Sunday, 19 August 2007

Ontological Dualism

This is the only sickness we ever need worry about.

Dualism is the distriction of things.

Dialectic is the distinction of thigs but seeing their relatioship which makes them opposites or different. For example we may see tables and chairs as separate, but we only ever compare them to see the difference because they tend to come together as a dining unit. We don't often compare elephants with jealousy to see their difference do we!

Ontological Dualism is the distinction of things, but we no dialectic awareness and with it reinforced by the (unprovable) belief that the things "really" are copletely separate as though they lived in diferent universes.

Ontological Dualism is the source of all evil because the holder can then see other things as totally different and so has no regard for them.

Watching the film Gandhi today for the first time while there is a lot of wisdom also what a waste of time for the man. Afterall where was the difference between Indians and English anyway? The colonial rules saw a difference, and Gandhi simply took that up and forced it apart. And then it got forced apart more into Muslim, Hindus, Sikhs, Tamils etc etc. So no suprise there was so much violence to what on the surface was non-violent because at root it is a violent idea to separate in a total way.

Do Indians really think they are ontologically different from Pakistanis? Unfortunately they often do. That is evil.

Brain & Information

This is about the brain now not the human.

A brain can be conceived as a compression tool. It takes vast amounts of data and compresses this into discrete entities.

Compression and Information theory have always been of interest to me. I completed a model on Friday which illustrated to me how it works. The basics are on Wikiedia.

Information at its most basic representation comes in "on" and "off". Anything less than this i.e. "on" and "on" doesn't tell us anything. IF information is about diferences all differences can be broken down into sequences of "on" and "off". That is the definition of how much information is in something - the smallest number of "on" "off" required to code for it.

Brains are not exactly "on","off" but Daniel Dennett uses a Von Neuman argument to show that they could be modelled on a computer so I'll take that unquestioned for now.

Now real world data comes in layers (I suspect like fractals). In this text on this page there are thewords, the letters and these are coded in ASC format to use 8 bits each. A compression algorithm could compress any layer.

There is a nice proof that there is no optimum compession algorithm because if such a thing existed how would be compress the algorithm itself when it was coded to compress itself? Classic loop disproof like so many (Godel etc) and I suspect the ultimate undoing of brain research one day.

One reason why there is no optimum compression came to me more clearly doing my own model. And this explains something else that has puzzled me for years about the seeming essential distinction between data and code.

When we compress a data we need to know what we are looking for in advance. Even a tool that built itself around the data has got to start somewhere. There is information already present in the coding which enables the compresson to occur because that information does not need to enter the compressed file... its standard data in the program file.

Here is another way to look at this. One way of compression is to extract commonly occuring patterns and store them in an index. The index location then becomes the data in the main file. Of course this only works if the index location in bits is smaller than the data being stored. There are other complications also. I found that this does not work very well when sed at the bit level ad the model was based on random data also (which has the highest entropy and highest eneregy). Real world data has much lower information and entropy. For example this page uses only 27 or so characters (max 5 bits each). Examine it at the bit level and it is a mess.

Knowing to group bits in bytes and that there are only 27 characters would enable a very good compression algorithm but only because this information is coded into the algorithm.

All this is leading to the obvious conclusion that the brain has evolved to process certain types of environments and search and encode certain things. We know for sure that congenital parts of the visual cortex identify edges and lines at different orientations. Can't that be expanded to other skills like language... after Noam Chompsky.

This answers a long held question of mine: is the world simply a product of culture or are their built to see it a certain way. And does the world make our brain a certain way: or does our brain makes the world a certain way. For example we see things in space. Thus we visualise the brain in space. So is the brain actually in real space and that spacial thing gives us the power to see (as Dennett brain thinks) or does the mind come first and its properties determine how we see the brain. Personally I've never been able to escape the latter let alone believe the former, and world thought with the minority exception of Western science and Anglo-American philosophy sees the latter also.

However in this blog entry the suggestion that the brain must have a certain form in order for it to process and compress data into discrete units leans toward the brain view. Of course that is assuming that the original arguments were not constructed within the Mind!

Saturday, 18 August 2007

Recognition

Understood something on Friday.

The boss annoyed me enormously on Wednesday when he totally ignored a document I have been developing for 7 years and simply started again his way. Complex situation.

It finally got to me on Friday and there was a lot of anger under the surface. It frustrates and angers me when people simply blank you especally when you think that they should not.

Now it makes sense. My father, my sister, the boss, myself to note a few suffer from the same problem. We seek recognition from others.

Karma is a law that is never wrong. I know that I am bad a giving people recogntion, not that I donn't take people seriously but I use recognition as a power tool. I know the boss desires my recognition of his authority (afterall why do many people become bosses?) and so I know by not giving it it gets him back. There is the rub... he's simply learned uses the same tool back.

