The Zen Wagon

The Uroborus Reunion

2009-05-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

The uroborus, also spelled ouroboros in the Greek translation, is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle.

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia describes the uroborus as a representation of self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly recreating itself. The cycles begin anew as soon as they end. The uroborus can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities that it cannot be extinguished.

Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, interpreted the uroborus as having an archetypical or a quintessential significance to the human psyche. The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann described it as a representation of the pre-ego dawn state. Newmann, on the basis of mythological and ethnographical material, depicted the uroborus as the original psychic state prior to the birth of ego consciousness. He used the circular image of the tail-eating serpent to represent the fundamental Self, the original ‘mandala-state’ of totality out of which the individual ego is born.

Edward F. Edinger’s book, Ego and Archetype, describes the individual’s journey to psychological wholeness. The book is a synthesis of Carl Jung’s fundamental psychological concepts. According to Edinger the Self is born but the ego, based on life experiences, is made. In the beginning of our psychic life all is Self and because, at this stage, the Self is the center of and totality of being, the ego totally indentifies with the Self, and even experiences itself as a deity. Edinger indicates that “it is generally accepted among analytical psychologists that the task of the first half of life involves ego development with progressive separation between ego and Self”. During the second half an ego-Self reunion unfolds with a surrender of the ego as it experiences and relates to the Self. Edinger acknowledged that while the basic separation- union principle is a good working formula it’s too broad and a more balanced idea would be to understand the process of psychological development as a continuous circular or spiral process of “alternation between ego-Self union and ego-Self separation.

Edinger developed the four figures in following diagram to represent the relationship between the ego and Self at different stages of development. The first figure shows the original uroborus state in which the ego is completely unconscious of the Self.

The line connecting the ego-Self axis represents the vital connecting link between the ego and Self that ensures the integrity of the ego. Initially ego and self are one. The ego is present only as a potentiality. Gradually the ego begins to emerge and become more conscious of itself. The last figure, according to Edinger, is an ‘ideal theoretical limit which probably does not exist in reality. This stage represents a total separation of ego and self and a complete consciousness of the ego-Self axis”.

A continuous cycle of inflation and separation occurs through out life and finally concludes in a process called individuation.

Individuation, a Jungian term, is a search for totality. It means that one becomes a totally integrated personality or a person. It is a discovery of the totality of your Self. Jung coined the word individuation to signify the process of the unfolding personality in the course of one’s life. It is a natural, inherent process in man. It cannot be stimulated by something external. It grows from within and just as the body can become deformed or ill by lack of nutrition or exercise, the personality can be adversely affected by a deficit of experience or education. An entry on individuation in Wikipedia states that people that have advanced towards individuation, besides being physically and mentally healthy, are more harmonious, mature, and responsible.

So what is psychically unfolding from the moment of our birth is a very interesting and complex process of psychic development. In the first half of life we are constructing and establishing our ego/personality. The development of this personality is based on our educational, professional and societal experiences. Throughout this process we continuously drift back and forth between the affairs of the ego (personality) and the wholeness of the encapsulating Self. For the personality to develop in a healthy way there must also be a conscious link to the Self as proscribed by Edinger’s ego-Self axis line. We must continuously be aware of the ‘idea’ of Self. During the occasions of separation from the Self the ego/personality is in fact in a state of alienation from the Self. Without a continuous healthy attention to the ego-self axis there is a danger that the ego may become permanently alienated from the Self possibly resulting in an isolated, lonely, and narcissist personality.

A lot of people mistakenly indentify completely with their egos and believe that the ego is actually their true or total self when in fact the ego is only one compartment within our total being; a segment that, poorly managed, can cause many problems. Eckhart Tolle’s recent book A New Earth provides a very good insight into the role of the ego and explains how we can “transcend the ego-based state of consciousness and create a saner more loving world by coming to experience who we truly are”.

We start out in our psychic life a completely whole uroborus. As we get older our ego begins its journey of separation. Our life experience moulds our personality and this process continues until we reach a peak or plateau in midlife. When we get there we become who we are like it or not. Midlife is a point of transformation where we begin another journey that involves the integration of all of life’s experiences into, as when we started, a whole. We experience a uroborus reunion.

There is no consensus that personality development stops at a specific interval in life. There is a view that says change stops at a certain age. It’s called the ‘hard plaster’ theory. The name given to the view that change happens in later life but at a slower rate is called the ‘soft plaster’ theory. Another group, called the “Contexulists’, maintains that change is present in the personality throughout life.

Whatever the real story is concerning the development of the ego/personality there should be little doubt that it does change over time and that we can positively manage that change if we are paying attention. And whenever or if it does stop, peak, or level off we can knowingly proceed with the positive development of the final phase or phases as we eventually embrace an ego-Self re-harmonization.

Many of us make the effort to keep our physical bodies in good health throughout life. We exercise regularly and pay attention to what we ingest. Many of us also understand the need for emotional soundness and spend a lot of time on tasks and entertainment that we enjoy. All of this helps our psychic development too of course but the results may be improved if we better understand the real nature of our psyche. If we become more aware of the process involved with our psychic development we can strive to properly nourish the ripening of our personalities and maintain a sense of wholeness throughout its development. We can then facilitate a more beneficial reunion of the ego-Self during the second half of life. As to how we accomplish this, well, it’s a natural occurring process anyway without a guaranteed outcome but when we are fully aware of this process there are many avenues all around us which we can utilize to complement the development process.

We can turn to yoga, meditation or prayer and even psychoanalysis if necessary to keep our psychic development on the right path. Keep a diary. Attend motivational courses or read inspiring books. Paint a picture. Do anything that keeps you in touch with your true self and helps with maintaining and ultimately establishing a healthy character. The most important thing you can do throughout life is to continuously look inside for as Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living”.

And one more thing – just because the ego-Self process develops naturally doesn’t mean that the end results are guaranteed. No one will receive an e-mail advising them that it’s time for introspection and harmonization. We must first be continuously and fully aware of the process in order to maximise the benefits. Without recognition we will sense that something is up but fail to realise just what it is and miss life's greatest reunion.

Semian Mogilevich

2009-05-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

David Cronenburg’s 2007 crime drama Eastern Promises illustrated a realistic depiction of the violent Russian criminal underground in London. John N. Gray a British political philosopher and author of the darkly pessimistic Straw Dogs opined that the gangster capitalism in Russia was the most successful on the planet. Transliterated in Russia as ‘Mafiya’ organized crime there has grown immensely and with widespread emigration in the 1990’as it has spread throughout the world.

The following guest post is from a university paper written by Matt Gossie. Matt is enrolled in a BBA program at the University of Cape Breton and the paper was prepared for his course Criminal Law: A Business perspective.

The primary subject of the paper is, a Russian mobster named Semion Mogilevich whom Robert L. Friedman, in his book Red Mafiya, calls the most dangerous gangster in the world.

