Pogo vs. Towers of Confusion - Epic Battles

General Confusion, the veiled enemy within our lines, slips in through the gates of deficient understanding of the efficient and latent factors, variables and patterns governing the actors and the field of activity in our existence. A stubborn human lack of insight offers him a safe haven, a virtually infinite breeding ground for his clandestine sabotage.

As thorough and symmetric understanding of our base existential dynamics decreases, entire infrastructures and establishments collapse — ground to dust and powder in the heat of their own increasing friction, meeting their demise with the cancer of pathological asymmetry, leaving but a residue of ashes scattered in the winds of entropy. To gain a clear perspective, Pogo has to conquer the Towers of Confusion first.

Pogo starts his quest up the long and slippery steps of the Tower of Confusion.
He needs to press the red button at the top and take the whole tower down.

The Troops of Entropy, led by General Confusion, will mercilessly burn to ashes world empires, nations, corporations and companies, social environments, networked platforms, software architectures, and even your very own psychological domains. The Winds of Entropy and the slow-acting Poisons of Confusion can decimate everything from the smallest microcosm to the greatest macrocosm.

Learn to observe and understand the dynamics across your systems, seek to transcend the pandemonium through astute wisdom. Understand the functional symmetries of your environment, and seek to nourish and advance them with your thoughts and actions. Symmetry leads to balance, and balance is a prerequisite platform for happiness and fulfillment — rewards rarely found on the slippery slopes of confusion.

If you drive a submarine, you can move under the waves of Confusion.
Otherwise, cultivating a high lung capacity can be a versatile asset —
especially in a two-player game with a one-seater bubble submarine.

"Pogo starts from the bottom and has to find his way up to the top. Along his way to the top of the tower, Pogo encounters many different enemies, mostly shaped like basic geometric shapes. Pogo can shoot some of the enemies, while some are impervious to shooting. Contact with an enemy knocks Pogo down to the ledge below. If there is no ledge below, Pogo falls into the sea and drowns. Once he has reached the top of the tower, Pogo needs to enter a door to trigger the tower's destruction mechanism. After that, the tower crumbles to the sea. " 

Nebulus was one of my great inspirations during my early formative years with technology. Pogo's enemies, as the common problems we encounter in our lives, are mostly shaped like basic geometric shapes. The trick to success is to gain extra lives on the way up, because Pogo will unavoidably fall to the sea at times as the Troops of Entropy are raging in full spirits. The better Pogo can understand the nefarious moves and strategies of General Confusion, the smoother his conquest of the towers of confusion and entropy will become. Thumbs up for Pogo — he's my childhood hero!

Five Inner Merits for Better Communication

Yahoo Shine published a fresh and "real simple" psychology piece by Amanda Armstrong under the heading 5 Ways to Win People Over, or how to deal with situations where you don't seem to link with others, and need to create a sense of synergetic connection to improve communication and cooperation. It's simple if you can take a moment to reflect on it and put it into practice — and it gets awfully complicated if you don't or won't!

Alexander the Great is famous for cutting the endless Gordian Knot.
Before using a sword to get heard, please consider the following options.

Armstrong's interviews with professional "influencers" resulted in five simple considerations on how to deal and not deal with people. When things just don't seem to click, keep the following in mind:

1. Puncture your own ego — or cut a bit of slack and be less serious about yourself and your pride,
2. Don’t be needy — or don't recruit people to ride your hectic roller-coaster only to scare them away,
3. Tell someone (nicely) what he/she has to lose — or present the reasons behind a prospect instead of building up mirages,
4. Throw a curveball in conversation — or first find common ground and then build toward the actual issues at hand, and
5. Reiterate the other person’s argument — or think of yourself in his/her shoes, and show that you actually understand their position.

Be sure to read the source article for more on the why and how of these five simple adjustments to your approach. Let's have a look at the background and ponder the inner mechanics behind, if only to escape from the often unavoidable reality of people manipulating and abusing others under unsavory pretenses. If you communicate, you have an ethical responsibility even with the best of tricks in your arsenal.

These five simple approaches to help win people over hold a strong inner merit — which is why they work to begin with, because actual positive inner prospects become shared. Your success in communication is a reflection of your own inner state. Always remember and never forget — inner peace and a sense of connection and security are attractive prospects for one and all.

The positive prospects in the above list arise from (1) absence of obsessive ego, (2) absence of greed and thoughtlessness, (3) helpful attitude of goodwill, (4) perception of unifying perspectives, and (5) a "do-unto-others" mentality with the perspective shift — and they help both you and others around you.

