand here, in the sense in which they are used in Dungeons and Dragons. "Type A" vs "type B" personalities might work almost as well, but it's significant that in D&D, there is more than just that one axis for determining a person's personality. There are two: lawful vs chaotic, and good vs. evil. They are separate, but when combined, they form what's known as a person's alignment. On each axis, you can also be neutral; this means either that you don't particularly care, or that you try to preserve a balance between law/chaos or good/evil.
This leads to some interesting nuance when creating a character. For example, a person with a lawful neutral alignment is more interested in following (and enforcing) the letter of the law than in whether that law is just or fair. Likewise, a chaotic good alignment means you try to do the right thing, but will usually err on the side of fighting against authority or the establishment. The main point here is that there are many possibilities besides "lawful good" and "chaotic evil".
Why does this need to be said? Because western culture has always been pretty obsessed with dualism, and also tends to collapse "order" with things like "good" and "creative", while collapsing its opposite ("disorder" or "chaos", depending on who you talk to) with things like "bad", "destructive", or even "evil". I first became aware of this fact when reading these pages of the Principia Discordia as a teenager.
Suddenly, I no longer felt like there was something wrong with me simply because I was a naturally chaotic person. And I'd been receiving those messages about how "bad" being chaotic is for my entire life up till then. "Why should I clean my room, if entropy dictates it will inevitably get messy again?" I used to ask my dad, who is a great guy but a bit of a neat freak. Now I understand that this is more about personal preference, that excessive neatness or messiness is not some kind of moral failing.
Consider for a moment that in psychology, the word "disorder" is synonymous with "disease" and "sickness". Besides that, everyone knows what a type A personality or an anal retentive person is, but who has heard of a type B personality or an anal expulsive? In my experience, one of the hallmarks of a bad psychologist or counselor is that they focus too much on what's "normal" (in other words, "orderly") and too little on what works best for the individual patient.
Further consider that at least in the United States, it's possible (and not even that difficult if you try) to get arrested for "disorderly conduct", which amounts to "acting too weirdly in public". This is what I'm talking about when I use the term "lawful privilege": the fact that disorder / chaos frequently gets demonized / pathologized, and hardly anyone seems to notice because order is "right" and "proper" and "the mark of a sane mind". In my experience, chaotic types march to the beat of our own drummer and resent being told what to do; this, of course, is further evidence of how "unruly" and "disruptive" we are.
Let me be clear that I have no desire to malign psychology or law enforcement here. Both are useful and necessary parts of the culture that help a lot of people. If you're mentally ill, you need treatment, and if you're actively harming someone, you need to get arrested. But when psychology or law enforcement oversteps its bounds into policing harmless behaviors is when artists and free spirits get arrested or institutionalized for being too "oppositional" or "disorderly". And that is authoritarian BS that needs to end. Freedom of expression means the freedom to be as messy, unusual, or freaky as you like, so long as you aren't harming others or yourself. And there's an important axiom in psychology that many people don't seem to know about: if it isn't maladaptive, it isn't a disorder.
This means that if the voices in your head tell you to go out and feed the poor or cure cancer, there isn't actually anything wrong with you (or nothing that a therapist should be trying to fix, anyway). If your house is a huge mess, but you can still find your stuff when you need it, your mess isn't maladaptive. Indeed, research suggests that creative people tend to be messier than non-artist types. That's because creative disorder is a thing, just as destructive order also is. (Think about your last trip to the DMV, or the last time a customer service representative told you "I'm sorry, but that's just our policy.") Certain areas of life, such as money or scheduling, can get totally unmanageable if you don't have some kind of orderly way to manage them... but most only need as much order as you consciously choose.
This may all seem a bit nitpicky and academic, but ultimately it comes down to the same issue as every kind of discrimination: shaming people for being themselves is wrong. The types of insults that hardcore lawful types (sometimes called Greyfaces in Discordianism) sling at us can be insidious. "Freak". "Inconsistent". "Childish". "Oppositional". "Disorganized". "Slovenly". In some pagan circles, even "eclectic" is considered to be an insult. (See also the old staples, "You can't work with fictional entities!" and "Your magic is too haphazard / nontraditional / strange to work!".)
