Half a Million Strong

Part One: On Yasgur's Farm

'"Three Days of Peace and Music,"' says Pauline, reading from the press release. 'A rock festival in the Catskills - sound like fun?'
'Sounds like pure hell.'
'Well, you're going.'

Thus begins Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's unorthodox take on the Woodstock Festival of August 1969. She was there, eventually and reluctantly, in her capacity as jazz-and-rock music journalist.

It sounds like hell to me as well. Too much like Waterloo Station at rush hour. I was sixteen when Woodstock took place, and taking a keen interest in all things 'alternative'. A few years down the line and I would be a counterculture hero myself, but in very different vein. I never wished I was at Woodstock.

Much has been made of the event by the mainstream media on this, its fiftieth anniversary. Organisations like the BBC appear to thoroughly approve; and why shouldn't they? 'Three days of music and peace' is the mantra churned out about Woodstock. In truth, I suggest that it posed little real threat to the established order. It is understandable that the 'love and peace and rock music' theme seemed vaguely revolutionary within the context of late '60s USA, with Vietnam, riots about race and war, and the rest; that stereotyped story is well-known. But most people who were really serious about creating a viable alternative were not in attendance. They were away, doing their thing....

The media's enthusiasm for Woodstock should instantly arouse suspicion: what's in it for them? Scratch  beneath the surface, and it's not difficult to see. With a little subterfuge, twisting, and distortion, the stereotyped memes of the Woodstock culture elegantly morph into much of what the modern mainstream holds as closest to its deeply-corrupted heart. Put in a different way: Woodstock has become hardcore establishment.

Love, peace; oneness; caring, sharing: who wouldn't want to be part of that? The problem is that it's all too easily taken up by vested interests who have little love for peace, really, and is simply used to further their own ends. Plenty of present-day Woodstock-lookalike dudes will show an uninformed enthusiasm for globalism. Sounds like oneness, doesn't it? Caring for one another. The thing is that globalism is anything but. 'Oneness' properly understood is an individual experience, possibly the result of decades of disciplined spiritual practice, sometimes more serendipitously the consequence of ingesting consciousness-altering substances. It highlights the unity and interconnectness underlying manifold experience. Globalism, in contrast, is a collective political stance, a recipe for the masses. It does not promote enlightened experience of the individual. It promotes uniformity, anonymity, sameness, the human identikit robot. A seething mass of sub-human soup, overseen by a small, unaccountable 'elite'. Not 'love and peace' in the slightest.

And what about national borders? Well, oneness and caring for everyone else; borders must be bad, mustn't they, creating divisions between people. Wrong again. As in the life of the individual, the social human being requires borders, boundaries. It is well-known that a human being without a sense of their boundaries, and/or too open to every influence from the world around them (over-sensitive), will struggle to function healthily, and to define a sense of personal identity. Similarly with groups of people. They need boundaries, they need a sense of social identity; remove them, and their integrity will be destroyed (which is the idea, when it comes to open-borders globalism).

Part Two: Snakes in the Garden

And then there is nature, the environment as it is abstractly called nowadays. "We've got to get ourselves back to the garden" intoned Crosby, Stills, and Nash, in their iconic anthem to the festival.
This 'garden' comes with a hint of ambiguity. Maybe it's the Garden of Eden, the paradise before the fall. The original place of primal innocence. But 'the garden' also suggests countryside, nature, back-to-the-land, all primary themes in the Woodstock sentiment.

I'm all for nature, and dealing with the issues related to it: plastics, pollution, decimation of rainforests and other habitats for personal profit. Trashing of nature for housing, and wind and solar energy. Toxic practices in over-industrialised agriculture. These are all real, tangible problems which demand urgent attention - and against which practical action is perfectly feasible. But environmental politics, the bastard offspring of Woodstock's garden worship, hasn't adopted any of these as its prime focus. Instead, it had decided to whip up mass-hysteria about the one 'environmental' issue which is more nebulous, controversial, uncertain, and which nobody actually understands: human-induced climate change or global warming; or, since this doesn't seem to scare people enough, climate emergency.

The politics surrounding this has become increasingly that of histrionics, departing from both rationality and nature (it is mainly promoted by people living in big cities). There is little honour and integrity involved. Instead, it is a crude but effective manipulation of the Woodstock instinct that alienation from the natural world is a bad thing. Climate change hysteria is a key ingredient in the globalist programme rolled out by not-very-nice people. Greta Thunberg may be the divine love child of the unthinking sector of the Woodstock generation, and an extremely irritating one, but I fear for her future.

Not enough people who consider themselves liberal, intelligent, caring, and generally right-on, have woken up to some harsh realities. That there are people out there who don't care if you are left or right, black or white, up or down, nice or nasty. Some will be outright sociopaths or psychopaths; others will be less extreme, but only too willing to cast aside any sense of morality, of democracy, of freedoms to speak and act for the individual, in the service of their own agendas. 'We need to do this in the name of the greater good': hear this phrase, and immediately go on red alert.

Whatever, you are easy meat for manipulation of your own feelings and attitudes, if you are not awake to what can happen on deeper levels. You don't need a PhD in parapolitics (you won't find one anyway), but you do require a good instinct for the games that take place beneath the surface of things. A bit of basic education in such things. If not, you will likely end up as part of the legacy of Woodstock, the twisted anthem for 'progressives' of today. Your nice feelings mangled and manipulated into service to those who will feign to care, all the while furthering their own programmes and agendas. The elites, the deep state, empire, the control system. They have many names, and we know they are out there...… Don't be a blind pseudo-hippie activist. Look out.

Footnote#1: Patricia

Patricia Kennealy (Morrison)'s account of the Woodstock festival is singularly dispassionate, and compassionate. She was there, and she was not seduced by the hype. She feels uncomfortable as she sits in the comfort of the rain-proof Pavilion provided for her and her fellow journalists, music promoters and rock stars, guzzling Moet and whatever else might be on offer; outside, meanwhile, the unwashed youth, the foot soldiers of the revolution, are cold, wet, and hungry. She feels troubled when she looks at some of the kids there: ".... kids who haven't got faces yet, kids filled up with drugs they don't know how to make proper use of, and only take them because they think it's required of them, because they want to be hip and cool and accepted...."

