Regarding the changing circumstances of people who opted for houses and now face problems with mortgages I can offer some solace in the recommendation of garages as living spaces. Just one of an endless number of ALS (alternative living spaces) that we should have the guts to explore.
It is possible that on legal paper there are complex issues here (I have been unable to find out) but reality isn't made of paper and having tested it for more than 2 years I can say that this is actually a good idea.
Firstly the cost is absurdly insignificant compared with an official living space of the same size.
The only physical problems lie in sanitation and waste disposal. Sadly in urban areas the obvious recourse used by every other living thing on the planet is not available to humans, and we need to use public lavatories (20p a time, a pint in the local pub etc). Waste disposal can best be done by not creating any, which is a good environmentally friendly idea anyway. The tiny amounts created can be recycled manually in local recycling bins, a trip to the dump if its large, or for small amounts (the odd plastic bag) I'm sure this can be disposed of in public waste bins without annoying the council guys too much.
Next problem is not having a fixed address. Its an unbelievably naive feature - of UK at least - that we have become so fixated upon the issue of houses that the council has only this means of registering human beings without one. Regarding council tax hopefully we won't use any of the services anyway (except the occasional use of bins which should be kept to a minimum anyway for environmental reasons). Certainly without a house; police and fire brigade aren't really issues. Like with waste disposal , use of these services should be avoided.
For central government (and its few remaining services esp. NHS - most have been privatised so what do we still pay for?) we do still pay through income taxes etc, since not having a "house" does not interfere with work and that part of our life. However it is sadly a necessity to know someone whose address one can use to receive land-mail. In my case I am still registered at my mothers and receive mail there. (Really the government does need to wake up to the restrictions that its lazy processes enforce upon us). Hopefully that is the tedious (and irrelevant) higher social stuff dealt with. It is certainly educational though trying to live outside the "box", it highlights a lot about the world that gets missed normally.
Having done a lot of camping it is easy to see how living can be perfectly comfortable and sustainable with very little input. A warm sleeping bag is the most important part. Feeling cold for long periods of time is unpleasant. Solve this! about £80. Why people need any heating, expensive bills and the elderly die each winter when they only need buy a 5season sleeping bag for £80 has always escaped me! Get some jumpers also - its cheaper and better for the environment!
I tried tenting for a few months but I'm not sure what the government says about this. There is a sense that it isn't accepted and this pervades the whole experience with uncertainly. Altho I can't see why our existence on the land should be prescribed, there is this sense that it is. (Really I say again the government need to start looking at things with fresh eyes). There is also the issue of personal possessions, you can't keep these in a tent! So the garage does work out the best middle ground. People keep their cars in there, so its must be ok for storage!
Food is always available from shops. Cooking is a problem since we must be very aware of carbon monoxide poisoning. Ideally we can cook outside, but again (in UK at least) there is the sense that this is not acceptable so we must cook inside at risk to ourselves. A good fuel camping stove £120 does the job (not for indoor use it says so b v careful). A simple carbon monoxide meter can be bought for £5 for Woolworths (replace every year). Better than that though is knowing what to look for. A throbbing headache signals the presence of Carbon Monoxide. Ventilate if this happens, and never sleep with a flame on! Only use for 10mins at a time ideally anyway. A yellow flame = carbon monoxide producing - keep it blue! We aren't paying for the fire brigade and we don't want to trouble other people - so extreme caution with flames anyway!! We're not allowed to store fuel in garages ... which had me puzzled since the average car stores 10s of gallons?
The next big problem is moisture. I have recently solved this. Watch for where water collects (around metal normally), it will begin to drip and create wet patches. Work out where the main ones are and then rig up lengths of plastic to collect the water and channel it into cups for disposal. This way moisture is actually removed by the process of condensation that creates it! Sealable storage boxes may be necessary to keep mildew off things - it forms in cold and moist places.
Lighting is simple. Batteries are environmentally unfriendly. Rechargables can be bought for use with ED head torches. These can be recharged anywhere, but this is emergency and not sustainable. Solar panels can be fitted and run to deep-cycle batteries which can supply all the electronic energy we need. Again the problem of social acceptability limits the amount of exposure. I'm running 4 low energy LEDs from a £20 car battery recharging cell linked to a £100 deep cycle battery which gives me enough light to get around with. What cannot be done with solar is heating of any sort (uses way too much energy - its the major major portion of the house energy bill) hence the fuel stove above.