Introduction:

Two luxurious villas located near the quiet town of Ricany, Prague, were used as torture chambers for what Interpol (the international police service) call the Red Mafiya. This coldly ruthless breed of young mob enforcers, most of whom were veterans of the Afghanistan-Russian war, achieved infamous notoriety because of their extreme brutality. According to intelligence gathered by Interpol the person identified as the “Boss” of the Red Mafiya is a 62-year-old Ukrainian-born Jew named Semion Mogilevich. Six years after Mogilevich fashioned the Red Mafiya, this notorious Russian organized crime cartel rose to global prominence as the worlds’ most cruelly vicious criminal organization.

The targets of the Red Mafiya are typically business people who refused to be intimidated or give in to the Red Mafiya’s extortion demands. These individuals (both men and women) were kidnapped and taken to what seemed to be two exclusive villas, but in reality they served as torture chambers for the Red Mafiya. Once in the grip of Mogilevichs’ young enforcers the victims are stabbed and tortured and their bodies butchered and mutilated. The slaughter of these individuals was so gruesome that it not only terrified business-people into compliance, it also terrified rival criminal gangs in the area. Although the primary base of operation for the Red Mafiya is in Budapest, this organization has satellite operations New York, Pennsylvania, Southern California, and as far away as New Zealand.

The sixty-two year old Semion Mogilevich remains an obscure person who fiercely guards his privacy. He is known by his colleagues as the ''Brainy Don,'' perhaps because he has an economics degree from the University of Lvov, Poland, or because of his ability up until the late nineteen-nineties (1990’s) to conduct his huge international criminal network without attracting negative public or media attention. In August of 1996, The Village Voice, a free weekly newspaper published in New York City, was able to obtain a large amount of top secret FBI and Israeli intelligence files along with the latest transcripts of interrogations and interviews with key members of Mogilevich criminal organization. This leaked information also contained intelligence garnered from law enforcement establishments around the world. Mogilevich represents a unique and extremely formidable variety of Russian gangster, the prototype “don” of the new millennium and is considered to be a grave threat to the stability of Israel and Eastern Europe.

Mogilevich - Background:

Little information exists regarding Mogilevich’s early years. Born in Kiev, Mogilevich’s mother was a podiatrist and his father managed a large state owned printing company. As a young man Mogilevich began his criminal career in the early 1970’s as a member of the “Lyubertskaya” crime organization. As a member of this criminal gang, Mogilevich was involved in petty theft and counterfeiting which ultimately led to his conviction for illegal currency speculation in the Ukraine. In the years following his 18 month sentence he was arrested and found guilty of dealing currency on the black market for which he received prison sentence of four (4) years. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that Mogilevich, who is described as bald, weighing approximately three-hundred pounds and who enjoys wearing brightly colored clothes and ostentatious pinky rings, made his first millions.

The 1980’s:

During the mid-nineteen eighties, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were scrambling to get out of Russia. These Jews were frantically emigrating to Israel and America, but were prohibited from taking their valued possessions. Mogilevich, using his Jewish background made deals with the fleeing Jews to buy their assets (comprised of rubles, jewelry, art and furniture) for a fraction of its true value. In return, Mogilevich promised to sell these items for fair market value and forward the proceeds at a later date. However, Mogilevich reneged and kept the millions realized from the sale of these items. Now Mogilevich’s criminal empire had the financial means to expand globally.

The 1990’s:

In the early 1990’s, in an effort to avoid gangland wars that were exploding all over the city of Moscow, Mogilevich and his top henchmen left Russia and settled in Israel. Mogilevich used his right as a Jew to reside in Israel as an Israeli citizen, where he maintained a low profile. In Israel his criminal activities remained low key as Mogilevich recognized the value of moving unrestricted in a country that does not extradite its citizens. The reach of Mogilevich’s criminal organization extended well beyond the Israeli borders and into countries world-wide. Just as Mogilevich used his Jewish heritage to gain access into Israel, in 1991 he married Katalin Papp, a Hungarian national. This marriage allowed him to legally reside in Budapest. It was in Budapest, Hungary were Mogilevich built the foundation for his international criminal empire.

Mogilevich Vs. FBI / Mossad:

Mogilevich’s criminal activities are well detailed in FBI and Israeli intelligence reports. These reports allege that Mogilevich’s criminal empire is involved in the trafficking of nuclear materials, drugs, prostitution, precious gems, and stolen art. His contract hit squads operate in the U.S. and Europe. He controls everything that goes in and out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, a ''smugglers' paradise,'' says Monya Elson, a well known, long time associate of Mogilevich. Mogilevich bought a bankrupt airline in a former Central Asian Soviet republic for millions of dollars in cash so he could haul heroin out of the Golden Triangle. The US authorities were most disturbed by Mogilevich's seemingly “legal” purchase of almost all of the Hungarian armaments industry; this according to American Central Intelligence Agency can significantly jeopardize the regional and national security of NATO and negatively impact on the war against terrorism.

It is interesting to note that in the October 2001 issue of the Russian magazine “Top Secret,” which relies on sources within the Russian security services, argued that there was direct connection between Osama bin Laden and the Russian mafia. The “Top Secret Magazine” stated in a news article entitled “Black September,” that the head of the largest and most dangerous Russian crime syndicate is none other than Semion Mogilevich. This article continued to allege that Mogilevich met Bin Laden’s associates in Marbella, Spain. According to Robert I. Friedman, “Mogilevich’s lieutenants are trained in intelligence operations and counter-surveillance, and provide warnings of impending police actions. They are experts at compromising Western security services, especially by making secret agreements to provide information on rival crime groups.” The organizational structure of Mogilevich’s criminal empire employs a mix of East Bloc intelligence professionalism with arms smuggling, money laundering, extortion, prostitution, drug trafficking, and murder. Mogilevich’s “former” East bloc intelligence professionals are well compensated for providing training to the al Qaeda terrorists that includes teaching them how to set up safe houses and smuggle weapons. According to sources near the action, East European mobsters (including Mogilevich’s Red Mafiya) are helping al Qaeda to acquire nuclear, chemical, and biological materials. The contraband is smuggled from the “former” Soviet Union and into Slovakia, through the Czech Republic and finally Poland, were they are sold for cash or heroin.

The Al Qaeda Connection?

Rumors persist that London is Bin Laden’s next target, and that “al Qaeda is planning to strike this city or some other city, and that various mafia groups are involved.” Investigative reporter and writer Jeffrey Nyquist maintains that there is no doubt that they are involved. Nyquist questions the rational arguing that, “If one stops for a moment and think things over, is it really conceivable that Russian criminals, without encouragement from Moscow, would dare to smuggle arms to terrorists in Western Europe?” That it seems inconceivable that the Hungarian security troops haven’t stormed Mogilevich’s fortified compound in Budapest; which is the capital of a NATO country. Would this suggest that Hungary is a NATO country in name only but not in reality? According to Nyquist there definitely appears to be “something amiss in this picture.” Nyquist argues that the idea that a police state such as Russia, lead by a police statesman (and ex-KGB agent - Putin) cannot cope with gangsters who steal nuclear, biological, and chemical materials is simply not a credible assertion. According to Nyquist, Vladimir Putin is perfectly capable of using gangster methods against his political opponents; including “oligarchs” and journalists therefore it would seem inconceivable to think that Putin would not use these resources against criminals who steal Russian weapons.