Some Doors aficionados really don't like Patricia at all. She is the 'pagan priestess' who underwent a pagan marriage, or handfasting ceremony, with Jim Morrison. Some consider her Jim story, 'Strange Days', to be a product of neurotic fantasy. Some details may be off-course, I do not know. But there is an overall ring of authenticity about some of her writing, at least. Incisive and intelligent, her view into the rock music world of the time is a good read. Her story is, above all else, on a theme increasingly rare nowadays, that of undying love.

Footnote#2: Love and Peace

Love and peace never really did it for me. In 1967, when California's Summer of Love sent its gentle ripples across the Atlantic to our fair shores, I saw the cowbells and flowers, but remained unconvinced. Spaced-out smiles on hippies dancing and blowing bubbles was all very well, and some of the music was great. But it all came over as a bit vapid, vacuous. I couldn't put my finger on it, but even to my fourteen-year-old mind something was missing.

Midsummer, and the Beatles released their own anthem to the year's happenings: 'All You Need Is Love'. John Lennon had reputedly been tripping on acid non-stop for the past two years, which sounded interesting. But if this was the best he could come up with after all that time, I wasn't impressed.

Then the Beatles went to India and teamed up with the Maharishi. You knew this was a mistake, just by looking at the photos, and all a bit silly. vapid and vacuous again. It was then that I gave up on the Fab Four. There had been a time when they were truly inspirational to a new teenager, but no more.

My mind drifted off elsewhere, and eventually came upon some kind of solution. The Doors. Jim Morrison, mainly. Nothing vapid here. Unlike the Beatles, and Woodstock a bit later on, he was perceived as a real threat by the powers-that-were, and he paid the ultimate price.

Twenty years after all that, I was finally able to give a name to what had been so patently missing, and what Morrison possessed in abundance: 'Shadow'.

Footnote#3: Greta

As I write this piece, our young saviouress is mid-Atlantic, on her boat en route to some extremely important climate change conference in the USA. This is well-known. What is less well-known - strangely, the mainstream has omitted to mention this part of the story - is the logistics involved in all of this. Greta, of course, is on the boat because she is against air travel, as it is contributing to global warming. We do, however, have the captain of her boat, who will need to get back to Europe from the USA - which he will do by plane. In addition, a team is required to go from Europe to the USA to bring back the boat. They will do so - yep, you got it - by plane. In other words, far more air travel is involved in all this than if Greta had done the reasonable thing, and just got herself a low-profile, economy class flight from Sweden to USA. But no. In other words again, it's a publicity stunt, and a feel-good trip for our pigtailed heroine.

Yes, Greta is very irritating. But maybe we shouldn't be too hard on her. Being famous so young can be tricky: ask Martina Hingis or Jennifer Capriati. And they actually possessed rare talent, unlike Greta.

I haven't followed the Greta story very much. I have other things to do. But it is likely far deeper, darker, and more complex than most people would like to think. I mean, what's it about? Really. There will be people behind the whole weird narrative of elevating her to saintly status. And we have some of mainstream media's obscene fawning over her. What's in it for all these questionable entities? Is it a shaming of older people, that they haven't done enough to save the planet, so we need a schoolgirl to show us all up as the irresponsible good-for-nothings that we are? The more time passes, the more I feel that there is something very sick about using a girl in this way, for whatever purpose. Some comments on a YouTube presentation I watched recently likened the phenomenon to child abuse. I think they have  a point.

In the meantime, don't be surprised if things don't end well for Greta. On the other hand, maybe she will be appointed Big Chief at the UN, and single-handedly save us all from the impending flames of hell. It is being suggested that she may receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Should anyone be in doubt as to the real meaning of this accolade, then here is final proof.

The thing is: on climate change we don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody. Don't be conned into thinking otherwise, that's my advice, not that anybody asked for it. Planetary climate can indeed change, rapidly and radically, both heating and cooling in next-to no time. It has happened before, without the aid of humankind, and can happen again. It's simply part of living on this planet: everything's a bit uncertain.

Footnote#4: The Garden

Actually, there has been substantial progress in reclaiming the garden in recent decades. In some areas, at least. Some things are being preserved, some things are being conserved.

I am thinking especially of some of the cities. Far cleaner, less polluted, quieter, less traffic, healthier in general, with the return of wildlife to urban areas. Some animals, in fact, seek refuge in the city from the 'countryside', where industrial farming poisons them and people try to shoot them with guns. In the city, no predators.

I was recently in Newcastle, a good example. 'Grim' and 'grime' are words which would once have been automatically coupled with this city, along with the other urban conglomerations adjacent. No longer. The central areas of Newcastle are a pleasure to stroll around, and to be in generally (this is probably not the case on a Friday evening....). Lots of money has been put into the place, and the riverside and city centre have been impressively transformed.

Inverness centre, in sad contrast, is a bit of a dump. It was a dump when I moved here fourteen years ago and, despite a little tweaking here and there, it remains a dump. The place survives largely because coachloads of tourists are disgorged onto its shabby streets for a few hours, where they spend a fistful of money on Highland souvenirs, before heading off to the Isle of Skye later in the day. Meanwhile, the outskirts of Inverness continue to spread relentlessly outwards in an urban sprawl that could be anywhere in the UK.

Inverness notwithstanding, some of urban Britain gives cause for optimism. Something which appears to pass Extinction Rebellion by.
                   

                 

Identity and Hate: Notes to a Diary

Part One

Dear Diary:

A number of things have piqued my interest of late - all a bit separate, but all connected in some way or another. Firstly, those unsolicited enquiries about whether I am right-wing. My response: I have no label - it took long enough to shed the label 'Buddhist', and I'm not going to take on any other label in a hurry, especially a highly charged political one. And how the question itself was curious: what might make me right-wing in anyone's eyes anyhow? And the fact that I didn't know what 'right wing' and 'left wing' signified, nowadays, and maybe for ever. If these terms mean anything at all, that meaning has changed radically over the past twenty or thirty years.

And then there was a comment from a friend of mine about how, referring to a Hillman quote that I used, he preferred 'fairness' to 'profit', and clearly felt that these were descriptive of left and right wing respectively. And how I felt this was not really the case, not now in 2019.

This, dear diary, is my meander through the highways and byways of my mind, consequent to these initial little puzzles.

Part Two

'Politics': it's changed. A decade ago, and when this blog first started up, it was pretty much a non-starter. Nothing to say. In the UK, there was only one political party: LibLabCon, as it was sometimes called. A few details were different, but the underlying belief systems, the ideology, were pretty much identical.

