Sex, Power & Cruelty

Following from the last post there is a second aspect to cruelty, that of its relation to sex. A lot of pornography and sexual activity involves cruelty. If the degraded person does it willingly then it submissing behaviour, but in its extreme form where it is done unwillingly then it is cruelty. Immediately the relationship to power can be seen. A woman who performs degrading acts like blowjobs or anal sex etc too willingly is considered negatively as in a slut or whore. The 'power' value of the act is greater if she has to be seduced, and in some way a mythical quality like respect is tainted. I wonder whether there is a female counterpart to this?

So why is power an aspect of sexuality? A power that can seek its source in the inflicting of pain?

One of the key features of the animal kingdom is that most animals can be distinguished into a female and male form: that is sex. Sex is strictly not to do with reproduction but the mixing of genes. Many bacteria and protozoans perform gene mixing with reproduction occuring separately. In sexual species however where gametes cannot meet each other so easily, the creation of a small mobile haploid gamete (the sperm) and a large nutricious stationary gamete (the egg) provide both the gene mixing and the creation of the new individual in one act. The growth of the metazoan (what we call the animal) around the sex cells then occurs in the female (by definition).

Now the feature of the male as being the carrier of small mobile gametes distinguishes him from the female who invest more in the egg. Her increased investment means that she is needs to get it right and is more choosy of a mate. It means that she has a greater interest in the off spring and also that she is less 'fit' than the male during gestation. The male as I have commented before has a much dfferent strategy. He cannot be sure that the females children are his own. Two strategies thus exist for the male: become territorial and lock the female up (Sheherezade etc) , or 'put it about' (Don Giovani etc). It seems that males are involved in both, and females are receptive to both also - however the female does need to trick some man into providing for the offspring during gestation. This is not a universal: in phalaropes (a type of bird) famously the male sits on the eggs, and in sea-horses the same. Quite what environmental challenges led to this I do not know (but am sure someone is researching as I write). In humans where the off spring are born prematurely to get them through the birth canal which has been narrowed by the shift to upright walking - and also require the longest nurture of any animal the cost to the female is huge and her need of support is huge. While feminists reject marriage and the need by men to control female reproduction to ensure they are supporting their own children, I wonder whether they also reject marriage and the suuport that a female derives from it? Feminism is in uneqivocal terms - claptrap. Its spirit of liberating women from oppression is noble, but it has been hijacked from the outset by ignorant and selfish people who have multiplied the oppression. The result has been the abandonment of a whole generation and the undermining of western humanity.

Returning to the point... built into the sexual distinction then are profound inequalities. Clearly the female should be larger to cope with the greater physical investment and in birds and reptiles etc this is true. In humans however where the investments are more shared it is the male who is larger. I imagine that human males spend a lot of time in territorial disputes. As I have commented on at length in this blog it is apprent to me that most of our daily life is spent in status squabbles be that getting the better car, the bigger house, or just the sharper suit. Women famously respond to status: a platinum card will bed more women than a gold I have been reliably told. I've also realised that women are involved in furious status squabbles also. Life in a harem is extremely difficult because of the infighting for favour by the lead male. However because of the physical aggression expressed by the male in territorial disputes, women rarely resort to physical violence. Power in women is achieved by more subtle and passive methods: for example being beautiful, gossiping (bitching) etc. By way of evidence I've mentioned before that I studied rabbits for by Zoology Bsc dissertation. They spend as much time watching for predators (which will kill) as they do watching out for each other (who will kill also!). Humans have few predators: we spend all out time watching out for each other. If war brings any good things it is that intra-community squabbles will diminish as the extra-community power squabbles intensify.
So finally the issue of cruelty. Neuroscience has done one good thing - it has shown that in the male at least sexual activity and physical violence occur in the same part of the brain. We can use this as an analogy for their similarity. One of the key status elements in the male is his ability to have sex. Thus a sexual encounter for the male can be more than just a sexual encounter - it is an act of status. For the female I believe she gains her status from the status of the guy whose harem she choses to join. If she sleeps around it doesn't work because at root it is female choice! However once in a harem she will vie to be #1. If she is the only girl in the harem then she can't prove her status! So large harems, or guys with multiple partners are attractive in this strategy.
Given the intimate relationship between sex and status then it is no wonder that power becomes a currency in the sex act. A sexual act involving power is "sexy". Thus cruelty from the previous analysis can become "sexy".

