People Ponderings: Nikola Tesla

Geniuses are always fascinating to read about. Their single minded focus on their goals leaves them open to ridicule and exploitation for their foibles, quirks and general disregard for the practical elements of life, especially finances.

I can pretty unreservedly say that Nikola Tesla enlightened the modern era. He gave us alternating current power, modern radio, radar, neon and flourescent lighting, remote control and almost it is believed universal free energy.

While most of his inventions, as is the modus operandi of capitalist imperialism, were turned to violence, war and monetary gain, Tesla himself forsaw and pursued a world of peace and enlightened mankind. He sought to lift the burdens of humanity and bring a new era of abundance and joy to all peoples.

Seeing the coming of World War II he sought to create a device that would make any country, regardless of size, safe within its own borders. It was rejected as was his device to create an ionosphere of unlimited energy for free use for every person of every nation.

Tesla was an inventor, scientist and engineer of the highest order. A veritable Superman!
He left us with a multitude of modern technologies, patents and scientific data.

He died leaving no offspring or legatees of his brilliant mind who might have carried on his work. He created fortunes for many money driven men but died penniless.

Ok...rewind that back please....universal free energy?!?!....apparently Tesla was working with resonant frequencies of the earth to potentially transmit unlimited electric power. He also found the same harmonics in the sea, air and space and believed that energy could be transmitted into any of these mediums and then utilised anywhere on the planet instantaneously...wow...and I mean WOW! Time to build a lab and do some experiments!

People Ponderings: James Howard Kunstler

Author of "The Long Emergency" as well as a couple of books harshly critical of suburbia namely "The Geography of Nowhere" and "Home From Nowhere.", Kunstler is a verbal samurai carving up notions that technology will save us from ourselves and depleting oil reserves will be solved by friendly bacteria excreting fuel into our cars and civic projects.

His website is http://www.kunstler.com/ and I invite anyone who wants a direct injection of reality straight to a major artery to visit it.

He also has a weekly podcast available at http://kunstlercast.com/. Again strap yourself in, be prepared to make light of disturbing human dysfunction and weep yourself into a world made by hand.

"I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work."

James Howard Kunstler, 'The Geography of Nowhere'.

I have enjoyed Kunstler's rants for over twelve months now and his no nonsense, take no prisoners approach to what I also believe is a massive waste of human potential in the mega over globalisation and suburbination (new word coming soon to a dictionary near you!) of our world, is inspiring in the same way that being chased by a lion lends an extra step to one's gait. Life is absurd and we are now witnessing the slow swaying and suspenseful slow motion collapse of a world built of goo. Be Merry!

People Ponderings: Arthur Schopenhauer

From Wikipedia (I know I've blown any academic cred utilising the great plebian knowledge cave but hey - therein lies revolution itself!)

Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788–September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of Buddhism and Vedanta.

I recently revisited the works and ideas of Schopenhauer on one of the various audios provided by various friends. In this case it is Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy". What I loved about Schopenhauer was his focus on the individual will as opposed to the collective will or more the subjugation of individual will to the will of the whole. His philosophies are inherently pessimistic as is anyone's that focus on the basic desires as the root motivater for human action. It can only be depressing to consider ourselves simple monkey's that react to basic, organic stimulus both internal and external. We want to be bigger than that, made in the image of gods, the highest form of evolved sentience, capable of great and noble things of universal significance. But what if anything outside of ourselves is simple illusion. The creation of willful monkeys, hell bent on not being simple willful monkeys. Schopenhauer's response was a withdrawal of sorts from earthly pleasures to a fairly austere existence. The theory being that to not partake in the pleasure/pain existence would free the mind to perhaps be more than simply will or desire.

He also had a combative discourse with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and any robust debate is a good thing I think... as long the competition is in the joy of discourse and not the eventual conquest and destruction of an opponent. An example verbiage from Schop - "If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right. ". Got to love it.

In a realm where death is a choice and to not die is a force of will I think Schopenhauer reigns supreme though he would not perhaps have accepted the hat.