Who came and went? I barely recall their spectral images. Miliband, Brown, Cameron; Clegg, May. In Scotland, we also had the SNP and Salmond. But though these ghostly personages were pretty good at slinging mud at one another if expected, they were all signed up to an identical vision of the world: globalism and all that it implies, including a blind devotion to 'multiculturalism' (whatever that may mean) and the strictures of political correctness. This was what it was all about, and if that meant subservience of local (eg national) interests to those of supranational concerns, so be it.

Democracy under LibLabCon offered no choice. The sham is well described in a quote from Naom Chomsky. "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." I talked about it in terms of 'apples and pears'. You go into a fruit shop, and they tell you that they sell fruit. You have a choice: you can have apples or pears. That's all very well. But if you ask for a mango, they will tell you that you can't have a mango. Ask for an apricot, and you'll be told  not to be ridiculous, apricots don't exist. Ask for a strawberry and the cops will be knocking on the door at 5 in the morning to take you away.

Then, as if by a miracle, two things happened that were not on the agenda at all - Trump and Brexit -, and all hell was let loose. It was as if the owner of the fruit shop went in to open up one day, and found all his nice neat trays of tasteless Golden Delicious on the floor, and a bunch of unwelcome new fruit doing a tango on the shelves. A gooseberry, maybe. A classical English fruit, common in my youth but almost an endangered species nowadays. Sour and prickly if you treat it carelessly, but sweet and tasty if cooked properly.

In the UK, LibLabCon with their buddies in the media went apeshit, as did their equivalents in the USA. For twenty years they had had everything their own way; suddenly spanners were in the works, and they showed their true colours. They were not good losers, and tried every trick in the book, democratic or undemocratic, honest or underhand, to stop the Trump-and-Brexit party pooping.

But with these new developments, politics suddenly and clearly became relevant again to the likes of me. What had been the case for a while was now thrown into full and inescapable relief. What politics was really about, in the UK, USA, and Europe north of the Alps at least (it possibly remains less so in many nations elsewhere). Money - 'fairness or profit' - is a marginal concern in the political world of today. The new politics is not about economics; it is about what can be termed 'culture'.

Part Three

Let's return, dear diary, to James Hillman's statement of 'more fairness, less profit' as characterising the left-wing. On examination, it's not very clever at all. First up, it's a false dichotomy: you can have both fairness (whatever you decide that vague term may mean) and profit simultaneously. In fact, you need some profit in order to have anything to be fair with. This has been the problem for various communistic regimes over the years: 'we'd be fair, but we haven't got any money to be fair with'.

What's more, profit is not the prerogative of the right nowadays. In the USA it's super clear. The various big tech companies make enormous profits, as well as exercising enormous influence and power. But they are all paid-up supporters of the Democrats, who by American standards might constitute the more left wing. Conversely, the 'far right' Trump has the support of many of the poorer folk in the country.

The 'left' and 'right' of the past are unrecognisable today. Thirty years ago, if you were anti-censorship, pro-free speech as a priority for a civilised society, it would be the left to whom you would turn. No more. The left - as in certain factions of Labour in the UK, and elements in the Democratic Party in the USA - are highly censorious in approach. Freedom of expression is fine, provided your 'free speech' does not go against the political programme - Chomsky again. If you are politically incorrect, your freedom will be precarious, and likely be curtailed - it happens on a daily basis. Personal freedom comes a poor second to the Big Agenda. Thus, any upholder of freedom of speech finds themselves curiously lumped in with folk who are, in groupthink terms, named 'conservative', 'right'. If you want kindred spirits for freedom of speech, you need to turn to Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Morrissey.  

But, to reiterate: economics is not the lynchpin of politics any longer. That went out twenty years ago. Maybe economics should feature more focally. Who would have thought, twenty five years ago, that Britain would have food banks, for crissake? And that's a development that has occurred, not under the devious authority of right-wing governments, but those of the centre and centre-left (so-called).

What is important these days, dear diary, is identity politics. Political correctness. Globalism. They all go together, by the way. This is what the headlines are full of, day after day. Racist tweets, sexist Facebook posts, Islamophobe politicians, LGBT rights, you name it. If you want to destroy your reputation, your livelihood, your career, in one fell swoop, all you need is one little misconstrued sentence on Facebook, and BBC and the Guardian will gleefully pick it up and crucify you publicly. It's their mission. They love it. And why not? That's what it's all about today.

Part Four

So, Diary, we've finally got there. Identity and politics. In truth, how did we get here in the first place? Take a step back, and you'll see what a bizarre, unreal juncture we have indeed arrived at.

The politics of identity. Political correctness (they go hand-in-hand). I've put time in recently. Videos. Books. Articles. Mulling things over, allowing things to sink in. Listening, learning. Turns out that it's not really a politics of universal love and peace after all. The opposite, in fact. Politics of Identity is the politics of never-ending conflict. The politics of hate.

There was a time when championing certain groups of people was sorely needed. Fifty, sixty years ago, discrimination based upon colour of skin, gender, race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, was real. It is a triumph that such prejudices have been largely removed by now, certainly socially and legally. There are, I'm sure, bits of tweaking here and there which could still be done. But, speaking generally, the battles have been fought and won, and society is all the better for it (remember, oh Diary, I am focussing on the UK and the USA here). In fact, minority groups are sometimes legislated for advantageously today.

But instead of rejoicing and moving on, 'getting a life' as the saying goes, our minority group activists have hung in there, like limpets on the side of a hull, hardening their position and morphing into something altogether more sinister. What was once (I assumed, anyway) a pragmatic movement for 'equal rights' is now an ideology, an entire way of interpreting the world of human affairs. People are now no longer unique, marvellous individuals. They are identified according to their group: straight, gay, transgender, black, white, Hispanic, abled, disabled, Muslim, Christian. You name it, you're part of a group with its own group interests. And your group will be pitted endlessly against other groups, which will create an interminable cycle of bad feeling.

All of this is unnecessary. In Britain, most people rub along together more-or-less OK. Problems are more likely to arise because your neighbour plays music loud at night, or their dog poos in your front garden, than anything concerned with race, sex, and the rest. Yet the 'political establishment' doesn't care about this stuff, and continues to obsess about Facebook posts, joking tweets, searching desperately for ways to accuse and demean those who 'deserve it' (primarily critics of their politics of identity fanaticism).

