Winter solstice

Christmas should be on the 26th this year. Tomorrow the day length finally increases here in UK from 7hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 51 minutes. The last time the day length was that long was the 17th December, and the shortest day was actually the 21st and 23rd, with the sun at its lowest (celestial point) on 22nd December. The sliding of sunrise and sunset days I don't understand but it shows there are many cycles involved in making day length.

Its quite amazing then that the ancients placed Christmas where they did - how in the world did they know that the 25/26 was the day the sun returned. I don't think it's a diss to the Christians to remind them that this festival is of great importants outside their calendar. Its a fact that the year which is governed by the cycle of the sun, which is also the most important thing which determines our weather and welfare - even today! - has certain high and low points and these have always been celebrated. Meanings have changed, but facts are facts.

Of course the return of the sun, and its birth in the heavens is exactly what we still celebrate. It is just an abstract spiritual son we look to now rather than just the physical sun. Just as at Easter we look at the coming again of the crops against the foe of winter, and now Christian countries look to the coming again of Jesus against the foe of sin and death - the resurrection.

=== 27th Jan 2010

This is wrong! I checked this up again this year (2009) and it doesn't work!! Don't know what was up with that data but day length should sinusoidally reduce to the solstice and then increase again.

Life, sex and death

I'm a little more philosophcal about the recent news. When things go wrong that's when we learn the most. She is a soldier to me now, forging ahead into territories that we all must walk one day, brave and fearless like she was in life, into that boundless unknown void. There is much to add to this story, but at the right time... i've still a lot to learn myself.

This has all woken me up to. Without a sense of death really how can we know what life is? and that was supposed to be the enquiry of this blog.

Cosi Fan Tutti was on TV today - saw the beginning, rest is recorded for later. Can "real" women be faithful, or are we destined to chose pleasures over virtue? This girl was a goddess to me, a heavenly being, but not because of sexual faithfulness - we were never physical with each other - but because of spiritual intimacy (or the belief of that). That I begin to remember - after the 9 years of this "relationship" - was the whole point.

If we chose physical pleasures over virtue, we chose the mortal flesh, we are bonded by what is temporary and soon to be extinct. But if we chose the spiritual and forgo the temptations of the body - what then? This was the whole point. Is it eternal if it aims for bondage between what is immortal? I never imagined that this would all be tested so literally. Is she immortal in some spiritual way? did I only love a mortal thing? Why did I feel I had been waiting for her my whole life when I met her? Why did we talk endlessly of eternal friendship and forever - is this all just irony knowing the truth is inescapable?

There are bonds that go beyond the physical. I knew something was wrong when she had a car accident 3 years ago. I knew something was going wrong last year and I had this dread feeling around the time she died. I knew nothing of these events for another 7 months - but after her death there was a release in my life and I had begun to explore old territories of interest. Maybe her loss did free me from some mortal attachment? When I got the email I already knew why it was sent, but didn't want to and couldn't accept that so I invented other reasons. My intellectual mind is terrible at intercepting deeper awareness, it has done this on many occasions. Maybe it is afraid of the new horizons that take power away from that rational creature. I remember she said she could see spirits. I didn't know what to make of that, we never really talked about it. Maybe she was already of a deeper level in life.

We were supposed to have a "natural" relationship. There was to be no overt desire, no manipulation, no compromise, no argument, no coersion, no seduction - if we were bonded naturally then what need for "making a relationship" or love. The paper knows what to do when the match is there - if we were truely connected then it seemed to me that it would happen by itself - and if it didn't it was not supposed to be. Well did it happen or not? Without direct communication and with only hundreds of thousands of poetic and alegorical words did we ever communicate anything. How can I ever know now? A councellor friend said just a few days ago that communication is the key to a relationship. I feel like I'm in a structural philosophy class again - do words mediate everything? I knew when she was in danger without words - altho I grant that it was words that I took to confirm these facts.

If relationships have to be made based upon human desires then all relationships are fearful of death. I am not fearful of death. I have a story to post sometime on that - one I sent her for valentines day - one that I wonder whether it might have been useful to her on her journey.

Buddha beat death and Jesus especially we know beat death. Holding onto the world in place of heavenly riches is like holding onto a sinking anchor for security. Knowing the difference between that which sinks and that which rises, and letting go of all these things that sink around us, must be the wisdom that survives death.

When I first prayed and chanted for her I was trying to see her face and where she had gone. My father was at first not so good, but now resides in a warm and cordial heaven and I'm so happy he has the smile that he only ever tried to get in life. This girl I was stunned to find in a world of brilliantly jewelled columns holding up a roof too far above to see, blinding white light shining all about and throughout the space, gold and silver jewelled thrones at all levels. It was utterly spectacular - I have never even dreamed or thought of such a wonderful place. I wonder if this is just my own respect for her expressed in imagination, or another connection beyond the physical? I so hope she is at peace, and in a happy place - and her mortal family and friends at ease and peaceful too.

I begin to have entertain faith that maybe there are worlds beyond this, and that peace is really a possibility for all man. Happy Christmas.

My muse is gone.

I found out 2 days ago why this girl's sister contacted me, it is as bad as the deep feelings I have been ignoring for a long time. This girl has passed away. In her memory let me say that she was the most wonderful, beautiful and inspiring person I have ever met. She was as free as a bird, as joyful and energetic as the swallows playing in the summer sky, it was as peaceful in her company as arriving in that deep forest glade and her voice was captivating, rising in short bubbles of excitement, just as the meadow stream flushes buoyant from its spring. There are no words worth anything. I had a letter read to me last night, I cannot believe she is gone, her words sounding from beyond the grave. She was only just 26, it makes no sense. I always thought she was a being from heaven, so freely she has returned to that happy place. I want to follow, but I know my days are here. I don't want to write more, there can be no turning back now.

Thank you to commenters

I just noticed that there are some comments on these posts - I am honoured but also my god things are no longer private. I'll pretend they are tho cos that might cause me to edit. Many thanks for the comments I will read and ponder them soon.

More on Nothing & dependent origination

I always thought that "relationship" mentioned before would enlighten me somehow - it seems to have been through awareness of the process of grasping and needing. To have needed something more than ones own life is ridiculous on closer examination - because we must have valued our own grasping more than the thing in order to need it that much.

On Saturday I woke up with a closer approximation to nothing and emptiness. It is the space before and after my life that is nothing. It is neither an absense nor a presence, but the peaceful irrelevance of myself. Neither positive, nor negative. I then examined a passage from the Diamond Sutra I never understood before - the bit of things being nothing more than their parts.


Building a Chair.
So I want to build a chair and I do some quantity surveying and write a list. Say 10m of wood, a flat panel, a saw, 10 screws, 5 hours of labour and 3 cups of tea (6 items). I get to work and finally have my chair. I sit back in it and relax enjoying the fruit of my labour.

The question is: have I made a new thing. Obvious answer yes else how am I sitting down now, where before I was on the floor. However if there is a new things where did it come from? If it is really a new thing different from the 6 items in the quantity survey then doesn't it need to be added to the survey to make 7 items. In which case what is the need for the other 6 items? We know however that it was created from the other 6 items. So on one hand it is new because we are sitting in it, but on the other hand it is just a composition of 6 other things and not new itself.

Simple but profound. We tend to think of a chair as a unique thing, something distinct and special, something which unlike many other things cannot be sat in. To comfortable solution to a special part of life, sitting down. Imagine a world without chairs. However at the same time a chair is not any different from it component parts - it is the plain sum of things which in themselves are no use for sitting down. The chair then is a different type of thing from its components, it is just an "apparent form" which emerges from its components, but which has no real substance - i.e. something we need add to the ingredients.

Just the really confuse matters, when this is understood we need consider that the starting ingredients themselves are just "apparent forms" of other components and so on.

The conclusion then is that form (the way things seem) is actually an "apparent form", it is like an illusion which is not really there. In reality it is just the sum of component parts which are quite different from the "apperant form", and if we wish to understand the origin of the "apparent form" it comes from nowhere - it itself is made from nothing.

This "nothing", i.e. the striking emergence of distinct unique forms from component parts, is the real emptiness of the "apparent world". The world is still apparent it is true, nothing there changes, but we realise that the apparentness is only that, it has no realness.

Thus in connection with the previous post: what "I" was before the component parts came together to make me 35years ago was nothing, and to nothing this "apparent form" of myself will return. And underlying that "apparent form" is emptiness, which is the same emptiness which enables me to grasp and take in all the apparent forms of the universe into myself as my life and existence.

The Grasping Hand & Nothing

Forget the last blog entry am making progress elsewhere...

Take a look at the hand.

With the hand we grasp for things that we want. Maybe a pen, maybe some food, maybe a lover. In each case we feel better off for what we have gained, and if we fail to gain then our hand feels empty and we feel worse. Normally then we view "empty" as a bad thing.

If we are already holding something then we are unable to grasp something new. It is because our empty hand is empty that we are able to grasp for new things. Thus in this sense emptiness is critical for the acquiring of new things and the satisfaction of our desires. Indeed it is precisely because our hand has nothing in it that it can be used to hold things. Thus in the act of having something we are relying upon our hands own emptiness! In this sense emptiness is critical in the act of having and is a good thing.

