Alan Watts Splits Fear Apart

The Wayseers are coming

Buckminister Fuller Challenge

Looking forward to the design revolution?
Hugs and Licks,
Wooski

Conforming to Society

Interesting Mix of Alan Watts clips mixed with some nice footage, as usual still just as relevant today as it was 40 odd years ago

Waking Up

Tenzin Palmo explains our current dilemma with the way in which society pursues happiness:



So, is there a way to wake up society, would it be a gradual evolution, or a sudden satori?
Comments please,
Wooski.

Seasick Steve- Wise words from track: Treasures

Awesome song which contains humbling words.

Being a bit biased as a big fan of Seasick Steve, I would highly recommend the new album: You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks. But to get the full experience go an see him live for a fantastic night out.

Alan Watts: Contemplating Death

Reality?

Terence McKenna - Hope is out of control

Terence Mckenna discusses optimism and the illusion of hope in control.



So where do you place you're bet? Do you sometimes get the feeling that our blind faith in jobs, consumerism etc is dumbing down the race? Can you let go, find hope in chaos leading to creativity.

I'd also just like to draw the attention of any Mckenna fans out there to Dennis McKenna's current efforts to raise funding for the production of a book on Terence:





It seems that counterculture is making a comeback with the Alan Watts project, now fully sponsored, and now this project as well. The memes are at work methinks.....

RAW (Robert Anton Wilson) continues to explain everything.... Maybe

T.W.A.T (the war on terror).....Question everything!

I'd like to bring your attention to the zeigiest movement response to the recent allegation of Bin ladens Death. To me it brings a fresh perspective on the event and carries and important message to all of us:

TZM: Response to Media; Death of Osama bin Laden

On May 1, 2011 Pres. Barack Obama appeared on national television with the
spontaneous announcement that Osama bin Laden, the purported organizer of
the tragic events of September 11th 2001, was killed by military forces in
Pakistan.

Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks
in what could only be described as a grotesque celebratory display,
reflective of a level of emotional immaturity that borders on cultural
psychosis. Depictions of people running through the streets of New York and
Washington chanting jingoistic American slogans, waving their flags like
the members of some cult, praising the death of another human being,
reveals yet another layer of this sickness we call modern society.

It is not the scope of this response to address the political usage of such
an event or to illuminate the staged orchestration of how public perception
was to be controlled by the mainstream media and the United States
Government. Rather the point of this article is to express the gross
irrationality apparent and how our culture becomes so easily fixed and
emotionally charged with respect to surface symbology, rather than true
root problems, solutions or rational considerations of circumstance.

The first and most obvious point is that the death of Osama bin Laden means
nothing when it comes to the problem of international terrorism. His death
simply serves as a catharsis for a culture that has a neurotic fixation on
revenge and retribution. The very fact that the Government which, from a
psychological standpoint, has always served as a paternal figure for it
citizens, reinforces the idea that murdering people is a solution to
anything should be enough for most of us to take pause and consider the
quality of the values coming out of the zeitgeist itself.

However, beyond the emotional distortions and tragic, vindictive pattern of
rewarding the continuation of human division and violence comes a more
practical consideration regarding what the problem really is and the
importance of that problem with respect to priority.

The death of any human being is of an immeasurable consequence in society.
It is never just the death of the individual. It is the death of
relationships, companionship, support and the integrity of familial and
communal environments. The unnecessary deaths of 3000 people on September
11, 2001 is no more or no less important than the deaths of those during
the World Wars, via cancer and disease, accidents or anything else.

As a society, it is safe to say that we seek a world that strategically
limits all such unnecessary consequences through social approaches that
allow for the greatest safety our ingenuity can create. It is in this
context that the neurotic obsession with the events of September 11th, 2001
become gravely insulting and detrimental to progress. An environment has
now been created where outrageous amounts of money, resources and energy is
spent seeking and destroying very small subcultures of human beings that
pose ideological differences and act on those differences through violence.

Yet, in the United States alone each year, roughly 30,000 people die from
automobile accidents, the majority of which could be stopped by very simple
structural changes. That's ten 9/11's each year... yet no one seems to pine
over this epidemic. Likewise, over 1 million Americans die from heart
disease and cancer annually - causes of which are now easily linked to
environmental influences in the majority. Yet, regardless of the over 330
9/11's occurring each year in this context, the governmental budget
allocations for research on these illnesses is only a small fraction of the
money spent on “anti-terrorism” operations.

Such a list could go on and on with regard to the perversion of priority
when it comes to what it means to truly save and protect human life and I
hope many out there can recognize the severe imbalance we have at hand with
respect to our values.

So, coming back to the point of revenge and retribution, I will conclude
this response with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., likely the most
brilliant intuitive mind when it came to conflict and the power of
non-violence. On September 15, 1963 a Birmingham Alabama church was bombed,
killing four little girls attending Sunday school.

