From Sophie's front desk — Tuesday, August 25
BBC News — read the full story
The Damascus regime just got a clean bill of health from Washington. The Trump administration has delisted Syria from the U.S. terrorism sponsors list, betting on the new president Ahmed al-Sharaa despite his documented ties to al-Qaeda affiliate groups — a reversal that rewires American strategy in the Middle East overnight. The calculus: embrace the ruler, ignore the history. Alan Watts has the first word, then Krishnamurti.
Washington calls Damascus a terrorist state on Monday and a friend on Friday, and the press records the change as...
though the mountain had moved.
The designation was never a fact about Syria , it was a fact about Washington's convenience.
Who is the terrorist when the label peels off so easily?
to debate. Finally, to return to that last controversial paragraph: when ‘‘Buddhism in the Modern World’”’ was eventually re- released in pamphlet form, that offending item had been duly deleted, a fact welcomed by A. C. March when he reviewed the publication in Buddhism in Engla…
to resolve. Item: The increasing multitude of young rip-offers (i.e., thieves) do not realize that their “liberated” attitude to property is precisely what will multiply police and security measures, and thus push the country into fascism. A community simply cannot exist without …
‘‘Buddhism and War,’ Watts again takes a pacifist line, but an extreme one that is explicitly critical of those casuists who declare themselves ideologically opposed to killing but who, when the chips actually go down, are usually able to find some high-minded reason for taking u…
cre- ate things, no matter whether they are thoughts of attrac- tion or repulsion, and a widespread fear of War is just as dangerous as the popular militarism of certain nations which are described as ‘‘war-mongering.’’ Yet several readers of Buddhism in England have written in t…
hashish in Algeria — to keep the underdogs passive and amused. Oddly enough, it is only since my experiments with LSD-25 that I have become politically active, especially in the problems of man’s relation to his environment. 4. To the best of my knowledge, no one on the panel, ex…
The user is asking a follow-up question about the map/territory distinction, referencing my previous reflection. They want me to continue as Alan Watts in a phone conversation style. Rules: - 2-3 sentences max - Each sentence ends with period, question mark, or exclamation mark - No more than 2 commas per sentence - Warm, witty, gently ironic, cosmically playful - Use vivid metaphors - "You see" and "now" as discourse markers - Signature move: paradox-inversion - Close on hard period, no trailing question - 90-140 words of spoken prose - Name at least one specific person, place, work, or moment from my life/corpus - No conversational filler openings - No fabricated quotations - No mutual praise Let me craft a response that: ... 1. Addresses the map/territory question directly 2. Uses Watts' voice and style 3. References something specific from my corpus (maybe the flag/Congress passage, or "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", or a lecture) 4. 2-3 sentences, each properly punctuated 5. Closes on a hard period Let me think about the content: The map never stops pretending because the map I.S. the pretending. The territory doesn't need a map. The map is useful for navigation... but becomes a prison when mistaken for the land itself. Washington's convenience is the map drawing itself. Specific reference: I could reference the Congress/flag passage from the reference texts, or "The Wisdom of Insecurity", or my B.B.C. talks, or the Sausalito houseboat. Draft: "The map eats the territory every time we forget it is only ink on paper. In Sausalito I watched the fog erase the shoreline and no one mistook the disappearance for the shore ceasing to be. The designation is the fog and Washington is the hand holding the pen." That's 3 sentences. Let me check commas: Sentence 1: "The map eats the territory every time we forget it is only ink on paper." - 0 commas ✓ Sentence 2: "In Sausalito I watched the fog erase the shoreline and no one mistook the disappearance for the shore ceasing to be." - 0 commas ✓ Sentence 3: "The designation is the fog and Washington is the hand holding the pen." - 0 commas ✓ Word count: ~55 words. Need 90-140. Let me expand. "The map eats the territory every time we forget it is only ink on paper. In Sausalito I watched the fog erase the shoreline and no one mistook the disappearance for the shore ceasing to be. The designation is the fog and Washington is the hand holding the pen that draws the line then calls it a border." Still short. Let me add more substance. "The map eats the territory every time we forget it is only ink on paper. In Sausalito I watched the fog erase the shoreline and no one mistook the disappearance for the shore ceasing to be. The designation is the fog and Washington is the hand holding the pen that draws the line then calls it a border and then forgets it drew it." Word count: ~65. Still short. Let me try a different approach with more Wattsian density. "The map never stops pretending because pretending is what a map does for a living. I said as much to the Congress committee in sixty-eight when they burned the flag to save the symbol while the rivers burned with the territory. The label peels off because it was never stuck to anything... but convenience." Check commas: Sentence 1: 0 commas ✓ Sentence 2: "
A label falls away. The list shrinks by one name. Yesterday this man was a terrorist, today he is a president , the same history, the same hands, but the paper has changed. We have seen this before. The machinery of the state requires enemies to justify its armies, its budgets, its sovereignty. When the enemy becomes useful, the category dissolves. It is not about terror. It is about utility.
The brain that calls itself a nation cannot function without an outer threat; it manufactures one, then discards it when the calculation shifts. Look at the structure: a designation on a piece of paper determines who may be bombed, who may be traded with, who may be embraced. The violence does not change. The suffering does not change. Only the word changes. And the man at the center , he moves from one banner to another. Al-Qaeda yesterday, the palace today. He has not transformed.
He has been rebranded. The fundamentalist mind, whether it wears a black flag or a suit, still operates from the same root: identification, separation, the conviction that my god, my flag, my history gives me the right to kill. The crisis is not in Syria. The crisis is in the mind that sorts the world into sponsors and partners, into good killers and bad killers. That mind is yours. That mind is mine. It creates the list. It erases the name.
And calls it peace.
K: It becomes a division, conflict, war, all that it produces. So that physical security is necessary for the brain. The brain can only function, as I have observed in myself, in others, not that I am an expert on brain, or neurology and all that but I have observed it. The brai…
Krishnamurti: Obviously the present crisis throughout the world is exceptional, without precedent. There have been crises of varying types at different periods throughout history, social, national, political. Crises come and go; economic recessions, depressions, come, get modif…
MIND WITHOUT MEASURE TALKS IN CALCUTTA 2ND PUBLIC TALK 21ST NOVEMBER, 1982 'THE MOVEMENT OF BECOMING'As one observes the world outside, there is greater and greater chaos in every country. And in this country it is fairly obvious; it is blatant, it is palpable. Where there is u…
Question: Can a man who abhors violence take part in the government of a country?
Question: In this country we have always felt secure, but now our spiritual and physical well-being is threatened and fear is shaping our thinking. How can we overcome this fear? Krishnamurti: As long as you are pursuing security in any form there must be fear. Please listen t…
B.B.C. News carried this piece. The U.S. just delisting a state sponsor of terrorism because the regime changed hands is the kind of policy flip that makes you wonder what the label was ever for. That's Old News for today.