Pesach

{Part 1 – 10/04/2017}

Channuka is like Pesach

Channuka is the story of a defeated nation which manages to rebuild its army and rebel against its conquerors.

Pesach is the story of an enslaved nation which is emancipated against all odds.

Both these holidays are about freedom.

On Pesach, we are meant to discuss freedom. In my own life, I have become more free by the addition of a custom-built, back-lit, desktop wonderland.

This is why Pesach is like getting a new computer.

{Part 2 – 13/04/2017}

[…]

There’s the back-story, and I’d love to embellish it. But I think the most important thing we can all agree on is peace, which is more than just a cessation of warfare. I believe that the foundation of peace is communication and that we have created a world that mistakes interaction (and domination) as recognition. But in our defence, we never learned the lesson of multiculturalism (our past was so slow). To communicate with another is to share a point of reference. The more inter-connected that point of reference is to all aspects of life, the more communication is whole.

What I’m presenting here is not a description of the truth. It is a story I think we can all share, knowing that the individual interpretations and evaluations will differ nonetheless.

There’s a rush I feel to build spacecrafts and new civic structures. But not all of us will lend a hand to every spacecraft, and our societies may take different forms. And it’s missing the point. The spacecrafts will be built on the foundation of harmony. The trees grow out of the soil.

What I’m presenting here is a snapshot of vantage points. Who am I/you? A member of reality, society, interactions, self? Is metaphysics the origin, or maybe ethics, or history, or discovery are the most important?

I’m not presenting a guide of love and happiness.

Here is a story we can all share.

History started sometimes around 2016/2017. Everything before that was a different way. It was like waking up from a dream, and finding out that all your toy soldiers were men. It was like forever being confused by how something so important had never been known. It was like waking up for school and realizing its the holidays. it was like the first sensation of love mixed with lust and looking at the past with disdainful eyes. It was like finding out that things were very different, and different in unexpected ways – in the past, in your parents lives, in stories from the past.

But it wasn’t just being a unique snowflake. It was like being told that all of history was a pedestal of stairs to everything you ever wanted, and as you’re being told all this (with fireworks in the background and laser special effects) you’re watching the door, waiting for the cameraman to walk in, laughing. It was like the Wonkavator.

No one prepared us, “You need to wake up now”. It was scary because we’d spent our whole lives believing one thing, and then (suddenly, it felt) being told everything needed to be rethought. There was no government official with a form and pencil, it was just each of us, with friends, and by ourselves, being told,

“Sorry, there’s been a big mix-up. We got the whole thing pretty much wrong. Except killing, don’t do that, we got that right.”

Sounds like a party in the streets and hangover through the seasons. But we were dazed and confused, and each of us kept checking that the rest of us were still in on it, as if we might discover that we were asleep again. So we were told we were free, but we’d have to choose everything, and nothing was certain, except that the past was a dream.

One of the loudmouths at the town meeting suggested that we live in peace.

In our parents’ days peace meant at least a reduction in hostilities, and in cases of strategic alliances, developed into cultural mingling. Trade was the undisputed backbone of the world and its people (like rivers joining towns) but was (without respite) plagued by violent greed and ignorant perfidy (esp. to the self). For reasons which should be explored, as a cautionary tale, this framework resulted in a myopic ethos of capital accumulation. It was like a plague, everyone was coughing, but thought it was a fact of life (even healthy).

Cities were built for the accumulation of liquid power, which was interlocked into systems of self-preservation and expansion (e.g. armies, diplomacy).

It wasn’t only that we were living wrong (in those days men would tie ropes around their necks before beginning the labour schedule), but there is no denying that our history left us trapped in an engine which demanded attention or else it would collapse and kill us. It is hard to imagine, but societies would forcibly translocate children into arbitrary indoctrination and pointless intellectual measurements. This began a process of segregation and ostracization which became a class hierarchy, and which itself disintegrated into simmering conflicts between political power, individual power, and the tools we’d build around ourselves. Instead of being overthrown by a robot army, the world was all over occupied by institutions and expectations which owned their legitimacy by way of inheritance.

Words mean different things, and its hard to imagine chains when they look like a necklace. But things were done because it was better than last year, and last year was based on the year before that, and there were things that hadn’t changed in decades, as if some genius had discovered the perfect solution to the human organization long ago and we weren’t to break it.

I’m writing this because these words will age. Tell your children because they will never imagine how much of a mind-fuck it all was. And funny.

It was like being told that all the carnivores had agreed to go vegan. It was like finding a present under your pillow after a bad day. It was like we all wanted to cry because secretly we all thought life was fucked and hoped we would all drown and blow up soon. If you don’t believe me: common entertainment (daily!) was to watch video recordings of recent tragedies, and discussions of expected future tragedies.

There were too many changes to keep track. First ones brought us amazement, then admiration, then a sense of wealth, but eventually it was a blur of everything is more. It was like jumping up from a bed through the roof and above the house, the neighbourhood, then continent, the solar system, and then just whoosh. Things looked the same, and we had the same thoughts and emotions – you had to be there. It was like being a tree and a tornado at once.

We were afraid. We were hopeful. We were inspired. We became filled with love and optimism.

