Open Integral

For those of you who do not follow the discussions at the Gaia pod “Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality” I’ve copied-and-pasted from a thread in that pod called “Myth of the Given”:

kelamuni said:

(quoting Marigpa): “I remember being told that a sense consciousness would perceive / apprehend an object directly then a split moment later the mental consciousness would impute onto the object. I can’t remember which model or school of Buddhist philsophy this comes from… but Kela knows : ) … he referred to it on another thread… I think he may have said it comes from the Sautantrika model/school.”

Actually, several schools hold to something like this. It may indeed trace back to the Sautrantika school, since they had a rather developed representationalist theory of perception. The reference I made was to Dignaga and Dharmakirti. Their school has been called “Sautrantika-Yogachara” by the Tibetans. Tsongkhapa was influenced to a signifcant degree by Dharmakirti. The idea that emptiness is “cognized” and that there are discreet “cognitions” of particular “emptineses” shows the influence of Dharmakirti.

In Hinduism, the Mimamsa school associated the above doctrine with an early Advaita Vedanta school that no longer exists and that was closely associated with the Yogachara. It is this school that Kamalashila mentions and of which he has to say, “There is little difference between this school and us; their only fault is that they hold to an absolute Self.” We can see remnants of these early Advaita teachings in the Gaudapada Karika.

theurj said:

From The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, CUP, 2007, p. 106:

Dharmakirti…holds that perception can only be non-conceptual. There is no determinate perception, for the judgments induced by perception are not perceptual but are just conceptual superimpositions. They do not reflect the individual reality of phenomena, but instead address their general characteristics….Hence for perception to be undistorted in a universe of particulars, it must be totally free from conceptual elaborations. This position implies a radical separation between perception…and interpretation of the object.

Dharmakirti’s view of perception, however, is more complex, for he shared with Sellars the recognition that knowledge, even at the perceptual level, does not boil down to an encounter with reality, but requires active categorization. We do not know things by sensing them, for perception does not deliver articulated objects, but only impressions, which by themselves are not forms of knowledge but become so only when they are integrated within our categorical schemes.

kelamuni said:

Dignaga and Dharmakirit define perception as bereft of conceptual construction, but like Kant’s “intuition,” it exists only as an abstraction.

This portion captures the idea: knowledge, even at the perceptual level, does not boil down to an encounter with reality, but requires active categorization. We do not know things by sensing them [alone], for perception does not deliver articulated objects, but only impressions, which by themselves are not forms of knowledge but become so only when they are integrated within our categorical schemes.

I like the comparison to Sellars. In the link posted by Jim on metaphysics, the author notes the quasi-kantian turn that things took after Wittgenstein among some anglo-american philosophers. The themes of “conceptual schemes,” “scheme and content” etc., are pervasive during and after the sixties.

theurj said:

So what’s the purpose of defining perception as bereft of concepts, or as the CHC says, having a “radical separation between perception and interpretation,” if one cannot “know” anything about the supposed pure perception without conception? For all practical intents and purposes since we cannot know about a supposed pure reality without concepts then ontology and epistemology are inseparable. So why the radical separation in the first place?

kelamuni said:

Good question.

It may have to do with a kind of apologetics or accomodation or reconcilitation concerning a pair dogmas, one being that true knowledge is perceptual knoweldge, the other of being that all worldly knowledge is conditioned.

Personally, I’ve never really understood why exactly they take this tack either, but maybe my knowledge of Dharmakirti is lacking. He is a tough nut to crack and our knowledge of him is deficient in general.

Basically, as I understand the teaching, perception (pratyaksha), which exists even if the definition is an abstraction, “touches” or is based on the real, what the Sautrantika-Yogacharas call the “pure particular” (svalakshana), but this intution is “covered over” or overlaid by “conceptual construction” (kalapana). Again, this sounds a lot like Kant

Dharmakirti did hold that there was something called “yogi pratyaksha,” a kind of pure perception of the truth. At the same time he set limits or criticized the concept of “yogic perception, in particular as it applies to other schools.

