Ubuntu

I am a ubuntu taoist. Being a ubuntu taoist I infuse humanity and compassion after taking care of my own clarity, success, and happiness. Ubuntu is so much clearer, better, more rational than "compassion" or "giving to the needy" or even "altruism" becaues of its mathematical correlate. Aiding fellow man not for some promised stake in heavenly treasure or to avoid the fiery pits of hell are logical fallacies appealing to flattery and fear, respectively. Ubuntu is proportional; it's reciprocating. If some person is down, you're down; if some person is up and successful, you're up and successful. It is, again, a reiteration of the golden rule, but there has been a reason that that aphorism has been paraphrased billions of times -- it works.


The problem with "love thy neighbor" and "give alms to the poor" is that, being "commandments" and "pillars", they are "rules" that evoke fear if not practiced. You don't inspire people for the long-term with aversions. The periodical involvement of a routine -- ritualized or conformed -- causes you to deteriorate internally. Ubuntu is all external, there's no scattering, nothing to be lost in translation. It's just the practice of humanitarian logic, and very "un-religious", which is why it's so efficient.

On the humanitarian end you have "moral cohesion" and solidarity, on the scientific, biological end you have altruism and mutuallistic symbiosis. While all of these involve sociological support and positivity, only the realm of ubuntu comprehensively covers the middle ground of this benevolent spectrum.

Christianity, Islam, Judiasm -- very inefficent constructs. The very idea of religion is enormously inefficient. What is the purpose of a religion? "The belief in and worship of a superhuman contrlling power". Superhuman implies out-of-touch from human, which, being degrading, implies inadequacy -- a falsity. "Worship", again, an enormously deformed and disfigured concept, "Adoration for a deity" because it brings in problematic uncertainties of "deity" and, again, the inadequacy and falsity of degradation of "humans". Ubuntu is apathetic to what most religion consider important -- deity, heaven, hell -- because those are unimportant. Does something nonexistant really matter? We are the gods and the heavens we seek.

Most religion is just accelerated marketing. Jesus was a brilliant marketer. He said "those who want to be with me will sell all they own and take up a cross and follow me". What kind of slogan campaign today demands that the consumer practice only the faith of "Microsoft" or "General Electric" or "Boeing"? Ad slogans all have the intention for the consumer to take up a product or service without "betrayal to the competition".


Ubuntu is raw, real, and applied. It isn't a picking and choosing of the parts of other religions that are dysfunctional because it is purely functional. It's 2+2=4; it's "water is fluid"; it's reality.

I am also beginning to see the power of reciprocity . The best years of my lives were 98 and 99. Friends took me to see BNL, I dated beautiful women, I got into the most rewarding awesome classes. That was the "payday" from doing a lot of love-giving with Alexa and doing beach walks, surfing, reaching out to meet new people, too.

I read very little books, drank a LOT of alcohol and strongly just "gave" to people. Not in a deliberately entertaining way, like telling a lot of jokes or something, but, rather, in a was an asset in the asset loop. So with karma earnings, I need to realize that computer usage and TV watching are border asset, if you use it for what I do, notes and publishing it's giving back in a HUGE way, making it a major reciprocating gesture, but nothing is as powerful as raw human interaction.

In the past 33 hours I've been awake, I've run 14 miles, biked 14, ran 1 mile with weights, hiked 2 trails (about 1.5 miles), grocery shopped twice, dropped off four application/resumes and met up with a restaurant owner, neighbors, and totally gave successful to these people like my parents, beating them finally and fully at their own game.

How is this possible? For me, this may be for others, too, I get energized when I exercise. I feel more "rested" and ready to get at them and tackle any challenge after an hour of running than an hour of sleeping. In fact, my energy level after an hour os sleeping is 2 and my energy level after an hour of running is 10 on a 10-scale! Physiologically, it gets hormones pumping, circulation strong, you're more fluid, you have more connection after running, you think more clearly and better, and stronger, whereas after sleep it just doesn't work out that clearly.

Okay, it's VERY clear to me what running and intense breathing exercise like that does for me. It slows me down, not an encumbrance, though, but so that my body can keep up with my mind. Normally it can't. Normally my mind and body are out of proportion. My mind isn't fully awake and I'm trying to do stuff or my body is shut-down with an alert mind, it creates mind-body connection simply generates a huge feeling of peace.


9/28/06
What the heck is going on? There's been some kind of hostage situation, or cop-shooting each day the past few days at noon. It's like the mid-day drama, terrorism episode.

Ah, now the bush "administration" (bit of a misnomer considering it is really just a shamnistration for looking like leadership). My bubble has burst. For years I've been reticent about Bush saying that I simply "don't think that much about him" and that he's an "actor" and that "he doesn't want to be doing what he's doing" (presidency). All of those are true, but I've never been critical of his intelligence, and I will continue that as well. However, there has a been a clear shift in the perspective of his adminstration. The big guns have begun to laugh at him -- Clinton's back.

Clinton, now that dude is a real leader. He's got the ubuntu, humanity, compassion ideology and practice down, but he's not some irate, angry, afraid preaching brainwashing religious freak (all those cultists are really just afraid, angry idiots). Clinton is warm, he's a people person. Most importantly he's a frickin' player! And he's not afraid to hide that even in the oval office! His sincerity is effulgent. Now, the bush "administration" is the worst set of terms served in our nation's history. It's already beginning to get chewed up in the historical meat-grinder for it's indifference, cheesiness,, inertness, and efforts to utilize fear (plugging in TSA protocols in the airports creates fear, it doesn't diminish it, so that people than revert to, all though american people are not idiots, "their" leader). Usually it takes a decade for a presidential term to become examined with disdain, like Carter's "malaise speech" (which wasn't even that bad) or Hoovervilles from Herbert, but only in the Bush administration is it beginning to look like a blemish in the vicissitudes or our country's brilliant sequence of leadership, and Clinton is the perfect pointman to not just pick it apart, but to just laugh at it, compared to his solid leadership in the 90s.

The Best Actors

"The apex of the most highly-paid, most successful acting elicts the best actors who do not act, but re-act with completely normal human emotions in completely humanly abnormal situations."

In other words, the best actors dont' "act" or put on emotional masks at all. They remove those masks and simply put themselves in situations that would cause any person not concealing their emotiosn to react with a display.

If there's machine gun fire in the background or buildings are exploding or loved ones die or victories are own, the greatest actors just react the way a normal, non-facade-wearing human would react. Because actors are actually "real" and not acting, they remind the many of us who get caught up in politics -- deceit of guises, gimmicks, and tricks -- and forget what it's like to be human, of our right and capacity to be human. Acting recollects the human spirit, in that sense.