Clothes are cleaned in a laundrette which is good for these reducing local services. Personal hygiene is courtesy of the local pool, which encourages a swim as well as getting clean.
Ideally a rain collection butt would solve water problems, and a solar water heater built into the roof would solve hot water problems. But again these are high exposure installations and there is this annoying sense that many people won't accept such alternative living. Water must be bought or taken from taps and carried in.
It may take a time to adapt, and the key to comfort is organisation and planning. But with a bit of thought there is no reason why using a garage as a living space should interrupt ones life. Clearly its a batchelors lifestyle - altho my last girlfriend lived there for 6 months and said she quite enjoyed it. I'd imagine that children would love it, but again the social taboos make this so much harder than it should be.
There are many benefits. It is certainly amongst the lowest carbon foot print lifestyles, with only 12 litres of fuel used a year for everything. It naturally encourages thought and care to be taken about ones lifestyle, nothing is for granted and it enables a much deeper understanding to be formed of the components of life and what is really important. One of the highlights is going to sleep to the hypnotic sound of the rain and the wind outside, and waking to the sound of the birds in the morning - simple pleasures that the now dominating "house" experience has all but completely obliterated.
Certainly I stand for a radical rethink in the way we exist on this tiny island. A certain mode of existence has become so dominant that we can't seem to think outside the box anymore. But living in a house has been only a luxury for most of the world for most of history, and it is only here that it is considered the norm. Given the projections in population for this century, the shortage of space, the absurd cost of housing and the endless destruction to the environment that this mode of living brings - in my mind at least - it is already unsustainable and irresponsible, and especially since other much simpler alternative already exist as I hope I have explored.
Another feature of this lifestyle is the requirement to share. Certainly in transport I don't drive, and where I don't walk I share my transport with others (buses, trains). I share my personal hygiene space at the swimming pool. I share my toilet facilities in the local pub, or at work. Ideally I would share everything (share this island, share this planet) that is a good way to think, and the more I do it the more absurd it seems that it's not the obvious norm.
Anyway there are infinite possibilities, we just need people to explore them. Been thinking about Mark Boyle again today. Its a wonderful thing he does. I wish it was me, but I now know there are at least 2 of us in what I have been tempted to see as this prison of sterile minds called modern living: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7217788.stm ... genius
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Mark Boyle Walking to India
Wow it's happening (at least someone is doing it) and for excellent reasons also!
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080130/tod-lifestyle-britain-india-walk-offbeat-6058bda_1.html
Attempting to make the walk without use of money. Brilliant.
Well its something I have been planning for around 10 years, but it seems it's now being done. Does this mean I don't need to do it anymore?
Anyway good luck to the man, will "follow" with interest (non financial obviously).
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080130/tod-lifestyle-britain-india-walk-offbeat-6058bda_1.html
Attempting to make the walk without use of money. Brilliant.
Well its something I have been planning for around 10 years, but it seems it's now being done. Does this mean I don't need to do it anymore?
Anyway good luck to the man, will "follow" with interest (non financial obviously).
Friday, 25 January 2008
A line in the sand
So the sage drew a line in the sand and said to the people: those who are bright, handsome and good you should be on that side of the line, and those who are dull, ugly and bad should be on the other side of the line. And a war broke out amongst many of the people, over who had the right to be one side or the other.
And some stood away from the crowd and gossiped and bet upon who should or would end up on either side.
And still a fewer number stood back from even these and watching a beetle crawl across the sand in front of them leaving another line, commented upon how silly these folks were to be making such trouble over what was really just a line in the sand.
And yet still a smaller group stood back and realised how foolish the last group were not to notice how ironic that the beetle was drawing a line between them and the group that was fighting.
And the they realised something, and left.
And some stood away from the crowd and gossiped and bet upon who should or would end up on either side.
And still a fewer number stood back from even these and watching a beetle crawl across the sand in front of them leaving another line, commented upon how silly these folks were to be making such trouble over what was really just a line in the sand.
And yet still a smaller group stood back and realised how foolish the last group were not to notice how ironic that the beetle was drawing a line between them and the group that was fighting.
And the they realised something, and left.
