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Speakers — New York 2008
Bill Ackman
is the Managing Member and General Partner of Pershing Square, L.P. Prior to forming Pershing Square, he cofounded Gotham Partners, L.P. in 1993, a public and private equity investment partnership. Mr. Ackman earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
John Burbank
is the Founder and Managing Member of Passport Capital. He started the firm in 2000 with $800,000 and now manages nearly $5 billion. Over this period his flagship global fund has earned a net annualized return of 37.9%, vs. 3.0% for the MSCI world index. Mr. Burbank earned a BA from Duke and an MBA from Stanford.
Leon G. Cooperman
was a General Partner of Goldman Sachs & Co. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management at the end of 1991 when he left to organize a private investment partnership, Omega Advisors, Inc. For nine consecutive years, Lee was voted the number one portfolio strategist in the Institutional Investor All-America Research Team survey. Lee received his MBA from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from Hunter College. He is a recipient of Roger Williams University's Honorary Doctor of Finance.
Boykin Curry
is the Managing Director of Eagle Capital which oversees more than 7 billion dollars in assets under management. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.
Aaron Edelheit
is Portfolio Manager of Sabre Value Management. His ten years of experience include research, trading and portfolio management across a wide array of industries both domestically and internationally. Mr. Edelheit began his career at Individual Investor Group. In 1998, he started Sabre Value Management and he launched the Sabre Value Fund in 2002. He has compounded his investors' money at 20% net of fees annually since 1998.
Kian Ghazi
CFA co-founded Hawkshaw Capital Management in 2002, a fundamentals-driven long/short investment partnership. He is a Managing Partner and portfolio manager. Prior to co-founding Hawkshaw, Mr. Ghazi was a senior investment professional at Midtown Capital Partners and the business services analyst at Lehman. He received his MBA from Wharton in 1995, where he was a Palmer scholar.
Lance Helfert
Before founding West Coast Asset Management he oversaw a $1 billion portfolio at Wilshire Associates. Lance sits on the board of directors for Junior Achievement of Southern California and the Tri-Counties Make-A-Wish Foundation. He has been honored as one of the top executives in banking and finance by the Pacific Coast Business Times. Lance is a graduate of Pepperdine University.
Atticus Lowe
is a CFA Charterholder and completed the Value Investing Program at Columbia. He is responsible for stock research and portfolio management, along with structuring private investment opportunities. Honored as a member of the "Forty Under 40" Class by the Pacific Coast Business Times, Atticus is a member of the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts, and a dedicated student of value investing.
Jeff Matthews
started as an oil analyst with Merrill Lynch in 1979 and founded Ram Partners LP in 1994. Ram Partners LP is a value oriented, long and short hedge fund with a focus on healthcare, consumer and technology investments. In 2005 Matthews started writing JeffMatthewsIsNotMakingThisUp, a financial blog that was recommended by Barron's in 2006 and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal's Market Beat. He is the author of Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett's Omaha.
David Nierenberg
is the Founder of The D3 Family Funds, which manages $650 million
in four private investment partnerships. Mr. Nierenberg serves on the Washington State Investment Board, which manages $80 billion of public employee retirement funds. He is a graduate of
Yale College and Yale Law School.
Mohnish Pabrai
is Managing Partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, a group of focused value funds. Since inception in 1999 with $1 million, Pabrai Funds has grown to over $500 million in assets under management. Pabrai is the author of two books on value investing, Mosaic and The Dhandho Investor.
Alexander Roepers
is the Portfolio Manager
of Atlantic Investment Management, Inc.,
which he founded in 1988,
a $4.2 billion global Registered Investment Advisor, with offices in New York and Tokyo. Mr. Roepers is a graduate of Harvard Business School.
Thomas A. Russo
has been a partner at Gardner, Russo and Gardner since 1989. He personally is responsible for $4 billion under management. He was at the Sequoia Fund from 1984-1988. Mr. Russo is a graduate of Dartmouth and has an MBA and a JD from Stanford.
Jeffrey Schwarz
is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, Inc., which he co-founded in 1992. He is the Chairman of the Board of Bogen Communications International, Inc. and a member of the Board of Cyberonics Inc. Mr. Schwarz is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he received both his BS in Economics and his MBA.
Whitney R. Tilson
is the Founder and a Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC, which manages three private investment partnerships and the Tilson Mutual Funds. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Value Investor Insight. Tilson has been a guest on Lou Dobbs Moneyline and Wall $treet Week, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and is a regular columnist for Financial Times. He is the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Value Investing Congress.
Glenn H. Tongue
is a Managing Partner of
T2 Partners LLC
and the Tilson Mutual Funds. Mr. Tongue spent 17 years on Wall Street, most recently as an investment banker at UBS, where he was a Managing Director and Head of Acquisition Finance. Before UBS, Mr. Tongue was at DLJ for 13 years, the last three of which he served as the President of NYSE-listed DLJdirect. Prior to that he was a Managing Director in the Investment Bank at DLJ, where he worked on over 100 transactions aggregating more than $40 billion.


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Multicore Mania
Faster, cooler-running consumer PCs are coming. The key: two, four, eight, or even a hundred CPUs on a single microprocessor.
This article is part 1 of a two-part series; part 2 will appear on Friday, December 16.
When you can't make a microprocessor run faster, what do you do? You combine two or more microprocessor cores, of course.
Intel and AMD, the top industry rivals, have already introduced dual-core chips for desktop PCs. And that's just the start of a trend that could bring an important change to PCs: multicore processing. Both of these leading chipmakers hope to pack four cores into desktop PC chips by 2007. And Intel researchers are investigating how to put tens or even hundreds of cores onto a single chip.
Both chipmakers and PC makers need multicore chips for an important reason: they've run out of performance headroom on existing designs. (For years, chipmakers have added transistors and ratcheted up clock speeds to make processors run faster. But clock speeds can be increased only so much before a chip radiates too much heat inside the PC case.)
But why does the average PC user need two, four, or eight cores on a chip? For starters, think multitasking. "I call multitasking the silent 'killer app'," says Shane Rau, program manager for semiconductor research at market-research firm IDC. "Today, all the apps we're using are nickel-and-diming the processor to death."
Most individual applications already run well – on their own. But, as any Windows user knows, running multiple programs simultaneously, say, a word processor, audio player, and anti-virus software, will eventually make the unwanted hourglass appear. Multicore processing could end that waiting period.
Furthermore, given today's ever-changing security threats, multitasking requirements will only go up, say industry observers. Most people will continue to use more applications simultaneously, while PCs will need to run more security programs in the background just to protect themselves.
In particular, streaming audio and video tasks can hog microprocessor resources. Intel believes multiple cores will be much better at tasks such as downloading video from a PC to a personal media player. And Intel's upcoming multicore processors run cooler than the originals – which could lead to innovative notebook and desktop PC case designs. The company's dual-core chip, nicknamed "Yonah," is set to debut in early 2006.
At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month, Taiwanese PC maker AOpen plans to demonstrate a Yonah-powered machine about the size of Apple's Mac mini-desktop computer, which measures 17 centimeters wide, 17 centimeters deep, and 5 centimeters tall. Yonah played a big role in Apple's recent decision to buy Intel chips, according to Kevin Krewell, editor-in-chief of In-Stat's Microprocessor Report, because Yonah will enable faster Powerbook notebooks.
First-Round Mistakes
Early dual-core chips, such as Intel's Pentium D, got mixed reviews – mainly because their performance gains were unimpressive when running software designed for traditional single-core processors. To really tap into the power of dual-core, or multicore chips, software applications need to be written or rewritten to take advantage of two or more cores, a process called multithreading.

subset: commoncrawl


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Don't Get Too Cocky, Thin People: 'Skinny Fat' Is Coming For You
This one's for the effortless thin. We all know a person like this: one who never goes to the gym, subsists on a diet of burgers slathered in cheeses and sauces and bacons and non-diet soda yet never gains a pound, who hates the gym because "it smells" and drinks like a parched fish. A person who, despite what she… »


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Selected Correspondence Vineeto
Social Identity
VINEETO to No. 7: I donĺt see how this ľ Dell-Carnegie-style ľ method could work in long term. It suggests attempting mind control over emotions, it does absolutely nothing to get rid of the emotions themselves. It does not get to the root cause of the emotional reaction ľ the Human Condition, inherent in the psychological and psychic entity within the body.
RESPONDENT: From my experience, certain emotions like anger can be dealt with by plain common sense. Just by understanding (and I am talking of only intellectual understanding), that anger is not going to improve or help the situation and on the other hand, it is going to harm yours and othersĺ mental and physical peace, the anger vanishes. I have tried and tested it and it works. It is not repression so it doesnĺt come back even in long run. Not that the anger does not arise, but as soon as it arises, you can see it vanishing in the light of your understanding.
VINEETO: What you are describing sounds like more than just intellectual understanding and more than the method of Ĺpositive thinkingĺ that [ Respondent No 1, List C] was proposing. You say you are using Ĺcommon senseĺ and Ĺnot repressionĺ. And you say, anger about that issue does not come back? Not even in the long run? It does not hang around, maybe as being peeved or annoyed? Or an expectation for a reward, a righteousness, a better-than-you-feeling?
If that is so, then you have found the first Ĺkeyĺ to eliminating anger ľ seeing the actual situation, sensibly considering everyone involved and understanding that your particular feelings will do nothing to help the situation, on the contrary, they are harmful. You can apply the same understanding to any other emotion arising, be it love, gratitude, resentment, doubt, anguish, sadness, etc. None of our so-called precious feelings are useful for dealing with practical, every-day situations. Care, consideration, attention, intelligence and common sense can do the job much better. The trick is to question the Ĺgoodĺ feelings as well as the Ĺbadĺ feelings, and a great part of the social identity will disappear, issue by issue.