It's not a level playing field. There are good guys and bad guys. Minority groups are labelled as helpless victims, while majority groups are marked as oppressors. What's more, they can be put onto a scale of wickedness, an activity known as intersectionalism. As a white, English, predominantly heterosexual male, I find myself on the very bottom rung of the ladder, along with other white, English, predominantly heterosexual friends and acquaintances. We are evil personified, the cause of all injustice and wickedness on the planet. Imperialists, heartless oppressors. Funny, really. I look at these guys and find them not too bad at all.

It is against this background that Trump was elected, and the EU referendum went the way it did. Vast numbers of people (and not just white, English etc...) felt desperately let down - forgotten - by decades of politicians more intent on being generous with 'minorities' and appeasing faceless, unaccountable EU bureaucrats than with doing anything to benefit 'ordinary working folk'. People just trying to get on with their lives, normally quite conventionally, but being ignored by government after government. "What about me?" "Shut up, white privileged bastard."

Part Five

We are nearing this journey's end. The truth now stares us in the face. The politics of identity, with its mind-numbing correctness, and the will to globalism are one and the same thing. At least they are inextricably interwoven. Group identity is the most potent of weapons in the drive towards globalisation - which is a polite term for one-world government and control.

'Divide and conquer': one of the oldest tricks in the book. Insert a whole variety of 'groups' into a host culture, indoctrinate the unwary into the goods and evils of their respective labels, stand back, and watch the whole thing descend into hate-fuelled conflict. It's a matrix, a synthetic mental construct, placed upon the natural flow of events between people. It is a weird, artificial, and wholly perverse way of looking at the world, designed for chaos, break-up, breakdown.

It is, some say, a continuation of the Marxist will to power. That's a suitably bizarre proposal; but bizarre situations sometimes require bizarre explanations. The traditional Marxist view of history didn't work out, so the theory goes: the proletariat refused to do their revolutionary thing in the western world. Even after being decimated by two world wars, they refused to rise up against their oppressors. The opposite was true, if anything. After World War Two, they wanted nothing more than a job, a house, and a family, ushering in a generation of stultifying conventionality.

Thus, with the proletariat a complete disappointment, a new tactic for the revolution was needed. The emphasis shifted from 'economics' to 'culture'. The oppressors were no longer the bourgeoisie, but western culture. It was hoped that 'minority groups' would succeed where the proles had failed so miserably. Mass immigration would be a prime tool in the new revolution, especially immigration from cultures at considerable variance with the host. With its unique blend of guilt and personal responsibility, western culture was perfect to be infected with a sense of its own sinfulness, and would acquiesce willingly to its own destruction. If your aim is 'globalisation', if you find this to be a good prospect, then niceties such as the west's unique nurturing of creativity, responsible for most of what people like these days, and the west's freedom of speech (they go hand-in-hand) can be happily sacrificed for the 'greater good'.

Though strange and seemingly far-fetched, the theory succeeds in offering some explanation for the extraordinary mentality which holds sway over much of the western world today. I have come across no other explanation of our current weirdness.

So that's it for now. Signing off. Putting the diary to bed. Sleep tight.....

Images: Gooseberries; Cezanne's fruit; the original Sargon; Antifa, a face of radical socialism today
           
 

         

Buddha Has A Joke

Part One: Woof Woof! Who's there?

From what we can make out, the Indian subcontinent at the time of Buddha was a place in foment. New ideas, new philosophies and approaches to truth and wisdom; innovation and experimentation in lifestyle and practice. A bit like the 1960s in some ways. Political correctness had not been invented; the thought police had yet to turn up.

If the tendency during the 1960s was towards hedonism, Buddha's era was characterised by ascetics and asceticism. All manner of self-torture, self-sacrifice, was employed in often bizarre efforts to release the spirit, to experience some kind of higher reality.

Thus we find Buddha, in an early text called the Kukkusavatika Sutta, engaged in conversation with a couple of these mind-bending ascetics. The first one is known as the Canine Ascetic, and his path towards liberation involves behaving like a dog. Just how far he takes this practice is not clear - we are not told whether he cocks his leg when he pees, or rolls over on his back hoping to have his tummy rubbed - but behaving like a dog is his thing. He approaches Buddha in great anticipation and, clearly expecting a great prognosis, asks Buddha what his future rebirth will be. Buddha remains silent. A second time he asks, and a second time Buddha is silent. A third time he repeats the question, and that's it. Buddha has a certain protocol. Should a person (or a dog-person) ask a question he would rather not answer, he stays quiet. But if asked three times, he takes it that the querent is really serious, so shrugs his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and speaks.

So a third time he is asked: "Lord Buddha, what will be my rebirth?" "My canine friend: if you are fortunate you will be reborn as a dog. If unfortunate, you will be reborn in hell." At this point, our Canine Ascetic loses all his pit-bull machismo, and bursts into tears.

As if this wasn't trouble enough, Buddha is then approached by a Bovine Ascetic. Same story, same outcome, except that he moos and doesn't bark.

The Buddhist text takes the story of the Canine and Bovine Ascetics as an opportunity to explain the workings of karma and some of its types. I take it a bit differently, though. It's Buddha having a joke. It is generally understood that being a human and reborn as an animal is pretty difficult to do, and I don't feel inclined to take Buddha's utterances too literally. Instead, he's gritting his teeth, but making the thing into a bit of a joke, to try and drum into these guys' heads that what they are doing is not the way, and will not end happily, while simultaneously treating it with humour.

Part Two: Cosmic Jokers

I recall something that Neil Kramer once elucidated. To the Ego, he said, the modern world of human affairs is a mess, a tragedy. To the Soul, it is a challenge. To the (higher) Self it is a game, a kind of cosmic joke even.

It would seem that a sense of humour is an essential ingredient in being fully and properly human; in achieving full-spectrum humanity, if you will. Conversely, the humourless typically inhabit a tight and tiny box, literalistic and rationalistic, divorced from the magic, mystery, and joyfully inexplicable which make human life truly worth living. As human beings, they have something missing. Something serious, seriously missing.

Its founder was not the only Buddhist to enjoy a good laugh. Lama Yeshe, a course with whom I attended in the 1970s, was always cracking jokes, often while discoursing on the profoundest of subjects, a move guaranteed to shock and discombobulate his western devotees. Chogyam Trungpa was another of that generation; his attitudes were frequently laced with humour. And let's not forget the Dalai Lama, who is proving to be more entertaining than maybe even he realises.