Reality is our master
As King Knut discovered while every person in his kingdom would do whatever he said, the tide failed to listen. A lesson for us all because Reality listens to no man, and the man who does not listen to reality is dead.
So Mankind has often rejoiced in his apparent supremacy over Nature. His apparent ability to command the forces; build aeroplanes; build computers; build fusion reactors.
But really it is because Mankind has become so good at listening to Nature, to obeying Nature that he has reaped such a fortune. After all no amount of Science can make the Laws change, we can only discover with ever quieter ear the thoughts of our master.
So Mankind has often rejoiced in his apparent supremacy over Nature. His apparent ability to command the forces; build aeroplanes; build computers; build fusion reactors.
But really it is because Mankind has become so good at listening to Nature, to obeying Nature that he has reaped such a fortune. After all no amount of Science can make the Laws change, we can only discover with ever quieter ear the thoughts of our master.
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Self-reference really is impossible.
I'm satisfied that it's completely impossible. Things can have no relationship to themselves. The reasons are less clear, but it is a logical necessity.
Firstly all things are made from things which they are not. A cake is made from flour, eggs, butter, sugar, mixing and heat energy; none of which if a cake. A table is made from a board and 4 legs, some nails and some work but none of which is called a table. Things that are not something come together to make something else by necessity. If they came together to make what they are then nothing could ever be made and the universe would be static with no time.
The universe is thus like a jig-saw puzzle. If a piece is missing we immediately notice that shape. But we see the "hole" made by the surrounding pieces. A hole cannot exist can it? but nevertheless it stands out according to the things which around it. In exactly the same way a single jigsaw piece on its own stands out. This is the same but in reverse. In this case the hole is the surrounding and the piece is what we see. In one case we see a hole created by surrounding pieces, in the other a piece created by a surrounding hole. In both cases hole and pieces exist!
Thus a thing cannot have a relationship with itself because it is also not itself!
Another argument is this. If a thing can refer to itself, then it is self-referential. If it is self-referential, and it refers to itself, then it refers to something which is self-referential.
Thus it is not good enough to refer to oneself to be self-referential, one must also refer to something which is self-referential to be self-referential. And that can only be self-referential by the same condition, so it can never be decided if something is self-referential.
"I have 4 words" is thus not self-referential!
This was useful in meditation because it stopped me thinking that i knew myself. This is impossible!!
Firstly all things are made from things which they are not. A cake is made from flour, eggs, butter, sugar, mixing and heat energy; none of which if a cake. A table is made from a board and 4 legs, some nails and some work but none of which is called a table. Things that are not something come together to make something else by necessity. If they came together to make what they are then nothing could ever be made and the universe would be static with no time.
The universe is thus like a jig-saw puzzle. If a piece is missing we immediately notice that shape. But we see the "hole" made by the surrounding pieces. A hole cannot exist can it? but nevertheless it stands out according to the things which around it. In exactly the same way a single jigsaw piece on its own stands out. This is the same but in reverse. In this case the hole is the surrounding and the piece is what we see. In one case we see a hole created by surrounding pieces, in the other a piece created by a surrounding hole. In both cases hole and pieces exist!
Thus a thing cannot have a relationship with itself because it is also not itself!
Another argument is this. If a thing can refer to itself, then it is self-referential. If it is self-referential, and it refers to itself, then it refers to something which is self-referential.
Thus it is not good enough to refer to oneself to be self-referential, one must also refer to something which is self-referential to be self-referential. And that can only be self-referential by the same condition, so it can never be decided if something is self-referential.
"I have 4 words" is thus not self-referential!
This was useful in meditation because it stopped me thinking that i knew myself. This is impossible!!
Life in a Nutshell
Of course where is the drivers load going? The driver is just following his own carrot and his life will be wasted too.
Ironic isn't it that the donkey needs only stop and look behind to understand that all along he was walking away from what he really wanted.. a cart of hay.
(image from http://www.christian-education.org/images/donkey.gif)
The end of Capitalism?
The world is adjusting to the shortage in credit. People are beginning to spend less, and as a result jobs are beginning to be lost. Bush is planning a $145m tax break to encourage spending, to boost the economy.
But wait a second. Isn't it a good thing that people are spending less and doing less work?
