Here is today’s recording, as requested by Creators…
The Creation for Sunday, January 22, 2012
and the notes Service Notes for Sunday, January 22, 2012

At 47 MB, the recording is a hefty file, so please be patient. While You’re waiting, consider the assignments, if You choose to take them on. During the State of the Union (SOTU) Address, listen for the three modes of meaning.

1) Presentational Meaning Listen for facts and figures, processes and procedures, explanations, definitions, descriptions, quantification and so on.

2) Orientational Meaning Characterized by the language of formality, as well as intimacy, status and power relationships, role relationships; speech acts such as promising or threatening, joking, insulting, pleading, requesting/demanding, offering, etc.

3) Organizational Meaning Generally not recognized or noticed in our culture, organizational meaning includes the ways in which language creates wholes and parts, how it tells us which words go with which other ones, which phrases and sentences with which others and how, and generally how a coherent text distinguishes itself from a random sequence of sentences, phrases, or words. This is the realm of the ‘texture’ of text. Look for figures of speech, changes in inflection and tone, word choices, rhythm, “call and response” techniques.

Here is today’s recording, if You’d like to “relive the moments…”


The Creation for Sunday, December 4, 2011


At 45 MB, it’s a large file, so please be patient.
In the meantime, here’s the 411 on the song we were singing this morning.


SMILE
artist: Nat King Cole
Peak billboard position: #10 in 1954.
Competing versions charted by Sunny Gale (#19) and David Whitfield (#25).
Also charted in 1959 by Tony Bennett (#73); in 1961 by Timi Yuro (#42); in 1962 by Ferrante and Teicher (#94); and in 1965 by Betty Everett and Jerry Butler (#42).
Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons and music by Charlie Chaplin (yes, that Charlie Chaplin

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

Lyrics | Nat King Cole lyrics – Smile lyrics

That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

First Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street. This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group. This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Note the message: we can save the planet by our purchasing decisions. Nothing could be further from the truth. See END:CIV below…

In lieu of the scheduled order of service for last Sunday, we had a remarkable conversation on the Current Condition: Politics, Public Policy, US and World Economy, Society and Culture. The schedule of topics for upcoming weeks has been revised.

February 27th – Generosity in the Aspect of Existence
March 6th – Otherness: Marginalization
                  (includes additional material on Islam and Atheism)
March 13th – New Communication: Twitter, Facebook, SMS and Language
March 20th – Intentionality

The message schedule is a flexible and synthetic matter: we made it up and we can change it. I love it when people make requests for particular topics into which they are inquiring.

I deeply appreciate the level at which Creators engage with the philosophical propositions of the Creation. I received a question from a frustrated Creator, who states, “I am having trouble with what inspires me and what my dreams are… Feel like I lost being able to create these long ago.” My response follows:

You are not alone in Your difficulty with creating inspiration: inspiring possibilities, dreams and visions. Possibilities, dreams and visions conceal themselves in the aspect of Existence, Being, as such. We tend to lose our facility with this powerful aspect of life around the age of five, give or take a couple of years. In the history of Human Being, Heidegger asserts, we began to neglect Being when we attached our approach to life to Plato’s philosophy of ideals (Heidegger. Being and Time. 1926). As I said on Sunday, ideals are possibilities that have died, changing their state from Being to Having. We have ideals, but consider them unattainable, or significantly, impossible.

Coming to Life from ideals (or preferences, desires, opinions, feelings, beliefs and so on) in the aspect of Having, drives us to react in the aspect of Doing, and then we get whatever results from that: disappointment, stress, frustration, elation, happiness, anger, a paycheck — and since none of those has any permanence or reality, these results dissipate and then we have to do more, or do better, or do something different, which then produces more, better or different results, and we are in a self-perpetuating downward spiral. This is the inevitable outcome of living in the neglect or resistance to Being. This was the fundamental mistake of Western Philosophy that produced our current condition of perpetual war, environmental disasters, greed, inequitable economies, oppression and slavery, and all of the outcomes we call “evil.” It has also produced progress in technology and techniques that we consider “good.” Continuing in our good or bad, better or worse, more or less, different and same strategies will keep us in dilemma, conflict, quandary and perplexity. What we need to get out of the vortex cannot be produced in the vortex. What we need makes no sense.

To live an empowered Life, we must create ways of Being, called possibilities, that serve as futures into which we can live. The future exists only in language, which fortunately for us, is the medium in which Human Beings can create. Language is not necessarily words and sentences, but it can be. There are no private languages, so one of the features of language is that it can be shared. Art, music, dance, non-verbal expressions of love can be language, as well as words, and they are most language-y when shared. (See, ‘language-y’ is not a word, but it communicates something.)

To inquire into what You could create, You may begin with considering the last time You were inspired by something. What was it? What inspired You about it? How did it feel, look, sound, smell or taste? Recreate the experience for Yourself. Then look to see what is in the way of creating the inspiration. We often think of the barriers in the way as something external to us, but the barriers are our own. “My upbringing” for instance, is not an external, as it is my interpretation of my childhood. Someone else with the same upbringing may have interpreted it differently, and constructed different barriers. When You’ve identified Your barriers, consider if You are wiling to give them up. If so, give them up. In the clearing that opens in the absence of the barriers You’ve given up, a new possibility (new future) will show up. I can coach You through this method, if You find it difficult the first time.

While it is not absolutely required that You share Your created future, it is valuable. Unpredictable promises and direct requests lead to the fulfillment of possibilities.

I hope this deepens the distinction of creating for You.

Love,
Samantha

This Sunday, we inquired into slavery and Freedom. We distinguished emancipation from the possibility of Freedom, in the extraordinary sense. We find that there are aspects of slavery and Freedom hitherto neglected, or so it seems.

The question to consider this week is, “What enslaves me now?” Other ways of phrasing the question may be “In what ways am I not Free to Be?” or “What is impeding my Freedom?”

We spoke of a section of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address, delivered January 11, 1944. This is often simply called “The Second Bill of Rights,” and once constituted the Progressive Agenda in America. Here is that section:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.[1]” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920′s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.[3]

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[1] In the English Property Law case, captioned Vernon v Bethell (1762) 28 ER 838, it was affirmed that there could be no restriction on the equity of redemption. In justifying this rule, Lord Henley LC made the famous observation that, “necessitous[2]” men are not, truly speaking, free men, but, to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose upon them.”

[2] necessitous |nəˈsesitəs| adjective
(of a person) lacking the necessities of life; needy.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from French nécessiteux, or from necessity + ous.

[3] http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html

Today we had an enlivening conversation about the drift we are in, as well as the Possibility of Freedom, distinguished against the background of Liberty. We participated in a process and looked upward from our aphelion.

Creation Service: July 4, 2010

This is now an unprecedented ecological disaster, the scope of which exceeds anything previously experienced in North America. Now, as ever, we must stand for the Possibility of Being One with Our Planet, Our Species, and All Things.