On the other hand, when you (1) push your ego without giving in, (2) rock on "I want it all and I want it now", (3) prefer mirages over helpful realism, (4) doggedly push on and refuse to listen and pay attention, or (5) fail to see and relate to others' perspectives — it's all downhill from there onwards.

Even while it all sounds simple, the fact is that we're all too often so lost and conditioned in our small worlds that even the simplest of considerations seem like an ocean away. As patterns and systems of advancing narrow selfish and partisan agendas escalate and collide, they give rise to degeneration, corruption and violence, ensuring a healthy dose of mayhem and pandemonium for everyone, despite possible best intentions in absence of virtue and wisdom.

Prophets emerge and diverse systems of faith and ethics are created in forming a common playground, to prevent the emerging chaos and the evils of ill will, poor spirit, and general disarray. Over time, these establishments forget their essential wisdom and virtue, degenerating and ultimately only further advancing the same dynamics they once sought to prevent. The exact same patterns are at play with nations that initially form to serve the interests of the people, and then proceed to leech and feed on the citizens as the inequalities escalate.

Wouldn't it be sweet if everyone could read and understand a simple bullet-point list, like the ones seen in this blurb? They could just grasp the basic points on spirituality and wisdom, be happy and be done with it, and move onward to living positive lives — instead of battling their own shadows until the bitter end of their days.

Embodiment of wisdom and virtue is what I consider true and beneficial transhumanism — not the prospect of plugging a hard drive into one's head, only to contain even more information...

Output of the India Years (MPI 50)

Project manager profile in 2007.

As I've worked further towards a synthesis of my experiences and accumulated skills from over the years in Hindu and Buddhist circles, it's clear that with sufficient abstraction all scenarios and their dynamics can be pooled into a symmetric set of multi-field expediency, also in diverse business and technology contexts.

Engaged in diverse projects in diverse groups, the unifying environment across the board has been one of intense focus and dedication to improving and perfecting one's accomplishments, while acting a carefully tailored frame of mind. When you do things for a holy purpose and it reflects on your entire existential status, motivation for getting the job done properly and thoroughly is naturally available. Moreover, when you are meticulous with every emerging detail, things tend to get done very efficiently.

Here's how the net total reads when distilled into additions to my professional CV, and you are allowed to tell me to shove it because I'm so full of it. In my world, everything is in perpetual beta regardless. [People interested in networking can look me up with the full CV at LinkedIn.]

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Form = Emptiness and the
Meaning of Three Fingers

Summary and Specialties

I have a long and solid background in Hindu, Buddhist and Oriental studies and associated meditative and cultivation disciplines, along with parallel research into psychology and general-purpose applications of their diverse methodologies, also in business and technological environments.

On the creative and alternative side, I have a definite personal and professional interest in deep aesthetics, expressive photography and innovative media, ayurveda and natural medicine, activism for good causes, and a general love for symmetry fueled by all these years.

Language skills: Native fluency in Finnish and English, major French and English with minor Swedish at school, good modern/classical Bengali, practical Hindi, philosophical Sanskrit and Pali interpretation, working  knowledge of several other Indic, Nordic and Romance languages and related writing systems.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

My early years with the Hare Krishnas, all the ding-ding notwithstanding, did provide me with a very useful and versatile environment for developing diverse skills and accumulating valuable experience on several fields. "Service is good for you", they say for karma-yoga. Even while the basic intention of the said service is of course to advance development of inner virtue, it's hard to escape the practical market realities in sales and missionary work.

ISKCON: Sales / Marketing / Communication / Technology
Religious Institutions industry, Marketing and Advertising industry
June 1995 – January 2000 (4 years 8 months)

Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International: Book and CD sales, direct marketing. Sales team leader, trainer, manager and cashier (1999), sales accounting, . Personal rapid marketing to diverse age and industry target groups. implementation of innovative direct consumer cold lead sales strategies for fast sales results for groups and other high-yield audience connectivity scenarios.

Library and store bulk sales, event sales booth presentations, sales material arrangements and stock control. Customer follow-up and ethical sales development for customer post-sale satisfaction and returning business, internal law and organizational structures. Projections for on-road stocks with overhead for unexpected sales on the basis of past sales volume by season, location, team members, and revenue requirements.

