Can SpaceX Set a Precedent of Safe Space Travel?

There is good reason to be apprehensive about tomorrow’s first crewed flight of the SpaceX Dragon Capsule.

NASA, as vanguard of both capitalist excess and nationalistic fervour, has emblazoned US space exploration with a legacy of avoidable deaths. 

The Columbia and Challenger disasters, 17 years apart, were both excruciatingly avoidable and led to the gruesome deaths of 14 astronauts. 

SpaceX is now poised to launch astronauts into space from US soil for the first time in nearly a decade. But is SpaceX just another capitalist endeavour doomed to repeat the same mistakes as NASA?

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Angry Diaries #3 – Bye Bye Bernie

It really says something about the state of the world when the first thing that has given me a glimmer of hope in several months is the news that Boris Johnson might be killed by the virus that he helped spread.

This week has been tough for managing my anger – partly because Bohnson continues to cling to life, and partly because Bernie Sanders has officially dropped out of the democratic nomination, ensuring Joe Biden will be facing Trump in November.

And with that news comes the inevitable flood of democratic fanatics, who had previously spent months joyfully belittling and misrepresenting Bernie’s supporters, now insisting that although Biden is a fucking scumbag we’re still worse than him for refusing to lend him our votes.

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Reflections on the horror of existence

I wrote this in my journal about four years ago. I wanted to put it here because it’s worth remembering these things, and being aware that my current sense of peace and fortunate privilege is all ultimately a part of the universal awareness trying to hide from the horror of itself.

It’s been a while since my LSD trip. About three months. And I feel like I’m gradually coming back to some kind of sanity and reality. But I feel like things have changed forever, like I’ve woken up to a reality that is more intense and terrifying, but also more vivid and beautiful, than I could have ever imagined.

I think the biggest change has been that I’ve realised that things are the way they are, because they’re the way they are. That sounds pretty stupid… but what I’m getting at is that the meaning of existence is inherent… things exist because they don’t not exist. It’s like why creatures evolve to suit their environments; filling a niche because that’s just what happens. I’m filling a Patrick niche, my own little bit of consciousness, because there is an infinite realm of possible consciousness that I inhabit a tiny part of.

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Good, and crazy, and laughing

Although slavery, oppression, and torture are never going away; are a part of existence that can’t be boxed up and chained in a padded room…

And that while there is no moral objectivity; that goodness and beauty are relative…

Nevertheless the point is to strive to be the most beautiful, joyously compassionate power in the world,

While always being aware of how absurd your own striving for beauty is, and how your compassion and love is just a joke in the face of the universe,

And this feeds into your absurd, insane, dazzling and confounding glory.

So fight slavery and suffering and evil in all its forms,

Knowing that you are exactly as powerless to the utter cosmic meaninglessness of it all as the people who cling to exploitation and cruelty.

But you look good, and crazy, and laughing, as you dance into the same oblivion.

 

koan

The Zen initiate Pat was studying a book of koans, and folding the corners of pages that he found particularly meaningful.

Pat’s Master noticed this behaviour, and she approached Pat and twisted his ear. Pat yelped and his Master returned to her room.

During their next study meeting, Pat asked what the purpose of this was. His Master said: “My most dim-witted students must be marked.”

With this, Pat had great satori.

no content

There is a Buddhist saying: “Statements about the nature of the ultimate truth have no content.”

Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński was opposed to people analysing his work or even interpreting it. He stated that if he wanted to say something, he would say it. A painting, however, was a unique expression of something beyond language. Interpretation immediately destroys that.

“Meaning is meaningless to me,” he once said. He didn’t even give his paintings titles.

Yet it is immensely tempting to apply meaning to his work – especially considering he grew up surrounded by war, genocide, and suffering. The corpse-like figures that populate his paintings are reminiscent of the starved bodies of holocaust victims. German helmets and Greco-Roman architecture evoke the Third Reich. Vast towering cathedrals of bone and flesh link human endeavour with misery and doom.

And of course, these words ultimately do nothing to convey the depth of his paintings. There will always be something missing.

These words have no content.

beksinski

Is Buddhism Sexist?

The short answer is yes. Buddhism has always been sexist.

But the core principles of Buddhism should prevent sexism or any kind of judgement based on forms and appearances. So are there just a bunch of people doing Buddhism really badly?

In Florence Caplow and Susan Moon’s carefully curated selection of Zen koans, The Hidden Lamp, Rita M Gross concisely outlines the prevalence of sexism and misogyny in traditional and contemporary Buddhism:

Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet also believe, in common with many Asian Buddhists, that it is impossible to attain full enlightenment in a woman’s body and that being born female is unfortunate. That tells us a lot about what women have had to go through!

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Angry Diaries #2 – Acceptance/Inclusion

Centrists want me to make friends with the stupid fuckers destroying the world.

They say if I don’t forgive ignorance, greed and casual bigotry, those poor innocent twats will have no choice but to become even more wilfully bigoted.

It’s tempting. After all, forgiveness is beautiful. I know we are all part of the universal consciousness. Bigotry is an expression of the shadow side of my own being. It may be a part of mind-at-large that is far removed from my own transient person, but doesn’t every being deserve love?

I’ve now realised the mistake I was making. The centrists were drawing a false equivalency between acceptance and inclusion.

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