If we are happy then we don't spend because we don't need anything! We only spend when we want something. A happy people actually do little spending and therefore little work! The more ill or disabled you are the more money you need to live. What does that say about the rich?
It is revealed again and again in economic history that contrary to the view that we would only work where necessary, the economic view is that work itself is necessary regardless of its products. That seems contrary to at least my experience of work.
For example if we don't get paid for our work then we feel it is a waste of time. And, to get paid we need to sell and therefore someone needs to value and buy the labour. In other words useless work is also work that we don't want to do.
Yet economic systems require us to work, often just for the sake of it. It is repackaged however in the concept of consumerism. This encourages people to buy things they don't really want, which then creates an apparent supply and therefore justifies unwanted labour. In more extreme cases job-creation schemes have been designed which also achieve nothing, I heard in the East at some time the government had people digging ditches and then putting the soil back again. And so now we have the American tax breaks and calls for people to shop (which when you follow it through the system is a call for people to start digging ditches).
It has been long argued, and probably plenty stressed in this blog, that work is not really about supporting ourselves or the human race. The great economists like Smith and Keynes, while they built good engines, seem to have overlooked where they would be driven.
It certainly supplies the function of useful production, but with modern technological advances if the human race could support itself 10,000 years ago how much easier it should be today. Yet we work three times as hard (rough figure: see Charles Handy). A paradox!
One explanation is that we consume so much more today... so we were poor before? This is essentially the idea of Progress, that humanity has progressed and things are better today than before. Materially it is true that we didn't used to have mobile phones. But does that mean people in the past were living poorer lives? Surely they just lived in a different way. I certainly lived quite happily without a phone before, but now I've got one I live differently. One is not better than the other, they are just different. Consider also the next great invention that will become indispensible in the future (surely there will be many e.g. time travel) - are our lives today less good because of that?
However one might argue life was better without the phone, because living a life with a phone has the overhead of someone having to make it and me having to pay for it. An overhead that is not present in the other life.
And this is the crux of the illusion that is capitalism. We are drawn into living a life with a massive time consuming overhead because we forget very quickly how life was before, and we just don't think about how life will be. And the more we work the less we have time to think about the alternatives and the nature of what we do. Participating in the capitalist system has made us belong to it, and thinking outside the bubble has become very hard. and bubbles seems to be buzz word for Capitalism!
There is another huge overhead to the capitalist bubble and that is the Environment. Our lives are begin transformed into existences with huge complex overheads. This is not innocent. That huge overhead is ultimately enabled by the environment. Every bit of work we do involves changing something, and when that change is material it is Nature that we are changing. The more we spend, the more we work, the more we influence Nature.
This change is not important for Human life. Human's clearly lived happily before (they would have evolved to like it! sad animals die out, so humans must have been happy!).
But changing Nature is a bit like fiddling with the operating system on this computer. It is quite happily supporting this blogger, but if I start to change the computer some changes might work and some might make the whole thing crash. If we make Nature crash Capitalism is going to become a bit pointless.
So why has this Capitalism become so popular? Originally there was a system of Aristocracy where people were ordered according to breeding and class. Of course money was important in this system too and ownership of land (set up in England by the French after Hastings) and the resulting taxes enabled the upper classes to be amongst the richest. The medaeval system was essentially a protection racket: Knights saying to the Serfs - "pay us and we look after you, don't and we won't (catch the drift ;-)". The same system exists today.
Some commoners like Cromwell famously developed huge money and power and led to the eventual overthrow of this ancient system. By the 1700s society was becoming ordered along the lines of those who worked and those who had the money to pay for industry.
Taxes were augmented by returns on these investment. The workers now payed not only taxes but had their earnings taxed at source in profits and dividends. By the 1900s Capitalism was in full swing.
It is partly because growing labour and growing markets ensures increasing returns on investments that labour is so important. If markets became static or receded then rich people would not be able to get interest rates. Why do rich people need interest rates? because this is how to get money without working yourself (its the old tax system). And the root reason for having money is to pay other people to do work in your place. Money essentially ensures the ancient status quo of higher and lower status people. That seems to be the main aim of humans, and Capitalism is just the best system at the moment for achieving that. True there are economies of scale and paying other people to specialise and be professionals enables them to do a better job, but this is not the reason that Capitalism is supported.
