You now know as much as I do. I’m not going to speculate until I get more data. More ina week’s time or so. And thanks for your expressions of concern.

Free Love, by Glenn Parton

Look up at the clear night sky! The free play of two cosmic forces, Eros and Thanatos, Love and Hate, Attraction and Repulsion, Intimacy and Distance, sustains harmony among the heavenly bodies and evolves the beauty, wisdom, and goodness of the universe. What is the message or lesson for human association or society that is written in the cosmos? We know that human society is a microcosm of this great celestial order, and that we have fallen out of balance with the rest of Nature. What must we do in order to become part of the Universal Harmony again?

Everyone recognizes that friendship cannot be mandated or legislated, that it arises naturally, spontaneously, one person at a time, and that it is possible and desirable to have many friends, on different levels of communication, conversation, and commitment. The hope of peace on earth, and peace with the earth, has a lot to do with spreading friendship around the world, but I do not believe this ideal will ever be realized (enough to save the world) until we acknowledge that Yin and Yang, the feminine spirit and the masculine spirit, are also cosmological principles and/or forces, which change the balancing point between men and women by adding sexuality to the mix. We should not pursue a vision of worldwide peace and friendship that ignores, minimizes, or misunderstands the sexual-polarity of human association.

My heavenly vision, and long-range political solution, is Free Love between man and woman. By free love I mean sexual love that does not restrict itself to one person at a time. It means holding oneself open to the possibility of sexually loving more than one, and taking that voyage when the opportunity arrives; it means taking each man/woman relationship on its own terms, as far as it will go, as far as it wants to go, including sexuality, until it finds its own point of equilibrium between Love and Hate, Intimacy and Distance. That is the Way to reach the proper balance between men and women. The message of evolution is that each being finds its balancing point with all other beings, according to the laws of nature, including Yin-Yang, creating a self-balancing dynamic whole in which each being is what it is in terms of the totality of its relationships.

Human beings must freely associate, form, and bond, including Yin-Yang sexual energies, or we disturb the natural order of human society, our alignment or agreement with the logic and love of the cosmos. Human society, with its sexual-polarity, must freely arrange itself, or we will not achieve a harmonious community, and without a harmonious community we will not reach consensus on the political level because sexual frustrations, conflicts and hostilities spill over into the major areas of life, work and government.  In other words, the ideal of friendship will remain an empty ideal if we do not understand that free love is part of the original architecture of human togetherness, and that we must allow sexuality between men and women to work itself out, according to inherent interests and desires, or we will never build good government, real democracy, or a true Republic because if we do not first put our sexual lives in proper order, then politics will collapse on a faulty foundation. Out of the fundamental harmony of a sexually balanced civil society will come political intelligence and wisdom.

Respond, as much as you can, to all heavenly bodies orbiting around you. Thatís how the suns and moons and planets behave toward one another, pushing and pulling everything into a vibrating, pulsating, interconnected totality. Of course it is not possible to love everyone with the same intensity and completeness (with some people a simple nod or smile, or even silent toleration, is enough), but each man/woman relationship has its natural sexual closeness and distance, and we must have the courage to seek it, and go there, without interference from custom, convention, or imposed morality. Friendship is always, at bottom, a relationship between two people, but everyone knows that it is not socially desirable, not community-building, for each person to have only one friend. Rather, each person is permitted and encouraged to have a diversity of friends, each one created on its own unique terms, as deeply as possible, with no outside direction or definition. If sexual love was free to follow this path, like friendship, then we would have discovered the secret ingredient in a self-balancing social constellation (of friends and lovers), and secured the social foundation for rational discourse and action.

If there was only Love, then the Big Bang would not have occurred, and the world would collapse (into undifferentiated Oneness), and evolution would have to begin again; if there was only Hate, then the world would fragment, scatter, and fly apart. The Great Harmony is a balance between the forces of Attraction and Repulsion, Contraction and Expansion, Integration and Disintegration. Free Love is the mystery of the universe, and if human beings would learn to sexually love who we want, when we want, in the way that we want, as much as we want, instead of imposing artificial constraints, or false morality, on love, then the gravity of love would create a tight and intricate web of human connections in which we would not have to struggle for political consensus because we would already basically have it.