The second Ĺkeyĺ is to examine the underlying reason why anger (and any other feeling and emotion) arises in the first place. What is Ĺmyĺ perception of the world, which of Ĺmyĺ expectations are not met, what is it that ĹIĺ am imposing on the world-as-it-is and the people-as-they-are that ĹIĺ feel angry about? Persistent questioning of the root cause of my getting angry as well as applying common sense had immediate and drastic results ľ more and more the Ĺselfĺ was seen for what it was in the light of this awareness; it was seen as an alien intruder that continuously spoiled the joy and ease of being Ĺhereĺ.
VINEETO: (...) Spiritualism vs. actualism is a great topic to nut out and absolutely vital for the path to an actual freedom. It takes great courage and persistence to disentangle oneself from the net of spiritual beliefs, which pervade each and every issue of life, from love and relationship to the way we look at the physical universe, people and events. This psychic net of beliefs and emotions is such a thick cobweb laid over our sensate-only perception that, once removed, even for a short period, you think you looking at a completely different world.
But letĺs stick to one point at a time ľ
RESPONDENT: Anyway I am still on this topic ĹSpiritualism vs actualismĺ. You mentioned that I donĺt differentiate between Ego and Soul. This is very true. With my experience, I really canĺt differentiate the two. When I look at myself I see only one identity. What I understand from both spiritualism and actualism is that this identity has to die.
VINEETO: You say, you understand that both, ego and soul, have to die. Great. Now, what is this soul?
The easiest way to understand Ĺsoulĺ for me was to see it as the sum of my emotions, feelings, beliefs and passions. Love is Ĺmeĺ, affection is Ĺmeĺ, sadness is Ĺmeĺ, anger is Ĺmeĺ, being annoyed is Ĺmeĺ, being grateful is Ĺmeĺ, being hopeful is Ĺmeĺ, being frustrated is Ĺmeĺ, being impatient is Ĺmeĺ, being fearful is Ĺmeĺ ľ you can add anything you like to this list. All ĹIĺ am is my feelings, all ĹIĺ am is my beliefs and all ĹIĺ am is my instincts. ĹIĺ consist of nothing else.
Although ĹIĺ am not actual, as in palpable, tangible, tactile, corporeal, physical, material, ĹIĺ am real, ĹIĺ am my feelings and the actions that result from having these feelings are real. To imagine otherwise is but a cunning trick and an act of blatant denial. ĹIĺ am not merely an illusion that can be Ĺrealisedĺ away as in the spiritual teachings. As such, the death of Ĺmeĺ will also be a real event. ĹIĺ in Ĺmyĺ totality, who is but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to Ĺmyĺ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word Ĺextinctionĺ written on it.
This fact of what ĹIĺ consist of has to be discovered, acknowledged, investigated and experienced, over and over again. Only then is one willing to Ĺget down and get dirtyĺ, willing to experience and examine oneĺs feelings ľ not merely Ĺobserveĺ them ľ and investigate into the hidden beliefs and instinctual passions that cause those feelings. By neither repressing nor expressing but by meticulously exploring each feeling I was then able to determine the underlying cause ľ be it a hurt pride, a bit of my social identity, a fear linked to my survival mechanism, a cherished belief disguised as Ĺtruthĺ ľ there was always an issue beneath the initial emotion. And each of these feelings and emotions is Ĺmeĺ, my identity, my Ĺselfĺ, my Ĺsoulĺ. ĹIĺ consist of nothing else but a great collection of passionate imaginations.
RESPONDENT: Peter just sent a diagram showing Ĺwho I amĺ diminishes gradually and Ĺwhat I amĺ becomes apparent in actualism. I read the same thing in spiritualism. Just that they call Ĺwho I amĺ as ego (and I understand soul also if any such thing exists) and Ĺwhat I amĺ as God (by whatever name). I donĺt see God as an identity at all. It is just a situation when ĹIĺ does not exist. With my understanding of both spiritualism and actualism so far, I think there are two big lies, which I have to understand:
I think I have understood the first lie, more or less.
VINEETO: When you say:
You have just defined ĹGodĺ as Ĺa situation when ĹIĺ do not existĺ and thus put it all nicely back into the spiritual belief system. If the spiritual ĹGodĺ is a non-identity, how come Rajneesh, Krishnamurti and all the other enlightened gurus had such glamour, glory and glitz about them, how come they needed heaps of devoted disciples and couldnĺt live as a fellow human being among other fellow human beings? Is this not the most obvious proof of having an identity, now even bigger, brighter, shinier and Ĺwiserĺ than everybody else? No more ego, but the soul in full swing.
When ĹIĺ, the complete identity, both the one ĹI think I amĺ and the one ĹI feel I amĺ have disappeared, there is no sense of identity whatsoever, nobody that can identify oneself as God or Existence or ĹAll That Isĺ. Then there is only a body with limbs and senses, blood-circulation and a brain that is aware of being alive. There is no identity holding it all together, no identity experiencing each moment, nothing that has a past and a future, no sense of Ĺbeingĺ and nothing that has any emotional memory whatsoever.
RESPONDENT: Now I have to realise the second one, which I understand intellectually, but not experientially. I am not interested in branding my understanding as either actualism or spiritualism. If this is what actualism says and maintains that this is different from spiritualism ľ fair enough. As an expert on actualism, if you confirm that my understanding conforms to what actualism says, then the next question is whether spiritualism also says the same thing! I am not an expert on spiritualism. In fact I know very little of it compared to you. But what I am quite sure of is my understanding.
VINEETO: An intellectual Ĺunderstandingĺ that ĹIĺ am a Ĺbig lieĺ wonĺt do anything. It will just be putting another intellectual belief on top of an existing belief, a new dress over the old corpse.
The diagram is trying to make clear, that all we know, all we are, is this grey mass of Ĺwho I amĺ. This Ĺwhoĺ has to be dismantled, piece by piece, gradually and meticulously ľ and there are no short-cuts such as meditative mantras of ĹI am but an illusionĺ, ĹI am only a beliefĺ. Because this Ĺwho I amĺ is not only a mental construct that can be dismissed with an intellectual understanding, this Ĺwho I amĺ is an emotional and instinctual package, supported by the chemical surges of our survival instincts, by ancient beliefs of our ancestors, a firm social structure of beliefs, morals, ethics and psittacisms, and on top of it a dearly held, carefully constructed, individual personality. There is a lot at stake when one decides for the path to freedom.
Logic is not going to make you free. Logic is a plain mental activity that avoids any real change. Actualism is about digging into oneĺs beliefs, tearing them apart, facing the upcoming fears and leaving oneĺs social identity behind. One has to fully experience each of the upcoming feelings in order to get to the bottom of it all. Then, out of this in-depth investigation, I am compelled to change my behaviour, and I am leaving my Ĺselfĺ behind, piece by piece.
RESPONDENT: ĹI am not an expert on spiritualism. In fact I know very little of it compared to you.ĺ
VINEETO: First I had to understand my own spiritualism, my own complex belief-structure that existed in my brain. First, I had to acknowledge that, yes, I am full of unquestioned beliefs, assumptions, vague feelings and intuitions. You see, nobody thinks he believes. Everybody is convinced that they Ĺknowĺ, that they Ĺsee the truthĺ. A passionate conviction, a belief fed into us with motherĺs milk is never seen as a belief ľ it is conceived as being the very truth. Why would people kill for what they consider a mere belief, an idea ľ no, it is the bloody truth for them, and they are ready to defend it with their lives and kill for it. So, first of all, one needs to acknowledge that there is belief. And believing is being spirit-ual, non-factual, substantiating ideas with oneĺs spirit. Every idea, every assumption, every opinion is spirit-ual, produced in the head ľ or in the heart.
Once I understood that the word Ĺspiritĺ describes the passionate yet imaginary entity inside of me, I could also understand that Spirit-ualism ľ Eastern Religion ľ is merely aiming to enhance that entity into glorious grandeur. Actualism is to get rid of oneĺs Ĺspiritĺ in total in order to experience the actual world that is already here.
Itĺs a great journey discovering facts, facts verifiable by the senses, repeatable, explainable, describable, non-emotional, non-affective, simple and actual ľ facts. As Peter has already mentioned in his letter to Alan, in the library you will find a good detailed description of Ĺfactĺ by Richard.
The path to actual freedom is paved by facts and the sensuous experiencing of the physical universe.
RESPONDENT: So, the intellectual part asks questions about the nature of the programs. Some programs are completely obvious, others not so, and itĺs difficult at times to differentiate between the elemental physical responses, and the learned reactions.
VINEETO: Yes, some programs are Ĺcompletely obviousĺ, and at first it was far easier for me to observe them in other people. The trick, implicit in the actualism method, however was to search for the same programs in myself because the human condition is common to all and that includes Ĺmeĺ.
The Ĺlearned reactionsĺ are those that make up the social identity ľ my identity as a male or female, a member of a family, profession, peer group, nation, ethnic group, religion, political and ideological orientation. Each of these aspects of your social identity gives plenty of opportunities for Ĺselfĺ-investigation. By examining what is preventing you from being happy and harmless now you are successively questioning and challenging your Ĺlearned reactionsĺ and feelings that arise from being a social identity.
The elimination of oneĺs social identity requires the replacement of the moral and ethical arbitrary judgments of good and bad and right and wrong with an open-eyed evaluation and intelligent judgment based on what is sensible and what is silly. The beliefs and psittacisms one has been instilled with in childhood, or has later taken on as oneĺs own, need to be replaced with observable and verifiable facts.
The actualism method allows you to separate Ĺelemental physical responsesĺ such as hunger, thirst, cold, heat, physical pain, discomfort and so on from your instinctual survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. The more you investigate into your social identity and peel the layers of your beliefs and feelings associated with the Ĺlearned reactionsĺ, the more those Ĺelementalĺ instinctual responses will come to the surface where they can be experienced and observed. To keep it simple and less confusing ľ first work first, and that is investigating the social identity.
