If you have a PC (or Mac, or Android phone) you can use the Internet to store your music. Actually you can do that anyway – Ubuntu Linux has had this for at least a year – but it is new to Amazon. com. And unlike Ubuntu One, it is for Americans only.
Amazon.com has launched a “cloud drive” service for their MP3 shop. People can save the MP3 files directly to these servers (not actual clouds, luckily) and play them from anywhere. Anywhere in the USA, that is. Â Amazon.com does not sell MP3 files overseas, although ironically they sell CDs, which you can then rip and upload to competing “cloud” providers. It’s a good thing sending all those physical objects across the globe does not cause some kind of climate change or anything, since the end result is exactly the same, with the addition of a CD on a landfill.
I think it is safe to assume that the restrictions on export of MP3 files are due to negotiations with the RIAA, the Recording Industry Asses of America or something very similar to that. It bears mention that I have bought several books in electronic form from Amazon, quickly and without hassle, across the Atlantic. This fits with my impression that book publishers may be greedy like the rest of us, but fundamentally sane. The RIAA, on the other hand, systematically comes across as a collective psychiatric basketcase, more exactly organized paranoia. These are the guys, if you remember, who wanted many millions from a single mother for a couple dozen pretty boring music tracks.
Not to sow doubt about their clinical insanity and need for strong medication and straitjackets, but there is a fundamental difference between books and music that may explain their behavior to some small degree. Whereas music has been with us since time immemorial, canned music is a far more recent invention than the written word. Â Books, in some form, is a mainstay of civilization. It could even be argued that civilization as we know it would be hard to maintain without them. Certainly a high-level civilization is unlikely to evolve without a lengthy phase of written records. Â So basically, we know books, their causes and effects.
And it so happens that people who read books tend to be regarded as civilized. Whether this is cause or effect, or perhaps both, I am not sure.  As a friend likes to quote from The Penultimate Peril: “Wicked people never have time for reading. It’s one of the reasons for their wickedness.†Music, on the other hand, is often seen as loosening the bands of civilization (although this varies with the type of music, I would say.)
It may not always have been exactly like this. During my recent reading of Dante’s Inferno, there was a mention of an adulterous couple who had supposedly fallen in sin by reading a romance novel together, and consequently went to hell as they never repented. Â My immediate reaction was “Who the hell would read a romance novel together with someone of the opposite sex if they were not already planning to do that thing?” Â But it goes to show that books may once have been viewed with a certain suspicion which is now reserved for more modern technologies.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-blurred-reality-of-humanity-2247591.html
That was a weird conclusion. I’m not saying they are wrong in claiming that the self does not exist, but the study rather says the opposite. For a unified experience to arise without any coordinating center in the brain, whatever causes this experience has to be non-physical. That does not necessarily mean spiritual – one could argue that it happens in software, somewhat like a virtual hard disk can either consist of several disks working together in a RAID, or be only a partition of a larger disk. So it does not need to be spiritual or supernatural. But the current science has basically eliminated one of the alternatives to a spiritual self, namely a particular brain region coordinating the multiple experiences into a whole. One down, more to follow! ^_^
(Truth to tell, I have tried for some years to tell people that they are probably wrong if they think their soul is a simple thing like a pearl, that looks the same from all angles and consists of the same stuff all the way through. This runs counter to how people actually behave, so that kind of naive perception is delusional and potentially dangerous. Our sense of identity does not mean we are predictable, even by ourselves, and this needs to be accounted for.)
I am a bit freaked out by the stuff I’m getting into.
This butterfly book for example.
The butterfly book is freaky indeed. For someone who once chastised me for grabbing ideas from a well-known and perfectly legal cult, you’ve come a long way in a short time. ^_^
Anyway, thanks for sharing the weirdness here. I doubt I would have run into some of this stuff on my own at all, certainly not anytime soon.
Still pretty freaked out.
Are you sure you can’t get back into the movie theater? It may have sounded like the door clicked shut behind you, but surely if you wait outside you can jump in when some other confused soul opens it and tumbles out? ^_^
Anyway, I think the article had a good point about the cart: Just because a cart consists of different parts, such as wheels (which again consist of parts, like hub and spokes etc) does not mean that the cart does not exist, in the sense that there is just a blank space there.
A famous Zen saying: “Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” Even Jesus Christ did not pray for his followers to be taken out of the world. Many people who seek Enlightenment are trying to run away from the world. But that is not what Enlightenment, Salvation or being a Butterfly is about. Or so I’ve been told by the wise. ^_^
I’m still in the movie theater. I stumbled on this freaky book quite similar to the Butterfly one. Freakier than the Butterfly book.
o.O
I opened the door and slammed it shut just as the light hit me.
I just want a normal life. With less pain than normal.
I’m going to listen to Metallica and I’ll get some sleep. I’ll try discussing this again tomorrow with you. (Yes, heavy metal helps me sleep). Thank you for taking the time to discuss it with me.
Here’s the book I’m talking about:
http://www.becominggod.org/
Huh. That one is actually more superficial than Butterfliesfree.com. That fits with his attempt to make money from it. There is nothing wrong with money, it is simply a way we use to appreciate each other’s work. But if you became God, would that be among the first things you thought of? It is simply too slick for him to have quite understood the Truth. And contrary to their front page, the Truth does not give you warm fuzzy feelings. It is more like a surgeon’s scalpel.
But I guess as you read more of these things, it keeps adding up. And you may have reached a tipping point. Put down that book and back away slowly, and nobody will get hurt… ^_^
Have you read the book?
Email the author and ask for a free copy.
Wait, why would I do that? He is selling the book, and this is his choice. I can certainly afford to buy it, I simply don’t see anything on the website that indicates that it will be worth the money and (far more importantly) the time. I’ve been in contact with the New Age / The Secret milieu for several years and his effort seems pretty mainstream for that type. If it resonates particularly with you, that is another matter. I may well buy the book if there is something in it you want to discuss.
I’ve used the pearl analogy before, actually. Not implying that we have the uniformity of one, but that we do add to our “selves” (or at least polish up the existing self in such a way that it won’t be burned up with the chaff when the wheat is separated, thereby making the “pearl” more pearl-like and consist more entirely of valuable substance) throughout our lives as we accrue experience.
Eh.
Not at all going to even TRY to get involved in anything like the conversation you guys are having, though. Beyond my capabilities at this point.
Kristi, I don’t have a problem with pearls, but the fact is that most people are multi-faceted, to say it politely. They can change quite a bit just from the living room to the bedroom, and from home to work. You probably know by now that the kids you see at school are not the kids their parents see at home. And so on.
Also each of us has a lot of different things going on at any one time. If you compare the mind to a Windows computer, then we have many different programs running at the same time, but we usually don’t notice because we tend to maximize the screen we are working with at the moment. If we try to close it down to take a look at the Windows desktop, then we find that we are instead looking at another program (thought), and when we close down that one, we find ourself with another and so on. People who just start meditating are often shocked that they never get to see the desktop – the quiet, unified soul they thought was right under the surface.
I asked the author for a free online copy and he gave it to me.
What extent do you think thought affects the world?
Mostly to the extent that we act on them. If you had just wanted a free copy very strongly and waited, you would probably never got one.
What about prayer?
His book does look like the Secret. I watched the Secret a few years ago (before the atheist days). The ideas in the movie were pretty much nuts.
There were definitely things in my life I did not attract.
The butterfly book seems the make the same claim: Chapter 17.