One can see the problem with such an “intutition” at once: as soon as we start talking about a “pure intuition of reality,” anything goes, and every man and his dog can start claiming all sorts of stuff, like channelling Sri Yukteshwar from Alpha Centuri.

theurj said:

From the draft of Chapter 8 in Integral Spirituality:

MONOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM AND THE MYTH OF THE GIVEN

If there is a common thread to the general postmodern current, it is a radical critique of monological consciousness-variously referred to as the myth of the given, monological empiricism, the philosophy of the subject, and the philosophy of consciousness, to name a few. As I started to indicate, what “monological” basically means is “not dialogical”-or not intersubjective, not contextual, not constructivist, not understanding the constitutive nature of cultural backgrounds-basically, not recognizing zones #2 and #4.

The myth of the given or monological consciousness is essentially another name for phenomenology and mere empiricism in any of a hundred guises-whether regular empiricism, radical empiricism, interior empiricism, transpersonal empiricism, empirical phenomenology, transcendental phenomenology, radical phenomenology, and so forth. As important as they might be, what all of them have in common is the myth of given, which includes:

–the belief that reality is simply given to me, or that there is a single pregiven world that consciousness delivers to me more or less as it is, instead of a world that is con-structured in various ways before it ever reaches my empirical or phenomenal awareness.

–the belief that the consciousness of an individual will deliver truth. This is why Habermas calls the myth of the given by the phrase “the philosophy of consciousness”- and that is what he is criticizing because it is blind to intersubjectivity, among other things. As we have been saying throughout this book, consciousness itself simply cannot see zones #2 and #4, and therefore is deficient in and of itself (e.g., “Not through introspection but through history do we come to know ourselves”). You can introspect all you want and you won’t see those other truths. So consciousness itself is deficient- whether personal or transpersonal, whether pure or not pure, essential or relative, high or low, big mind or small mind, vipassana, bare attention, centering prayer, contemplative awareness-none of them can see these other truths, and that is why Habermas and the postmodernists extensively criticize “the philosophy of consciousness.”

–a failure to understand that the truth that the subject delivers is constructed in part byintersubjective cultural networks. This is why the myth of the given is also called “the philosophy of the subject”-what we also need is “the philosophy of the intersubject, or intersubjectivity.”

–the belief that the mirror of nature, or the reflection paradigm, is an adequate methodology. The recent move in spiritual approaches is to take the reflection paradigm (or phenomenology) and simply try to extend it to cover other realities (such as transpersonal, spiritual, meta-normal, planetary consciousness, complexity thinking, etc.). This is essentially the belief that the reflection paradigm, or monological empiricism and monological phenomenology, will cover transpersonal and spiritual realities. But the subject does not reflect reality, it co-creates it.

All of those, the postmodernists agree, are shot through with the myth of the given. In other words, many approaches, wishing to get spiritual realities acknowledged by the modern world, simply take empirical methodology and try to extend it, make it bigger, push it into areas such as meditation, Gaia, transpersonal consciousness, brain scans with meditation, empirical tests of cognitive capacity with contemplation, chaos and complexity science, holograms and holographic information, the Akashic field, and so on. Although they might overcome one problem-such as Newtonian-Cartesian mechanism, for example-by introducing something like “mutually interdependent networks of dynamically related processes”-not a single one of those approaches addresses the more fundamental problem that the postmodernists are criticizing, namely, that all of those approaches are still caught in the myth of the given and the ignoring of intersubjectivity. Indeed, those approaches give no indication that they even know what it means.

theurj said:

P. 107 of the CHC goes on to discuss Dharmakirti in relation to Sellars myth of the given. It says:

This close connection between thought and language, inherited from Dignaga, differentiates Dharmakirti from classical empiricists, such as Locke and modern sense-date theorists, who believe in what Sellars describes as the “myth of the given….” Dharmakirti’s philosophy is quite different, for it emphasizes the constitutive and constructive nature of language.