One thing we cannot grasp however is the hand itself. Try and grasp your hand now! It is impossible. The inability to grasp ourselves reinforces our insecure. If we ever doubt ourselves what can be grasp to reinforce ourselves? Nothing!

In this sense also the hand is intrinsically empty, because it cannot hold itself - there is nothing there to grasp. This is because it is just the possibility of grasping, not a thing which can be grasped. Thus in grasping relationships we fit together like shaking hands, each grasping the others grasping and empty nature. My emptiness fits into your emptiness, and vice verse and there is a bond.

There is a great analogy here between the hand and the self. The "true self" is our grasping nature: our ability to go-for-things, acquire things and own things. It is not however the things themselves. But often we examine that power through the things themselves, we add up the things we own and the things we have done. Or at least we measure our potential to own things through what we have actually done and owned. However our existence itself is actually just the space into which all these things come. And that is obviously there whether it is a filled room or an empty room. If we think the filled room (the ostensibly successful life) is any different from the empty room (the life of monastic non-ownership and attachment) then we are viewing the rooms space in terms of its contents not its emptiness. We are told the human mind is actually an infinite space with room enough for the whole universe and more!

To Have or the Have not?

I have a story to tell which is teaching me a great deal.

9 years ago this month i fell in love. Nothing extraordinary about that, but for me profound. I remember the day preceeding that clearly: a girl walked into the shop where I worked. I remember she stood out because she seemed to glide rather than walk; in all the time I knew her I never remember her feet touching the ground. The shop as I remember it was always radiated in golden light whenever she was present that day and those afterwards. I watched her enter the training room and some hours later leave and thought I'd never see her again. A few days later I turned around one afternoon and to my shock she was there on the till next to me. An opportunity I had to take. I spoke to her and in those first few seconds I fell in love.

This was the girl I had always wanted to meet. The person of my childhood dreams. It seemed the very reason I had been born. She was the key to my heart and with her it just opened. I pondered so much then and since as to whether I really was waiting all my life for "her" or for someone like her. I write this as an edit to the original post because that has become of critical importants. Either way the door of my heart was finally open and I was seeing the beautiful world inside for the first time. How I had known it was there, and how I had known that this girl would walk into my life and open it were a mystery that led me to hold onto the idea of rebirth and karma - things I had been very skeptical about. There was at least a sense I had known her in the past, there were unfinished things from behind the veil of my past before I was born. That is the mythology that makes all this so difficult, and the protection of an open heart the most precious part.

I think there may have been some mutuality, I remember seeing her dazing dreamily at me some weeks later. Speaking to her I was amazed that we had anything in common. There was just one bad bit of news she was 17. But that turned out to be only part of the problem she had a 33 year old boyfriend and there lay the rub.

She may not have know what she was doing, but I was sure it was not the way I wanted it to be, to have to take her from him. If it was going to be like that, afterall, why shouldn't someone else take her from me!

If it was going to be, it was going to be. A match and a candle don't need much to get them started. If you end up having to work at it, there is something wrong.

I was also worried that we had another huge difference. In life I have never wanted anything. I for that reason have nothing. I had no job, no significant qualifications, no car, no house, not even any good clothes. Yet she was hanging out with a millionaire. I made the decision that unless she chose me, I would not bring her into my "fools paradise".

You believe you are invinsible. That is the foundation of much morality. Trying to fulfill my love on the meagre scraps that were offered me, being the very best friend I could be, exploring the beautiful world I had been revealed as purely and without "taking" as I could was to prove my own hell on Earth. After a few years what was good began to turn bad. Anger and jealousy began to take over and the stress I was experiencing between what I wanted and what I had began to consume me. I had no choice but the walk away - literally out of the pub and her life into a desert. It felt I left my very soul right there sitting in that London pub.

Since then I have had very little to give the world. It is hard to live when you are not living. But never to give up, and certainly never to dwell on the past I have moved on - still believing myself invicible. I guess I had some kind of nervous breakdown - altho apart from some panic attacks and a few years of agoraphobia I like to think I shook it off alright. Tried out a few relationships but was always haunted by the emptiness inside.

I practiced Buddhism in those years. I still disagree with the mainstream Mahayana because what I wanted was liberation from this life. And I thought I was succeeding. There was some joy in my life and I thought I was growing new sprouts and living again.

This week I found an email from this girls sister trying to get in touch. In an instant I realised I have been living a lie. I still love her, she still means the world to me. Now I have a problem, a real problem. If I can't get rid of this wrteched love what can I do. I turn to theory next to work out exactly how all this works and what it means about life and love...

but first a tea break (we are in England afterall)

Loss of Baiji

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/12/14/ancient_species_of_dolphins_believed_extinct/

I read today that the Baiji river dolphin has been declared effectively extinct. Despite still holding a ruthless genetic attitude to "species" one feels that something real has been lost, and the question I always ask here is what have we gained in its place.

Certainty

it just occurred to me as I scanned my bulk mail folder looking for important emails about how do I know that I am concentrating enough to pick them out. We know that were I daydreaming I could easily scan over a name, and actually its amazing that I can just look over the list - without any particular expectation and wow magically I can notice a name of interest - how do I know that I am in the right frame of mind to do that?

Maybe its a feeling I have which proves this fact. A feeling of "paying attention". How about "I just know".

Then I played devils advocate with an imaginery "scientist" who would want phenomenal proof. How I would argue does he know that he is paying attention to his experiments? He would say that he has the phenomenal knowledge of the experiment itself to assure him that he is not sleeping or not paying attention.

But I would argue further, how do you know that you are paying attention to the "evidence" that you are paying attention?

At the end of the day we just "know" directly whether we are paying attention and what the state of our mind is. Being a mind is the same as knowing a mind!

It is not a case of viewer and "the viewed", but rather viewer is "the viewed".

Its strange in a world of proof and ecvidence to speak of self-evident truths, things we know in themselves directly, but these things must be possible else we would never be able to reach across the divide from ourselves and the world we wish to know.

Of course once the divide is bridged once it is no longer so great. What is the difference between viewer and viewed anyway? that has not been imagined itself.

- Another bit of writing in the long list that begins on the home-page and spills out in all directions to some sense that the world is self evident and existence and truth are already here. That working, building and constructing truth is at root a myth.

Matthew 6:22-23

22 The light of the body is the eye. Therefore if your eye is sound, your whole body shall be full of light.
23 But if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

found it... this is the bit from the Bible which summarises Jesus' similar statements to Hinduism and Buddhism - that to know ourselves look at what we see, that what is outside is what is inside, that our self does not hide behind the appearances of the world like a computer or viewer, but rather IS "the quality" of what we are seeing and experiencing and thinking - the goodness or badness of our existence.

This is remarkable to me that in its core Jesus, Buddha and the Hindu sages are on this point at least speaking exactly the same language.

Does this concordance between such traditions suggest that there is a common core to human life? that there is a single path of goodness for those who will know it.

Ever since orientating myself to these points on Thursday last week things have gone bad. I argued with my mother all weekend like I used to when I was a kid, and today am in the endgame with my girlfriend of 2 years - altho that was a forgone conclusion 2 years ago!

Sometimes it looks like the closer you get the harder it gets. So maybe this is the core to progress in life and the facing that core is why the going has gotten tough.

What is a Good Self?

Following on from the last post it is apparent that this puts the knife further into the "self thing".

What is the self I keep asking myself, both unsure what it is and also amazed that I seem to be sure, but can't see why.

After the previous post I see that I have been still believeing in a "ghost" behind the scenes pulling the strings of my world. When I think, speak, have emotions, dream or whatever I have imaged that there is a secret self, unseen by the "outer" world who does all this like a tank commander running operations in his safe tank. Yet I have never seen this "ghost", nor do I have any reason to believe in it, I just feel as though it is there - that is after all what makes me "me".

In the last post I realise that all those things I thought where caused by my secret myself are actually myself. I am nothing more than my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings, my actions.

The very same things which other people judge me by, my thoughts, words, and actions are actually "myself". There is no hidden self in its "inner" world creating impulses which have effect in the "outer" world, because there is no "inner" world. Recaping the last post: the "inner" world is actually the outer-world-as-I-see-it, and if there is an "outer" world it is an imagination about a world free from "interpretation", free from subjective involvement, an objective world - which is a fantasy since we can't know that directly (without personal involvement). There is only 1 world - tat tvam asi (thou that is art).

So the "self" is plain to see for everyone. And this has a big implication on our behaviour and attitudes. I have lived very much hiding from reality, believing that inside there was a self which was misunderstood, which has bad/good things happen to it, which was free from the world around it. Yet now I see that this is an illusion.

You cannot be a good person and hide behind bad things - saying for example that you were forced to do them, or that you were justified in doing them. Bad things - be they thoughts, words or deeds are only bad things, and if you do them then you are bad - there is no escape to your "inner" world. Bad things only result in bad things, so you have no choice but to avoid bad things immediately, there is never reason to do them.