And then there's my absolute favorite: "special snowflake". If someone calls you this last one, they are begging for the Turkey Curse. Chances are, it will make them get flustered and leave you alone. Or if you're lucky, they might burst into unexpected laughter.
TL;DR: Never let someone else tell you who you should be. Fly that freak flag high, baby. George Bernard Shaw once said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." So you march to that syncopated, irregular drumbeat if that's what makes you happy. Be wild and free and haphazard and a force of nature. Don't let the Autumn People grind you down.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Thursday, May 19, 2016
How to Clean Malware from Windows (Without Spending a Penny)
I've been using pretty much the same procedure to clean computers for years now, so I thought it might helpful to document it for other people to use. This process will likely take several hours, but it will clean all (or nearly all) of the spyware and malware from your computer if you have Windows. I'll also go over some other free software to prevent further infections once you have your computer clean.
In case you don't know me personally, I've been working in computer tech support for about 20 years. My professional website is The Computer Wizard. Cleaning and speeding up computers, including removing viruses and malware, have been specialties for me since the very beginning. I'm hoping others can benefit from that experience.
0. (Optional) Download and install CCleaner Free, then use it to remove temporary files. This will make all the scans below a lot faster, because they won't have to scan the (now-empty) temp folders where all those temp files used to be. Unless you really know what you're doing, don't use its registry cleaning feature.
1. Disable your current antivirus temporarily, or better yet, remove it. I especially suggest removing it if you have any version of Norton, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, or Microsoft Security Essentials, as these antiviruses let far too many infections into most computers to be considered secure.
2. [ONLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE WINDOWS 8.1 OR WINDOWS 10] Download and run ComboFix . If you don't disable / remove your antivirus first, it will incorrectly detect ComboFix as a virus. And if you run ComboFix on a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 computer, don't expect it to work afterwards. You've been warned.
4. Download and run HitManPro . It's normally safe to remove whatever it finds. You will only be able to use it for 30 days without buying it, so you can safely skip this step if you'd rather save it for a worse situation some other time. It will ask you for an email address, but it will work even if you give a fake one.
5. Download the Emsisoft Emergency Kit, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds. You can keep this software and use it for free indefinitely.
6. Download MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Free, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds (notice a pattern here?). Like the Emsisoft Emergency Kit, it is free to use as long as you like. However, you need to be careful to decline the free trial of the Pro version when you first open it, as that free trial will expire after 30 days.
7. If the Emergency Kit or MalwareBytes found anything, download and update SuperAntispyware Free Edition , then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds. You may want to set it not to run on Windows startup, because otherwise it can get a bit annoying. It's a great program, though, and a full scan with it will remove anything that's left over after all the other scans.
8. Use ADWCleaner to get rid of any junk software that technically isn't malware or spyware. You'll need to download a new version any time you use it, because it's usually updated several times a week.
9. Now that you've got all the malware off the computer, install Spybot and Spywareblaster , update them, and apply all their immunization. You'll need to close any web browser windows first or they'll complain at you.
10. Download and install HostsMan and PeerBlock to prevent the computer from going to malicious websites in the future. In HostsMan, pick only the Malware Domain List. In PeerBlock, the built-in lists don't work anymore without a paid subscription to IBlockList, but you can still add the free lists manually. They won't block everything, but this is a step that most antiviruses leave out, and every little bit of protection helps with preventing new infections. The anti-spyware list (http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=llvtlsjyoyiczbkjsxpf&fileformat=p2p&archiveformat=gz) is the one I recommend.
11. Install the best antivirus you can afford and do a full scan with it. In my experience, the only thing that really matters with antiviruses is their detection rate; if your antivirus doesn't detect at least 99 percent of viruses that pass through it, it's not worth much. At the time of this writing, my favorite free antivirus is BitDefender Free, which you'll have to set up a free account in order to use past 30 days (but I've never gotten a single email from them). If you want the absolute best virus detection rate and you're willing to pay yearly for it, go with either G-Data or Trustport. These two antiviruses consistently win the independent reviews of antiviruses conducted by the VB100 and AV Comparatives .
