Krishnamurti - The Real Revolution

Test Lab 

by culturKritic 

Sometimes the world makes sense… but most often it does not.  This is particularly true when you have trouble believing the accepted narrative.  The correct word is not conspiracy or paranoia, it is simply by DerektheRed…

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

scientists love conclusions, and why shouldn’t they? that’s what the empirical method is all about isn’t?

and you know there’s no telling what you may find when you go poking around.

A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret

…the orbital cortex puts a brake on another part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved with aggression and appetites. But in some people, there’s an imbalance — the orbital cortex isn’t doing its job — perhaps because the person had a brain injury or was born that way…

‘What’s left? What takes over?’ [this researcher] asks. ‘The area of the brain that drives your id-type behaviors, which is rage, violence, eating, sex, drinking.’

it’s the rage part that fascinates me. what’s better? rage, or the kind of cold calculating control evinced by our ruling classes? or by our very reasoning processes?

now, once upon a time i heard some hotsy-totsy academic describe the author Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) as rather a “lowbrow” writer, but is not this very question addressed in Burgess’s novels? rage is at least a human emotion, rather like violence, you know, the thing the State claims a monopoly upon. as a Commie, it falls upon yours truly to question the role of the State, especially in light of Solzhenitsyn’s work; but then shouldn’t we all question the role of the State? it has always mystified me how one persons judgment may be questioned, but the group? who dares question the collective wisdom? especially here in the age of inverted totalitarianism.

let’s see what Agent K has to say, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

or perhaps someone more erudite, with gravitas, “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” rather a different Mr. K.

now of course one of these quotes is from a movie, the other may be apocryphal, who knows? could be beets…………….could be peaches………….

so, we are left with “eating, sex, drinking.” sounds good to me. be that as it may, the message seems to be ‘beware the monster from the id.’ but where shall we find this monster? the Forbidden Planet? or somewhere more close at hand? not to worry, our government is on the job.

The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.

The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.

Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses.

Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence. Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain

sorry folks, but is it just me? but should we be planning for AI when the jury is still out on whether we are using the intelligence at hand to best effect?

my, my, how nice, plumbing the depths of the human psyche with our bright and shiny new toys, this of course brings us to the next question. who is it who will make the determination what behavior is socially acceptable? the government? a blue ribbon panel of experts? we are well down the path to a Brave New World, but who will it benefit? we have seen what the Soviets did with their show trials for anti-social types, we have seen our government conduct experiments with venereal diseases on unsuspecting African-Americans, bomb tests where the safe distance was not established, let alone our dismal record of late on torture and detention. please feel free to add your favorite outrage.of course the claim is that these technologies will be used for beneficial purposes, and we all know there were WMD in Iraq, and our erstwhile ally Saddam’s figerprints were all over 911. perhaps i could interest you in a bridge in Brooklyn. once the powers that be decide who is acceptable and who is not, what will the prescription be? drugs? confinement? surgery? or can we find out before birth? perhaps in our omnipotence we can bio-engineer these undesirable traits out of the herd, but we wouldn’t want to breed it all out now would we? perhaps we should retain a cadre with a penchant for these “id-type behaviors” such as “rage (and) violence”, just as a fail safe, in case things get out of hand.

so much injustice, so many inequalities and suffering; a budget drowning in red ink, but money from Homeland Security to militarize the police, bringing the excesses of empire to everyones doorstep. look up in the sky? it’s a bird! it’s a plane! it’s………….

a spy drone keeping tabs on the subjects here in our little Test Lab.

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Highly Recommended Reading: 

Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited 

Related 

(After viewing Krishnamurti's videos above and hearing him elsewhere (see below) I realized that the opening narration for the original Zeitgeist film was his work) 

Source: http://www.extraenvironmentalist.com/2012/12/20/xe-mixtape-volume-2/

At this time of cultural transformation, fundamental questions of human connectivity and education  are gaining importance in everyday life. In this mixtape, we overlay some music on the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti as he discusses the psychological changes needed to solve our global problems. Can we truly learn in a transformative manner? What has convinced us that we aren’t part of a global system?

Then, friend of the show and long-time listener Thomas Daulton shares a story inspired by our audio skits on a world without gold.

Happy winter solstice and 14th Baktun,

The Extraenvironmentalist

Download (right click, "save as") 61.5 MB

See also: 

http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/07/another-mumford-reading-excerpt-if.html?q=the+myth+of+the+machine