The state of rotteness.

Reading that poem reminds me that there is a very good case for the world being rotten. The sad news is that this is not news... we all know it already and yet no-one does anything about it... least of all the people who have actually taken it upon themselves within the game of "political power" to actually have some "power".

People are not waiting for conclusive evidence, or good arguments - all these exist. The problems lie in the very state of rotteness.

The rotteness is just this, that people don't do what they should whether in power or not, whether responsible or not.

It's a dream then to think that if we provided evidence or good argument we could change anything. Nuclear power, perfectly calculated and researched as well as anything ever could be, was used to kill and create a state of global insecurity and unease. Was all this what was argued?

The cult of Diana on a small Aegean island during the days of Antiquity illustrates an important logic of those hellbent on surmounting their opponents. So desirable was the position of Guardian of the temple of Diana that young men were always battling for the post. Few realised however that the day they won they took over a life of terror, for each day and each night for the rest of their short lives they would have to hide with sword drawn to defend themselves from the next suitor. Thus if we ever take up arms to win a position over someone else, then it follows that when we take up that position we will need to defend forever from those same arms and so ensure our demise by their very hand. So it is true that "he who lives by the sword, so shall he die by the sword."

So stupid are men that we get caught by our own aspirations and drives in such dead ends, unable to see as we are the mirror that stands before all our actions. They call it karma in the East as though it was a Law which had to be applied, when it is present in our very actions themselves if only we had the eyes to see it.

How futile then that we seek this position, over that position. Hope that our well fashioned arguments are swords that will win. Designate this as rotten and that as healthy.

After many millenia doesn't History tell us but one thing that the book of History will never be finished and that the writers spend their time on an endless wheel. The foolishness of even our contemporaries who claimed that "boom and bust" were finised, or Fukayama who claimed even that "History was finished". Whatever is finised is just the next page of History (and there surfaces the self-reference argument again).

So are we doomed to try and try-not and achieve just the same nothing in the long run? That what is this, is really that, and it is only our ignorance that sees them as two. That the labours that gave us Rome are the labours that gave us equally the Dark-Ages? And who would work to create a Dark-Age? but only a horse blinded by the arrival at Rome who failed to look where the Northern roads out of the city do run.

I lack the energy and the inspiration at the moment to complete the gargantuan task of asssempling all the information required to show that Mankind has gone the wrong way of the past 1000 years. And in any case Mankind will find out what the future holds with or without prophets.

And all those who would listen to evidence and argument already know that we have made a gigantic mistake. And all those who can't see because Rome is so close wouldn't listen anyway.

Again my roads seem to point upwards to transcendence and I'm beginning to realise all other roads are futile and endless, going here and then there, but never arriving anywhere.

topical little poem...

Topical little poem posted by Guardian reader "judyg"

The seas are all polluted and theres over fishing too
They tell us then to be more green when we are feeling blue
Our food is full of chemicals, stupid then is that?
The toxins that we eat we shouldnt put out for the cat!
Nuclear waste is hidden too, underneath our soil
They say this the way forward as we grow more short of oil!
Our medicines, have side effects, while killing off disease
The side effects are sometimes worse than the illness if you please!
Herbal cures and vitamins are scorned by ‘experts though
And anyway drug companies would lose out-what a blow!
Pollution from our vehicles is causing many ills
For chesty coughs and asthma were given then more pills!
Were warned of global warming and that we must recycle
Are they really serious or just taking the Michael?
The earth it keeps on spinning, turning the same way
But may not always be the case, it will change round one day!
Meanwhile we have corruption, mostly in high places
Often this is hidden, and the villains hide their faces
Were told we have democracy, to vote in who we choose
But who is there to vote for? We have so much to lose.
Who is pulling all the strings in this our great ‘free world?
Not the politicians at whom bad eggs are hurled
The money men lay hidden, the power in their hands
Big trans national companies now cover all the lands
Warmongers and evil seem to rule the day
We need a New World Order! the leaders now do say!
What we need is honesty and decency again
A world not ruled by Mammon and usury! insane!
A world of great equality and food for everyone
A roof then over every head to rest when the day is done.
These things wont come about though by just some heavenly prayer
A paradigm shift of thinking the new way forward here!
We really dont want fooling by media and biased news
We dont want suffocating by preachers from the pews
Need new ideas and trust again and less of all the gloom
And throw out all the rubbish, then buy a big new broom!

What is human life really like?

Recent research I'm doing points to working hours being about 6/day. That means that all subsistence work (shopping for essentials, commuting, grooming, actual work, eating etc) shouldn't take more than 6 hours of the day. With 8 hours sleeping that leaves 10 hours for socialising, chatting and spirituality (personal development, relaxing and destressing).

This is the current best guess at the correct style of life.

Life is shit! - that is the root fact, but...

OK seems I've been banging on the same door for too long now. Done a bit of reading... the question of this blog "what is life?", with a view to knowing what to do with it, is inspired because I and each one of us knows deep down that it is shit. Uneqivocally shit! and we only try to pretend otherwise because we are too egotistical to admit that we have failed to be happy. And what little happiness we do get is tainted because we are then afraid it will go and we will have to face the base fact again that life is shit!

I've made a double error because I thought that I could solve this issue all by myself as though it was a problem that people haven't been struggling with since the dawn of time. For me I saw the news as a kid and thought these people are idiots let me find the answer. But I see that there is no need for me to find the answer because it really has been found many times over by many people. Most coherently (for me at least) Buddha, but I have been held back because I lacked faith and accurate teachings - the latter my fault again because I didn't look! (or was not ready).

Anyway when you finally realise that "life is shit!" and there is no little escape passage that you've not checked - you've tried money and success, and love and sex, and knowledge and truth and all such things and you realise that each is tainted by its own shit! and the best you can do is pretend that everything is ok because your friends seem to be ok (when really they just pretend also). Well I'm ready to accept that it really is shit!

OK now what? Well here's a start...

http://www.maithri.com/links/articles/tri_lakshana1.htm

I particularly liked the honesty here...

"It is this instability that makes Dukka or the unsatisfactory nature of life bearable. Otherwise human beings would die of boredom with what we call pleasure, and the agony of what constitutes suffering."

So I'm sold finally no more tedious searching for answers in this mode of existence ... come back in a thousand years and everything we build today will be gone anyway, time for something much more fruitful.

I realise prior to this in meditation earlier that a characteristic of us all is that we spend our whole time struggling to gain control over our worlds - little tanks we are pulling levers and pushing buttons to try and negotiate some kind of satisfactory existence. Its never very satisfactory and what builds up is a resentment - I at least realised that were I to me made ruler of the universe there is a very good chance I would be literally terrible because the temptation to pull my extremely powerful levers and push my very powerful buttons to gain that dreamed of complete satisfaction might well destroy me and make me one of the really bad guys. Were I ever to lose sight of the people around me I could be very bad.

So in contrast to this pathetic view of each of us walled up in our own tanks looking through tiny periscopes and limited to pulling levers it seemed completely preferable to get out of the tank (which has the down side of "getting over ourselves") and working to make it a better world for all the other tank drivers. The gain is freedom and not being limited to using bulky levers, the downside is that we aren't stuck in a metal cage (hmmm but that's a good thing!)

