Archive for the ‘Syncretism’ Category

No Prescription Tramadol Online Legally

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

No prescription tramadol online legally, In his blog series "A programmer's view of the universe", Google engineer Steve Yegge is exploring the ontological insights gained in his years writing software.  His first post told the sad story of a pet fish who died after discovering the nature and limits of its own captivity, its tank, while looking out through the glass walls to a world it could never reach.  His latest post uses the video game Mario Kart to explore the concept of embedded system, where the player controls drivers who race around a track inside a universe completely contained within the computer, but with the illusion of a landscape that stretches off into the horizon.  Here he introduces the concept of the one-way wall, which the players butt up against, for example, when attempting to drive too far off the track.  The rules of the game keep the players safely within prescribed boundaries; the game software itself can monitor and control all activity within the simulated game world, but the game cannot "see into" the containing world outside its confines.

Yegge is probably fully aware of the well-worn philosophical implications of this line of inquiry; he is, after all, a self-proclaimed fan of Douglas Hofstadter, whose almost mystical ruminations on the nature of recursion and embeddedness in Gödel, Escher, Bach are a metaphysical classic in the computer-geek canon.  Seeing oneself as a creature in an embedded system attempting to perceive the workings of the "outer system" - to look through the one-way-wall the other way - has forever been a preoccupation of intelligent and spiritually-inclined seekers.

Flammarion woodcut


I would submit, contra Baudrillard, that while we denizens of the internet may today experience an unprecedented degree of abstraction, humanity has never inhabited a space other than one populated by self-created simulacra, and that indeed, the simulacrum has always been the very nature of the worldview of every individual who has ever lived.  For the human brain is itself an embedded system, fed information through a one-way wall (our sensory input) and developing a model of the world outside to the best of our abilities and according to our internal propensities.

Human communities are also an embedded system, one in which individuals reside, and they share a pool of common assumptions about the world (myths) and the "rules" by which we participate in it, refining and elaborating on the individual's innate sense of right and wrong.  Much like cells organizing themselves in a human body, or ants in a colony, all of human civilization and culture -- indeed all human achievement -- is built up of thousands of individual decisions within a socially prescribed rule system.  Such self-emergent organization -- whereby progressively more complex, richly varied systems construct themselves from a few basic rules -- is very appealing to computer geeks, who can create such embedded systems on their computers with just a few lines of recursive code, like this 1-dimensional cellular automaton:

1d cellular automata


This ties into a conversation I was having the other day with a colleague who had just finished reading another computer-geek classic, Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near.  Kurzweil's work of Utopian fantasy is popular among geeks, since it promises a future world (not too distant, either: according to his projections, within the next 50 years) in which technology will become sufficiently advanced that computer intelligence will outpace human intelligence.

What happens beyond this point is impossible to say, but according to Kurzweil's theory, machine intelligence will recursively create new machines with rapidly accelerating intelligence, Very Cheap Tramadol, which may (among other things) provide capabilities for human immortality, interstellar space travel, or perhaps even, one day, create nanobots that will transform the nature of matter and reality so that all matter will reach a point of "supersaturation" in which the entire universe becomes a gigantic supercomputer.  This event is called the singularity, also known as "nerd rapture".

To which I replied: What if the singularity has already happened?  How would you know, no prescription tramadol online legally.

Singularity speculation (in its modern form) began in 1965 with J. L. Good, but was eagerly adopted in the post-psychedelic era by early transhumanist and Harvard psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary in his eccentric 1979 book The Game of Life, in which he uses the Tarot, the I Ching, Kundalini Yoga, and various other esoteric traditions as metaphors for a projected evolution of life (and accompanying stages in the development of individual consciousness), beginning with single-celled organisms and progressing through fish, lizards, mammals, apes, primitive humans, early civilizations, monarchies, and monotheism, then stepping into increasingly liberated states of self-awareness, reality fabrication, DNA manipulation, and atomic, gravitational, and quantum manipulation, into the final payoff, Tramadol Caps 50mg, fusion into a black hole, which in turn creates a new universe.  (Paul Davies also alludes to this possibility, that new universes could be spawned by sufficiently advanced technology.)