Conspiracy Theory or Fact?

Nyquist questions whether it is possible that “thefts” of Russian WMD materials are somehow useful to Vladimir Putin? After all according to Nyquist, the stolen weapons are smuggled by Russian gangsters and “former” intelligence operatives for use against Western countries. Nyquist asks a difficult question, “If you think about it,

Russia

’s WMDs were built with Western countries in mind.” But Nyquist indicated, there is another set of questions we also need to ask ourselves.

Why should a criminal syndicate, Russian or otherwise, be motivated to help Islamists?
Are American gangsters stealing WMDs and buying armament-factories and setting up compounds in neighboring countries in order to sell arms to terrorists?

When one scrutinizes the Red Mafiya it is important to realize that this is no ordinary case of organized crime. The Red Mafiya has at its disposal an army of Russian criminals who hold doctorates degrees, have been trained in intelligence and military tactics and who are facilitating the advancement of terrorism aimed at the West with impunity. According to Nyquist the world has never faced a criminal empire such as the Red Mafiya before. Jeffrey Nyquist ended his thoughts pertaining to Mogilevich with the following thought.

“Perhaps, at this point, we ought to say something about the elephant in the room. The biggest criminal organization in history, with the largest number of murders to its credit, was no mafia at all. It was a totalitarian formation known as “communism” which killed over100 million people in the twentieth century and looted untold wealth. Communism was a formation that supposedly broke apart and no longer threatens the world. But what if this formation reformed itself in an unexpected way? What if this formation found a new path, a new set of tricks and a new avenue of attack? Think about it.”

Concluding Thoughts:

While researching and examining the various books, internet sources and other documents associated with the criminal activities of Semion Mogilevich, this researcher found this enigmatic criminal strangely fascinating. Mogilevich’s brilliance was matched only by his ruthless brutality. As Mogilevich began to develop his criminal organization, he took full advantage of the breakdown of Russian political infrastructure and the ensuing economic and social chaos. Mogilevich employed highly qualified professionals and disillusioned veterans of the Russian – Afghanistan war. These people provided him with the muscle and brains required to successfully build his criminal empire. When gangland wars began to threaten Mogilevich’s safety, he fled Moscow and relocated in Israel: he did this by using his entitlement as a Jew and declaring himself an Israeli citizen. The fact that just a few years earlier he had stolen millions of dollars from desperate Jews forced to flee Russia went unnoticed. The collapse of the Russian economy combined with the erosion of government owned industry and armed forces created an environment in which Russia had become a “Petri-dish” for the growth of organized crime. Even Mogilevich’s marriage was one of convenience, by marrying Katalin Papp, a Hungarian national; he gained legal access into Budapest, Hungary. By this point in Mogilevich’s career his reach had taken on an international influence. Mogilevich has the ability to discern weaknesses that are inherent to national and international law. For example, because Israel does not extradite its citizens, Mogilevich was free to conduct illegal activities in other countries without fear of prosecution. Perhaps his most enterprising criminal initiative was his recognition that the laws and regulations associated with the North American Stock Market were both antiquated and poorly regulated. By employing highly qualified economists and individuals who already had in place a well developed business network, Mogilevich was able to exploit any and all weaknesses or loop-holes exposed by his team. Mogilevich’s nefarious undertakings were a perfect fit for the North American market place, a market driven by the price of stock, CEO bonuses, and greed. While it is difficult to justify or rationalize Mogilevich’s brutally affective manner of conducting business, one cannot ignore the reality that Mogilevich used fundamental business principles upon which he founded a highly successful criminal organization. As the end of the first decade of the new millennium approaches it appears to this writer that the lines between what is considered a very efficient and effective business enterprise and what is defined as “white-collar-crime” has started to become less and less distinct. Perhaps in the final analysis, history will remember Mogilevich as the man who identified and subsequently forced the international and the North American Stock Markets to revamp governing regulations and tighten up grey areas ripe for illegal exploitation.

The Daimon In Your Machine

2009-04-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Does your computer have a ghost living inside it? Mine seems like it does.

Gilbert Ryles, a British philosopher, in his book, The Concept of Mind, introduced the phrase the “ghost in the machine”. Ryles was criticizing Rene Descartes’ theories on mind-body dualism. I once read a book by Arthur Koestler that used the phrase in its title.
Koestler’s book targeted mankind’s self destructive urge particularly with regard to the nuclear proliferation occurring at the end of the sixties. The book also had issues with the behaviourist theories of B.F. Skinner. Koestler’s ‘ghost’ was the earlier, more primitive reptilian brain on which our human brain has been built. I found it intriguing that there was possibly an unconscious entity within my psyche that could covertly affect my conscious activity and I wondered if we should extend this disposition to non-human machines and objects that we are involved with on a daily basis.

Can non-human objects or machines have ghosts in them too? Rocks are objects that are unarguably non-human and inanimate. For a brief period in the ‘70’s rocks were playfully sold as pets. We refer to boats and automobiles as “she” in our daily conversations. We get indignant with many of our machines when they don’t perform the way we expect them to. Do our non-human machines have ghosts in them too? If you are an Animist you would likely venture a yes to that question. Wikipedia describes Animism as a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans and animals but also in plants, rocks, rivers and even thunder.

Another term, similar to ghost, that we could use to describe the animated shadow living inside of our human and non-human machines is daimon. We apparently aren’t sure of the exact origin of the word in the ancient Greek language. Daimon is the Greek derivative of demon and in this sense means ‘replete with knowledge’. The more exact Greek meaning for daimon is ‘divine power’, ‘fate’, or ‘god’. Early Christians preferred the more derogatory term demon because they didn’t like the idea of an inner voice or figure influencing us. The Romans took a different tack altogether and referred to it as “genius”.

James Hillman, an American Jungian psychologist, in his 1997 book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, developed a theory in which the daimon plays a central role. Hillman presented what he called ‘the acorn theory’ of the soul. The theory states that each of us already contains the capacity to realize our unique individual possibilities. There is a special ‘something’ that I carry into the world at birth that is particular only to me and is connected to my daimon. This “energy of the soul” will be displayed throughout my whole lifetime and will be expressed in the things that I do in life.

Now back to my computer. It has a daimon living inside it, as has every computer that I have ever owned or worked on. Yours does too. The daimons in our computers periodically express themselves in ways that can range from simply annoying to down right ugly but are mostly just harmless and annoying. Once we understand the unique nature of our particular daimon we will have a happier experience when using our computers as well as the peripheral equipment and networks that are attached to them. And don’t forget, they all have daimons too. Be warned though, uglier daimons are lurking about like shadowy sharks looking for easy pickings and we should have some understanding about their effects too.

My daimons are related to quirks in my Vista operating system as well as with adware that came with some of the programs I have installed on my computer. These adware daimons like to call home regularly to let the manufacturers know what I’m up to and if I need to install an update. There are benign cookies on my computer too but I leave them there as they are convenient when accessing sites that I use on a regular basis. I really make an effort to keep more serious daimons from getting into my computer.