He had already raised quite a few starchy ideological eyebrows when he put forth his opinion that refugees in Europe should be trained and educated, then returned to their countries of origin to help rebuild life there. Then, and it had to happen some time, he was asked the question. Would he be happy for the Dalai Lama to be reincarnated as a woman? He paused for a moment before answering. Yes, he replied, he would be happy for a future Dalai Lama to be a woman. But she must be attractive! This is such a brilliant and hilarious moment, one of the moments of the year so far. This is one thing about humour, that it can get straight to the bone, cut through the bullshit. I suggest all feminist Buddhists go on a two-week retreat in solitude in a damp, dark cave on the Scottish west coast and meditate on the Dalai Lama's words....

Timothy Leary is another one with a real sense of humour. Maybe it comes with spending enough time outside the box. His autobiography, 'Flashbacks', is replete with wit and humour, though even Tim struggles to keep the smiles going when it gets to his time in jail and being held captive by the Black Panthers. For the next generation, the psychedelic hero Terence McKenna is similarly endowed with unstoppable humour. Anybody feeling down, out of sorts with the world, is recommended to find out a few quotes from Leary or McKenna. This will invariably life the spirits, invoke the spirit of the laughing Buddha.

Part Three: We Are Not Amused

Conversely, most modern politicians come devoid of a stock of decent jokes. Laughter is not part of their game. Some of the worst are women. Angela Merkel, Teresa May, Nicola Sturgeon, Hillary. What a sour, humourless bunch. Terrible. I went to our local 'Waterstones' bookshop to hunt out a copy of 'Nicola Sturgeon's Best Jokes', but I couldn't find one. Maybe it had sold out.

Then there is a whole bunch of lower-ranking political females who come laughter-free. A prime example is the man-despising, humour-free safe space Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, Jess Phillips.

I shall come down especially hard on these sour women. BBC Newsnight presenters and other BBC third-wave feminist interviewers and commentators join the list. It dismays me. With women increasingly entering the public sphere in recent decades, it has been a wonderful opportunity for them to truly enrich human culture. But with people like this, it just hasn't happened. They have blown it, and we are all the poorer for it. The narrative is that the West has suffered from 2000 years of imbalance, of one-sidedly masculine culture. These women have made it even worse, by adopting some of the uglier aspects of 'the masculine', while bringing zero positive femininity to the table. All we have learnt from them is a negative femininity, in particular spitefulness and a certain way of being nasty.

One politician who appears to possess a sense of humour is Donald Trump. Dry, clinical, devastating - which is why he works so well on Twitter. There is a brilliant clip of Trump and Putin at the recent G20 meeting. The inevitable happens, and a journalist pipes up (one of those sub-women, again!): what about the Russian meddling in American elections? Trump looks momentarily at Putin. 'Don't you go meddling in our elections, OK?' before moving on. Putin, meanwhile, the normally po-faced Vlad Putin, is sitting there pissing himself laughing. 'No' he replies.

I think it is a great sign for the security of the world that Trump and Putin can have a laugh together, especially at the expense of the tedious and increasingly ridiculous. The truth is that it's not Russia who are meddling in American electoral outcomes, but the tech giants of Silicon Valley. Selective censoring and deplatforming, manipulation of algorithms, and other devious tactics that I can't remember the names for. These are the criminals.

Part Four: No Jokes, Please. We're British

Political correctness and humour are inherently antithetical. Much that is funny is based upon differences and distinctions between people; differences that are largely harmless and enriching, until weaponised by the ideological monolith-makers. Most television comedy produced before 1990 that we may consider funny would no longer be made - could no longer be made -, thanks to political correctness, which narrows everyone and everything down to tedious sameness, faux inequality, plain mediocrity. Such is progress. To find out the meaning of humour nowadays, I consulted my copy of 'The BBC Newspeak Dictionary' to find the meaning of the word 'joke'. It said: 'joke': a snide remark about Donald Trump or Brexit'. If you want to go completely overboard with this particular 'brand' of humour, well, you can always try Jo Brand, and her recent 'joke' about throwing battery acid over people like Nigel Farage. It was so funny that I had to take to my bed laughing.

Beware what Milo Yiannopoulos calls 'the left-wing war on fun'. It's real, it's out there, and it's after your jokes, your laughter, your irony, your sense that it's all a cosmic game.....

And there we have it.

YouTube links: the top one is Dalai Lama, a good view. The second is Jo Brand; I wouldn't bother unless you suffer from morbid curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3STgsoKqRis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8HpHM1bGkM

Meanwhile, it looks as if this blog may have found a new sponsor:

Photos: Chogyam Trungpa, Lama Yeshe, Tim Leary, Jess Phillips, Vortex multicolours.

Climate Change, Part 4872087

There are loads of little, and not-so little, videos out there demonstrating the realities of the climate emergency mindfuck. Be afraid, brothers and sisters, be very afraid. The longer things go on, the more extreme and ridiculous the claims. In tandem, the less credible they become. Anyhow, this is just a little filler until I write the next post, which should be soon. In the meantime, keep on trembling in your boots. The climate emergency is real and upon us. Corbyn and Sturgeon have told us, so it must be true....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Ve84pPs6o

Paradigm Shift....

Part One

'I think the true agenda of the old is the agenda of the left: more fairness and less profit; more restoration and less development; community care, not more prescriptions; restoration of nature, not more harvesting from it; ……. investment in schools to teach the young, not prisons that let them languish; more friendliness rather than user-friendly electronics; and peace, not guns.'

This is a quotation from James Hillman's book 'The Force of Character', focussing on aspects of what happens as we age. It was written as Hillman was an ageing citizen himself, and was published in 1999.

When I first came across this quote recently, 'by accident', I thought that it would well serve to illustrate the point of 'the paradigm shift'. As I've read it over and over, I've started to feel that it's just not a very good piece of thinking by Hillman. Anyhow, let's see how we go...…

We can ask what 'the left' is in the first place nowadays, and probably enter a period of dumbfounded silence. In Britain at least. But I shall suggest that 'left' and 'centre left' are the meat of the majority of mainstream politicians in positions of power, along with most of the mainstream media. Their lead comes from the more 'radical left', which core is a small minority of the total population, but whose influence is highly disproportionate. Having clarified, slightly, what we are talking about, now let's check out Hillman's characteristics of 'the left' from twenty years ago.

More fairness, less profit: today's 'left' are in large part middle-class, affluent people, typical of those who appear on BBC Breakfast programmes. They have done pretty well for themselves, but like to make snide comments about others. They are scathing about and dismissive of the people formerly represented by the left, ie more traditionally working class folk, people who do useful jobs like plumbing. Especially scathing if the proles do things like vote for Brexit.

