Don't you get it, a Trump figure would only give us more of the swamp, on LSD. The thing you hate is about as good as it gets in human civilisation. There are a few more liberal countries who have done better in their own way. But as for the US, the only direction the country will go with destructive leaders like Trump is downhill like Turkey, or Belarus.

It looks as though Johnson is totally cornered, it's like checkmate, there's no where for him to turn, now that Biden is president elect. Either he takes the country down with him with a no deal Brexit and no US trade deal, but temporarily saves face with his party. Or he capitulates and begs for a closer trade deal with the EU and betrays the Brexiters, splitting his party, but saves the country and paves the way for Starmer.

Which is it?

Trump can't show his face, he's so naked in his failure. The next 70 days are going to be his worst nightmare come true, with the whole world literally watching him.

His only way out of the despair and to try to save face, is to try to make some sham of a legal challenge sound credible. Then when it fails in a few weeks time to grudgingly acknowledge the transfer of power and claim that he will be back in four years. He will need to save face with his base. The trouble is that this route will only dig a deeper hole as the US public hates a sore looser.

Do you mean beings living within us?

I don't know, it's speculation. My point was that there may be beings in the biosphere with knowledge of this existence, while we are in ignorance.

I think our cells are a sort of being that collectively create us.
Is this insight part of a school of thought, or is it your own construction?

It's Theosophy which is derived from Hinduism. Some of it is my own thinking, I've lost track of where one ends and the other begins.

Fox is calling Arizona for Biden, looks like they've dumped Trump.

When I say DNA, I really mean epigenetics, or cellular consciousness.

I can agree with that.

DNA seems to be the custodian of this.

I agree that DNA plays an important day to day role in cellular life.

You see the biosphere as the main organism, and humanity as one of its components?

Yes, also individual cells likewise.

What caused the biosphere ? How did it come to be?

Both questions are not answerable from our current position. I'm not saying the answers are beyond our understanding, but are not, perhaps within our area of knowledge. It's possible that someone has got a right answer, but how could this be verified? Also, there may be beings with us who know the answers but for some reason or circumstances are not telling us.

I agree with most of what you say, but my focus is on the imperative of removing Trump. Gridlock is fine while Trump is ushered off the stage and put back in his box. It's possible that he will rally his forces and return next time, but I doubt the party will submit to his mealy mouthed madness, he may even make them unelectable for a while. But the crisis of a second term of Trumpism has been averted.

My perspective is shaped by the UK Trump happening at the same time. Johnson is also a showman, not so much a snake oil salesman, as a clown. But he can do more damage than Trump because the UK Prime Minister has a great deal of power and is currently reaping havoc in my country and turning us into a laughing stock and rogue state, while trashing the economy. Now Trump has descended into a vindictive burbling man child, some of Johnson's gloss will have tarnished and we can start to reign him in and possibly topple him now.

Will Trumpism continue when he's been defrocked?

This would be a dualism, whereas I am a monist. Once the wave passes, so dose the pattern that formed it, I believe.

Its only dualism from a certain perspective, or in other words, where does one draw the line between monism and dualism. From where I'm looking it's monism.
In reality we can't answer this question as we are in a position of ignorance.

What is controlling what / who? What is the strategy?

The organism of the body, so as to protect and nurture the body within a social colony. Before we developed larger brains and intelligence, emotion was more important in controlling behaviour.

In biology we are the vehicles of DNA,

I don't attribute such importance to DNA, as it is the source of the encoding of the structure of the body, rather than the control of the organism during its day to day life, or in experience. Therefore DNA is not involved the strategic, or social behaviour.

We being nodes in a lineage of life.

Agreed. I see the biosphere as an organism, likewise humanity as an a organism. Organisms which are divided into seperate units, or individuals.

You are referring to experience, and the essential element of experience is emotion, which I would agree can not be described with intellect at all - it must be experienced - suggesting emotion is a force rather then a concept. To feel the force / emotion of ones body is the only way of knowing it. This is the hard problem of consciousness.

I wouldn't put to much emphasis on emotion myself, as it is a system within the vehicle of the body for the purposes of controlling behaviour, in a conditioned, or inherited and strategic way.

Likewise experience while being a fundamental property of being is also provided by the action of the body. If one is to distinguish the being from the vehicles through which it is hosted. One much identify the vehicles and their actions in this hosting and distinguish the spirit, or essence of being form the vehicle. Such knowing does require some practice, but as I have hinted, we do already know these things were we to but know it. To see the wood for the trees.

Agreed.

I sympathise with your ideas here, I have similar ideas. But we will need someone like Corbyn as Prime Minister to even start moving in the right direction. To think that right leaning conservative leaders might move in that direction is naive. You are aware I presume of the inequality in our society? In which a proportion of the population drains wealth away from the other less privelidged parts of the population. There are literally people who don't work, but live off the back of others working, often through what could be described as exploitation. There is a group who live off the wealth accrued from the increases in property values, again they don't work and that's not to mention the billionaires and criminals.

