February 20, 2006

• OLIGARCHIC ANACHRONISM

  I wish I’d been paying closer attention today when I heard the piece on
  NPR about Nevada’s water troubles.  I caught that quote above,
  “oligarchic anachronism,” and understood that he was talking about
  Nevada farmers and ranchers, but missed the man’s name who said
  it.  He was either an academic or a bureaucrat.

  This issue boils down to this:  Las Vegas wants to pump water out
  of the aquifer upon which the farms and ranches of southern Nevada
  depend.  The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s representative
  claims that they don’t know what the effect on the aquifer will be if
  they pump that water out.  I say they should ask the farmers in
  Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas who have to keep drilling deeper wells, or
  who have to start drilling wells when the ponds dry up that they once
  depended on for stock watering. 

  Or, they could ask the people in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,
  that town that used to be called Hot Springs.  Geronimo was known
  tohave used one of the springs in that place.  Fifty years and
  more ago, the town was a resort with more than a dozen active hot
  springs.  Last time I was there, the biggest and best-known
  resorts had closed when their springs dried up, and only two or three
  warm springs remained.

  Nevada’s government, like the rest of this country, is a democracy de
  jure and a bureaucracy de facto.  Lots more jobs and tons of
  tourist dollars depend on keeping Las Vegas hydrated.  Anybody
  want to take a guess or make a bet on who will win there?

  ---

  Somebody asked–

  I got an email through the xanga@xanga.com link, from joesmitherman@yahoo.  Joe had seen my “interests,” where I wrote:

  exploring alternate realities, improving my mind

  Joe asked what I explore and what I do to improve my mind.

  The answer to the former is twofold.  In one sense, each journey
  into the shamanic Otherworld is an exploration of alternate
  realities.  In another sense, every time I visualize a world that
  is saner, more loving, more sustainable, etc., it is an exploration of
  an alternate reality.  Both of those are work of a sort.  One
  is the work of divination or healing that I do for individuals who
  consult me.  The other is dreamwork I do for the Universe.

  One of the things I do to improve my mind is to exercise it in those
  ways just described and through math puzzles, logic problems, and
  various games.  If ever in my reading or other means of input, I
  encounter a concept I just don’t “get”, I don’t just let it go.  I
  think about it.  I may diagram an idea to try and visualize it, or
  google it to get more information, whatever it takes for the concept to
  make sense to me, and for me to expand my conceptual framework to
  incoporate it. 

  Another way I work on my mind is through the memory exercise of memoir
  writing.  This builds new neural pathways, I’ve been told.  I
  do not accept amnesia lightly.  My memory is full of gaps around
  which I nibble and worry, attempting to recover whatever is
  there.  This exercise is not only good for my neurology, but also
  for my psychology.  There is therapeutic value in remembering, and
  the more effectively a memory is buried, the more effective will be the
  therapy in recalling it.

  Another process or exercise I have been employing is that of
  “upgrading.”  Thirty-some years ago I started transcending all my
  addictions or upgrading them to preferences.  Or, maybe that was
  “downgrading.”  It all depends on one’s perspective.  After I
  had been doing that for a while, I discovered that I had been addicted
  to being “right” and that this addiction had led in some instances to
  my denying reality and adopting some false and limiting beliefs. 
  Then I started examining all my beliefs and either upgrading them to
  knowledge if they deserved to be, downgrading them to the bullshit
  category if they couldn’t pass the test, or keeping them around as
  working hypotheses pending further investigation if they were still
  useful but not provable.

  And then there are the nootropics and cognitive enhancers, the amino
  acids and other “smart” drugs and nutrients I have been studying and
  ingesting for thirty years or so.   Y’see, Joe, it’s like
  this:  When I was a kid, people would gush and rave about how
  smart I was.  The general consensus was that it was a “gift” of
  some sort.  As time passed and I explored my reality, I came to
  believe that if there had been a gift involved that gift had been
  curiosity, a desire to learn and explore.

  I can generally account for all the rest of those things that allow me
  to score high on IQ tests by the fact that I try harder than most
  people do.  I really work at knowing and understanding.  Most
  of the people I know are content to inhabit a reality filled with
  “black boxes,” mysterious processes, devices, etc., that function in
  ways they don’t understand.  I like opening up black boxes. 
  I may not have enough time in this life to explore and understand
  everything around me, but that is not, in my far from humble opinion, a
  reason to stop trying.
  

  • 8:24 pm
  • 4 Comments