RESPONDENT: The direct half did have a glimmer today though ... I grokked for a moment how I have been interpreting ĹHow am I experiencing...ĺ as ĹWhat am I experiencing...ĺ, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
VINEETO: When I looked up the word Ĺgrokĺ, the Oxford dictionary defined it as Ĺunderstand intuitively or by empathyĺ. Spiritualism teaches that intuitive understanding is always Ĺrightĺ and that intellectual understanding is at best incomplete, and mostly Ĺwrongĺ. In actualism I learned to question my learned notions of right and wrong, good and bad and slowly replaced them with a common sense assessments of what is silly and what is sensible. Instead of intuition and gut feelings I looked for the unmistakable certainty of facts, which is far more accurate than any intuition can ever be.
But you are right that Ĺwhat am I experiencingĺ is indeed a different kettle of fish. Using the actualism method is a matter of intent ľ what is my aim, what do I want to achieve by questioning how I experience this moment? Sometimes I would get lost in following my affective experiences down the garden path, making them bigger and more intense the more I provided indulging attention. But whenever I remembered my goal to become free from malice and sorrow, my wandering observations changed into the search to find out how to get out of this insidious Ĺselfĺ-centredness of feeling-experiences and come back to being happy and the sensate experiencing of being alive. Unless you have an intent or reason for asking how am I experiencing this moment of being alive you will have neither the motivation to make it your first priority in life nor the impetus to overcome the reluctance to admit to unpleasant or undesirable answers.
The cute thing is that you donĺt learn anything new but rather unlearn everything youĺve been told since the day you were born and then you even get to undo the genetic program of the instinctual survival passions. It is a fascinating journey, full of wonderful adventures, thrilling realizations and life-changing discoveries.
RESPONDENT: Animals appear to thoroughly enjoy life, unless theyĺve been damaged psychologically. Is being happy our birthright, which we typically squander?
VINEETO: As for Ĺis being happy our birthrightĺ ľ it does not make sense to call happiness our Ĺbirthrightĺ because there is no court where you could claim your Ĺrightĺ. I would rather describe it that the animal survival passions, universally manifest in humans as malice and sorrow, are our biological heritage ľ Ĺmeĺ being as old as the first human ľ but a path to freedom from this software programming is now laid out. You can jump right on with both feet and complete the next step in human evolution.
RESPONDENT: Wouldnĺt the social conditioning be the software programming, and the instinctual passions be the hardware programming? Iĺm mincing words here, but I am an engineer after all and tend to go a bit overboard on deconstructing things. Or maybe you hadnĺt noticed ;-)
VINEETO: The idea that Ĺthe social conditioning be the software programming, and the instinctual passions be the hardware programmingĺ is instilled by spiritual teachings and psychological theories that lay the blame of all the ills of mankind on social conditioning.
The uniqueness of Richardĺs discovery is that he proved by example that oneĺs instinctual passions are permanently deleteable and therefore as much software as oneĺs social conditioning. One need not trust Richard that this is so because everyone has had a PCE at some time in their life when both ĹIĺ as ego ľ oneĺs social identity ľ and Ĺmeĺ a being ľ oneĺs instinctual identity ľ are temporarily in abeyance. In a PCE both Ĺsoftware programsĺ crash simultaneously, leaving this body free of any identity whatsoever ľ as such, a PCE is experiential evidence that the instinctual passions are not hardwired.
RESPONDENT: I could suggest that the developed intelligence has a cultural bias, and hence is affected by conditioning, but thatĺs starting to get a bit nitpicky and probably not worthy of pursuit.
VINEETO: Why should exploring the link between intelligence and social conditioning be Ĺnitpickyĺ on a list dedicated to exploring the human condition? On the contrary, itĺs absolutely Ĺworthy of pursuitĺ to investigate how one can free oneĺs intelligence from oneĺs inevitably acquired Ĺcultural biasĺ, which is not part of intelligence per se. As such any of my cultural bias, which prevents me from harmoniously living with my fellow human beings, needs to be eliminated.
To give you an example ľ when I was a young student I believed that certain German traits were common to all humans on the planet until I came to India and discovered that Indians lived by a whole different set of traits, often quite opposite to those I had learned. My Ĺselfĺ-oriented horizon widened even more when, living in an international community, I had opportunity to study all sorts of national cultural traits. I also discovered that whilst I could easily let go of some of my acquired traits, other traits were deeply rooted in who I thought and felt I was.
To separate intelligence from its cultural bias is fairly easy in practice ľ whenever you are not happy and harmless, then it is either your social identity or your instinctual identity that is interfering with the free operation of your intelligence.
RESPONDENT: The point I was making was that our intelligence is a developed faculty and is biased by our upbringing. The boy who is raised by wolves exhibits intelligence, but it has a wolf-ish flavour. If the wolf boy were to practice actualism and succeeded in deleting the wolf-cultural bias and the instinctual programming, the remaining intelligence would still have been shaped by his upbringing. It would not remotely be the same as yours, or mine.
VINEETO: I wonder whatĺs the point of your point, i.e. whatĺs the relevance of this hypothetical example. My experience with the various aspects of my social identity, such as spiritual beliefs, belonging to a nation, a group, a family, a gender or a work-related social club, was that particular aspects of my social identity, when investigated and understood, disappeared without a trace ľ often I had trouble remembering what it was that I had hung unto so desperately or what had been so important and defining Ĺmeĺ just a little while ago. Each aspect of oneĺs identity, when understood in its totality, vanishes without leaving as much as a scar or even a memory.
It all becomes clear in the doing.
As for your example of a man having grown up amongst wild animals ľ when a person is actually free then he or she is completely free from his or her instinctual passions as well as from his or her social identity ľ no matter what the content of his or her previous identity had been. Therefore the intelligence in a person free from the human condition is unencumbered by their former identity. You could safely assume that just as my previous German social conditioning does not bias my intelligence today, his belonging to the wolf-tribe wouldnĺt bias his intelligence. In that sense his intelligence would indeed be similar to yours or mine ľ intelligence being solely a function of the brain, an organ of the flesh and blood body ľ provided all three were free from the human condition.
Something Peter wrote in his Journal goes along with this assumption ľ
As for a personĺs sensuous preferences, choices, particular behaviour or personal quirks, when free from the human condition, one can only speculate and such speculations are of no relevance to the actualism process.
If you want to experientially discover in what ways your intelligence would benefit from actualism, you will need to abandon philosophizing about what would happen if a Ĺwolf boy were to practice actualism and succeeded in deleting the wolf-cultural bias and the instinctual programmingĺ and begin to actively inquire into your own cultural bias, i.e. into you own dearest beliefs. You will then discover that intelligence improves in direct correlation to the diminishing of beliefs.
VINEETO: As for ĹI just keep discovering more fear and malice and compassionĺ ľ it is quite amazing what is revealed when the light is switched on in the hidden corners of oneĺs psyche, so to speak, and all the previously unseen and unknown Ĺghostsĺ come to the fore. Whilst this can appear at times as if things are getting worse, this discovery is the very result of taking the lid off the hypocritical morals and ethics and paying exclusive attention to what is really going on.
It is important to always keep in mind that actualism is not about abandoning the spiritual world and going back to reality. Actualism is about leaving both grim reality and its panacea Greater Reality behind and stepping into the actual world of benevolent perfection that is temporarily but unmistakably evident in a PCE. As such, it is vital to remember that actualism is not about dwelling on the invidious emotions that one invariably becomes aware of in the process of actualism but that the aim of the process is to encourage the flourishing of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings ľ those that are happy and harmless.
RESPONDENT: Thanks for writing Vineeto, coming from a military family I tend to forget that itĺs not just about whipping myself into shape. I can get stuck there like a fly to fly paper. It is possible to get back to being happy and harmless, thanks for the nudge.
VINEETO: Yes, the social conditioning of Ĺwhipping myself into shapeĺ, be it the practice of beating yourself up or the practice of Ĺselfĺ-empowerment, is just as interfering with oneĺs being happy and harmless as indulging in emotions or expressing them towards others. The actualism method is specially designed to detect these deeply imbedded patterns. Increased attentiveness to either Ĺselfĺ-punishing or Ĺselfĺ-indulging behaviour reveals that I can stop acting along those lines and that I have a choice to be sensible. It takes a good deal of persistence because not only have those patterns been imbibed since very early childhood, they are also literally the building blocks of oneĺs precious identity, Ĺwho I think and feel I amĺ. As you seem to be discovering, it needs sincere intent and investigative attentiveness in order to bring about lasting change.
RESPONDENT: The main point is that I donĺt want to hurt anybody while resolving my issue. I have noticed that this tendency of mine has, in a subtle way, been used by my wife (or maybe it is used by women in general) to make it very difficult for me to break up with her by apparently denying the issue while simultaneously making me feel guilty.
I think that honesty and clear communication is crucial in any relationship, be it with a lover (this seems easy but not painless, however) or my wife.
So ... I will proceed the best I can in hope of a peaceful separation and maintaining a friendship with my wife. The separation which will allow me to cultivate the relationship with the woman I am attracted to and hopefully to live together.
Well, this is my update as to whatĺs happening in my life. There are some spontaneously peaceful and perceptive moments combined with some confusion and fear of making a painful decision.
VINEETO: As this is obviously your adventure and your exploration into depth of the Human Condition in you there is nothing much I can add. I myself had several complicated relationship situations in my life, so I know it is not an easy task. I have learned a lot from those situations, about me, about relationship and about the things that donĺt work.
The most important point for me when starting on the path to Actual Freedom was to remember that it is always only me that I can change and that I can make free. I can never do anyone elseĺs job and nobody can do anything for me. Thatĺs the very nature of an actual freedom.
One of the first things I had to learn and successively understand was that obeying the ethical and moral rules of society or religion was not going to help me to reach the purity and perfection so clearly experienced in a pure consciousness experience. As long as I oriented myself on the ideas of right and wrong it always left one party Ĺrightĺ and the other Ĺwrongĺ and neither peace nor equity were ever achieved.
