Guest speaker: Bruce Damer
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.]
“I think it’s clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center, every walk of life, that we have to undo a mess that’s been created, a tangled mess. And we have to remake the System. There’s no way to reform the System. We must re-do it.”
“If you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it. As long as you’re pure in that vision and you really vision it, and you really share it, it’s amazing how these things come to pass.”
“Silicon Valley and its progeny have reinvented the world, and [the tools they have created] are now the tools by which we will reinvent politics and the economy.”
“The Occupy Movement is like the tip of an iceberg, but underneath the water is 95% of the volume of the discontent and of the volume of the powerful organizing.”
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Indian Man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam
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Hey,
Just wanted to thank Lorenzo for another incredible podcast. The PS is so well balanced, imo. Love to here your voice each week. 🙂
Speaking of balance…
To Bruce: I love hearing you speak and have listened and watch everything I can that you do publicly. You are unusually diplomatic and know exactly how to deal with the non-thinking folks. This was a talent Terence had as well. I don’t really recall a time when Terence was ever heckled or lost his cool. I think you, Bruce, are even more-so like that.
I know no one can replace Terence, nor should anyone ever try, but I am finding your work to be a continuation (if not clarification) of our Bard’s effort. We need a new spokes-person for the Tribe who is progressive and diplomatic, I tend to see you as this new philosophical torch bearer.
I happen to agree about the need for an intelligent Constitutional Convention and that a cultural or social dismantling is going to be required to ease the negative consequenses of “rule by the richest.”
If it is not done in a way like you propose, then it will collapse of its own unrighteous weight. At least YOU are offering an answer, and are willing to work fairly with others who are also concerned.
I wish you and Loranzo the very best in everything you do. And if there is ever a way that I can do some work for any of you project, please let me know.
With Great Optimism!
Alex
what would terence do… jeez, what would jesus do for that matter. -overturn the tables at the temple.
y’know, there’s more lost these years than our politics or society or room for our own beliefs and experiences, what’s happened to ‘ol chistianity -hell, religions wholecloth is to me scandalous.
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/04/01/misunderstanding-jesuss-execution/
like that great quote from podcast 303 by Joanna Harcourt-Smith nails so succinctly;
“In my childhood, and in those [wealthy] circles, I never encountered compassion. If I ever encountered compassion it was from someone who was serving these people. And I wondered why that is. And this man said to me, ‘Well, you see, the very, very rich have to kill compassion in their children. Every child is born innately compassionate, but they have to kill compassion in their children so that they don’t give it [great wealth] away.’ I mean, how could we own most of what is if we had compassion?”
…& now we have ‘megachurches’ pushing material prosperity like a camel through the eye of a needle etc…
welll, what would terence say if his spirit was to be channeled to this very post where his absence was noted?
maybe, just maybe, he might say that ignoring such as the physically daunting task of dismantling however many american military bases worldwide -virtual cities many of them -to speak in the abstract on reconstituting from square one, one *might* be inclined to yes give it all back. hawaii to the hawaiians, alaska to the eskimos, & the 48 to the indian nations. (living in oklahoma, i can tell you that the indians here are the most effective and productive political bodies i know of.) terence maybe would say something along such lines, no? jesus too for that matter, i’d wager. maybe. it is sure is dicey to imagine what anyone would do or say but i thought it a good limb to go out on, & bring TM into this in spirit if not in word.
-anyway, it was a thought i had that i wish i’d thought of before posting my first comment here.
things are seriously bent when the mainstream dialogue is so corrupt that gun rhetoric has become the norm. it’s more important than ever to hold back such tides as ‘Black Bloc’ tactics and their tacticians. imho.
here in oklahoma city, we have earthquakes like never before. the fracking issue is huge. the very ground beneath my very ass trembles and shakes mightily scarily with the demonstrated immediate reality of politics. it’s beyond crazy: it’s patently insane.
who has anything vested in *not* being crazy & stupid or succumbing to ‘money makes stupid’ and ‘power makes crazy’? indiginous peoples.
there is no separation. no mind/body split or body/planet split. or intent/result split for that matter. screw white privelege.
http://zuma.vip.warped.com/planet-plant-plan.png
we need to hear south american voices, small or dim or obscure they may be.
http://www.borev.net/
i used to correspond with this guy before he was disappeared.
when i used to work as a courier/purchaser/office flunky for tampa airlines in miami in a base my dad started up for the coulsen fam, i saw uribe a coupla times as he flew into miami and came through. feted with aquardiente and good colombian coffee etc. i had no idea of the reality behind or rather before him. point is, it’s all of this earth and quite real. south america has always been a big part of my history. my brother was born in peru & my sister in colombia. it’s all a festering mess, the whole magilla of S.A. and what’s happening to the amazon and what’s being lost is unmeasurable -especially to us what might it matter to lots…
africa matters lots, india too for sure, the whole planet indeed -but there is something about the amazon most pertinent to us all -and it’s stewards matter lots…
as do our vets!
http://www.tuberose.com/Depleted_Uranium.html
there’s so many fronts to this crescendo of a generation-spanning affront to sanity & humanity that can *any* amount of effort *not* be dispersed to ineffectuality? of course not, but it will take just that much to get over this thing, an X amount we cannot even begin to speculate upon now with any informed foresight… but i’m hopeful, with faith in tasking human moral imagination and creative powers. like #OWS.