Am I sure? Well consider the relationship between the heads of industry and industry itself. Northern Rock executives have just got Christmas bonuses of 50% of their salaries in secret, known only by the UK government treasury. The government essentially gave the go ahead for tax payers money to the siphoned through a failing company into the pockets of the richest. The same people whose irresponsibility had caused the crisis! This is not a meritocracy, this is not reasonable or justifiable, it is simply the oldest law of the land that those with status are supported by the system. That is the meaning of status. A lower status person stealing even a jumper from a shop will have the full force of the system against them, while the high status people can steal millions and it be fully sanctioned. Status preceeds all other things in humans.
Another example of the status quo control that Capitalism affords the elite is in money. We assume that money has some value. Think again. That is only true for the lower status people. When I write a cheque, I have a credit check I have to prove I can repay it and I need some collateral. Sub-prime borrowers only failed to pay back the interest, you can be sure they lost their houses and everything else that stood as collateral. The high status people working in the banks, or with the banks, on the other hand can write cheques for any amount they like! Even before the current system of Fiat money they could write cheques for a staggering 20 times their collateral! That is like me taking out a £2m loan secured by a lousy £100k flat! But that was ok for a bank. These days it is endless. Bush wants to pay for a war he just writes himself a cheque. It is meaningless and we are fools to accept the same system. Go back to Gold is the key now.
So as the once serene gods of the establishment begin to sweat and make progressively more irrational moves we begin to see the real Wizard of Oz behind the curtain of illusions. There is no place like home and the yellow brick road upon which we walk leads us nowhere. Progress, development, apparent riches do not exist. While there is food in your mouth, clothes upon your back and a safe place to sleep, the light show outside our window is a pantomine to control us, whether intentionally or not, who knows.
So what is the point of life, if work and progress are not. Well that is the issue of this blog, and this part of my life (irony ;-) ). Certainly seeking the truth is not the truth itself (self reference I am satisfied is impossible). But I am confident that without knowing the truth, life cannot be lived.
Regarding work, sitting around doing nothing ain't the solution either. The fruits of labour - ALL the religions say - belong to God. Which makes sense within the Capitalist model because who owns our hands? If I own my hands do I own my body? If I own my body can I lose my body? Can I lose my hands? If so what am I if not my hands or body? If I do not own my hands then how can I own what they do? (compare with the nonsense John Locke writes). A Deep look at this shows that ownership does not exist. "God made us", means very profoundly that "all this just is, mysteriously and without explanation". If we work or not is actually meaningless, whether for Capitalists or not, what we do is what we do regardless of outer forces. The only meaning is why we do it. If we do our work because of the dreams and illusions of Capitalism we are a fool, just as the Germans were fooled by Nazism. All that really remains is to find out what our life is about, and the current crash should help enormously.
But wait a second. Isn't it a good thing that people are spending less and doing less work?
If we are happy then we don't spend because we don't need anything! We only spend when we want something. A happy people actually do little spending and therefore little work! The more ill or disabled you are the more money you need to live. What does that say about the rich?
It is revealed again and again in economic history that contrary to the view that we would only work where necessary, the economic view is that work itself is necessary regardless of its products. That seems contrary to at least my experience of work.
For example if we don't get paid for our work then we feel it is a waste of time. And, to get paid we need to sell and therefore someone needs to value and buy the labour. In other words useless work is also work that we don't want to do.
Yet economic systems require us to work, often just for the sake of it. It is repackaged however in the concept of consumerism. This encourages people to buy things they don't really want, which then creates an apparent supply and therefore justifies unwanted labour. In more extreme cases job-creation schemes have been designed which also achieve nothing, I heard in the East at some time the government had people digging ditches and then putting the soil back again. And so now we have the American tax breaks and calls for people to shop (which when you follow it through the system is a call for people to start digging ditches).
It has been long argued, and probably plenty stressed in this blog, that work is not really about supporting ourselves or the human race. The great economists like Smith and Keynes, while they built good engines, seem to have overlooked where they would be driven.
It certainly supplies the function of useful production, but with modern technological advances if the human race could support itself 10,000 years ago how much easier it should be today. Yet we work three times as hard (rough figure: see Charles Handy). A paradox!
