2011.10.15 13:00 - Anger Coupled with Hope

The Guardian for this meeting was Bruce Mowbray, subbing for Aphrodite. The comments are by Bruce Mowbray.

Our chat began with the "Occupy" protest movements occurring globally today, which led into alternative ways of lending - which led into alternative ways of thinking about space and time.  Present were:  Wol, druth, Arch, Mickorod, FcSeeker, Santoshima, Zen, Zon, and Bruce.

Wol Euler: okay, ready :)
Archmage Atlantis: Goats, really Wol
Archmage Atlantis: Put ur knees back to human
Archmage Atlantis: Hello Fc
Wol Euler: hello fc
Bruce Mowbray: Hi, Fc!
FcSeeker Resident: Hello Wol Bruce Arch <3<3<3<3
Archmage Atlantis: Hello, Wol....Bruce
Archmage Atlantis: Fc sees
Archmage Atlantis: so hello
Bruce Mowbray just decided that he'd rather be able to wave than drink coffee. . .
Wol Euler smiles.
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Wol, Fc, Arch!
Bruce Mowbray: I've been watching the Occupy protests today -- made aware of them only by dialogue at the session here earlier.
Archmage Atlantis: This planet is deciding what it fate it wishes
Bruce Mowbray: I feel there’s another option to the banking thing. . . at least a partial option.
Bruce Mowbray: How did we get talked - or legislated - into the idea that only banks can lend money?
Bruce Mowbray: and that if we need money, we have to go to a bank?
Archmage Atlantis: Because we got talked into the idea that money is value
Archmage Atlantis: And that was not wrong at that time
Archmage Atlantis: This is a new time
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, money is symbolic of value - - and try buying a steak dinner or a new car with chickens . . . . Nor does bartering work well over long distances...
FcSeeker Resident: there's special change happened in my country what comes to get money for the loan...
Bruce Mowbray: What's that, Fc?
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, druth.
druth Vlodovic: boo
FcSeeker Resident: there's been born companies like mushrooms when good rain at fall
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Mick.
Mickorod Renard: hi
FcSeeker Resident: which loaned money even if one has not good credit reputation
FcSeeker Resident: Hello Mick
Bruce Mowbray: lots of places to borrow money in your country, Fc?
Mickorod Renard: howdy
druth Vlodovic: scary, borrowing is a good way to get into a hole you can't get out of
FcSeeker Resident: Hi Zon
Archmage Atlantis: There is a word, called usury
Bruce Mowbray: for sure, it is, druth. . . but it is also necessary.
Zon Kwan: heya
Mickorod Renard: Hi zon
Bruce Mowbray: Usury is exorbitant interest. . . yes.
Bruce Mowbray: Hi, Zon.
druth Vlodovic: they'll need to get all their friends to borrow from the same place and default in order to bankrupt it so they don't have to pay back :)
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Zen.
FcSeeker Resident: Hello Zen
Archmage Atlantis: this world we live in now, it begats usury
Zon Kwan: zen, dharma brother
druth Vlodovic: we tie our selves up in knots with our economy, gaining more and more dependencies until we can't move
Zen Arado: Hi all
Bruce Mowbray: one thing that I hope the protests do is to help people think of alternatives . . . different ways to do banking without the corruption . . . and without dividing societies into rich and poor.... but these are already available.