All things said and understood. Valid points all around. Still I agree with Levi albeit his clumsy wording. Maybe a separate section for all things OWS for obvious reasons : )
hey Levi
what do you mean you’ve been patient with Lorenzo’s OWS segments? is your patience really required? isn’t it up to Lorenzo what kind of podcast he makes? how can any one of us really demand anything of Lorenzo?
if you need more Leary and McKenna, it’s all here in this tremendous and historically unpaired psychedelic archive that the salon is, where you can listen to it over and over again. it doesn’t have to be the latest podcast nor does it have to be the first time you hear it for it to be worthy of your time and further study. you’re like the lazy student who blames the teacher for your own low achievement by complaining the class is boring.
just think before you take that tone when you speak to a guy who actually takes the trouble to gather and inform our group. you want a different podcast, you make it!
if you had paid attention to the very podcast you are so eager to influence, you would have noticed in last week’s episode when Lorenzo said he would no longer do OWS segments at the end of a longer episode, as this represented practically doing two podcasts in one. Instead he would make some podcasts entirely about the Occupy Movement, like this one. Knowing this, you wouldn’t have blundered out how “this one lacks that perspective altogether”, as Lorenzo continues to dedicate entire episodes to such a perspective.
no hostility toward you is intended, Levi. this is mere indignation, but not so much that i can’t end the message with a friendly smiley 🙂
take care!
Audun
I have been patient with Lorenzo’s OWS segments because the shows still have featured some Leary, McKenna or something in that vein. This one however lacks that perspective altogether.
I think it’s very important to have the Psychedelic Salon. This is where we learn about our inner minds and what potential is there. We learn things HERE and then we go out to the world and participate in things discussed by Bruce, etc. But, if the Salon turns into just another political soap box, then we’ve lost something truly special.
(And to put my above statement into perspective: I certainly side with Bruce and Lorenzo’s politics for the most part. So my old man grumpiness is not because I oppose your views! Just keep them to a smaller segment on the show, please!)
“This is not a democracy”?
How do the representatives of a republic get their positions? Through one-citizen/one-vote DEMOCRATIC elections (ostensibly).
Are “conservatives” really that uninformed and stupid?
Not fully. When a white person in the U.S. clamors about “mob rule” he/she is, almost always, really expressing concerns over the preservation of white privilege.
When one of the callers said he wouldn’t want the Occupy Wall Street participants to get a seat at the table because they’re the types that “want something for nothing” he is expressing more or less willful ignorance of the fact that for most of U.S. history white skin has given its owners TREMENDOUS unearned privileges over people without it.
The callers who disagreed with what Bruce is proposing are primarily expressing concern over the maintenance of these unearned privileges.
i really think the whole dominator subculture took off when the honey (that the mushrooms were preserved in) fermented and consumption of alcohol began. (yeah, i buy that story -it rings true to me.) whatever weird relations man has with power, alcohol amplified and intensifies it. body drugs in general (save maybe downers) may tend to do it, i don’t know. Ego , Power, and Control are a weird triumverate, and each a very powerful force on it’s own. i doubt anyone here is unfamiliar with the notion of ego death or transcending ego. i would submit that positions of power and control -even in a non-heirarchal structure -are harder to resist being corrupted by in present day mainstream society. but then we’re not mainstream society, are we?
it’s enough of a challenge for us to even exist in such as it is, even as it does slowly change (in parts, spurts, and places), but heads all over the world recognize each other, and stoners everywhere are more ‘out of the clost’ than ever before.
neo-nazis are coming back into vogue more than ever as well. a backlash? on http://crooksandliars.com today i saw two neo-nazi stories. years ago i collected stories on the growing mass of such in the military (link above).
justifiable homicides have tripled since the ‘stand your ground’ laws began.
ever heard of Infragard?
at the cultural level, these nodes of power are only interested in increase, not conflict resolution or justice or social reconciliation.
but that’s just ground level immediate first person stuff.
