“It may be thought that we have left out a basic field of analysis – the critique of technology as a prime mover of the globe’s palpable degenerations of live diversity and the life-ground…. [however], the money-sequence program behind the pervasive advances of machine technology is never uncovered. The value logic of ‘development’, ‘investment’, and ‘profit’ in whic technology is always the means, is not itself examined… The regulating principles governing the private and state corporate bodies who plan, produce, implement, and distribute machine technology of every kind are left unexamined. What we are seeing here is a classic case of blaming a tool for what it is being used for.”
Shambhala — music fest/spiritual retreat
aaron moritz, August 3rd 2010Shambhala music festival has been my yearly escape for quite a few years now (I’m gonna say 6). It’s nearly a week long, camping in the forest next to some big ass stages and loud music. There are people high on everything you can think of, dressed up in costumes, naked, dancing, celebrating. It’s absolute chaos. But it’s well organized, safe, and I love it. I find peace within it. It seems like a lot of people do. It’s hard to explain, but the air there is electric. The mood is contagious. Even though we all spend our completely separate lives doing whatever completely different things we all do, when people come to Shambhala (for the most part), the environment changes them, even for a few days, into happy, peaceful hippies. It’s absolutely beautiful.
This is my new year. The middle of the summer is my birthday, and it used to be the divider between grades, so this time of year has always felt that way to me. This has always been my new year.
From tomorrow until next Monday I’ll have barely any cellphone service, definitely no internet access, and probably some chemicals flowing through my system, though I’ll admit, I’m not really the type of person who ‘parties’ very hard. This ‘retreat’ gives me the most of both socialization (there are people everywhere, friends, friends of friends, stranger friends) and contemplation, because inside the solitude of my tent, and even with the distant beat of four or five different stages at nearly 24 hours of the day, my mind is rarely so calm and clear.
Shambhala is a vibrant, and I’ll admit, sometimes overwhelming display of the human spirit. People there are rarely afraid to talk to strangers, they’ll make eye contact, we don’t know what it is, but when we’re there, we all understand it (anyone who’s ever done mushrooms or acid knows that feeling…), even if that understanding is sometimes fleeting, forever striving for it allows each new experience to teach me something. And shambhala is an experience I look forward to every year.
peace. be back on monday :)
and while I’m away don’t be scared to share any of these video’s and posts with your friends.
Edmonton, Ab — Love Police (my training video)
aaron moritz, June 29th 2010when I saw that people in Edmonton were shopping and not smiling, I got on whyte ave and (remember when I said “I Refuse To Be Terrified”…. bullshit) had some fun. This is literally all the footage I took before running back home scared.
visit the OG love police at http://cvietch.org.
visit my youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/saydaysago2008
my last two videos
aaron moritz, June 18th 2010haven’t been posting them…
we are winning:
talk to people:
visit my youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/saydaysago2008
discipline
aaron moritz, June 11th 2010you know, sometimes you’re reading a message board post that’s so great you feel it’s an injustice that it’s just buried on some message board somewhere.
i decided i’d bury it on some blog somewhere too.
from the zeitgeist movement forums, obviously on the subject of child abuse / discipline. Â link to thread:
IDMclean wrote:
My question for you and any other person who sees a distinction between discipline and abuse, what is the distinction? Where is the line drawn? I draw it at the application of mental, physical, and social violence. Which excludes the majority of types of discipline commonly cited. In my experience as a nomadic child, living between two different parents in different places with different schools, discipline is synonymous with abuse as you can see by reading through this thread.
If you take punitive measures, you are behaving abusively. When you yell at a kid, you teach them yelling at people to get what they want is okay. If you hit a kid, you teach them hitting people to get what they want is okay. If you hold their possessions hostage, you teach them that holding the possessions of others hostage is okay. In many cases, the ancestor generations discuss what amounts to techniques of social and psychological terrorism forgetting that the use of such techniques teach the child that such techniques are okay to use.