The key insight that Leary brings to this fantasy is one of cyclical motion: once a new universe is spawned, the cycle begins anew, for new worlds and new civilizations to repeat this journey.  Indeed, for Leary, each stage of evolution goes through a three-stage cycle of birth, maturation, and decay before leading into the next stage.  This reflects the notion of a cyclical universe in Hindu cosmology, which however sees the course of civilization as one destined toward decay and destruction rather than a state of perfection.  In the Hindu view, it is the individual life that re-enters again and again in new forms to attempt to climb the ladder to liberation. No prescription tramadol online legally, In any event, the key ingredient to this timely yet ancient cosmology -- recursion -- leads us to the insight that no matter the ultimate direction of history or the universe, we exist only in a single moment, a point in motion, brought here by events outside our control and to be swept away by forces outside our control, in death and decay.  We act out our parts as best we can, knowing that we are subsumed in the eternal flux of creation and destruction that define all existence.

This problem is present in all cosmologies (including the modern scientific one), and it's a crucial weakness for the monothestic/Judeo-Christian view, which sees an eternally static Creator God "zapping" the world and time into existence exactly as we see it today, then just as abruptly, destroying it all in a raging fire, whisking his faithful off to eternal, static bliss.  I find this view of the universe pitifully unimaginative and lacking a key ingredient: sacred union, from which we derive imbalance, from which comes change, repetition, recursion, and eternity.  The Judeo-Christian god is deeply flawed for lacking (or, more truthfully, denying) a creative feminine force, which drives this change and evolution.

In fact, to reconcile this problem, Kabbalistic thinkers have developed the idea of tzimtzum: that, in order to make room for creation, the omnipresent God had to withdraw from a part of himself, leaving himself imperfect.  Thus even Yahweh seeks a mystical union with his own creation.  In any event, Cheap Tramadol Fedex Overnight, we know from experience that the nature of reality is the paradox of eternal change, and yet in common Christian thought Yahweh immaturely seeks to deny this, asserting the immutability of his own personality and ego.  (Gary Snyder reports a Mahayana Buddhist commenting, "He needs to do more meditation.")

A frequent counter to the idea of an "unmoved mover" god is the question: well, where did God come from, then?  The answer, "I am that I am", is true yet unsatisfying; this is not the petty, adolescent, egotistical, tribal Yahweh-god but his Mother - the primordial Void, the backdrop in which the creator God appears - talking.  Here's Jesus, emerging from Mother-God's vagina, represented as a Mandorla:

Mandorla


That's more like it!  Every cause must have a cause, and this leads us into a state of "turtles-all-the-way-down", or infinite recursion, which may as well be an eternal cycle, represented as the self-devouring serpent ouroboros:

Ouroborous


The ultimate, all-encompassing religious expression of this concept is contained within this modern image of the Tibetan Buddhist Dharmapala (dharma-protector) Mahakala:

Mahakala


Here, the Great Time-Lord Mahakala advances through time in a blaze of activity, through all dimensions, in perpetual combat with himself as he generates adversaries (his own image) and slaughters and devours them, thereby regenerating himself.  His myriad arms, at once swords and wings, cradle in their clawed hands Bodhisattvas (saints and future Buddhas).  From this eternal recursive creation-destruction, all forms are generated (symbolized in the tiger skin, the leopard prints, the octopus tentacles, the various faces... well, What Is Tramadol Used For, keep looking, you'll see).  The two tracks of infinitely-receding adversary heads are joined in an earring which points to the empty heart of the beast, the Void.  Yet in his hands, amid the fires and the creation and the death and destruction, he protects in a delicate (vaginal/Mandorla-like) clamshell the central Mystery of the sacred union, Yabyum: the eternal, dark Buddha making love to his own ephemeral feminine nature, enraptured in the embrace of the beloved.

In the distance stand other Buddhas, Dharmapalas, and various demons: the Dharmapala replicated, again, across yet other dimensions (other universes, perhaps?).