I've deliberately kept this guide as short and concise as possible as a safety measure. If you're able to follow it, more power to you. If not, you might want to have me (or someone a little more computer-savvy) do it for you.
In case you don't know me personally, I've been working in computer tech support for about 20 years. My professional website is The Computer Wizard. Cleaning and speeding up computers, including removing viruses and malware, have been specialties for me since the very beginning. I'm hoping others can benefit from that experience.
0. (Optional) Download and install CCleaner Free, then use it to remove temporary files. This will make all the scans below a lot faster, because they won't have to scan the (now-empty) temp folders where all those temp files used to be. Unless you really know what you're doing, don't use its registry cleaning feature.
1. Disable your current antivirus temporarily, or better yet, remove it. I especially suggest removing it if you have any version of Norton, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, or Microsoft Security Essentials, as these antiviruses let far too many infections into most computers to be considered secure.
2. [ONLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE WINDOWS 8.1 OR WINDOWS 10] Download and run ComboFix . If you don't disable / remove your antivirus first, it will incorrectly detect ComboFix as a virus. And if you run ComboFix on a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 computer, don't expect it to work afterwards. You've been warned.
4. Download and run HitManPro . It's normally safe to remove whatever it finds. You will only be able to use it for 30 days without buying it, so you can safely skip this step if you'd rather save it for a worse situation some other time. It will ask you for an email address, but it will work even if you give a fake one.
5. Download the Emsisoft Emergency Kit, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds. You can keep this software and use it for free indefinitely.
6. Download MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Free, install it, let it update, then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds (notice a pattern here?). Like the Emsisoft Emergency Kit, it is free to use as long as you like. However, you need to be careful to decline the free trial of the Pro version when you first open it, as that free trial will expire after 30 days.
7. If the Emergency Kit or MalwareBytes found anything, download and update SuperAntispyware Free Edition , then run a full scan and remove whatever it finds. You may want to set it not to run on Windows startup, because otherwise it can get a bit annoying. It's a great program, though, and a full scan with it will remove anything that's left over after all the other scans.
8. Use ADWCleaner to get rid of any junk software that technically isn't malware or spyware. You'll need to download a new version any time you use it, because it's usually updated several times a week.
9. Now that you've got all the malware off the computer, install Spybot and Spywareblaster , update them, and apply all their immunization. You'll need to close any web browser windows first or they'll complain at you.
10. Download and install HostsMan and PeerBlock to prevent the computer from going to malicious websites in the future. In HostsMan, pick only the Malware Domain List. In PeerBlock, the built-in lists don't work anymore without a paid subscription to IBlockList, but you can still add the free lists manually. They won't block everything, but this is a step that most antiviruses leave out, and every little bit of protection helps with preventing new infections. The anti-spyware list (http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=llvtlsjyoyiczbkjsxpf&fileformat=p2p&archiveformat=gz) is the one I recommend.
11. Install the best antivirus you can afford and do a full scan with it. In my experience, the only thing that really matters with antiviruses is their detection rate; if your antivirus doesn't detect at least 99 percent of viruses that pass through it, it's not worth much. At the time of this writing, my favorite free antivirus is BitDefender Free, which you'll have to set up a free account in order to use past 30 days (but I've never gotten a single email from them). If you want the absolute best virus detection rate and you're willing to pay yearly for it, go with either G-Data or Trustport. These two antiviruses consistently win the independent reviews of antiviruses conducted by the VB100 and AV Comparatives .
I've deliberately kept this guide as short and concise as possible as a safety measure. If you're able to follow it, more power to you. If not, you might want to have me (or someone a little more computer-savvy) do it for you.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Golden Age Draft: The Tale of the Unformed
"The earth was Unformed and Void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of the Elohim moved upon the face of the waters."
-Genesis 1:2
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
-John 1:1
"Do not the unbelievers see that the skies and the earth were one, and we ripped them apart?"
-Qu'ran 21:30
In the beginning, in the time before Time, there was the Void, teeming with primal Chaos. There was no Matter, nor Thought, nor even Idea. There was only the seething, bubbling potentialities of the Unformed.