There are as many reasons for the root causes of computer daimon occurrences as there are parts in a computer. In most cases you can live with them as long as you know how to handle them when they arise out of the blue. Others require more attention and are only controlled in the sense that they can be prevented, managed and, in modern times, thwarted. Mid level daimon manifestations such as viruses have more serious consequences and more effort will be required to deal with them. Spyware and adware can be very annoying and jam your internet data flow. The ugliest daimons are evolving in sophistication and can bring mayhem to industrial control systems or threaten the affairs of nations by compromising their information networks. Our own home computers can be directly involved in these very serious incursions.

If your computer suddenly stops responding when you are using it or if you can’t access the internet and you could a second ago, a minor and controllable daimon may be responsible. Usually restarting your computer will clear things up. Just press the power button until the computer shuts down if you can’t turn it off normally. Then turn it right back on again. The daimon will most likely vanish. In the instance where you can’t get on line you can also power down the associated modem or router that connects you to your Internet Provider. If you are using a wireless router along with the provider’s modem or router turn the power off and on with that unit as well. Turning your machines off and then back on again will usually resolve these types of less harmful and controllable daimon visits that occur periodically. There are technical reasons for daimons that work this way but there is not necessarily a fix for them. You really don’t have to know exactly what the cause is to deal with these types of problems. Either they’re temporary network related data confusion issues or are bugs that are system oriented and may or may not be eventually addressed by the associated manufacturer of the software or hardware involved. Don’t worry about them once you’ve determined their nature.

Mid level daimons, such as most viruses and adware are more difficult for most users to analyse. That’s why we depend on relatively sophisticated software products available from companies like MacAfee and Symantec to protect our computers. These corporations spend a lot of time monitoring the threats out there and their security professionals provide regular updates to their programs to detect and remove or manage the unwanted daimon visits. Usually these daimon occurrences are more annoying than dangerous but they can render your computer basically unusable once massively entrenched.

The companies that provide the operating system software used on computers also provide regular security updates to defend against daimon visits. Microsoft even has a free anti-spyware program that you can download called Windows Defender. It’s a good program and I use it because it’s been developed by the same company – Microsoft – that
makes the operating system that I use.

Daimons of a much more serious nature are Worms and Trojan Horses. They can be very destructive to business and home networks. Users rely on the same “anti-daimon’ software as previously mentioned for protection from these uglier manifestations. Your financial resources are vulnerable to these predators as they can be used to determine passwords and related information that you use for on line banking or shopping. They can also consign control of your computer to unscrupulous cyber attackers that use your computers to spread Spam emails and to similarly infect other computers.

The ugliest daimons of all involve a complex and relatively recent evolution of digital attacks that utilize Worms and Trojan Horses to wreak havoc on a national or global scale. Conventionally we have considered such attacks as attempts to steal information and that any damage would be temporary and superficial. We are now identifying incursions where a few lines of code could cause industrial control systems used by power plants and other critical infrastructure to malfunction and shut down. According to an article in the April 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics “many of the control systems in the industrial world were installed years ago with few or no cyber-security features”. Now many of these control systems have been integrated into corporate computer networks that are linked to the internet.

April Fool’s day this year has been heralded as a showdown with a worm known as Conficker. The security experts figure that this worm has infected over three million PC’s already and it’s still growing. Not only is it growing but it’s also evolving in place. The attackers have been patching and upgrading the implanted code in infected PC’s to resist disinfection programs and to improve the worms’ effectiveness. The infected computers form a massive network that is now commonly referred to as a ‘botnet’. They don’t know exactly what the specific intentions are for this particular ‘botnet’ but think that it’s intended to become a huge Spam mailing system. They suspect more to come from this threat but acknowledge that given the resulting publicity that industry and law enforcement efforts will deter any future phases of the worm’s progression.

This past March a ten month investigation by researchers at the University of Toronto uncovered a broad Chinese espionage scheme that forayed into computer networks in foreign embassies, news services, and even the office of the Dalai Lama. The system called GhostNet infects host computers via e-mails. It directs the infected computers to download a Trojan Horse that enables the attackers to gain complete control. This Trojan searches for and downloads files, and can operate attached devices including microphones and cameras. The researchers found out that GhostNet had developed a botnet of over 1300 computers in 103 countries. They don’t know if the attackers have ever benefited from their ‘zombie’ network but insist that this incursion is a wake up call to policy makers as it demonstrates how a relatively simple and unsophisticated technical system could be used to set up a very effective spy network.

From the merely annoying to the costly ugly the prerequisite tactic for dealing with computer daimons is awareness. When you understand how easily your computer can be compromised and how you can protect it then you are on your way to an enjoyable and efficient computing experience. Installing a good security program on your computer, following recommended security maintenance procedures and religiously monitoring and installing security and operating system updates will ensure that you are keeping your computer as safe as possible from attackers. Your Internet Service and Web Mail providers aid your protection efforts by employing their own security measures to keep malware out of your computer and, by extension, their computers as well. As for the much more serious infections, such as Conficker and GhostNet, awareness and effective security software and maintenance are still your best means for protection. These higher level attacks are monitored by security experts on a national and global basis. If the end users take the proper precautions to protect their individual computers and networks they will greatly enhance the endeavours of the security experts and will help to keep the Internet, and your computer, operating smoothly.

By using the term daimon as a metaphor for computer viruses and bugs I am attempting to reduce the aversion that most users have towards the technical descriptions and jargon that are used to describe them. Envisioning a virus or bug as a spirited entity, I think, will make it easier for us to deal with them and will help us to better recognize and control them when they emerge. So get to know your less serious daimons and be fully prepared to engage the more menacing ones.

Zen And The Wizard Of Id

2009-03-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and founder of Analytical Psychology. He and Sigmund Freud were the nucleus for just about everything there is today in the field of Psychotherapy. These onetime friends and colleagues eventually parted ways because of Jung’s growing disagreements with some of Freud’s basic ideas.

Jung thought that Freud’s focus on sexuality was overdone and that his concept of the unconscious was too negative and limited. For Jung the unconscious was a source of creativity. Jung believed that modern psychotherapy rests on the principle that when allowing fragments from the unconscious mind to be built into the life of the conscious mind a restructuring takes place that negates the conflicts between these psychic entities. As a result the mind becomes more whole.

Zen practice also recognizes the importance of the unconscious in the development of the wholeness of mind. Zen practice accomplishes this by the emptying of content from the conscious mind. According to Jung, as this emptying occurs over a period of time, the contents of the unconscious will transfer to the conscious mind. This is a basis of the Satori experience in Zen.

When I was a much younger man Jung serendipitously fell onto my life’s path. Since then, his work has been a significant influence on my personal development. I had given Freud a try but he always left me confused and wanting. Like Jung, I wasn’t keen on Freud’s emphases on sexuality as a motivating psychological force. Jung’s work seemed to make more sense to me and his view of mankind was a lot more optimistic than Freud’s.

