Lemme Think About It...to pretend

To pretend, I actually do the thing: " I have therefore only pretended to pretend."

From The Study...a conversation about possibility...consciousness of guilt

Consciousness of guilt...

In the first volume of The Death Penalty, Derrida considers the jus talionis, the principle of equivalence according to which a relation is set up ‘between the crime and the punishment, between the injury and the price to be paid’. Debt, in On the Genealogy of Morals, gives Nietzsche a way of understanding how ‘the “consciousness of guilt”, “bad conscience”’ came into the world. Earlier he laments ‘that whole sombre thing called reflection’, in which the self becomes its own object of relentless scrutiny and self-punishment. If one wants to keep a promise, one must burn memory into the will, submit to – or submit oneself to – a reign of terror in the name of morality, administer pain to oneself in order to ensure one’s continuity and calculability through time. If I am to be moral and keep my promises, I will remember what I promised and remain the same ‘I’ who first uttered that promise, resisting any circumstances that might alter its continuity through time, never dozing when wakefulness is needed. The promise takes on another meaning in Nietzsche when what I have promised is precisely to repay a debt, a promise by which I enter into, and become bound by, a certain kind of contract. What I have apparently burned into the will, or had burned there, is a promise to remember and repay that debt, to realise the promise within a calculable period of time, and so to become a calculable creature. I can be counted on to count the time and count up the money to make the repayment: that accountability is the promise. I can count on myself, and others can count on me. If I prove capable of making a contract, I can receive a loan and be relied on to pay it back with interest, so that the lender can accumulate wealth from my debt in a predictable way. And if I default, the law will intervene to protect his interest he exacts from me.

Judith Butler...

Stopped To Ponder...happenstance

Happenstance...

John Krumboltz is an established career theorist. He most recently developed ideas about supporting indecision in clients. He states that indecision is desirable and sensible, as it allows the opportunity for clients to benefit from unplanned events. This theory is called planned happenstance. "Now ain't that the sh*t. Ole Jes B Rambling was right after all. Doing nothing, cause I have not finished yet."

Lemme Think About It...awareness

"There is not a "you" independent of your awareness.

That is just a thought too."

Inside The Sane Asylum...

Announcement...

The Sane Asylum Hysterical Society would like to announce the ribbon cutting of a new
business venture in The Sane Asylum. No one knows for sure when it will open. Seems the proprietor is on the road trying to franchise the idea. But if you happen to be up Shit Creek without a paddle, you should look them up online. They carry some much needed merchandise.

P.s. You guessed it. No post today. Attending this important event. Ole Goat Man will be giving lessons on the fine art of goat milking...later, Doc.

P.s.s Don't believe all that bull sh*t I just wrote...the truth is, today is the day I cut my own hair. By the way, no post tomorrow either. I've got a lot of chores to do, besides, if you stay on Google to much you will need one of my paddles...also lowers your IQ...Doc

From The Far Side...of the glass. Anxiety

One important source shedding light on anxiety: Google. As reported by economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, searches for anxiety have doubled in the past eight years. Certain terms are typed more often: ‘anxiety at night’ is skyrocketing, while ‘anxiety in the morning’ is also on the rise.

Most interesting about Stephens-Davidowitz’s reporting is that heavily reported items—major terrorism attacks; whatever Donald Trump is barking at—do not increase searches. Obviously Google is just one source, and not everyone seeks help online. But Google offers critical insights into social functioning. What the data reveals is fascinating...

Interestingly, memory plays an important role in both addiction and anxiety disorder. With addiction, positive reinforcement creates an insatiable urge to revisit the experience. An addict’s aggressive nature partly depends on recalling the feeling of the experience. Soon this spirals into negative reinforcement, where a potential inability to return to that state keeps the user focused not on pleasure, but fear of withdrawal.

This is why panic attacks are a withdrawal symptom. If the compulsion to use is unrewarded, an overwhelming sense of dread kicks in. While this insatiable craving is not exclusive to drugs—food and sex are also powerful motivators—drug addiction is perhaps the most damaging.


Derek Beres is working on his new book, Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health (Carrel/Skyhorse, Spring 2017). He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.  A good one to follow...Doc

Reflections From The Past...