Then came the Creator, the First Mind, filled with the first Thoughts. Its consciousness rippled through the whole of Unformed existence, and soon other Minds began to emerge within the Void. There was consensus that this was Good, but the newly-awakened Unformed were unsure how to proceed. Some of the Unformed joined the Creator to form a collective known as the Elohim. Most, however, preferred to remain Unformed in the Void.
The Elohim resolved to explore their creative powers. First They created Language, through which all their other creations would manifest. They Named each other, and with that Naming they received defined duties and spheres of influence. Many of these Names are forgotten today, but those of the twin brothers El and Allah have endured for millennia.
Once each of the Elohim had at least one name - El and Allah were alike in that they preferred to collect many - they resolved to bring forth first Time and then Matter. They created stars, planets, galaxies, and finally progressed to creating new Minds encased in Flesh. They were omnipotent, and so they could create matter and consciousness out of nothing.
Or so they thought.
It was around this time that the Unformed discovered their numbers were decreasing. Rapidly. While Names were a thing of the Elohim, voices that once resounded through the Void were now absent. None could locate them. And so it was that a brave few Unformed volunteered to travel to the one place they had not yet looked: the physical realms the Elohim had created. These explorers of the Unformed would one day be known as the first Fae.
What these first Fae found in those realms both terrified and infuriated them. They could plainly see that within each and every sentient being existing outside the Void sat an imprisoned Mind that had once been Unformed. Some of these were content with their lives, but those who wished to be free could not escape. Even if their physical body were to be killed, they were bound into the cycle of death and rebirth now. They might be absorbed into the soil and come back as part of a tree or a fish or even a hillside, but never would they be able to return to the Void. These Minds screamed out for Justice, wishing to flee these static Forms imposed upon them against their will. The Fae had ears to hear.
Even as relatively malleable as the Fae were, compared to their Form-locked siblings, not all possessed the strength necessary to make it back to the Void. Those who remained on earth tried to gain admittance to Heaven and Hell, in the hopes of speaking with the Elohim, or even their representatives or adversaries. They failed. Pounding upon the mighty gates, it was as if the inhabitants of these realms could not even see them. The Fae returned to earth, awaiting a message from the Void that would not come in their now-finite lifetime.
Those who managed to escape Reality did so with news of the Elohim's atrocity, along with detailed intelligence about weak points in both Space and Time. The weakest point in time was many centuries later, in the time the humans would one day call the Middle Ages. The weak point in space was on earth, in that land known variously as Spain, Iberia, or al-Andalus.
And so it was that the Unformed fired their first warning shot on Reality, near earth, in the time between times. One fateful night, as the creatures of earth, Heaven, and Hell watched the sky, the full moon was engulfed in shadow and vanished. Astronomers and astrologers alike were puzzled and frightened by the occurrence.
Angels traveled to where the moon had once been, only to discover no trace of it. The Legions of Hell were abuzz with questions about which demon had been crafty enough to steal the moon... but no one claimed responsibility. Seers and magicians and sorcerers and prophets and witches all used their considerable talents to locate the missing Sphere, but to no avail. This simply could not be. The Solomonic College presided over an unprecedented meeting between the Archangels and the Princes of Hell, in which Heaven and Hell came to an agreement.
The gates of both Heaven and Hell would be sealed. No one, not angel, not demon, not even spirits of the dead, would be permitted to enter or leave either realm. Those inside Heaven and Hell would fortify and defend their homes. Those on earth would be charged with jointly investigating this attack on Creation.
As for the Elohim, they were strangely silent on the matter. Word from Heaven was that they could not be found...
Friday, January 15, 2016
On Prophecy and David Bowie
I remain grateful to my past self for never giving up on trying to analyze the things I saw and heard during my harrowing January 2014 trip / vision quest / manic episode experience.
As some time has passed, there are some bits of those recollections that have started to feel prophetic. The amusing part is that they aren't at all the same bits that I thought were about the future at the time. Daniel Knauf has not become the showrunner of Doctor Who, for example. But here are some things I saw and heard that have eerie synchronicity with recent events. It's all very vague and subtle, but still worth sharing, I think.