Dramatic highlight from diverse
more and less strange projects

Department and project leadership, talks and lectures, congregation expansion models, cell group organization, education and consultation,  audio archive organization and source material networking, community management and conflict resolution, event organization and promotion, periodic internal upskilling in management and sales seminars, scalable on-road and large catering cooking and organization skills, dramas and scripts.

Poster/brochure design, prepress and promo material printing, e-communication, Internet, Telnet and BBS systems, textual research and language studies, personal web projects and other computer work. Communication and coordination across heavily hierarchical and often archaic multi-level managerial and advisory structures in national and global scope; success in a highly demanding environment.

Modeling and implementation of philosophical and operative formulas in practical contexts; mental training and discipline to sustain functionally desirable perspectives across environments. Deep philosophical research on practical and metaphysical causation, causal chains and causal combinatorics, and derived practical projections and mental projection models.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The second related entry is a combination of web freelance work and involvement in the diverse aspects of Swami B.V. Narayana's international movement and related websites, publishing, propaganda, and congregational work.

Freelance / GVS: Developer / Designer / Promoter / Organizer
Information Technology and Services industry, Publishing industry
June 1999 – January 2002 (2 years 8 months)

International Ali Baba
of Propaganda Work

Freelance: Small/medium business websites, basic eCommerce solutions, CMS customization and simple custom CMS prototyping and deployment, brochure sites and home pages, graphics and content production, web software modification, CMS and publishing systems testing and deployment, miscellaneous scripts and utilities, personal and volunteer NGO website projects. Self-directed learning through tutorials, manuals and professional collaboration.

GVS: Desktop publishing, translation and editing, brochures and promotion, general prepress work and on-demand click-print mass publishing, community management, event organization, lectures and seminars, tutorials and study materials preparation and production, audio archival and associated online resources, e-book library compilation, organization and material production, promotional writing, miscellaneous research, resource sites and general propaganda strategy.

Collaboration and pioneer work with Gaudiya Vedanta Publications in editing, layout, custom fonts and general prepress, parallel with independent startup publishing, distribution and sales models and trials. International Gaudiya Vedanta Society congregational organization, engagement continuity cultivation, market expansion strategy and public representation. International networking and strategic think-tanking for exchange of ideas and effective outreach across mixed target groups.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Here are the years I spent divided between Finland and India while digging deeper into the ancient traditions, producing associated services and resources, and providing diverse consultation, research papers, and community organizational support for a small global audience. Total 50 individual and indexed projects.

Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir: Editor / Translator / Research / Archival / Prepress / Project Manager
Publishing industry
February 2002 – August 2007 (5 years 7 months)

Radhakund CPP (Chief
Production Professor)

Manager for Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir global and local publications in English, four produced and mass-printed books with matching e-book versions, general production management.

Author and producer for general digest e-books and websites [Gaudiya.com], translation [Sanskrit and Bengali to English and Finnish] and integrity verification, direct clarifications with original author, general proofreading, manuscript organization and archival work, historical and doctrinal research and exegesis, research papers and general queries, abstracted information storage and applications, synthesis and systematization of scattered source texts.

Desktop publishing, printing press contacts and production supervision, website design, copywriting and development, wiki logging and encyclopedic collaboration, cross-referenced multilingual databases and reference tools development, shared authoring models and workflow conceptualization, small-scale website networking and centralized search engine infrastructure.

Lots of this in sorting the
head into good order.

Communications and consultation, local and virtual community management, miscellaneous research and writing, source material hunt and digitization, fund raising strategies, education and seminars, audio/video recording and media archival projects, video editing and advanced DVD authoring, environmental projects.

Founder of associated Lake of Flowers Productions providing 100+ GB of free multimedia online. Former president and executive project manager for Gaudiya Kutir, a budding non-profit organization with audience and contributions from people in the Americas, Europe, and India, working towards syndicating and organizing dozens of related projects and agendas.

Freelance / SKCSM: Madhavananda Project Index
Published URL: http://md.gaudiya.com/

The MPI is an exhaustive personal project index covering a total of six years of research and 50 individual projects undertaken

Collecting and archiving
audio/video at events.

and brought to various stages of completion, managed from both Finland and India. Further published works and productions are included in the combined portfolio and task tracker portal. A good deal of the related resources were acquired in collaboration with Sri Krishna Chaitanya Shastra Mandir and associated helpful people. Much of the production cycle and related adventures were also documented and archived online in substantial detail with photos [Vraja Journal].