Addressing Jung’s interest in the thought of the East J.J. Clarke in his book, Jung and Eastern Thought wrote that “there is an obvious affinity between his [Jung’s] own thought and the ways of thinking of the Eastern philosophers, and even if he had never written a word on this subject, it would be possible to draw clear parallels between them”. My own interest in Eastern thought began with the writings of German Novelist and poet Herman Hesse. I still have Siddhartha and Journey to the East that I purchased thirty years ago. Understanding the concepts of Buddhism, especially the Zen practice, has been a struggle for me because my Western mind isn’t wired to easily comprehend them. Jung felt that the ideas and views contained in the original Buddhist writings were very difficult for the average western mind to comprehend. He said that by devoting considerable time to the study of Buddhism the perplexities that Westerners experience will eventually fade away. We just have to keep working at it.

Today Buddhism has spread rapidly to the West and as a result the essence of Buddhist teachings have become less difficult for the Western mind to assimilate. There are now hundreds of Buddhist centers throughout North America and Europe and our libraries are full of books on Eastern thought. The Internet is another increasingly popular way for Westerners to receive training in the ways of Buddhism. Zen concepts still remain perplexing to most of us but Zen too has become more assessable thanks to this proliferation of information. Jung’s view that most Westerners wouldn’t sacrifice many years of their lives to the wearisome pursuit of such an object like Zen still stands. It requires a lot of effort to get results. Jung was certain though that the benefits were worth it and if we made an honest effort to understand and follow its precepts, “even to a certain degree”, we would “ come upon certain depths beneath the bizarre cloak of the individual Satori experiences, or we will sense disquieting difficulties which the philosophic West has up to now thought to disregard”. In his foreword to An Introduction to Zen Buddhism he sums it all up this way – “Zen demands intelligence and will power, as do all the greater things which desire to become real”. The author of the book, D.T. Suzuki, refers to Zen as the heart of Buddhism. Jung said that Suzuki, a Japanese writer, brought Zen closer to Western understanding. Jung was particularly impressed with the manner in which Suzuki presented Zen concepts.

Satori is described as the spiritual goal of Zen Buddhism. Suzuki said that Satori is the raison d’être of Zen. Without it there would be no Zen. One of the key concepts of Jung’s work is Individuation. Both of them are processes that involve the attainment of self realization after serious and sustained effort. Both involve a substantial transformation by resolving misconceptions between the self and the ego and both result in a psychological healing or sense of wholeness.

Jung divided the unconscious mind into two parts: personal and collective. The personal unconscious is individual. It is mine. It contains my accumulated perceptions, repressed or forgotten memories, wishes, and emotions. The collective unconscious is universal. It predates the individual and is a repository of all of man’s religious, spiritual, and mythological symbols and experiences and is common to all of us. It’s like a universal library. The Self, which is often confused with the Ego, is the central pattern or archetype of the collective unconscious. It unifies the personality. According to Jung self-realization is our goal in life and is the most complete expression of the highest unity that we call individuality. We achieve wholeness with Individuation by coming to know, giving expression to, and harmonizing the various components of the psyche. Our conscious and unconscious minds become united. The Self is liberated.

Zen is also a process involving a unification of psychic parts into a harmonized whole. Like Jung’s Individuation process Zen seeks to overcome the illusion that our ego represents our true Self. The way Jung expresses it is that the enlightenment of Satori “embraces an insight into the nature of self, and … it is an emancipation of the consciousness from an illusionary conception of self”. While Jung concedes that the tasks of Western psychotherapy are too varied and the individual phases involved are met with far more opposition then those of Zen the results of the latter are too meaningful to be ignored. For over two thousand years the “most venturesome minds of the East” have been occupied with the concept of wholeness and have developed philosophical doctrines “which put all Western attempts in the same line into the shade”.

Individuation is a process worked on and brought to consciousness by way of analysis and rigorous self examination. Zen is an extremely elusive and puzzling process that includes concepts such as Satori and Karma as well as the ambiguous and paradoxical method of the Koan to achieve enlightenment. Both processes are available for our use and have the potential to greatly improve our lives.
Jung’s concepts may be more accessible to our Western intellect then Zen but Jung advises us not to “underestimate the spiritual depth of the East, or to assume any kind of cheapness in Zen”. As for the idiosyncrasies, strangeness, and paradox involved with the Zen method Jung said “One must always consider…that on the one hand there are any number of people who cannot distinguish between a spiritual witticism and nonsense, and on the other hand very many people who are convinced of their own cleverness to such an extent that they have never in their lives met any but fools”.

Jung and Zen are compellingly representative of the convergence of the Eastern and Western understanding of individual development. Jung sums things up this way: “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ”

Guest Post

2009-03-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

This is a poem written by my "rug hooking" wife Carolyn. The poem was printed in The Loop
Magazine of the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia in the September, 2007 issue.

WORDS FROM A HOOKED RUG

I am the family wardrobe, best and worst
From all of its members
The last - to the first.

Grandpa's "salt and pepper," used in the barn
The bill frayed and ravelled
And mended with yarn.
Grandma's old shawl that had been passed on down
Woven in warm colors
And worn in to town.

Ma's wedding dress - rich plum, faded to taupe
Once hemmed and twice borrowed
And worn with much hope.
Pa's red flannels which gave quite an itch
Were worn in the coal-mine
With hopes to get rich.

Skirts and petticoats; shorts and pants
All of good quality
Sent home by "the Aunts".
Uncle John's uniform, worn in the war
It was said he was tall
But it hung to the floor.

Clothes from our children, now all gone and grown
Bring back lots of memories
Of childhood and home.
Johnnie's brown snow-pants; patched at the knee
From coasting too quickly
And stopped by a tree.
Mary's red jumper with buttons to match
Got snagged on barbed wire
So, had a small patch.

Old people and memories recalled with a smile
Get hooked in these treasures
And remembered a while.
So gently! Tread carefully when walking on me
You'll be sculffing the bark
Of your old family tree.

Meme Gardening

2009-03-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

A meme is a unit of cultural information that is transmitted from one mind to another. Examples of memes are ideas, tunes, catch-phrases, fashion, and ways of building things.

The “idea” of a cultural building block called a meme was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. This is an important and exceptionally easy book for a layman to read on a very complex subject.

According to Dawkins genes replicate themselves from “survival machine” to “survival machine” and Memes, especially “idea-memes” are entities that are capable of transmission from one brain to another. And just as our collective genes, via their very successful duplicating process can be immortal, memes or ideas can be immortal as well. Contributions to the world’s culture can live on long after someone’s individual genes have dissolved in the common pool.

Dawkins refers to genes as “policy” makers and brains as the "executers" of policy. Genes provide us with brains capable of “rapid imitation” and on that basis memes will automatically take over and manifest themselves on our culture. Dawkins offers a compelling argument for man’s capacity, through conscious foresight, to simulate the future in our imagination and save us from the worst excesses of gene and meme replication.

We can avoid such excesses by imagining our minds as fertile gardens that require constant and positive nourishment and by realizing that we have the power to defy the selfish memes of our cultural programming. We can insist on a better world right now and far into the future.

