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