The first and foremost criticism that is raised against free love is that it harms children, but actually it is best for children because the nuclear family is too small a world for the development of the vast potential of children. The nuclear family limits childhood reality to the overbearing influence of two adult perspectives, making it nearly impossible for the child to escape from prejudice, ignorance, narrowness, and parental unconsciousness. The wounds of the parents are visited on the children, and the cycle of the neurotic family is perpetuated from one generation to the next, which slows down the evolution of the human species tremendously. Free love makes intimate communities (like tribes), rather than isolated families, the center of childhood upbringing, exposing the child to many viewpoints, expanding his/her consciousness, increasing the opportunities for sanity and self-realization.

A second objection that is raised against free love is that it will not work because human beings are competitive, jealous and possessive creatures, but actually it is monogamy that causes these problems because it makes us fearful that if s/he loves someone other than me, then s/he cannot also love me. If your concept of love is limited, then that creates jealousy and possessiveness because you are afraid of loss, abandonment and loneliness, but if you ìseeî that it is possible to love more than one, then you will not fear abandonment and loneliness when love overflows to include others. Free love makes intimate networks (like tribes), rather than fragmented couples, the center of personal life and love, exposing the adult to a diversity of potential lovers, broadening the horizon of intimate contact, communication, and knowledge, increasing the opportunities for security and happiness.

Another criticism leveled against free love is that there is not enough time to love more than one, but of course love concerns quality, not quantity. Eliminating the boredom of monogamy alone would provide more than enough time for at least a few additional lovers, and then there are those habits, routines, hobbies, and fantasies that could be replaced, for almost no money, with deep and thrilling real sexual love adventures. There will never be enough time for co-dependent individuals because every gesture or sign of independence is seen as a minimization or devaluation of their relationship, and there will never be enough time for someone who is waiting for the one and only perfect lover. Such people cannot get enough love no matter how much they get because they misunderstand free love. To these people I say: contemplate the heavens and let your personal life become a feeling and thoughtful expression of the Will, intention, and intelligence of the Universe!

• The red, blue, and green system charts and process charts you have become accustomed to on this blog will be discontinued. In their place you will see graphics such as the one above. The lack of borders on these charts indicates the omnipresence of intellectual miasma, and the lack of connections on these charts represents universal uncertainty. All that we can presume to know is that ideas and conceptions have the apparent quality of co-existence and that understanding of their relationship will, with time and contemplative study, gradually emerge.
• No arrows will appear in any graphics from now on. Such presumptions of causality are, at best, oversimplifications and, at worst, dangerous misinformation.
• The words question, answer, problem and solution will be scrubbed from posts on this blog. In our world, as a complex system, these concepts are meaningless. There are no answers or solutions, just learnings about ideation, being and nothingness, consciousness and unconsciousness.
• You will no longer read the words ‘how’ or ‘why’ on this blog. In the absence of causality on the edge of chaos such terms are pretentious. Effective tomorrow the name of this weblog will be Convergence Bridge.
• The categories feature of this weblog will be discontinued. Since everything is related and the true relationship between the conceptions discussed uncertain, it no longer ‘makes sense’ to have artificial categories. And instead of arguing, as I have in past, in favour of personal taxonomies and ontologies, I will argue, in the first article tomorrow, that there are no taxonomies or ontologies, and that such arbitrary categorizations are fraudulent.
• I will also eschew the use of the question mark in all posts, since questions imply the existence with reasonable certainty of answers. Instead, I will begin using the ‘degree’ symbol (†), the circle representing the endless pursuit of perfect understanding at points in my discourse where a ‘pause’ for considered thought is called for. Likewise, periods, with their naive implication of order and finality, will be replaced by commas, the perfect symbol of tentativeness and uncertainty,
• And finally, the absurd words ‘know’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ will no longer appear in my posts. Again, a symbol, the colon, with its gentle suggestion of possible relationship, will be used in place of such anachronisms,†

