Middle East n Violence

It is one of the most misunderstood facts of life that "violence begets violence".

There are many aspects to this truth one that I'm sure hasn't escaped many. A people who notoriously experienced one of the most systematic ethnic cleansing ever seen and who know intimately the horror of war seem completely unrestrained in their own dishing out of righteous authority. Oh how they will complain and the Arabs punish them if the tables ever turn again! For now it is the Arabs who complain and the Jews who have the power and upper hand.

This is the insanity which lies at the heart of all us low people. I have been arguing with my mother today in exactly the same way as the Jews and Arabs argue. Everyone thinks they are right (otherwise there wouldn't be sides to any argument). And we all know we don't like to have violence dealt against us, but we act with complete impunity when we have the power.

How can there ever be an end to war and violence when people are actually like this!

The surmounting of sexual desire!

This has been as long a journey as any I've been on : the battle with sexual desire. Why battle with it? Basically because it is not our own, it is an imposter in our freedom! I realised as a kid looking within myself that sadism etc are possbilities which proves that it is not our friend - it is not the type of thing we wish to hold close! It also disturbs us from our seat in search of satisfaction. False relationships are created to satisfy it: the deep down knowing that you only know this girl because of how she makes you feel. The force is very powerful and very painful if not satisfied. It turns our lives upside down, it creates false lives and false wishes simply so it can be served. We become its slaves. Sex is the easy part: Love is its divine tormentor which demands not of our body but of our soul and seeks to crucify us on a life of slavish obedience.

Harsh words for one of life's greatest pleasures: but that weakness of us is the very reason to fear it! So I have battled it with more of less vigour and suffered whenever I gave in!

Of late however the battle has been going my way. I forget how long ago but since getting away from the hampster wheel of work and slowing things down I've developed a resistence to sexual desire. It is still incendiary but I've been losing to wish to love (or the respectful keep off approach to love). I no longer wish to "fall" and "abandon" myself to ecstacy.

Maybe this arises from a firm understanding of the true nature of ecstacy. It is much better achieved through meditation. Sexual ecstacy is very profound but it is powerful and forceful and arises from strong attachments. In an uncertain world - as I've discovered - best not to rest ones hopes on mortal entities. Meditation achieves much more profound states with less strings attached - save only discipline, time and ones own living. Temptation for the flesh and the soul is still huge but finally I seem to have let go of the morring rope and it is drifting slowly off.

It is more like having finally swallowed something that previously had been to large to eat. The whole image of "woman" in my head was too sensational and provocative to enable calmly getting to know. The thought that vulvas, legs, hips, breasts, ovaries(interesting object to view sexually) were all somehow connected with the sexual beauty that is often held in the face and in the image that clothes, hair and other styles create. It is a toxic and potent mix that is simply too vast to comprehend in one go.

It involves smashing the glass illusions which encase the sleeping princesses of beauty. I was considering today this approach:

Why is it that we won't accept just any woman as our life long partner? It is because we are looking for something in particular. If we examine that something in particular it is probably very trivial indeed. It might be that we enjoy sex together. It might be that we get on well, or we are able to have a laugh together. It might be that have a certain look that turns us on. It might be something like hair, eye, skin. It could be a taste in music, food, sports etc. Or most probably a combination of such things.

But really all people are good in one way or another else some just wouldn't ever get a partner. If we were marooned on a desert island with one other person (of appropriate sex) it is no longer the right person that really worries us but rather that they are not the wrong person. Anything else is manageable.

What it boils down to is simply a choice. We chose a partner not unlike a car or a house. In a big city the choice is big and we spend longer looking. In a small village we make a quick decision. On a desert island we take what we can get.

That choice is not much to do with the business of sex. Rights bits and pieces then we got sex no problem. Its about the mental fabric. They call it chemistry and indeed it is exactly that. But the impact isn't biological but mental. On a desert island I really don't think people would be much fussed by the chemistry! Ok so our kids "benefit" from chosing a partner with different gene pool from our own - but it isn't important.

So amongst the deducable points from this are these. (1) The idea of the "right one" is an absurd myth simply made all the worse by the millions of potential mates we meet day to day. Maybe we would be blissfully happy with 1 in 500 or maybe even 1 in 100 random mates depending upon how easy going and tolerant we are. The mystery of the perfect connection is myth. (2) That most if not all of our preferences are just fetish and create a superficial veil of illusion that is paper thin and unsubstantial. Directly sexual cues are maybe not so trivial but you only need to see the diversity of orientations to see that even this is maybe trivial. Certainly in homosexuality the arguments for one taste over another are paper thin. In heterosexuality it is arguable that reproduction and offspring fitness are cues in mate selection so confering some importants - and just thinking here evolutionary biology must be considered by radical homosexuals to be hegemonically socially constructed - given that the prevailing sexuality has been hetero whose agenda is suited by it?