Thought identifies its object by associating the representation of the object with a word. When we conceive of an object we do not apprehend it directly, but through the mediation of its aspect. Mediation through an aspect also occurs with perception, but here the process of mediation is different. In the case of perception there is a direct causal connection between the object and its representation, but no such link exists for thought. There is no direct casual link between the object and thought, but rather an extended process of mediation in which linguistic signs figure predominantly.

kelamuni said:

Language, and this is where the parallels with post-Wittgensteinian and post-Heideggerian thought come in. In Mahayana, the world is constituted by prapancha (discursive proliferation), which is linguisitic in its basis, metaphysically and etymologically. In Advaita, the phenomenal world itself is called prapancha.

In Madhyamika, conceptual construction (kalpana) and “discursive proliferation” (prapancha) are mutually determined (anyonyabhava).

kelamuni said:

In the case of perception there is a direct causal connection between the object and its representation…

This is what I was talking about when I said that for Dharmakirti and Dignaga perception “touches” or is based on the real. (object here = svalakshana).

Basically, for all the schools, perception (pratyaksha) is “valid cognition” (pramana) par excellance. Basically it means direct cognition. Some schools play with the concept a bit. The Vedanta Sutras define it in terms of scripture (sruti), ie the Upanishads.

On this idea of perception touching reality: we find this same idea in Advaita in the teaching that in every cognition, there is, always already, a direct contact with reality, in the form of the always already ever present consciousness (cit; chaitanya). In other words, “causal consciousness” is always already immanent in every act of cogntion. This idea is referred to in the comments made by Lol concerning perception, namely, that in perception, there is first an indeterminate moment that precedes the deteminate moment.

As I say above, the early Advaitins in particular are associated with this teaching. And when the Advaitins talk about these two moments of perception, in particular Mandana Mishra, Shankara’s great contemporary, they use the techincal terms nirvikalpaka (without conceptual construction) and savikalpaka (with conceptual construction), the same terms used by the yogic wing of the Indian tradition. In classical Yoga the idea can be found in the teaching that “in between” the “mind moments” a pure consciousness “shines through”; the implication is that we need to “extend” the “interval” between the moments through the practice of yoga. It is also present in the definition of release that both Vedanta and Yoga hold to: the self-manifestation or uncovering or “shining” of the Self in its own effulgence and presence, a doctrine tracable to the Chandogya Upanishad. In Hinduism, we find the idea most fully developed in Kashmiri Shaivism, in the idea that in every cognitive moment, consciousness, Shiva, is always present: in this sense, Shiva is ubiquitous. And I think this brings us around to the Indian Mahamudra teachings and Dzogchenpo, which to me sound like Kashmiri Shaivism when they refer to the natural, spontaneous (sahaja), self-perfected consciousness.

There is the contra-punctual theme of “mysticism of light” present in these various strands, a theme I am personally attracted to, like a moth, I guess. Which reminds me of a Far Side cartoon that shows Superman coming home in the evening, his costume in tatters and his head spinning, and has Mrs. Superman saying, “Have you been circling the street-lamp again?”

theurj said:

The CHC quotes I’ve been using are from a chapter in the book written by George Dreyfus and Evan Thompson. You can find the article by itself at this link.

In the article Dharmakirti does not assert a direct perception of the object; it is mediated through a representational “aspect.” Granted there is a causal connection between the object and the aspect, but they are not identical. Hence even perception is not direct but mediated.

theurj said:

Another aspect (mentioned in Jim’s thread) to the MOG question is that what is given to our perception, even assuming a direct correspondence to objects, is incredibly limited. We know now about, with the advances of science, the existence of objects well beyond our perceptual capacity to register. The root of this perceptual MOG is that it arose in a time when we assumed that our perception revealed reality, as it is, in its totality. We now know that the so-called objective reality we perceive is an infinitesimal slice of what is there. And even the vastly broader objective reality revealed with our instrumentation is also infinitesmal to the rest.

theurj said:

Regarding the notion of “self-luminous” awareness, according to Dreyfus it has to do with the perceptual, representational “aspect.” He says that “an aspect is a representation of objects in consciousness, as well as the consciousness that sees this representation.” The implication is that “perception is inherently reflexive.”