So here is the score.

We give and take recognition until someone we would like to recognise us blanks us. This hurts so we learn that recognition is an insecure thing. Think of pop stars. They require the recognition of their fans to be famous and so their whole sitution rests in the hands of their fans... quite out of control and insecure (or so we think). The turn then is inward to seek a situation that is secure... a self recognising security. The hope of course is that when we have that self recognising security we are free from others and it falls to us to dish out the recognition which is power.

Now while self-security is a good thing (and I wonder if this is the goal of the yogic who in the Bhagavad Gita celebrates the joy of solitude etc) the use of it as a power against others is clearly an evil thing. When we have self security we should give it. That way we will receive it also.

But if we are interested in using self security in a powerful manner it means that behind the veil we are actually not secure yet and dream of a day when we can be free from the vulnerability of seeking recognition. So it can't ever be used powerful reasons cos such thoughts go with the territory of security anyway.

Another view of this is that vulnerability and seeking recognition is not actually a weakness. If we are able to see through the short term and see the long view we will see that to create recognition we need only give it. The law of karma is so secure that we should never hesitate to give recognition in all situations even when we are hurt because we know that it is the only way to create recognition. Until that Law is understood we will leave in fear of the power that others can wield over us simply by the choice to phone, write, talk to us, ackowledge us.

So it's simple while I think the boss is an idiot (I feel like Dr Evil's son in Austin Powers) I simply need to see that he could very well think the same of me and that by not giving him the recognition he requires as a human being he won't give it back either.

Once this issue of recognition is sorted and we realise that it is fair playing field where everyone has currency and we exchange it - the rich ones being the ones who invest the most - we see all humans at root as equally sensitive and valuable souls seeking the recognition of others (often completely unawares of and rejecting themselves).

So the resolution here is easy. If I wish to ease the load of my suffering at not be recognised I need to look in the mirror and give a little respect as the song almost goes (to you not me). I need to accept personal unconditional vulnerability so I can let down the shields and give freely.

Now its an interesting point that the short route to the yogic is catastrophic. If we simply retreat from the world in seach of inner elightenment we will not resolve this first issue of letting down the barriers. You can't enlighten behind barriers. The self is entirely conditioned by the surrounding world. Live in fear or with a feeling of insecurity of the outside world and other people and we shut the boarders to trade and we starve. Self suficiency is not what the enlightened soul is about. Quite the opposite. It is realising that it is completely dependent upon others - parents, food, water, sunlight all other things - and it views ths with no anxiety of fear of personal inecurity because firstly it knows that it only needs to give to receive, and secondly on the deepest leve it does not exist separate from these "other" things anyway. The wise will see how can we be anxious of what we already are. To us selves (and countries) with tight boarders controls, trade restrictions and anxieties about others ... we have a long way to go to realise that.

Wednesday, 15 August 2007

Consciousness Unexplained

I sat through some videos on You-Tube yesterday of interviews with E.O.Wilson, Daniel Dennet, Richard Dawkins etc. The hard line materialists. They are tedious though so have not watched them all. Its not that they are exactly wrong, and the interviewer was the more tedious, but it is just naive and childish.

I consider myself in a position to comment on materialist belief because at 36 the larger part of my life so far has been caught up in this same desire to explain the exciting and mysterious phenomena of the world in rational terms... especially consciousness. A few years of thinking and you will probably have been through most of the loops and issues of this subject and realise how enormous it is. I will tackle "consciousness explained" by Daniel Dennett (typically only having read half) to explain the naivity of materialists. I'll use some Buddhism to show how un-naive that is.

Let us begin with what Daniel Dennett believes (and that is his root weakness: he believes something!).

Firstly consciousness is the awareness of things existing which we realise we didn't have when we awake from a dreamless sleep. The "being there" right now of the world around us as Heideggar would put it.

His big advance is the rejection of the "Cartesian Theatre". This is the thinking persons belief that within each one of us is a unique subjective view of the world. We can retreat into this inside world and dream, or look at the things outside and think silently to ourselves and no-one can ever find us in there. The obvious problem here is "who" or "what" is doing the "looking"? All we have done is take the issue of consciousness and pulled it inside without actually tackling it at all.

You may not understand this stage. Another belief is that what we see is what is really there. However a moments thought shows that what I think is the "real world" is more accurately my "experience" of the real world. If I put tinted sun-glasses on the whole world changes colour. I know that the world hasn't really changed colour its just my experience has changed colour - but where has the untinted "real" world gone? Its not there anymore. All I can see is the tinted world. The real world has become just a belief or idea that were I too take the glasses off then the tinting would go. So we understand that what I am actually conscious of is my "experience" and the "real world" is some idea I have of something else "objective" beyond my consciousness. This is the beginning of the retreat into the Cartesian Theatre where at rock bottom we are like a pilot of a submarine with only TV screens of data input of the "outside" world. Of course you see that this does not explain consciousness at all because the pilot must be conscious to look at all this data coming in.