what’s really going on? did it begin 100 years ago and has had a growing resurgence? well yeah, somewhat. the H. G. Wells / George Orwell dialogue keeps returning to mind. it seems to me though that what amps it up is the new technology each century brings. they get all excited in the scramble for the new power. is it any coincidence the dawn of the digital age came about the time Reagan was ripe for shepherding the brooding brewsters into a new power jag? dominus probiscum…
the thing is, what’s “going on” is global. that’s the one sticky point for #OWS. it can only address things on the national level, yet so much of what it tries to address comes from the global level. that’s a fundamental difference in U.S. national politics compared to a hundred years ago. (another is the bill for reagan’s coup, based as it was on borrowed money.) isn’t there something like the top 4 international banks practically owning the top 5 international oil companies? i remember the shocking picture of armed BP personnel cruising the texas coast line and wondering how reality was being demonstrated. BP’s history is worth studying.
and so is Chiquita bananas. think United Fruit Company. think ‘The Company’. power doesn’t give up anything, any time. ‘CIA’ may as well stand for the ‘Central International Agency’, eh?
to try spread change from the ground floor on ‘up’ is one thing -culturally we need to -but to try to change the ‘up’ entirely addresses much unknown. and it’s such a leap into the unknown -bypassing much. black ops, black budgets, corporate governance en toto -these things are secret by nature. it’s no dystopic view or conspiracy theory, it’s a culture. global.
‘smaller’ government is corporate governance ballooned. read ‘The Complex’ by Nick Turse. the fabric so woven is tight, with a high thread count. you can hardly sneeze without using some product by someone relying on government contracts. how does one dismantle anything so woven into the fabric of a nation’s immediate life? and believe me, government by contractor is no way to govern. patently a failure. fascism, essentially.
i was once all for a constitution convention. i still am at the right time, way, place, and circumstance, but i don’t think we’re there yet. i’m not against it, mind you, but there’s much more immediate things to attend to first. kinda like with the first constitutional convention…
we’re in much deeper doodoo than is easily known in all it’s hoary detail. globally. the ‘growth’ of #OWS should be, to my mind, to #OE (Occupy Earth).
i think ideally what we actually need is itself practically impossible; the dismantling of power structures en toto. OWS’s non-heirarchal nature is a great success and lesson.
instead of any ‘New World Order’, i’d like to see the opposite, smallest units possible. instead of even direct democracy, i’d like to see something where actual consensus is more possible and viable…
there are massive systems of power in place on a global scale that aren’t easily addressed, but even on the national level we can barely realize what we are up against. to be sure, those surveillance culture wingnuts have much more going on than just Room 641A. and then there’s the nuclear stockpiles…
just consider the American Military and what it’s grown into. to really do that is a massive and comprehensive undertaking -it’s that big. and powerful.
Power. there’s more going on with our relation to Power than Joe Sixpack dreams of. as earnest and curious heads, we have more to offer than our personal experiences or visions and tribal aggregation; we have our lessons learned.
false flag ops have virtually delineated american history. i’d include JFK’s assassination and 9/11 in there. there’s a cultural consistency there. Occam’s Razor time. time to jump the shark.
we don’t know what we don’t know but we do have a greater estimate of our ignorance than most normals do. we should proceed from there, with humility.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=25475
kevin flaherty’s site is a favorite. while any talk of drugs may not have as large an expanse of informed audience as here, the political acuity is extremely high. and realistic. kevin is equally well informed on food (he farms) and money and power and history. i have much respect for him. i always wished he and Lorenzo could find themselves as seatmates on a long bus trip.
it’s no surprise that naziism and fascism return together. i recommend reading Webster Tarpley’s book on the Bush family -and Prescott Bush’s (& the USA’s) role in Hitler’s rise.
http://zuma.vip.warped.com/bushbook.zip
or this:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nazi_Hydra_in_America.html?id=vh7sx2xtjGEC
The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century
by Glen Yeadon, John Hawkins
corpocracy or psychopathy, what we immediately address ought be what we immediately encounter. and the details are near infinite. i wish the psychedelic community had a site like kevin’s. alternet’s drug tag doesn’t cut it, and it’s near faceless anyway.
in any case, yes, it’s time to move, one way or another. the stop sign has turned green.
Lorenzo,I discovered your podcast a couple of months ago and would like to commend you for all of your fine work helping to unite the tribe. The salon is an indispensible wealth of knowledge and guidance. I listen daily while toiling away in a snowboard factory and it helps immensely.
I warmly invite all comments and ideas here about this podcast! Several people have been weighing in over in Facebook but lets bring some of that discussion over here eh?
Hello Lorenzo,
Thank you so much for this podcast (and the others), it was very interesting, especially for a non-american (I’m French…)interested in the politic of the US. About the founding fathers, indeed, it would be necessary that more american people read H. Zinn to have an opinion worth a sh*t about the true face of the “american dream”, which Arianna Huffington, for instance, doesn’t seem to get right in “third world america”. But I understand that for some people he may be to lefty to be honest.
And thanks also for mentioning this very important, spreading hope, story of mollay (sorry if i don’t spell it right.)
Take care