Thinking With Somebody Else's Head

I’m Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is TWSEH. Oil and water. Black cats and white sweaters. Neckties and bowls of soup. Some things just aren’t made to go together. Like being given plastic cutlery at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant, they’re all a bit difficult to reconcile. Some more profound examples could include faith and doubt, humility and self-confidence. And what about God and science? Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, Bringing Together Theology and Science. This is a prickly subject I’m embarking on here, I’m aware of that. But I feel I would be doing a dis-service if I didn’t address the subject. I say this because of the fundamental questions that can only be addressed if we wade into these controversial waters. Questions like, what is the origin of life and the universe? What is the purpose of life anyway? And more existential even … why am I here? We can’t begin to tackle these questions without a consideration of today’s topic. These questions don’t occupy our conversations much these days, if they ever did. The Facebook posts we read seldom broach the existential beyond the collective questioning we embark on after a tragedy occurs or a famous person dies. I was recently visiting my aging parents in Canada and their diminished quality of life has caused no small reflection on my own life and purpose. So there are times when we venture into the reverie that generates this discussion. Although it’s rare. Especially in recent years it appears. We’re not much for the deeper considerations in our materialistic and consumerist society of today, and I don’t think this has been positive. “What’s it all about, Alfie?” seems a faintly anachronistic and old-fashioned question today, doesn’t it? Or is it that we’re just embarrassed to admit that we ponder those questions, admittedly late at night when no one’s watching? There’s precious little reflection of life’s mysteries in our modern art. The poets and song writers mostly seem intent on considering love only from the “how am I going to live without him or her?” position. In that light, I just finished reading Leonard Cohen’s biography, and was touched by the deep yearning he has had over his long career to explore the profound and the profane, so I know it’s not completely uncool to pose the deeper questions. Well, in fact, who cares if it’s uncool to be involved in understanding the human situation. I’m not sure when displaying profundity became unmodern, but I’m all for returning to a time when the artists considered they were conversing with the beyond and a human being wanted to consider his short life as fitting within some larger purpose and design. In large part, I think what’s going on here is a result of the splitting of science from theology and philosophy over the past 500 years or so – culminating in our 20th Century position that there’s no way to marry the three. Science has become a strictly materialistic pursuit perfectly represented in Einstein’s famous formula – the most famous of the 20th Century – that E=mc2. In other words, no matter, no energy, making Einstein’s theory arguably one of the most materialistic in the history of science. I’m sure that wasn’t his intention, of course, but it’s hard to escape the stark materialism of his proposal. It’s also difficult to distill a coherent spiritual philosophy from the Quantum Physics camp. Parallel realities. Alternate universes. Unlimited realities awaiting your choice to come into being. How to make sense of that in any practical way? I watched What the Bleep do we Know a couple of times and, I must confess, couldn’t make head or tails of it. It seems sexy to consider that universe a series of possibilities awaiting my choice before unfolding reality, but I somehow can’t quite conclude that reality actually bends to my will despite my wishing it so. The Architect’s speech from Matrix Reloaded is a classic example of how confused we’ve become by this separation of science and theology. Critics call it “profound” but “confusing”. And it is that. Listen: “The first matrix was perfect … flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure.” What does that mean? And since when did confusing become profound? No, we need a better starting point than this. A starting place that can be found in the work of Norberto Keppe. His Analytical Trilogy is the synthesis of science, philosophy and theology that has been missing. Keppe considers philosophy to be the mother of science and theology the grandmother, and it’s very illuminating to look at reality through Analytical Trilogy eyes. Let’s do that today … try to bring the incredible wisdom from 5000 years of theological and philosophical study back into science. Or at least, start the process of understanding that. Keppe’s books will fill out the knowledge. If you’re interested in more, write me at rich@richjonesvoice.com. Bringing Together Theology and Science, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

Ever since Dorothy pulled back the curtain to reveal a perfectly ordinary Wizard of Oz manipulating switches to make him seem more powerful, the image has served to portray a reality. Somewhere, in the shadows in not behind an actual curtain, unseen forces are in control. Perhaps when they are officially unmasked, they will show themselves to be as feeble and full of bluster as the wizard from Frank Baum's classic, but while they stay hidden they exert enormous influence, as the Wizard of Oz did actually - until Dorothy blew his cover. The Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion - most of use have no idea what goes on in their closed meetings. Or even if some of them actually exist. This ground is ripe for the wildest imaginings of the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists, but it would be foolish to dismiss the central idea out of hand - that our world is really controlled by individuals we seldom see. It's a nefarious world of secret influence and elite privilege that survives only on deceit. Peeking Behind the Curtains of Power, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.  With so much tension and confusion in  modern day life, it seems appropriate to do our show,  which deals so directly with the core issues of human existence. In fact, perhaps any of us who don't feel deeply disturbed by our situation are dangerously alienated or excessively cold-hearted. That would appear to be the case with the power structure that governs our affairs today. Norberto Keppe, whose science of Analytical Trilogy underpins our show, considers that the way power is being used today to be the biggest problem facing us.  We live in a world dominated by the pathology of power, which is even more responsible for our modern crises than our individual problems.  Still, we condone this abuse by not learning more about it and by following it. Ignorance is no excuse, and we must become smarter about psycho-socio pathology, the purpose of our show today.  Recovering True Humanity today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