This isn’t to say that I’m saying you can’t structure your child’s life and correct behaviors. If discipline is to be held as separate from abuse then discipline is the correction of dysfunctional behavior by example and restraint both yours and theirs. You can not correct dysfunctional behavior with dysfunctional behavior. Additionally, you can not correct dysfunctional behavior in another if you, yourself, are engaging in that dysfunctional behavior regularly; especially, if you are engaging in the behavior in practicing discipline. To do so, exacerbates the behavior and creates a double standard.
One thing to consider is that most often when a person is behaving poorly it is because that person needs or wants something. In many cases, it is because they want attention and can not get positive attention. It is a simple truth that people seek to avoid the absence of stimulation preferring positive or negative stimulation, pleasure or pain, over nothing.
If you watch the Zeitgeist Movement videos, it is a common theme that the dysfunctional behavior of the society itself comes about due to its dysfunctional structure. Remove the impetus for dysfunctional behavior, and the dysfunctional behavior itself should abate.
This principle is extensively discussed in the writings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Specifically, it is addressed in Three Ways of Meeting Oppression. Additionally, you can find more about the application of Satyagraha here.
iI really have nothing to add I just thought that was fantastically put. wish I’d wrote it.
my third video: the reason my site’s become a string of random youtube clips
aaron moritz, June 2nd 2010because I spend all my time editing this shit for you guys so like it bitches. :)
Criminal Reality (Imprisonment pt 2):
Not sure if it’ll stay working. Youtube was giving me some shit when I first uploaded it because it somehow auto-detected that simpsons clip at the beginning, copyright infringement and all that. Should be fine though, it’s all fair use as far as I can see.
visit my youtube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/saydaysago2008
Carl Sagan: great scientist, writer, thinker, marijuana user
aaron moritz, May 16th 2010When I first read “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” about  a year ago, I was (and am, constantly) undergoing a transformation in the way I think about the world. That book hit me hard, and it sured up a lot of things I’d kinda been feeling, but unable to put into words.
He wrote this amazing essay, as “Mr. X” (having to hide his name for fear of committing public and career suicide), about his own personal marijuana use and he even mentions that it helped with some of his scientific insights.
link to his essay
Here are a few video’s from youtube, if you’re like me, and are too young to remember him being on TV, and don’t know who I’m talking about.
-oh wow I just finished watched this one again as I searched for it on youtube. all the shit that we do to each other… i don’t know, this video just puts things into perspective.
-Carl on his PBS show ‘Cosmo’s’ explaining the fourth dimension.
you gave your love to me, and now you are my property
aaron moritz, May 8th 2010“Baby, I know you’ve got all those crazy, lofty goals, going to art school and following your dreams an whatnot.
Blah blah blah… just throw it to the side. You know I can support us all on my own and worst case, I’ll just have to sell some drugs to my little brother’s friends.
If you do have to sell your body, once, or twice, or seven times, it’ll be worth it. And trust me, one day my band is gonna make it and this will all be just a distant, distant, dream…
Until the earth’s removed!
Or daddy don’t approve!
Whatever happens first!
Depending on my mood!
You gave your love to me,
and now you are my property”
-Say Anything (again)
When someone says my boyfriend or my girlfriend, what do they actually mean?
What about that person is yours?
A relationship (I’d think) should be based on a deep-felt connection, of two minds, who happen to compliment each other in a unique way. I’m talking about love, though I hate to use the word because it is so loaded with preconceptions that to even bring it up can lessen the chance of what I’m saying being understood.
Person: “When I say my girlfriend, I don’t mean she’s literally mine. It’s just a way of expressing that we are in love, or at least are in a serious relationship. That we share ourselves with each other, connect.”
Amazing. Perfect. So why the proprietary terminology? Why say “my boyfriend”. I know, I know, you didn’t invent the language, but I think that this is something we should take a closer look at because the way we use language affects the way we view the world around us and the things in it.
People might argue against me on this, but I think generally when most people claim a person as their ‘partner’, they are claiming exclusive sexual rights to that persons body. At least, that’s the biggest thing. Emotional lapses can be forgiven, but CHEATING on someone, having sex with any other person, even once, is a huge deal. It means either they made a ‘mistake’, or they don’t really love you, and it’s time to leave. That’s quite an assumption.