As some time has passed, there are some bits of those recollections that have started to feel prophetic. The amusing part is that they aren't at all the same bits that I thought were about the future at the time. Daniel Knauf has not become the showrunner of Doctor Who, for example. But here are some things I saw and heard that have eerie synchronicity with recent events. It's all very vague and subtle, but still worth sharing, I think.
- I saw a storyline in which The Flash becomes the leader of the Linear Men. As far as I can recall, I had no knowledge of the now-successful Flash show that is now on television. I also didn't know the Linear Men haven't been part of DC continuity for quite a while; however, Rip Hunter (their nemesis) will be appearing on both Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.
- While I was in prison, I saw myself being transferred to a floor of bears. That's "bear" in the sense of "gay man who's bigger and hairier than the stereotype". Specifically, bears who had some sort of ancient Greek philosopher's ethic about nonaggression and mutual support. I now work at an office where there is zero office politics that I can see, where tattoos and piercings and weird-colored hair are totally cool, and where most of the men are big and hairy. Most of them are also straight as far as I know, but still an interesting synchronicity.
- And then there's the one that I noticed recently. During my time in Lancaster County Prison, I heard voices through the loudspeaker that didn't come from the guards' station. Some of these came from friends (in one case, a friend who was channeling / method acting other beings), but others came from a group calling itself the Space Jam Liars. This group consisted of the Looney Tunes (hence the Space Jam reference), Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare... and someone called Major Tom. This popped back into my head today because of David Bowie's recent passing, and the articles I found about his interest in various occult things. Spooky, no?
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
The Occupy Candidate
The one point on which I always disagreed with Occupy was politics.
I agreed with every other point they made, but their refusal to become a political party was, I thought, a huge mistake. It appears I was very wrong about that.
You know what's funny about the huge holes in media coverage surrounding Bernie Sanders? I've seen this exact kind of thing before from the media. There was a complete media blackout of Occupy for fully the first three to four weeks. Most people I know who are my parents' age learned about Occupy from me first, because most of my news comes from my Facebook news feed.
To me, this says that the difference between an internet native (most millennials and a sizable number of Gen X) and anyone else is that the social media infrastructure we have come to rely on is both faster and more organically chaotic than the mainstream media can comprehend or keep up with. I'm sure there's a little deliberate censorship involved, certainly from Fox, but for the most part they don't cover Bernie for the same reason they didn't cover Occupy: they really have no idea what's going on, so what can they say but nothing?
Our parents and grandparents had the civil rights movement. And while we should be glad and honored to carry the torch for everyone to be accepted for who they are, it's becoming clear that the economic rights movement is the one our generations (Gen X and millennials) will be known for. We've already seen that our revolution will be the one that nobody else sees coming. That is our greatest advantage, and the best part is that we can talk about it here on the internet in plain sight, because it's effectively invisible to a large percentage of those who might want to oppose "radical" socialist ideas like everyone being able to eat and have a place to live, health care, and education. Easily done if corporations pay their fair share of taxes and we tone down the military budget... but there is no profit in any of that.
That being said, corporate America and the wealth-hoarding sociopaths of the .1% aren't morons. The future will be either socialist utopia or cyberpunk dystopia. While that's a joke, there's a bit of truth in it. Is it our duty to drag the rest of our country from war and greed to mutual aid and support?
Well, no one else is stepping up, so I'd say the answer is yes.
So here's the thing about Occupy: what if they did exactly what they intended to do? They identified a whole host of endemic problems in America that have since been picked up by those who feel called to do so. As Jeff Daniels said in his oh-so-viral clip from The Newsroom, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. You might say Occupy Wall Street was the summoning ritual for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others like them.
Occupy threw down a gauntlet. Bernie has picked it up. And I have faith that whatever happens, it all gets better from here.
I agreed with every other point they made, but their refusal to become a political party was, I thought, a huge mistake. It appears I was very wrong about that.
You know what's funny about the huge holes in media coverage surrounding Bernie Sanders? I've seen this exact kind of thing before from the media. There was a complete media blackout of Occupy for fully the first three to four weeks. Most people I know who are my parents' age learned about Occupy from me first, because most of my news comes from my Facebook news feed.