----My Grandpa, John (Jean) Lemoine.

Poppa John and Momma John lived just across the bayou from us. Most of the time the bayou was full of water, but my Poppa solved that problem by building a footbridge across it. A big willow tree was next to the lil bridge. Poppa came home one day with a long piece of tow boat rope that he found on the river bank. We tied it to a big limb in the willow and played Tarzan with it, standing on the bridge, giving the Tarzan yell, then swinging on the rope out over the water. We had very little, but we were proud.

Poppa John had a milk cow. She never had a name, so we called her "milk cow". Seemed like it was ok with her, cause bout the only thing she ever said about it was "moooooo". (:-).

Poppa John milked that ole cow every afternoon, and on his way to the barn he would hit the milk dipper against the milk bucket, his signal to me it was time for me to get over there.

The old barn where "milk cow" lived was a scary place to a sprouting tadpole like me, and little did I know that a monster named "JudeBa" lived there too.

On our way back to the house with the milk Poppa John always had a sip or two of fresh warm milk left in the milk dipper. He would look around to see if Momma was not around, then give it to me to drink. I found out why one day, when Momma saw him give me the dipper, and did she fuss him or what. She told him the raw milk was gonna make me sick and kill me, but hey, even though I feel dead I am still kickin.

I have to admit, when I was little, I was bad.

 One day, a new resident moved into the ole barn, his name was "JudeBa". While Poppa John sat in his rocker on the back porch, JudeBa would come a crawling out of the barn on his all fours, moaning and groaning, then stand up, a big long black coat from his chin to his feet, big wide brimmed hat, not even a hint of his face could be seen. That's all it took to hightail it back over the bridge and back home while Poppa John laughed. This happened quite often, and every time it did, Momma John was nowhere to be seen.

Life was good living next to your Grandparents. When Christmas time rolled around Poppa John would load us up in his ole car and take us down the road to Mr. Duke Rogers store in MaCrea and buy us Christmas candy, moon pies,  stage planks, and firecrackers. While he was there he would get some "Joe Lewis sausage" and "forceted meat" for Momma John to cook. We ate a lot of "forceted meat" as kids, know what it is ? (:-). He never left Mr. Dukes without a half gallon of banana flavored Borden ice cream in the round cardboard container either.

Once we grew up a bit and the bad in us seemed to water down, ole JudeBa moved on.

Momma John took down sick and left this life many years before Poppa John, then before we knew it Poppa John's work here being finished,  he went to meet Momma John in that better place.

Their old house and barn, "milk cow",  the lil bridge Poppa built, the willow tree, Momma and Poppa, their house, everything they built, all faded away into the past, but me and mine still live here, the bayou is still there too, and sometimes while I sit alone on my swing in late afternoon, I can still hear Poppa John hitting the milk dipper against the milk pail, telling me it's time to milk the cow.

Hey Poppa John, you are a handsome man Sir, and I am so very proud to have your communian/confirmation candle, and one day very soon I will post a pic of it for the whole world to see.

Tell Great Great Grandpa Marcelin hello, never had the pleasure of meeting him, nor Great Great Grandma, no pictures of them, but i have his diary, and had he not survived the war, I would not be sitting here tonight, telling the world about a milk cow named "milk cow", a "JudeBa", lost bread, and peanut butter with syrup, mixed up in a bowl, waiting in the ice box for someone to eat, because it's "good for you, get you some",,,,,,,,,,,,,,just like family history.

May you and Momma John rest in peace, never to be forgotten.

--- This post is not the end, but the beginning instead.----'nuff said, for now.

Michael Gautreaux, Sr.

Stopped To Ponder...Silence

“There are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout,” Henry David Thoreau observed in contemplating how silence ennobles speech. A year earlier, he had written in his journal: “I wish to hear the silence of the night, for the silence is something positive and to be heard.” It’s a sentiment of almost unbearable bittersweetness today, a century and a half later, as we find ourselves immersed in a culture that increasingly mistakes loudness for authority, vociferousness for voice, screaming for substance. We seem to have forgotten what Susan Sontag reminded us half a century ago — that “silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech,” that it has its own aesthetic, and that learning to wield it is among the great arts of living.