A good self on the other hand is one who has good thoughts, words and deeds. Most importantly it is a self who strives to be positive in its thoughts, words and deeds and to ignore negative thoughts, words and deeds. There is no good self hiding behind the scenes of a person, they are good only in their positive approach, emotions and attitudes.

So the search ends for me for an "inner" self, and the discover, liberation and revelation of such a self is believed to be a myth. There is only one process and that is to chose positive as often as possible, and to learn to ignore negative. The more we learn to avoid negative and replace it with psoitive the weaker negative becomes and the stronger our self becomes.

Thus faced with situations which make us angry, hateful, destructive, bitter, sad, unhappy, lonely, sarcastic, vindictive, revengeful, shy, frightened, greedy, selfish, unkind, cruel, thoughtless etc, i.e. whenever we are negative we have a job to do - to find ways of being positive to shake off the darkness, see things in a good way and see a path through to the light.

Such positive ways always exists because the "negativity" we see, the unpleasantness of such existence, is just our self being bad. And if our self can be "bad" and make our world unpleasant then it can also be "good" and we need to find that way through. Its the job of a knight, or soldier as the Protestant Christians imagine.

This is a powerful way of starting to turn against negative: when things turn bad we take it as a challenge and adventure to find the positive - remember all those movie adventures where heros head off into darkness to bring back light. Of course it is hard and perseverence is the key, not to give up.

There is no hidden self, damaged or bad pulling the strings - we exist only in the moment in what we think, say and do and so we can make instantaneous changes if only we can let go of belief in a solid "self" and identity holding us back.

Eyes are a window on the soul

Here is a story I was once told...

There was once a man who practised Hinduism very devoutly. Every day he would get onto his roof away from the busy streets below and meditate.

Next door to him was a woman who had 2 children. To support her children she was a prostitute.

The man sitting on his roof used to look down on her and complain to himself why he such a righteous person should have to live next to such a sinful person.

The prostitute on the other hand used to look up at the man and wish that she had the chance to be so good, but because of her children she was forced into her sinful life.

When it came to their deaths and judgements the righteous man was suprised to find himself in hell, and angered to discover that the woman had gone to heaven. She was sinful and me good, there must be some mistake.

It was explained that for his whole life he had held her bad ways in his heart, cursing and looking down on her; while she had only held his good ways in her heart.

This illustrates the greatest irony in life that the way we see the outer world is actually only what we let into our inner world and soul.

If we want to see the outer world as good we need only make that effort to see it as good, and if we do that we let a good light into our inner world.

If we chose to focus on the bad things and paint our picture of the world as bad, then we only let a bad light into our world and heart.

In Buddhism they say that the outer world is a reflection of our inner state, our inner imprints and karma. If we have a pure mind without distortions we will always be able to see the world in a positive way. If we have a dark heart with many hindrances we will be caught and dragged into seeing the world as bad.

Rather than see what is outside as a "projection" of what is inside, here it is revealed that it is upto us to makle the effort and chose which light we light our inner world with.

It can also be seen that the "inner" world is actually just "our experience of the outer world", and if we look for an "inner world" of substance "behind" the external world we find that there is no space for such a world. The world "behind us", the world which we imagine is the screen on which eyes project their image is actually just the "outer world as we experience it". In reality there is no "inner world" and there is no "outer world" as is usual to think, since both "inner and outer" refer to the same world.

Our daily life then is a process of working to improve our "view of the world", by looking for positives and turning off the negatives - this way we begin to fill our "inner world" with light rather than darkness.

If we think for a second there are clues that we hold the key to a positive world. When we are in a "bad mood" things look bad abd difficult, when we are in a "good mood" often the same things suddenly don't seem like such a problem. People with a positive view find no difficulty in things which a negative view can see as impossible and fearsome. A famous Chinese story illustrates.

Once there was a man with 2 daughters one sold umbrellas, one sold noodles. (Understand that noodles need to dry in the sun). A monk noticed the man was always unhappy and asked him why. He said that when it rains his noodle daughter has no trade, and when it is sunny his umbrella daughter has no trade. The monk simply pointed out that instead of seeing the negative, see the positive - rain or shine one of his daughters is bringing home money. This is the glass half empty, or half full.

Capitalism is a good example infact of negatives and positives being just a perspective. Whatever happens in the world it is an opportunity for someone, and sometimes a loss for someone else - it just depends who you are. My lab partner always points out when there is disaster that at least it is good trade for undertakers - tasteless joke, but some truth in it.

Risk and Getting it wrong

Its easy to be set back by failure. The best strategy is to shake off failure and not be put off. For some reason this is counter interintuitive though which is why we get confused.

In an article in Moneycontrol.com 20/11/06, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala argues exactly this that taking risks is against human nature.

We tend to minimise loses instead of maximise winnings. That is we try to avoid defeat, rather than try to gain the most. Thus we may miss many risky opportunities as we try to avoid defeat, which had we played them would have on balance of probabilities earned us more through the array of wins and failures than just backing the dead certainties.

George Soros is quoted as saying, being right or wrong is not the issue, it is rather how much you lose when you are wrong and how much you win when you are right that counts.


As a zoologist I am familiar with this type of thinking from analysing animal strategies. If there is one inter-disciplinary subject that should exist it is animal behaviour and economics!

In optimal foraging it ius assumed that the winning strategy (i.e. the one that selected for and therefore evolves) is the one which maximises energy and thereby offspring. What strategies exist to maximise energy in an unpredictable environment? That is the strategy.

When certain factors like "thinking time" or "handling time" (where the time it takes to determine the type of prey and therefore the way to attack it and eat it) are introduced into models, a remarkable accurate prediction of many behaviours arises based upon the hypothesis that animals maximise energy consumption, rather than minimise loss. So the dominant strategy in many environments is to go "all out", taking risks and suffering the losses because overall the wins are greater.

Why have humans not learned this? Maybe it is to do with aspects of social status and psychology. Being a "loser" has a special meaning in humans, far beyond the practical aspect of having little resources. We try to look like "winners" and so we don't take risks to avoid looking like losers. Reputation means a lot. Traders want to look like winners so they attract interest, even though that strategy may mean overall they win less than their competitors who have a lots of losses as well.

Are riches inside or outside?

I still battle with this every day. The temptation is still to view people with big cars, houses and families etc as being rich.

I was thinking this walking home last night. Someone drove past in their big car and I wondered wouldn't it be luxury to own a car and drive like that. At that moment I turned to corner into our road, which is at the top of a big hill with views for 40 miles. The thought of the car was obliterated by the view which I always enjoy, and I was reminded that walking has every bit of pleasure that driving has.

Last summer I wanted to take a cycle and I wanted to go bird watching. I decide to do both. It was strange because while I was cycling slowly along the country paths I saw no birds at all. I stopped to walk and instantly noticed birds in the trees. I stopped to sit by the canal and there saw even more birds. The scale of view is altered by each mode. In a car we see almost nothing, we are orientated toward arriving, but not the journey. If we want to arrive, then take motorised transport, but if we want to travel then walk.

The same goes for life. If we want to arrive then motorise, plan a streamline your life for purpose. If you want to live then walk.

Unfortunately people share their lives in the form of places they have been. The names count for a great deal, when in reality I suspect they are the same experience underneath. We may "do" a very great deal in life, but if we didn't travel then its a pointless journey I suspect.

Of course we could go to the other extreme and do nothing, watching TV or dreaming. I suspect this is just as vacuous as doing lots but not travelling.

Riches? Is the poor man who is content richer than the rich man who still wants more? As I child I learned that you only miss that which you have known. If you never knew about it you are free from it. That means we can treat the knowledge of new things with pleasure of displeasure, because new things give us new wishes and new loss of contentment.

If we could master our wishes, so that we wished what we wanted to wish then we would be able to free ourself from those wishes we cannot fulfill. That way contentment would be truely ours, rather than the fake contentment of temporarily having "achieved" what we wanted.

And "achieved", why is that so important. Many people will argue that the greatest pleasure is not the having, but the achieving of the something - the satisfaction that "we" proved potent, rather than impotent. Often people fight for things they don't want, because the object is the winning not the having.

This is ego. We are bound then to the eternal requirement to prove ourselves, to prove our existence through our ability to create change. Obviously change requires many people for starters, although some people like architects get to continue the delusion by having their names on buildings. If we look further however this is not our existence is it! Did we chose to define ourselves like this! or are we victim to an external measure imposed upon us. And, if there is a standard by which we measure ourselves - what is is measuring if not our already existence!

So we can discount "achievement" as important to riches, and we can discount the wishes that we achieve. So what then is richness? that I am still living on...

Buddhism and Christianity is Anarchism

Don't know whether that statement does more damage to Buddhism or Anarchism!

I'm an Anarchism, but not trivially in the sense that I believe in the destruction of all state apparatus and the sending of the world into chaos - ridiculous.

Rather it is the belief that at the end of the day the world is made of people. Whatever their beliefs and the systems of coersion and force that exist, we are all people. I am an arachist to the existent that people come first and state apparatus comes second. Put nothing before being a friend to your fellow man - whoever they are.