A lot of ideas about mind are like this. It is the idea that the world that we see is actually a model made up by our brain about the outside world. A brain is seen as a very powerful simulator processing incoming data and quickly modelling all that data to get a "representation" of the outside world so that it can make predictions about the future and respond to "reality". Two enormous problems. Dennett askes what "use" would conscious be to such a brain? The second problem he hasn't fully articulated. He does question the meaning of "outside" and "inside" in his book but this goes much further. A model is "of" something. Thus the computer scientist has the data of the phenomenon and then instructs a computer to replicate that data. However the scientist himself only has his brain so he only knows the "model". What is the "real world" then that he is supposed to be modelling and how would he know whether it model well or not? We saw above that when we put on shades we don't get 2 worlds (one unshaded and one shaded) we get only 1 shaded world and an "idea" of the unshaded real world. Likewise how can you have a "real world" and a "model" as two things when everything you know is just a model? Isn't the so called "real world" just a model of a model! and so even less real than the model! Its a loop and self defeating and pointless and trap into which everyone falls when they start to think about the process of thinking and being itself. There is sadly no end to this mirroring and dog-chasing-its-tail behaviour. The issue of understanding ourselves oneself is doomed to obvious failure because whatever we decide is the foundation of ourself depends upon ourself already.

You simply cannot build the foundations to a house that already exists. If you are interesting in building foundations but find yourself in a house, you missed the job already. I can say categorically here that conscious humans have missed the building of the house because how are they going to understand consciousness when they already are conscious?

The dream of building someone elses foundations is not a problem. Mothers do it every day and we can replicate that process. But just because you can make a conscious being is insufficient to explain it because unlike other things consciousness is characterised by the existential Being of the consciousness. Its the non-theoretical actuality of being consciousness that by definition must be unthinkable and unmodellable by scientific modelling devices. Celluloid heros never die and neither do ideas, but real people do and that is why they can never be ideas. Dennett and his cohorts like us all are most likely running from death into safe and secure mental worlds and models where they have the illusion of immortality an unreality.

Returning to the issue of explaining conscious. This endless realm of thinking traps I will call the "mirror model of consciousness".

Consciousness has this alluring property to it that we seem to know that we are consciousness. Its single most defining quality is not that people are aware of things and can answer questions about the world, but that they are aware of themselves as conscious. Just processing data doesn't make us conscious - computers can do that - its that we know that we are processing data: we know that we know things. This has captivated me for a long time. It seems the key to consciousness is the process of knowing applied to itself. If we can process the information in our eye to see a bird to find out that it is a bird, and then process the fact that we are doing this then we would appear to be conscious. "What is that?", we are asked. "A bird", we answer. "What are you doing?", we are asked. "I am seeing a bird", we answer. This really sounds like consciousness in action. It leads (and I stopped reading when Dennett started to suggest it) to the idea that consciousness is a looping process in the brain.

Everything Dennett has absorbed from neuroscience, physiology and psychology is good science and fascinating reading. His arguments are sound to a point. However the suggestion that looping processes in the brain give consciousness is wild speculation. He even knows its a blind stab in the dark, the same one a million people thinking on this subject are bound to make. It's also junk, but it takes a long time to see this - it really is a hall of mirrors.

Consider two mirrors facing one another. The first mirror is reflected in the second mirror. The second mirror and the image of the first mirror are reflected in the first mirror and so it goes on ad infinitum. How many mirrors are there? Its still 2. You look into the mirror and its fascinating for your brain looking at all the reflections and images. You simply can't work out what is happening and which is the image of what or even how many there are. Its beautiful and spelling binding but don't let the fireworks change the fact its just two mirror.

Unfortunately I see Dennett doing the same thing. By having processing building up upon itself into ever higher orders of self-referentiality he's hoping to find some system which is strange enough to correspond with consciousness. If we take our head out of the mirrors for a second lets look at what we have got.

We know that consciousness is not at the simple material level else everything would be it. And we know that consciousness only corresponds to the tip of the iceberg of brain activity so its not the same as simple processing. This leaves the materialists only one place to look which is in higher processing. Even if they find a tight correlation why should that level of processing be consciousness and all the others be unconsciousness? Its not an explanation only a correlation. Opening the box at the end of this search for consciousness leaves not gold but just a picture of consciousness. A big disappointment. Below is less disappointing!

