Genres: Progressive Metal, Math Metal
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A blog dedicated to my thoughts and musical discoveries that I wish to spread to positively influence my section of space in our universe.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Life Is But a Lucid Dream, Part 1
In my personal experience, dreams seem to parallel our personal development in this physical realm. To have more awareness in this life also coincides with one's ability to be more aware within dream states. The concept of 'Lucid Dream' is not new; recorded evidence such as Dream Yoga practiced by Tibetan Buddhists in the 8th century supports this. In order for a dream to be lucid, the dreamer must simply be aware of the fact that he/she is dreaming. However, the level at which the dreamer is aware and under control of the dream state can vary greatly. For example, knowing you are dreaming is unrelated to whether you will take the opportunity to take conscious control of the dream and manipulate it. In my own experience, before I had true lucid dream states, I had many dreams in which I was aware that I was creating the the story unfolding around me; yet I never came to the full realization that "I'm dreaming". Once a dreamer is able to regularly have this conscious thought during dreams, it is then he/she will realize the opportunity to influence/change the situation. For me, this serves as a greater metaphor for the way we live our daily lives in this waking state. Knowing one's ability to influence and make an impact on this world and other people parallels one's lucidity in dream states. The person you are awake is the same person you are dreaming. The thoughts and intentions you have and the way you perceive this physical reality directly correlates to the way you manifest dreams. The main difference between one's impact on the physical reality and the dream realm is the limits upon the influence/manipulation. The possibilities within a lucid dream are literally endless and depends wholly on the dreamer. Knowing one's potential to create everything and anything, even beyond what is physically and mentally possible in our waking state, is a greater part of the lucid experience. The ability for dreams to incorporate these impossibilities, and our daily worries/concerns, can make them hard to remember once the dreamer is awake. I have found that keeping a dream journal can remedy this. Keep a notebook or journal in visible site of where you sleep and be aware of its existence and purpose as you fall asleep. Upon waking up, be completely focused on the dream state you just experienced and try to write down as much as you can. Include every detail: names, places, colors, emotions, feelings; even sketch the dream out if possible. Live and dream focused, and open wide to suck it all in.
Read more:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming
http://www.dreamviews.com/section/why-lucid-dream-8/
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Culture for Dollars, Part 2: The Pharmaceutical Industry
The drugs we take are manufactured to relieve symptoms, not cure or solve underlying causes. To increase profits, drug manufacturers engineer drugs to create habitual usage which can lead to dependency. If the true intentions of pharmaceutical companies was to help us, they would create drugs that only need be taken a few times, or even once, to cure the cause of illness. The absurdly long lists of side effects that accompany most drug commercials are also of great concern. A causal chain of side effects keeps drug users in a perpetual state of ingesting new compounds to relieve new side effects. A great example of this causal relationship can be seen with the advent of morphine as a "cure" for opium and alcohol addiction. Alcoholics and opium addicts subsequently became dependent on morphine. Heroin was then isolated from morphine, which was regarded as a "safe" cure for morphine addiction. Users then became addicted to heroin, and in response, Rx companies synthesized methadone which is still widely used today. In many cases, those taking methadone for heroin addiction become addicted to the synthetic opioid due to the physical dependency it causes. One can only assume a "cure" for methadone addiction will soon be synthesized.
This causal relationship is also related to our food industry. Unhealthy food is what is subsidized by our government because it is what creates cheap food, aka fast food, which is consumed by a majority of our country. Detrimental effects to our health as a result of highly processed food creates a need to purchase health supplements and other drugs created by pharmaceutical companies; a chain of profit is thus established. If the food that was made cheap and convenient for Americans was healthy, various health issues would be avoided altogether and buying drugs to combat the defects would no longer be relevant. Examples of these medications include cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and Crestor; all six of which are simple variations of the first drug and accomplish the same tasks. This points out another issue with Rx companies: do they create new drugs to be innovative and help the masses, or to make more money? One must question the true intentions of the pharmaceutical industry and the drugs they synthesize.
Read more:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-truth-about-the-drug-companies/
http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/01/24/what-dont-we-know-about-the-pharmaceutical-industry-a-freakonomics-quorum/
Friday, May 27, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Suggested Reading: Daniel Pinchbeck
Daniel Pinchbeck - Breaking Open the Head
Open City editor Pinchbeck's book debut is a polemic that picks up the threads that Huxley's The Doors of Perception, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and counterculture idealism left in the culture. Charting his gradual transformation from a cynical New York litterateur to psychedelic acolyte, Pinchbeck uses elements of travelogue, memoir, "entheobotany" ("the study of god-containing plants") and historical research to ask why these "doorways of the mind" have been unceremoniously sealed, sharing Walter Benjamin's melancholy about the exasperating nature of consumerism: "We live in a culture where everything tastes good but nothing satisfies." Pinchbeck travels the earth in search of spiritual awakening through tripping, from Gabon to the Nevada desert. At happenings like the Burning Man festival or a plant conference in the Ecuadorean jungle, Pinchbeck meets "modern shamans" and tells their stories as they intersect with his. In his reporting, he manages to walk a difficult tonal tightrope, balancing his skepticism with a desire to be transformed. He thoughtfully surveys the literature about psychedelic drugs, but the most exhilarating and illuminating sections are the descriptions of drug taking: he calls this visiting the "spirit world," which is "like a cosmic bureaucracy employing its own PR department, its own off-kilter sense of dream-logic and humor... constantly playing with human limitations, dangling possibilities before our puny grasps at knowledge." There's little new drug lore here, but Pinchbeck's earnest, engaged and winning manner carry the book.
Related videos:
Culture for Dollars, Part 1: The Music Industry
A trend in our society today seems to revolve around sacrificing culture for the sake of increasing profits. This is not an isolated event; the music industry, agriculture/food industry, the movie industry, and many other sectors have been affected. During my lifetime, I have personally witnessed the downfall of the music industry. Mainstream music, in my opinion, has progressively lost any shred of musical innovation over the last few decades. If you need specific examples, turn on the radio. It is just disgusting that this is what is deemed "popular" and shoved down the throats of the masses. Most mainstream music is created purely for the purpose of making money and lacks artistic value, lyrically and musically. This is due to the music companies' choice to spend less money to create the music, as to increase profit. In many cases, record labels will simply "remix" an already popular song; allowing them to make more money without actually creating something new.
The way the music industry is structured gives record labels a majority of the profits made by the artists under their name. If music-buyers knew the money they were spending would go directly to the artist (see Radiohead), they would more likely purchase the albums rather than download them for free illegally. I believe this, increasingly lower quality mainstream music, and the availability of online file-sharing services/sites have led to the downfall of the music industry; as indicated by music sales cutting in half since 1999. It's only going to get worse from here if music doesn't return to its state as a pure art form, untouched by greedy businessmen.
Read more:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
http://www.asuherald.com/opinion/mainstream-music-lacks-soul-1.2381202
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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