My ideas of what was morally good or ethically right would stop me inquiring, fearing to do something Ĺwrongĺ, violating the moral code and ethical value of the tribe, the peer group and the spiritual / religious group I had belonged to. First I had to understand the workings of those moral and ethical rules in me before I could inquire further into the nature of my feelings, emotions and passions.
Having experienced the purity and perfection of the actual world and the intent to live that pure consciousness experience 24 hours a day, every day I could safely begin to abandon the moral and ethical codes that society imposed on me. Thus I whittled away at my social identity and its ensuing notion of right and wrong, good and bad. Now I can dig into the feeling that arises, find the root cause and understand why, when and how I feel this way, without the fear of Ĺbeing wrongĺ or Ĺbeing badĺ. Knowing the actual world from the memory of my PCEs I can determine what is Ĺsillyĺ and Ĺsensibleĺ and act according to what is sensible and best for everyone involved.
I dug out some questions that Richard has answered on the subject of ethics and morals ľ the first obstacle to be tackled before one can really decide about silly and sensible action ...
RESPONDENT: Re: gender issues. I am a human first, secondarily a woman. I enjoy being female and have no problem with the idea that there are some real bio/chemical distinctions between males and females, but I differ strongly with the idea that there is a masculine and feminine side to existence, a cosmic tantric dance of masculine & feminine forces that is the key to the meaning of existence. From a scientific point of view, sexual reproduction of any type is a pretty recent development in the history of the cosmos as we know it, and the presence of humans in the sexual scheme of things is the briefest of all. So, to think that the universe is founded on a masculine/feminine principle is, well, very primitive, to say the least.
VINEETO: A good point, I never looked at it that way. In my investigation into my social identity I was not so much concerned about the alleged masculine/ feminine principle of the universe but I was much more interested in the differences of conditioning, beliefs, behavioural and emotional patterns and the continuous power battle between man and women, no matter how subtle or covert. New age therapy blurred the distinctions of the roles a bit on the surface but underneath oneĺs Ĺflirtationĺ with the so-called inner male or female is hidden an instinctual desperate battle for power which has up to now prevented couples from peacefully living together in equity, parity and intimacy. I had to dig into my identity of what I felt and instinctually knew I was as a woman, and investigate and eradicate each single idea, notion, belief and feeling of Ĺwoman-nessĺ in order to experience the actual intimacy with a member from Ĺthe other campĺ that we now enjoy. After an initial rocky time, Peter and I were able to put a permanent halt to the battle of the sexes and had immense fun in comparing notes, having Ĺa spy in the other campĺ, so to speak, and digging deeper and deeper into the so-called mystery of gender and the supposed mystique of sex.
RESPONDENT: Last night I was out with the visiting relatives in a country setting. The sky was brilliant with stars, much clearer than what I can see at home with city lights, etc. I wondered what I would make of the stars if I hadnĺt learned that they were similar to our sun, burning masses of unbelievably hot gases, that warmed the solar systems around them, etc. What if I had no knowledge about those heavenly bodies, what would I make of them? Probably something akin to what Ĺancient wisdomĺ came up with.
Similarly with the masculine/ feminine principle. Not knowing better, it would be easy to think that there was some heavenly design related to being male or female, that certain activities related to gender were prescribed and others proscribed. Where real knowledge and technology are absent for whatever reason, superstition, imagination, and intuition will prevail. Man will use his brainpower to increase his chances not only to survive but to better himself and will fantasize as readily as reason to get a handle on the situation he finds himself in. And, obviously, he will choose fantasy and intuition over cold, hard facts if fantasy affords a better possibility for him than fact, e.g. the immortality offered by spirituality.
VINEETO: As a second stage, underneath the obvious socially and religiously / spiritually learnt differences between the sexes, I discovered the workings of male and female instincts. It was utterly fascinating to observe the sexual instincts in me in action, after the sexual taboos, the moral limitations and feelings of love and authority had been stripped away. It was daunting and bewildering at first, perceiving myself as nothing but a female animal wanting to become pregnant, to be filled with the maleĺs sperm to fulfill my instinctual destiny ľ the fact that I had been sterilized fifteen years earlier did not change that urge at all. Exploring these instinctual passions to their full extent, and comparing notes with Peter, I finally understood the dilemma of male-female instinctual behaviour that spoils every relationship. While males, besides fatherly care, are instinctually driven to spread their semen as far and prolific as possible for the benefit of the species, females are programmed to search for and then hold on to one reliable protector to care for them and their offspring. It is one thing to have read about those instinctual differences, amongst other theoretical, psychological and spiritual deliberations, it is quite something else to experientially explore oneĺs instinctual sexual core ľ there is nothing refined or intelligent about our core passions. Blind nature does not care a bit about anybodyĺs well-being, natural forces are merely concerned about the survival of the species, and this happens by the traditional recipe which has worked for other mammals for millions of years. Possessiveness, jealousy and rape are all part and parcel of this instinctual animal drive for reproduction.
Love is merely a human invention to cover the embarrassment of being animal at oneĺs very core.
RESPONDENT: Now, to move from the broader picture to the more personal picture: I was about 40 years old before it ever occurred to me that sex could simply be for sex. I donĺt want to give the impression that I was dysfunctional, everything worked fine, but there was always a more primary purpose for sex than just enjoyment. As a young Catholic girl, you were told to hold out on sex for marriage. As a member of the 60ĺs generation, there was lots of sex, but the payoff was love, sex for love. As a married person, sex was to improve the relationship. As a person involved in spiritual discovery, sex was a tool towards enlightenment. Every cultural/spiritual influence of my life has said sex is for something else, besides yummy, delicious enjoyment. Just like life itself is the journey to heaven, or bliss, or freedom from the wheel of birth and death, etc.
VINEETO: I was raised a Catholic and I know the implications. Sex was always dimmed by the dark shadow of guilt, sometimes enhancing the thrill but always keeping me within the boundaries of societyĺs values. In my twenties I explored emotions via primal therapy but sex was strictly excluded from the explorations. The early years in Poona in Rajneeshĺs ashram were a wide field of sexual experiments for me, but as you say, I always wanted more than sexual pleasure ľ attention, affection, love, recognition, being part of a group, etc., etc. Only when I came across Actual Freedom, I came to understand that one has to remove oneĺs identity completely in order to enjoy sex for the pure sensuousness of it ľ ĹIĺ will always feel abused and neglected when ĹIĺ am not recognized with affection, love and gratitude.
Sex as a Ĺtool towards enlightenmentĺ was a theory and/or practice so full of contradictions, hypocrisy and loopholes that in the end I could not make any sense of it anymore. As I said to No 8, investigating and enjoying sex as integral part of a journey towards purity and perfection was for me one of the first attractions of Actual Freedom.
RESPONDENT: Yes, I think I do understand that Actualism is quite a radical break from whatĺs traditionally known as Ĺexpressing emotionĺ. Maybe I can change a bit what Iĺm trying to say... I suppose I donĺt have to use any Ĺexpression of emotionĺ as an Ĺinterim solutionĺ. Looking into the matter, I find that the reason I find that is important so that I donĺt feel Ĺrun overĺ by others. I do see now that my preferences can be stated non-emotionally and that any sort of emotional language (and expression) can be effectively deleted. And all the better for it. Maybe what Iĺve been calling a Ĺcrutchĺ or Ĺinterim solutionĺ can be better expressed by saying that Iĺm not perfect. I do realize that even though I now have the intent (and a method) of becoming happy and harmless, Iĺm not perfect ľ that inevitably an emotion will occasionally slip out. Yes, I welcome those as opportunities to apply attentiveness.
But, at times, I have basically castigated myself for the expression of an emotion and was looking for some way of recognizing that Ĺslipping upĺ is inevitable. I donĺt mean to justify Ĺslipping upĺ ľ only to say that it is going to happen ľ but that gives me opportunity to investigate the emotion that slips. I donĺt really mean to Ĺcondoneĺ emotional expression or say that it is Ĺvitalĺ in some sense. What is Ĺvitalĺ is that we not castigate ourselves (myself) for the inevitable slip-up ľ rather investigate that particular emotion.
VINEETO: Okay, this is where it is useful to make a clear distinction between oneĺs social conditioning of needing to be perfect according to some set of social rules or standards and oneĺs sincere intent to become happy and harmless.
By becoming an actualist you set becoming happy and harmless as your aim in life and by doing so you set your own standards of what you want to achieve. These standards are far beyond the normal moral and ethical values of what society considers being Ĺgoodĺ or Ĺrightĺ. Social standards are variable, what is good for one social or spiritual group is bad for another, what is right for one group is wrong for another, what is perfect for some is flawed for others, what is true for some is false for others. Not only do these standards vary from group to group, but they are also subject to vagaries ľ what is deemed to be socially appropriate behaviour changes cyclically according to cultural fashions and whims. The variations and vagaries of social standards are the cause of so many differences of opinion, debates, arguments, conflicts, public machinations and self-flagellations that it is a wonder these standards have any credibility left at all.
It goes without saying that the aim of becoming happy and harmless is not reached in a day or a month but that it takes a pioneering attitude, stubborn determination and diligent application to find your way through the maze of your social conditioning and your instinctual programming and all the emotional confusion that this process entails.
RESPONDENT: I remember you saying that when you started AF, that you often felt like a Ĺtiger in a cageĺ. Maybe thatĺs how you felt ľ I prefer not to make myself feel that way ľ I prefer to find my own pace and put happiness as priority.
VINEETO: Yes, in the beginning of taking up actualism I Ĺoften felt like a tiger in a cageĺ, but it was a cage entirely of my own making in that I had made it my aim not to let out my feelings on anyone else. <snip> If you Ĺprefer not to make myself feel that wayĺ that is fair enough. It is not everyoneĺs cup of tea to be a pioneer in radically breaking with the social-spiritual traditions and going against the animal-instinctual imperative by putting oneĺs harmlessness first.