Anyway slow realisations that I am shit also and need to do a damn sight better to achieve any of this enlightenment I pretend to seek!

Why so many little people?

Gave this some thought last night.

The Western world in which we live has been designed by literally a handful of people. Adam Smith was friends with John Locke who corresponded with Newton etc etc it was a very small world of landed gentry and capitalists - just a few people who had the social standing and time to be diversioned in such pursuits.

I've provisionally noted to myself reading all this stuff that the nature of their social standing and existence reamins an a priori in their thinking just as it was for Aristotle and many others. It is assumed that the human race is divided into those of intellectual capability and those who are only good for manual work. With such essentialist distinctions come the whole justification for social heirachy and injustice, and the moral indifference of the upper classes. This idea is still vastly prevalent in one way or another.

Just inserting here some feedback from my old place of work. The person who has taken over my role there was recently refferred to as the "monkey" of the organ grinder (the organ grinder being my old boss). This expressed in unequivocal terms what was always apparent that he perceives his business status as an essential superiority over other people. It is necessary for him to see himself as materially superior to others. This is partly his fault but also stems from his Indian background. I have it on good authority now to never work for an Indian or a Chinese - both are considered by their own people incapable of management (voicing which incidently led to my dismissal). Truth hurts I guess, but we do know thereby that it is true.

The need for people to be perceived as materially distinct and superior to others seems a deep requirement even of the founders of our systems of thought. This may partly be because of biology (that we seek material welfare) or spirituality because of ego (that we seek protection of our belief in ourselves). This I still investigate within my life: I can note that having nothing to do, and nothing to enjoy creates a surplus of "figgety" energy that seeks futile expression in things like smoking or pointless activities. is this "figgety" or "boredom" energy really the sickness that drives teh human race? To be revealed I hope in time... but back to the subject...

All these men were technicians. They did not provide a profound understanding of the world only technical rules by which it either did work (in Newtons case) or how it could work (in Smiths case). They left from their pages an understanding of how it should work. Such omisions mean that nuclear energy for example has been for benefitial power and counterbeneficial weapons. Likewise the economic system has no direction to it. Put it in the hands of great men and you have great prosperity, put it in the hands of little men (as the Americans have become for example) and you have great poverty.

My search for a technical "system" that would embody the Laws of Reality (those of goodness and selflessness) is maybe I see an impossibility because no technical system can include the rules of how it is to be used. Choice and human morality as highlighted so wonderfully in the Genesis story remain our own and not even the Law can influence us.

Thus my arguments for Anarchy have come and bitten me in the food. It is precisely because each man is free to chose even in the most fascist state (where the choice if allegiance or death - like my old work ;-) that there can never be a techincal solution to badness. Jesus only spoke of the benefits of Heaven and Buddha only spoke of the benefits of Liberation, neither tried further to pursuade the free minds of their audiences (altho many Evangelical Christians have misunderstood this). In the case of Buddha those who did not listen or have the heart to understand he simply ignored - he realise in Jesus' terms that some seed will land on barren soil.

So I am faced with a profound dialectic from which there is no recovery: there is the technical world of rules and the underlying world of Laws and one of the Laws is that man is free to chose how he used the rules.

It is obvious really that goodness cannot be procedurised because then it is no longer goodness. Morality is a function of the higher world of men something that depends upon our own experience and choices.

So this blog makes great progress. The issues of life exist on two distinct levels now for sure. There is the biological and physical - the technical "rules" which has been largely ignored in these pages) and there is the spiritual which is the founding Law upon which mankind is based and the key to life is actually to master our place amongst the Laws so that the rules can played correctly.

The remaining self-reference problem may flounder then because is this an attempt to present the Laws within the Rules as a technical failure of the rules demonstrated through the inability to express in Rules the Rules themselves?

Some progress anyway... Chinese New Years Eve tomorrow... Happy New Year of teh Ox






irrelevant to discussion but note to read this sometime
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/943-3_temp_appendix.html

Of Great People & Little People cont...

The chance of being cheated is the spanner in the works of all human endeavour... especially human economy. The justification for the prison of property and economic measurement (money) is just this.

Consider a system without money in which we offered our time freely to the community when it was convenient and when it was needed.

People are actually industrious ... we need only see the impact of unemployment upon people to see that they are not happy doing nothing. Give people the opportunity to contribute to society and the vast majority would be only to happy to do so. There is however a minority of people who might be classified as having "special needs" whose attitude and ability to contribute are impaired either physically or psychologically. These small number are either considered justified in taking more than they contribute (the disabled) or they are cheats.

It is amazing to think that the vast majority of the ones who are otherwise happy to contribute become discouraged by the thought that there are people out there who are cheating. Rather than continue doing what they want (i.e. to contribute) they feel they are being used and express this as anger against the cheats combined with a reduced wish to contribute.

For this simple psychological reason we have the concepts of "property" and "money" to measure how much we contribute (money) and to establish a fixed relationship with what we have earned (property). We feel then that our efforts are solid and we can covert them.

But of course this only little people who think like this. The concepts of "property" and "money" rather than ensuring that cheats do not operate by fixing measures of contribution, actually gives people solid entities with which to fixate their small minded psychology of "fear of being cheated" and makes what is purely psychological seem real. From this stems the appearance amongst people of rich and poor and those who believe in the systems of "property" and "money" find that while they can be sure no-one is cheating find themselves suddenly in a heirachy of wealth in which they can look down on poorer people to feel well off, and up to richer people to feel that they are poor. Suddenly what was a simple matter of being active, sociable and contributing to the society becomes a fixed ball and chain around our lives that fixes us financially and socially.

It is important to realise - and I've analysed it at length over the past year - that all these things especially "status", "property" and "money" do not actually exist they are simply the "rules" of a game that has been evolved in human societies. True they are rules that we must accept, in the same way we accept the offside rules in ball games, but they have no reality outside the game.

Famously some societies have operated without concepts of "property". Some animals are territorial (i.e. have property) and some are not. We tolerate a black-bird in our garden but not another person; a robin will tolerate a sparrow but not another robin; it is funny how territory is species related and many species have overlapping territories on the same land. The territory is not therefore physical (and real) but a game played out "on" the land. This mountain marks the edge of my territory says the human, while the very same mountain may be the center of a lions territory at the same time. Humans don't "own" the actual "land" they simply play a game of ownership with the land. The surface of the Earth existed billions of years ago and will exist for billions more years. What humans "think" about the surface whether as "territory" or "Mother Earth" is irrelevant outside of the social games (context) which make use of these "rules". Just the same as a football lost on a crop field is useless, but the same ball in a football stadium is the source of hopes and dreams.