Ideally dismantalling the state apparatus seems right, but really it is not. If we do that, then there is a power vacuum, and because 2 people are usually stronger than one, the world will build itself up into groups again, each fighting for power. Best infact to have a hugely powerful overlord dictator who can fill the power vacuum, but who is otherwise incompetent and not authoritarian so that we can ignore him - ridiculous also.

So the best way is to leave boys to play out their fighting in politics and business, and instead focus on treating our fellow humans as humans - in whatever form of state apparatus they might be. This is the Anarchistic view I believe.

Copraterrorism

I used to dream of sending a letter to the IRA (who were afterall quite respectful terrorists aiming to do damage to the opposed system but not hurt real living people) on copraterrorism.

For some reason this rather amusing subject has never entered the terroist handbook. Rather than go for big high profile targets like financial buildings, and definitely rather than hurt people, why not take out the sewage systems and drains?

I can just see the manhole covers blowing off a shopping street as effluenet is strewn everywhere making the street impassable. The news readers trying to get words out between their wrteches cos of the stench. There is the cost to business - and thereby jobs for the cleaners and decorators. There is the deterrent to shoppers - although it is not dangerous, just unpleasant.

And best of all there are the signs on toilets for miles around, out of order while mains repairs are underway.

A complete nightmare, without any serious damage, and also quite funny! Lots of unforgettable news items and lots of jobs created and overall a quite satisfying political process. If people hell-bent on expressing themselves against the country adopted this form of "terrorism", or rather "yuckism", it would make for much more amusing and watchable politics and social expression, and that would avoid the biggest problem of terrorism, which is the galvanising of opposition to their cause. When the West goes in with bombs, or the Middle East comes here with bombs, it just reinforces the stance against them, which is the opposite of what was wanted - a voice for unrepresented people who people believe rightly/wrongly are suffering.

Rugby Demonstration Strategy

I noticed in demonstrations in UK in past few years that the police have gained the upper hand by encircling demonstrators and breaking groups down.

Officially the police are there to protect property and the safety of people and I have nothing but respect for the UK police, seeing that they handle these difficult events suprisingly well and are good natured and respectfull. I expected them to be utter fascists after the miners fiasco under Thatcher.

However I do think they are a bit onesided as they have a mandate to the establishment only, and if the demonstration is against the establishment we should gain a bit more freedom to express ourselves - especially when the subjects are as important as global capitalism and environment (which are so easily hidden by vain local government pretence). As the slogan goes - "if democracy ever changed anything it would be illegal" because quite correctly the establishment will never lose its position at any cost.

A strategy that would be excellent against the police is rugby mauling. If you watch rugby you can see that the game played by police and protesters is similar to that of opponents in rugby, which is gaining movement into the opposition area. This is primarily enabled by pushing in tightly bound packs which draw the opposition into the maul to return the same force. The image here is a set-piece scrum by the process is the same.

If the police were forced to maul, this would break up their lines and the game would be played in blob like packs which are of no use to the police strategy of containing the demonstrations.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Amateur psychologists and neurotics must love this one. The thought about the possibility of something happening actually leads us to make it happen.

I was always uneasy about this bit in Marxism and Hegelianism. Hegel has written a book; famously completing it to the sounds of Napolean's advancing armies, bringing what he believed was the new age that he was writing about.

In which case what was the point of the book. A kind of epiphenomalism, a story and narrative which runs over the already happening events?

In which case why does Hegelianism and Marxism inspire people to complete the events written about? If the worker's revolution is really the natural progression for society then it will happen by itself, intrinsically from the existing components, without ideological campaigning by Marxists the "change" the course of history.

If on the other hand the workers revolution requires campaigning and individual effort then to what extent can it be seen as the "correct" or "natural" progression for dialectical materialism.

In other words, if the book is right then it is just epiphenomological and has no part to play in the described process, and if the book is just propaganda to arouse worker's consciousness then it is wrong about dialectical materialism.

What Das Kapital might say to be logically correct is, "now that you have read this book you join a community of other people who have read it and understand it's ideas, what you do now is upto you since pages can't fight."

However the existence of "self-fulfilling prophecies" in psychology does open the door to Marxism working. Some ideas seem to make themselves happen.

This is like Richard Dawkin's idea of memes, where ideas are built in such a way to propagate themselves well. He cites religion, and while firmly convinced of God etc, I am equally skeptical of religion: some Evangelical groups I have visited seem to do nothing but propagate the Word. And what is the Word? that we should propagate the Word.

Marxism is designed to grow because it offers the poor, riches. Any idea which poses that dream will propagate as long as there are poor.

Islam seems similar, and the radical arms of Islam seem especially bound into self fulfilling prophecy. We hate certain people. So we will bomb them in the most appauling way. They will then hate us and treat us like animals, which gives us the justification for hating them and so it spirals.

Of course the Christian West is equally embroilled in the process. We'll treat them like second class global citizens, and exploit them for political and material gain. When they get angry that is the justification for treating them like animals. Israel is the worst offender by far here.

The Americans have their own special brand of self-fulfilling prophect with End Timers, or people who follow Revelations rather than Christ. (Really they are no longer Christians.)

By believing that the salvation will accompany the end of the world they are looking for the end of the world. Of course with such an interest in the end of the world, they are actually bringing about the end of the world.

The Mirror

When someone is angry with us then we get angry with them.
Of course they then find an angry person, and they get even more angry, and so it snowballs.
In the face of anger, we can only be peaceful.

If someone steals from me, then I want to steal back.
Of course they then think they have had something stolen and they steal more.
In the face of theft, we must give.

If someone is dishonest with me, then I want to be dishonest with them.
The find people untrust worthy and they become more dishonest.
In the face of dishonesty we must be forgiving.

It seems that I am programmed to respond in exactly the wrong way to situations. I look at everything in a mirror, not seeing that the right way to respond is the opposite of what I think.

Action?

I have a few activist friends. I thought of activism my self at one point - "I want to help the world and make it a better place" I used to think as a child. But before that a much more important question - "Does the world need any help?".

We are taught to think of the standard images of poverty, hunger, disease, war: so much for the fortunate in the West to do. So much to add to our lives to make them more worthwhile. But isn't that a little onesides - as opponents to the war in Iraq point out, wouldn't that money be better spent at home - as if we don't have our own problems.

"Problematising" is the problem here I am beginning to think! People in need of a life's purpose, in need of something to do in a Western world so swamped with wealth that there are almost no more jobs to do.

Are there any real problems? Is there anything really to do?

We know there is difficulty in life and in a sense there are things to do to attend to that difficulty, but such things are quite normal and natural. They do not need a task force or any great revolution to attend to.

Sometimes there are disasters, sudden changes of equilibrium, which require a sudden change in peoples attitudes. Here would be an example of difficulties that require some organised mobilisation.

What I am questioning is not these sudden changes. I am challenging the idea that within the established organic world there are "hidden" illnesses that suddenly today need to be solved.

The news that 80% of the world lives on less than a dollar amongst a host of "moral panic" statistics regarding a world that we otherwise live in without comment.

People are always trying to distinguish the world between acceptable and problematic, and then allign themselves against the problematic, when actually they only need to align because they decided that something was problematic.

The War in Iraq the cause celebre of such people, and the chaos that has followed an illustration of the non-existence of problems until you engineer them, and then make them worse by responding to them as problems.

There are simple things that make us human: care and love being the most important. That people need to engineer organisations who professionally "care and love" is rather overlooking the already existing nature of the human world. That humans can hate and neglect is also part of the human outlook. The belief that organisations will contain qualities other than these is rather overlooking the commonality which humans have, and just propagating the greatest feature of humans: the ability to segregate and divide one another.

Borat is a masterpiece!

Just saw that and far beyond the laughs what a brilliant dissection of the worlds issues.

The blindness prejudice against "The Poor" versus the juggernaut of narrow mindedness regarding the "American Dream".

Actually Borat shows brilliantly abd hilariously what a ridiculous lie the American Dream is, and shows what a ridiculous lie the fear of poverty is.

The people from the "poor world" are led astray by the American Dream of a "Better" life.
The American's are led astray by the American Dream thinking they have a "Better" life.

Selectively edited, planned and staged it might be, but the message of poverty in both Kazakstan and American is rather poignant I thought.

Life is simple and harsh, it aint a Hollywood movie and it was never gonna be - unless you like eating plastic celluloid food and talking to images on a wall.

The image we all want is so unrealistic like Pamela Anderson, but we are all so fooled and blind to see the poverty of that image.

In the end don't we want to return to quirky Kazakstan than live in the soup of blatant illusion in America.

Sun does go around the Earth

Well if you saw the sun this morning it was over there on the horizon and this evening it is over on the other side of the sky. That is what I call moving!

There is no way that any physicist can reject the fact that the sun moves.

I know about the solar system theory and I understand that it explains the motion of planets perfectly (including all those curly recessions) and I also know that if I was to get into a space craft and travel into space I would see the Earth going around the sun.

But I also know that one Earth the sun moves!