Of the nine kinds of silence that Sontag’s contemporary and friend Paul Goodman outlined, “the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul” is the kind we seem to have most hastily forsaken — and yet it is also the one we most urgently need if we are to reclaim the aesthetic of silence in the art of living.

From The Study...a conversation about possibilities

We all carry in our heads a model of reality put there by tradition,

training, and customs. When the events of life and the behavior of

persons around us conform to this model, we are at peace; and when

they don't conform, we feel upset. Thus, what in truth upsets us is not

those persons or those events, but the model of reality we carry with us...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...syllogistic reasoning

It all started long ago. Somehow during that still mysterious time of neuronal arrangement an ancestor realized its brain could carry simple reasoning. The new device might have enabled the brain to ask a question. Perhaps the brain noted nausea, and our poor ancestor just blurted out, "why am I feeling so shitty?" Was it that smelly caveman last night, or was it that weird green plant I ingested or what about the presidential election?"

All kinds of animals can figure out what makes them sick. Rats remember shit like that. They learn. That sort of simple associative reasoning abounds in the animal kingdom. What does not abound is the capacity to ask the next questions. "Why did the plant make me sick?" "How can I avoid that crap?" Sustained syllogistic reasoning, the capacity to state a major premise, then a minor one, followed by a deductive belief conclusion...our species alone can do that...pretty amazing! "I can't believe I ate that shit again!!"

Draw your own conclusions about yourself...after all, it's just my version of the truth, and I could be wrong...Doc

Discovering Ourselves Series...interesting species

In general the mind seeks to understand the world. In doing so it creates the illusion that we are in control of all our actions and reasoning. We become the center of a sphere of action so large it has no walls.

The manifest presence of the mind, rearing its magnificent head above the sea of species around us, raises the question, "Why us?" It is really a special device, or is it the mere consequence of the brain getting too big and loaded up with neurons? Is it truly a human instinct, an adaptation that supplies a competitive edge in enhancing reproductive success? What ever it is, this device, it has helped us conquer the vicissitudes of the environment and enabled us to become psychologically interesting to ourselves as a species.

Now with all that said, draw your own conclusions about yourself. After all, it's just  my version of the truth and I could be wrong...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...the fictional self

Discovering Ourselves...the fictional self

"There is no life that can be recaptured wholly, as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. What does that tell us about the nature of life, and does one really want to know?" Bernard Malamud, Dublin's Lives

Well we do know about the fiction of our lives and we should want to know. Resconstruction of events starts with perception and goes all the way to human reasoning. Funny, the mind is the last to know things. After the brain computes an event, the illusionary "we" (that is, the mind) becomes aware of it. It reconstructs the brain events and in doing so makes telling errors of perception, memory, and judgement. The clue to how we are built is buried not just in our marvelously robust capacity for these functions but also in the errors that are frequently made during reconstruction. Biography is fiction. Autobiography is hopelessly inventive.

Now with all that said, draw your own conclusions about yourself.  After all, it's just my version of the truth and I could be wrong...Doc

From The Study...a conversation of possibilities

Use suffering to end suffering..

Happy experiences make life magical, painful experiences lead to growth. This does not mean we are to seek suffering and provoke pain. There is enough suffering in life. No reason to add to it, but we do with our "unreason". True reasoning is...we must use our suffering when it comes for its Nobel purpose.

Never say to yourself, "I'll be happy when this suffering passes." If you are not happy with things as they are with you now, you will never be. If you wait to get out of jail in order to be free, you'll never be free. Learn how to feel free while you are in jail, and then you can be free anywhere. A Nobel task for a Nobel purpose...

Lessons From The Sane Asylum..."un enlightenment"

Revelation always comes as somewhat of a shock, not only to the person who receives the revelation, but also to those with who it is shared. It is the nature of revelation to be shocking and startling because when it hits up against our cherished beliefs, we become conscious of the degree to which our minds have been conditioned, by opinion and theories in human thinking. Suddenly we realize the extent of our "un enlightenment".