It is my sincere belief that these changes will allow a higher level of intellectual discourse on these pages: I look forward to our continued journey together:†

• Eric Sprott suggests you consider what will happen to the markets when the price of oil doubles soon,
• Richard Duncan recaps the Olduvai Theory predicting the end of oil, and of civilization, by 2030, and
• John Michael Greer quotes Galbraith, and suggests a locally-autonomous community-based economy will help us get through it,

And we’re nearing the End of the Bubble:

• James Grant in the NYT warns the stock market bubble is as bad as ever, and Greenspan is to blame,

But if you Ask the People:

• They think too much is spent on defense and war and not enough on health, education, renewable energy, jobs and deficit reduction;

Meanwhile Nero Keeps Fiddling:

• Bush appoints a redneck who hates the UN as the ambassador to the UN, paving the way for US withdrawal, and
• Robert Byrd warns eloquently that the new legislation to end filibusters means the end of free speech, the end of the right of dissent, and the end of minority rights in America

And Don’t Count on Business to Help Out:

• Two new surveys show US investment in innovation is in a tailspin.

There are disturbing signs that hot on the heels of the End of Oil will come the End of Water. So put a rainbarrel on your shopping list along with the hybrid or Smart Car.

Thanks to reader David Parkinson and Innovation Weekly for some of the links.

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 For more on how That’s Awfully Personal works, please see the How to Play section below. Here is this week’s Awfully Personal Question:

How to Play “That’s Awfully Personal”:

1. Subscribe to (i.e. join) this Yahoo group to get the weekly question(s) sent to you automatically by e-mail each Friday.
2. On Saturday, or whenever you get around to it, post one of the questions and your answer to it on your weblog or web site.
3. Then come back here (you may want to bookmark this site) and click the ‘comment’ button under the question(s) of the week. If it’s your first time, you’ll be asked to enter your e-mail and the URL of your blog or website. Then just note that your answer is up. Other readers will then be able to read it on your site by simply clicking on your name in the comments thread. You can check out other people’s answers at the same time. Or, if you don’t have a blog or website, you can post your answer right in the comment box.
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5. If you have a suggestion for Question of the Week, e-mail us and our Panel will review it and, if selected, they will acknowledge you as the author with a link to your blog. Questions should ideally be challenging, so that the answers will be revealing (when answered honestly). But this isn’t Truth or Dare — we want people to want to answer honestly and to have to think a bit before they do.
6. “That’s Awfully Personal” was developed when The Friday Five closed down. The questions are more thought-provoking and, well, more personal than most Friday Five questions. If they’re too serious for you, here’s a group that is resurrecting The Friday Five, which you might enjoy instead.

 For more on how That’s Awfully Personal works, please see the How to Play section below. Here is this week’s Awfully Personal Question:

How to Play “That’s Awfully Personal”:

1. Subscribe to (i.e. join) this Yahoo group to get the weekly question(s) sent to you automatically by e-mail each Friday.
2. On Saturday, or whenever you get around to it, post one of the questions and your answer to it on your weblog or web site.
3. Then come back here (you may want to bookmark this site) and click the ‘comment’ button under the question(s) of the week. If it’s your first time, you’ll be asked to enter your e-mail and the URL of your blog or website. Then just note that your answer is up. Other readers will then be able to read it on your site by simply clicking on your name in the comments thread. You can check out other people’s answers at the same time. Or, if you don’t have a blog or website, you can post your answer right in the comment box.
4. If you have questions or observations about “That’s Awfully Personal”, or would like to become part of our Awfully Personal Panel that selects the weekly questions, e-mail us.
5. If you have a suggestion for Question of the Week, e-mail us and our Panel will review it and, if selected, they will acknowledge you as the author with a link to your blog. Questions should ideally be challenging, so that the answers will be revealing (when answered honestly). But this isn’t Truth or Dare — we want people to want to answer honestly and to have to think a bit before they do.
6. “That’s Awfully Personal” was developed when The Friday Five closed down. The questions are more thought-provoking and, well, more personal than most Friday Five questions. If they’re too serious for you, here’s a group that is resurrecting The Friday Five, which you might enjoy instead.