One explanation is that we consume so much more today... so we were poor before? This is essentially the idea of Progress, that humanity has progressed and things are better today than before. Materially it is true that we didn't used to have mobile phones. But does that mean people in the past were living poorer lives? Surely they just lived in a different way. I certainly lived quite happily without a phone before, but now I've got one I live differently. One is not better than the other, they are just different. Consider also the next great invention that will become indispensible in the future (surely there will be many e.g. time travel) - are our lives today less good because of that?
However one might argue life was better without the phone, because living a life with a phone has the overhead of someone having to make it and me having to pay for it. An overhead that is not present in the other life.
And this is the crux of the illusion that is capitalism. We are drawn into living a life with a massive time consuming overhead because we forget very quickly how life was before, and we just don't think about how life will be. And the more we work the less we have time to think about the alternatives and the nature of what we do. Participating in the capitalist system has made us belong to it, and thinking outside the bubble has become very hard. and bubbles seems to be buzz word for Capitalism!
There is another huge overhead to the capitalist bubble and that is the Environment. Our lives are begin transformed into existences with huge complex overheads. This is not innocent. That huge overhead is ultimately enabled by the environment. Every bit of work we do involves changing something, and when that change is material it is Nature that we are changing. The more we spend, the more we work, the more we influence Nature.
This change is not important for Human life. Human's clearly lived happily before (they would have evolved to like it! sad animals die out, so humans must have been happy!).
But changing Nature is a bit like fiddling with the operating system on this computer. It is quite happily supporting this blogger, but if I start to change the computer some changes might work and some might make the whole thing crash. If we make Nature crash Capitalism is going to become a bit pointless.
So why has this Capitalism become so popular? Originally there was a system of Aristocracy where people were ordered according to breeding and class. Of course money was important in this system too and ownership of land (set up in England by the French after Hastings) and the resulting taxes enabled the upper classes to be amongst the richest. The medaeval system was essentially a protection racket: Knights saying to the Serfs - "pay us and we look after you, don't and we won't (catch the drift ;-)". The same system exists today.
Some commoners like Cromwell famously developed huge money and power and led to the eventual overthrow of this ancient system. By the 1700s society was becoming ordered along the lines of those who worked and those who had the money to pay for industry.
Taxes were augmented by returns on these investment. The workers now payed not only taxes but had their earnings taxed at source in profits and dividends. By the 1900s Capitalism was in full swing.
It is partly because growing labour and growing markets ensures increasing returns on investments that labour is so important. If markets became static or receded then rich people would not be able to get interest rates. Why do rich people need interest rates? because this is how to get money without working yourself (its the old tax system). And the root reason for having money is to pay other people to do work in your place. Money essentially ensures the ancient status quo of higher and lower status people. That seems to be the main aim of humans, and Capitalism is just the best system at the moment for achieving that. True there are economies of scale and paying other people to specialise and be professionals enables them to do a better job, but this is not the reason that Capitalism is supported.
Am I sure? Well consider the relationship between the heads of industry and industry itself. Northern Rock executives have just got Christmas bonuses of 50% of their salaries in secret, known only by the UK government treasury. The government essentially gave the go ahead for tax payers money to the siphoned through a failing company into the pockets of the richest. The same people whose irresponsibility had caused the crisis! This is not a meritocracy, this is not reasonable or justifiable, it is simply the oldest law of the land that those with status are supported by the system. That is the meaning of status. A lower status person stealing even a jumper from a shop will have the full force of the system against them, while the high status people can steal millions and it be fully sanctioned. Status preceeds all other things in humans.
Another example of the status quo control that Capitalism affords the elite is in money. We assume that money has some value. Think again. That is only true for the lower status people. When I write a cheque, I have a credit check I have to prove I can repay it and I need some collateral. Sub-prime borrowers only failed to pay back the interest, you can be sure they lost their houses and everything else that stood as collateral. The high status people working in the banks, or with the banks, on the other hand can write cheques for any amount they like! Even before the current system of Fiat money they could write cheques for a staggering 20 times their collateral! That is like me taking out a £2m loan secured by a lousy £100k flat! But that was ok for a bank. These days it is endless. Bush wants to pay for a war he just writes himself a cheque. It is meaningless and we are fools to accept the same system. Go back to Gold is the key now.