Among others: Archival work, book publishing and prepress, printing and e-books, multi-project environment management, construction and rural property development, dozens of networked website projects, classes and seminars, language tools and localization, local and virtual community management, community think-tanks and study groups, promotion and study materials, tutorials and manuals, standards research and establishment, resource networking and project support, lecture podcasting and media production, 10000+ organized photos, server administration, software development, etc.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The following initiatives grew out of this abundant pool of projects and enthusiasm. While the limited amount of available project participants and material resources limited the expansion of operations to an unfortunate degree, two out of the following three major initiatives are still alive and well, continuing to serve a global audience with diverse informative, cultural, religious and academic resources.

Lake of Flowers Productions: Director / A/V Recorder and Producer / Systems and Infrastructure
Publishing industry
March 2002 – Present (8 years 8 months)

Lake of Flowers Productions was in its prime between 2005 and 2007, producing and publishing online a total of 100.8 GB of audio recordings and edited video footage, and photographed and archived thousands of high-quality photos. Presently in archival mode, the site is supported by ads and donations, and continues to serve out free media indefinitely. As of October 2010, 27 TB of tracked media have been downloaded.

The storage and online file serving solution was provided with support from the Internet Archive (Archive.org) and their petabyte project, as free availability of high-quality media and cultural history was a shared agenda. In-house developed tools for connecting with the Internet Archive server networks made the operation silk smooth. Footage from the archives has been featured on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and in numerous independent productions.

Areas of work: A/V recording, equipment screening, testing and purchase, A/V editing and post-processing, codec, compression and storage solutions, scripted processing, online infrastructure, networked resources, peer-to-peer media distribution models, scripted image and metadata archiving, A/V versioning and archiving, web development, online archive scripts and tools, DVD authoring and production, general design, prepress and print, newsfeeds and podcasting, open-source audio/video tools

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Gaudiya Grantha Mandira: Developer / Digitizer / Systems Provider
Libraries industry
February 2002 – Present (8 years 9 months)

Software and technical solutions provider, text digitization and transliteration with Gaudiya Grantha Mandira, a non-profit initiative founded by professors Jan Brzezinski and Neal Delmonico for digitizing, transliterating, and eventually translating ancient and medieval Sanskrit and Bengali texts as a free public service.

The current library hosts almost 600 previously unavailable texts in diverse formats for both academic research and seekers of wisdom, provides an additional platform for collaboration, and a well-rounded set of free tools for converting text between all common transliteration schemes and associated Indic scripts.

Some initiatives, like a semantic markup language for automated text processing, cross-referencing and miscellaneous notation, an abstracted data storage system for bibliographies and metadata cross-referencing of categorized shorter texts, and an advanced full-text library search engine, are still in the air pending more resources and volunteer participation.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Gaudiya Kutir: President / Project Director / PR / Networking / Systems and Infrastructure
Non-Profit Organization Management industry
June 2005 – June 2007 (2 years 1 month)

The Gaudiya Kutir was a syncretic networking initiative to advance availability of information and resources on cultural, meditative and religious traditions from medieval Bengal. With agendas for I. Education, II. Preservation, III. Celebration, IV. Facilitation, and V. Outreach, it aimed for a broad field of activities and global expansion. I contributed as founding member and VP (later President), community leader, project manager, systems developer, and resources producer.

The organization sought to pool volunteer resources and ongoing projects under one roof, providing synergy, contacts and additional resources to efforts with parallel interests and potential. With over a dozen major internal projects and assistance for numerous independent initiatives, it successfully disseminated information and provided resources to a small but growing global audience. In absence of sufficient supporting interest and funding, the project was gradually frozen, and contingencies were shaped for the initiatives to continue independently.

Activities: project organization, human and material resource management, volunteer management, local and virtual community development, lectures and seminars, educational initiatives, copywriting and press releases, promotional materials, server infrastructure, material and resource development, event organization, social media and networking, networked websites, software development, project consultation, audience activation initiatives, translation and interpretation

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Finally, below is the conclusion of the diverse business work I somehow managed to somehow accomplish in between the cracks to keep bread and butter on the table, parallel to all the religious, cultural, internal and mystical ventures oriented for broadening my overall perspectives.

CodeWallah: Developer / Designer / Project Organizer
Internet industry
October 2004 – February 2009 (4 years 5 months)

Fixing things up for
people in need..