I think it's fine to get some of these people to pick vegetables, or work in the care sector for a good wage. But somehow I doubt that they would see it that way.

The only thing I don't define here is spirit (for want of a better word), because any attempt falls short. Remember what I said about a different kind of knowledge, one not requiring the intellect, which you agreed with. What I'm saying here is that each of us knows spirit (for want of a better word), but via being rather than intellectualising it.

Please do describe such things by another system, I am familiar with most of them. I will remind you though at some point that our current understanding of material and life is quite limited and that the reality of manifestation might be quite different from what we can deduce with science for example.

THERE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ANY REASON WHY I, YOU, OR ENTITIES EXIST!!!!!

Yes, but there must be a mechanism by which they come to exist. Unless you wish to assert that this existing thing is the natural state, so there is no beginning ?

You don't know what you want. Neither do I.

That's not correct. I do know what I want, to be able to have a cup of tea and a biscuit when I want. Fortunately I am able to most of the time.

Yes, I agree that it's about providing the circumstances for experience. Although I wouldn't say it's consciousness which is having the experience, specifically. Rather consciousness is also a vehicle for experience, likewise the soul. Leaving spirit as what is enjoying the experience. I think it is best to leave spirit undefined, other than its being something we know because we are alive and have being. This fits the reference to the Upanishads you mentioned.

I don't personally look to deeply into the roles played by DNA, because the workings are not important and that the reality of the manifestation is probably more complex than we know, or we are in the dark to the reality.

I would be interested in your explanation?

That the material we find ourselves in is a construct, an artificial substrate, or vehicle enabling the appearance/experience of a being/s. Being artificial, their existence is artificial and when they cease to be, what ceases to be was not real, but a construct.
Likewise this is also the case for the soul (for want of a better word), but in a more subtle way. This is a simplified version of the idea.

According to the theory, you can not be destroyed because, as a pattern, you don't exist.

I can buy that, but my explanation is probably quite different to yours.

We do not experience extension. We are always here and now. This is well discussed by the physicist and mathematician Hermann Weyl in his writings on the continuum. Extension is a theory, not an experience.

Agreed. In our world extension is the flip side of experience (this does not mean it is in any way fundamental).

Thoughts on this?

The north is being used as a Petri dish.
The surge a month ago was fuelled by schools and universities going back, so now the increases will be reducing due to partial lockdowns. The trouble is that the infection rate is so high that test and trace has become ineffective as the numbers are unmanageable.

The real estate bubble in the UK is due to a systemic failure of government, Although it was the privelidged classes who benefited from it, I don't think it was this which provided the driving force behind it. It was ideological, the Tory government continually dismantling state institutions and support, and inviting in capitalist organisations to fill the gap. The Tory wet dream of free market capitalism. During the same period there were incentives brought in to increase home ownership allowing council tenants to buy the property they were living in. This fuelled the trend further. The council properties were not replaced with provision of new social housing. The property developers continually focussed on building the highest value properties in the most desirable locations with little affordable housing.

I could go on, but that is enough detail to spell out that the UK is in a dangerous place, trying to hold this bubble in place. If it blows all that wealth built up over 40 years will evaporate, with mass evictions, repossessions and millions of people with massive debts that they can't pay. No wonder the Tory's are running scarred and lurching to the right in a vein attempt to double down on their rip roaring capitalism. They have filled Downing Street with headless chickens running around the cabinet table, lashing out at Europe, immigrants and the poor. Roll on Brexit Britain.

Lockdowns are spreading across Europe as the virus surges today. Infection in Czechoslovakia is very high at the moment, with similar levels to Wisconsin in the US, which is probably the hottest spot in the world at the moment. I heard on the news tonight that 1 in 4 are infected there.

The UK is going to try to weather the storm without a national lockdown, somehow I doubt it. I expect a sudden U turn in a week or two which is the modus operandi of our government these days.

So if that philosophical distinction is rejected, both in whole and in part, then what are we left with? I think ordinary language serves us just fine here.

Perhaps the point, the whole point of this world is to be a vehicle for experience.

Nobody is going to win here...we are all losers in this one.

That sort of complacency will let the commies in.

Or in other words, it's ok to chop your own head off in a world without commies, but not in one where they lie in wait.

If by understanding that we will "discover how to live intelligently and supremely" then we've been living intelligently and supremely for quite some time now.

Surely the goal is, by hook, or by crook, to live a rounded, benevolent, congenial life, enhanced with at least a little service to thy fellow man. For humanity as a whole, to improve the human world and experience until some kind of heaven on Earth is realised.

As for Krishnamurti, I agree, along with Theosophy in general. I am more concerned with the message itself, rather than the messenger.

Life is for all, and there is no elite, no aspiration, in this practice. What is important here is to notice how one seeks to imagine the result, rather than practice the practice.

Quite, I was, perhaps clumsily, saying that of those who seek Nirvana, only those who are ready will realise it. Also that some folk can't be doing with such practice.