The lesson that the Dharmapala brings to us is this: wherever you are, whatever you are doing, all things are in flux.  There is always change, there is no Utopian state of perfection, for creation and destruction are intertwined.  Fighting through the one-way wall, stepping out of the matrix, you find yourself in another matrix, and you cannot escape.  Concentrate therefore on the center, this fusion of opposites, from which all things flow, and you will inhabit at once all levels of existence; the nested shells of all matrices outward and inward come into focus, and you see them line up in eternal recursion in all dimensions for all time.  This is Moksha, liberation.

In the meantime, humanity will continue to attempt to construct a utopia out of machines.  It's what we do, worker bees that we are. Futile though it is, it's in our nature.  It is clear that while we may construct bigger and more fantastic fishtanks for ourselves, Ultram Overdose, we cannot escape fishtank existence.  But perhaps we don't really want to.

No matter.  Onward.  Upward.  Inward.  Outward.  Always.

Similar posts: Discount tramadol online. No prescription tramadol. Cheapest tramadol in the world. Buy tramadol online. On sale tramadol on sale. Buy tramadol online without prescription.
Trackbacks from: No prescription tramadol online legally. No prescription tramadol online legally. No prescription tramadol online legally. No prescription tramadol online legally. No prescription tramadol online legally. No prescription tramadol online legally.

On Sale Tramadol On Sale

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Just saw The Dark Knight On sale tramadol on sale, with some friends, and on the walk home, we saw a new billboard placed near I-5:

Imagine No Religion

The Dark Knight just topped opening weekend sales records, making it the most profitable superhero franchise in history.  Americans clearly have an appetite for superhero logic.

Two Face

An East African vision of [the] great lord of the world emerges from a folktale of a young man whose dead father appeared to him along a path going into the ground, as into a burrow.  ... In the morning the Great Chief Death appeared.  One side of him was beautiful, but the other rotten, with maggots dropping to the ground.  Attendants were gathering up the maggots.  They washed the sores and, when they had finished, Death said, "The one born today will be robbed if he goes trading.  The woman who conceives today will die with the child.  The man who works in his garden will lose the crop.  The one who goes into the jungle today will be eaten by the lion."  But the next morning Death again appeared, and his attendants washed and perfumed the beautiful side, massaging it with oil, and when they had finished, Snorting Ultram, Death pronounced a blessing. "The one born today: may he become rich!  May the woman who conceives today give birth to a child who will live to be old!  Let the one born today go into the market: may he strike good bargains; may he trade with the blind!  May the man who goes into the jungle slaughter game; may he discover even elephants!  For today I pronounse the benediction."

"If you had arrived today," said the father to his son, "many things would have come into your possession, but now poverty has been ordained for you; so much is clear."


-- Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology NY: Penguin Books, 1976, pp.118-119

The theme of duality pervades the Batman franchise more overtly than perhaps any other multi-million-dollar Hollywood comic book fad, and indeed, as some have pointed out, Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride, can be interpreted as right-wing propaganda.  Isn't that getting the cart before the horse?  How could Batman possibly be an imitation of Bush, when it's been so apparent this whole time that Bush is in fact the simulacrum.

Loki as the Joker

Loki, archetype of the Joker

While Two-Face embodies in the flip of a coin Batman's Jekell/Hyde duality (CEO of a multimillion-dollar corporation by day, high-tech strong-man by night), the Joker is Batman's mirror image, the trickster, the destroyer of order, with "nothing in his pockets but knives and lint".  Bruce Wayne hoardes money, in order to use it for "good" ends; the Joker burns piles of it in sweet torment of the pathetic ambitions of the mob.  Batman is the warrior king; Joker, the trickster who is the agent of the oblivion, Purchase Tramadol, the teacher of the most difficult lesson we all must one day face, but seek -- in fear -- to hold at bay.