My wife Carolyn has several beautiful flower and leafy plant gardens all around our property. There is one big rock garden on the northern side of the house. Her mom, Hazel, had a thumb so green that it was in direct competition with our house plant’s chlorophyll for the solar energy streaming through our windows. Hazel died in 2007 and her plants are still thriving with Carolyn’s encouragement. My inside and outside gardeners had a way with flowers and plants of every description. They nourished them, tended them, and loved them. They knew when to water and feed and how to keep their enemies at bay. Carolyn will work in her gardens for hours removing weeds and slugs and uprooting and replanting if that’s what is needed.

Our minds, like our gardens, will become beautiful and healthy through attentive and regular maintenance. And just as the well being of gardens can be compromised by inattention and infection so can minds that aren’t fully aware of the sometimes contradictory or detrimental memes that they are cultivating. The cells in human bodies like to duplicate and they excel at it. Our minds work that way too. Memes will restructure our brains in order to make it a great environment for memes to nest in. Today memes spread around the globe at the speed of light, rapidly replicating as they leap from brain to brain. What we should recognize is that our minds are very friendly environments for parasitic, self replicating ideas or information. Memes spread not because they are good ideas but rather because they are good memes. Some are deliberately designed to cause havoc and others are innocently mutated and evolve unconsciously. We need to have the ability to discern and cultivate memes that are beneficial to ourselves and to our culture and to successfully dissolve or negate infectious memes that are not.

We are presently living in vary complex societies and many of us are too busy to realize when simpler and less productive memes successfully compete with better memes that we avoid because they are less appealing. Memes do compete with one another and if a particular one is to dominate our brain it must overcome its rival memes. If we are not paying enough attention to the competing “ideas” our “mind gardens" can become compromised and we may possibly help replicate a mutant meme to other brains. It’s not enough to live consciously; we must also make clear and purposeful choices. We must avoid copying errors and mutations to other brains. By paying attention to what is happening in the world around us, by doubting where there is insufficient evidence, and just by noticing the memes in the first place we can make the right choices. We can consciously select our memes.

Unlike genes, memes can evolve in one lifetime and therefore can provide more effective ways for us to act on our problems. As Richard Dawkins sums it up in The Selfish Gene “we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination”.

From my brain to yours … happy gardening.

Here's a link to a site on Memetics

The Enron Loophole

2009-02-28T04:22:00.000-08:00

Rolling blackouts in California began in June 2000 and reoccurred several times over the following 12 months. This became known as the California electricity crisis and was characterised by extremely high prices, along with the blackouts.

By the summer of 2008 oil was trading at an unprecedented $140.00 US a barrel. Gasoline prices in Canada reached $1.40 a litre. This spike in the price of the world’s most precious resource had a very dramatic affect on the world’s economy and was likely the tipping point for the global financial crash which began in September 2008. Many in the media, supported by some of the financial experts - but not all, blamed the price rises on unregulated commodity speculators.

What do these two catastrophic events have in common? A company called Enron played a significant role in both situations.

Enron was an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. It employed almost 22,000 people and was one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with revenues of nearly $101 billion in the year 2000.
After a series of revelations involving irregular and fraudulent accounting procedures carried out during the 1990’s Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. Until the fall of Lehman Brother’s in September 2008, this was the largest bankruptcy in history.

Antonia Juhasz, in her recent book The Tyranny of Oil, indicates that Enron intentionally drove up the price of electricity in California through manipulation of the energy market. According to Juhasz, “as a result of the false scarcity of electricity and the rising prices created by Enron, people throughout the West encountered rolling blackouts and high electricity bills that many could not afford to pay”. Businesses closed down, people lost jobs and large public utilities’ declared bankruptcy. As this was occurring Enron collected the spoils. In just four months in the summer of 2000, according to Juhasz, Enron’s West Coast energy traders took in $200 million dollars. This was four times the profit they had made in all of 1999.

What precipitated the alarming rise in global oil prices during 2008 and enabled the manipulation of electricity inventories and prices in California in 2000? The answer involves an alteration to the U.S. Commodity and Futures Modernization Act which is now widely known as The Enron Loophole. Juhasz’s book describes the loophole based on a U.S. Senate Staff Report, Permanent Subcommitte on Investigations, June 25 and July 9, 2007 – “ the Enron Loophole… that exempts key energy commodities from government oversight…[has] resulted in the irrational situation in which one key U.S. energy exchange, the NYMEX, is subject to extensive regulatory oversight and obligations to ensure fair and orderly trading and to prevent excessive speculation, while another key energy exchange, ICE (The Intercontinental Exchange), operates with no regulatory oversight, no obligation to ensure it’s products are traded in a fair and orderly manner, and no obligation to prevent excessive speculation”. Not only Enron benefitted from this regulatory evasion. This change meant that any corporation, including the big oil companies, can participate directly in speculative energy trading. A great way to control the price wouldn’t you say?

A key architect of the Enron Loophole was also, incredibly, a key player in the deregulation of California’s energy commodity trading which enabled Enron’s traders to manipulate the energy market in that state. That man was Phil Gramm a former Republican Senator. You may remember Gramm. He was co-chair of John McCain’s run at the 2008 presidency and was McCain’s most senior economic adviser. Gramm would very likely be the U.S. Treasury Secretary if McCain had won the election. Gramm resigned from McCain’s campaign after referring to the American people as “a nation of whiners” in the summer of 2008. He was addressing the American electorates’ fears that they were entering a recession which Gramm said they were imagining. It is also interesting to note that according to Antonia Juhasz, in The Tyranny of Oil, after George W. Bush and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison “no elected official received more in campaign contributions from Enron than did Phil Gramm”. Also “Exxon Mobil’s … top three campaign recipients since 1990 are all from Texas and are, in order: George W. Bush, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchenson, and Senator Phil Gramm”. Apparently, according to Juhasz, Enron’s Ken Lay even served as the regional chairman of Gramm’s unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996.

Gramm’s wife Wendy also played a significant role in the deregulation game. Wendy Gramm was deeply entrenched in the Reagan administrations’ financial regulation planning. She was the executive director of Reagan’s most important deregulatory arm, Reagan’s Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. In 1988 she was appointed chairwoman of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). She held this position through the George H. W. Bush administration. According to Juhasz in the dying days of Bush Sr.’s administration Wendy Gramm enacted and approved a ruling that exempted key energy futures contracts from government regulation. So there’s the one-two punch. Mrs Gramm gets rid of regulation and, during Bush Jr’s first term, Mr, Gramm carries the ball a little further and has his wife’s earlier rules codified into federal law and then goes even further and adds changes to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act allowing energy traders to establish their own exchanges on which to trade contracts and then exempted the exchanges in their entirety from government regulation. After leaving her government job, Mrs. Gramm went directly to the board of directors of Enron.