Money is the same. We accept a certain currency in a certain territory not because of any intrinsic value of that currency but it is simply the accepted game. It began in UK with the Bank of England under William III. By royal decree paper bills took the place of gold. This acceptance has been stretched now so that the bills themselves are used as money and represent not even gold. Logical problem with this however is that the money was used in a barter system of exchanging something for something. Now that the money is nothing, when you buy something you are giving nothing in return for the goods! Gold had been the universally accepted currency before partly because it was scarce, it was magical (position in Alchemy etc), and it didn't decay so was perfect for storage. But it was only because people accepted it in the game of exchange that it had value - by itself its of no use as the rich find out in times of famine. So to say that you are rich is not a real existing quality - it is simply true within the rules of the game like saying you won 3:1 in a football game - its not something real you take home with you afterwards. Go to a country which values cowrie shells and not gold and you are poor.

In the case of "labour" we make real things and so what exists now where before nothing existed surely is because of us and the value added is from us and therefore part of us and we therefore "own" it? Except which part of the final product do you own? Suppose you assembled a chair from parts made by someone else. True you have added something to the work done by the carpenter who added some work to the timber merchant, and before him the lumber-jack and before him the forestry managers and before them the trees themselves and before them the sun and the rain and the soil micro-organism etc etc etc. But each person owes things laterally; to the designers of the tools and the skills that have been passed down generation after generation. And, in some cultures they don't have chairs so all this activity would never happen without the social and cultural norms. In every direction that the worker looks they are fed and drawn in directions that lie outside them. Even the energy that the worker expends in building the chair comes from the sun ultimately. The energy to even think all this comes from the sun - see how his arguments for ownership go after he has starved to death!

The truth is that in reality we depend upon everything around us for what we do. What passes through us as "work" and the things we create are no more ours than anyone elses. This is why the Jews argue and Jesus supports them in this view that the fruits of your labours belong to God (a view echoed in the Hindu 'Bhagavad Gita' and presumably around the globe).

So what is "ownership" then. As argued it is a rule of the game that is played in Europe (and the European colonies), but a rule that is enforced with violence so that if you don't play the game you find yourself abused - as the American Indians and Australian Aboriginals have found. But importantly it is not real.

Now the Great people know it is not real. A great person does not say "give that to me, it belongs to me". A great person says, "why have you taken that, do you need it?". And if we meet someone with a need what is wrong with giving them what they need?

The answer I imagine is that they don't deserve it. And that is based upon a belief in ownership. That we own our work and therefore we earn our pay, and those who have need should work to meet that need, for the need is not mine but theirs. In this argument can be seen the brutality of Western society, that our deepest instincts to kindness, and compassion for our fellow bretheren are foreshadowed by the dark cloud of indoctrination and stinginess that is born of Western economics. This is how the once great men have been brought to squabbling around in the gutter like rats.

We need only see what is happeneing at the moment in the economy to see the inadequacy of the previous argument. Once there were strict rules about payment. We had to pay our taxes else we went to prison, and we had to pay for our goods else we went to prison. The unemployed and disabled had to jump through hoops to gain a small percentage of the government purse. Yet over night the rules have changed. Each person in the country has now given £11,000 of the tax purse to the small group of banks to stop them going broke. Yet if we wanted even our own money back we would not have been able to see a penny of it. This on the back of disasterous wars costing hundreds of billions. None of this money we will ever see the benefits of. Likewise in times of war the property rules can be changed and the government can claim any property they like. None of this is a problem if you see the system as just rules which can be changed whimsically, overnight. But this must be incomprehensible to people who believe that "property" and "ownership" actually exist.

Returning to the argument a couple of paragraphs ago. The core grievance in this argument is the difficulty with which people have had to work to get a living. When money costs this much blood sweat and tears then you are stingy and you don't want others to have it easy. But it only costs this much because so much is taken by the capitalists (consider the bank bonuses for example), so for the working classes to be using the same rules of property to beat each other up for the meagre scraps under the capitalist table is verging on the lunatic. Its all just rules of the game.

I don't know yet whether this stands as a convincing argument to separate the rules of the economic game and of property, and the underlying laws of reality which are that we own nothing of this world since ownership has no reality and that our fear of being cheated and of losing the prisoners dilemma is therefore not a reality but a psychological weakness akin to stinginess. It is this psychology which makes us small people and puts us in the prison of mediocre fulfillment always being between those who are richer and those that are poorer and always being asked to peddle faster to stay alive. Great people on the other hand have little regard for themselves - they see the world around them and give freely as and when needed without ownership of the fruits.

Two things are immediately important in this:
1) this argument cannot be used to be irresponsible however because if we think that we don't own what we do then we don't need to do good things and avoid doing bad things we enter the little mind again because our motive to be careless will be to make our life easier and to make someone elses harder. If we do something then we do it sufficiently, satisfactorily and we do our best always.
2) the second problem always is that we do need to care for our own subsistance else we will die. This argument is the foundations of all right wing attempts to support the stingy small mind. This along with the belief that fellow humans are naturally going to try to cheat us so we need to protect ourselves at all time (our lives 'nasty brutish and short'). In response to the last argument: it is prisoners dilemma again: if everyone thinks they are going to be attacked then it is a self fulfilling argument and we will need to protect ourselves: so the only rational response is to behave generously and give rather than protect. (If there is one thing that modern economics has got right over the Mechantilists is that protectionism is not a working strategy.) So don't we need to protect our own life? This is a very deceptively subtle point. Obviously we do need to protect our own existence. In a desert we need to find water, in a capitalist society we need to gain an income to buy food. Monastics in many societies live on donations as do charities in UK, so there is no universal solution to this problem. Banks at the moment are living on donations! and that is supoposed to be the heart of the economic capitalist system! So certainly the rules are flexible. But we must be careful of one thing: that we do not put our own needs before others. If we take from another to meet our need then we have become small minded again. To be big minded is always to put others first, and at the same time (which requires the skill) survive ourselves.

If one thing is learned from this text it is that co-operation in a community of individuals will ensure the welfare of those individuals at a standard much higher than what we have today. For, while we do enjoy great material gains in this system it is at the cost of complete breakdown in our relationship with the community: everything done under a shadow of distrust with contract, IDs, financial exchanges, laws and a whole deepening layer of pointless bureaucracy that destroys the efficiency and sponteneity of society. The sickness is profound if you have not noticed it. Best demonstrated by pre-developed societies which are characterised by zero levels of crime! Something we cannot comprehend so widespread is this sickness.

One historic solution that is made a very big deal of in the West is the creation of a fixed social structure and the designing of that system around the assumption that everyone will behave like the worst. So rules of property, money and law are introduced to ensure that no-one trusts anyone else from the outset and thereby cheats cannot prosper. (That is cheats who are not in the system!). This is because the system has been designed by little people. Now why is it that the little people have gained the power in the West? I need to consider that point and really what is needed here is a coherent history of the rising of this disasterous idea.

The other solution is to tolerate the cheats and "turn the other cheek". This is the one called "religious" rather than "secular". While secular makes rules for people to live by, the religious are not interested in just playing games. The religious are interested in reality and what is the actual Law of existence. As I hope I've argued (and really this post is just a summary of a very large chunk of this blog) that reality is one where "property" and "labour" and "money" are myths no more meaningful than Monopoly money and owning "Park Lane" in the London version. The reality is that if we avoid self-fulfilling prophesies and assume that others will not cheat (something we have to assume they are assuming of us) then even if we are cheated we have not lost. If we think they might cheat so I'll cheat then we must assume that they will do the same and it becomes a lose/lose.