RESPONDENT: Oh, but it is my Ĺcup of teaĺ. Iĺm just looking for the most appropriate and effective way of putting into practice.
VINEETO: ĹThe most appropriate and effective way of putting [this aim] into practiceĺ is to ask yourself each moment again ĹHow am I experience this moment of being alive?ĺ And when you investigate what exactly it is each moment that prevents you from being happy and harmless, you encounter the various obstacles on the path, one of them being, as you indicated above, that you Ĺcastigateĺ yourself for not being perfect.
Blaming yourself for not being perfect according to other peopleĺs standards is, however, the quintessence of your social identity, the Ĺnoisy chap in the headĺ as Gary named Ĺhimĺ. This inner critic is the social part of the entity inside the flesh-and-blood body called No 37 ľ Ĺheĺ who has imbibed all the rules and regulations as to how to be a fit member of society, fulfilling and expressing what is Ĺrightĺ and Ĺgoodĺ, avoiding and suppressing what is Ĺwrongĺ and Ĺbadĺ.
By using the method of actualism, I dissected those social rules, ethical values and moral standards one by one, examining them to see if they were silly or sensible in accordance of my own chosen aim of becoming unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless. (...)
RESPONDENT: In my experience, only by becoming Happy first ľ can I also become Harmless. This is not to neglect Harmlessness, rather to notice that if I try to be to vigilant ľ Ĺtaking responsibilityĺ for how my emotions cause ripples in other people, then I become a Ĺtiger in a cageĺ ľ i.e., unhappy. Granted, both happiness are harmlessness depend on each other, but happiness seems to be the horse carrying the harmlessness cart ľ and not the other way around. I donĺt have motivation to be harmless, if Iĺm not happy. At least ľ thatĺs my experience.
VINEETO: If by Ĺbecoming Happy firstĺ one could Ĺalso become Harmlessĺ, the whole world would be happy and harmless by now. The pursuit of happiness is as old as humankind but it still has not produced anything remotely resembling harmlessness, let alone harmony. Actualism breaks with the instinctual compulsion of human beings to put their own happiness first and put harmlessness second ľ as a socially conditioned afterthought, so to speak. As long as I put my happiness above being harmless, my outlook towards others is inevitably Ĺselfĺ-centred, which means that I cannot consider others as equitable fellow human beings.
RESPONDENT: I do not mean to imply that happiness and harmlessness are exclusive of each other. I also am not asserting that one can become happy without being concerned with harmlessness. I recognize the two are dependents and intertwined together. I am just as concerned with harmlessness as happiness ľ my experience just tells me that if I become overly concerned with harmlessness and begin to castigate myself for it, then I donĺt have a chance at being either happy or harmless.
VINEETO: The challenge in actualism is to resist the temptation to compromise your aim and your sincere intent when you are not perfect at the first attempt, but instead investigate the Ĺlittle man in the headĺ who is doing the castigating. Given that the inner critic is your social identity, Ĺheĺ is nothing other than the conglomerate of all the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, principles and psittacisms that Ĺheĺ has been programmed with since birth. Your social identity also determines how you automatically relate to other people and how you expect and demand other people to perceive you. In order to eliminate oneĺs social identity one needs to replace the moral and ethical arbitrary judgments of good and bad and right and wrong with an open-eyed evaluation and intelligent judgment based on what is sensible and what is silly. One also needs to replace the beliefs and psittacisms one has been instilled with in childhood, or has later chosen as oneĺs own, with observable and verifiable facts.
By choosing to become happy and harmless I set my goal far higher than the societal values of Ĺrightĺ and Ĺgoodĺ and, as such, the nagging Ĺlittle woman in the headĺ eventually ran out of objections of me being happy and harmless. It is the intent to be harmless that is the crucial difference between a spiritualist and an actualist because everyone wants to be happy but very few are ready to commit themselves to the truly benevolent aim of becoming harmless.
GARY: Actualism is the study, the investigation of this Ĺmeĺ who is standing in the way of experiencing a totally incomparable quality of life, second to none, which is freely available to all and sundry, once ĹIĺ willingly self-immolate. Trouble is, ĹIĺ will do just about anything to stay in existence. Like the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, once I think Iĺve got it under wraps, fresh new leaks of Ĺmeĺ sprout up all over the place. Gary to Alan, 7.6.2001
VINEETO: I like your analogy because it describes very well how one can experience oneself when applying the method of ĹHow am I experiencing this moment of being alive?ĺ for some time, as belief after belief gives way to the irrefutable obviousness of facts and one Ĺselfĺ-image after the other crumbles in the bright light of sharpening self-awareness.
In the first months of my investigation I was thrilled and excited when I saw my beliefs tumbling, my morals thrown overboard and my ethical values gone out the window because they no longer made any sense. The challenge was to eliminate my social identity bit by bit, to question and examine my cherished beliefs, my ideas about right and wrong, good and bad and to shed my identity of belonging to a gender, a nationality, a profession, a race, a religious or spiritual group ľ in short everything that would give me definition, value and position as a member of society. Having looked again and again under the hood of the nice and the good girl that I usually was, I was at times shocked at what I discovered, as in Ĺis that really Ĺmeĺ, is that who ĹIĺ really am?ĺ
However, some several months into my explorations, I remember a stage when I thought that I had done enough and cleaned up my remaining Ĺselfĺ enough. Consequently, every time I experienced an emotion creeping up, I berated myself, resented that I still had feelings and wondered if I had missed a signpost and gone off the Ĺrightĺ track. I had long discussions with Peter and Richard and read and re-read about the method of Actual Freedom until I had to admit that I had fallen into the trap of attempting to live as a Ĺreduced selfĺ, as much as possible devoid of feelings, and that this was the reason why I was feeling so stuck.
When I examined this attitude a bit closer, I found it to be a remnant of my past spiritual teachings ľ despite my initial genuine investigations I had inadvertently transmogrified the method of actualism into the Buddhist-based teachings of transcending or sublimating my feelings instead of eliminating the Ĺselfĺ that generates them. This Ĺescape routeĺ will inevitably present itself as a Ĺselfĺ-preserving way of sweeping the remaining Ĺselfĺ and its resultant emotions and feelings Ĺunder the carpetĺ in order to remain Ĺmeĺ. At this point the challenge was to see myself coming closer and closer to the point that cleaning myself up was not the whole story ľ that I was in fact undeniably moving to a point of no return. In hindsight, I can say that attempting to be a rational, sensible but emotion-reduced Ĺselfĺ via sublimated feelings was jamming my foot on the breaks in order Ĺto stay in existenceĺ.
It took me many deep breaths to fully acknowledge that ĹIĺ consist of nothing but my emotions and instinctual passions and that there wonĺt be any of Ĺmeĺ left when all of the Human Condition in me is Ĺcleaned upĺ. Or, to put it the other way round, it is impossible to clean myself up without simultaneously instigating my extinction. In actualism I am not merely sorting out and eliminating the good or bad attributes of Ĺmeĺ ľ all of Ĺmeĺ has to go. Once I fully comprehended the implications I could also see that there were only two options now ľ to abandon ship and turn back to Ĺnormalĺ or to go full steam ahead and incite Ĺmyĺ Ĺselfĺ-immolation. As I had already passed the point of no return because becoming Ĺnormalĺ again was plain silly, I thought what the heck. By the way ... according to an American comedian, heck is a place not quite as bad as hell.
Well, Ĺwhat the heckĺ soon turned into more and more delicious abandon, and ever since I have been busy discovering how absolutely safe the actual world is ľ whenever ĹIĺ have stepped aside to be able to experience its sensual abundance and utter perfection. The instinctual passions of survival are deeply ingrained in us and this is why, in order to be able to investigate those passions, the Ĺdykeĺ of oneĺs social identity along with oneĺs fixations of good and bad, right and wrong, has to leak and eventually break. As long as one feels it is Ĺwrongĺ or Ĺbadĺ to feel fear, aggression, lust or dependency, there is no possibility of scientifically observing, factually examining, deeply understanding and successively diminishing oneĺs instinctual passions. Only when I know Ĺmeĺ in all of my instinctual variations do I know all that I have to leave behind. As history has demonstrated very clearly, a blind jump from being Ĺnormalĺ can only lead to Ĺmeĺ changing identity by becoming ĹMy Real Selfĺ.
So, Gary, as you have discovered, actualism works successfully to Ĺunwrapĺ, dismantle and eliminate what stands in the way of experiencing the actual ľ and as such the ĹDutch boyĺ may well be doomed to fail. I found, however, that I would never get more challenges than I could handle at one time, even if it sometimes initially felt that way. The trick is to remember not to take the discoveries of your emotions and beliefs as Ĺleaksĺ of an imperfect personality or as individual bad traits, but to understand them to be manifestations of our genetically inherited disease known as the Human Condition, i.e. common to all. The Human Condition by definition is common to all ľ however, each individual can instigate and facilitate their freedom only for himself and by himself.
When you see that everyone is inflicted with the same instinctual animal passions, then Ĺmyĺ shame, Ĺmyĺ guilt and Ĺmyĺ doubt begin to lose their grip in the face of this obvious observable fact. Then oneĺs investigation changes from Ĺwhat is wrong with my belief?ĺ to Ĺthis is a belief and where in particular is it wrong?ĺ Thatĺs when investigating the Human Condition, as it is manifest in everyone and in oneself, becomes such a thrilling and intriguing adventure, so much so that one becomes fascinated, rather than seriously concerned, about how ĹIĺ tick. Actualism is about being sincere, not serious ľ after all, leaving the Human Condition behind is considered a mental disorder.
VINEETO: I remember a stage when I thought that I had done enough and cleaned up my remaining Ĺselfĺ enough. Consequently, every time I experienced an emotion creeping up, I berated myself, resented that I still had feelings and wondered if I had missed a signpost and gone off the Ĺrightĺ track.