--BELL—

Bruce Mowbray: Hey, newcomers, we've been talking about the Occupy protests happening throughout the world...
Santoshima Resident: ty ~
Santoshima Resident: going in a short while
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, San!
Zen Arado: 'The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.'
Santoshima Resident: hey!
Santoshima Resident: Vancouver
Mickorod Renard: hi santo
Zen Arado: Hi Santo
Bruce Mowbray: yes, I've read about your protests in Vancouver....
Bruce Mowbray: and London, and Rome. . . and all over America and the globe.
Wol Euler: hello santo
Archmage Atlantis: The flowers in the field
Santoshima Resident: hi mick, fc, wol, bruce, zen, druth, arch, zon ~
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Zon Kwan: santo
Wol Euler: oh, hello mick and druth and zon too
druth Vlodovic: maybe humans are getting their souls back
Bruce Mowbray: If you HAVE to ride the bus/subway, it is possible to make that available to everyone. . .
Bruce Mowbray: or even rural transportation outside of cities.
Zen Arado: I would like to be able to ride a bus
Zen Arado: never mind drive a car
druth Vlodovic: you can't?
Zen Arado: if people have unequal talents how will we ever have an equal society?
Bruce Mowbray: in America Zen could ride a bus in any city.  - - I proved that to myself when I rented a wheelchair. . . (In America, it is the LAW, that public transportation be available to physically disabled - everywhere.)
Zen Arado: no...not disabled accessible
Zon Kwan: there are equality and eqaulity
Wol Euler: perhaps we aim for ‘just’ rather than ‘equal’
Archmage Atlantis: Once upon a time, a woman was known as Gaby.....Her husband flew,,,, we are joined
Zon Kwan: we are all different
druth Vlodovic: people have different talents, different environments make them more or less successful
Zen Arado: well not here
Santoshima Resident: here, too ~ all public transport is required to be accessible for wheel chair
Bruce Mowbray: different needs, and different ways of getting them met. . .
Zon Kwan: different intelligence
Bruce Mowbray: And that brings me back to the question of alternatives to banks. . .
druth Vlodovic: not equality at all, since we spend more on some people than others, more compassion, and valuing people just for being people
Bruce Mowbray: Are we sacrificing the possible to the "perfect," here?
Zon Kwan: equal in core, not equal on circumference
Zen Arado: it's a big subject..
Santoshima Resident: yes
Zen Arado: taxation is a way of imposing equality
Archmage Atlantis: Banks were a good idea in their time...now my hands rarely word
Bruce Mowbray: What I am saying is, persons who need to borrow money -- even a LOT of money - do not have to go to banks to do that - - -
druth Vlodovic: my idea is that the gov't ought to own all insurance companies, banks and casinos, then they wouldn't need taxes :)
druth Vlodovic: who should they go to Bruce?
Zen Arado: that happened to me too druth
Bruce Mowbray: peer-to-peer lending is happening all over- - - (but not in my state anymore). . .
Zen Arado: what is it?
Bruce Mowbray: It is similar to sharing a movie with the world. . .
druth Vlodovic: ah, traditionally that was what family was for, with low birth rates what do we replace it with?
Bruce Mowbray: You bid against hundreds of other lenders to "buy" rights to lend someone money. . .  (and many lenders share the same loan)
Zen Arado: money is security idea
Bruce Mowbray: Three years ago --- one MONTH before the collapse on Wall St. -- I lent out $60,000 to 166 persons.
Archmage Atlantis: We are here
Archmage Atlantis: We dream
Archmage Atlantis: Everything is possible
druth Vlodovic: neat, what do you have for collections?
Bruce Mowbray: Now I have only ONE of those loans left to come in. . . and during the worst economic down-turn in my lifetime - - - failed banks, failed, jobs, failed, mortgages, etc. . .
Archmage Atlantis: Nothing is for sure
Bruce Mowbray: I STILL made an average of eight percent on the money I loaned.
Wol Euler: that’s a better average than most banks manage, Bruce
Santoshima Resident: quite great
Bruce Mowbray: That's after many of my people went bankrupt ---- lost jobs, etc.
Bruce Mowbray: 8% on your investment is phenomenal during these past three years!
Bruce Mowbray: Yes. . .

Zen Arado: sure is
Bruce Mowbray: But here is my point - - -
 Bruce Mowbray: Instead of thinking in the old ways of banking - - - why not democratize the whole system. . .
Archmage Atlantis: Hold my hand, take one last look over the fields
Bruce Mowbray: When you get a chance some time, Google search “Peer-to-peer lending” .