As kela noted this goes back to the Vedantins. But Dreyfus notes an interesting difference in Dharmakirti: “…the inherently reflexive character of consciousness is not a consequence of its transcendent and pure nature, but of its consisting of the beholding of an internal representation.” There are two sides to this, internal and external. The external is what we’ve been discussing, the perception of an outside object. The internal though perceives our mental states. Yet they exist together in that consciousness is “aware of itself in being aware of its object.”

However reflexive consciousness, aka “apperception,” does not take “inner mental states as its object.” It is tied to external perception in that “a subjective aspect beholds an objective aspect that represents the external object within the field of consciousness. Self-cognition is nothing over and above this beholding.”

It would appear that for Dharmakirti there is no completely subjective, transcendent and pure consciousness free from objects.

theurj said:

Dreyfus also says the following on Dharmakirti and the myth of the given, from The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction, p. 35, fn. 26:

Let me start by saying that I agree that there are many elements of the given in Dharmakirti’s view that bring him close to empiricism: the distinction between conceptual schemes and perceptual objects; the primacy of perception among the two allowable forms of knowledge; the insistence on grounding inference, the other form of knowledge, on perception; the requirement that perception apprehends real particulars; and so on. This is certainly enough to determine that Dharmakirti is a foundationalist, as I did in my book Recognizing Reality. But I would maintain that this is not enough to decide that Dharmakirti subscribes to the myth of the given in the full Sellarsian sense of the term because a crucial epistemological component is missing; the assertion that real external particulars are known directly and immediately by perception….In reality, perceptions put us in touch with external objects by being directly produced by external objects as bearing their likeness, not by directly cognizing them. Perceptions contribute to the cognitive process by providing sentience (the felling of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral experiences) and inducing perceptual judgments. It is only through these judgments, however, that perceptions provide knowledge concerning the external world.

kelamuni said:

On self-reflexivity: I believe we have discussed this elsewhere. It came up, I believe, when we were talking about whether or not it is possible to be “lucid” in the state of deep sleep. I expressed my doubts and brought up Shankara’s position, which is that there can be no knowledge at all in the causal state, since there is no object of consciousness in such a state. Indeed, this is how the causal state is defined: as the absence of any object, any “other,” any second: not two. This is Shankara’s conception of non-dualism. This idea goes back to the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad whose teaching is: the eye that sees cannot see itself. So… if there is to be lucidity, there must be reflexivity, self-consciousness. And this implies an object. Here, the object is “itself” i.e., the reflexive cognition: I am aware. Descartes “cogito.” This touches upon another critique I suggested in another thread, namely, that there is nothing at special about “lucidity.” In fact, it , as I suggest, is merely the intrusion of waking self-consciousness into the dream state. (And this critique is not based on some a priori dismissal of such state on my own part. It is to a significant degree based upon my own search for a truly discrete state of consciousness. )

As an historical sidebar, the Chandogya Upanishad actually criticizes the Brhad Up on this account. What is the use, it argues, of having a causal state in which one is not self-aware? How, in other words, can there be moksha if one is not aware that one is released? (Good point, dude!) This is the primary reason why the “fourth” state is revealed in the Mandukya Up.

I also suggested that the Tibetan teaching of “taking the mirror mind into the state of deep sleep” was in fact merely an extension of an apriori doctrine, viz., the Yogachara doctrine of self-reflexivity. At this point, we get into the important question of whether or not some of these “teachings” are really just apriori idealizations, or whether they are in fact based on actual “experiences.” What I’m suggesting is the former, that it is sometimes the case that the “teachings” are stuff that looks good on paper, or coming out of the mouth of a Great Guroo, when they are, in fact, mere abstractions. That was the point behind the extensive analysis of the “always already” in the End of Enlightenment thread. In other words, the “always already” is really just the extension of a certain kind of thinking about being, what I call the “logic of being.” (At the same time, I think that this logic does jibe with a part of our brain, in the meaning centres, that says, “This shit’s happened before. I know this shit already.” Plato’s amnesis. Buddhist smriti/memory. Kashmiri Shaiva “re-cognition. Strong shit; but also available on nitrous.) And it is not just Vedanta: In both Vedanta and Buddhism, there is kind of “conditional” logic concerning nirvana: ”IF there is to be release, here is what we need….” And then we are off to the races with various teachings about how to “get enlightened,” not much of which is based on actual experience, as the mystical empiricists suggest, but a lot of which are in fact based upon apriori speculation upon what is required.

