The First and Last Freedom

This is excerpted from the third chapter of The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti.

"What you are, the world is. So your problem is the world's problem. Surely, this is a simple and basic fact, is it not? In our relationship with the one or the many we seem somehow to overlook this point all the time. We want to bring about alteration through a system or through a revolution in ideas or values based on a system, forgetting that it is you and I who create society, who bring about confusion or order by the way in which we live. So we must begin near, that is we must concern ourselves with our daily existence, with our daily thoughts and feelings and actions which are revealed in the manner of earning our livelihood and in our relationship with ideas or beliefs. This is our daily existence, is it not? We are concerned with livelihood, getting jobs, earning money; we are concerned with the relationship with our family or with our neighbors, and we are concerned with ideas and with beliefs. Now, if you examine our occupation, it is based fundamentally on envy, it is not just a means of earning a livelihood. Society is so constructed that it is a process of constant conflict, constant becoming; it is based on greed, on envy, envy of your superior: the clerk wanting to become the manager, which shows that he is not just concerned with earning a livelihood, a means of subsistence, but with acquiring position and prestige. This attitude naturally creates havoc in society, in relationship, but if you and I were only concerned with livelihood we should find out the right means of earning it, a means not based on envy. Envy is one of the most destructive factors in relationship because envy indicates the desire for power, for position, and it ultimately leads to politics; both are closely related. The clerk, when he seeks to become a manager, becomes a factor in the creation of power-politics which produce war; so he is directly responsible for war.

What is our relationship based on? The relationship between yourself and myself, between yourself and another - which is society - what is it based on? Surely not on love, because if there were love there would be order, there would be peace, happiness between you and me. But in that relationship between you and me there is a great deal of ill will which assumes the form of respect. If we were both equal in thought, in feeling, there would be no respect, there would be no ill will, because we would be two individuals meeting, not as disciple and teacher, nor as the husband dominating the wife, nor as the wife dominating the husband. When there is ill will there is a desire to dominate which arouses jealousy, anger, passion, all of which in our relationship creates conflict which we try to escape, and this produces further chaos, further misery.

Now as regards ideas which are part of our daily existence, beliefs and formulations, are they not distorting our minds? For what is stupidity? Stupidity is the giving of wrong values to those things which the mind creates, or to those things which the hands produce. Most of our thoughts spring from the self-protective instinct, do they not? Our ideas, oh, so many of them, do they not receive the wrong significance, one which they have not in themselves? Therefore when we believe in any form, whether religious, economic or social, when we believe ... in ideas, in a social system which separates man from man, in nationalism and so on, surely we are giving wrong significance to belief which indicates stupidity, for belief divides people, doesn't unite people. So we see that by the way we live we can produce order or chaos, peace or conflict, happiness or misery."

For an electronic copy of the book, just click here.

Facebook Use and Productivity

Only a few months after one study found that Facebook users tend to get lower grades in college, another study has found that the social networking site might not be earning good grades in the workplace as well.

Companies that allow users to access Facebook in the workplace lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity, according to a new report from Nucleus Research, an IT research company. The survey of 237 employees also showed that 77% of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours.

And "some" employees use the social networking site as much as two hours a day at work, the study found. Nucleus Research did not say how many workers fit into that category, but did note that one in 33 workers surveyed only used Facebook at work.

Of those using Facebook at work, 87% said they had no clear business reason for using the site.

"If your company is facing tight margins and low profitability, as many are now, then how can you accept any work distractions that drain your overall productivity?" asked Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research for Nucleus Research, in a statement. "While it won't make you popular, restricting Facebook can reclaim lost productivity. If your profitability is say 2%, this could be the difference between staying open or closing shop."

In April, a study released by Ohio State University shows that college students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grades than students who don't use the popular social networking site. And which students were more likely to use Facebook? Well, they're the future systems administrators and CIOs.

Facebook, which logged its 250 millionth user earlier this month, has been showing tremendous growth.

Last week, Nielsen Online reported that people spend more time on Facebook than any on other Web site. The study also noted that 87.25 million U.S. users visited Facebook from home and work during June, and each of those people spent an average of 4 hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site during the month. And early last month, Nielsen reported that Facebook saw a 700% increase from April 2008 to April 2009 in the amount of time users were spending on the site.

Source: Computer World

Does Gravity Drop Slightly during Total Eclipse?

LONDON: A team of Chinese scientists is planning to conduct a once-in-a-century experiment on July 22, the day of the total solar eclipse, which would test the controversial theory that gravity drops slightly during a total eclipse.

According to a report in New Scientist, geophysicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are preparing an unprecedented array of highly sensitive instruments at six sites across the country to take gravity readings during the total eclipse due to pass over southern China on July 22.

The results, which will be analyzed in the coming months, could confirm once and for all that anomalous fluctuations observed during past eclipses are real.