--BELL—

Bruce Mowbray: The one that I worked through is www.prosper.com . . . . BUT, unfortunately. . . .
Bruce Mowbray: the regular bankers in Ohio got wind of it -- and made it illegal in my state to do this. . .
Mickorod Renard listens
Bruce Mowbray: under the guise of "protecting the consumer..."
druth Vlodovic: neat, you get rated on your transactions, like in e-bay
Bruce Mowbray: . . . when the bankers were really just protecting their own corruption and trying to eliminate competition
Zen Arado: high interest = high risk unfortunately in my experience
Zen Arado: what is happening to my avatar?
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, high risk. . . .
Zen Arado: keep turning upside down
Santoshima Resident: hmm
Bruce Mowbray: you look fine to me, Zen.
Mickorod Renard: you look ok to me Zen
Santoshima Resident: not on my screen zen
Zen Arado: saw it happen to druth too
Santoshima Resident: you look a-ok
Bruce Mowbray: OK -- both of you.
FcSeeker Resident: as well to me
druth Vlodovic: I guess you'd assess your risk by the reputation of the lenders and borrowers
druth Vlodovic: all I saw happen to zen is he grew a beard
Bruce Mowbray: I will drop the subject - - - except to expand it to: The old ways of thinking about banking do NOT have to be the new ways. . .
Santoshima Resident: bye Zon
druth Vlodovic: and rep is an old style of human currency, used in all small communities
Mickorod Renard: bye Zon
FcSeeker Resident: ah...sorry; looking better; your Avatar is female on my screen of her body, but not the head
Zen Arado: you know the old saying that if you redistributed all the world's wealth equally to everyone, after a few years it would all have reverted to the way it was before
Archmage Atlantis: fc, never thought you would bring sexual elements in
Bruce Mowbray: probably true, Zen.
druth Vlodovic: yes, a person's ability is not just in skill, but in their modes of thinking
Archmage Atlantis: we are creations
FcSeeker Resident: (Zen's Avatar has breasts on my screen)
Bruce Mowbray: but I still hold on to that old notion that folks can be educated to do better. . . and can change.
druth Vlodovic: (pecs! we call them pecs!)
Wol Euler: hehehe
Santoshima Resident: :))
Wol Euler: "moobs"
Archmage Atlantis: time to go
druth Vlodovic: sure, but people have natural tendencies, and moral preferences
Santoshima Resident: bye arch ~
Zen Arado: bye Arch
Mickorod Renard: bye Arch,,good to see you
Wol Euler: bye arch, take care
Bruce Mowbray thinks redistributing all wealth to all people would be an interesting thought experiment. . .
druth Vlodovic: perhaps if I was more willing to bullshit people I'd develop the necessary skills to be a good manager
Bruce Mowbray: bye, Arch.
FcSeeker Resident: waves to Arch
Wol Euler: http://www.snorgtees.com/t-shirts/co...ide-we-have-pi
druth Vlodovic: but I dislike that sort of thing, so I don't
Zen Arado: I still am ruthed?
druth Vlodovic: you are beautiful
Wol Euler: try rebaking, zen, that should update fc's viewer
Santoshima Resident: no ruthing in evidence, from this vantage
Bruce Mowbray: I love the Schoedinger's cat shirt: "Wanted - Dead and Alive."
Santoshima Resident: nice, Wol ~
Wol Euler: yep :)
Bruce Mowbray: you look perfect (and male) to me, Zen.
Santoshima Resident: perfectly handsome
druth Vlodovic: there, Bruce and I will dance with you :)
druth Vlodovic: and san
Zen Arado: I wasn't fishing for compliments :)
Santoshima Resident: :)
druth Vlodovic: the best time to catch them
Bruce Mowbray: There seem to be many factors that can change the appearance of one's avi - - so I like to check that out with others, to be sure I'm looking like I want to.
Mickorod Renard: I was thinking how primitive my avi is
druth Vlodovic: I just spent 40 min at a lecture before finding out I was naked
Bruce Mowbray: Have any of you here actually been part of any of the Occupy protests throughout the world?
Bruce Mowbray: oh dear, druth!!!!
Mickorod Renard: not me Bruce
Zen Arado: nah
Mickorod Renard: what is it about Bruce?
druth Vlodovic: they let me live :)
Bruce Mowbray: but that's what I mean -- I once went to an on-line Quaker worship group wearing tiger-print swimming trunks and nothing else. . .
Zen Arado: I have to go
Mickorod Renard: did anyone notice?
Bruce Mowbray: although I looked like I was wearing a Sunday suit, to myself.
Zen Arado: bye all
Bruce Mowbray: Bye, Zen.
Mickorod Renard: bye Zen
druth Vlodovic: try that in RL :)
FcSeeker Resident: waves
FcSeeker Resident: to Zen
druth Vlodovic: have you been to one Bruce?
Santoshima Resident: bye Zen, take care ~
Bruce Mowbray: I live too far from the city, unfortunately, but I would be there if I could.
Wol Euler: bye zen
Wol Euler: take care
Bruce Mowbray: I have friends who are there (in Columbus, Ohio)