More restoration, less development: our modern 'left' is as keen as anyone else on advancing 'development' such as plastering wild places with windfarms, destroying countryside with housing estates, and the rest. More profoundly, they seem to have a disdain for western civilisation in general, despite being products of it themselves. 'Restoration' is counter to their game. The same goes for 'restoration of nature, not more harvesting from it'. Much leftist environmental thinking is shallow, sometimes misguided, based on abstraction, ideology and hysteria rather than cool reflection.

Investment in schools to teach the young: education, under the rule of new left principles, has little to do with true education. Instead, it is largely indoctrination. It does not teach children to think and feel for themselves. It aims to churn out good, obedient, 'responsible' citizens. Children who are immune from the perils of 'wrongthink' 1984-style. Children who know all about their rights, about LGBT, who feel guilty about destroying the Amazon rainforest. They are not taught to be aspiring individual miracles, but to be little social justice warriors.

More friendliness rather than user-friendly electronics. Wrong again, Mr Hillman. 'Leftist' ideas spread like viruses through electronics. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. They work, not through saying anything constructive or intelligent, since they have little constructive or intelligent to say. No. Their main game is attempting to destroy the reputations and careers of anybody who is bold enough to disagree with them. Name-calling, insulting, accusations of being this '-ist' or that '-phobe' are their stock-in-trade. 'Hate speech' is their catch-all meaningless favourite. Nothing is too low for them to try and discredit their opponents. It's started with Boris Johnson now. So predictable, so tiresome, so poisonous.

Part Two

The past twenty years or so has seen a vast paradigm shift. I tend to date the time when it really took off to the coronation of Dark Lord Tony Blair back in the late 1990s. There was a time when 'the left' did indeed stand for fairness, and for that most precious quality, freedom of speech. No more. The opposite is true. It seeks to smother dissent by calling out its catalogue of vague, mis-used categories of political correctness. Just call someone a far-right racist Islamophobe. Call them out for 'hate speech', when you are the one doing the hatred. That's all you need to do, almost regardless of what the object of your tirades might really be saying.

There is nothing very novel or clever about what I have just written. As far as Tony Blair goes, even Wicked-pedia concurs. "Blair declared support for a new conception that he referred to as 'social-ism', involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, cohesion, the equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity."

Social justice = constant pitting of different groups of people against each other, fuelling endless and unnecessary tensions. Cohesion = enforced conformity, apart from for the 'liberal elite, who do whatever they want. The equal worth of every citizen = all are equal, except that some are more equal than others. Equal opportunity = equal outcome, manipulated by law if need be.

So this is what is meant by the paradigm shift. It's glaringly obvious, but it's a trick still missed by a good many folk, of my generation in particular. Think 'socialism', 'left-wing', and they still think good old Uncle Michael Foot, looking after the working classes. No more. When people addicted to labels use the expressions 'right-wing' and 'left-wing', I no longer have any idea what they are talking about. The terms no longer fit.

And this is, maybe, one of the reasons why I am going on about this stuff again - and again, and again. There is this element, of calling out those deceiving bearers of darkness, who clothe ignorance and the wish to control others in the language of acceptability. Just call yourself a guardian of social justice and all will be well. But it is also a lament. A lament for so many of my generation. People who supported, fought for, even, the end to discriminations when such an end was needed. Who like to think they helped to usher in freedom of speech, who played their part in overturning a good deal of censorship. But these are people who have now got lost, who are stuck in the old paradigm, and have been easy meat for a new and very different kind of social shaping under the umbrella of 'left wing'. A new paradigm, where overcoming -isms and -phobias is no longer a pragmatic move in the direction of a more humane society. Where these have become something else: dogmas, ideologies, capable of never-ending exploitation in the service of nefarious ends.

There was a time when those championing the freedom of the individual looked to the left. No more. The 'radical left', the social justice warriors, are singularly intolerant, hell-bent on silencing anybody who happens to disagree with them. They are the vanguard of the society portrayed in Orwell's '1984'. The parallels are chilling. So I lament those of decent heart and good intent, who have been duped. I should not feel overmuch sympathy: it is blindness and laziness that permit such deception. But once more I find myself walking alone, my past reconsidered, let go of, drifting away into mists of personal antiquity. So be it. Like the magic phoenix, we may always arise afresh, anew.

Postscript: OK. This morning I discovered that I have an ally in all this; there is a like mind. Vladimir Putin. He gave an interview in the Kremlin just before heading off to the meeting of big boys and girls, in which he said that western-style liberalism is obsolete. 'Obsolete' is the perfect word, and I think he is talking about the same things as in this blog piece. In fact he articulates things extremely clearly in this interview. So, thanks Vlad.

Photos: The British working class.
            Morrissey, a modern working class hero, that most rare of species.      

Western Civilisation and the Ivory Towers

Part One

It's been a sporadic yet persistent theme on Pale Green Vortex over the years: how western civilisation has, in my mind at least, often fallen short. Specifically:

- The prevailing scientific materialistic view of modern times. This is an extremely partial view of the universe, effectively disconnecting humanity from much of what it requires in order to discover its own deeper nature and purpose. To become properly human, we could say.

- The suppression and persecution of those who have stood up against the dominant paradigms of the time. Persecution of Gnostics, Cathars, 'pagans', witches, and any other type of heretic in the eyes of Christian authorities. In more recent times, orthodoxy has passed from mainstream Christianity onto a certain political elite, and our modern heretics are more likely to be those at odds with the whims of these ruling elites. We see the attempted silencing of certain individuals who dare to think outside the box of pseudo-liberal globalism with its various dogmas and creeds (climate change emergency, multiculturalism, etc).

- The way in which notions such as democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the individual, have all too often proven to be a sham, a cosmetic veneer on a darker agenda. A dominant programme through the ages has been that of 'Empire'.

All of this still stands. The history of western civilisation is frequently messy, sometimes awful and painful to investigate. It is a deeply imperfect thing. I feel that the moment has come, however, to look at the other side of the coin. To emphasise the unique and most precious aspects to this imperfect thing. Qualities which it is well worth making the effort to cherish and preserve.

A most obvious example. Were it not for this 'western civilisation', I would not be sitting here writing this; and you wouldn't be sitting there reading it. Enterprise, ingenuity; freedom of the individual. OK, we all know about exploitation, colonialism, etc, in fact I'm sick and tired of hearing about them. As if no group of people ever behaved badly towards another group before. But amidst all this has run this thread of democracy and freedom, this other aspect to western culture.