In a public address, Dr. King stated:

“What murdered these four girls? Look around. You will see that many
people that you never thought about participated in this evil act. So
tonight all of us must leave here with a new determination to struggle. God
has a job for us to do. Maybe our mission is to save the soul of America.
We can't save the soul of this nation throwing bricks. We can't save the
soul of this nation getting our ammunitions and going out shooting physical
weapons. We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take
up the ammunition of love.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King, 1963 -


~Peter Joseph

Alan Watts: In the Way, needs your support!

Hello Folks,
Been away for a while, just wanted to post a trailer for the proposed Alan Watts Film: In the Way, production is dependent on raising funding ($50,000) on kick starter(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrisbritt/in-the-way-with-alan-watts)
If the whole amount isn't raised you get your donation back. If the film does go into production, there are some fantastic rewards offered for donating. This film should have been made years ago, and is needed now more than ever. It has a fantasitic team to produce the film and no doubt they will do Alan Justice



Again the link to donate is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrisbritt/in-the-way-with-alan-watts
Be back for more soon,
sincerly but never seriously,
Wooski.

Interesting words from Mr McKenna:

Inspiration from Bill Hicks

We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution. Bill Hicks:
Enjoy,

Food for thought, E-prime: english without "to be", "is", "am", "are", "was", "were" etc

Merry Chritmas and a happy new year,

It has been a little while since my last post but I have been ruminating on things. Recently I have been attempting to incorporate the use of E-prime language in my speech.

Why? Well, to me it seems to portray a more honest and accurate way of making statements.
On a basic level E-prime avoids such words such as “to be", "is", "am", "are", "was", "were” which signify an abstraction certainty in a statement. E-prime goes further to improve clarity of the statement when supported by other method in general semantics, by including in a phrase where the perception comes from.

English where description includes reference to itself without presuming dogmatic certainty seems to me a good way to describe E-prime.

For instance a statement such as:
"Spiderman 3 was/is rubbish"
Using E prime sounds something like
"I thought Spiderman 3 seemed rubbish" or "Spiderman 3 seemed rubbish to me"

One benefit of using E-prime for me, I don't seem to get caught up by my own beliefs when I stop making statements that assume perceptional experiences for everyone. The same seems to occur to me when negative feelings arise; using E-prime I tend to realise that a negative state is only relative to how I may feel at that moment.

E-prime seems useful in demonstrating a communication method that expresses individual experience more clearly.

However, using E-Prime on a regular basis seems difficult if not impossible as we are trapped in linguistical constructs and if used to extreme E-prime seems paradoxical as all expression requires some assumptions. As a result I have found that E-prime tends to collapse on itself, as complete expression of experience is impossible and a balance in description usually made instead.

Perhaps the point of E-prime is in realising that all observation is a gamble, we make assumptions constantly. Basically E-prime is a tool in realising the expression signifies concepts only. This may be the case as David Bourland, who came up with the idea of E-Prime, studied under the founder of general semantics Alfred Korzybski who coined the statement:

“The map IS not the territory”

A fascinating statement which, I think, should be seen as a pointer

Using the method of E-prime does seems like a useful tool if you ever find yourself becoming irritated or caught by, your own or others, dogmatic perceptions. But don’t take it too seriously or it may send you nuts!

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." Alfred Kozybski







 To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology

Book Review: Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown. By Alan Watts

For the first book review I thought we'd start with a gem:  Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown. By Alan Watts.

This is a fantastic collection of Watts later work, consisting of a selection of short essays and some of his public talks.

 He presents the same message over and over (The menu is not the meal) and attempts to show that the organism and the environment are not separate and in fact are completely dependent on one and other.

 Watts argues that if this point of view can be achieved there is no fundamental problem because dualism disappears. But in trying to obtain this point of you get further from it, because you’re still looking from the point of view of a separate self trying to get one up on nature. So there's nothing left to do but chuckle ha-ha.

My favourite essay was entitled: "What on Earth are We Doing?” This is where watts challenges the human system and assumptions inherent in your current culture. Watts argues that human beings, using Euclidean intellect of categorising everything, instead of using our organic brain, is progressively wrecking the earth.

Watts is also suggesting that we have priorities mixed up. We have created so many words which we use as goals, "but we have more words than experience for what we mean".  


Most of the people from the west, whether knowingly or not seem to get most of their "goals" from a Judeo-Christian upbringing, which Watts suggest leads people to  strive for a future goal of heaven, whilst feeling guilty until they get there. This is nicely summed up in a animation vid of a Watts Lecture I recently found on you tube:




I would highly recommend this book as an introduction to the legend Alan Watts, it covers a huge range of issues that, although written nearly 40 years ago, still hold relevance probably even more so today.

Chat to anyone who's listening soon,
Off for a Nap,
Hugs and Licks,
Wooski.

Hello Folks,

Hello Folks,
They call me Wooski,
I am, for want of better words, the worlds first truley enlightened dog. As such, there is a duty for me to help anybody who feels they need it to awaken from suffering, feel happier or just have a bit of a giggle.
On the way to awakening I was guided by lots of things which, along with my wisdom may help you too.
So, whilst my lovely lookerafterers are out playing for bits of paper in exchange for lovely jubbley food I intend to reveal to you snippets of my wisdom, along with reviews of any sources that have helped me along the way.

Love, licks and tricks,
Wooski.