Make no mistake: Batman is, like most conventional superhero tales, most immediately obsessed with national (and, indirectly, personal and ego) security.  The threats to society consist of mobsters, terrorists, bombs; Gotham City is in a sort of perpetual crisis mode, overrun with criminals and corrupt officials. Generic tramadol online legally, For the greater part of the 20th century, a large portion of the American people lived cowering in fear that any minute bombs may begin raining down.  This sublimated fear has oozed out of our pores and become pop culture -- comic books, movies, cartoons -- stories that, not coincidentally, bear strong resemblance to tales our ancestors wove about times and places quite different from our own.  We resonate with Batman: we worship in the temples of our movie theaters and shell out our wages to purchase his likenessExcessive violence in the Bible notwithstanding, our understanding of the world order is as much informed by watching the Joker as it is by reading Beatitudes.  Simply because the comic book industry, unlike the religio-tainment industry, does not yet come equipped with an army and a navy, it's easy to dismiss the religious significance of witnessing and vicariously living in the psyche of Batman, the vigilante of order and reason in a chaotic universe.  Singling out only one form (the Bible, a comic book, Ultram Cold Turkey Withdrawal, a political figure) is an exercise in vanity, unless we go further and address the underlying root cause of these forms and our affinity for them.  The stories we venerate -- whether blockbuster movies or Bible tales -- are as much a reflection of us as we are of them.  Until we begin to address the affinity between both kinds of "religious" experience and acknowledge that it is a fundamental feature of human psychology, generations will continue to be swayed by the crusading Batman rhetoric of the Bushes of the future.

Batman and Robin.

Similar posts: Buy tramadol online. Buy tramadol online without prescription. No prescription tramadol online legally. No rx tramadol no prescription. On sale tramadol online legally. Order tramadol no prescription.
Trackbacks from: On sale tramadol on sale. On sale tramadol on sale. On sale tramadol on sale. On sale tramadol on sale. On sale tramadol on sale. On sale tramadol on sale.

Cheapest Tramadol Online

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Crucifixion


 Cheapest tramadol online, I ween that I hung on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Odin, myself to myself,
On that tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.


Poetic Edda, "Hovamol" (translated by Henry Adams Bellows, via Joseph Campbell: Primitive Mythology

Odin (aka Wotan), the Zeus-like Ruler of the Gods in Norse mythology, in order to retrieve sacred wisdom from the Underworld, sacrifices himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil,

whose shaft was the pivot of the revolving heavens, with the World Eagle perched on its summit, four stags running among its branches, browsing on its leaves, and the Cosmic Serpent gnawing at its root... It is the greatest of all trees and the best, Tramadol Cod, Order Overnight Tramadol, the ash where the gods give judgment every day. Its limbs spread over the world and stand above heaven, Tramadol And Alcohol. Order Synalar Tramadol, Its roots penetrate the abyss. And its name, Order Tramadol Cod, Yggdrasil, means "The horse of Ygg", whose other name is Odin.
.

Similar posts: Ordering tramadol no prescription. Overnight tramadol overnight delivery. Where to buy cheap tramadol. On sale tramadol online on sale. Cheap tramadol online legally. Ordering tramadol.
Trackbacks from: Cheapest tramadol online. Cheapest tramadol online. Cheapest tramadol online. Cheapest tramadol online. Cheapest tramadol online. Cheapest tramadol online.

No Prescription Tramadol Overnight Delivery

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

No prescription tramadol overnight delivery, In his own characteristically simplistic manner, David Brooks picks up on a cultural current that seems to be gaining steam.  He writes in this week's NYT about "Neural Buddhism", a new mentality among scientists fueled by new thinking in neuroscience.  It's worth a read:

... My guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. Free tramadol no prescription, The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

.., purchase tramadol online legally.

In unexpected ways, Buy Cheap Tramadol, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation, no prescription tramadol overnight delivery. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, App Tramadol, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. Generic tramadol generic delivery, I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.


When science offers more spiritual insight than orthodox religious fundamentalism, the days of fundamentalism are numbered.

Similar posts: Buy tramadol. Buy tramadol no prescription. Cheap tramadol online without prescription. Overnight tramadol online overnight. On sale tramadol online without prescription. Ordering tramadol no prescription.
Trackbacks from: No prescription tramadol overnight delivery. No prescription tramadol overnight delivery. No prescription tramadol overnight delivery. No prescription tramadol overnight delivery. No prescription tramadol overnight delivery. No prescription tramadol overnight delivery.