The fact is that motion is relative! It depends where you stand. If you stand on the Earth then the Sun seems to move. If you stand on the Sun then the Earth seems to move. If you stand on the Galactic Centre then the Sun and the Earth seem to move.

The reason why we say that the Earth goes around the Sun is that we adopt a theoretical standard these days to describe the motion of the Sun and earth, and a theoretic notion of fixed space. That is fine.

But don't forget that in reality our perspective is on the Earth, and the Sun starts in the East and sets in the West and gradually travels across the sky! No physics can blind us to that daily fact?

Right and Wrong

I once saw and argument between a Christian African and a Rastafari Carribean.

The Carribean was arguing that Haile Selassie was God and the Christian was rejecting this.

It suddenly occured to me there was a much more obvious thing to note that the value of their arguments - it was that one was an African and the other Carribean.

It would follow that a child brought up in the Carribean was much more likely to be a Rastafarii than an African, and vice versa an African much more likely to be Christian or Muslim.

The reason these two men were arguing was not so much the value of their arguments, but because of their background.

If there were indeed universal arguments then everyone would believe the same thing. These encounters between people would naturally lead to universal agreement over the centuries. But it hasn't!

The very fact that people have to use force to supress some people and some beliefs only goes to prove further what poor arguments the world has.

If we want to understand what people believe it is best to look at their background, their parents and their identities. We tend to follow the beliefs of the groups to which we feel we belong.

If all our beliefs are indeed caused by our location, if the power behind our arguments simply our own ignorance of the caused nature of what we believe then what are we to make of beliefs?

Looking into my own past... its obvious that Eastern spiritual people become Buddhist monks, it obvious that Western spiritual people become Catholic monks. Its not that Catholic is better then Buddhist, but that peoples backgrounds cause different things.

So how to we make sense of a life built upon only local causes and conditions. What am I to make of myself as a momentary and locally nurtured event and entity?

A note on moderation and the Law...

Before continuing the threads here a note on moderation!

On one extreme of truth is the Universalist, who believes in universal truths which apply in all times and places. Our job is to identify these unquestionable universal truths.

One might naively counter the idea of universal laws by suggesting that there are no universal laws, that we are each free to interpret the world as we like, and to live as we like. This might be the Particularist. There job would be to break with laws and demonstrate the individuality and freedom of things.

A note on Law. Law is the notion that there are principles which are obeyed. In Natural Laws we see the regular motion of objects which seem to obey fixed rules which have been investigated in depth in science. In Social Laws there are the customs which we obey usually quite naturally and the legal rules that sometimes require administering by authorities. In all cases that idea that there are fixed patterns to life is that of Law.

A moderate path between the Universality and Particularist is the Relativist. They might state that all truth is only relevant in its context and so there are no context independent truths with universal relevance. Their job then is to understand the relationship between contexts and the beliefs relevant to those contexts.

The relativist walks on shakey soil however because if they adopt such a stance as a Law then they are becoming Universalist, suggesting that All Truth Must be viewed in terms of its context.

Obviously one might ask what context makes such a relativistic attitude relevant?

I don't wish to determine a Law here restricting people to Universal, Particularist or Relativistic attitudes. Only to warn that I do not intend to eliminate any of them with future arguments.

Semitism and Anti-Semitism

Alot has been said about the people called Jews. They seem to be the archetypal people, distinct and so strongly identified in Western history.

When we have this strong distinction between Jew and non-Jew we can write a history of these people and see all the things that have happened "to" them.

It's a mixed history of great ups and downs.

The Jews are so strongly identifed there are even words for the like and dislike of them. Prosemitism and Antisemitism. There are few people who can boast that!

Prowelsh, Anti-welsh; Protibetans, Antitibetan. Don't work so well.

There are special laws surrounding all this also. Its a very well defined thing this Jewish.

Of major concern is the negative attitude that is recorded regarding the "Jew". I did a little reading on the theories about why such negativity exists. One Rabbi argued that it was because the Jews gave us the Western notions of morality and justice and people resent being told what is right and wrong.

No doubt the place the Jews hold in history for the Abrahamic religions - Judeism, Christianity and Islam!

Are these Jewish people really so different. They seem to relish this differentiation from other peoples, this individuality. One Jew I met seemed to wallow in the weight of this identity. Being Jewish must be hard when it is such an enormous weighty inheritance you gain.

What makes a Jew different from a gentile (the Jewish name for non-Jew)? And why do the Jewish make such a distinction between themselves and others?

In the West with the birth of Humanitarianism the Jewish attitude seems a little old fashioned. Jesus you might argue began it when he fought his own prejudices to help the gentiles. He realised that God was not just for the Jews but for the gentiles also. God was God of all peoples and nations. A big problem for the Jews who had held onto the idea that God was theirs and for that they were different and privileged. For that one wonders whether they aided the demise of Christ? We know any other nation of rulers would have done the same - treason they call it, denouncing the primacy of the ruler and the ruling.

The Jews suffer from just one thing, the same thing that all nations suffer from - self importance. They may believe they are unique and special, but so does everyone else! Maybe there is a uniquely indulgent way they do it, I don't know. A lot of nations believe that God is on their side - its not just the Jews. Some like the Russians and Nazis states didn't believe in God, but no-one believes that God is not on their side.

Unless the primacy of Jews is objectively shown to the nations of the world, unfortunately its in their interests to let go of this distinction I believe and join the human race. The same goes for all other peoples, but the Jews seem the historical archetypes so I discuss them for everyone.

Illusion & Narrative

Its a strange thing to find Conservatives or Labour party members.

These parties were set up around policies and attitudes to government. But as time changes it may well become the case that opposition politicians hold better policies. So we vote for them instead of our own party.

So if we vote blindly for our party then we may well vote in leaders who damage the country and we end up having the opposite impact we intended by joining the party.

This is the danger in being dogmatic, of fixating on the image and packaging rather than the substance and contents.

Another thing I have learned is that people joing groups for its own sake, they like being in a group and membership is more important than what the group was formed for. Be it the social experience, the power, status or wealth - groups are fascinating to many people and often the group can seem to be individually good while overall being bad.

In animal behaviour herding is a good example. One argument for animals herding is that it affords individual protection cos your mates might get eaten instead of you. It also increases the chance of seeing predators also. On the down side however it increases the overall predation on the species cos groups are easier to find and once found predators can go on a feeding binge. Individually advantages, overall disadvantages. Members of rich states enjoy the economic benefits and are unwilling to change their group membership, even while environmental damage is overall making this unprofitable.

In general we fixate on the image of things, the definitions, what we think we know, the packaging of things rather than the things themselves.

Take a picture. We think it is of the boat, we think we know. But we also know that we can't sail in this boat because it is not a real boat. Its an illusion of a boat. It makes us think of a boat, but is just a picture, some ink on a page which gives us the illusion of a real boat.

There are so many illusion. These words on a page are a spectacular illusion - talking of the world in such confidence when really they are just marks on a computer screen or page.

Most of our life is illusion. People talking about the images of things, which when you try and find the real things they don't match.

The war they talk of is not glorious, it is ugly and destructive. The evil people we fought against were kids like us ourself. The evil political machine a power house for the German elite, like the Imperial machine which housed the British elite. The horror of Nazi genocide an extreme expression of hatred for unwanted people we see the world over from Rwanda, to old Yugoslavia, to Darfur and America today (I speak of the elimination of Amerindians). (I'll write on Semitism next)

Where is this power and there is suppression, oneday the tables will turn. One only needs to see the sporting circuits of clubs and countries rising and falling in skill and dominance (again Englands sad rugby demise) to see that what is up and what is down, will soon be what is down and what is up.

Today you lose Kundun, tomorrow you win.

Not that we should take stock of this and wait for our time of triumph, but rather realise that tiumph is just a moment in time between losses, and losses moments in time between triumphs.

Why play life like a leaf on ocean waves?

Like is football for most of us. We change teams, be bank on teams, we watch the rise and fall always focusing on the tops, or the bottoms depending upon how positive or negative our minds.

Is this all it is? What if we let go of the ups and downs and stop comparing moment to moment? What if we stop worrying about the political climate, the economy, our life? What if we just do what is obviously needed, as it is needed. Listen and learn and keep and open mind and heart? If things go down, so be it. If things go up, so be it? We do what we do, we accept the way it turns.

The problem with all these stories we furnish our minds and life with is that we think they are books with a beginning middle and end. No history has a beginning and end. We are just on a page somewhere between endless pages and maybe this part of the story is down, and the next is up. Maybe our chapter is a good one, maybe the next is bad.

Fixation on a notion of time, an attachment to a place in history, a particular page in the book and time is the worst illusion. That was "my" chapter we think.

But we look again and see how many billions of chapters there have been and how many more to come. Is "my" chapter so important, is the good or the bad of my chapter so important in a book where the story has been going up and down forever?

The Illusion of Remembrance Day

I appreciate what a massive event the war was and how it has shaped the world in which we live today, but I see some problem with being absolute about it.