The two final years of the CodeWallah phase went largely off the grid across India and Nepal in search of the ultimate code and the patterns of a grand paradoxical abstraction, with periodic meditation retreats and seclusion, general free wandering on foot, entertaining villagers, publishing blogs, photos, doodles, poems, serious news and editorials, and hacking in a random client update at times of electricity and "available" business time in a cyber-café somewhere down the lane.

Wandering with native and foreign
holy men of many denominations

In Nepal, I worked with two environmental/educational NGOs and an orphanage, providing marketing and networking help, volunteer organization, manual labor, technical solutions, food, and organization structuring help on a volunteer basis.

Somewhere down the line I first grasped that strange unifying light atop the yonder mountain peaks after muttering too many mantras, studying too many books, casting too many spells, hoping too many hopes, dreaming too many dreams, and walking way too many miles both physically as well as far far down the rabbit hole and back again.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

kaccin nobhaya-vibhraṣṭaś chinnābhram iva naśyati |
apratiṣṭho mahā-bāho vimūḍho brahmaṇaḥ pathi || BG 6.38

Arjuna: "O Mighty-Armed One, would one not fall from both spiritual and material, as a torn cloud perishes without any foundation, if he is bewildered on the path to transcendence?"

pārtha naiveha nāmutra vināśas tasya vidyate |
na hi kalyāṇa-kṛt kaścid  durgatiṁ tāta gacchati || BG 6.40

Krishna: "O son of Pritha, whether in this or the yonder worlds, he is not destroyed; for one who is a doer of good will never attain a foul destination."

The Tao of Self-Governance

In light of the ongoing indignation against so-called democratic governments, here are a few salient thoughts from Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese treatise on the natural order of things, a perhaps utopian ideal where people may live whilst enjoying real freedom and happiness, instead of the grief-stricken and abusive facade of a free world we live in.

Yours truly on a political rampage by chance of circumstances...

The exact details of contemporary application will of course vary a good deal, as we're living a fair 2500 years apart in a radically different world, but the heart of the ideology of a passive mode of government, where the people themselves make the decisions and bear the responsibility, is something that strikes a strong chord in me. I've heard something eerily similar in spirit presented as pure democracy — though it'd really be but a platform towards fully natural collectives for hatching inherent human potential.

The Tao of Good and Bad Government 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"To be concerned about whether people look upon you with favour, or whether you are in disgrace, is to live in fear. Why does concern with favour and disgrace imply living in fear? Favour corrupts you; you fear losing it, and yet you are convinced you do not deserve it.

"A ruler may treat the welfare of his own body above the welfare of the political body [the people]; that would make him unworthy of trust. A ruler who treats the political body with as much care as he treats his own body, is worthy of trust."

~o~

"The best leaders are hardly known to their people; they are shadowy figures in the eyes of those they rule [because they stay out of the way]. The next best leaders are those who are known and admired by their people. Below them come leaders who are feared by their people. And the worst leaders are those, who are despised by their people.

"If leaders do not trust their people, their people will not trust them; if they give no trust, they will receive no trust. If leaders enable their people to live well, and do not fuss or boast of their achievements, then the people will take the credit for themselves, saying: 'We did that.'" [And so learn to become adept and rely on themselves.]

~o~

"In ruling his country, the king should do what is expected [by people]. In winning a war, he should do what is unexpected. In controlling the world, a person should do nothing. ... The more rules and regulations there are in the world, the poorer people become. The more experts a country has, issuing edicts on every aspect of life, the more confused people become. ...

"Thus the wise leader says: 'I shall do nothing, and let the people look after themselves. I shall enjoy tranquility, and let the people find justice for themselves. I shall avoid interfering in the conduct of business, and let the people prosper on their own. I myself am free from desire; let those who are wise among my people share my freedom."

~o~

"In ruling the people and in serving heaven, it is best for a ruler to be inactive. If he is inactive from the start of his rule, the people will soon learn to expect inactivity from him; and thus they will learn to rule themselves. As a result, his country will enjoy an abundance of virtue; and he himself will be invulnerable, because he will have no enemies.

"When the inactive ruler decides on rare occasions to be active, no-one will oppose him, because they will have forgotten how to oppose. Thus the inactive ruler has unlimited power. But he will retain this power only so long as he uses it sparingly. The inactive ruler is like a tree with deep roots and and strong trunk. The less a ruler uses his power, the longer he keeps it."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

- Translations adapted from Robert Van De Weyer's "366 Readings from Taoism and Confucianism".