As we wait for the 2009 version of spring to unfold, the news about the global economic situation keeps getting worse. Did the Enron Loophole play a role in this deepening recession that we are now experiencing? My answer is, yes, it did. High oil prices pushed an indebted system into a freefall. As Juhasz points out it’s not just the Oil companies that now control prices by establishing their own speculation exchanges. The large banks and other corporations are doing this too. According to Juhasz, Big Banks and big Oil “have heavily interlocking boards; they lobby together; and they contribute money to many of the same political candidates. They also share energy traders”. She goes on to say that “the banks have since become some of the largest beneficiaries of deregulation, particularly as they move directly into the oil business themselves. Moreover, as the banks have lost billions of dollars in the sub-prime mortgage debacle (largely caused by deregulation and market speculation), they re moving aggressively into energy trading”.

Just after Bill Clinton won the presidential election in 1993 I heard an interview with Gore Vidal on the CBC radio program, As It Happens. Vidal is an American novelist, playwright, essayist, short story writer, and politician. In the interview Vidal stated that Clinton may very well be the last popularly elected President of the United States. He went on to say that there was just one political party in that country and it was the “Corporate Party”. This party consists of two wings, the Republican wing and the Democratic wing. In other words, the system is controlled by the large corporations and Clinton, due to his popularity with the broader electorate, was not their man. Vidal opined that if Clinton fails then we would likely see the corporation’s representatives in that office far into the future. I was really struck by Vidal’s ideas in that conversation and they stayed with me. Well Clinton did screw up and the corporations got their man elected. George W. Bush was certainly an Avatar for the big Oil companies, so much so that they didn’t even have to spend money on lobbyists during Bush’s terms according to Juhasz.

We now have another popularly elected American President in office and it looks like the Yanks get another kick at the can (the rest of us too by association). Let’s hope that Obama succeeds in closing the Enron Loophole and any others that work to the determent of the larger society.

Another Fine Mess

2009-02-24T18:20:00.001-08:00

Yes it is quite a mess isn’t it? The world’s largest banks on the brink of failure, industry collapsing, millions being thrown out of work. The Crash of 2008, barely six months into its dire unfolding is anything but fine and will likely get uglier still.

Media reports are not very encouraging but then have they ever been? Fear sells and it’s even affecting weather reports now; have you noticed? Normal winters are now killer storms that will blow us to oblivion. Can the media be trusted to provide us with accurate data? Olliver Hardy didn’t even say “fine mess”. He said “nice mess”. How did this get changed around?

There are a lot of questions.

One big question is just how worried should we be about this crisis in the Global financial system? Or is worry even the right word? Would concern be better? Can we do anything about it? Should we do anything about it?

What, Me Worry?

“ Down to the very last breath
Bartender what’s wrong with me
Why am I so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma’am
This species has amused itself to death”

Rodger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, wrote that in 1997 for his solo album Amused to Death. 1997 seems like a long time ago doesn’t it? Times were great then. We had lots of money and lots of amusement to spend it on. Eat, drink, and be merry, for … well it is tomorrow now isn’t it? Have we now succeeded in amusing ourselves to death on borrowed money? Being broke and out of work can sure make it seem that way. Not much to laugh about these days either. With every passing day the noise from the media has been relentlessly harsh and negative about our financial decline. It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous epitaph – an entire generation who’s prosperity was merely a mindless illusion.

Should we be worried? The word worry comes from the high German and originally meant “to strangle”. It refers to a state of “high mental distress”. If this is what worry means than it won’t help much. I heard a great line recently that went: “worry if you think it will help”. I love that. Of course most of the time worry won’t help so why bother. Now concern is another matter. It does appear that we should be concerned about what is happening at the very least. Concern means “to be a care” or a “trouble”. This sounds less drastic than worry and would be a more realistic approach to a very real problem. People we care about can be adversely affected by all of this. We can be affected too. We need to be concerned.

Getting to Now

Since the end of the American Civil War we have had numerous recessions and only two Depressions. Now this is true if you believe that some of the very deep downturns we have experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930”s were really recessions and not depressions. John Ralston Saul, an award winning Canadian essayist and novelist wrote in the mid 90’s that we went into a Depression after the Oil Shock in 1973 and had never come out of it. Remember all of that deficit spending by governments? The word “Depression” itself has become a grammatical pariah since the last war and our leaders will turn themselves inside out before they use that word. Ain’t language wonderful?

When I was a young man, newly wed but childless, we experienced the first of two great oil shocks. The world seemed like it was coming to an end. Gasoline shortages, especially in the United States, and no oil from OPEC. We all bought wood stoves and small cars and tried not to go over 55 miles per hour on our highways. Things were looking very dire indeed. When we patched things up with OPEC the economy sputtered to life and gradually our fears were diminished. Soon we didn’t think much about it anymore until it happened again towards the end of the 70’s. By 1981 re-emerging energy concerns (the second oil shock) and stagflation drove the economy into the ground again. This time I had a mortgage and a child. My wife and I were fortunate to have the mortgage locked in at a reasonable rate and we both kept our jobs throughout the recession. Inflation was very high and so were interest rates. It was troubling but it passed without much direct affect on us and on most of the people that we knew.

There were several downturns since those days including the Tech implosion of the late 90’s and the Asian meltdown. In 1973 I would definitely say we were worried. But it passed and the ensuing troubles didn’t affect us enough to be more than reasonably concerned. Since then I have always felt that we weren’t making the right decisions about energy and one day it would bite us big time. In spite of that underlying suspicion I sensed that things would be OK and they were. We all went back to buying things and otherwise simply enjoying the fruits of our labour. Big oil discoveries in The North Sea helped us to forget the lessons of 1973 – oil is limited. In a sense we went back to sleep while the icons of the financial system looked for ever more ways to increase earnings beyond rational sustainable limits. We started to build big trucks again.

Everything really took off with the neo-liberalism of Ronald Reagan. A free market became synonymous with personal freedom. Get government out of the picture and take off the regulating “shackles”. The Bushes and Clinton took it even further and soon modest income earners could, incredibly, owe tens of thousands on their credit cards. Mortgages were given to anyone who applied. The free market would provide nirvana for all. Sensible regulation was discontinued. In late 2008 everything came tumbling down. All of a sudden the world was broke.

Who can We Trust?

Reagan, famous for his way with words, summed it up pretty good - “A recession is when my neighbour loses his job. A depression is when I lose mine.” Are we in a depression now? Will we get the truth?

Who can we look to in these unprecedented times? Will a saviour emerge and lead us out of the wilderness. Enter Obama. Can he fix things? Will the Right make sure he can’t by maintaining an attitude of, as John Prine puts it, “we're gonna spite our noses right off of our faces” in his great CD In Spite of Ourselves. After virtually enabling the financial system to run everything into the ground can we trust government to get everything back on track? Even when it has a leader as highly regarded as Obama is at the moment?

How about the big corporations themselves? This isn’t the first time they’ve brought the system down and I’d bet it won’t be the last time either if things don’t change. If you want to get an insight on how the powerful corporations brought us to the brink read The Tyranny of Oil by Antonia Juhasz. You will not only learn a lot about the dangerous powers exercised by the oil companies you will also see how the rest of corporate America has benefited from using the exact same measures developed by the big oil companies to dominate their markets at the expense of every entity including this planet. Don’t kid yourself thinking that those guys standing in front of a Congressional Panel are sorry for what they have wrought. They aren’t sorry at all. They should all be in jail. Virginia Hammerness, the granddaughter of the man who founded Bank of America, recently called the bank’s current condition “totally repulsive” and blasted the bank’s management for being “idiots”. You shouldn’t trust an idiot.