It is within the context of this particular culture that I have been able to lead my own rather unorthodox life, sometimes not without some difficulty, but nevertheless fairly much as I have wanted. I haven't been locked away for it as yet. I have been able to research and investigate an entire range of subjects which have assisted me no end, thanks to printing and modern internet technology. All of this is the fruit of this western spirit; I am deeply grateful.

Yet these freedoms which, though battered and bruised, are characteristic of one side of western civilisation, are fragile. Over the past decade or so, I have seen them attacked and eroded again and again; it's a process which I see accelerating and growing more vicious as the days pass. It is as if we are fast approaching some kind of Armageddon, and power-mongers are desperate to close down our hard-won and precious freedoms. They are freedoms which some take for granted, and others simply do not appreciate. Other cultures extant today do not enshrine these values to the same extent, to my knowledge at least. Our freedoms are worth cherishing, and fighting for if need be.

Part Two

That I not only spent three years studying at Oxford University, but came out with a high grade degree, is news which receives a variety of reactions from the unprepared, all of them inappropriate, and reflecting more the assumptions of the individuals concerned than anything about this type of university.

I occasionally receive bulletins, magazines, newsletters, by post and online, from the university and from the particular college I attended, Hertford. I frequently wonder about cancelling the whole lot; but then I consider some more, and continue. It's called 'what's the enemy getting up to now?'.

Oxford has long given up any pretence at being a centre of higher learning. Such status was always a little doubtful, but now it's transparent. Instead, the university is devoted almost entirely to cultural programming and social engineering. Brainwashing on behalf of the elites, mind-control of the plebs. Some readers of this blog would, I suspect, find it a real eye-opener to see what bilge is put forth in the name of 'edyookayshun'. It reads like a leaflet for the globalist paradigm, hating things like Trump and Brexit with the same insistent venom as does the BBC.

My most recent post discussed the magic twins of dorje and bell, and the mess which can ensue if one or the other goes missing. But what happens if both of them go absent at the same time? This is the moment when we need to creep along the corridors of academia, climb the dark winding stairway to the top of the ivory tower, to discover who and what are lurking there.

The May edition of 'Oxford Alumni' magazine contained an article written by one Amanda Power, Professor in Medieval History at this august centre of learning. It was entitled 'Should Notre Dame be restored?' "Most people have assumed that the cathedral should be lovingly restored" the article gurgles on, "but should we let it stand as a symbol of the damage that our climate denial and environmental entitlement have already caused the planet?"

And so it drones on. And on. And on. Is there no end to the expiation of guilt that certain elite sections of society require from its western inhabitants; a guilt that is unique to this particular culture, I suggest, and is its Achilles heel. The majority of academics are oblivious to what they bring to their 'academic studies', the monsters that lurk in their own swamp. In this state of ignorance they are easy meat for promoting agendas, all the while thinking they are being brainy and 'objective'. And doesn't our Professor in Medieval History get the irony of her wailing and bemoaning the awfulness of western culture as it has rolled down the centuries? That, without this particular culture, she wouldn't be doing what she's doing, sitting smug and righteous in her academic privilege. She would be nowhere.

Note the not-very academic and objective language used by our medieval historian: 'climate denial'; 'environmental entitlement'. The comparing of climate change sceptics to holocaust deniers is a topic gone into so frequently, I'm not going there now. But this is the great one, really. Climate change science is not done and dusted. It isn't. It isn't! It's only the lamestream media, ideologically invested politicians, and idiotic one-eyed academics who say so. You don't have to be a bloody conspiracy theorist to see that, either. The info is all out there, not difficult to find, but folk dependent on their BBC/Guardian world won't go there, it's too threatening.

I was at least pleased to see that the article received a goodly number of robust rebuttals from less blinkered alumni in the 'Comments' section.

Part Three

I hadn't intended to do this; in truth, it's a bit of a rant, and I am not proud of that. Nevertheless, if it succeeds in pointing out how most academia should not be revered, or taken very seriously at all, then it might be worth it. This is actually the subtext of my years at Oxford. I witnessed first-hand how academia is, in general, populated by people who are not to be hugely respected. Lots of active, clever brains, but working within a small, pre-organised box. I needed to come out of university and into the alternative culture of the 1970s before I encountered people who I could take seriously. So I have this advantage: academics can't pull the wool over my eyes.

This month, June 2019, I received another missive from Oxford, my online 'Hertford College News'. In this, we were encouraged to watch the TED talk delivered by a college alumnus, one Carole Cadwalladr. In this talk, apparently (I'm not intending to actually watch it...), 'She digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK's super-close 2016 vote to leave the EU.'

It's not perplexing! It's only perplexing because you've got your over-sized academic brain stuck in the sand. Anyhow, it seems that Carole has it all sorted. 'A barrage of misleading Facebook ads' placed by pro-Brexiteers is the culprit, we are informed.

It was a vote, the majority elected to leave the EU, end of story, get over it. If it were the other way round, such a theory would be ridiculed as a 'conspiracy theory'. It is the reaction to the Brexit vote, with so many people showing up as bad losers, that is the real threat to this country, not leaving the EU. It is here that our hard-won and shaky freedoms are endangered. People unwilling to accept the democratic process when it doesn't go their own way. It's as simple and as childish as that.

Also this month turned up 'Oxford Alumni' again. There is some very important research being carried out, I am informed. "A group of Oxford researchers have seized on the divisive nature of Donald Trump and his inauguration ceremony to examine how different emotional responses to public rituals can effect group bonds."

Don't forget, folks, this I one of the planet's top universities. And that there are people out there getting good money for doing this stuff....

'Divisive': it's one of those words, really. Its meaning in the dictionary in front of me is 'tending to cause disunity and dissension.' Neutral, really: a statement of an objective reality. Some things just cause disunity, it's part of how the universe works. Its connotation over time, however, has become negative: 'intending to cause disunity and dissension.' Trouble-making; perverse enjoyment of creating schism; polar opposition to new age-y harmony and light.

'Trump' and 'divisive'. How often do those two words turn up in the same breath? The guy's just that, apparently, a cosmic troublemaker. And in the hands of a Jeremy Corbyn, the word 'divisive' reaches its nadir. As part of Corbyn's own divisive behaviour during Trump's recent visit to the UK, he recently complained about Trump's 'divisive views on trade, immigration, human rights, and climate change.' In the hands of a Jeremy Corbyn, the word takes on its vulgar modern meaning: 'divisive' simply means something or somebody I disagree with. Discussion, debate, difference of opinion, become divisive. Thus we arrive at the state of 'forced consensus' and modern totalitarianism.