Like so many words, romance has been banalized in western culture. Coming to a head in what we now know as medieval chivalry, it's become associated with more mundane items today, like chocolate and Valentine's cards. Those medieval tales talked of chivalric adventure and didn't combine the idea of love until late into the 17th century. Romance, then, has something to do with flowers and candlelight dinners, but much more to do with tilting at windmills it appears. And it is in this latter sense that we embark on our adventure today. And like words such as service and humility and reverence, this definition of romance can seem a little fuddy duddy in our hip and flip era where nothings is sacred and all is looked at with a jaundiced eyes from our position of bitchin' awesomeness. But romance is anything but lame. And nowhere near as anachronistic as modern society would like to believe. Let's go a little deeper into romance today. Recapturing the Flavor of Romance, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

A reading of modern scientific and philosophical thought can be unnverving. Human beings, goes this materialistic scientific view, are the product of causes that are accidental and purposeless. All individual achievements are destined to extinction in the vast entropy of a universe relentlessly bound for ruin. We are nothing but gigantic lumbering robots built by our genes as survival machines, asserts Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of this modernist stance. And I'm not exaggerating the bleakness. Reading Dawkins or geneticist Steve Jones (no relation) or philosopher Bertrand Russell is a depressing journey that reduces Man's greatest imaginings to the garbage heap of cold, unforgiving material forces that care not a whit for such romantic notions as hopes and ideals. It's all so very modern. No good and evil, no confusing purpose, just relentless survival over incomprehensible time periods. Maybe there's something missing in it. Losing our Religion, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Ask them about what's important to them and they'll counter your enthusiasm with a shrug and a mumbled, "I don't know." Somewhere between kid-dom and adolescence, your child stops asking sweek, inquisitive questions and starts acting like everything you care about and they used to care about is now completely useless. I know, I'm dangerously close to sounding like every other person from the older generation here, lamenting the lost younger generation. But I'm going to go out on a limb and propose that really, today, something is different with our teenagers. Maybe it's just a matter of degree ... I was pretty obsessed with being cool in my teenage years as well ... but we have to be open to the possibility that the decay we see in all areas of our planetary experience has spilled over into our young people. And I don't mean just that difficult teenage time when rebeliousness seems a rite of passage. Of course, there are extraordinary and idealistic young people, dedicated and talented. But there's a lot of decadence, too. Let's try to understand it better today. They Tyranny of Cool, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. It was part of the psychic apparatus defined in Freud's Structural Model of the Psyche. Its role was to mediate between the desires of our uncoordinated instinctual tendencies - the ID - and our critical moralizing part called the Super-Ego. For Freud, our Ego - caught between these two forces, has a heck of a time maintaining equilibrium. It often loses, as we all know when we do something we know we shouldn't but can't help, and then have to live with the consequences. But Keppe has re-defined this battle by proposing that our neurosis comes, not from the fight between our primitive instincts and our censoring personal and social Super-Ego, but from our inverted desires against our good, beautiful and true essence. A dilemma recognized by St. Paul when he lamented, "Why do I do the things I don't want and fail to do the things I want?" A question perhaps all of us have asked in different ways. Keppe's work in this area is essential for all, but lamentably not well divulged. Let's go some ways towards correcting that. Our Inverted Contra-Ego, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I’m Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. From the time we're young, we're taught to protect ourselves from nature. Sprays to keep off the bugs, oils to block the harmful rays, poisonous cleansers to stave off the offending bacteria shacked up in the bathroom. Nature is a savage place, we're shown on Cable TV documentaries, where malefic killer diseases lurk and there are microbe enemies in pigs and birds. It’s so common to hear this that we can be forgiven for not questioning the accuracy of this view. You see, it was a scientific coup d’etat back in the early 1900s that launched us on the path to seeing all our health problems as coming from the microbes invading us from nature. That was Pasteur’s proposal, the Germ Theory was born, and the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry led by Rockefeller and Carnegie had found its scientific forefather. And its tool for bludgeoning contradictory perspectives senseless, and within a very short time, medical education and clinical practice was firmly on the path of seeing our problems in germs, and making billions with medications to protect us from them. Explaining Illness and Epidemics Energetically, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I've been catching up on some reading lately. That's one of the things that seems to slip through the cracks if I don't take care. All this focus on tweets and Facebook updates seems to have shortened my attention span, so getting into a good book gets harder and harder. The book I've been biting into is Norberto Keppe's landmark book, The Decay of the American People (and of the United States) - the one that started troubles for Keppe and Co. in America because the powers-that-be didn't get it. They thought Keppe was attacking, but on closer reading you'll see he was keen to help. "We are not simply writing a book," he says in his prologue, "We are launching the beginning of a campaign of awareness to save the U.S. from total decay." It had been noteworthy from his first landing in New York in the early 1980s that trouble was brewing. And his book laid out the areas that were in decadence, from economics to industry to agriculture, to psychology and esthetics and religion. It's strong stuff. And it points a firm finger at the extremely megalomanic people in power who've lost their sense of reality and are leading the decay. Paranoia and Society Control, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this program.