Q& A with Dennett.
==============
If we ask Dennett "where is consciousness?" he might have a revealing time answering it. He says "the brain". We ask him "where is thinking?". I think we will say the brain also. We ask him "where is seeing?". I think he will answer "the brain" also. Eventually we ask him "Where is the brain?". He should answer "the brain" too!! If he answers "inside the skull" then we ask him the previous questions again. Is consciousness really inside the skull? If it is then why are we conscious of things outside our skull!!! while unaware of what is inside the skull? (This identical line of questioning is reported in the Surangama Sutra to have been had by Buddha with Ananda 2600 years ago ... well worth the read)

Readers of Gilbert Ryle will notice a "category mistake" here. Dennett is using "brain" in two senses. Firstly it is the sense of physical organ and secondly our "experience". Actually they are different words.

The problem and the requirement for identity to say they are the same lies in Dennett's basic belief in "things". He belives the world is made of things. So he has a thing called consciousness and a thing called brain and he wants to know if they are the same or different.

Actually the world aint like that.

We know from the above discussion the dangers of making the "outside" and the "inside" different. The idea that consciousness is "inside" anything be it skull, brain, Cartesian Theatre is all blatant rubbish. Consciousness as Sartre writes about is obviously out there "in the world" mixing with the very things of which we are conscious... even the precious brains that Dennett talks about.

Its like a necker cube. Look one way and we're particular subjects looking upon a world from a unqiue perspective, and in the same frame we see a shift and see the world as a single objective place where many people live. The only difference is perspective or our Mind as Buddhism puts it.

Liberation must be this gradual dawning realisation that the mind preceeds all. It is totally untained by the events and expetiences, or thoughts or beliefs. Without mind what are all these anyway!

So for Mr Dennett and his cohorts (esp. Richard Dawkins) I imagine (but am interested to be mistaken) the future is not spectacular until the break through where Mind is put before the intriguing ideas about matter and things and the correct order reintroduced. Afterall some day Dennett will have to apply his ideas to himself and wonder how all that brain activity created itself ;-)

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Where is Here?

Outside today the weather reminded me of a holiday in Iceland and I wished I was in Iceland again. Then I thought but I am not in Iceland I am in England. It made me anxious because I do not understand what these words really mean "Iceland" and "England". How can I tell where I am from the rain, the tarmac the houses? There is nothing here to tell me what this place is... its just a belief that people have and I have to ask them what they believe to find out.

This is the same problem that dominates my world at the moment. You ask a couple whether they are married because there is nothing "married" about them it is just a belief. You have to ask do you "own" this because there is nothing there to suggest that it is owned, it is just a belief that people have... etc etc.

Actually this confusion is the truth because none of these myths actually exist they are just vacuous beliefs with which the human world of dreams and unrealities is built. The mirror maze of unreality that is contemporary human life.

I shall call this "life" from now on, while "Life" will be the term for what is real and is apparent to anyone who looks. You must ask people about "life" because it is not actually there it is just a learned belief. You can live "Life" yourself because it is actually there for your own inspection and living.

I see now what Buddha means when he says to people that a mountain is not really a mountain and that a person the size of a mountain is not really a person of big stature. These are only so in the world of concepts and beliefs. The reality, that world that you can inspect for yourself without learning and accepting the opinions of your language, culture and world, that reality is quite void of labels and signs to tell you what things are.

The anxiety also told me something else. This is a demon that frightens me away from truth. A karma that hinders me from seeing things how they are. I am not peaceful, and I am not kind to other people and that negativity means that i am afraid of what they will do to me. I am afraid of leaving the artificial reality and seeing it for myself because I am afraid of what others will do to me when I ignore their beliefs. That fear is solved not by falling back into the hegemony but by turning myself even more strongly to th positive to clear the way for even more bold observation and acceptance of the Reality of Life.

Monday, 13 August 2007

Private

Finally its happening the military is falling prey to private sector ... after all how can you have a "national" army in a global world ;-) ... for the times they are changing... so that's the beginning of the world losing this absurd idea that we belonging to nations and countries... only because the leaders in each country/company need our "loyalty"... but it always been just a con brought about at the end of a gun if you argue. Good that the army is growing wise step by step and learning not to fight.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/13/wirq113.xml

The reason I celebrate is how long will it be before the payees of different companies realise that it doesn't mean anything and their alegiance as is only as strong as a contract and money ... which is the truth of all armies in reality... none of these patriotic myths.

Thursday, 9 August 2007

I think therefore ...

I think therefore there is awareness of thoughts
I see therefore there is awareness of sights
I sense therefore there is awareness of perceptions
I am therefore there is awareness of Being
I write therefore there is desire to speak upon these things

Its not new to say this, but at root for anything to be notable we become aware of the processes which bring it about. We cannot however be aware of the awareness? What kind of infinite mirror world would that be. Awareness is the very notability of processes which we may decide in many thoughts afterwards are products of separate senses, of brains of bodies.

Awareness reigns supreme as the inception of all things, untouched by itself or anything else... a castle in the air built upon nothing, itself the foundation of all other things especially any sense of self.

Self is not aware. Awareness is only of self.