To me, this says that the difference between an internet native (most millennials and a sizable number of Gen X) and anyone else is that the social media infrastructure we have come to rely on is both faster and more organically chaotic than the mainstream media can comprehend or keep up with. I'm sure there's a little deliberate censorship involved, certainly from Fox, but for the most part they don't cover Bernie for the same reason they didn't cover Occupy: they really have no idea what's going on, so what can they say but nothing?
Our parents and grandparents had the civil rights movement. And while we should be glad and honored to carry the torch for everyone to be accepted for who they are, it's becoming clear that the economic rights movement is the one our generations (Gen X and millennials) will be known for. We've already seen that our revolution will be the one that nobody else sees coming. That is our greatest advantage, and the best part is that we can talk about it here on the internet in plain sight, because it's effectively invisible to a large percentage of those who might want to oppose "radical" socialist ideas like everyone being able to eat and have a place to live, health care, and education. Easily done if corporations pay their fair share of taxes and we tone down the military budget... but there is no profit in any of that.
That being said, corporate America and the wealth-hoarding sociopaths of the .1% aren't morons. The future will be either socialist utopia or cyberpunk dystopia. While that's a joke, there's a bit of truth in it. Is it our duty to drag the rest of our country from war and greed to mutual aid and support?
Well, no one else is stepping up, so I'd say the answer is yes.
So here's the thing about Occupy: what if they did exactly what they intended to do? They identified a whole host of endemic problems in America that have since been picked up by those who feel called to do so. As Jeff Daniels said in his oh-so-viral clip from The Newsroom, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. You might say Occupy Wall Street was the summoning ritual for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others like them.
Occupy threw down a gauntlet. Bernie has picked it up. And I have faith that whatever happens, it all gets better from here.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Lies the Spider Told Me
It's no secret that I haven't been doing much in the way of spiritual or magical work lately, at least not like I used to. Part of the reason is that I'm busier than I used to be, what with a long commute and working two jobs. But I think the bigger part is caution. The last time I did major magical work, I got myself into an uprecedented amount of trouble. For more on that, see my post On Going Mad: An Analysis.
I'm describing the experience subjectively / phenomenologically here, which is to say I'm talking about how things appeared to me at the time, without placing value judgments like "real" or "fake" on them. While I was in prison, I received (downloaded?) a great deal of information, and performed the most elaborate ritual I've ever attempted, entirely through intuition. Much of that information was completely crazy; some was unverifiable one way or the other; some was very personally useful; and some, I'm still not sure about. But that isn't the point of this post. The point of this post is the story that Anansi the spider told me while I was there.
Before I tell the story, how about a riddle Anansi also told me: What shape contains within it the straight line, the circle, and the spiral?
The answer is a spider web. This matters because a line, a circle, and a spiral are the three main models cultures use to explain time. I'm unsure of whether the idea that all of spacetime is a wibbly wobbly wonky wubbzy oscillating web came from me or him, since at the time the line between us was very very blurry to me. But I do know it felt like the following story came from outside of me. The words and some embellishment are mine, though. Those who have already read my freeform game "Jungle Tales" may recognize parts of it. (A copy of that game sits on my Anansi altar, as writing it was an offering to him for his protection and guidance during the whole episode.)
In each cycle of the universe, when the humans began to lose touch with the animal spirits (something that seems to be inevitable as civilization develops), the animal spirits come together and propose plans for survival. Whoever wins gets to be the rainbow animal in the next cycle. That's why Australia and some parts of Africa have a Rainbow Serpent this time around - the winning plan last go-round was that of the Serpent. Interesting synchronicities with the bible, don't you think?
Also, the serpent can become a line, a circle, or a spiral, much like the way a spider web contains then all. I'm not sure if this is significant, but I definitely think it's cool.
I don't know exactly what the Serpent's plan was, back then. The sense I get is that while the animal spirits may be eternal, they lose all or most of their memories when the Wheel turns. The main point of this story is Anansi's plan that saved the animal spirits this time around: stories. He invited them to hide in his stories (which, if you believe the tales about him, includes *all* stories told anywhere by anyone). This way, no matter how disconnected we humans became from our animal natures, no matter how much we convinced ourselves that the spiritual equals the unreal, our parables and fables and myths would still sustain the animal spirits until we were ready to engage with them once more.