They played brass band music at the ceremony in London. I thought this is great for the people of the old wars, a remembrance of Great Britain, its empire and the grandeur of dreams in those days. The world has changed for the people fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. England is no longer a super-power, like its rugby it has to accept a status along side second rate countries. It is a nation which has to accomodate many histories and peoples under one roof, in which politics in no longer unanimous and one sided. In a world where power is shared by many nations and people. The music has changed also, I wondered what the military music of the future might be? Some electronic beat music (an evolution from the fixed strong military beats anyway), but a music that has been absorbed into a world of decadence and party going, quite a different tune. Imagine guitar/techno/world music at the remembrance days of the future, a slightly odd mix I feel.

Of course in reality they should be having identical services in Germany, Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan even in Al-Qaida for their fallen - who regardless of our own position on the conflicts are never-the-less in memory of people who have died for the causes they believe in. It seems odd that the Glorious dead of the British nations and allies are just lucky to have been fightin on the side of Good, and all those Germans were unlucky to have been fighting the side of Evil - amazing coincidence - was there a gene or something in the German water which made all those Germans suddenly blind to what the British soldiers could so obviously see?

It's much clearer to make a distinction between the process of war and national allegience, and then to see the process of history and after the match analysis as different things.

We are expected to fight for Britain and British citizens without regard for whether our country is right or wrong. If we expect the Germans to have laid down their weapons because they realised they were fighting for Evil, am I allowed to do the same? No.

If we expect Al-qaida to stop fighting because they are evil, murderous bastards then we must also give our own soldiers the right to stop fighting when they think it is wrong!

Its a mess. War means death and destruction - whichever side you are on, it matters not. War is Evil, killing is not Good. If all soldiers could see that then we would have peace. It is only because Germans and British soldiers are blind to the evil that they both didn't lay down their weapons (well when they did in the Christmas Truce they were threatened with execution - loyal people those British and German commanders.)

There is only one position when it comes to conflict be it argument, or fighting and that is no position.

Armistice remembrance is a legacy of the way things were, and the future will be the way things are going to be. Our only question is whether we will accept the future, change it, or be indifferent to the endless game all together.

Life is infinite, boundless and indefineable

Last words to a muse of mine, but now I realise that maybe this is the truth. Life encompasses everything, but because we try to own it and put limits on it we limit life. Sometimes limiting it is good because we can account for our life, give a good story of it and compare it with standards and others to feel we have had a successful life, but sometimes it is bad as we feel loss of control over our life, and when we compare we feel we have failed. Death will happen, but it is the boundary of a physical or conscious notion of life. If we can see the boundlessness of life, we can see beyond the limit of death.

Arguments and debate are pointless

I have dedicated a life to seeking truth through debate and argument. Recently I have begun to see that this pursuit is pointless.

All points of view can be countered. There will always people who like one side more than another. There is never a time when everyone can agree.

I used to think there must be some truths which are unquestionable. I now doubt that. Really there will be always people who have something to gain from countering any argument.

A universal truth would have to be uncounterable, it would have to be such that it could not be wrong - and if it cannot be wrong then it also cannot be right. There is no such thing.

Thus we live in a world of many sides, a plurality by necessity, in which no side is better than another in any real way, only locally it may be more appealing.

If today people hate you, tomorrow they will love you. If today you are poor, then tomorrow you will be rich. Whatever opinion we hold can be countered, and what is good today, may be bad tomrrow.

In such a world why hold opinions, and why argue with what people say?

Pleasure at no-ones expense

This is critical as another example from my girlfriend demonstrates.

She is deeply hurt by any affection shown to me by another girl and especially if that girl gets my attention.

It transpires that when she was single she gained pleasure by gaining the attention of married men, especially at the expense of their partners.

Having reinforced the rule that winning attention over the partner was the name of the game, she in turn is now emprisoned by that game now that she is in a relationship.

The illustrates perfectly why we should never draw battle lines and rules that discriminate between people, i.e. between winners and losers and between happy and sad people, because once those battle lines are drawn we will one day be a victim of them.

The moral is that all distinctions we place are temporary, and even while they may suit us today, there is never reason to fix them for one day they won't suit us and we will wish they were not fixed.

This is to be distinguished from those laws that quite properly should apply to everyone.

Is Work Necessary?

(This is a repeat of a previous blog - but it just staggered me again how odd the world is)

Yesterday my girlfriend tells me that she is has competition from another girl who is better qualified and seeking a similar job.

That is a good thing right? because it means that the job can be done even better than she can do it.

After all what needs to be done needs to be done, and it should be done as well as possible by people who are most able to do it. We ask pilots to fly planes and accountants to do accounts, and within those professions we want to be flown by the best pilots and have the accounting done by honest accountants.

So if someone is better able to do your job obviously it is best that they take over.

YET, that is not how we think for some reason.

We think that we MUST do the job, even if we are not the best person for the job.

Worse we believe that we need to do a job, even when there are no jobs to do!

For some reason the rules of the economy are set so that we have to do a job (even when there is nothing to do) in order to get any products of the economy.

Often in a jobs there is nothing to do, holidays and the way things worked out ment that I had virtually nothing to do yesterday, but I still had a job and I still got paid - so its not the work so much as the job which pays. There are jobs, even when there is no work.

The reason is that without work there is no produce to consume, and so it follows (they argue) if we don't work we don't get any produce.

BUT, that argument doesn't work. "Economy of Scale" and machines both operate to vastly increase the economic productivity which far exceeds the abilities of its individuals. It makes no sense to attribute productivity to individuals then.

Capitalism solves the problem by paying investors to encourage investment and economic growth which we need to pay investors (silly circularity that), and then profit which belongs to the company directors.

Marxism was supposed to share the profit between the whole nation.

A problem with both these is that economic expansion is :

good economically,
bad ecologically

What we gain within the system is taken from outside the system. Economics is slowly absorbing the cost of ecological damage. But is all stems from economic growth which is needed to create jobs and increased in return on investments because in reality we are running out of things to do.

The obvious answer is to pay people in time, not money and reduce the amount of work that people need to do. Either maintaining the job=pay equality and paying more, or increasing the social security payments to encourage people out of work.

Anti-Proof of Artificial Intelligence & Accident

The goal of Strong Artificial Intelligence is to make a machine which while composed from simple unintelligent components, replicates the intelligence of human beings.

Intelligence is the quality of humans which scientists and researchers would use to create such an artificial system.

It therefore follows that a truely intelligent system would have the qualities required to discover and create itself, just as the human creators have done.

And if it has the qualities to understand and create itself, then it also has the capabilities to understand and create a human being intelligence.

We know that humans were not created by an intelligence but rather by natural unintelligent forces.

If the Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to create itself, and thereby the capacity to understand and create humans, then it also has the capacity to understand the unintelligent forces that created humans. It has to have an understanding of Natural forces also, not just of logic and intelligence subjects.

The loop is infinite. True Strong Artificial Intelligence requires a machine so vast that it can understand the forces that created the universe, and then its own creators and then itself. Such an Artificial System is neither artificial, nor a system - it is the universe.

If on the other hand we decide to take the path of intelligent design, our Artificial Intelligence must replicate the intelligence of God, it must become God. And God himself must have the intelligence thereby to understand and create himself, ad infinitum also.

This is a demonstration of a principal I wish to call "the inefficiency of self-reflexivity".

If you photograph a camera in a mirror, is the picture taken really the camera? Yes, but it is not identical because now you have a picture and the real camera. There is no system where the picture taken is identical with the picture taker, because if they were which came first - the picture taker or the picture? If the exist simultaneously where is the difference - aren't they just the same thing?

In computing this is the difference between "data" and "instruction code".

Another analogy is the proof that there is no best algorithm for compressing data. The minimum compression is the same as extraction the information from a system. Many systems have redundancy created by repetitions. This physical sentence has many repeating words and letters and can be enormously compressed to extract the information. So there is no algorithum to extract all the information from a system either. The proof is basically like this and is another example of the inefficiency of self-reflexivity:

Were such an algorithm to exist, it could be coded into a computer and then used to extract it's own information content. Such an program code would have to take an input, namely the code to be compressed. So we would have to code the algorithm with variables, and then to use it replace the variables with the code. But that code would need it's variables replaced and so on infinbitely. This is not the actual rigorous proof, but it illustrates the point.

Searching for a completely closure on understanding is an endless task. Research will only ever succeed by accident in discovering Artificial intelligence, in its simplest way by replicating the biological processes in childbirth.

Accident indeed has been the foundation of human progress from (apocryphally) Newton's apple to Alexander Fleming, and is the magical force which gives us the world around us. "Accident" cannot be owned, predicted, or understood - indeed it is the magical principal which blows apart the myth of Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence - the nearest actual thing to God.

The Importants & Unimportants of Ritual

Ritual is the trying to repeat something.

Things are repeated when they are considered good, we try not to repeat things that were bad.

In our lives we often have good experiences and then try to repeat those experiences when they are gone. In reality we can never repeat anything, so we are left with a ritual. [Explanation follows.]

Shopping is a good example. We may have experienced that feeling of buying something we really wanted. Much the same as when we got a present we really wanted as a child. Or we experienced some pleasure through something we bought.

