immanence

Members
  • Content

    89
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

Community Reputation

0 Neutral

Gear

  • Main Canopy Size
    145
  • Main Canopy Other
    Reflex
  • Reserve Canopy Size
    150
  • Reserve Canopy Other
    Micro Raven
  • AAD
    Cypres

Jump Profile

  • Home DZ
    currently nomadic
  • License
    C
  • License Number
    10492
  • Licensing Organization
    BPA
  • Number of Jumps
    134
  • Years in Sport
    12
  • First Choice Discipline
    Formation Skydiving
  • Second Choice Discipline
    Freeflying
  1. You're right. The bi-plane is by far the best scenario, but my point is that it is unpredictable. You are still in an emergency situation that must be treated with extreme care. The situation will be accentuated if there is a large mismatch between the size and speed of your reserve and that of your main. Personally, though, I have no experience of this. With a downplane, if you have time, get rid of the main. "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  2. When I ran my university's club back in the day I used to tell people that the more you know (about the sport) the more you understand the risks and prepare to deal with the worst, if it occurs. I'd probably say the same now ... education is key. But I'd also be thinking, in my head, "if you're so afraid of death, take up television", or "if you're gonna die this way, death will find a way to make it happen." I agree with what some of the more battle-worn jumpers tend to say: you can do everything right and still die. Could you have avoided it anyway? Can any of us avoid anything? Maybe free will and human action are just illusions that deliver us, regardless, to exactly where fate lies in wait for us. I'd tell them that being relatively closer to death in the sky makes me more alive on the ground. I'd tell them that skydiving helped me deal with big questions like mortality. I'd be thinking, "it doesn't matter how you die so long as you live." None of that means, however, that my next rig won't be a V3 with a Skyhook Blue skies, ian "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  3. Truly and quite honesty I hope that you are right. I sense, though (and I may be wrong) that the history of the evolution of techniques of political control is only ever upward: same as the law, every loophole is eventually closed. Arundhati Roy has a powerful metaphor and I believe her. She says, "They are sealing all the exits." I guess a lot depends, perhaps, on where one stands; what one's vantage is. Living in the Middle East for four years certainly brought certain things out into relief. Believe me, Trent, holding up a Halloween mask to the mirror (or anyone else) is not of interest to me. I just can't lose sight of the fact that we're only 60 years on from the vast social experiment of fascism, and other experiments including clinical psychiatry and cybernetics as originally understood. I just try to keep an eye on things. I'm not alone: wouldn't claim to be. I agree that paranoia is a real risk. I run that gauntlet continually and let me say, the real world as I have experienced it is far beyond anything that Chomsky or Howard Zinn can encapsulate. Both are important, but they're scratching the surface. The depth underneath is both far more mundane (i.e., often nothing to do with conspiracies or cabals) but all the more powerful, automatic and curious because of it. best regards, ian "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  4. I guess I'm led to believe that my reserve will open. Do I believe it? Maybe Sure, one cannot give up believing in everything: I still believe the sun will rise tomorrow. We have several zillions of years to go before I need to question that one. But I think this can be separate from not believing in the existence of God. And as I say, this is how I would put it. Atheism is not the belief that there is no God so much as not believing in God. Maybe there's an important difference here. Though I am totally unconvinced by anything I have heard in my lifetime that tries to establish as unshakable fact the existence of God, I can't say for sure (because I'm not God ) that God exists or not. I can, however, decline to believe in God (i.e., decline to invest emotional energy and establish a code of life based upon the theory that God exists). I can withdraw allegiance from the concept and all it's social meanings / triggers. I think this is different — in a small but perhaps significant way — from believing in the non-existence of God. Perhaps, though, I have defined agnosticism not atheism. I'm not sure (it's late, I'm tired). I do think that atheism need not be a "belief" as such. But I'm being a fussypants because in general I think language-play gymnastics ("You don't believe, but you believe you don't believe, hypocrite!", or "Your theory encompasses everything and so therefore says nothing") are lazy. What is a siddarthic traveler? You're referring to the book by Hesse, perhaps? I don't know, but would like to know! "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  5. Thanks for replying. Yes, I did live in the US, for two years. I lived in Providence, Phoenix and New York City. I have visited a great number of other American cities and towns, both during those years and at other times. You win. I was simply trying to better outline my differing viewpoint, which seemingly to you is worthless. In a way, I hope you're right. I suspect you're wrong. The lines of force that I try in my work to decipher in detailed ways — the genealogy of modern governmental rationalities — affect me as much as you. But I will speak of it no further: I sense that your mind is decided on these issues. Fair enough. Just for my own sake, however, and to put meat on the bones of her retort, kindly elaborate on how I misdirect and manipulate the great thinkers I referenced in my post. Just a few indicators would suffice. Thanks again
