Thank you to the person who sent me Crowds and Power. It's really incredible, and totally up my alley… to those who've read it, it goes a long way to explaining how and why I do the things I do (which is probably why I'm enjoying it so much). Even if you couldn't care less what makes me tick (I don't see why most people would), this is an incredible education for anyone interested in entrepreneurialism, a political career, or leadership as it relates to group behaviour.
A quick mix of quotes (mostly translated from German) from the author Elias Canetti (who won the 1981 Nobel prize to a large extent because of this 1960 book):
Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.Today everyone takes part in public executions through the newspapers.
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
That last quote predates one of my priniciple ideas about heavy ritual — that by travelling inside you're actually breaking through to a connected space where all are one. When self-knowledge is fully realized, omnipresence is the immediate result. (In reference to the discussions in the whatever forum lately, I'll add that I believe this is a wholly explainable physical phenomena, not magic or the supernatural).
Anyway, tomorrow (it would have been tonight were it not for the shaky harddrive problem) I'm adding a new bot to BME. Basically, if you email it, it emails you back a message continaing a link to everything you've ever submitted to BME (well, since 2000 anyway, since that's as far back as I was easily able to build the database). People ask me for that on a regular basis, and I have internal tools for it, so I figured it would be easiest for everyone if I just made it public (don't worry, it's impossible for anyone who doesn't have access to your email to have your submissions mailed to them).
If anyone has any concerns about that bot, drop me an IM or post it and I'll read it over before putting the final touches on the code.
