Google Frustrate

I read this today:

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with Google, constantly moving the goalposts simply to wheedle more data from us which they can then sell on …..

Comment:

It's a variation on an old paradigm. Instead of being predated upon by a
cartel-monopoly stranglehold, one is groomed and collected for others who
then feed on you or gain power over you. (And instead of doing evil, they
can adopt a philosophy of pseudo neutrality such that they don't hesitate to
provide easy access to the 'evils' that gather ad revenues and information
of users and usage patterns.

And of course predation being sanctified as the reality beneath any illusion
of civilisation in the 'modern' thinking.

While the markets are distorted, one may have to use services from purveyors
whose methods and motives may be alloyed at best and completely without
principle at worst. But one doesn't have to put all eggs in one basket and
can 'spread one's risk' and remain attentive and flexible.

The breakdown of civilisation (which of course has never been without
faults) is via the implanting and granting of freedoms, powers and a sense
of self-specialness. In the old days it was called the deceiver.
When we want to believe lies about ourselves we easily don't see what is
actually going on. And the ingenuity that comes from supporting an
investment in untruth is by nature unfathomably complex and opaque - such as
our current world in economic, social and political expression.

"At least do no evil" is a good reminder. But the most likely agency of evil
being done  on each other, the world and our self, is the blind presumption
of being right in who we think we are instead of actually in connection with
a willingness to work (or play) with what is right, in others, the world and
ourself. These three go together. Those two commandments J recommended point
to a prior unity that we have prodigally forgotten.
Noses in the trough was a phrase used to account for why (virtually) no one
blew a whistle on the insane behaviour leading to the Big Crash (which is
still running in managed slow motion).
But it is simply perceived self-interest. Greed is only fear unrecognized.
Perception may be used to hide and deny as much as to behold or receive.
What to do if the mind has been hacked and compromised?
Don't use it until a genuine movement of communication is felt. What one
resists, persists. And what one does not use atrophies by neglect.
When J said 'Resist ye not evil' he was pointing the snare by which we
forget and neglect to extend a true presence, in exchange for the
manufacture of a presentation that depends on opposition to seem to exist.

There must be emerging opportunity for businesses to identify themselves
responsible as part of a whole, rather than a part that feeds off the whole,
but it is hard to share and keep a light in a world that chooses to remain
in darkness. Tokenism soon muddies the water. Anything that can take form
can be mimicked to sell false associations that then corrupt the original
movement. Discernment is a deeper quality of our consciousness. I always say
'it takes one to know one' - so being less able to trust our surface
mentality obliges us to listen and discern more deeply that just running on
a default sense of false security.

Icons are like idols - images with which we invest personal meanings and
which if shared in the same way - work as a shorthand for real connection.
I feel the mind - in its surface sense as is most used as a shorthand
meaning - is already a virtual reality layer, and the fact that we are
currently building yet another level of 'exploration' (defence?) over our
current relational actuality.

With any new 'territory' there is the re-enactment of a pattern of
breakthrough or escape into an innocence that soon becomes a sort of wild
west where fear grows unabated, and the ways that then work to tame and
bring order soon become owned and corrupted by the powers that preside over
their territory or gateway service. Technology can serve, but it can also be
used as a means of control, including to restructure society (consciousness)
so as to be ever more 'free' of checks and balances to its 'freedom' to
assert itself coercively upon its slavs.

We live in interesting times

all the best
Brian