So as the once serene gods of the establishment begin to sweat and make progressively more irrational moves we begin to see the real Wizard of Oz behind the curtain of illusions. There is no place like home and the yellow brick road upon which we walk leads us nowhere. Progress, development, apparent riches do not exist. While there is food in your mouth, clothes upon your back and a safe place to sleep, the light show outside our window is a pantomine to control us, whether intentionally or not, who knows.
So what is the point of life, if work and progress are not. Well that is the issue of this blog, and this part of my life (irony ;-) ). Certainly seeking the truth is not the truth itself (self reference I am satisfied is impossible). But I am confident that without knowing the truth, life cannot be lived.
Regarding work, sitting around doing nothing ain't the solution either. The fruits of labour - ALL the religions say - belong to God. Which makes sense within the Capitalist model because who owns our hands? If I own my hands do I own my body? If I own my body can I lose my body? Can I lose my hands? If so what am I if not my hands or body? If I do not own my hands then how can I own what they do? (compare with the nonsense John Locke writes). A Deep look at this shows that ownership does not exist. "God made us", means very profoundly that "all this just is, mysteriously and without explanation". If we work or not is actually meaningless, whether for Capitalists or not, what we do is what we do regardless of outer forces. The only meaning is why we do it. If we do our work because of the dreams and illusions of Capitalism we are a fool, just as the Germans were fooled by Nazism. All that really remains is to find out what our life is about, and the current crash should help enormously.
Friday, 11 January 2008
unpredicatable pattern
An oxymoron? I just deleted it, but I had a great picture of the days FTSE trading from the 1st week of Jan 2008 and next to it one from the last 6 months of trading and you could not tell which was which. They were very similar. However while this looks like a fractal pattern we also know that the market cannot be predicted (efficiency of market). So it's a pattern which can't be predicted!
Thursday, 10 January 2008
We enjoy suffereing
This sounds oxymoronic, but it seems more and more to be true.
If you accept the view that suffering is caused by ignorance and wrong doing and true happiness is freedom from ignorance and wrong doing, there remains the question why do we remain ignorant and do wrong? even after understanding that these cause unhappiness.
The problem is that we chose ignorance and wrong doing because we like it! We like laziness, weakness, ignorance, stupidity, hurt, pain, greed, anger, jealousy, envy, anxiety, worry etc and so we chose it. While suffering we will wish we were not suffering, but then we will do it again and go suffering again and eventually we will wonder why do we go around in circles? The hard thing to realise is that we actually enjoy going around in circles. There is a very profound level in which we enjoy the trials and tribulations, the temptations, the rises and crashes of these circles and that is why we never progress beyond them.
Realising that we are attached to all the hindrances that stand in the way of true happiness is the first step toward true happiness. I suppose until we have tasted true happiness we will remain bewitched by the lower cycles, the instability and uncertainty, but then we will never taste such happiness until we have let go so its a chicken and egg. We need to have faith and strong enough desire to let go of the less contemporary existence we have, and take that leap into the unknown higher worlds where while unfamiliar we know lies truth and profound happiness.
If you accept the view that suffering is caused by ignorance and wrong doing and true happiness is freedom from ignorance and wrong doing, there remains the question why do we remain ignorant and do wrong? even after understanding that these cause unhappiness.
The problem is that we chose ignorance and wrong doing because we like it! We like laziness, weakness, ignorance, stupidity, hurt, pain, greed, anger, jealousy, envy, anxiety, worry etc and so we chose it. While suffering we will wish we were not suffering, but then we will do it again and go suffering again and eventually we will wonder why do we go around in circles? The hard thing to realise is that we actually enjoy going around in circles. There is a very profound level in which we enjoy the trials and tribulations, the temptations, the rises and crashes of these circles and that is why we never progress beyond them.
Realising that we are attached to all the hindrances that stand in the way of true happiness is the first step toward true happiness. I suppose until we have tasted true happiness we will remain bewitched by the lower cycles, the instability and uncertainty, but then we will never taste such happiness until we have let go so its a chicken and egg. We need to have faith and strong enough desire to let go of the less contemporary existence we have, and take that leap into the unknown higher worlds where while unfamiliar we know lies truth and profound happiness.
Dualistic arguments fail
All things are possible. If a problem cannot be solved then the problem needs to be rethought until it can be solved. Q.V. Hegelian logic.