We are supposedly deep in the middle of a change in consciousness on our planet. The Aquarian Age, the new millennium, the Third Wave ... whatever you call it, many advocate a new era on earth. I also am optimistic, but I believe some knowledge is missing from our collective education, some missing pieces of consciousness that will impede our evolution if they're not put in place. One of the primary things lacking is a deeper understanding of the pathology of power. For, it must be obvious, we are living in a society where our freedoms are being increasingly restricted, and those restrictions are being imposed by, let's just say it plain, the psychotics in power. And so it's to a deeper understanding of psychosis that we must dedicate ourselves, for these psychotic tendencies run rampant in all of us, and knowing this makes it possible to control them and accomplish this new civilization we so desire. Understanding the human relationship to power and ethics and even God is essential for our development. False and True Power, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

My father is fond of saying that the problem with human society is that we were born without an operating manual. Clever I thought. Once. But thinking more carefully, I realize it’s actually not true at all. We have endless advice passed down through tradition and testament and even tablet that lays out pretty unequivocally how we should live. And it’s surprisingly consistent. From Buddhism to Christianity, Confucius to Mohammed, the great mandate has always been to do unto others what you would have them do unto you. So that’s out there, and it shows up again and again in social conventions and cultural upbringing and even on fridge magnets and coffee mugs. Constitutions and declarations and proclamations for centuries have laid it all out. This is not the problem, Dad. Our problem is that we don’t want to follow it. Yes, it’s an obedience thing. When confronted with what we should do, we human beings like to say, “Oh yeah? Who says so?” Defiance to the truth then … this is deep, isn’t it. And it deep inside us all. Looking Inside for Truth, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

I published this wonderful radio program last December, but felt it deserved another airing. Hope you enjoy another reminder of the need to honour the Christmas spirit. Another Christmas period, and all that that brings. The packed parking lots, the festive yuletide happy hours, cooking – and eating – the fatted calf. And maybe, in a quiet, reflective moment, a spark of Christmas spirit will catch flame inside you and for a few seconds or moments or, if you’re lucky, hours, you’ll feel a deep sense of piece and connection with your fellow man and the universe that you recognize as the Christmas spirit. Those tantalizing moments are tragically short-lived. Some complain that they don’t like this time of year because we should have this spirit all round. “It’s fake and phony,” they say. But it doesn’t feel that way to any who are still enough to allow themselves to receive the grace and depth of that spirit. The Holy Spirit we can call it, and we should take time to remember that this time of year is for honouring that divine presence. Yes, Christmas, of all times, is time to remember that. Honouring the Christmas Spirit, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

The Urban Dictionary offers a comprehensive definition of what is a magnetic personality. It's a person with a sense of calm self-confidence and authenticity, they say, who others are drawn to instinctively. There's a lot in that statement. It could be a keen intellect, a personal charm and highly developed capacity to connect with others, an impressive competence in something, but a magnetic personality does attract us. If we're not too envious, we notice and admire the difference in these people. We also know the deceptions that occur in this personality type. Hitler, after all, was said to be very charismatic and attentive when he wanted to, and psychopaths are often notorious charmers. So there would appear to be some significant other requirements necessary for the magnetic personality in question to be valuable and useful for society. And it is in this area that we must turn to metaphysics if we're to really understand this phenomenon. And perhaps unlock the door to our own nascent magnetism. The Human Being's Magnetic Inner Life, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

We've all had the experience. You go to sleep concerned about something or other. A thorny problem at work, a creative block, a difficult communication you have to make, and you wake in the morning with a way through. Showering or shaving or frying an egg, the solution appears in a flash. The challenge is holding that inspiration as the day unfolds. Doubts creep in, phone calls and emergencies arise, and what seemed clear and defined in the waking moments can pale or even disappear rather quickly in the maelstrom of modern life. Except this distancing from inspiration is not only from the pressing of text messages and Twitter updates. If speaks of a pathological force and counterforce habit we have. A tendency we have to take one step forward and two steps back, as the saying puts it. And this, despite Newton's premise of action/reaction, is not a true thing. We should be all action ... and continuation. Moving forward and upward constantly. Removing the Blocks to Progress, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.

If we open a discussion about civilization, we open ourselves to the possibility of particularly dull and wooden exclamations about the renunciation of instinct or the enshrinement of rights. There's been the tendency to equate the progress of civilization with technological advance, but surely we see the incompleteness of this view in our polluted and violent modern world. Not to advocate returning to the land, which some suggest would solve our problems, but it must be clear to any thinking citizen that our modern world, while containing numerous labor-saving devices, is a far cry from civilized. For true civilization goes much beyond democracy and freedom to consider goodness and truth in their universal definitions, and perhaps most importantly, must include beauty if it is to be a civilized world. And herein lies the rub: we as a species have been particularly dismissive of reality. Let's address that today. Arts and Beauty - the soul of society, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.