What is awareness? asked the fool.
What does the eye look like? asked the blind person

Wednesday, 8 August 2007

Risk

The estimation of risk by people is crazy. I am planning a walk to India. My mother was in hysterics thinking i was going to get my head cut off in Iran. Other people have phoned my sister to say that it is dangerous in London because of terrorism. Are they mad?

Let us use road accidents as a bench mark of risk. We consider driving and crossing the road as worth the risk. Total number of road related deaths in UK 560% per 100000 (government statistic) which is one of the lowest in Europe.

Total number of people killed on July 7th 2005 = 50. Effective population of London at very least 7 million i.e. 0.71 per 100000. If those bombing happened ever 6 weeks in London the risk would rise to the same as for driving and crossing the road. So until we get terrorist attacks every 6 weeks we should consider it safe.

In Iraq say the death rate is 100 per day. In a country of population 20 million that is 50% per 100,000 per day. That is 30 times the risk of driving in this country. Is that safe?

Total terrorism for the past 40 years the world over including IRA, ETA, Al Qaida etc probably amounts to 10,000 but lets say 20,000. World population average say 40 billion in the period = 1/8% per 100,000. That makes car driving 5000 times more risky and we think that is reason for spending £1/4 trillion? and expected to rise to maybe £1 trillion. That is 6250 new hospitals that would cover the US and UK with a (hexagonal) network of hospitals so that no-one anywhere was more than 18km from a hospital.

Bearing in mind that the heart disease kills 22750% per 100,000 in the US hospitals that makes all the other apparent risks rather negligable and suggests that hospitals should be the obvious way to go rather than war!

The numbers are crude, the arguments lose but you get the point I hope!



The total number of all terrorist fatalities in the past 30 years all round the world is far less than 10,000 including IRA, Eta, Al Qaida,

3 laws of authority

1) If the world was reasonable then there wouldn't be a need for authority

2) People do because they can

3) Happy authority is a happy you.

Explained
1) The only reason why people need "power" is to make sure things happen that would not normally happen. Thus we know the world doesn't work right. And, if it doesn't work right why should management be any different?

2) The only thing that stops people from doing things is the fact that they can't. The moment they can they will do them, regardless of reasonability.

3) You can't expect authority to be generous and constructive if it is itself hassled. The first thing it will do according to rule 2 is use its power to off load the problem onto those below. Afterall what else is the point of being in authority?

Idealists might argue that this is cynical and not what authroity is about, but unfortunately the failings in human nature that are the reason for authority are also the weaknesses of the very people in authority. Giving authroity to a cat so that it can stop other cats from eating the birds is well... who ever thought it would work? Oh sorry its unreasonable ... rule 1

Progress is a modern Myth

I had this wrong. It is true that "Progress" is an illusion that keeps Western people struggling for an unobtainable future. But my reasoning was wrong.

There has clearly been development in the West. Understanding of the natural world in the sciences has expanded enormously. Technology is on an ever speeding upward turn. Mastery of the air, of travel in general, communications, of medicine, of psychology are unquestionably in progress. But this is not real progress!

Hidden within the idea of progress is that humans have a common goal and history is drawn upon a single running track with the past behind us and the future ahead. The West, and indeed every society that has ever existed, believes that it is further along this track than its neighbours. Each human likes to view themselves along similar running tracks, maybe the track of money accumulation, or possessions, or wisdom, or intelligence, or beauty.

In reality human life has no goal. There is no end point in what is a vast and boundless country large enough to accomodate every dream and aspiration. People travel in all directions some in races along set tracks, others in races along different tracks. Tracks spring up and decay, races begin and end, but the result is always the same ... nothing. We may travel some distance in a direction, but this might be the opposite way to that of another race. Our "progress" can only be measured relative to the race we think we are competing in. If we change races half way through we find we might find we are going the wrong way!

Once again the notion of progress stems only from a point of view. Our travelling has no real meaning. Hidden in the view of western "Progress" is a goal, a belief about what life is about: namely that ease of manufacture and ease of getting what we want is what life is about. Of course this is idiotic because just how easy do you need to get? and what do we do once we can achieve everything with no effort? what is life then? We'd just invent new games and struggles to occupy ourselves and give senses of achievement.

Development can occur anywhere whether it is flint axes in the neolithic period, guitaring in rock music, or rockets in space travel... but there is no absolute "progress" by which one person can be measured against another. there can only be success and failure in the rules of the game. The slowest runner, might be the most beautiful, the fastest might be the least intelligent. Which standard do you fix, and why?

Liberation is freedom from absolute measures, the ability to change games and see the global diversity of boundless games and human aspiration, and also the ultimate pointless liberation that this view gives.

s that a new race? The race to achieve liberation? only if you aren't liberated yes.

It Feels Good

We want to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, not because they are hard, but because they feel good.