Based on the extension of "human" rights to dolphins and chimpanzees in some countries now, we may be almost there.
This should mean that when the next age comes, whether that means the Age of Aquarius or the destruction and re-creation of the universe or the age of indigo children or the singularity or something wholly different, the Rainbow Spider should emerge as a new entity or archetype. Arguably, the Connector (made famous in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point) might be a form of this. Truly, human society continues to get more and more interconnected, all thanks to the Web.
You know, the Web.
The repository of all human stories.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's got a Rainbow Spider sitting on top of it already.
I'm describing the experience subjectively / phenomenologically here, which is to say I'm talking about how things appeared to me at the time, without placing value judgments like "real" or "fake" on them. While I was in prison, I received (downloaded?) a great deal of information, and performed the most elaborate ritual I've ever attempted, entirely through intuition. Much of that information was completely crazy; some was unverifiable one way or the other; some was very personally useful; and some, I'm still not sure about. But that isn't the point of this post. The point of this post is the story that Anansi the spider told me while I was there.
Before I tell the story, how about a riddle Anansi also told me: What shape contains within it the straight line, the circle, and the spiral?
The answer is a spider web. This matters because a line, a circle, and a spiral are the three main models cultures use to explain time. I'm unsure of whether the idea that all of spacetime is a wibbly wobbly wonky wubbzy oscillating web came from me or him, since at the time the line between us was very very blurry to me. But I do know it felt like the following story came from outside of me. The words and some embellishment are mine, though. Those who have already read my freeform game "Jungle Tales" may recognize parts of it. (A copy of that game sits on my Anansi altar, as writing it was an offering to him for his protection and guidance during the whole episode.)
In each cycle of the universe, when the humans began to lose touch with the animal spirits (something that seems to be inevitable as civilization develops), the animal spirits come together and propose plans for survival. Whoever wins gets to be the rainbow animal in the next cycle. That's why Australia and some parts of Africa have a Rainbow Serpent this time around - the winning plan last go-round was that of the Serpent. Interesting synchronicities with the bible, don't you think?
Also, the serpent can become a line, a circle, or a spiral, much like the way a spider web contains then all. I'm not sure if this is significant, but I definitely think it's cool.
I don't know exactly what the Serpent's plan was, back then. The sense I get is that while the animal spirits may be eternal, they lose all or most of their memories when the Wheel turns. The main point of this story is Anansi's plan that saved the animal spirits this time around: stories. He invited them to hide in his stories (which, if you believe the tales about him, includes *all* stories told anywhere by anyone). This way, no matter how disconnected we humans became from our animal natures, no matter how much we convinced ourselves that the spiritual equals the unreal, our parables and fables and myths would still sustain the animal spirits until we were ready to engage with them once more.
Based on the extension of "human" rights to dolphins and chimpanzees in some countries now, we may be almost there.
This should mean that when the next age comes, whether that means the Age of Aquarius or the destruction and re-creation of the universe or the age of indigo children or the singularity or something wholly different, the Rainbow Spider should emerge as a new entity or archetype. Arguably, the Connector (made famous in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point) might be a form of this. Truly, human society continues to get more and more interconnected, all thanks to the Web.
You know, the Web.
The repository of all human stories.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's got a Rainbow Spider sitting on top of it already.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Pontifications on the Ten Principles
Since I'm fresh back from Wicker Man, the Ten Principles are on my mind. For those who aren't aware of them, the Ten Principles of Burning Man are the ideals intended to create a specific type of event normally called a burn. It's a kind of temporary autonomous zone (for more on that, check out the book by the same name) constructed around creativity, participation, inclusion, and service. I'm listing the Ten Principles here for reference:
Welcome to Dystopia Rising. We are a community. We are a community of people who come together because we share a common hobby, and it doesn’t matter what our day-to-day life is like, it doesn’t matter what our day-to-day ‘social standing’ and responsibilities are. Here, we are all gamers. Regardless of race, religion, philosophy, gender, sexuality, political background, or any other categorization that can be used to describe a person, here we are all gamers.
We come together to share a hobby that we love. We come together to revel in a community of our peers who will treat us as one of their own.