Where I realise the problem lies is that people really do think like evolutionary biologists: that they view this as a game. What is missing from this is the important fact that we are humans and humans while they can play games are themselves far beyond games. It is like saying that a football pitch is only good for playing games when obviously it is far more - and for example it has a physical reality too unlike football. Human beings (indeed all beings if you follow the Hindu and Buddhist arguments) are "made in the image of God" whatever you think this means it points to there being more to the human being than the obvious. Human's have for example a "moral" compass which transcends common-sense and cultural norms and extends in all of them to an awareness at some level of what is right and wrong. For example all footballers know the offside rule, but to score offside and win the game based on that means more than a lucky avoidance of the rules. It means that we cheated the other players who were playing by the rules in the belief we would do so. This is no longer an aspect of football and of rules, but a moral question of whether we should abuse anothers trust. Everyone has an opinion on that because it is a real question which can only properly be formulated in morality. Do computer programs "trust" even while they play the prisoners dilemma? Some people are more challenged in these matters than others: some so called sociopaths and psychopaths effectively have learning difficulties regarding these features and need special support: but the features to learn are as real as numbers and planetary motion.

So all humans have an awareness of the underlying human reality of trust and compassion but only the Great Men are brave enough to face it. For the rest of us beset by learning difficulties and other weaknesses are only capable of falling into distrust and fear of being cheated and that fear becomes engrained in the weak concepts of property and money: at first used to protect ourselves, but then the sword by which we discover we have been cheated. In reality we cannot be cheated because nothing is ours, and therefore everything is ours. In reality we cannot be hurt, but we must put aside our small minds and become Great Men before we can enjoy this freedom.

Briefly to end this mammoth post a repeat that experience in Scotland I wrote before that seems relevant here. I took a short cut through a mansion in Scotland a few years ago. Through the toparied gardens and fountains it was paradise and truely spectacular especially since I had been hicking for 3 weeks and living rough. An hour later walking up the road I looked back and the mansion and grardens were just a speck of green in the huge expanse of horizon from teh sea to my left across the plains to th mountains on my right. I realised that we have a choice in life: either enjoy the local pleasures but become trapped in that cage and forgo the world around, or to forgo the local pleasures and revel in the freedom of the world around which has no boundary at all. That is the question: to be a Little person, or to be a Great person?

Great people & Little people

There are great people and there are little people, and the thing which separates them is this: great people put other people first; little people put themselves first.

Why is this? Great people are the hole that is left when they are removed from the universe. They are definied by the infinite world around them. Little people are what is left when the universe is removed. Great people prosper, little people wither and die.

This is not an easy thing to grasp. I have struggled for many years and still can't make the transition from little person to great person.

The problem is best expressed by what dominates our western societies: the question of how to stop people from cheating. Cheating is the only sin, all other sins are cheating and all other virtues are not cheating. When cheat when we put ourselves first, we are virtuous when we put others first.

In both moral classes and evolution classes at uni we looked at the prisoners dilemma. This game presents the following conumdrum: you do not know whether your partner will co-operate or cheat but if you both co-operate you both gain. If you both cheat you lose. But if only you cheats you do best, and if only your parner cheats you do worst. Obviously you should cooperate rationally knowing that your partner will be thinking the same - thus you both do well. However the temptation is to cheat because knowing your partner will cooperate you stand to gain a lot more. But then you realise they will be thinking the same so you will both lose. So you go back to coperating and it goes around in circles. The end of the game is to realise that you are both going around in circles and just to take the plunge and cooperate. Thus you both do well.

However in a world of rational people an irrational person who doesn't think like this finds that they start doing very well and the system breaks down. As a result we think we can't take the risk and so the whole society suffers as everyone starts cheating to protect themselves from the odd rogue cheater. Then when everyone really is cheating all the time you have no choice but to cheat and that is where society is today.

We now have an economic system and a legal system that assumes that everyone will cheat. Every detail is verified, everyu penny is counted, every interaction subject to a contract. The cost to society is astronomical - the efficiency and the ability for people to operate under the weight of bureaucracy is being eroded. I've argued before that this is pointless because it is not the system which keeps people in order, but the people who make the system: even if everyone in the whole society became a police officer we would still not be able to control crime - the crime would simply be in the police system. And if an small elite become the enforcers they do not have the power to subdue the masses. Society works because people play the prisoners dilemma rationally, when they fail to play well the society is effecively disbanded. This is where we are heading.

So why do some people not play the game well? These are the small people and a society is only as good as its smallest person - so we all suffer their foolishness. The small people can be found at all levels of society: it is not a feature of wealth or class or education or anything - the current establishment is made of small people. As argued the instinct to heirachy seems fundamental in many people but it is patently for small people. To have a position "in the system" is by definition to be above those people who have not been as successful and below those who confer the status. If we were big people we would see that actually we are nowhere, if we are small people then we look up and down from our perspective and see this as being somewhere.

Politicians who have spent their lives playing the game of status are most probably small people. People of great financial wealth of often small people (I cite my most recent bosses as prime examples who taught me so much about all this). But it is not necessarily the case: many politicians and business men are magnanimous and occupy their position for the benefit of those around them. These are the truely great men.

If you ever feel that you are a failure because you have failed to get this status in a company or society, or you failed to get rich, or your football team fell out of the division, or the girl turned you down, or you have lost something of great value then actually you are a small person because you look at things from inside yourself looking out. "I am the measure of all things" says the small man. I have more money that this person, I have less money than that person - if this is your world you are small.

By contrast the great man says this person has a lot of money, that person is poor. They might then think from this that the rich person might be able to fund a project to help the poor person. Somewhere at the back of the great man's thoughts would be the simple practical detail of how much they had.

It is because we firmly believe that I must take care of myself that leads even potentially great people to become defensive. Suddenly under threat they look inwards, build the wall and start to plan for themselves. They become risk averse and are more likely to cheat. Wishing therefore to benefit themselves even at the expense of other people they become small, and the system spirals into cheating. This is why we must remain great people, always, even if we end up on a cross some day in the future.

The psychology of the great person is rather unfashionable at the moment. The heroes we see in the American media are actually small people mostly. They are greater than the mass it is true, but ultimately the look to save only their family, or their nation or their planet or some version of themselves looking outwards. The true heroes are looking in, they see themselves being sacrificed. They do not stand up for themselves, they do not become defensive or protectionist. They are the opposite side of the spectrum from the banks we see today.

The odd thing is to realise that the whole society is dominated by small people. I am used to thinking radically but it must be fearful for those who have "served" their state. To see the state as actually a parochial small minded creature whose decisions are as profoundly wrong as the criminals it seeks to bring to justice is bizarre, yet I can see no alternative but to think this.