Nice thread. My first thoughts are that this is about practice informed by contemplation. That it is a good starting point for this practice. That the two systems, the Hindu and the catholic are compatible, I know this through personal experience. But that the aspirant can only go as far as his/her body is capable at their stage of development. Or that it is only for some people who are that way inclined.

Dominic Cummings is Davros, the leader of the Darleks.

I hear you, but I'm not so confident that they engage in any joined up thinking.

One would think that the Tory's would want to keep their older voters alive to keep voting for them. But that relies on some kind of normal political balance, like what we have experienced over the last generation. In reality, I suggest, the Tory's are grappling with an existential crisis, in which they can see the younger vote abandoning them and their reliable voter base inexorably dying off. Resulting in their only hope of survival as a political force requiring them to veer hard to the right and hope to convince the population that that place is normality, while the left are communist lunatics. This course relies on a healthy economy. It is of course doomed to failure, now.

I'm not happy about a virus. I'm also not overly worried. People should relax, newsmedia should stop scaring old people, and the experts should just do their thing.

You don't seem to have much understanding of humanity. After all we are primates with a complex social and economic structure with a long history of warfare, exploitation, poverty, genocide etc etc. All that is required to upset the relative equilibrium we have enjoyed over the last 70 years, in the West at least, is something like a global pandemic.

There is an acute tension developing between healthcare objectives and economic objectives in many countries. Both are experiencing great loses, with catastrophe just around the corner. Those sitting on great wealth, or in ivory towers will be getting worried to the extent that they will stop caring about the vulnerable and the old.

There are rumours going around the UK that the government is secretly happy that many thousands of old people will die, saving a great deal of expenditure in health and social care, as a vast social care crisis was looming before Covid, due to a population with to many old people.

The debt bubble could fracture at any time now, as the economy feels like it is on a rollercoaster with no controls.

Are you going to bury your head in the sand, or remember what humans are like when the pips squeak?

The virus seemed to be spreading unimpeded across parts of the UK for a while until about a week ago. With a few cities and counties having up to 1,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 of the population. It was doubling about every 2 weeks. Now the chaotic government has introduced some localised lockdowns, it is doubling about every 4 weeks in the worst places. Already the numbers are to high for test and trace to be effective. Scotland and Wales now have full national lockdowns, but England is not going down that route as there are a number of politicians in the governing party who insist that there should be no lockdowns and that the people should just use their common sense and live with it. This is exerting pressure on the government causing more dither. We are like a boat without a rudder at the moment.

It will up to you to consider what you read if it is spiritual, material or else.

Thanks for the link, I am a fellow traveler looking for an answer to these questions.

I would like to add something for you to consider.

Firstly, it is relevant to view humanity as a whole, we are a colony, each independent on the population for our survival and sociolo-cultural development. I will go further and suggest that in a sense, humanity is one organism, indeed the whole of the biosphere is one organism. So you can't consider yourself in isolation, if you are considering reality.

Secondly, the purpose that can be deduced from the world we find ourselves in is simply for humanity to sustain the biosphere in a healthy state in the short term and in the long term, to secure its long term survival in the universe at large. Any other purposes, of our being here can then work themselves out during this plan.

I can't shake that feeling that you are talking in a Peter Sellers, Nazzi accent, it would so suit your manner of reasoning.

What I try saying is that it is enough for me to know how I came here without losing my time in discovering the start and the end of the world existence and life.

But the explanation you give, via science, is not how you came to be here, it is merely the mechanism by which you body came to be constituted. We really don't know how we came to be here. Or, we really don't know how the universe we perceive, came to be here.

For what purpose?
— Punshhh

I thought I already gave the different thoughts about it on my first post!

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that we don't know any purposes for which we came to be here. One of your thoughts might be correct, or the real purpose might be something else entirely, we just don't know.

You do seem to be looking for some kind of spiritual purpose, or is it more that that makes more sense for you?

I'll elaborate, the answer to the question ought to be contingent on the answer to these two questions;

How did we come to be here?
And
For what purpose?

In the absence of this information, it is difficult to answer your question.

We are entirely in the dark on the issue.

We either have a good idea about what is going on or not.

Quite, and how will you know?

It is just like a novel that includes you but compares your point of view with a baseline of the real that does not care what you think.

Yes and when it comes to the esoteric, science, academic knowledge etc is also in the dark.

It is important not to be a fool in this regard.

Quite, not an easy thing to avoid.

I like what you say about testing the logic through introspection, I do that too. What I was thinking of was a kind of contemplation in which you are distinguishing knowing through the body, consciousness and being, from the thinking mind, ego and personality. Once you are good at this and see the distinction clearly, you can start to inform one from the other and develop a more subtle understanding of yourself, the world and your place in it. Perhaps, this is wisdom.

Finally

Agreed.

Both Christmas's are going to fall over the precipice. It's a slow motion car crash. I'll get out my Tom Waites albums, (Clue, The Piano has been drinking)