What we are left with for sure is just the tenuous, temporary and fraught pleasure available from sexuality. The pleasure itself is fruitless with no beneficial results as it evaporates into the ether. Once the mythology is shattered those who seek complete liberation have the strength to walk away from this most enfatuating feature of life!

Of Numbers, Ratios, Fascism, Value

So the Greeks viewed geometry in terms of ratios of lengths and sides and stuff hence pythagoras's famous equality etc.

Ratios and equations are directly analagous to weighing scales. Sadly but true it was merchants and accountants whose trade necessitated and began the art of numbers and maths.

It occurred to me today that all numbers can be seen as ratios. Nothing new but never seen clearly to me before...

In elementary algebra we are taught to treat terms separately ... i remember as a kid trying to get my head around the rules : "3a + 4b = 7ab" seemed sensible that is 3 apples and 4 pears makes a pile of 7 apples and pears... not so. The point here is that numbers in reality are of "types" of things which means that we are comaring like with like! A pile of 3 apples is in a ratio of 3 to a pile of 1 apple. It is not in a ratio to a pear. The number 1 then arises through my old enemy of self-reference: everything is in a ratio of 1 to itself. But this is not a self-reference problem because the reference is external to the entity: when we say that an apple weighs as much as itself a priori we imagine an apple on both sides of a scale: but the scale is external to the apple. The self-reference problem is an entity which is by its own nature self-referential e.g. a scale which weighs itself. This annoying problem like a tooth ache still awaits solution.

When we measure the number of things we are not making any qualitative statement about the thing itself. 3 apples does not tell us what an apple is. To say that something is 100 miles long doesn't actually tell us how much space it occupies it simply tells us the ratio of this length to the length which we call a mile. We try to make sense of distances like a thousand miles by taking what we humanly know of a mile and do a bit of mental addition. Of course that mental addition is unrealilistic. 1000 miles is alot more than two 500 mile walks!

My criticisms of economy, employment, capitalism, politics have been aimed recently at the psychology of power and the misuse of people by one another. It is dawning on me that there is another illness in the system - a misunderstanding of numbers. I scanned a book a few weeks ago on this very subject and it has left an impression. David Boyle's "Tyranny of Numbers" looks at first scan as off the pulse but actually it explains more of the ills than my own analysis so far.

It is because we feel knowledgeable about things when we see the numbers, because we feel we know whales by a statistic of their size, or we know the sun by a statistic of it's surface heat, or know the concentration camps by a statistic of the body count. But this is accountant thinking. Does an accountant know an apple when we reads the receipt for 10 apples?

This is at the route of the old saying "knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing".

Value is Quality as Robery Pirsig would say (Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance) while Number of Quantity as we are familiar with.

You cannot know value when you have numbers, and judgements based on number are void of quality - that is disrespectful of the things being counted - that is in the terminology of this blog; fascism. It is not money that is at fault but numbers, and I propose experimentally that it is not Nazis at fault but numbers.

So far only Natural and Rational numbers have been discussed. A student of Pythagoras discovered - and was drowned for the heresay (Pythagoras in the midst of Nazi number madness) - a group of numbers that do not exist in a ratio to the numbers so far discussed. These are the irrational numbers things like e and pi. They can only be generated by infinite sums of the numbers so far discussed. Here my analogy between ratios and numbers collapses and numbers spin off out of worldly orbit.

Numbers are certainly an odd world, quite removed from qualitative value based reality: yet intersecting with this reality in qualitative concepts like ratio. You can use the methodology of ratio to get a number (more commonly called measuring e.g. 10cm is a length in a ratio of 10:1 with a cm i.e. 10 cm end to end) but you can't then measure the methodology. This has been my argument for many decades against science it doesn't have the tools for self analysis. It is the self-reference problem.

However I must add that pi cannot be measured since it does not lie in a ratio to anything: but we can determine an indefinitely accurate ratio which is as good as measurement. Somehow we have escaped the limitations of our human world of indefinite quality to postulate the existence of exact entities which lie in infinity - how Platonic is that! The mind is certainly greater than reality (greater in a qualitative not quantitative way - how could you measure the mind: What is the meaning when a ruler measures itself?).

Mind, Suffering and Reality

Having read that book by Ven. Walpola I think an important understanding has emerged. Consider this:

Have you a memory of something that causes you distress, worry or suffering? OK remember it now and suffer a bit.