Last night on the BBC Radio 3 A.C.Grayling and a government advisor were discussing the distinction between combatants and non-combatants - that is the distinction between soldiers and civilians. A difficult division it was concluded but one that needs to be drawn. Yet the language used was steeped in acceptance of war and the idea of a just war. Surely the division is a false one because no-one is ever justified in killing another. If the Afghanis are the right people to be shot in the war there, then why don't the Afghanis shoot themselves? It is because they disagree about who is the right person to be shot. If everyone must always disagree about who is the right person to be shot (which is the essence of war) then how can we talk about justice? Yet people are dragged into this foolishness. It is because they are small people and the country that they represent is a small creature.

America speaks like a great person at the moment. Obama speaks about the World, he speaks as though he realises that a happy World is a happy America. Yet we know that hidden in the rhetoric is the old parochialism that really decisions will be made from the inside looking out - the Americans who voted for bush are still alive (though many think they are the right ones to be shot) they will never see beyond home grown policies. The rally under the sign of Jesus but they are very last people in the world to offer their place on the cross for him.

So for all my big talk what happens when your country is threatened. What would I do (if I was a great man) faced with the rise of the Nazis or the rise of Jihadist Islam? The honest truth now is I don't know, I puzzle this daily - to solve this is to know how to face the man who threatens you with a knife in the street. The first thing to realise is that the Nazi and the Jihadist are not wrong. They are at a place where dominantion of another country or people seems the right thing - that is a fact not to be disputed. To enter that discussion and think that really it is them that should be dominated is to think like them. Already every "civilised" response in history is small minded.

We can agree that the common soldier, death camp worker or suicide bomber are probably not the people to enter into discourse with - they most probably "follow orders" and this is not therefore their situation. But find the ring leaders who have set the division amonst people and find what they want. The answer has to be one that makes both sides no longer think that the other side is the right one to kill. It is hard work, it takes great men.

I'm running out of time on this terminal: but hopefully greatmen/smallmen will be concluded in plain words soon...

Teenage Gangs, Knife crime UK

A friend was lamenting the state of the streets today. It made me realise the problem we have today.

A kid here in Reading stole my bike a few years ago. I told the local kids that he could have the bike, but he shouldn't steal. He came and found me to confirm that he could really have it. I repeated yes, but he should have asked before taking and added how would he feel if someone stole from him. That affected him deeply and he started to tell me how bad it was having things always taken. The point is that the kids today are suffering from the lawlessness. Why is this?

The law in this country I believe means that kids below a certain age are beyond the law. They are considered too young to take responsibility. This protects them from their own actions. It does not however protect the other kids from their actions. Thus to protect themselves they form gangs.

I've analysed before the nature of gangs. What is happening is that the largest gang (the government) is effectively refusing to include children in its law system. Naturally they are forming their own groups and laws.

Now there is no difference between the government launching weapons in Iraq and kids fighting with knives. There are brutalities in national gang battles (like the Israelis only last week) and their are brutalities in the smaller battles that occur on the streets now.

I've argued at length in this blog that the true solution is for people to understand the inpact of their actions and realise that we live in an anarchy.

But failing this the government must realise that to be the big gang it must incorporate all people. Kids cannot be left out of the legal system - they have grown up these days and the system hasn't.

The election...

Just checking out the inaugauration ... what goes down must come up and surely things can't get more moronic than over the last 10 years. Obama seems like the kind of guy we need, but the system and the people in the system haven't changed, and human nature remains ignorant. America is responsible for electing the republicans they have themselves to blame for what has happened so this is not a time for celebrating but a time for relief and to reflect upon their sins. Of course UK has its own problems but the previous US administration is more than a part involved. This is not good, it is just a return to normality something I hope the Americans don't get bored of and keep up!

It is interesting that at the outset of the worlds worst recession we are celebrating the rise of a black president. Actually this means nothing it is just a skin colour. But it is amazing because labour used to be scaled based upon colour. If you were black you didn't need a salary, you were a slave. This is how all great economies have been created before the rise of the new black slave namely oil. Cheap labour is what "civilisation" needs so that the "civilians" can escape the burden of work and live as cultural elites. America was the last country on Earth to abolish slavery - some good time after Europe and even Russia. This is how "free" America is. Yet it needed this exploitation to rise to the economic power that it now enjoys. Likewise it had to eliminate the native people to give it the "free" land upon which it could play out its property games. The celebrations are uncalled for, it is just a late turn to normality for America.

I see that Joint Vision 2010 and 2020 are still being funded. This is where is all began for me in 1999. Happily the US military and Rumsfeld's plans for the military have floundered and the US who are too inexperienced and naive to have an empire have failed in their goals of world domination - the New American Century remains another American Dream. With a bloodied nose hopefully a more sensible attitude will sooth the heads of the bombastic nationalistic militaristic red necks that infect all levels in America.

"Do you think you are right to ignore the UN and go it alone in Iraq?", went the UK interviewer in 2003
"Let me tell you, we're the most powerful nation on Earth, we can do what the hell we like!", goes the whitehouse spokesman.

That's the kind of diplomacy and cool headed thinking I like.

I do however feel a bit sorry for old W. Now that his cronies have abandoned him and left him high a dry he seems quite human and reflective over the things he has said yes to. His are very bad friends and he was pushed out by them to take the fire for their madness. I speak especially of Cheney. Hopefully funding to these think tanks and arrogant fools will dry up as their failures become more and more apparent. We can but hope.

OK here it is. A bit of a fluff but he's in. It is never-the-less a great moment and hopefully something that seeds the start of a more positive American people. Certainly the energy has been much better today...

Of Pleasure & Appreciation - milestone!

Finally I'm regaining a lost wisdom and maybe the time has come not to be so hard on the body. There is no body/mind dualism yet I have argued very much against the value of the body and very much for the value of spirituality. There is no material/spiritual dualism either but how do we bring these two together? A clue lies in this...

I had the good fortune to consider the very good cooking of a the grandmother of the boy I am currently tutoring. I am always very appreciative of food, it is always a blessing. It occurred to me that appreciating the food is the very best way to say thank you. Thus the physical pleasure and spiritual gratitude are one! Examine this very closely! When we experience something as a gift, something that is given to us and for which we are fortunate, then the pleasure we experience is fully wholesome and at the same time a gift in return.

In contrast I described the pleasure that a pig might have experienced with the same meal. Or in reflection a dog. The dog devours the food and comes back attentively looking for more. As spiritual beings we confuse this enjoyment and the patiently waiting to be fed as a form of gratitude. The dog seems to recognise that we are the giver of the food; food it deserves only when it is given, and the hasty devouring of the food we take as an expression of enjoyment. This characterists make the dog, and a similar pig, very endearing companions. I question however that we aren't anthropomorphising a bit. There is no 'thank you' from a dog. It either has food or it doesn't. It either likes the food or it doesn't. This does not mean that a hungry dog does not deserve our generosity but the nature of the relationship I doubt it very spiritual.

Sadly humans are all too animal: myself included. How often do we engorge a fast food meal hastily without a seconds appreciation: either stopping to appreciate the gift we are now in possession of, or even stopping to just physically enjoy the food! We are the pig, no more and no less. (This is the pig character in the Chinese Buddhist tale of Monkey King.)