I mean, cheating is usually a marraige ender, right? Why?
And then there’s marraige. A legal contract to love someone for the rest of your life. I can’t think of anything less romantic than putting my name on a LEGAL CONTRACT tying myself to another person for life (or until divorce). It’s so cold and sterile.
I know for most people it’s not about the contract, or the legal aspects, it’s about openly declaring your love for each other with a big ceremony, and making a lifelong commitment, and that’s something I just have to say I just don’t get. I don’t get the public ceremony thing at all. If I want to declare my love for someone, that’s a personal thing between me and him. To put it on display almost cheapens it.
It’s like the episode of the office where Pam and Jim get married. I know it’s hyperbole, but the whole office shows up at their wedding, and the day turns out to be more about the event and the other people than it is about Pam and Jim. So they sneak off, and have this romantic boat-ride ceremony that Jim conveniently had preplanned… whatever, it’s a tv show. What I’m saying is that marraige and monogamy are two social institutions that we kind of take for granted as things that are beneficial.
I’m just saying maybe they aren’t, at least, not all the time.
I’ve never been in love, so call me naive, but I think if I was, really was, there’s no way I’d want to hold that person back, in any way.
believe nothing and understand as much as possible
aaron moritz, April 17th 2010I think I’m gonna make that my motto, or a mantra or something.
Step 1:
-Don’t believe what’s in the papers.
-Don’t believe what’s on TV.
-Don’t believe what’s on the internet.
-Don’t believe activists.
-Don’t believe special interest groups.
-Don’t believe scientists.
-Don’t believe priests.
-Don’t believe your friends.
-Don’t believe me.
-Don’t even believe your own senses.
None of these things are reliable sources of truth. There is no way to know the truth about anything for sure, ever. So instead of wasting time, being critical and choosing what to believe and what not to believe, believe nothing, but understand as much as you can.
Understand what’s in the news, and understand who writes the news and why. Understand what your friends say, and try to understand where they might have gotten that information from. Understand that activists usually have very good intentions, and are often saying something important, but understand their passion, and their tendency to do anything, including lie, for their causes. Same goes for priests and politicians. Understand that scientists are people too, and while they are embarking on the great search for truth on behalf of all mankind, they are not infallible, and are often wrong.
Understand that our senses and our memories can play tricks on us, and understand that other people are just like you in almost every single way except for the circumstances that have led up to their current behaviour.
Or maybe you understand none of these things, you have your own understandings. That’s good. That’s amazing.
But without beliefs, how do we decide how to act? If I don’t believe that killing someone is wrong, why don’t I just go out and have a blast slaughtering as many people as I can? Because I value human life. I’ve cultivated that value based on the understanding that I am a human life, and I understand and see and feel the beauty of other human lives. I see myself in them, and to do them harm is to harm myself, is to harm everyone.
And I also understand that the less harm there is going around, the better off we’ll all be.
Understandings are only approximations. They are ever-changing and evolving. New facts and new information can sometimes turn your understandings over on their head. If you are wrong about something, and you get corrected, you don’t have to feel stupid or ignorant for ‘believing’ something that was wrong, instead you can rejoice at your new knowledge and updated understandings. Understandings have no emotional attachment.
Saying that we understand something is likely true, rather than saying we ‘believe’ it, places us into a new paradigm whereas the false dichotomy of ‘true’ and ‘not true’ is not recognized. Because the real essence of what I’m promoting of the removal of absolutist thinking. This is the end of black and white, the end of good and evil. Such ideas are useful for making points, but they don’t have any real-life substance. Not a single person or a single thing or idea is all good or compeltely bad, it’s all shades of grey.
So when presented with an idea, the question is not ‘is this idea true?’, it’s ‘how much information do we have to support this idea?’ The more information we have the more confident we can be that an idea is true. Truth then becomes a never-quite-attainable, quite imaginary, abstraction. It’s like infinity. You can keep counting but you’ll never reach infinity.