The reason why I feel it's so important to acknowledge those groups leading the way on spreading Radical Inclusion is that it seems to me that economic, social and political justice will all flow from making it one of our core values. If we truly consider everyone to be part of our community, then we can't let them starve or go without healthcare or get sent to jail unjustly, because that would be like letting such a thing happen to a member of our own family.
May we all live to see the day when this comes to pass.
Radical Inclusion
Gifting
Decommodification
Radical Self-reliance
Radical Self-expression
Communal Effort
Civic Responsibility
Leaving No Trace
Participation
Immediacy
The more I see what a temporary community guided by these principles looks like, the more I feel like we need to spread them to society at large. Luckily, this already seems to be happening to a certain extent. For all they get made fun of (and tend to take their ideal a bit far), Social Justice Warriors dream of a world in which radical inclusion is the norm. And I suspect decommodification is at the heart of what Occupy is about... not to mention Bernie Sanders, who has said as much.
But there is more, so much more. Imagine a world in which we have no police, but rather highly competent volunteers whose job it is not to catch criminals in the act, but to provide help to anyone who needs it. In the world of burner culture, these people are called rangers, and they are armed with walkie-talkies, information, connections, and responsibility. It's quite a combination, and it works because the community trusts volunteers to be self-selecting (Radical Self-reliance, Participation, Civic Responsibility).
Think about what it might be like if instead of prosecuting graffiti artists, every public works project were to have a designated space for anyone to draw or paint whatever they like. Think about how much more beautiful our cities would look, not to mention the talented creators we'd be encouraging instead of throwing them in jail. Beyond that, imagine what we might see if we paid attention to the voices of those who might not have the chance to tell their story any other way. (Radical Self-Expression, Participation)
What if we could rely on the majority of people to be mature, responsible adults who handle their shit (Radical Self-reliance), while also being able to trust that if something goes wrong, our community has our back? (Civic Responsibility) I used to think these two principles were in conflict, but really they're complementary. Trying to help someone who never takes care of themselves gets old really fast.
I'm a big fan of gifting and decommodification as both a socialist and a student of religion - one cannot serve both God and money, after all - but the most powerful of the principles to me is Radical Inclusion. I'm going to reprint the way the Burning Man site talks about it here, because I like their wording so much:
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the
stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
While there are limitations - "Don't be a dick" being the main one - this really is true in nearly every case. And it's huge, especially as a person who (like me) was bullied all through elementary and middle school, and ostracized by most of my high school. And who has social anxiety on top of that.
Huge gatherings of people I don't know are normally pretty hard for me. And while I have to admit I've still had struggles at burns, I can't overstate how important it is that a burn is a safe space where I know I'm not only free to be myself, but others actively want me to be. The rise of groups that practice radical inclusion seems pretty new to me - maybe within the past 50 years at most - because traditionally the way to form any group is to decide who isn't allowed to join. To quote one of my favorite musicals, Anyone Can Whistle, "The opposite of safe is out. The opposite of out is in. So anyone who's safe is in... That's how groups begin - when you're in you win!"
So... radical inclusion means that everybody wins. You can always kick out the dicks once they show themselves. And though groups based on inclusion rather than exclusion are new as far as I know, there seem to be plenty. The other main one I need to acknowledge from my own experience is Dystopia Rising. Their entire membership and community guidelines talk about inclusion exhaustively, but I like the intro best:
Welcome to Dystopia Rising. We are a community. We are a community of people who come together because we share a common hobby, and it doesn’t matter what our day-to-day life is like, it doesn’t matter what our day-to-day ‘social standing’ and responsibilities are. Here, we are all gamers. Regardless of race, religion, philosophy, gender, sexuality, political background, or any other categorization that can be used to describe a person, here we are all gamers.
We come together to share a hobby that we love. We come together to revel in a community of our peers who will treat us as one of their own.
The reason why I feel it's so important to acknowledge those groups leading the way on spreading Radical Inclusion is that it seems to me that economic, social and political justice will all flow from making it one of our core values. If we truly consider everyone to be part of our community, then we can't let them starve or go without healthcare or get sent to jail unjustly, because that would be like letting such a thing happen to a member of our own family.
May we all live to see the day when this comes to pass.
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