This is what J.F.K. should have said. In the TV series "Last man standing" last night one of the contestants said how good it felt to win the wrestling contest. Of course his opponent felt bad and that is the absurdity of contest that the result viewed one way is good and viewed the other is bad. How we feel is just the result of a view point. Fixation upon our own view point ties us into the dualism, but any by stander can see the two sides.

We went to the moon, we start wars, we kill, Beethoven wrote his symphonies, we listen to those symponies, we understood physics and Relativity, we have families ... because it feels good and for no other reason. This is the playing field of human biological existence. That desire for what feels good and its corollary - the running from what feels bad - is what drives us around the circle of daily life like a dog chained to a post. Fixation upon our own feeling good and bad makes the play complete and we are driven endlessly and unknowingly by the tight reigns of that master.

That picture of the donkey with a carrot tied before its eyes trudging on toward its unachievable goal whilst carrying its master is a metaphor for so much. I wish I could find a copy of that picture. Whether it is promise of future riches which ties us into busy business whilst we carry the weight of the aristocractic investors upon our back, or more profoundly the endless journeying toward the goal of feeling good carrying our enslaved selves upon our backs it is the same sight to the outsider looking in.

Liberation must be the breaking of that tether, liberation from the selfish fixation upon our own feeling good and feeling bad, to see the boundless horizon in which looked at one way it is good and looked at another it is bad. The freedom that comes from an expansive view that includes all people and places no point of view above another. That is the non-dualism of Hinduism, Buddhism and Western Philosophy the medicine for the very human illness of partiality and enslavement.

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

Freedom

Its a sadly misused word these days... liberation is better only for that reason.

Freedom has come to mean selfishness. Today it means "I can do what I want".

Of course this is not real freedom because it assumes you know what you want and what is best for you. You might exercise your freedom to drive fast which looks good until you have an accident and are paralised... which ultimately reduces your freedom.

More subtly the exercising of apparent freedom in behaving selfishly and badly toward people - say by lying and cheating - slowly erodes our status in the world reducing our freedom as people learn they cannot trust us. We thereby lose the benefits we once had of friendship and cooperation. Cynical attitudes like this more subtly - and with far further reaching consequences - damage oneself. Upholding the belief that "I am better than others" and can do what i want to them, destroys our ability to relate to the world, shifting us into a lonely and closed existence which is extremely vulnerable.

As many moral philosophers and religious leaders have espoused before - only good behaviour can lead to true freedom. It seems a contradiction that we need to learn how to be free and that it takes effort and wisdom, but that is the truth.

Freedom which had no restraints is what we want. But trying to run before we can walk only leads to bloodied knees. The attitude to freedom as something that we can just take without training is the source of the chaos that it causes. Freedom is built only upon wisdom. Without wisdom there is no freedom.

My father used to say "freedom implies responsibility". I've never been too sure about this word "responsibility"... it sounds like part of the blame process where when something goes wrong those responsible get the blame. If responsibility means instead that we those responsible act with care and wisdom toward their duty then I agree. That is what creates freedom.

On a simple level the signs that this is true are everywhere. If you know what you are doing you can achieve so much more than if you do not. If you want something you are much more likely to get it if you understand what it is and how to get it. Obviously freedom to get what you want requires knowledge and wisdom. How can anyone think that freedom means just having it for nothing? how can that possibly work?

This is a superficial explanation which is also wrong though. A deeper level is the wisdom which sees that the reason why our life is the way it is lies in our attitude. With a positive attitude then even seemingly impossible situations suddenly get all kinds of avenues out. People watching "lucky" people probably think how does he always get away with it. If they are using wisdom it is because they can see the infinite possibilities that lie in ever situation. Nothing then seems like a trap or no-win situation. Negative attitudes is what traps us because we close off the possibilities and feel that life is pushing us around. Thats where the desperation above for freedom comes from, one that the politicians cynically exploit.

The ultimate positive attitude is complete liberation which means cutting the root of bondage to the world which is actually ourselves not the world. The anchor which keeps us stuck where we are is our own desire which becomes attached to things and won't move on. This is the deepest ignorance which challenges our freedom. Its the ignorance I tackle daily so until personal progress is made no point going further. Much written in books though especially in Buddhism.

The other thing I wanted to mention about freedom is the link between Nature and Freedom. This was drawn to my attention by the BBC program "Something Understood" on Radio 4 in the last full week of July "The Wild". I've got a copy and might illegally make that available when its off the BBC site. I need to listen to it all as well.

It concludes that the allure of the Wild and of things natural which surround us from insects crawling to the daily light show of the sunrise and sunset is that most profound and human instinct for freedom. The vast natural world opens our heart to that infinite possibility and unbounded radiance of the human soul. That is my own words for what I hope the program did actually say.