Now I have been aware of this spiritual "requirement" of gratitude and appreciation for many years. It is odd however that I was far more thankful before gaining this wisdom. "Trying" to appreciate things is impossible. Why? Because the cause of non-gratitude is amongst other things greed. After last nights discussion and a few years struggling with this I return to a state resembling gratitude at last, because I am curing my greed.

What was the greed? It seems to be a feature of humans that we have limits. I am very quixotic and am careless about my limits. I will be generous until I have almost nothing left. Then in the resulting state of poverty there is a reaction and an uncontrollable demand for things. This demand turns us into animals and our awareness of the world turns inside out. It is no longer about the world but about us - what I can get.

A moments thought tells us that we can't get anything without a world about us that can supply us with those things. We might try vainly to argue that we deserve something because we put in the years of work required to earn it. But even if we built a house we needed the raw materials. Even if we made all the bricks ourself we need the fuel to fire the furnace. Even if we made the furnace from raw materials and collected all the fuel ourselves we still have nature (or the universe) to thank for supplying us with these things. Stuck adrift in space all the work in the universe won't get us very far! In every breath there "should" be gratitude.

Yet when we are impoverished, when there is that inner demand then no argument makes any difference. We want, I want - this is all that matters. Any attempt to calm ourselves but self-control or abstinence simply makes the demand stronger. We suffer. This is the karma for greed, the suffering that is built into it.

Note here also the arch-sin of all: ego. It is not just demand that matters like a dog's wish for a biscuit. It is demand for things for "myself". That is what gives this demand special power and magic. At root when the demand is not met then it is not the need that is left, but the hurt "I" experience because I have not been realised or appreciated or allowed to exist. When the world shuns "my" need then I am pushed backwards into that cold, dark corner from where I peer out at the world around and wish that it was me out there.

Note also that the every nature of "want" is built upon a belief that we are on one side and the things we want are on the other and the only way to resolve this is to get the things we want onto our side. The sages will point out that the easiest way to get things onto our side is to knock down the wall so that our side and the other side are the same. Maybe unknown to Pink Floyd they wrote an opera that tackles the sickness at the root of all evils: The Wall. Mistakes people make however are either to struggle to get things onto our side, or worst of all travel to the other side. In both scenario is a life of struggle. Bad enough for inanimate things: consider the endless problems when two people are trying to get each other onto their side! Had that experience at work. I for one don't go to other peoples sides. They either join mine or that is the end of it: recipe for difficulty!!

So how did I get to this place? A major component was "my muse". In that extended experience I took the erroneous logic of greed and ego to its conclusion. I made her mine. I believed she was on my side. At the same time I was no so bad as to insist she joined me, I just waited until such time as she did. Even after her death I still wanted to believe she might be on my side - in some phantasmogorical way. A change has happened that preceeds what I write here. A few days ago I realised that I no longer wish her to reappear: if she did great, but i won't wait for that day. She is no longer on my side. I no longer believe she is. Writing this reminds me of that gr8 scene in "Meet the Fockers" - the bloke wakes us to find a simple note from De Niro on his chest: a drawn circle called "circle of trust" and a spot outside it called "him". "my muse" is finally outside the circle of trust. This is not an enlightened position - where all walls and circles are dissolved. My circle of trust still exists but I'm waking up.

So the situation left me desiring sexual and spiritual gratification from someone outside myself (obviously). This sets both them and myself up as real solid things. Then the self gets shitted on from a great height because the world just won't deliver. So the self becomes a non-self (negative self) because it exists only to be denied what it wants - it even exists now because it doesn't get what it wants. The body complains and the desire stops being a wish and becomes a demand. Then it is game over. No girl - no one - ever gave into a demand. Neither do I give into demands from myself and I ran away.

But once the demand is there enormous damage has been done. The self is inside out seeking desperately sustainance and looking only to the outside world for it. There can be no gratitude and no appreciation of what it taken, we have become the pig. This is greed, we are doomed to suffer.

After a long time, when suffering has been experienced and somewhere something that is perceived as fortune breaks through then we might calm down the grasping hand and look at the world more peacefully. In my case it has been the wonderful food I have received at the house of a tutee. Suddenly there is the realisation that we are grateful. Then there is pleasure and appreciation in one. Then we see a harmony between body and spirit, between self and world.

Does this solve the issue of sexuality and relationship? In one sense no because the economic struggle that is a western family is not something anyone should have to suffer. People from the generation before me and before that are endlessly bitter about the world they grew up in. Basically they have been economically exploited. The state has exploited them in wars. Now the economy exploits them again as it struggles with the tsunami of debt that has got to be paid (its not a credit crunch at all). Their's has been a very tough world somewhere the world should show them some gratitude. But it doesn't mean that we all have to carry on like this.

On the other hand this does solve the issue. In a loving relationship the experience of sexual joy is proper when we experience it as a way of saying thank you to our partner. What has had me confused is that I am aware of another type of sexual gratification: that of greed. In this case the pleasure is internal, exploitative and without regard for the "giving" that is essential in the experience. It is not that fopr example pornography by itself is bad: there is an industry of people who are giving visual stimulation. It is bad when the recipient of pleasure does not appreciate the people involved in that experience. Thus even in some bondage it could be argued it is not bad when it is mutual. The problem is that experiences such as porn and bondage where the boundaries between people are so extreme it opens the door to careless exploitation of people and pleasure that is divorced from gratitude.

The culture points its finger at pornography but there are equal examples of pleasure without gratitude throughout the society. From fast food, to service industry, to the concept of human resources and art collectors. In all these cases the lines between people are enlarged. The whole idea of quick eating is underwritten by the concept of carelessness and indifference. People expecting other people to do things for them for money is nothing more than prostitution. Human resources is an abomination I don't need to explain. Collecting art for its financial value is cynical and probably the main reason for the implosion of post-modern art - there is no pleasure and no gratitude in a canvas hidden in someone's warehouse as capital.

So this exp0sition hits the nail on the head of what is wrong with the economy and brings me happily back to earth where I left it all those years before meeting "my muse". The exposition of my own faults of greed and ego has run its course I now hope and I can return with the warning - all ye who enter on that path adandon all hope. A great man is a man who follows his greater part, a lesser man one who follows his lesser path. In return the greater path is one of pleasure and gratitude as one indivisible entity: body and mind, matter and spirit as one.

The problem with the economy is that people and the world are the horse that drives the cart of industry with its wheels of money. When the cart comes before the horse - as we are now experiencing - when politicians and business men make "financial" decision rather than "human" decisions they become pigs (as G. Orwell noted) and pleasure (for that is what all economy at root creates) becomes more important than gratitude. It is the value of things that starts to drive the world, and the appreciation for what we are given becomes an after thought. Then this comical horse walking backwards with its owners looking over their shoulders as the cart careers along the road is a sight for the wise to laugh long and loud about - but with due gratitude for the clowns who have so entertained them.

The Copernican revolution?

