the present


I think of Uber as a modern-day version of the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. Thanks to Uber, I am not poor. I am just … nobody.

When I first started driving, I talked to every passenger. I engaged in conversation about the city, life and politics. I told them about my work as a reporter, and as a strip club manager. I felt the need to say, “I’m not really an Uber driver. I am someone too. Just like you!”

Nobody cared.

I found that I could become visible or invisible at will. It’s about the voice. Say “please” and “thank you” and shut up and drive. Don’t make eye contact. People come in with their antenna up and on alert. Once they see you are no threat, they turn you off.

This crushes the ego. As it turns out in my case, that’s a good thing. Next comes acceptance. I am a driver. I drive. I work and go home and then work again. I speak less and listen more. People drone on about their work and lives and I nod as if to agree even as I think, mostly, “what a wanker.”

Only when they initiate conversation do I join in. It just doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

And that’s when the healing starts. It is Zen and the Art of Uber Driving.

beyond the mind – beyond all thought of past and future – there is only what is

nothing is other than this being

no one is

and what is – this being – is a gift beyond words: the present

* * *

avoid harming any being

avoid killing, stealing, cheating, lying, and otherwise denying awareness of being …
all being, all that is: the present

just be … and do no more than need be done to be and let be*

this being :: Beyond the Mind :: *with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity

infrastructure: finance as everyone’s business


public finance, like the law, is a social construct; it’s what we all agree it to be

opinion alert: personal value statement follows

foundations of money and credit: not products to let banks profit, but infrastructure to let people prosper

* * *

Japan may show the rest of us how to spend on worthwhile infrastructure projects by printing money, that is, by moving the interest on new national debt down to zero percent and keeping it there; the next step is to move away from fractional reserve banking by moving the reserve requirement up to one hundred percent and keeping it there.

a physician’s response to religious conflict


At another time of violent religious schism (1689), the physician John Locke (1632–1704) linked three ideas that have together proven to be a powerful and enduring statement of western values—empiricism (Essay Concerning Human Understanding), liberalism (Two Treatises of Government), and tolerance (A Letter Concerning Toleration). His argument about how human beings acquire knowledge of the world provided the basis for his view that political communities are formed out of Nature and Reason. The first law of Nature is Reason, he suggested, and our societies should therefore protect and augment ideas of freedom and equality. He writes powerfully, “that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions”. The goal of political communities is “the Peace and Preservation of all Mankind”. The purpose of government is “to restrain the partiality and violence of Men”. And these freedoms should extend to religion— ”The Toleration of those that differ from others in Matters of Religion, is so agreeable...to the genuine Reason of Mankind, that it seems monstrous for Men to be so blind, as not to perceive the Necessity and Advantage of it, in so clear a Light.”
A  “coherent and particular view” of being human can make our disintegrating world whole again. It is so true that “a war on Islam will never solve the existential predicament we currently face.” Violence helps no one.
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this being


beyond the mind – beyond all thought of past and future – there is only what is

nothing is other than this being

no one is

* * *

there is only this being … and doing no more than need be done to be and let be*

Beyond the Mind :: *with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity

being and not being

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know, how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. —Michel de Montaigne

follow link in tweet for more

see also die before you die

* * *

To be or not to be is not the question. There is only being. There is only what is, all of it, the whole.

The countless forms that being takes come into existence, exist for a while, and then no longer exist.

That is one view.

In another view, that anything exists as an entity apart from the whole – even for a moment – is in the mind.

In this view, nothing depends on nothing; nothing does not change; nothing exists apart from the interdependent web of all existence.

That there is any independent being that comes into existence, exists for a while, and then no longer exists is an illusion.

  • all being is nothing but change
  • no being is independent of any being

see also UU principles*

*search :: …

Photo Op (2005)

“There are very serious sins – mortal sins – certainly: murder, for example. We can talk about the invasion of Iraq being mass murder. A sin like that, unrepented, would mean that you are effectively in hell. Obviously lying about something as important as the reasons to go to war, for example, would be a massive offence against truth.”
—Father Martin Newell … click link in tweet above for more

* * *

Photo Op by kennardphillips

Our photomontage "Photo Op" depicting Tony Blair taking a "selfie" in front of a burning oil field has just gone on show at Catalyst - the first major exhibition at the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) national contemporary art collection in Manchester.
click link in tweet below for full article (October 2013)

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