Doesn't the argument go like this: I have remembered something that has really happened, or is really happening. Because it is real, it means that is exists whether I remember it of forget it. Because the memory causes me suffering, it means that the thing causes me suffering; and because the thing is real then the suffering is real, well founded and should remain with me.

What this line of reasoning hides from us is a very, very, very important fact: we don't suffer when we forget about it. When we are asleep the memory stops and we don't suffer. If we were to die; the same. Even if we are distracted by something else, the mind is no longer on the object of suffering and it stops.

What this should point out to us (when we are correctly alerted to it as Walpola does) is that the suffering is not created by the thing but by the memory, and the suffering and the memory (like the thing) are temporary things which arise and decay. They are not eternal.

There are 2 profound points here. (1) That it is the mind, not the reality, where the suffering is created and happens. (2) That there is a higher reality which transcends the separate arising and decaying moments of our minds.

Switching for a second to the Abrahamic view this parallels the difference between God and devil. God is the higher reality which transcends the momentary arising and decayings and exists at all times and in all places, while any particular devil comes and goes and is only ever causing suffering at one place and time.

The problem of sin then is no longer the view of absolute evils that have been committed either in our personal hisories or in world histories, but rather the attachments that caused those evils which persist through history as long as we don't learn, and the attachments to memories which do the same.

Wisdom saves us from wrong doing. Most importantly humility and acknowledgement of wrong doing and suffering (both our own and others) . Repentence and forgiveness being the way of the wise. Denial and justification the way of the ignorant.

Note

An old idea hatched with a friend was the realisation that capitalism was secretly designed to make you unhappy bcause if you were happy then you would not shop or work and th economy would collapse. I realise today that really a lot of hat has been argued so far is a version of that. Human Societies become self serving at the expensive of the human collective they are supposed to represent because people either come to rely upon the identity or power that they gain through heirachy within these societies, or in an economy the livelihood that it affords them.

The economic collapse is the greatest Christmas present we could be given because it relieves us of much of the burden of work. According to one tabloid large numbers of people are taking an unprecidented 1 month holiday this Christmas - why not take more there is no longer any ork to do.

But the catch is not a reality it is just an unfortunate feature of the current economy that if you don't work then the whole distribtion system collapses too and no-one can receive even the essentials. Thus because we aren't working on making x-boxes and interior decorating we must starve. This is the problem that the new economic theory that surpasses the antequated capitalist system must solve.

The problem then can be reduced maybe entirely to "attachment". It is the attachment of ordinary people to extra-ordinary social organisation and status that is the ultimate problem maybe. A new economic theory must offer people satisfactions and rewards separate from what they do! So that the "doing" becomes a means and not an end, otherwise people keep on "doing" beyond utility and even to disutility.

Consider the growing requirement to be economical with resources. Despite talk to reduce, reuse and recycle we are also expected to buy more to keep the economy running? The economy has reached a point long ago where its "doing" is becoming disutility.

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On subject of old ideas. Harmonic Structuralism seems to be returning into favour. It was a means of objectively separating Nazism from Democracy. The "good" is the largest harmonic group. Nazis are limited by their opposition to certain minorities and neighbouring politics. They are good for their limited membership. Democracy is better etc etc

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Progress. Qualitatie and Quantitative progress. Was trying to think of any qualitative progress. Do we yet eat anything that was not discovered long ago? Well to date there are no artifiial foods - i.e. artificial foods are just cheap copies of wild foods. There are no man made tastes or foods yet. Entertainment is not new and nothing we have developed is qualitatively different from sitting around the fire hearing a well told story (if you have ever experienced complete absorption into narrative so that it is as good as real). Even in medicine we have been operating and giving medicinies all of history. Genetic modification has occured in farm animals, wheat and dogs so even this cutting edge of science is just new tools for old methods. Is there anything new?

If not maybe it is simply because man-kind has not changed. We still have 5 senses and the same brain. This very much supports my argument for seeing through the aura that surronds all things modern.

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OK signing off. Hopefully in the new year I can tie up the negative analysis and start to synthesise a full working positive hypothesis of life - I need to ... somewhere in all of this I've got to live! Merry Christmas

Profit?

Profit arises when income exceeds costs. How is this possible however? Two identical companies competing in a true free market if they had surplus wealth would use this to increase wages or lower prices so as to attract better staff or more customers. Surplus wealth would thus always disappear.

Of course it is never a free market and this example illustrates this point most definatively.