Our favourite discovery and the greatest jewel we bequeath to our descendants is a great peace. It was impossible and then it was inevitable. Peace be upon you.

Talking to each other

Some people divided everything into two great lights:

1. We discovered that we were sitting on a perpetual motion machine. It started with the Torah, but soon we realized that everyone could reach unending piles of gold and shiny coloured stones. It was not just that the brotherhood of man was beautiful (in the past it was considered all right to use the masculine pronoun in English and other languages to indicated an audience of mixed gender. This is the first and last gender warning).
2. We discovered that we were a sisterhood, separated by complexion (mostly inner, slightly outer), and combining to reveal each other’s beauty (and obviously our own).

I must pause to remember.

In the past, we had thought that man was a limited creature, and then one day we went from hoping for better medicine to hoping for jungles painted in all the colours.

In the past we had burned down each other’s cities to protect our own, knowing we would never be safe unless we were strong.

Remember that we were not wrong, it was our world that was wrong, and then remember that we woke up from a dream in which everything was wrong, and the sun was shining and there weren’t enough songs for our happiness.

Talking is like language. When a word means the same thing to two people, then the word is being communicated. In this way, communication is like a sail: tied down to fly free.

We no longer had to speak one language. It was enough that we shared one word.

The word first looked like peace, but it was a tapestry more than a word. We didn’t mention it at every visitation, nor did it seem relevant when conducting formal business, but like a constellation which anchors the stories, so too the things that we share are like mangroves between a river and sea.

(In the past some of our mangroves were sick and infectious: some communication was predominantly penal, whilst others were dehumanizingly mercantile).

The tapestry is told in different words and shapes and places. Once it was told like this:

We are the children of a creator who has brought us into the world to love our values and flourish into beauty and honour. We are all partners in a creation which we build as a gift (first to ourselves, our children, and then the stars which have the pleasure to sparkle in our night sky). We are the gardeners and soldiers the artists and builders and healers and bringers of time.

Ideas (not plan):

• Blurb “What is the Torah” and “How can I engage the Torah” (ayin – ? “Thinking about judgment; or, using your eyes)
• Blurb “What is the Mishkan” and “Shai’s idea for ballparking a Mishkan-thing” (cf. bet)
• Blurb “What is the fire and theodicy”
• Blurb “What is Kabbalah, and a primer on a map of maps”
• Blurb “A way to think of civic possibilities, without restricting them – use caf and cf Keter)
• Blurb “4 worlds and how can the created look like creators”
• Blurb “Nun as contorting against lower self (can use this to segue to discussion of souls, and avoiding fear of non-jews not having souls relating to Israel being the first part of the soul which is freed from Egypt, will be prone to being misunderstood but is cool, iI think, since it is cool how Judaism can be so individualistic, and yet be used by itself to talk to other nations without “Jew-difying” them)
• A song to the unborn; an ode to freedom written to one who will know nothing else
• I think the above is OK, but ideally, it would be rewritten into a pre-planned tone/texture. I’m thinking that it needs to be written with a vintage, archaic, unfamiliar movie lingo, in order to preserve its emotional intent as dialects/fashion change.
• Torah, a letter to a boy on his bat mitzvah. Ignore old branding of Torah, completely, and just speak what you know he needs to hear.
• Fire/theo could write in short metre cf. haiku, emphasize that brevity is of necessity.
• Go wild with “primer of maps” be willing to assume an impossible audience, as if I at this point in time.
• Comment on crossing road (i.e. open with subliminal messaging towards anarchy) then talk about what a society is (I mean a community, not just a social contract), etc. Write it like an old man who was once a freedom fighter, then a politician, and now a kibbutznik.
• Brief 4-worlds told as schematic, then segue into the concept of wisdom, and thus into the challenge and opportunities of learning (i.e. not merely Bina, but also Chochma). Can go meta here, and write the second part as a commentary on the first.
• Religions of fear vs The New world ORder. Dislocating hygienic emotions from pragmatic (albeit highly existential and phenomenological) process. (i.e. Nun).
• Mishkan: I’ve had lots of ideas for cool possibilities, but restrict: I want to find an adaptor cable for allowing a project which (at least in part) aims to shine the brightest. Shorter term goals apply too. Indicate my ideas for how to begin an early iteration/development. Specifically, I am interested in the methodology for creating channels of communication between parties involved in both isolated an interlocking projects including psychonautic, physics et al., mystical, creative, engineering, wisdom, words, more words (lots of people with their big dreams).
  • This part write as if talking to a project manager at a first or second meeting, for a tentative project
  • IF CAN, SEEMS HARD: A micro-vista-idea for a city made of communities. (Allow for extrapolation into “nation” made up of cities. with notes on non-centralized foreign mingling, i.e. not diplomacy – > segregation of state and society, i.e. two churches each independent but each with mutual responsibilities insofar as relating)
  • I reckon, write this up in exaggerated note form, e.g. mistakes, corrections, etc., and thus present as a feeling, not a plan. (Avoid restricting audience’s imagination where possible).

{Part 3 – 24/04/2017}

In the past we had burned down each other’s cities to protect our own, knowing we would never be safe unless we were strong.

Or

In the past, we had thought only one of us was right, and everyone else wrong and doomed in their error. (In various degrees and scopes).