I like wasps. Maybe I like them because they are incredibly, foolishly, suicidally brave.
They will take on anything at all; wolverines on steroids.
So I never kill wasps.
Except, a year or so ago, when I had to dig out an old tree stump, in preparation for building a carport.
A wasp warned me off, as I dug. It became more and more threatening, the more I dug and dug.
But I needed that stump gone, and so I ignored the wasp and carried on.
Until it became so insistent that I retired, hurrying across the lawn, while it relentlessly followed me.
The fool thing became stuck inside my glove, between glove and wrist, whereupon it stung me.

Well. When I get hurt, I get angry, and man, that hurt!
Before I knew I'd done it, the wasp was dead...

I've felt bad, ever since, for killing that wasp. It was an expert in bushido, and I regretted having had to off it.
Bad for my karma, too, I imagined, and golly, what price would I have to pay for that?

And suddenly I realized:
If there is such a thing as karma, then surely it doesn't just apply to humans.
It applies to every living thing. Wasps too.
No matter how well-armed one is, and however justified in one's actions, there are consequences to one's actions.
Take on something thousands of times your size, and those consequences are likely to be unpleasant.

Perhaps, as my wife reminded me, that wasp was the reincarnation of an especially ornery human.
Some characters just never learn.

I love this story.  When Americans speak of 'karma,' they talk about it like its some sort of convenient cosmic system for granting the weak revenge upon the strong.  You know, like Christianity. 

In my more fanciful moments, I like to think that life's little mishaps are just nature's way of reminding us to value what we do.  Most people place very little value on most of what they do, and consequently do most everything poorly, and with ill-concealed resentment.  I've come to welcome the occasional annoyance or setback; it helps me to remember that every challenge is worth overcoming and every task begun is worth finishing, and finishing well.  It is hard to value that which we have not worked for.

We are talking about two different things here.
What you say is true, up to the point where it is no longer true.
When I say 'no thought', that is exactly what I mean:
A state in which thought is utterly superfluous, and simply ceases to occur.
Indeed, as soon as a thought manifests, the no-thought state ceases, and the thinker returns to its accustomed state.
There is, for example, in the no-thought state, no hint of emotion, or identity; only one-ness with everything.
Thinking separates itself from everything else, in order to consider it.
Not-thinking removes that separation.

Ha. I had to repair the insane misspelling of that last 'separation' about nine times before it was right.

That sense of "oneness"?  It's only in your head.  It is, as we like to call it in the parlance of my generation, a thought.

When I encounter a situation that calls for less thought and more...whatever, I'll let you know.

I wouldn't hold my breath for too long, were I you...

Or, perhaps we need to bend the arc of our "current contemporary culture" away from its current path toward an ever more secure haven for passive, effeminate, organization-minded (as in "company man," not the capacity to provide organization) failboaters...

“Trust us: when the Congressional Black Caucus tells you that a voter ID law will be detrimental to black empowerment — black political empowerment — we know what we are talking about and it is for real,” Butterfield continued, before contradicting himself (with respect to the alleged goals of the “right-wing conspiracy” trying to return to 1900. “What they want to do is not take away the right to vote, but if black voter participation can be diminished even by ten percent it will make that critical difference all across the country. President Obama won my state, in the last election, by 14,000 votes. Had we had a voter ID law in North Carolina he would not have won the state of NC and probably could not have won the presidency.”

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/dem-scotus-part-racist-right-wing-conspiracy/570266

(What leadership under a liberal democracy does with your time.)

It's a classic illustration of the ways in which our politicians love to address issues that don't matter to the exclusion of those that do.  There's not enough vote fraud in the US to justify spending a second of legislative time on laws to prevent it, nor will requiring voters to show photo identification disenfranchise any substantial number of minorities.  These are laws that aren't needed, but have no real negative impact, either.  Which, I suppose, makes them perfect bones for contention: no one has to risk losing anything important..

Quote from: Conservationist on April 12, 2012, 04:13:28 AM

I don't understand the bias against Zionism. It's Jewish nationalism. That's worth supporting.

Thats what kills me, if you hate Jews so much, why not help with their Zionist mission and help them get the hell out of Dodge? If Zionists had their way, you wouldn't have to deal with the Jews materialistic bullshit, and they wouldn't have to deal with European and American pogroms. It's win-win.

Well, unless you're a Palestinian Arab.

The brain is one of those things about which we know very little, and understand even less. As a result, I am always, at the very least, suspicious of grand sweeping claims about brain function.  I am particularly suspicious when such speculation is couched in vague, imagistic terms that read like a personality sorter...or a horoscope.