GARY: Yes, I still discern that there are times, recently in fact, that I deride myself for experiencing unpleasant emotional states. I think there is a tendency still to think that I am doing something Ĺwrongĺ and that I am Ĺfailingĺ in my investigations into Ĺmeĺ. I am aware at times of the Ĺshouldsĺ and Ĺshouldnĺtsĺ arising at these times, the result of a long period of socialization in which one has been schooled to conform to certain behaviours, attitudes, values and beliefs, according to oneĺs particular background, culture, gender, and other such socializing influences.
VINEETO: Whenever I have examined particular persistent feelings of ĹĹshouldsĺ and Ĺshouldnĺtsĺĺ I found that I had to investigate a layer deeper than purely questioning my particular socialization. I found that my fears of not meeting the ĹĹshouldsĺ and Ĺshouldnĺtsĺĺ were sometimes not only my own personal standards but were closely linked to my fear of losing friends, losing my image of who I thought I was, and again and again the atavistic fear of falling off the plate called humanity. The need to belong is a strong instinctual survival mechanism and not so long ago it was indeed almost impossible to survive on oneĺs own without the support of oneĺs tribe.
However, once I found that my particular feeling of not meeting my or other peopleĺs standards was underscored by atavistic fears of being all on my own, it was relatively easy to stop focusing on Ĺmyĺ individual failure or Ĺmyĺ personal socialization and concentrate on examining this common-to-all instinctual passion. Then the reason for berating myself and blaming myself disappeared by itself ľ it is only natural that stepping out of humanity is causing fear ľ and it was at the same time clear beyond doubt that I would proceed despite the tremors. (...)
VINEETO: You might consider that there is a difference between being stuck and feeling stuck. Feeling stuck may be connected to Ĺmeĺ not meeting Ĺmyĺ standards and in this way Ĺmeĺ has come in through the backdoor once again. Whereas being stuck can be easily detected by asking ĹHow am I experiencing this moment of being alive?ĺ and upon sincere questioning I will notice that I am simply postponing looking at, or addressing, a particular issue. There is nothing wrong with postponing ľ itĺs just that I cannot raise the bar again to feeling excellent as long as I am avoiding the next issue.
GARY: I have a question at this point: Is living in the condition known as Virtual Freedom the same thing as being a Ĺreduced selfĺ, or is it different? What is behind my question is this: I can see where consciously striving to reduce oneĺs Ĺselfĺ by the method of repressing or suppressing oneĺs emotions and feelings results in a condition of being a Ĺstripped down selfĺ, as Richard has put it. But then it seems that by continuous practicing of the method of actualism one is, in a sense, entering into a Ĺselfĺ-reduction plan, as one finds that oneĺs identity is getting rather threadbare, withering on the vine, so to speak, but yet not completely absent from the scene, as there are the inevitable Ĺbleed-throughsĺ of feelings. Do you see what I am getting at? If one is denying, controlling, suppressing, and repressing, that is not what we are talking about at all here. Because one is then still doing the controlling, whereas we are talking about eliminating the controller, the Ĺmeĺ that is reining in the emotions. I think you are talking about this latter process of controlling or reining in the emotions through control, suppression, and selection.
VINEETO: I like your expression Ĺentering into a Ĺselfĺ-reduction planĺ and I have always maintained that without substantially reducing the influence of the Ĺselfĺ one cannot step out of oneĺs Ĺselfĺ ... or, as Richard wrote to Alan recently ľ
What is certainly being reduced to a microscopic size is oneĺs spiritual and social identity ľ oneĺs spiritual values, morals and ethics and oneĺs identity as a parent, as a member of a gender, a race, a nation, a profession or any social-ideological-spiritual-religious movement. When this outer layer of the Ĺselfĺ has been fully examined, its influence successively disappears out of oneĺs life and life becomes increasingly Ĺunrehearsedĺ as there is no identity-image to be constantly polished, produced or maintained.
However, this social identity is only the outer layer of Ĺmeĺ, drilled into me from very early age in order to ensure the smooth operating of society. With diligence and awareness I reduce the influence of my social identity to a minimum so much so that life is experienced as a delight 99% of the time.
Then the Ĺinevitable Ĺbleed-throughsĺ of feelingsĺ that you speak of can then be traced to our raw instinctual passions, the very core of the survival program. At this stage of the process I came to understand that the core of Ĺmeĺ cannot be reduced, but the excesses of the instinctual passions fall by the wayside as the felicitous feelings increase. This is where my misunderstanding of attempting to live as a Ĺreduced selfĺ lay, despite the fact that Richard had been very clear about the method of dealing with emotions all along ľ
GARY: I also have wide-ranging interests outside of work and I like to expand my horizons by delving into subject matters where I have little expertise. This gives me enormous satisfaction and engages my interest, so there is really no reason to be Ĺboredĺ. Yet, I do still find that there are occasional periods when a lacklustre feeling of boredom creeps over me, however fleeting these may be. Like other similar experiences, since I have been practising the actualism method, I have become intrigued and interested to know just what these feelings consist of, what they feel like, what triggered them, and such like questions. And I believe I have traced the feeling of boredom many times to a belief such as this: ĹI am not accomplishing anythingĺ. Too, with the feeling of boredom there is a sense for me of time hanging heavily, a sense of Ĺwasteĺ, time slipping through my hands, the hourglass running out, you might say. And I must say, at this point, that this is where I feel actualism is right on in finding that it is the instincts that are laid as a kind of veneer over the pristine and perfect actual world. It seems that the sense of time running out, the feeling of waste and ruin is closely associated with the feeling of boredom. Too, there seems to be a feeling of frustration that oneĺs desires are not being satisfied, so I think the instinct of desire is involved in experiences of boredom. At least that is what I have found.
VINEETO: There were two aspects that I found with the need to achieve. One was the social conditioning of needing to be someone, earning my right to be here, proving my worth and being a useful member of society. Very early on I decided that the path of family and career wasnĺt for me, so I went off trying to achieve something in the spiritual world, but the pressure to achieve something stayed the same. When I began to explore the feeling of boredom, and the need to be busy, however, I discovered another layer under the social aspects of the desire to achieve. ĹMyĺ very existence depends on Ĺmeĺ being busy because without a mission and a meaning in life ĹIĺ am superfluous, i.e. ĹIĺ have no business in being here.
The solution for me was to make becoming free from the human condition my mission in life ľ this is what I want to achieve and this is what gives my life meaning and significance. The cute thing is that with this mission ĹIĺ am writing Ĺmyĺ own death warrant. Now I understand the feeling of boredom as Ĺmeĺ objecting to being redundant and when I agree to becoming redundant, everything is experienced as delicious and fascinating, whether doing something or doing nothing.
GARY: One of the most striking things to happen to me since I started practising Actualism is the diminishment of emotional connections to other human beings.
VINEETO: You are right; Ĺthe Ĺneedĺ to affiliateĺ is a sticky business. I remember clearly when I saw Peter for the first time not as an affiliate of any kind but as a separate-from-me fellow human being. In an instant of clear perception, all Ĺmyĺ sticky psychic tentacles that automatically reach out both to objects and to people around me had fallen away. From this particular insight I gained an understanding about what usually happens in interaction with others. I began to see, and unravel, the connections that ĹIĺ spun with others, the deals ĹIĺ struck, the bargains ĹIĺ committed to and the mutual obligations ĹIĺ engaged in during my daily interactions with people, particularly those I considered Ĺmy friendsĺ.
GARY: A great deal of what happens in day-to-day life consists of instinctual behaviour, which stems from the more primitive areas of the brain. The longer I have been at Actualism, the more pervasive the primitive survival program of the human species, located in the mid-brain regions, appears to be. This holds true I think for all kinds of emotional connections with others, whether they be mutual obligations, hierarchical types of interactions with others such as dominant and subservient behaviour, ingratiating, cow-towing, gossiping, worshipping, etc. ľ the list goes on and on ... all these types of social behaviour have their root in Ĺmyĺ need to survive as an instinctual entity, find a suitable mate to disseminate my seed, fight off rivals, etc.
Perhaps I am too reductionist in seeing the hand of the instincts in all these myriad forms of behaviour and feelings. I have questioned whether I was getting tunnel vision in that respect. However, be that as it may, in Actualism one applies attentiveness as a discipline to oneĺs own inner world ľ the world of the feelings, passions, and calentures ľ and by extension, with the Human Condition as it exists in each and every human being currently alive. And the conventional wisdom, endlessly repeated ad nauseam, is that human beings Ĺneedĺ one another ľ that Ĺno man is an islandĺ ľ and other such sentiments.
VINEETO: You are certainly right when you say you are Ĺseeing the hand of the instincts in all these myriad forms of behaviour and feelingsĺ. The first layer of my feelings and behaviour towards other people was mainly due to social role-play, defined and governed by the social identity ĹIĺ thought and felt ĹIĺ was. As a social identity, I was a member of a spiritual belief system and mostly intermingled with other believers, I was a sister to women friends, I was flirting with men I felt attracted to and suspicious towards every other man. The more I unravelled my social identity ľ the spiritual part being the most tenacious to take apart and leave behind ľ the more the underlying instinctual feelings that were the source of my emotions and attitudes towards other people became apparent.
GARY: To begin to unravel the Ĺsticky businessĺ of oneĺs affiliation and social needs is to undertake a hazardous enterprise ľ hazardous chiefly because it spells the beginning of the end of Ĺmeĺ, as I am largely a social creature ľ raised from my inception to have a place in a social hierarchy, be a member of a particular racial, ethnic, and tribal identity, have Ĺmyĺ loves and hates, Ĺmyĺ attractions and repulsions, all of which serve to fix me in a particular niche in society, make me useful to that society as well as expendable .