A new take on the Copernical "revolution" conumdrum mentioned before (but not by that name). The conumdrum is that while we all accept that the Earth goes around the Sun this contradicts our daily experience of the Sun rising in the East and setting in the West before returning East again in the morning.

We are even conditioned to believe that this conumdrum is explained by saying that "while the Earth goes around the Sun the Earth is revolving so that anyone standing on the Earth will perceive the Sun to be orbiting." Now it is true that the Copernican model explains the passage of the Sun not just daily but also annually and for every point on Earth. It is a more descriptive model no question. However it does not replace the previous model at all (of the orbiting Sun) which is a much better one for daily observation.

It is like Einstein's theory usurping Newtons. Newton's is still good for normal observation, Einsteins is just more complete.

Now the conundrum is the question, "Given two fundamentally different models, which one is Real?"

In other words does the sun really orbit the Earth, or the Earth really orbit the Sun?

The answer is neither! This is the non-self of Buddhism. Given any phenomenon there is no "real" underlying substance or reality. Depending where you stand both models work! Neither is fundamental, neither is real. There is no more real a sun at the centre of of the solar system than there is going around the Earth. Copernicus explained the phenomena better, but phenomena is what they remain - the same phenomena that early man explained as the sun travelling through the sky.

This also reveals the inherent cultural snobbery and eliteish that accompanies science. That we the West believe we have the truth and our ancestors were ignorant - is the most arrogant and profound ignorance. Both explained what they saw as well as they need to, that is all we can do.

Toward a human economics ... cont

First 5 additions to yesterdays critique of economics...

1) Economics does not measure that which is naturally given. Thus sunshine, oxygen, rainfall, growth, sunsets, natural beauty etc. All these have fundamental value yet it is not measured very well in economics. People may pay to enter a national park or a zoo to wonder at natural beauty and form but "nature" gets no payment so who does this money belong to? Nature does not charge us for its services. Thus we do not pay for the pleasure of having an "eye" for example. This type of fundamental value is not currently measured, only the relative value of exchange. Thus I might exchange my eye for a new kidney altho the value of each is unique and personal.

This I see links directly with the discussion on measuring before. One cannot measure absolutes only hold one things against another and compare quantitatively. Obviously money as a measure of value will only ever compare things.

2) The analysis of the mechanisms was money flow were not made clear enough. The physical mechanism of money transfer and the availability of money themselves have important impacts on the value of things. As I will expand below money is not a simple ballot system to find which is most valuable.

3) The issue of built in obsolescence has slipped from these pages. The absurd feature of commersialism that it is better to produce cheaper products that break than to produce more expensive ones that last a lifetime. It is absurd because it creates unnecessary work for no gain, and it is absurd because it results in far greater cycling of raw materials and environmental degredation than is necessary for the same products.

4) The divison of private and company time. When for example we phone customer services to gain a refund on an error we have to work for free while the company funds the customer services out of the company profits. Thus the cost of products is higher to compensate and we effectively end up paying for our own customer services. We pay twice. This is another example of a type of work that is not measured by the prevailing economics.

5) Just to recap there is the fantastic feature of economics that not only must we work to create the products that we need, but we must buy the things we don't need to create jobs. This puts the cart far before the horse and creates work and environmental degredation where none is needed.

The Prevailing System.
Continuing the argument from the last blog the benefits of the current system can be seen.

On the principal that each person has equal rights and needs we distribute equal voting tokens to each person (say £100/person/week). They then purchase in the normal way and the money accumulated by each company represents their relative value in the market place. This way exchange value can be determined and non productive companies will be closed. The government collects these tokens and redistributes them. Thus circumenting an unequal salary system.

This is extremely naive and reveals the logic of the rest of the system.

Suppose that an individual like myself does not spend very much. In other words I start to accumulate voting tokens. Gradually the number of tokens in the system will reduce. People will be given progressively less than the opening £100 and correspondingly will be prepard to spend less and prices will fall. As my stash increases my spending power will grow doubly and if I form a cartel we can end up in a position where we can buy anything completely skewing the system. This is worse than what happens now.

If the government claimed all tokens back at the end of each cycle and regarded the unspent ones as a vote for "nothing" this would encourage people to buy things anyway. This is exactly aspect 5 above to be avoided!

If on the other hand the government recycled the tokens but continued to acknowledge your continual ownership then we have the fractional banking system which is also to be avoided and massive inflation as the limited money supply gets reused many times.

Work?
This is just the markets. The next problem is work. If we all got identical tokens by right of living then wouldn't we shop instead of work? Where is the incentive to make things?

The original reason to make thinge was that we did not have them and to get them we must make them. This is reflected in the current system that we must work before we receive the products of that work. Except that our work is exchanged for money and we exchange our money for goods.

This represents the simple personal situation perfectly. But in reality it is never like this. 10 people hunt a deer, 10 people build a house, 10 people farm crops. One person by himself does not get very far. So actually it is 10 people who earn the wages and 10 people who spend them. So what relation does each person have to the community? Under what circumstances do we say that someone is taking more out than they put in? Add to this the problem that occurs when technology increases the productivity of the group, or even makes certain jobs and skills redundant. The group can exchange its products on the market for money but how does the group then decide how to exchange that money.

The current solution is to reduce it to the individual situation. We each market ourselves. If one group offers us a higher share than another then we can change groups. But other non economic factors like enjoying the people of one group more than another may affect our decision.

In the current system "group" refers to legally registered company which is based upon a financial loan and an owner of that capital. Of course a "group" pays back the investment so in theory the group owns the group. But this is not the Capitalism model. There are rewards for risk and also property rights involved. Certainly an entrepreneur takes a risk that employees do not take. But in reality groups are abitrary and it is worth considering the group of all human beings. This group works together and produces products for itself. It is the highest level of human super organism. Strange that few people think at this level which is every bit as real as a registered company. Above this lies the greater groups of ecology, but these do not exchange their goods and "labour" on an exchange and are not measured.

While I brainstorm here to consider the bee. Famously contrasted to the archetect by Marx. But both do provide an exchangeable product. Honey is exchangeable for money as are building plans. The difference though is that the archetect expects to be paid for his "labour" while the "bee" gets given a one off payment of a hive and is expected to do the rest itself. The bee keeper by contrast might be expected to be paid per hour for his labour in collecting honey. Arguments have been created to show that the bee does not work because work requires conscious intention.

I don't think the markets care whether it was conscious intention that made something or a bee or a machine. The product is exchanged as what it is. The money raised by that is then distributed within the group who created the product. If the product is not very valuable but requires huge amounts of manhours (like for example counting the grains of sand on a beach) no one will accept that wage and that product won't be made. If on the other hand a pin factory can buy a machine which requires 1 operator to produce £1000 worth of pins a day then it becomes viable. The idea of our "time" being paid is a myth. We simply get a share of what has been made.

Just arguing this out loud I see the link between time by money is not only a myth but is also highly dangerous. When products are produced per hour rather than per product then the whole nature of work is changed. Workers agreeing to a wage per hour leads industrialists to require products per hour and neither us nor the product determines the work.

Per hour of course is also an inhumane constract.

A share of the exchanged value seems to be the logical way to distribute wages.