Now it is important to understand how this has been arrived at. It is only when the ego seeks freedom from other people, and seeks freedom by seeking dominance over other people that cruelty can seem positive. However it is only positive from the glass cage of the ego. The ego doesn't realise that the apparent freedom is really cheese on a mouse trap. By cutting itself off from sexual partner, or fellow human the ego is becoming isolated and imprisoned. How ironic that a situation should ever arise where the ignorant ego can enter a prison and think that it is freedom! Thus the cruel self becomes emprisoned. The future is loneliness, sadness, powerlessness and sadness - complete dejection and rejection.

For these reasons such a big deal is made of love and sex. Love is the opposite of cruelty. Love is true freedom but it involves taking risks and the ego must risk losing in order to gain. Jesus dying on the cross should remind us all (X-ianian or otherwise) that death is nothing to be afraid of and is a risk worth taking for Universal Love.

However I still have much to analyse because why should Sex & Love be connected where power and aggression are such intimate bedfellows with sexuality? Neuroscience will show us that Love is a completely different part of the brain to sex and aggression!

Of Cruelty

This is of particular interest to me because it is my #1 demon. As a child I realised that there is no problem more fundamental in the world than cruelty. People can be ignorant and careless, but when they see what they have done they regret it. The problem it seems with cruetly is that it is done in the full knowedge that it is wrong, and the wrongness is even the attractive feature. Realising that such a possibility existed, a genuine motivation to do evil (rather than it being a superficial matter of mistake) radicalised my childhood morality.

Radio 4's "Leading Edge" last night carried a section on a new book 'Cruelty' by neuroscientist Kathleen Taylor. I despair even more of neuroscience after what was said. Cruelty was analysed as a function of group memberships - it seems that the analytic tool I've been using to discuss the motivation behind progress, wealth and happiness is alive and well in the professional analytic world to. Well after that analysis I know even less about it than I did before. Does this mean that Abu Graid was a good thing or a bad thing? Because the prisoners were from an "out-group" the American soldiers were stimulated to behave like this... so will human's always behave like this to "out-groups"? or do we have a choice? And if we have a choice then why did the American soldiers not use it when faced with "out-group" instincts? Yup we've learned nothing.

I admit it has been a difficult analysis for myself also. But let me express what I realised many years ago and probably needs updating.

A situation of cruelty is one where someone (a perpetrator) inflicts suffering on another (the victim). Objectively the victim suffers. From their point of view the suffering should stop. An objective person will be sensitive to this and want to stop the suffering. The perpetrator then realises that they have the power to stop the suffering and objectively they would.

In doing this however the perpetrator realises that they have the power to start the suffering also. Thus what was initially a stop contains in it a start. What was from the position of the victim an imperative to stop the suffering, becomes from the position of the perpetrator a definition of power.

What I have described as "objective" - the Law which states that suffering is bad and should stop - becomes perverted by the Ego when it separates itself from the victim. For the perpetrator it is no longer a Law which states that the suffering should stop - but a Law in Your (the victim's)world. "I" the perpetrator am free from your world now and am a Law unto myself. I prove this in having the power to start or stop my punishment of you, and in my rejection of the Law of your world which tells me to stop.

Thus the action of cruelty involves an absolute movement of Ego to cut oneself off from the Other. It is an act of Alterity. If you have ever experienced this it is frightening because you realise that there are no rules anymore - you genuinely can do what you want. Thus perverted Kingships have "enjoyed" unchasened violence in the past - people of the likes of Vladimir the Impaler and others.

So what encourages the Ego to absolutely cut itself off from the world around and in so doing divorce itself from responsibility to others, and in so doing open up the possibility of glorification in violence and suffering in others? It is the possibility of a Real Self.