Trump's views on 'climate change' are fluid, but not divisive. He just happens to disagree with the orthodox views which, as mentioned above, are lies. That 'the science is decided', and that there is 'scientific consensus'. This is all untrue, and you don't need to be a master detective to find that out. But disagree with this piece of charlatanism, and you will be called 'divisive' and worse.

A blog friend recently commented that I should propose a few solutions to some of the ills I write about. In truth, I feel no obligation to do so; a difficulty is a difficulty, and the first step is facing up to that possibly unpalatable reality. In this case, however, there is a simple solution: academics should begin to be proper academics, not lackeys to a toxic socio-political programme. And academic institutions should do the same. Piece of cake, problem solved. The only thing is that it most likely ain't gonna happen. Academia, journalists, establishment politicians, 'far-left activists', legacy media 'newspapers' and television channels: they are all the same thing, really. Fully paid-up members of the same club, the same international mafia. Part of the One Real Conspiracy. Just remember that the next time you read that 'research has shown…..' or 'scientists have discovered.....' Don't be impressed, don't be impressed.
     

Dorje Chang and Idiot Compassion

Part One

Dorje Chang - or Vajradhara in Sanskrit, though I always prefer the sound of the Tibetan. He is the Adi-Buddha, the Primordial Buddha. Dharmakaya. He is everything and nothing at all. In his being all dualities are resolved, all paradoxes swallowed into a single form of beauty. Neither Oneness nor Multiplicity can get a hold, both turning out to be simultaneously phantoms and mirror-image aspects of reality.

The bell and the vajra: these are Dorje Chang's twin symbols, the magical implements that he wields, his weapons of gnosis. One in each hand, typically crossed in front of his heart, just to emphasise their centrality to all that he is.

The primordial consciousness of Dorje Chang splits into these twin aspects, these two arms, bearing the bell and the vajra. The one becomes two, and the two becomes one. The eternal dance of reality, the inseparability of spirit and world, of heart and mind, each a mirror of the other.

The primordial consciousness, the godhead if you will, split and sundered into two. Between them, the vajra and bell encompass everything. They are the great divide, into duality, but just one small step from Buddha.

Vajra: masculine, head, thought; sun, day, wisdom. Being, Siva.

Bell: feminine, heart, body, feeling; moon, night, love. Becoming, Shakti.

The sounding of the bell, the wielding of the diamond-hard vajra: this is also the call, the invitation, for kundalini. It is her wake-up call, for her to arouse from her slumber and uncoil herself. She, sacred serpent of the one-in-two and the two-in-one.

Wisdom and compassion entwined is how the Buddhist texts put it. Sounds a bit abstract and heady, that's all. Maybe better to think of it as Siva and Shakti, in ecstatic embrace, simultaneously in eternal union and everlasting separation.

Part Two

As above, so below. As in the figure of Dorje Chang, so in the affairs of human beings. This is the essence of mystical perception and experience. It is a trickle-down, and a trickle up, I suppose. Sacred correspondence. The individual needs to align sufficiently with 'higher reality' in order for that higher reality to begin to flow into, within, and through their being.

In this case, the task is to mirror the totality of Dorje Chang, along with the great union of vajra and bell, in the lives of human beings, both individually and collectively. To aspire to see the diamond wisdom of vajra and the great love of bell in tandem is a worthy road map for human endeavour.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." The words jumped at me the moment I heard them spoken. It is a quotation steeped in wisdom. It speaks of Dorje Chang, of the inseparable nature of the bell and vajra. For they are inseparable, two mirror reflections of the singularity of Dorje Chang and of each other. One without the other is useless, or worse, destructive, quite possibly disastrous. Incompleteness imagining itself as whole: tragedy.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." These were not the words of a great Buddhist sage, a Nying-ma lama in rich attire addressing an audience of devout followers. Nor of any other wise teacher or guru with a woolly beard. They were spoken, during her 'prelude talk' to 'Borderless' entitled 'Changing my mind on immigration' by Lauren Southern. A talk, by the by, during which she possesses the dignity and humility to do what many-a so-called great guru is incapable of doing: to admit that maybe she got things a little bit wrong.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." Rather less charitably, I refer to it as 'idiot compassion'. It is an insight reflected similarly in the old proverb 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'    

How so? How can it be? Surely 'compassion' is a good, great, and wonderful thing. Depends. As once noted, you can use a knife to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, or you can use it to stab someone and kill them.

Scattered across the posts on Pale G.V. are references to the obverse: understanding, or at least thought, without heart or feeling is not wisdom. Much of the academic world is filled with people of this type, who end up creating all manner of ridiculous proposal. That gender is a purely social construct, for example. This is 'idea' totally devoid of heart, soul, intuition, common sense, decent eyesight. Try the simple 'clothes-off' test for starters. Or, if that's not your cup of tea, watch a top tennis match between two women, followed by one between two men.

Yet because, oh wow!, they happen to have got a job at some university or other, these academics are well placed to have their stupid theories and theorems taken seriously. Dragon's head, snake's body (with due respect to all snakes out there).

But it's the same with compassion that lacks understanding. In the context of 'Borderless', it's a matter of good-hearted but blind sentiment driving a European immigrant situation which all too often benefits neither immigrant nor indigene. Promoted enthusiastically by people carried away by words and sentiment, without a serious care for the complex and sometimes heart-breaking consequences of their proposed actions.

Who 'open borders' immigration does benefit are folk who singularly lack compassion, but who have a well-developed 'understanding' of what will help their own dark, self-serving ends. But heart without understanding can be applied to other circumstances typical of western cultures as well, where the enthusiasts for political correctness in its various forms, victim culture, are doing less of a favour to society than they delude themselves they are doing.

Compassion without understanding provides the fuel for the wolf in sheep's clothing who stalks the corridors of politics and power. If there are dark forces at work behind the scenes, nefarious beings rolling out programmes intended to disempower, then 'compassion without understanding' provides the perfect fuel for such endeavours. Entire populations will unwarily sign up to attitudes which they believe are for the great benefit and betterment of humanity, while nothing could be further from the truth.

A little picture of Dorje Chang on the bedroom wall, and a daily check that both vajra and bell are intact, polished and gleaming brightly together, might go a long way...…