What was I talking about initially? Oh yes, reflexivity…

We need to be careful when we talk about “self-luminosity” in regards to Mahayana and Advaita. The two ideas (sva-samvedana: Yogachara; sva-prakasha: Advaita) are completely different. In Advaita “self-luminous” refers to the idea that the Self needs no other light than itself. “Self-luminous” means that the Self stands by itself, as the Absolute Subject (Shankara) or the Absolute Object (Mandana). In Mahayana, “self-luminous” refers to apperception, to the reflexivityof consciousness. In Mahayana there is no transcendental Self. Cosciousness (vijnana), which here is completely different from consciousness (cit) in Advaita, refers to mundane wordly consciousness… or cognition, to be precise. In Yogachara, it is part of the nature of consciousness (vijnana) to be self-reflexive. Shankara denies this, and he quotes Dharmakirti (as does everyone else) when he refers to the Mahayana doctrine. Shankara say this it impossible for consciousness to be self-aware, just as it is impossible for a tumbler to stand on his own shoulders. There is, to be sure, apperception. But this does not belong to the true Self. It is mere “aham-kara,” the mere reflection or “shadow” of the light of the true self in buddhi. At this point Shankara begins to sound more like Kant. The Self, the nature of which is consciousness, is the transcendental condition of all experience. It would be impossible for the transcendental condition or cause of experience to itself be an experience, as this would imply that that experience has some other cause or basis. But for the Yogacharas, there is no problem here. Mundane experience is its own cause, or to be more precise, it has its “cause” in a colocation or network of mutually determined causes, which is the Mahayana’s redefinition of pratitya-samutpada.

And in fact, Dharmakriti, who was perhaps the most brilliant philosophcial mind that classical India produced, picks up the pieces and runs with the argument:

“How is it that consciousness can produce its own object, ” asks the detractor. “”What the hey are you talking about when you say ‘all is mind’?”

“Why should there be a problem with consciousness produciing its own object?” replies Dharmakirti. It does anyway. This is shown in the self-reflexive nature of cognition. In every cognition, we are always aware of ourselves, of what we cognize, and of the fact we are cognizing.” What a clever boy, that Dharmakirti.

By the way, Dreyfus is the man. He is precisely what we have needed for some time: someone who can think, and who can read Tibetan, and who has the time and patience and interest to cull the Tibetan commentaries for illuminating insights as to what Dharmakirti was on about.

kelamuni said:

Yes, this is what I was saying – that perception is always mediated for D. However, he does admit this “yogi pratyaksha” animal into the mix.

theurj said:

“Yes, this is what I was saying - that perception is always mediated for D. However, he does admit this “yogi pratyaksha” animal into the mix.”

On pp. 28-9 of the above referenced article Dreyfus notes that Dharmakirti shifts between the Svantantrika and Yogacara conceptions of perception to fill in the gaps. D uses an ascending, hierarchical scale of interpretation, much like we talked about before, Yogacara being higher. Hence we have such phenomenalist and idealist notions as you mention, that deny “there are external objects over and above the direct objects of perception.”