  6. I won't take the bait of your personal comments: please feel free to think and feel as you wish. That's fine by me. On the substance, I don't think it's a stretch — and certainly not naive; on the contrary — to see a close connection between politics and religion. Machiavelli, who was a thoroughgoing secularist, practically an atheist, had great reverence for the disciplining capacities of recourse to thoughts about divine provenance. Giovanno Botero who followed, and who wrote the classic Reason of State, while berating Machiavelli, whom he saw as coniving, was even more specific about the diversionary uses of religion. You believe it's a stretch, but the very foundations of the political systems within which we find ourselves are built on ideas like this. Marx understood these foundations better than most and was unashamed when he called religion the "opiate of the people." Even Voltaire and the fathers of the European enlightenment, while bringing it under yolk of reason, were careful not to dispense with religion completely (e.g., see Voltaire's letters to Frederick II of Prussia in which he exalts the "admirable order" and "immense power" of the divine). The content of my post may seem extreme to you, but it is outlandish in neither the fields of social psychology or political philosophy. I am not alone in thinking like this. In many ways, the entirety of the modern era has thought in this way about religion ..... but of this you seem unaware. Hegel, who otherwise wrote the secular constitution of the modern state, put it this way: Hegel marks the firm opening of the modern era. As to now, I'd say we wouldn't be paying attention if we didn't note how firmly this administration — that of George W Bush — is grounded in (or seeks to project the image of being grounded in) religion. Someone praying of their own volition in this instance (relative to the Katrina disaster), I have no problem with. But when a day of prayer is declared, my ears prick up. I think if anyone is naive it is he who thinks, upon hearing this, "Our leaders have compassion!" I'm not saying you — or I, for that matter — can't pay attention. But clearly the introduction of the divine has supplementary effects: 1) It mobilizes the individual to act, principally in the name of Christian values (hence taking the burden off the government, to which Americans — especially the poor — already pay dearly in taxes); 2) It equalizes the government / state with the citizen before an all-powerful, angry God (again the disaster becomes something that individuals, as much as government-funded emergency agencies, should respond to); 3) It is a reminder of "higher powers", which too often by this administration have been evoked to underline the rightfulness — practically the destiny — of neoconservative policy. The combined effect is to blur into indistinction the question "Who is to blame?" Did Hurricane Katrina cause the disaster, or did people die afterwards, as a result of the levies breaking because of ill repair and ill preparation? No wonder George W Bush is up there leading the prayer. All of a sudden, he's not the secular president (remember, this administration has no comprehension of the concept of accountability) but the priest. Haven't his speech writers, since that first, rather frightening, "end of days" inaugural back in 2001, tried to cultivate his "wise if clumsy" persona? The poetic hyperbole is past laughable most of the time. A lot of people think he's a good president, however. Why? In part for the same reasons the US has numberless channels of God TV. So we mark this day of prayer with solemnity and reflection. God, evoked as the ultimate author, is immune to criticism and civil action which might otherwise have targetted nefarious political negligence (the channelling of public funds to an illegal overseas war at the expense of ensuring the basic defence of life at home; which, afterall, is the very basis of the social contract). The state, sworn to protect life, liberty and property certainly failed in two out of three. No, you respond as though my words were those of a lunatic, when in fact I am simply reflecting upon political principles and a history of mentalities of government — dark, perhaps — which, aside from anywhere else, is enshrined in your very constitution. "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  7. Maybe Bechtel had a pre-war contract to the rebuild the detention center but some dumbass overlooked it so they had to take its' ass down "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  8. It is much more than a gesture, but it doesn't do harm: unless, that is, you believe that slavery and silence and the non-accountability of government does harm. "Day of prayer"? Day Bush and associates hope national attention will be turned away from their gross incompetancy and callous disregard for blacks and the poor, more like. I don't think it's a "nice gesture". It's a classic evasive gesture that states and governments typically pull when there's some kind of crisis and their asses are on the line. Domestic backruptcy? Let's start a war! Natural disaster in which we are culpable by way of the reduced, under-funded defenses we ignored (hell, anyway, it was where the poor live)? I know! Let's get 'em praying! It doesn't matter who you pray to. That's not the point. In fact, if a little social cohesion could be built up temporarily by all religions pulling together then go for it: beem that live 24-7 on CNN. The point is you're on your knees, while the government catches its breath and lines up the media for a recovery photo-op. "You may think I'm cynical, but there ain't no ring through this nose." — Edward Abbey "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  9. Is that from the movie with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or from these guys? "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  10. Again, I agree that a non-religious person can be very moral. I’m not trying to say one must be religious in order to be moral. I think that a sense of right and wrong is imprinted on our hearts by our creator whether we believe in that creator or not. I’m speaking specifically to the atheists and trying to tie morality in with the existence of God. I read some C.S. Lewis stuff that I thought was interesting in this regard. He was speaking in reference to what he called the “herd instinct.” I would also call that morality that we’ve taken from our parents who took it from their parents who took it from their parents and so on and so forth. That our morality is just something that developed in the course of evolution in order to better suit the survivability of the whole. I agree with some of that but not all. Some feelings of morality that we might experience fall into that category of what we must do to function and relate with one another. However, there are some which do not fit into that category and it would seem they must come from something completely different. Here’s what C.S. Lewis said: ***For example, some people wrote to me saying, ‘isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn’t it been developed just like all our other instincts?’ Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct – by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys. Your instinct for self-preservation would be the stronger of the two instincts. Your conscience might tell you, however, to pick the weaker of the two and do the right thing. That doesn’t seem consistent with respect to a completely natural theory of our existence. What do you think? What a great post! "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  11. You exercising your freewill not to believe does not offend me...it saddends me. I pray your heart will soften one day. My heart has been bent every which way in this life; it is very soft and pliable. Truly, in the absence of God I see the deepest, closest, wonder to human, animal, cosmic life. I find sadly too often among those who take another path (religious paths, of varying nature) characteristics, lines of thought and judgment, that I do not wish for myself, and that I try to cure myself of. To me, without God, and looking at faces, people, cats and dogs, buildings, trees in the street, knowing there is not an all-seeing creator (which is not to say that everything around us not resonant and divine: it is transcendent beyond all poetry) brings me new levels of forgiveness and understanding: I see this vast and small human adventure, and all the games and loves and arguments we have. I believe my heart gets bigger. Thanks for your post. "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  12. Introducing a very long post Feel free to ignore! Speaking personally, a complex constellation of institutions founded on violence and aimed towards normalization. I think most of my moral values were not found by me, but rather instilled — better yet, let's use Kafka's phrase, "imprinted" — in me by what I would define, these days, as the State. This isn't a conspiracy theory. I'm not talking aliens controlling the planet. I'm talking detailed rationalities which are socially derived and pertain to the broad reproduction of the "order of things". The constellation of institutions I mentioned include those disciplinary sites of domination such as the school, the military barracks, the asylum, the prison, the hospital, the factory, etc. I have never been in the military, I should add, but I'd say that as a young boy I grew up amid a constellation of values — including military ones (I grew up in a small border town famous for its Elizabethan ramparts) — that formed a sort of grid for my existence and basic dreams and thoughts. I'd call this grid — which included lots of lessons in politeness in a family context — "morality". Mostly it was an aesthetic experience: how schools looked like prisons, looked like factories, looked like asylums. Then there were so many stories I grew up with: don't go with strangers, respect officers of the law, etc. Not all of it was stultifying. I wouldn't say that. Perhaps a large part of my freedom now is based on discipline I learnt then. As for religion, I did go to Sunday school. But I don't remember much about this. Probably I learned (or thought) more about aesthetics and space — grandeur, authority, pomp, ceremony — rather than morality per se, there. Not sure I answered the question, but this is what occured to me. In general, I'd say I was coded: programmed. I didn't discover my basic values for myself. Not by any means. And there was a lot of societal indocrination involved. Only much later in life did I get time to look at the whole picture again. But then I'm not so arrogant to imagine that when I did I was free. Broadly speaking, the really free people, those who don't fit the mold (and there's not just one mold, but millions) are outside society, in some way. Even when reading radical politics, or radical philosophy, I'm within the bounds — very firmly — of society. E.g., Friedrich Nietzsche is published by Cambridge University Press. Adding a few comments to other parts of the discussion ..... In response to Gawain: You nailed it! That's exactly what I was saying. Atheism is not a belief but a refusal to believe. The limitation in language appears when one says "I am an atheist." The "I am" part, relative to an idea or group of ideas, denotes belief (e.g., I am a socialist, I am a libertarian). If atheism is the refusal to believe — and I agree it is — it's a connundrum in language (which you picked up on) that suggests that atheism is a belief in and of itself. So I don't think being an atheist is a belief. The reason for quoting from the Thesaurus was simply to make a side point about how, in general (and despite the secular nature of public life; and here I'd say that secularism is not atheism nor agnosticism but rather the privatization of religious belief), atheism is vilified. In response to 1010: I don't doubt it. My point is that you don't need a belief in God to do good (if doing good is your aim). In fact, I think the danger is that that "do-gooding" (forgive the phrase, no perjorative connotation intended) is, for people who believe in God, muddied by notions such as "pleasing God" or ensuring one's salvation. Personally speaking, I'd probably appreciate a favor done for me more from an atheist than from a Christian just because I know that the favor, for the athiest, is not calculated relative to their own gain. I do take your point, though ... True, up to a point. The first universities were certainly extensions of monastries. But we would also have to say that it was only certain kinds of knowledge that were protected. If libraries were born in monastries so, also, was censorship. Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest intelligences of his age, was burnt at the stake, his palate and lower jaw penetrated by iron spikes (called a "box" — used frequently to prevent screaming, but in Bruno's case specially designed), by Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine in 1600 for challenging orthodox theories of the place of the earth in the universe. Bruno, in his book Of Infinity, Universe and World, suggested, among other things, the existence of multiple earths. He was tortured for eight years before his trial, replying famously to his accusers: "In pronouncing my sentence, your fear is greater than mine in hearing it." I'd also add — and this, though controversial, is a clear fact — that it was the church who did more than kings or despots to multiply the means of human torture. The sheer production of different kinds of torture through the period of the three inquisitions is just breathtaking. So yes, they protected some knowledge, but the price was a gory one indeed. A very good point. I agree entirely. Just as I would say one doesn't have to be religious to do good, being athiest sure doesn't mean one can avoid evil. The gulag had more than one cause, of course, but Russia's experience with religion would definately be important to a full discussion. People do tend to say this. Personally, I haven't met an atheist like that. As for me, well, I replied to VisionAir separately on this issue. Okay, but you cannot be unaware that society as a whole seems much more set up for people like you than people like me. And the role that religion and God plays ........ I mean, can you imagine feeling in your heart of hearts that all that is a sham, completely bogus, but seeing major wars occuring in the name of religion? Can you imagine what it feels like to be atheist, and atheist not because I think that God gipped me, but because I feel that it's just a step too far into the completely fantastical: like believing in fairies or something? Just as much as these words likely bother you, the very concept of "belief", the constantly referring back to a book which in my view was just cobbled together by ordinary human beings 2000 years ago, the constant trumping of arguments because, afterall, this is the word of God and therefore Truth (capital T), the constant reference to ways of life, "parables", that mean nothing now — all this is so infuriating. Why? Because there is so much beauty, so much grace, so much to be discovered and felt in this world. And hell, since I'm in rant mode I deplore the piety and absurd, twisted morality of the body which goes with most religious practice. I decline to accept that my desires are evil. I refuse to be taught about morals and family values from celebates. And I won't even get into the appalling scandals which have rocked so many churches .......... Indeed it is. I can't imagine living my life in a cave or a moral straight-jacket because I'm waiting for an afterlife which noone has reported back from, and which is just a "belief", thoroughly unproven and taken on "faith". Same as I abhor all that stuff about Adam and Eve and the serpent, etc., etc. As a political analyst (by vocation) I can't help but hear in religion the first echoes of the State. This is all it seems to me: a way of keeping people in line, and governing their lives in complex, reflexive, uiltimately decentralized ways. No. I see the present and I say "LIVE NOW!" I know I am a heathen. But I am a heathen with a very soft heart and a very warm nature, and a lot of passion for life, worts and all. Too much like Disney for me to base a life on. I hope — genuinely — for you its true, though. Maybe it will be. Maybe whatever this thing is that we call "soul" is powerful enough to create whatever afterlife we imagine or don't imagine. Maybe I don't imagine one because I'm not supposed to have one. I don't have any answers to any of these final questions. No offense meant in anything that I have said. In response to VisionAir: I wish He would come down and prove that it was His word. Instead he plays this game: if they believe with no proof whatsoever thenthey will be saved. It's so mean! In response to 1010 again: There is a woman I love called Rime and I would give my life right now for her (I'd rather live for her, mind you). I don't have faith in the way you understand it. I can't be exceptional because I don't have faith? I think that's a step too far. Albert Einstein was an atheist and seems pretty exceptional to me. Same for Bob Geldof (remember him? Live Aid?), Angelina Jolie, Milan Kundera, Arthur Miller, Gore Vidal. Hell, Barry Manilow, if you like the old copacabana thang or Fidel Castro if you live the Guevara-Havana thang. Trust, mind you; I can go with this concept. But it is not trust in a coming reward. I don't live in order to be saved. I live because I believe that there is a broader rhythm to all things, and that if I'm destined to go in, or be knifed, or blown up in a car bomb, thus it will be. Let happen what will happen: even if it means falling into the abyss. I don't fear. I have trust. But this is different from having faith. Because trust surmounts faith insofar as it doesn't fear the worst. On the "herd instinct," by the way, nothing I have ever read comes close to Nietzsche's critique of morality. Check out Book II of The Will to Power and the entirety of On the Genealogy of Morals. You may not agree, he may challenge you deeply, he may strike you as the anti-Christ, but he cannot be ignored. Kind regards to all ......... ian "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  13. Fuck. There go my 4-way ambitions "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'
  14. Fair enough. I'm out. This thread caused me much sadness knowing that it was borne from within the community of skydivers. Rehmwa: I agree 100% with what you say. Falxori: I was busy in my work; will reply with a few points in response to your last substantive post in a private message. Salam "where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'