In the jobs market a surplus of prospective employees in a particular market reduces wages. That is competition between people to get a job means that they will accept lower and lower wages even to the point of absurdity because being alive but exploited is preferable to being starving. In the case of skilled employment such a glut of individuals would cause people to reskill, but for unskilled labour there is no such escape from competition. A surplus of unskilled staff means that companies will always make profit on wages, and it also encourages companies to reorganise toward unskilled "division of labour" for this reason. This is quite a different explanation of profit from Smith's economies of scale in the famous pin factory.

Imagine pin making was broken down from 1 skilled task into 10 even more skilled tasks, maybe using highly complex machinery. Then while factory output might increase a hundred fold the supply of staff skilled enough to operate the machinery would vanish. They could then charge whatever they liked from the capitalists and the profit would vanish. Any company trying to cut wages would lose its precious staff to competitors.

The situation with prices is simpler. In theory any company with profit could reduce its costs and out compete its competitors. However as far as I can see there two factors which limit market freedom. Copyright and patents mean that capitalists can control production of products, and the odd behaviour of luxury goods where increasing prices can increase sales because the the increase perception of quality.

What happens to profit? As far as I know it is either invested back into the company, gets distributed in bonuses or is used to pay off the capitalist owners. So infact there is no such thing as profit anyway, it only exists because of the way that capitalists like to look at the system of production.

Bonuses aren't really bonuses they are just wages based on performance rather than on contract. It makes sense to me to have all wages based like this. When you work for a company you contribute a share of the labour and you get a share of the income - that is what actually happens, it just gets dressed up in meaningless rhetoric as a labour contract. If the company makes no money then you can't have a wage regardless what the contract says - it is just paper; reality is what we need to look at (seems to be linking into the previous block of posts on rules and laws). Companies then fail in a discrete fashion which is another falasy.

In reality companies ascend and decline gradually - but it is all hidden by creative accounting and the meaningless announcement of "profits" (which I'm arguing don't represent anything) and are unrealistic. It is only when the creative accounting can no longer hide the truth that the company seems to implode. If wages were represented as a share of income then wages would rise and decline (rather than profits) with the fortunes of the company, and companies would naturally shed staff and costs as they declined.

The real crime tho in profits comes from the capitalist skewing of business. The most important people in any company are the "staff" and the "clients". It is the relationship between these two aspects of humanity which determine success and failure. Afterall "staff" can be "clients" and vice versa - the terms denote not individuals but modes by which humans interact (wrt previous posts on participation and the nature of society). I notice a profound misunderstanding by many people on this point - that some people take their "position", "role" and "modus operandi" personally so that it says something about "themselves". (On going enquiry into "self" but I take Buddha's point that it has no reality.)

Material production can be viewed as the servicing of needs. But "needs" are mostly satisfied in all the worlds societies - without this people in these societies would have died out! Production in "developing" societies is not about needs. I've been enquiring privately into what it really is about and formed the current opinion - after much reading - that it is about culture. It is the culture of capitalist societies that people interact through the mode of production. An alternative culture is to interact through the modes of fun, festivals and family (to quote Charles Handy). Capitalist societies have simply adopted the culture of "work". All the rhetoric about progress and development is simply ediface to a culture, like tree spirits ediface to animist rituals.

I see this awkward post is twisting around as it negotiates the point. I'll have to refine these points at later stages...

Staff and clients are not the point of view of capitalists. Instead Returns on Capital are the point. Companies exist and indeed their existence depends upon the attitudes of the capitalists. It is the capitalists who buy a right to sit in on meetings not the people who actually make up the company or even the people who use the services. It is returns on capital around which the whole system is centred.

And, why is this? It is historical. The system in which we live has evolved out of the feudal system and the ancient system of taxation. Previously the people were taxed through land tax (rent). Now they are taxed through capital tax (dividends). It is the evolved inequality by which a very small minority continue to avoid work.

The avoidance of work holds a fascinating place in society and one that I am exploring in my book. Of note is the taboo and moralistic nature of avoiding work. The very people who live on capital income are the ones who preach about the "work shy" - not working is a privilage something that must be earned, and previous one that was given by Royal decree to the highest classes. By contrast Working, in its understanding as a culture that dictates human interaction, is simply a system which prolongs the oldest features of human society that it can't bear to deal with humans as equals and likes the existence of closed groups and heirachies.

A real nexus of ideas here that hopefully will tease out more coherently in the future (or even eventually into a book).

Idling... Tom Hodgkinson

Finally catching up with some stuff that maybe makes sense :-)

http://idler.co.uk/

Tom Hodgkinson my new hero and the first since Kierkegaard!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/tomhodgkinson

Blimey it makes sense!