I'd not wanted to make the link to freedom because I know the natural world is a tough place governed by uncompromising and unmerciful laws. You make a mistake, you misread something and Nature will think nothing of wiping your existence out. At the same time, the very same sweep of the hand which removes you from the stage, it sows another in your place. The ego has a problem with Nature cos She doesn't seem to respct us. That is until we learn her laws, then it is harmony and freedom.

I'm not completely clear on this point as I write but isn't the allure of Nature the attitude which sets us free from Life? If you despise nature then it will punish you mercilessly, if you love it and are wise to it then you escape?

Certainly as I review my own life to date it seems to be a struggle within between two worlds. The world of games and worldly vanity - the job titles, positions, wealth, qualifications, skills, clothing labels, friends and partners (i.e. the CV) - and the actual reality of sensations and things I can see and touch. The two are as different as oil and water to me. Stick me on a beach with the wind, elemental whiff of sea air, the waves, the subtle tones of blue fading across the sky any day to the icecream vendor in gawdy colours and the girls and guys vying for each others attention. True there is as much nature in the ice cream and attraction of sexes as in the sky and sea but the latter is naked and free; the former wrapped up in a maelstrom of glitter and glass which obscures to the point of distraction. Give me something that does not shapeshift upon which to rest my gaze, upon which to rest my hand and I know that it is real. Clarity of vision like glassy waters cascading over angular mountain slopes under the gaze of vast horizons that is nature and freedom itself... simple, unobscure, full of vitality.

Wages and Usary are different types of money

What is money?

The most obvious feature of money is that you can exchange it for goods. And why would you do this? If apples grow in my back garden why buy apples?

It is because (1) theft is illegal i.e. I cannot take apples from someone elses garden and (2) because it saves the trouble of having to pick them myself.

Essentially then: money is the power to get another to do work for us restrained within property laws.

With money at root we buy other peoples time.

There are a whole complex of issues underlying this. There is the belief that people have talents. Some people are good at writing music so we are compelled to purchase their music and time because we cannot do it ourself. Some people have physically issues which mean they are unable to perform the actions required to even stay alive... they are especially compelled to purchase other peoples time. Time is differently valued depending upon whether there is a demand for what we do with it.

We gain the ability to purchase other peoples time by selling our own time. At root in the monetary system we are exchanging time.

In a simple game this sounds like fun. Unfortunately money can be gained by other means than expending your time. Money can be gained by trading and investment. This is not the same kind of money as that which exchanges time, yet it is an identical currency in current economic theory. Thus the rich can earn the right to buy other peoples time without having to trade their own time.

This is the old system of exploitation and slavery that we have sort to get away from. A class of people who have the right to determine the actions of others without any real existential involvement themselves. By existential I mean that giving your time for someone is the giving the most central part of your existence and humanity to them. But if they have that right through anything other than their own human commitment to the exchange then it is slavery and builds inhumanity and alterity into the system.

The Bible says that usary is not allowed. If derivative incomes were paid in separate currency to wage and sales income it is obvious how parasitic and meaningless this currency would be. Capital raise through shares cannot be used to buy anything other than other shares and we see the true criminal and insidious nature of this apparent wealth.

I am opposed to all income based on investment. The Bible seems to be correct to outlaw this. Our western societies seem to be wrong in their liberal attitude to it. But of course the law makers get their funding from this kind of income so they are never going to stop it!

Friday, 3 August 2007

Journal entry

its easier to enter personal stuff here I'm finding, worthless reading for anyone else, just journal entries

Was going through old course notes from my ship wrecked zoology degree 18 years ago. Its amazing how much I've forgotten... whole courses for which I remember absolute nothing... makes one wonder just how much I've done and known that I have now forgotten. Memories certainly cannot be a mainstay of life because they are so patchy and incomplete.

It was also good looking at the comments on essays for me as an 18 year old. I was lazy, unfocused and disorganised. It is certainly true that I was not interested in doing any work, had my head in the clouds exploring the issues that I still explore of the nature of perception and scientific truth, and saw no meaning in the work I was doing. I also thought that I was better than what we were being asked to do... so it was last minute lab write up, and badly researched essays. This is what contributed to my downfall, and also illustrates that I was in no way ready or motivated by what I was doing.

Had I done all this again I would have had to realise that the time was not right and I needed to go through the process I'm currently going through of finding a meaning to life and a direction before the prescribed expectations of academia and qualification. Not much space for that in this world, but unfortunately that is the way of "reality" not often seen by the establishment and the employers and dictators of the system order that we like to believe in.

Thursday, 2 August 2007

Dissatisfaction really is key to life

What makes things problematic? simply dissatisfaction. If we want something and we don't get it, or it is not quite what we wanted, then we are dissatisfied.

A hundred complex ideas have issued surrounding this. Things which try to fix our desires in a material and secure world. Things like justice, law, politics, religion which at root aim to secure a belief that we deserve and can get what we want. They are ideas built only from experiences of dissatisfaction.