Of course you can never buy something again the same way as you did the first time, because it is no longer the first time.

There is also a filter system as work. It is easier to find your way into a maze than to find your way out. The future is like walking out of a maze, the past is like walking into a maze. I will call this the "maze filter". Why? because our attention is brought to shopping as a source of happiness because occasionally it made us happy, but we never recall all the times it was too mediocre to remember. So looking into the past gives us the benefit of being at the end of the route and outside the maze and therefore looking in, but we forget that at the time we were inside the maze and were searching the way out. That feature of being "in the maze" is essential to each experience, and the recalling of an experience from outside the maze is a different type of experience, (it's a new type of maze). Unfortunately going back into the maze and refinding our way out is impossible, because time travel is impossible! Thus repeating things and rituals are impossible in reality.

Rituals, and repeating things, do find a place however. Our lives are governed by ritual - our morning, daytime and evening routeens (governed even by these three routeen time periods). What we expect from life is a routeen, birth, marriage and death all involve their routeen, rituals. Our social world infact is built upon routeen, without ritual there would be no identity and no social human life.

More philosophically this is obvious. The existence of repeating things in "nature" is what gives us our world. If things were always different, if we truely never met the same thing twice, there would be no meaning to the world because everything would be completely new. Identity depends upon repeats, meeting the same person twice enforces the notion of their identity.

The thing about the world is not that it is always different, because in a very radical way that would mean that is was the same - in that it is "always" different. The world is profoundly always different, because sometimes there is similarity and sometimes difference - a profound inexplicable admixture that itself defies classification as different or similar.

Society like anything is a profound admixture of similarity and difference, and rituals respond to that possibility for similarity. But, take them too seriously and they deny the inexplicable processes of difference and similarity which underlie the world.

A Serious Problem with Working

In a good economy there should be jobs for all.

This is because the distribution of goods is done by exchange. In the simplest barter system if you want something from some one you need to have something they want also with which to exchange. In a monetary system as long as anyone wants what you got, you get paid and then you can buy anything. Its an excellent system for many things.

Amongst non-exchange systems there are 2. Those done without the consent of the giver - that is theft, and those done with the consent of the giver, that is charity.

All three systems exist.

In the first (exchange) system you need to work in order to get money or goods to exchange, and that is why exchange economies are bound to provide jobs for all.

BUT, there are obvious problems with pure exchange economies. Some more apparent than others.

People who are unable to work are considered disabled and must rely upon charity, that is people giving them support which they cannot repay. Children are another example of people, not considered unusually disabled but temporarily unable to repay. Whether Childhood is something we should repay is an undecided issue for many. If we fall critically ill early in life and do not have enough savings we require charity also.

Many projects deemed worthy but unable to directly support themselves are also in need of charity. Government and defence are enormous charities. They argue that they do an important job, but they don't have anything directly to exchange and there is no choice whether we buy them or not. That is the system of tax - a protection racket really.

Arts and Science some might argue are an equally important systems of charity. Only technological sciences make money, we don't buy the research that tells us the universe is 13 billions years old. Likewise not enough people buy seats at performances to support the extreme cost of such endeavours, so like disabled people, science and the military they have a charity status.

Freemarket is not everything obviously, but despite this we do need to work to earn a living.


There is a much graver problem with exchange economies.

If you take an economy which is supporting its population in employment and then some efficiency is made, especially some machine is bought which increases efficiency that leads to redundancy.

So where do these people go? The economy must expand to create new jobs, and that means that new markets need to be found to sell the products of the news jobs.

This suits capitalists because it creates an endless source of places to invest.

But efficiency driving economic expansion to make places for investment and to keep displaced people in employment has one bad draw back.

The environment has to constantly provide more and more raw materials to fuel the economic expansion.

There must be a limit somewhere. Either people will be unable to consume any more - their time will be so pressed buying all the things they need to in order to provide the markets for the huge economy, OR the planet will simply be unable to supply more resources.

An escape route might be to redirect the growing economy into virtual worlds and products. People leave manufacturing to work in arts and music, or in the internet. As a song or animated film changes hands for lots of money on the internet then there is no increased pressure on the environment (as long as energy problems are solved maybe by nuclear fusion). That way the ecology could just support an endlessly growing economy.

Another way of looking at it is much simpler and more in line with old projections. Wasn't the point of labour saving devices to save us time? It's not just to fuel efficiency and profits but to give human's a break from work.

Lazy they call it. But if we are lazy we are not consuming the worlds resources. We are not causing problems.

It didn't used to be called lazy. The aristocrats and bourgeoise of yesteryear enjoyed freedom from work as a symbol of their higher life. That freetime is what birthed the sciences and the great discoveries of the Renaissance and European Enlightenment. We owe our current world to that freetime.

The free time created by Athen's early wealth the power house behind the philosophy and maths of the ancient world. That same freetime the powerhouse behind the philosophies and wealth of culture in all ancient societies.

Far from it, not laziness at all, but the essential space required to become educated and become a higher human being.

So the modern world has made itself a problem. By insisting upon an efficient exchange system built for capitalist investment we have shackled ourselves into a world where we have less and less time, are enslaved to markets - through both consumerism and working - and where the future of the Earth is under an endlessly increasing threat.

Some day the system will have to reorientate - that is not a request that is a necessity. Someday we will not be able to invest our money with big returns because the economic growth has slowed. Some day there will not be jobs available. Someday we wil have to find other things to do with our time than working and shopping.

Its a great challenge for the modern world as it drives into a cul-de-sac. If we have not eradicated education by then in favour of exchangable vocation, we will still remember the ancient worlds and there solution to just this problem. Human life is boundless and immaterial, the spirit abides in peace at all times and has no need for worldly entertainments and endeavour.

Amazing to compare that simple truth with the ruckus that dominates contemporary debate. The irrelevant issues of failing states, of terrorists, of economics - issues that are only interesting to the states that invent their own governance.

The grass grows whatever the politics, although we are working so hard these days that one day the grass and crops might no longer be able to grow.

Mankind into Ecological debt today

Its obvious if you think about it that the world is a limited place. Yet mankind seems to have unlimited demands. Increasing population combined with increasing living standards are obviously destined to one day "use up" the world and then we are doomed.

It was obvious to me as a child, it must be obvious. Yet for some reason it isn't really thought about much. Today a UK think tank places October the 9th 2006 as the day that we started to go into the ecological red. But there is nowhere that can bail us out!

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1822171.ece

It's an arbitrary date. I figured we were already long into the red years ago. The endless removal of vast swaithes of forest, pollution, endless urban development and economic growth signalled a hundred years ago that this was a road to unsustainable destruction.

Mankind will destroy itself, but only because we are stupid. An irony for the organism that considers itself in its mental dream world the best organism, the best often only because it has this mental dream world.

Smith, Keynes and the great philanthropist economists did great works and reinvented the systems of prosperity and wealth, but they gave us a bomb with which to explode ourselves. A bomb much more dangerous than Oppenheimers.

I do not have the skills to change the minds of great men. It is the shoulders of great men that must carry the responsibility and burden of their thoughts and actions. Pity all those who rise to positions of such responsibility! for the future has their name upon it, and their name will be on the tomb stone of mankind.

In a petri dish in a laboratory we see the rise and fall of nations of bacteria. Composed from replicating units barely a 1000th of a millimeter across, growing exponentially until all resources are hoarded in their walls and they are starved, dying and spilling their contents out for the scavengers. And each cycle the energy is lost until only a barren wasteland is left.

On the Earth we see the rise and fall of nations of huamns. Composed from replicating units 2 meters across, growing exponentially until all resources are hoarded in their walls and they are starved, dying and spilling their contents out for the scavengers. And each cycle the energy is lost until only a barren wasteland is left.

Remarkable how the large and most arrogant organisms bear so striking a similarity to the smallest and most important.

can the Subject ever be the Object?

It is true that Being should be understood in its full enormity and not limited to just knowledge and cognition. In other words the "good life" is not one of only mental activity and correctness, but includes one's whole interaction with existence on all level. That said the mental world, the world of words, can be a testing ground for the wider aspect of our being.

The question here, and posed to my girlfriend last night, can the Subject ever be the Object?

What is Subject and Object?
Object is anything that you can point at. Obviously that's physical things, but point at includes anything we can point at with words. So I might say that I have an idea. It's not physical but I am pointing to its existence and I am aware of it in the world at large.
The subject, by contrast, cannot be pointed to. It is the thing which does the pointing. In simple terms it is the self. But as we will see much of what we consider ourself can actually be pointed to, and the self cannot be pointed to.

Can we point at ourselves?
That is the challenge. Everything we might point to: emotions, thoughts, memories suddenly becomes an object. And for each object there is always a subject doing the pointing. Can we envisage putting our whole self on the other side of the finger of pointing? No, there will always be the agent of awareness and living doing the looking.

If we can't point to ourselves, or anything about ourselves then we cannot say that we differ from moment to moment. It was the same subject looking at the world yesterday as today. (Strictly we can't say we are the same either, but I am trying to remove the idea that subject has any distinguishing features.)