VINEETO: Yes, and the good part is that when you make yourself Ĺexpendableĺ to society you then become able to enjoy the freedom from the straightjacket of the social patterns as well as the reciprocal expectations and demands that go along with belonging to a certain group in particular, and to society at large. It used to be essential to Ĺmeĺ to be useful to society because this usefulness provided Ĺmeĺ with meaning, with a moral right to be here, the right to take up space so to speak. As I investigated whatever I felt was preventing me from being happy and harmless, I quickly came to question and explore my need to derive meaning from belonging to a group and being useful to society. Again and again I found this need to be sourced in the need to justify Ĺmyĺ existence, Ĺmyĺ very survival.
Nowadays the idea of needing to earn my Ĺright to be hereĺ is patently silly because, as this physical body, I am already here. It is exquisitely enjoyable to be Ĺexpendableĺ to society because the meaning of life is not to be found in attaining a particular place or status in societyĺs ranks but is to be found in Ĺselfĺ-less experiencing and delighting in the purity and splendour of the actual world.
RESPONDENT: At another passage Mrs. Charlotte Joko Beck (Everyday Zen, Harper &Row, New York) advocates the opinion that emotional thoughts have to melt away, all these imagination, hopes. Every near relationship bring sufferings as our expectations are not fulfilled. We should make clear about these disappointments etc. and no longer cling to emotions. I donĺt know whether I agree to it. But I think it sounds familiar to you.
VINEETO: It might sound similar. But what Zen implies and what is not mentioned in your quote is that the human emotions should Ĺmelt awayĺ for the higher goal of dissolving into the Divine or Higher Self. One should turn away from earth life and its disappointments and discover oneĺs ĹTrue Selfĺ (the Inner, the Soul, the True Nature) which then becomes one with everything. A giving up of human suffering for bliss in the Ĺspiritĺ.
If you look closer it is only slightly different from the Christian faith, donĺt you think so? Another translation, a less personified God (no man with a long white beard), but nevertheless a turning away from life on earth with its self-centred feelings and emotions.
The new thing, that I found in Richardĺs discovery, is a questioning of everything that is not actual ľ not experience-able through the physical senses. This includes everything ľ good and bad ľ that human beings believe and Ĺfeelĺ about being on earth. The important words are Ĺbelieveĺ and Ĺfeelĺ. Everything that we human beings have made up in our minds, in head or heart, is part of the particular identity of each of us. For instance: I have been a German, a woman, a secretary, a restaurant-owner, a Sannyasin, a drug-counsellor, a girlfriend, a lover, an Australian resident ľ all those emotional identities were the Ĺwhoĺ I thought and felt I was. Those roles and identities made me different to and separate from everyone around me who had different feelings, different beliefs, different emotional experiences or emotional memories. Further I discovered that I was driven by instincts ľ our animal heritage from the days of sheer survival ľ that all humans are equipped with from birth. They all form what we call Ĺselfĺ.
In the end, when I look around, it is exactly those different, passionate defended roles, beliefs and emotions that are causing both religious and territorial / tribal wars in the world. No religion or philosophy has ever, or will ever, succeed in bringing a lasting solution to wars, rapes, murder, suicide, depression, fear etc. Although using different methods, both Eastern and Western religions tell us to Ĺgo somewhere elseĺ in our imagination, into some inner space or some hoped for heaven after death.
The new approach is to get rid of this entity inside the physical body, which is more or less the same for every human being, and have paradise here on earth, while we are alive. I cleaned myself of the alien entity inside that feels, worries, is hurt, is hopeful, is loved or unloved, feels connected or an outsider, is angry, is anxious, excited or bored. An identity that continuously wants to make sense of questions like Ĺwhy are we here?ĺ and Ĺwhat happens after deathĺ?
Recognising beliefs and emotions as just that, as ideas and feelings and not an actual part of my physical body and thus non-essential to living as a sensate and reflective body, I slowly slowly discarded every single one of them as redundant. It is a continuous psychic operation, shaking the very ground I thought I was standing on, but it is like removing a cancer that has made life hard, fearful, miserable or Ĺotherworldlyĺ.
This process is like taking the skin-tight suit off to feel the air on the skin for the first time, smell a flower for the first time without an interpretation of good or bad, to hear the rain falling on the leaves for the first time in this moment in time. Just the senses, and the delight of being aware of it. Any meaning, any goal, any moral or ethical judgement would stand in the way of this direct sensate intimacy. Simply being a human being, enjoying every moment of life, without malice, without sorrow ľ without an identity that would feel and act on those emotions.
The end-result is that one lives on this earth, in this moment, utterly carefree, able to apply intelligence wherever needed, fully enjoying the sensual delights and pleasures, and is much more innocent than a new-born child.
Not only hopes disappeared but also the Ĺhoperĺ, not only feeling insulted disappeared but also the Ĺfeelerĺ along with an Ĺinsulterĺ. The whole factory of emotions and imaginations (believing) has gone up in smoke. A wonderful liberation. A final arrival. I had searched all my life, but always in the wrong direction, away from life, away from earth, away from the physical. In a big loop I now come back to my senses, literally and figuratively.
I have intended in this summary to hit the core of the matter, but one never knows. However, after all my psychic and psychological problems are solved, the practical organization of a comfortable survival and life-style are no big challenge at all, which means that life is fun. I am as happy as can be, and harmless on top of it.
Vineetoĺs & Richardĺs Text ęThe Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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Gamer, Brony, fan of a fair few things. I've been here a while, but also disappeared from this site for a few years, so I've missed a lot too.
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Robots are Stupid Rated 3.9666 Stars Robot complains, annoying people he encounters Comedy - Original I Know You Too Well Rated 4.4662 Stars To like you anymore Music Video TopStick Rated 4.4461 Stars TopStick: Clash of the Stick Figures! Action ++Nes Collab++ Rated 4.1116 Stars A tribute to your favorite NES games! Comedy - Parody
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Chibi Knight Rated 4.4196 Stars Save the kingdom of Oukoku from the 3 beasts! Fun Action RPG with big bosses! Adventure - RPG The Flood Runner 2 Rated 4.2602 Stars The flood is coming, run hard and jump for your life! Action - Platformer - Hop and Bop Sonny 2 Rated 4.4465 Stars Play as a Zombie in this second chapter of the Sonny RPG series! Abuse humans. Adventure - RPG Sonny Rated 4.3816 Stars You are a Zombie, and the world hates you. Fight for your life in this epic new RPG! Adventure - RPG


text:
The time is ripe for developing new adaptation paradigms that exploit digital traces to extend users' personalized experience by connecting the digital, social and physical worlds. Hence, traditional adaptation mechanisms (such as feedback, help, guidance) can be extended to become more effective by taking into account not only the user's experience in the digital world (i.e. the conventional user modeling paradigm), but also relevant experience (of this user or of similar users) in the physical world. The latter approach, which is the focus of this workshop, represents an emerging research strand whereby user models are augmented with real world knowledge to enhance adaptation and personalization.
Digital traces can be attributed to more than one individual, e.g. a circle of friends, a scientific community or even a whole population can be characterized by topics they tweet about, or things they comment about. Furthermore, events, e.g. conferences, local or global disasters, political debates, can be modeled by the streams of digital traces generated around these events (e.g. pictures, comments, discussions and reactions). Technological advancements, such as data/text mining, information extraction, opinion mining, social signal processing, interactive story telling, intelligent media annotation, semantic alignment, media aggregation and retrieval, make it now possible to automate the processing of digital traces to enrich system's understanding about users' experiences in the physical world. This technological development brings new opportunities to the user modeling community, and at the same time, opens up new technological, social, and ethical challenges.
read more >>>


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San Miguel by T.C. Boyle
Viking • $27.95 • ISBN 9780670026241
On sale September 25, 2012
San Miguel is something entirely new for people who, like me, read T.C. Boyle like the world's about to end (get it?). As Boyle told me during an interview at the Nashville Public Library, this is a historical novel entirely without comedy or irony. It's not, as he says, a "wise-guy" novel. Boyle also told me that he and his publisher think this one is something special, and they certainly aren't wrong.
San Miguel returns to the setting first introduced in When the Killing's Done: the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. Boyle's newest is based on the lives of real families who inhabited San Miguel in the 1880s and the 1930s, and more specifically, the three women who were brought there by their men.
In 1888, Marantha and her family move to San Miguel in search of sunny Californian weather to help with her consumption. She spends six months at the sheep ranch, trying to restore her health and stave off the creeping boredom that comes with total isolation. Two years later, her adopted daughter Edith will do anything within her power to escape the remote island and her controlling stepfather. The novel then jumps to 1930, when newlyweds Elise and Herbie start their lives together, far away from the Depression and the rest of the world. They call themselves the King and Queen of San Miguel, and they consider themselves truly lucky—until WWII threatens to break their world apart.
As in so many of Boyle's novels, humans appear powerless before the elements, such as in this scene from Marantha's early days on the island:
Now, as she lay there in the dark, the thing in her chest quiet for once, she was afraid. The wind kept beating, keening, unholy, implacable, and it was as if it were aimed at her and her alone. As if it had come for her. Come to blow her away across the waters and force her down beneath the waves, down and down and down to the other place, darkness eternal. The roof heaved, the house rocked and groaned beneath the joists. Everything seemed to compress, as if waiting to blow like the cork from a bottle. She wanted to waken Will, wanted to cling to him and feed off the low consoling murmur of his voice, but she didn't because she knew he needed his rest—now more than ever—and there was nothing he could have done in any case, nothing anyone could do except God, and God had deserted her. Will was right there beside her, and she'd never felt more alone. She couldn't sleep. She'd never sleep again. And though she needed to get up and relieve herself she was afraid to move, as if even the slightest perturbation would upset the balance and bring the whole ramshackle structure crashing down around her.
Is this one you've been looking forward to?


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|Kid Things
|CHORDS (D), C(add9), D, Em, F, G
|Difficulty: hard
|return to normal Verse: What?s that that makes you wanna be lonely? What?s that that keeps you sitting at home? He?d always say no, no, no as if he wanted you to be hungry Well the same things you?re missing could get you into something else Pre-Chorus: A (guitaretab.com)


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- Filed Under
I'm happy to announce the panel of Post-Crescent Community Columnists for 2014. There are 51 of them, and they come from all over the Fox Cities, have widely varied backgrounds and perspectives and are eager to share their views with you. Some are returning columnists; a few are joining us for the first time.