However, given the hierarchy it would seem Madhyamaka supercedes Yogacara. Nonetheless we can still see traces of the latter in Tibetan Madhyamaka, which tries to “correct” some of the supposedly relativistic and nihilistic aspects in Indian Madhyamaka. Sounds a lot like Wilber’s critique of green and reinterpretation of Nagarjuna, which is not surprising, given his Tibetan Buddhist indoctrination.

theurj said:

Also note Dreyfus’ comments from The Svantantrika-Prasangika Distinction, about Dharmakirti’s adherence in some ways to a given. While Dreyfus defends that Dharmakirti does not fully commit to the MOG he does admit to the latter’s foundationalism. And I’d say these same elements of Dharmakirt’s given are those retained in Vajrayana and what I’ve been criticizing all along.

Regarding the definition and relationship between so-called constructive and deconstructive postmodernism I offer a couple of excerpted paragraphs from the conclusion of Mark Edwards’ Integral Theory Conference paper, which Balder was kind enough to forward to me. I hear it was voted best paper at the conference? Edwards says:

Integral metastudies is a postmodern activity in that it recognizes the plurality of use and seeks to integrate them within abstract and generalising frameworks. As such I regard integral metastudies as a counterpart to the more typical forms of decentering and deconstructing postmodernism which seeks to identify and give voice to the personal story, the local history, the grounded experience and the marginalised instance. These two postmodern activities are fundamentally different and provide critical counter points for the development of each other. Decentering, pluralist postmodern research is not something to be integrated within an integral metastudies. They are complementary. Where integral postmodernism develops abstractions, decentering postmoderism develops grounded stories. Where integral postmodernism creates imaginative generalised frameworks, decentering postmo creates particular narratives and personalised accounts of human experience.

This is not a developmental modernism versus postmodernism battle. It’s an ongoing complementarity (e.g. Plato & Aristotle). An integral metastudies should not be seen as a rational project of integrating every perspective, concept, paradigm or cultural tradition within its domain. There must be some things that, be definition, lie outside of its capacities to accommodate and explain. Consequently, an integral metastudies needs a decentering postmodernism that it cannot integrate, that lies outside of its scientific purview, which continually challenges it and is critical of its generalisations, abstractions and universalisings. The decentering form of particularising postmodernism is not something that integral metatheory can locate or neatly categorised somewhere within its general frameworks. Decentering postmodernism will always provide a source of critical insight and substantive opposition to the generalising goals of an integral metastudies. In the same way that postmodernism often misunderstands integrative approaches as just some form of scientific monism, there is a danger that integral researchers can misrepresent the decentering and localising concerns of postmodernism as simple relativism.

See this article at the NY Times.

Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. It almost sounds like the title of a country love song. But no, it’s how business is done in America. Create companies with minimal legislative checks that grow way beyond their means to handle the losses and reap obscene profits for the top and then let we, the people, pay it off when it goes under. No, we cannot help out the poor families that are losing their homes, that would be socialism. But socialism is fine for these corporations when they go bankrupt, i.e., the costs are shared by each taxpayer instead of letting the company go out of business when it fails. What happened to personal responsibility for our actions? It obviously doesn’t apply to corporations or the people who run them.

But we can’t let them default, they’re too big, it would destroy the economy. No, the point is that the lack of regulation in the first place, obtained by insider lobbyists, created a situation that let them get too big without proper capitalization. They got too big purposely to create massive wealth for the top on the backs of the hard-working homeowners and then left the bill for them to pay off, in addition to losing their homes. Oh yes, they deserve the huge profits because they took the huge risk? Please, what risk? When you know you’re going to create a co-dependent monster that will collapse the whole system should it fail, and knowing it will be bailed out by the taxpayer, then there’s no risk in that at all. To the contrary, it’s a deliberate and insidious plan to game the system at our expense.

So don’t buy the usual, empty conservative rhetoric about the free market versus socialism. Their version of the free market is privatize the profits but socialize the losses.

I’m with Bruce Kunkel (of Santa Rosa Integral Salon) on becoming aware of how we define and confine ourselves by our perspectives, and how we have to open to newer perspectives beyond them. And perhaps even to open into, as Gebser calls it, the aperspectival. I’d say to do so we even have to examine what we’re calling our integral belief system.