I've no more time here but the brief further argument was that to get people to work we might need to either qualify them for shopping tokens only if they work or make work compulsory which is exactly what we have.

Crudely then the reasons for the current system are laid out and the requirements for the new system also.

Measuring Human Values

This is the requirement of the new economics and the failure of the current.

Why doesn't traditional economics measure what is important to humans? i.e. why doesn't money measure the human value of things?

What is on the economic radar?
In theory it should.
(1) We buy what we humanly want or need.
(2) We make that which we can sell, which therefore has a human value
(3) We are compensated with the power to enact (1).

The value of goods should be set by how much money is available to each person and their relative human need for those goods. The amount of money available to each person should be set by the relative human value of their time (i.e. what they make of human value in that time).

One must also add money velocity. So an economy where work is done fast and goods consumed fast recycles the money faster and we therefore have more value passing through our hands per year and appear richer. (Current credit situation arising because the velocity not the amount of money has slowed.)

What is missing on the economic radar?
However consider the situation where someone is disabled in some way. They can contribute less of human value but require more. The work done to assist them while of enormous value to them cannot be compensated with money and so is not measured. Likewise child care does not currently appear on the radar altho it is conceivable that parents could take out loans that their children have to pay back.

Consider the situation of mutual exchanges. A loving couple providing each other with TLC. While of enormous value to each other pricing becomes very difficult. Could we ever say to our partner I will charge £100 per night for my time, and our partner charge more and it be a stable relationship. It also means that the relationship becomes universal in nature and we are open to bids from other individuals - a girl at work offering us a cheaper rate for example.

Consider in the same vein a child taking parents who charge them less.

The notion of human identity - where we wish to be with "this particular person" in a mutual and closed exchange - which is the foundation of love and care; the core human values - cannot therefore be traded on an open exchange where all things are compared like with like.

This refelcts on the first case of invalid care. We care for them not as parts of a relative market but as absolute elements "in their own right".

This idea of humans as "ends in themselves" is often recognised as a key component of human life, human values and a core foundation of human and civilised life.

Money then proves completely incapable of reflecting value the value of individual things. It can only measure the value of "types of thing" which can be freely traded on an open market.

Money therefore measures the value of a type but not the value of a token.

Thus we can say that "an apple" is worth 40p because across all markets this is the average amount. There will be regional differences but actual individual values cannot be reflected. Some people like apples, some don't. Our personal values and our personal relationship with apples exists entirely separately from the price.

The impact on Society
As money becomes the standard of interactions in a society we end up with a society of people who view the price of thinsg as the market price of things (traditional called the exchange value) but who become less capable of having a personal relationship with things. Thus we end up buying that which has high market value, or which is on discount rather than simply buying that which we need (and can afford). We also learn not to value non financial interactions and the value of other people as "ends in themselves" seeing them purely as relative agents in a market place. Of course we become viewed as such and we end up with no trust and personal security as our life is freely exchanged with any other.

Personal values are not this simple however. In addition to the averaging effect of markets are group values which I have dicussed at length. Thus people divorced from their own ability to evaluate things can accept group pressures to conform and I always cite the Nazis as a famous case of membership swaying people to do things they would not otherwise have done.

Just adding to this recent news from Guantanamo. An ex guard described the situation there as allowing some people to become the very worst that they could be and some people had been waiting for such an opportunity as this to express their badness. Or words like that. It seems that some people have a tendency to be brutal and groups can sanction release of this behaviour. However I firmly believe that this brutal behaviour is itself a feature of other group behaviour and in line with religious belief we are all gods at heart.

So here lies the problems now the solutions of economics to follow.

Gr8 nature participation site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/doonething/simple/surveys.shtml

Recession & Environment

As the recession pulls back on the bull of economic growth a wonderful thing is happening! Just listening to BBC Radio 4 last night in more than one place people are talking about a reassessment of the value of our economy! Maybe I don't need to write my book, maybe the change is coming all by itself.

"People are rediscovering that the best things in life are free" says a National Trust warden - days out with the family, landscapes all are free. In another place the discourse on sustainable economy appears to have risen in the consciousness. The extinction of the fossil fuel based economy is on the horizon. In the long term because no new fossil fuel is being produced and we are using it at a staggering rate. In the short term because of carbon based taxes. Now is the time to redeploy capital toward the economy of the future. This attitude is just part of the larger awareness that just as we have lived beyond our means financially so we are living beyond our means ecologically and the "environment crunch" is going to be far more catas-trophic than anything we see now.

Laterally a separate discussion was had by the editor of the magazine Wired on the arrival of a true free economy based upon the almost zero cost of digital data replication. While I don't rate this as a productive direction itself, it shows that the ingrained economic thinking of the industrial revolution is being eroded and the possibility of reconceiving our personal interactions in terms other than a limited model of exchange value is having its genesis.

One sad relapse to the old thinking is the attempt by the government to stimulate jobs by further fuelling the old archeic industries. First it was the banks, then Heathrow and now they are talking of refinancing the car industry. There are very good reasons why the car will fail, and very good reasons why the car should fail. I discuss the many sides on my web page, but to me the most damaging is the rise of the supermarket. When people drive to the shops they can travel further and carry more. It destroys local shops and communities as all products are brought under one roof. It leads to less frequent shopping, more food storage, more packaging and more centralised food distribution. That encourages road usage and diminishes the impact of local agriculture. It centralises capital and gives increased powers to supermarkets who then use this to drive prices down and thus exploit farmers, livestock and the countryside. Food quality reduces, animal welfare reduces, environment reduces, jobs reduce and health reduces while pollution rises. It is a terrible scar on current society. And this is just one side!

As also discussed on my web page things are most efficient when they are shared. Most obviously space is shared. If we cut the world up into individual plots of land we would have to live our whole lives on only 3.5 football pitches - and on the land would have to be the roads, crops, livestock, mining, industry, sewage, waste disposal and everything we use! A remarkable fact! It is only possible because we centralise and share these resources.

Given the advantages of economy of scale and division of labour how odd it is that while supermarkets exploit the power of centralisation we have a transport system going in the opposite way! Instead of giving the money to the car industry why not take this wonderful opportunity to let the dinosaur die and instead fund public transport. The problem is that a public transport system could be created that offered people greater freedom than the car but for less money and with less jobs. The reason is basic economics.

However we have this growing problem that efficiency works against the fundamental tenet of ancient thinking that we must work for what we receive. This is plainly absurd yet the dogma is so entrenched that it seems few people have questioned it. I won't discuss the details but consider returns on capital investment - the backbone of the current division between rich and poor. What work does an investor do? Yet they get handsome returns.

If we make the economy efficient then we will make people unemployed. Yet we are beginning to accept that we must increase energy efficiency to protect the environment and ultimately create a sustainable economy (unless we rapidly work out how to exploit other planets). So with these two competing problems it is only a matter of time before we have to find a way of distribution wealth separately from labour! For now give the car money to the future of transport namely the public transport system.

Middle East n Violence

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

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

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

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

The surmounting of sexual desire!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Numbers, Ratios, Fascism, Value

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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