Each columnist will write five columns over the course of the year. Some will be about topics in the news. Some will be personal stories. All of them, we hope, will be columns you can relate to and lead you to think about them.
This will be our 11th year of hosting Community Columnists. It's been a ...


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Complete Story
Miller Troyer Custom Homes (SOLD)
4,700 sq. ft.
4 bedrooms
3 full and 2 half baths
3-car garage
About the Builder
Miller Troyer is a design build, full service custom homebuilder that also offers remodeling work and custom Amish cabinetry. Our process is turnkey and we work with clients on all aspects of their building/remodeling projects. We are unique because we design build our own handcrafted Amish cabinetry for every project, as well as provide Amish community/craftsmanship. Old world craftsmanship in a modern technology world where honesty and integrity mean everything!
Must See
The secluded owner's retreat is reached by traveling through a barreled-ceiling hallway incorporating a built-in library bookcase.
Home Features
- Unique "Farmhouse Chic"
- Beautiful Two-Toned Amish Custom Cabinets
- Amish Artisans On-Hand To Demonstrate Techniques
- Extensive Custom Outdoor Living Space
- Covered Porch And Patio
- Gold - Library/Study
- Gold - Owner's Suite
- Silver - Best Special Feature
- Bronze - Landscaping Front Entry Garden
- Bronze - Landscaping Rear Garden
- Bronze - Lower Level
- Bronze - Exterior Architecture
- Bronze - Outdoor Living Area
Contact Information
Sales Contact:
Troy Miller, 614-595-7789
Home Design:
New Avenue Architects & Engineers, 614-884-8888
Interior Design:
Crimson Design Group, 614-270-9057
Landscape Design:
Hidden Creek Landscaping Inc., 614-777-4254
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jGuru Forums
Posted By:
Posted On:
Friday, April 22, 2011 04:44 PM
I have several web/ejb applications. These applications use some common libraries and should share instances of classes from those libraries.
But applications are being deployed independently thus packaging all them to EAR is not acceptable.
I suppose the problem is that each application uses separate class loader.
How can I make AS use single class loader for a set of applications?
Different applications depend on different libraries so I need a way that will not share library for all applications on the domain but only for some exact applications.
When I placed common jar to
- all works. But that jar is shared between all applications on the domain.
When I tried to place common jar to
and specified
attribute on deploying I got exception
java.lang.ClassCastException: a.FirstDao cannot be cast to a.FirstDao
If multiple applications or modules refer to the same libraries, classes in those libraries are automatically shared. This can reduce the memory footprint and allow sharing of static information.


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- Filed Under
Homebuyer activity may have gotten a chill in an icy February.
And that's the upbeat interpretation. Sales dropped 19.2 percent and there was a 16.4 percent decline in the number of deals launched compared with the same month a year earlier.
The downbeat worry is that it could be worse. Some brokers wonder whether the slowdown may be due to the local economic conditions, especially jobs. ...


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On Jan. 24, I read that five major banks - Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Ally Financial - and the U.S. state attorneys general, reached a settlement related to mortgage foreclosures. The Obama administration has kept pressure on state officials to make the big banks pay for their part in the collapse of the housing market.
Taken in perspective, it's not a settlement, but rather, an attack on our economy, the banking industry, and the average American homeowner, who is doing the right thing, honoring their obligations, and making their mortgage payment every month.
There are roughly 62 million homeowners with mortgages in the U.S., and the overwhelming majority make their mortgage payment every month. Since 2008 somewhere between 5 and 7 million faced possible foreclosure, and more than 1 million did get foreclosed. The Attorneys General in many states, following the Obama administration's criticism of bank foreclosures, decided to sue the nation's five largest mortgage lenders, accusing them of deceptive foreclosure practices that "drove homeowners out of their homes," according to an Associated Press story.
Let's all remember that foreclosure starts after many months of non-payment. Foreclosures are the result of non-payment, not the result of foreclosure practices. After constant bombardment from populist politicians, both state and federal, as well as negative media horror stories, the five largest mortgage lenders agreed to a settlement.
I'm sure that there were many mistakes made in the foreclosure process, just because of the large numbers of mortgages involved, but banks don't foreclose on mortgages that are paid promptly every month. That's just plain stupid. Banks love having mortgages that are paid promptly. That's how they get back the money they lent to borrowers to purchase homes. If they don't get paid back, they become unprofitable and go out of business.
Imagine you've been paying your mortgage for years, sometimes skipping vacations, buying used cars instead of new cars, sending the kids to community colleges, skipping eating out, etc., so you had enough money each month to make that mortgage payment. You work hard to pay your bills, own a nice home, and pay for your kids education. Now imagine that you never saved for a down payment on a house, yet, learned you could get a mortgage at 100 percent or more of the value of a house, with no down payment, and no income verification. Even with a history of poor credit, you qualified. So you sign a mortgage, with none of your money invested and agree to pay a monthly payment that you know is beyond your capability. Gee, that's quite a deal.
At first you make a few mortgage payments, but then you need a new car, or want to buy a boat, or want to go on an out-of-state vacation, or something else, so you skip a mortgage payment, then another, until you are more than 90 to 180 days or more past due, so the bank forecloses. It's your lucky day. Not only did you not lose any money, considering whatever mortgage payments you made as rent payments, but you, and about 750,000 others, who obtained mortgages between 2008 and 2011, are going to get a check for $1,800 as a reward for not paying and getting foreclosed. How crazy is that?
Wait, it gets worse. Those people who took out mortgages during that same time period, and are delinquent, and, stopped paying because their house lost value and is worth less than their 100 percent down payment mortgage balance, and who are basically renters, will now also be rewarded. As part of the settlement with the state attorneys general, one million delinquent homeowners will get the principal amount of their mortgage balance written down by an average of $20,000.
What does that say to the 60 million-plus people who saw the value of their house decline, but still continued to pay their mortgage every month? What a horrible message to send to the vast majority of Americans struggling to make ends meet. The government has decided that since more than 90 percent of you are paying the banks, the banks can take the money you are paying, and give it to those who aren't paying, couldn't pay to begin with, and in many cases, never intended to pay. How's that for "Fairness" and Hope and Change?
Pay your bills, so those who don't can get rewarded. What a sad state of affairs.
Dennis Wharton


text: Swedish creative Stina Persson uses ink and watercolors to create vibrant illustrations that dance with texture and casual detail. Using watercolors and drops of ink, her deft sketches are immediate and look effortless but clearly come from master hand and eye. Based in Stockholm, Persson has created images for Absolut Vodka, Godiva, DKNY, Target and scores of other high-profile clients and had her work featured in publications like Harper's Bazaar, Nylon Magazine and Elle UK. [via booooooom]


text:
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Wazzup yo?
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I'll Sue Ya! Rated 4.3651 Stars Music video I did for Weird Al's "Straight Outta Lynwood" album! Circa 2006. Music Video The Real Legend 3 Rated 4.4178 Stars Folow link in his quest to save princess Zelda! Comedy - Parody Full Metal Sonic Rated 4.2916 Stars The Full Metal Alchemist intro transformed into a Sonic intro! Music Video Sonic Stereo Rated 4.2398 Stars Shadow can't even listen to music without being pestered by some of his costars... Comedy - Parody
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Sonic Character Designer Rated 4.2638 Stars A character designer using the "Sonic the Hedgehog" theme. Gadgets - Dress Up Clock Sim Valentine Rated 3.8724 Stars A sim date parody Simulation - Dating Mastermind: WC Rated 4.4393 Stars Manage your minions, defend your base, and conquer this puny planet ONCE AND FOR ALL! Strategy - Real-time (RTS)


text:
Excellent take from former Magellan fund manager Peter Lynch:
"If the professional economists can't predict economies and professional forecasters can't predict markets, then what chance does the amateur investor have? You know the answer already, which brings me to my own 'cocktail party' theory of market forecasting, developed over the years of standing in the middle of living rooms, near punch bowls, listing to what the nearest ten people said about stocks.
In the first stage of an upward market – one that has been down awhile and that nobody expects to rise again – people aren't talking about stocks. In fact, if they lumber up to ask me what I do for a living, and I answer, 'I manage an equity mutual fund,' they nod politely and wander away. If they don't wander away, then they quickly change the subject to the Celtics game, the upcoming elections, or the weather. Soon they are talking to a nearby dentist about plaque. When ten people would rather talk to a dentist about plaque than to the manager of an equity mutual fund about stocks, it's likely the market is about to turn up.
In stage two, after I've confessed what I do for a living, the new acquaintances linger a bit longer – perhaps long enough to tell me how risky the stock market is – before they move over to talk to the dentist. The cocktail party talk is still more about plaque than about stocks. The market is up 15 percent from stage one, but few are paying attention.
In stage three, with the market up 30 percent from stage one, a crowd of interested parties ignores the dentist and circles around me all evening. A succession of enthusiastic individuals takes me aside to ask what stocks they should buy. Even the dentist is asking me what stocks he should buy. Everybody at the party has put money into one issue or another, and they're all discussing what's happened.
In stage four, once again they're crowded around me – but this time it's to tell me what stocks I should buy. Even the dentist has three or four tips, and in the next few days I look up his recommendations in the newspaper and they've all gone up. When the neighbors tell me what to buy, and then I wish I had taken their advice, it's a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble."
-Peter Lynch, One Up On Wall Street
Hat tip Jeff Saut
Category: Markets, Psychology
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
27 Responses to "The Cocktail Party Market Indicator"
[...] An absolute classic, by way of Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture. I know, not quite as exciting as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Indicator. Hard to say what stage we are at, but it's clearly not stage four! [...]