A complete awareness of the Subject and how it refuses any definition is a huge step to freedom. All the things we think about ourselves and other people think about ourselves, all the features we think we need such as food and life are actually objects - they are not us. This is true for all subjects also. Any person we meet is not an object, but a subject, and that means we can only understand them in opposition to the physical and mental object that they present to us.

Subjectivity is without bounds. Does not exist in time and space like objects and the notion of identity, life and personal existence is completely transformed. It is very liberating and is a further exposition of the notion of "being oneself" outlined before.

The Central Hypothesis of this blog

This weekend after a few years of absence I remembered the central thesis of my life. It got lost in 2003 when I first questioned the relationship between man and nature which diverted my energies, and then in 2004 when I tried to become a mediator at a Chinese temple totally forgetting my own input, and then last year through tolerance of an unwanted relationship. Finally its back and I'm on rails again.

The Thesis
========

Straight from Buddha comes the idea of Middle Path. He realised that neither abstinence nor indulgence achieved anything. Indulging in life's pleasures is only satisfying when we have a short sight that can stick its head in the sands of current experience. Things are great when it's pleaure, we have difficulty when things are unpleasant. Going to the other extreme and shifting entirely to the long view removes us from current concerns and that is detrimental to our healthy. The balance is the right view.

I concluded, especially from this but it is present elsewhere, that physical comfort and material progress were not essential to life. A completely happy, satisfying and successful life is available without any loss through a life of poverty. Indeed it is mastery of such things as loss and poverty which achieve this.

Such a view frees me from much that is traditionally viewed as "important" and despite what Mahayana Buddhists try to convince themselves, is very consuming to our time and effort.

If it is possible to achieve a completely full life through moderate poverty, it also follows that riches are indeed futile, or at least unnecessary for life and pursuit of them is a life wasted.

Its a work in progress, I now understand the cause of my current life - which for personal narrative reasons is very centering, since I was searching for it and thereby unsatisfied.

It has obvious real implications also. Social and financial inequality - which is one of those blatant absurdities that jarr violently which the rhetoric of free society - is no longer an important feature.

With the significance of economic prosperity anulled the constrant human drive to transform the environment is tempered, and that gives breathing space for other excluded aspects of the environment - like nature.

The space such a simple acceptance of poverty creates is what I believe is the space in which we can develop a meaninful existence and that is the current root of this blog and of my life.

QED

2 types of problems in the world

Problems can be separated into two types. Those made by man and those made naturally.

A tsunami is not man made. A war is man made.

Looking at the news so much of what we need to do in the world and in our lives, is actually the result of other things we have done.

Environmentalists for example have two jobs. One to record and manage the natural world. The second to offer advice on how mankind is destroying the natural world. A lot of their time is wasted covering up other peoples actions.

Likewise in medicine there are genuine illnesses that no amount of care can prevent. The vast majority of medical time is spent treating illness and injury brought about by careless people. Again mankind making work for itself.

Rather than work to undo the mess that other people have done, would it not be infinitely more efficient to educate people not to make mistakes in the first place.

When there is a problem there are 2 ways of tackling it. Do things to stop it, or if we are the cause stopping doing it.

It's not fashionable to consider not doing something to be the solution of a problem, but in the balance of things not doing things is as likely to be the answer as doing things. A quick look at economics will explain why this is the case. If we ever solve a problem by not doing something then it damages the economy. Better in economic terms to do something with undesirable results, and then do more to solve the outcome. That way there are plenty of jobs.

In real terms I suggest not doing things is a very real solution to many problems, especially in health and environmental areas.

Which came first eyes or sight?

Which came first eyes or sight?

Eyes we say because without eyes we can't see.

However if we could not see what would our eyes mean to us?

Surely it is because we can see that we go in search of the wonderful organs and processes that enable us to explain how we see.

After all if we did not have sight how could we see the eyes!

The same goes for all the senses. Surely it is our experiences which come first, because without our experiences how could we know about the senses!

Our Mind comes first is the lessons.

I will argue later that the real answer is that neither the experience nor the eyes come first! Rather it is a very profound kind of Mind which comes first - beyond both sense and thought.

(q.v. the story of the monks arguing over the moving flag)

Beyond Descartes

This is well documented in philosophy texts, but only recently has it begun to make real sense to me.

Descartes wanted to know if anything was certain. He embarked on a process of doubt, trying to find if there was anything he could not doubt.

All sense could be hallucinations or like things in the Matrix.

One day he came to consider his own thoughts and inparticular his doubting and then he realised something. Could he doubt that he was doubting? The more he tried to doubt he was doubting the more he knew he was doubting. It was some certainty at last! He expanded this immediately realising that he could not think that he was not thinking! any thought was proof that he was thinking - even the thought that he was not thinking.

The inner world of Descartes was filled with certainty which grew and grew. Eventually he realised that even if he was hallucinating that experience of his hallucinations could not be doubted. The whole mental world was proof to Descartes that he was thinking and seeing and hearing and soon the world was back certain and secure again.

He made a well reported mistake however. Although he was now fully aware of all these undoubtable experiences, how did he know they belonged to him?

Where is the evidence that anything belongs to us?

We think many things belong to us from cars, to houses, to children, to arms, legs, organs, brain, sights, sounds and thoughts. But, where is the evidence they belong to us?

I will explore in later blogs that on many occasions in life we are able to own things, and then disown them. It is a free process, so where comes the real link that goes beyond our choice to own things?

Celibacy and Vegetarianism

The process of celibacy for me seems to be the same as the one I went through for vegetarianism.

We tend to find the killing of animals disgusting. What we do then is hide ourselves from the reality and just enjoy the superficial taste. I did a similar thing. Long after beginning to finding the reality of sex disgusting I continued to satisfy myself with porn which has much of the taste without the disgusting reality.

In some ways this is a dangerous path because we begin to live in a fantasy world and forget about the real persons involved. This is exactly the myth of meat, they many people live in a fantasy meat world and are very distances from the daily slaughter of animals.

It can be good however because it is much easier to kick the habit of looking at silly pictures, than to kick the habit of finding real girls! If we can be aroused from some colours on a page or computer screen how easy to see the absurdity of the whole thing! With real girls we are encouraged to believe that there is more to sexual satisfaction that just an absurd biological impulse.

Maybe today I have finally attained celibacy, after many years of struggling with this!

God or Dog

This is not an angel / devil thing where we should be one side and not the other side - its a fact: one part of us is like a dog and the other side of us wants to be with God.

Learn about dogs; how they eat and defaecate, how they have sex and have children, how they seek social security and dominance. This is our genetic and natural side.

But they have short and temporary existences and they suffer.

Humans do many things exactly like dogs.

But we also have another side which does not belong to dogs. We can put others before ourself in a way which cannot be explained by genetics. We can develop distance and mastery of our genetic and natural sides, and through this process we can overcome the limitations of material existence escaping death and suffering - just as Jesus and Buddha for example have done.

The path of God is quite different from the path of dog. Dogs seek satisfaction for desires, Gods seek freedom and liberation. Dogs put themselves first, Gods seek liberation from themselves initially by putting others first. Dogs are onesided and bias, Gods are multisides and universal. Dogs are agressive and protective while Gods are joyful, compassionate and endlessly giving.

There are big differences and we need to chose all the time whether we want to be more dog or moreGod in life.

Religion and the World

I have an email from a friend regarding a famous Buddhist Master who is visiting the UK to speak about the importants of harmony and peace in society. This seems to be a common subject for spiritual leaders, but I have questioned to myself whether this is a good outlet for spiritual wisdom.

Looking at society as it stands the majority of people work to help one another. There are teachers who are skilled at bring reading and writing to pupils, there are nurses and doctors who are skilled at bringing health to patients, there are politicians and diplomats who are skilled in the complex world of negotiations to bring the best outcome for those they represent, there are engineers who make devices for handicapped people to help them live more open lives, their are councillors and psychologists to aid people in their relationships and problems... in short every need that people have is met by ordinary people.

Many spiritual masters seem to duplicate these services. They build hospitals, and schools, they get involved in politics like the Dalai Lama and they offer councelling services and advice on life. Why the need to duplicate what is already there? Have spiritual masters not their own niche?

Jesus was most known in his own time for his miraculous ability to heal. But is a physical doctor all he was? Why is he more famous than any doctor? Buddha said that he was a doctor who offered the medicine to cure suffering, but he was not talking about worldly afflictions. Many spiritual groups believe that healing worldly afflictions is the point. Few seem to accept that worldly afflictions are not the real problem, and curing them is like offering a cold remedy; it simply treats the symptoms. If we want to heal worldly afflictions then become doctors or psychologists don't turn to religion!

Spiritual leaders should lead us to God and teach us to pay little attention to our physical circumstances. After all our physical suffering is at worst only for 70 or 90 years, why waste so much of that time on itself? The solution to worldly things is not itself worldly, and strictly it is not other-worldly (many people believe after death we go to a new world called Heaven which is absurd), rather as recently explored here it is learning not to take sides with the world.