I have argued at length recently the vapidity and obvious illusory nature of these ideas. They simply do not exist. We can agree that they exist in the same way that we can agree that a character in a play is who they are. But in reality they are a fiction. There are NO higher elements in existence than the experience of dissatisfaction and the "real" world does not care for our dissatisfaction. It will administer luck and bad luck, injustice and cruelty at random and we can only believe that in the end we will get what we want.

The issues of murder for example are enshrounded in so many complex ideas. Especially that each human being "should" be free from threat to life, they have a "right" to be free from threat. The "real" world does not know about this. Disease, "natural" disaster and death are administered without any knowledge of human "rights". And at root if or whole family is murdered in front of us, as happens in places of war and turmoil, the only problem is our dissatisfaction. Had for example we wanted them dead the apparent problem would vanish.

This sounds harsh but consider like this. We often want people dead. We are fighting wars throughout the world especially in Afganistan and Iraq. With billions being spent on bullets and bombs how can we imagine for a minute that we are not seeking the death of people? We want and are directly spending our money through taxes on the death of people. These people have families who love them as any family would. We are perpetrators of the acts of killing families. But, we do not see a problem because it creates satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction for us. However were it our family being killed then suddenly and miraculously we would see a problem.

This is unclear maybe because of so many "unreal" ideas. We might argue that we have a right to kill out of self defense, or that the terrorists started it. Arguments that are undoubtedly used to create a sense of justice/injustice on the "other" side also. So these ideas have no friends and only seek to justify and create a sense of injustice in whoever holds them. The reason we hold these ideas is to support our acts to escape dissatisfaction... that is the only root.

What causes dissatisfation? It is exactly as Buddha stated. It is the failure to gain satisfaction and that means to, "get what we want". That is the Law.

How do we cure dissatisfaction. The obvious way is to "work" for what we want. In which case our world gets orientated around our desires. But this is as unreal as an actor playing out a role. as the props move around the stage there is no absolute meaning to these movements it only makes sense within the "narrative" or story. As a stage hand we might have to place a gun on a table at the beginning of a scene and then remove it from the floor at the end of the scene. That is our job, that is all we need to know. To the audience of course we can assume that the gun has a whole new "unreal" meaning within the illusion of story that is played out.

Of course maybe the stage hand is part of a bigger play. Maybe there is an audience (as I have created by writing about it) or maybe there is not were it to happen for "real". But the story I tell is an illusion the same in "reality" as in the pages of this blog. What is the difference?

So it is with our lives. An alien anthropologist studying humans could not make any sense of our lives without knowing about our desires. If we were to watch them get depressed because their tentacles didn't meet in a certain way we can only assume (from our own experience) that this was some desire of theirs. There is no absolute meaning behind tentacles meeting in a certain way, any more than the gun playing an obvious role in the world.

Sex for example is the same for us. We understand the hormonal, nerological experiences of sex and love. Within the framework of our desires it makes perfect sense. But in reality to someone without such desires it is simply to moving of a gun around, the touching of arbitrary tentacles.

So it is desire that fashions the whole world and makes its juxtapositions of relevance. And what causes desire? It is how we think about things. Think about her as a desirable female, think about her as your mother. Same person different thoughts, different desires, different actions, different satisfactions, different dissatisfactions.

So this is the root and route and it is the confusions created by our multifaceted broken mirror world of mirages that makes this issue so hard to comprehend.

I champion non-violent, harmonious, respectful truth and "reality" seeking anarchy as a way of breaking the link with these mirages that have us so tightly bound. And what makes it worse is that we are always on a stage performing the multifarious roles and plays that we are born into and people expect of us. If we break with character, let people down, don't perform the play right then we find ourselves pushed off the stage and onto other stages. There is no end of stages: be it the successful business and family man stage, or the penninless homeless tramp stage. Each with their role and each acting out to the audience of other players. People who believe they are in governments and institutions (but who in reality are just reading a certain script) will hand you a script and expect you to read from it. It is wise to do so because reading from your own script is just as bad and these official scripts are "really" dangerous though the perpetrators don't see what they are doing (qv the worst case in History the Nazis - though that is another script).

The aim is no script. No prepared answers, no expectations of oneself or others. Seeing things as they "are". Seeing desire as a product of belief and thought and seeking to free oneself from these... by understanding at least even if another place called "no desire" does not exist.

Now Freedom or Liberation is the next thread to expand because that is the true heart of these enquiries and I'm beginning to see Life itself.

Done it: proof that Jewish thinking is limited. Spent most of the day avoiding triggering ChatGPT but it got there.

So previously I was accused of Anti-Semitism but done carefully ChatGPT will go there. The point in simple terms is that being a Jew binds y...