An immediate counter to this might be that "unsolvable problem" cannot be solved. The problem with this is like the problem with apparent self-reference in recent blogs: how would we identify an "unsolvable problem"? While it seems that there should be such a thing, in reality it could always be that we haven't looked hard enough. Same problem as identified with falsification. In principle you can't just invent a term logically and then go looking for that thing, or worse argue the nature of real things from the terms which we use to describe them. Q.V. the ontological arguments for God. e.g. God is perfect, and perfect things must exist so God exists etc
Another issue of dualistic statements is that every argument for one side can be mirrored on the other. My lab partner always used to argue that romance does not exist because if you remove the genitals from a woman then she is no longer interesting, so sex is the key. The counter of course is that if you add the genitals to a man then by that argument we would find him sexually appealing. Amusing that example might be but it reveals a universal issue in dualistic arguments.
The challenge when hearing any argument then is to argue the equally valid counter argument.
An immediate counter to this might be that "unsolvable problem" cannot be solved. The problem with this is like the problem with apparent self-reference in recent blogs: how would we identify an "unsolvable problem"? While it seems that there should be such a thing, in reality it could always be that we haven't looked hard enough. Same problem as identified with falsification. In principle you can't just invent a term logically and then go looking for that thing, or worse argue the nature of real things from the terms which we use to describe them. Q.V. the ontological arguments for God. e.g. God is perfect, and perfect things must exist so God exists etc
Another issue of dualistic statements is that every argument for one side can be mirrored on the other. My lab partner always used to argue that romance does not exist because if you remove the genitals from a woman then she is no longer interesting, so sex is the key. The counter of course is that if you add the genitals to a man then by that argument we would find him sexually appealing. Amusing that example might be but it reveals a universal issue in dualistic arguments.
The challenge when hearing any argument then is to argue the equally valid counter argument.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Mankind is not a threat to the life
Dr Iain Stewart in Sun 30 Dec The Power of the Planet cleared up something for me. Despite being aware of the destructive effect that mankind has been having on the planet, it did not escape my attention that regarding CO2 even if we burn all the fossil fuels and release all the stored C it will only put atmospheric CO2 levels back to the carboniferous (300 million years ago). In other words the planet has been here before.
Dr Stewart went further... there is nothing we can throw at the Earth which is beyond it. The planet and Life have been through all this before and bounced back. The issue for him then not the planet or life in general but only the current state and thereby ourselves since we are dependent on a qite narrow range of conditions.
I'm a member of many conservation groups. Its not that mankind's activities challenge Life in any broad sense, only that we are having defining effects on the current state of life and seeking to preseve what we've got is like preserving anything we value. However its not a fundamental requirement, Life will bounce back in some form whatever happens.
There is a self-reference issue here also. Mankind is part of life, so then what he does is part of life also... OR mankind is outside life and so he can make choices about it... which is the determinism and free-will problem also... a dis-proof of determinism would be self-referential then like...if everything was determined then we would be determined to choose determinism or free-will and so our knowledge of it is no longer truth since we can't be wrong.
There's a lot to this self-reference thing... i was hoing to have it sorted by the new year...
Dr Stewart went further... there is nothing we can throw at the Earth which is beyond it. The planet and Life have been through all this before and bounced back. The issue for him then not the planet or life in general but only the current state and thereby ourselves since we are dependent on a qite narrow range of conditions.
I'm a member of many conservation groups. Its not that mankind's activities challenge Life in any broad sense, only that we are having defining effects on the current state of life and seeking to preseve what we've got is like preserving anything we value. However its not a fundamental requirement, Life will bounce back in some form whatever happens.
There is a self-reference issue here also. Mankind is part of life, so then what he does is part of life also... OR mankind is outside life and so he can make choices about it... which is the determinism and free-will problem also... a dis-proof of determinism would be self-referential then like...if everything was determined then we would be determined to choose determinism or free-will and so our knowledge of it is no longer truth since we can't be wrong.
There's a lot to this self-reference thing... i was hoing to have it sorted by the new year...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
The classic antimony is between : (1) action that is chosen freely and (2) action that comes about through physical causation. To date no ...
-
Well that was quite interesting ChatGPT can't really "think" of anything to detract from the argument that Jews have no clai...
-
There are few people in England I meet these days who do not think we are being ruled by an non-democratic elite. The question is just who t...