--BELL—

Mickorod Renard: if you could get to them Bruce,,we may loose you :((
druth Vlodovic: but do they have a plan or is it just "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take, um, something, anymore."
Bruce Mowbray: ;-) - - - It is anger coupled with hope.
Bruce Mowbray: as differing from the Tea Party's Anger coupled with fear.
druth Vlodovic: I had thought we'd given up on hope
Wol Euler: apparently not
Wol Euler: despite the efforts of the media and the right
druth Vlodovic: we had less than 50% turn out for the last provincial election
Bruce Mowbray: America is becoming a two-class society: CYNICAL ex-liberals, and DUMBED DOWN arch-conservatives.
Bruce Mowbray: The rest just watch TV and don't care.
Bruce Mowbray: so much for democracy, huh?
Bruce Mowbray: “Anger coupled with hope” is another chance. . .
druth Vlodovic: they should create the "apathetic" party which would automatically get every vote not cast in an election

Bruce:  ha ha ha ha ha!
Mickorod Renard: I started to read bits in that book called time space and whatever,,you know the one..first time around a year or so ago i didnt understand it much,,this time I seem to relate to it..I think our time spent here is worthwhile
Bruce Mowbray: bye Fc!
FcSeeker Resident takes a humble bow
Mickorod Renard: bye c
Mickorod Renard: fc
FcSeeker Resident: be well and take care
Santoshima Resident: bye dear Fc
FcSeeker Resident: namaste
Bruce Mowbray: You mean the book by Tarthang Tulku that Stim helped write: Time Space Knowledge  ?
druth Vlodovic: we are running out of humble bows around here, I should go bake some more
Mickorod Renard: yes,,thats the one
Bruce Mowbray: What did you think of it (although that's an enormous question, sry.)?
Mickorod Renard: erm, yes,,its a difficult one to give an answer,,also I have not managed to read it in totality yet
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm.
Mickorod Renard: but I would say its mind-expanding
Bruce Mowbray: I've read it three times -- all the way through. . . and I'm feeling it is one of the most profound books I've ever read.
Mickorod Renard: that’s a mighty tribute Bruce, and a Brave one too
Bruce Mowbray: one problem is, folks get to some "different" ways of thinking about things, and they immediately shut down.
Mickorod Renard: I think I may reach that conclusion one day
Mickorod Renard: re it being profound
Bruce Mowbray: I know one guy who said he stopped reading when it asked him to enlarge a physical body into a giant (in his imagination). . .
Mickorod Renard: and yes, i too have suffered shut down before on it
Bruce Mowbray: but there were excellent reasons to do that thought experiment - - unfortunately, his reactiveness cut him out of all of the good stuff.
Mickorod Renard: fortunately I have a good imagination,,so that’s not an issue,,I have to hold mine back
Bruce Mowbray: ha! Me too, Mick!!
Mickorod Renard: :))
Bruce Mowbray: please say more about the book -- or anything you wish, though.
Wol Euler: let your imagination loose on your SL appearance then, Mick :)
Bruce Mowbray: THERE you go, Mick!  Sky's the limit.
Mickorod Renard: well,,I havnt read that much this time,,I picked it up because it had fallen on the floor,,then opened it,,and thought,,how interesting,,which I struggled to form that opinion before
Mickorod Renard: I think, without realising,,over the time I have developed somewhat,,and now the book has a clearer message
Mickorod Renard: thanks ssanto
Santoshima Resident: yw ~
Wol Euler: ty santo
Santoshima Resident: fun! yw
Santoshima Resident: Bruce, you shrank?
Mickorod Renard: I see that some of the exercises are in keeping with similar things I have taken to doing already
Mickorod Renard: like making space
Bruce Mowbray: although Tarthang Tulku denies that the book is either Buddhist or phenomenologist, I think it's a great coupling of those two.
Bruce Mowbray: yes, making space. . .
Mickorod Renard: I would agree wholehearted there bruce
Mickorod Renard: :)
Bruce Mowbray: The book grows on me -- each time I read it.

--BELL—

Mickorod Renard: I think this will happen to me too,,unfortunately I have so many books on the go at the moment
Mickorod Renard: oops
druth Vlodovic: I was talking to a fellow about that sort of thing, he said "If I take a block of wood and carve a beaver I have a beaver, not a block of wood!" even though technically it still is the wood
Bruce Mowbray: good point, druth -- and isn't that what we do when we "carve" thoughts?
Santoshima Resident:

"Axe Handles"     by Gary Snyder

One afternoon the last week in April

Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet

One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.

He recalls the hatchet-head

Without a handle, in the shop

And go gets it, and wants it for his own.