"It sounds like what is really necessary to break the uncertainty," said Chris Duif of Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.

"I'm not really convinced the anomaly exists, but it would be revolutionary if it turned out to be true," he said.

The first sign that gravity fluctuates during an eclipse was in 1954, when French economist and physicist Maurice Allais noticed erratic behaviour in a swinging pendulum when an eclipse passed over Paris.

Pendulums typically swing back and forth as a result of gravity and the rotation of the Earth.

At the start of the eclipse, however, the pendulum's swing direction shifted violently, suggesting a sudden change in gravitational pull.

Fluctuations have since been measured during around 20 total solar eclipses, but the results still remain inconclusive.

In the run up to July's eclipse, Chinese researchers have prepared eight gravimeters and two pendulums spread across six monitoring sites.

The team hopes that the vast distance between the sites (roughly 3000 kilometers between the most easterly and westerly stations), as well as the number and diversity of instruments used, will eliminate the chance of instrument error or local atmospheric disturbances.

"If our equipment operates correctly, I believe we have a chance to say the anomaly is true beyond all doubt," said Tang Keyun, a geophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The opportunity won't come again soon. At over five minutes, the event will be the longest total solar eclipse predicted for this century.

What's more, the event will occur when the sun is high in the sky; a time when, according to Tang, any potential gravitational anomaly should be greatest.

Source: The Times of India

Thermopylae

Poem by Constantine P. Cavafy

Honour to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do,
but showing pity also, and compassion;
generous when they're rich, and when they're poor,
still generous in small ways,
still helping as much as they can;
always speaking the truth,
yet without hating those who lie.

And even more honour is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
that Ephialtis will turn up in the end,
that the Medes will break through after all.

Photo Credit: Flicker

From Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"

"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run--in the long run, I say--success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

Damion Hamilton's Poems

Trapped

Walking into the human traps
And the traps are all around
The military, the trap of school
The trap of women
The trap of a job or a career
The traps are omnipresent
The boys and girls are out there
Selling you things that you do not need
Credit cards, cars, mouth wash
Cheeseburgers, cigarettes
All around traps
With smiling faces and kick your ass strides
So many traps
One can't help but to walk into them
The trap of hard work, the trap of a good time
So many traps
One can't smell or hear the dogs
Like a fox
So we are not nearly as cleaver
And the fox holes are too small to hide in anyway
And one knows why men become hermits
And live in remote locations away from people
And those dangerous smiling faces
Those faces put one into debt
Those faces send you off to the battlefields of the world
Those faces put you in jail
Those faces will have you married with a job
For life
Those faces sell and sell and sell
As one sees the billboards on corners of everywhere
And remembers Sartre's words,
"Hell is other people."


The Wound

It could come from a bad childhood
Or bad parents, or growing up in the wrong neighborhood,
Or it could come from going to the wrong schools,
It could be caused by, being punched too much,
Or teased too often, but it’s there
As we follow after wrong ideals and mishap theories
Always the wound and the dull flashing of yesterday
As we try to move on
But the damn wound won’t let us forget;
It’s image so poignant, so poignant
And we must forget, and try to forget
As most people try to forget, but I can’t and know
Others who can not forget either
Those pale wounds, still hurting slightly
If you put a finger or palm over them
So many of our wounds threading through
The order and chaos of our lives
Those wounds write books
Those wounds create paintings
Those wounds write music
Those wounds get up in the mornings
Those wounds type at computers all day long
Those wounds drive busses
Those wounds work on the Ford assembly line
Those wounds drive cars
Those wounds must prepare dinner
Those wounds must try to fall asleep at night
Those wounds must move on
The wounds
The wounds
The wounds


Faking it

In the world you have
To fake it,
To be social,
To work with the others
You have to fake it
Put on a false smile
When you don’t want to
In this world, working
Towards a common goal
You have to be good natured
When you don’t want to be
And would rather be somewhere else
Instead of smiling and laughing
With the others—
That’s how people earn a living,
How the world makes a living,
Were morality comes from,
It’s how the business man does it
And the shop owners too,
In business you can be truthful,
Show your true emotions,
When you make a living,
How terrible it would be
If people did what they wanted
At work, and said what wanted to
Nothing would ever get done,
In this world, you have to fake it

---

Listed below are some of his other poems:

My Madness
How It Can Happen
The Great Music Producer
Traffic Court
What I know
Wisdom
How It Is
The Times
A Pecking Pigeon
Knowledge
The Silence of Motion
Three Girls
Morning Rush Hour
A Strange Place
Epiphany
On Corners
Nowhere
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
An Ode to Desire
Dark Empty Room
The Weekend
Big Problem
Courage
Writing the Street
Ennui
Energy
Ants and Childhood
The Wealthy
Video Addict
Dreaming and Riding
The Joke Is on Me