Are the media any help at all during these stressful times? Seems to me that they are the cause of most of the stress. It’s very difficult for most people to be literally plagued day after day with overblown descriptions and explosive adjectives that are bound to wear people down. In a January issue The Medill News Service asks:

“Job cuts, depleted banks, mounting foreclosures – the media continue to churn out news on the country’s economic troubles. But is constant news coverage of the recession only making things worse?"

The article goes on to say that such negativity “causes a chain reaction that has a negative impact on retail and a negative impact on the economy.” And that “news organizations should report the facts, but that they should also bring in more optimistic perspectives when possible”.
And this from the Washington Post: “Unfortunately we now live in the cycle of 24-7 financial news coverage. One pundit’s idle chatter or a leader’s words taken out of context can create a storm of controversy that wipes out stock prices in a whole sector of the economy”.
An article in February 24th’s issue of The Globe and Mail asks the question: “Will Invoking the Great Depression Bring It On?” The really surprising nugget in this article is that while we have very good criteria available to determine when we are in a recession “there is no widely accepted, precise definition of depression”. Now that’s weird. So who calls it what? Should we be looking beyond the media? Where then? As I asked earlier, are we in a Depression now?
It’s hard to find an institution to trust these days.

What Can We Do About It?

There is one thing I think we should fully understand, especially in times like these. We should become aware that there are man made forces in motion on Earth that are simply beyond the control of ordinary people and even governments. If a big system like Capitalism is flaming out or imploding as Communism did in the late 80’s we can only patently wait for its demise to unfold. Many will deny that this is in fact happening but I believe that this is the case. Today, I’ve read, the most successful capitalist system is operating in Russia. It’s dominated by their version of the Mafia. They recruit the best IT graduates from their Technical schools to develop software that will allow them to clean out our bank accounts. This is what this system has evolved to - Russian Mafia and Bernie Madof.

I believe that we are going to evolve through a great paradigm shift of a Global nature over the next few years. We will never again attain the high levels of consumption that we have recklessly enjoyed for the past several decades. Times will be very hard on many people during this period. How hard times will be will depend on those whom we trust the least – Government, Corporations, the Media – regaining our trust and doing the right things. We will also have to be more conscious of what is going on around us and address wrongheadedness wherever it arises. We have to pay a Zen-like attention to everything that is happening around us and demand intelligent results from our public and private institutions.

The economy is only one of many important problems that we must deal with. Global Warming must be addressed and quickly. We are running out of conventional supplies of Oil despite the lies that the Oil company’s continue to spread. The unconventional oil is expensive to get and is very toxic to the planet. We are running out of cheap oil and we should be looking at alternatives now. The price of oil will skyrocket again and as things look now we will not be prepared for it. The rise in prices experienced in 2008 was, in my opinion, the tipping point that knocked down the debt ridden financial system.

As with the “last” Great Depression good leadership will not suffice. We will need great leadership. As a matter of fact just doing a good job in any endeavour may no longer be acceptable. Greatness may be the new norm. Barrack Obama is, at this point, the only leader arising from the ruins. Is he a great leader? Time will tell. David Brooks, one of the saner conservative pundits in the United States writes for the New York Times. In his column on February 24th he acknowledges that “society is an immeasurably complex organism” and that we can be “strangers to ourselves”. Some of the west’s great writers from the left and the right understood this and “tended to be sceptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down”.
Brooks goes on to say that “we are on the cusp of the biggest experiment of our lifetimes”. He thinks that Obama is wrongly trying to tackle every major problem at once and will likely fail. Even so, Brooks hopes that Obama doesn’t fail, as the stakes are enormous.

If we can manage to get involved with solutions, pay attention to what is happening around us, be realistic in our goals and needs and remain hopeful about the future we will not only survive a very serious malaise but will be even stronger when it’s over and begin the engineering of a new world. Renewed, attentive, and involved we can build a better world together with our children who, as always, will inherit our wind, ill or otherwise.

Zen and Boularderie Winter

2009-02-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

Snow flakes are unique. I was told this when I was very young and I believe it. I’ve never really attempted to prove that there are actually no duplicates. Somehow this has become an accepted fact by everyone. No two alike. Amazing.

Now how about winters? Are two winters ever alike? There can be a pile of snowflakes during the winter that’s for sure. And once the snow is on the ground they all look the same to me. Winters can seem alike though. I think that’s because we often don’t retain the memory of one winter to the next. Something like when someone asks you who won the Super Bowl last year? You watched it. Probably followed the winning team all the way through the playoffs but can only vaguely recall even the teams that were in the final. I’m going to go out on a limb and say, categorically, no two winters are the same! They are as unique as the snowflakes that the composition of winter entails. I do remember last winter.

I live on Nova Scotia's second largest island after Cape Breton Island. Boularderie Island is 40 Km long and from 3 to 10 Km wide. Winters here can be harsh with lots of snow and very high winds.

Last winter, on Boularderie, was very different than the one we are now two thirds through. Last winter we had a lot of snow. It started on the very first day of December and only stopped for an occasional breather until March. Although it snowed often the storms were very gentle and it was pleasurable being out there clearing it away. During the breathers the temperatures were mild and the snow didn’t build up too much. By the first week in March it had practically disappeared. Every last, one of a kind, flake disappeared into the air and ground. We did not once go below -17C that year.

The present winter has been a rough one. Almost a dozen major storms from early December to late February and a long March to go. This year the snow has built up and we did, several times, get below -20C in January. We didn’t get the usual thaw period in January this winter. The storms in February have been affected by milder temperatures so we have been getting rain on the tail end of the disturbances. The big story this winter has been the wind. We have had extraordinary winds with the systems that have been coming through the Maritimes. Early on we were losing our power with every storm. Two or three times the gusts have reached 100 Km an hour! High winds are far from uncommon in these parts but it is unusual to get so many of them. The high winds actually started in mid fall and seem to accompany every storm. This is likely the affect of Global Warming but until all winters behave this way we can’t be 100% sure. I’m still betting no two are the same so I’m not too worried.

Winter weather can certainly be a challenge but the season does have its sweet spots. For instance with the exception of shovelling and clearing the snow and driving around in it there are few other demands on our precious time. For me, everything slows down once winter sets in. I read more books, listen to music, and just generally relax. The storms can make a person a tad “jumpy” but that wears off after a few good blows. Winter can be a great time for introspection. A person can go into winter a complete cad and come out the other end a saint if they stop counting the days and flakes and take advantage of the downtime offered in generous amounts. Once spring shoves us into summer we are animated again and move along at a faster clip, minds busy and unfocused.
The warmer weather is certainly much welcomed and my favourite time of the year but I still like, and need, the spaces between the snow flakes that are there if you really look for them.