In that light I offer this link to an essay by Rich called “Integral Ideology” at the Science, Culture & Integral Yoga blog. Rich has participated in a couple of the dialogues over at Integral Review and one of his perspectives might be labled Aurobindian, but he is much more than just that.

Do we recognize ourselves in any of his analasynthesis?

Obama too has questionable economic advisors: Jason Furman. See this article in The Nation questioning Obama’s judgment in naming him as head of the economic team.

You might be interested in Keith Oberman’s investigative report on the above. It turns out that McCain’s chief economic advisors were part and parcel of creating a law that caused the Enron debacle and now artificially inflated oil prices.

It seems in general that politics, public policy and good citizenship have been neglected subjects in integral studies. Granted there are some exceptions but it seems to lag behind things like personal meditation practice, business coaching or developmental studies. Here are a few words of recognitiion and encouragement on this apparent lack:

“In general, the related fields of public policy, dialogue and deliberative democracy, and the related fields of adult development and learning appear to be standing as surprisingly separate silos. I advocate for dismantling these and many other such silos that limit our ability to see and work with the whole. I also advocate for and even predict that a new integral field of public issue analysis is ready to emerge.”

From Jan Inglis, “How then do we choose to live? Facing the climate crisis and seeking `the meta response.’” Integral Review, 4:1, June 2008

“I remember seeing proofs of a CIA interrogation manual, something we’d been sent unofficially, for comment,” the old man said. “The first chapter laid out the ways in which torture is fundamentally counterproductive to intelligence. The argument had nothing to do with ethics, everything to do with quality of product, with not squandering potential assets.” He removed his steel-rimmed glasses. “If the man who keeps returning to question you avoids behaving as if he were your enemy, you begin to lose your sense of who you are. Gradually, in the crisis of self that your captivity becomes, he guides you in your discovery of who you are becoming.”

“Did you interrogate people?” asked Garreth, the black Pelican case under his feet.

“It’s an intimate process,” the old man said. “Entirely about intimacy.”

–Spook County by William Gibson, p. 275.

Here is some news you won’t get in mass media. Thanks to Randi Rhodes for the links.

Perhaps 60% of Today’s Oil Price is Pure Speculation

The Truth About America’s Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits

One Piece of Legislation is why the Price of Everything is Going Through the Roof: Part I

Part II

Bush, Congress Must Hold Oil Industry, Speculators Accountable for High Gas Prices

Bush Has ChevronTexaco Lawyer Head Up Fed’s Oil Price Gouging Probe

Bruce Kunkel has a song on his new CD called “Race to the Bottom.” Ironically there’s a new article in The Nation (5/1/08) with the same name about Clinton’s campaign tactics and how they are alienating some of her previously strongest supporters, the feminist movement. Excerpts from the article follow:

Yet what is most troubling–and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement–is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival’s race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior “electability,” she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right–in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country–seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. And the Clinton campaign’s use of this strategy has many nonwhite and nonmainstream feminists crying foul.

The Wright, Farrakhan and Ayers controversies have been fueled by a craven media, and ABC’s performance in the debate has rightly been condemned. But given that Clinton is the one who is running for President and who purports to represent liberal ideals, her complicity in such attempts to establish guilt by association is far more troubling. While she has dealt gingerly with the matter of Wright in the wake of his recent appearance at the National Press Club–accusing Republicans of politicizing the issue–she also took pains to remind reporters that she “would not have stayed in that church under those circumstances.”

It’s disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent’s patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color–who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous.

Of course, Clinton’s decision to play the hawk may have had other motivations. Perhaps she really believed that voting to authorize the war in Iraq was the right thing to do (which is, arguably, even more worrying). But her posture in this campaign–threatening to “totally obliterate” Iran after being asked how she would respond in the highly improbable event of an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel, for example–has at least something to do with a desire to compete on a macho foreign policy playing field. It’s the woman in this Democratic primary race who has the cowboy swagger: the nationalist and militaristic rhetoric, the whiskey-swilling photo-ops, the gotcha attacks for perceived insults to a working-class electorate (as in “Bittergate”) that is usually depicted as white and male.