A broken-off axe handle behind the door Is long enough for a hatchet,

We cut it to length and take it

With the hatchet head

And working hatchet, to the wood block.

There I begin to shape the old handle

With the hatchet, and the phrase

First learned from Ezra Pound

Rings in my ears! "When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off."

And I say this to Kai "Look: We'll shape the handle By checking the handle

Of the axe we cut with-"

And he sees.

And I hear it again: It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century A.D. "Essay on Literature"-in the Preface:

"In making the handle

Of an axe

By cutting wood with an axe

The model is indeed near at hand

- My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

Translated that and taught it years ago

And I see: Pound was an axe, Chen was an axe, I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture,

How we go on.

Comment:  Although I missed it during the session, I've now re-read and re-read again the poem that Santo gave us.  How appropriate a coupling of "carving thought," our discussion of metaphor, and what now follows:

Mickorod Renard: some things that i now feel inspirational,,slap me in the face sort of things,,are so simple and already known to me,,yet they reveal something diferent.
Mickorod Renard: maybe knowledge is multidimentional too
Santoshima Resident: need to go ~ thank you, all
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, Mick - - - There's a sort of self-reverential familiarity in discovering things. . .
Bruce Mowbray: Bye, San!
Mickorod Renard: bye san
Bruce Mowbray wonders how knowing could NOT be multi-dimensional . . .
Bruce Mowbray: The only way I know of "knowing" is through references to other things that I know.
Mickorod Renard: i read something somewhere,,maybe even today..about wisdom being a rebirth of knowledge
Bruce Mowbray: This mirror-like way of thinking is one of the things that's coming up in our WoK studies of metaphor.
Mickorod Renard: i look forward to the sessions
Bruce Mowbray: Me, too, Mick.  I feel that learning and knowledge are not possible without metaphoric thinking.
Mickorod Renard: me too,,i have had some serious thoughts about it since last wok
druth Vlodovic: to learn we compare what we see with what we know
Bruce Mowbray: Next time we'll be sharing poems that speak to how we "know" through metaphor. . . bringing our own poems or those of others.
druth Vlodovic: maybe why your friend had a strong reaction to the book
Bruce Mowbray: ;-) -- good point, druth. Maybe he couldn't think that metaphorically – yet.
druth Vlodovic: or why re-reading the book increases your understanding, you are changing into a person who can understand it :)
Bruce Mowbray: As Wol already knows, the most powerful image of the book (TSK) for me. . .
Bruce Mowbray: was the image of Time as male and Space as Female.
druth Vlodovic: ??
Bruce Mowbray: yeah, I know it's a difficult image to grasp at first.
Bruce Mowbray: but the book does a superb job of explaining -- and WOW! How that did open up my experience of both time and space!!!
druth Vlodovic: you mean in the active energy/passive energy sense?
Bruce Mowbray: not really.
Mickorod Renard: of course,,one thought i had was that mankind has had one method of understanding that has been much more ancient than the word of mouth..that of dreams,,which is also metophoric,,imo,,if that makes sense
Bruce Mowbray: More like . . .  "Space is infinite possibility - anything can exist and happen in space."
druth Vlodovic: next you're going to tell me to go read it :-/ it costs twice us much in Canada as the US wahh!
Bruce Mowbray:  . . . and Time is infinite offering of those possibilities. . .
Bruce Mowbray: so Time gives space opportunities. . . and space is where they come into being.
druth Vlodovic: oh, that's sort of what I meant, space is the palette, time the brush
Bruce Mowbray: yes, I discovered that things in Halifax were more expensive. . .
Bruce Mowbray: Oh -- love your metaphors there!
Mickorod Renard: i may search the charity bookshops here,,lots of them,,for tsk,,and if found offer to post them to who needs
Bruce Mowbray: great! Time as brush. . . space as palette - - (or maybe space is infinite canvas. . . )

--BELL—

Bruce Mowbray: Folks, I really must be away now. Thanks for sharing.
Mickorod Renard: i will have to think about that one,,i am slow
druth Vlodovic: have fun mick
Bruce Mowbray: Bye for now.
Mickorod Renard: yes, i must go too
Mickorod Renard: bye druth
Mickorod Renard: bye bruce
druth Vlodovic: I'm off too, supper calls and cannot be denied
Mickorod Renard: thanks
Mickorod Renard: bye wol,,take care