In our hearts we know that our existence is at best mediocre. We have to compromise and take "shit" from other people every day of our lives. It comes to a crunch in which there are 3 possibilities.
(1) The most primative solution is to form an army and fight back. Ultimately this means to inflict suffering on those who have woed us. There is one word for this solution: America. It involves picking up a gun and blowing people away, or tying them up in dungeons and torturing them. This way is death of others: we are free of them.
(1) The more advanced solution is the internalisation of (1): just roll over and die. Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or end them. For Hamlet both options were personal death: we are free of them.
(3) The most advanced solution achieves freedom but no-one dies. Inflicting death is stupid anyway because eventually it will happen by itself. Its a bit like taking revenge on someone by scratching their car only to see that it was on a conveyor belt towards crushers anyway. The advanced way is to realise that the "self" is the victim of a thousand ininquities during life, and that it is going to die anyway oneday, and that it will get old, and really its clapped out. If we can divorce ourselves from ourself - not in an act of violence but simply gently forgetting - then all of the above is no longer a problem...

Once the self no longer craves control and power over the world around it. Once the self no longer accumulates the sufferings imposed on it by others. Once the self no longer calculates the actions of others as violations of itself. Once the self no longer seeks to correct these iniquities by inflicting them on others. Once the self no longer glorifies its power over others. Once all these things have come and gone: then we are neither wronged against and we neither seek to wrong others.

I see the children of today and realise that since my day as a child the world has worsened a lot. Kids openly talk about Revenge these days; I doubt I will ever hear of forgiveness. Kids openly demand Respect these days: but I doubt I will ever see them freely give respect. Kids openly talk about Revenue these days: but I doubt anyone will ever see a penny from them.

Each of these belongs to a person who has bought himself. Little does such a person know that this self he has bought is due to die soon of its own natural causes. This self looks nice in its packaging, but stripped naked it is a fragile and ugly creature. Stripped further it is full of worries and insecurities and weaknesses. Stripped further there is nothing there. Yet given the quality of the product the fool still buys himself - choses the prison of this one small person rather than the palace of the world outside.

So firmly prisoned up inside ourselves we start to accumulate the slings and arrows of the passing fortunes that really we have almost no control over. Some are lucky, some not - it is pure luck. If we are walled up in an unlucky prison then woe on woe! We seek to protect the prison, we seek some power with which to enforce our own emprisonment. How dare the world try to turn me out of my prison. Eventually I may find a situation where I can attack the people in other prisons. See in their eyes the suffering that I have been feeling. For a moment the suffering seems to be outside me and I am as long as they are suffering free from pain. I have control and power over them, I am no-longer victim, I glorify the freedom from Others and the suffering that has brought.

But it is lonely in space. And, in space living things die. This illusion of freedom is onec again death.

The only true freedom is to escape the prison. And this reminds me of teh first thing I ever gave my muse to read. Sitting in that cafe in Piccadilly staring at her pretty face as she scanned the words she smiled and nodded and looking starry eyes at me she said 'I know what you mean'. I thought she really did. I'll dig it out. Maybe it'll make more sense to me now.

The rules of the road

I'm a cyclist at the moment and have been paying attention to the "rules" of the road... or not as the case may be and it gives plenty of opportunity to re-investigate the issues of "law" that I examined last year.

Can a traffic light be wrong? This question perfectly separates the two types of people that I identified in a previous blog.

Red means stop. Green means Go. You are wrong if you disobey these: is the simple answer. Because it is simple the law uses this rule otherwise legal cases would be far too complicated.

But we are not the legal system. In reality we all know the traffic light systems have been introduced to manage traffic flow so that ultimately we don't hit each other and hit pedestrians. If the world changed so that collisions were no longer a problem then the traffic light system would lose its utility. The actual LAW is the physics of collisions - that deserves the name Law because it can't be changed. The human impositions to manage this Law are technically Rules because we can design them how we want (summary of big analysis last year).

If we come to an empty junction and the traffic light is Red then actually it is wrong because actually we can go. This is where round-abouts are so ingenious. If you are clear to the right you can go. Trains use the same system: if the track ahead is clear you can pass a Red light but with caution.

Now if an accident happens and you have gone through a Red light then you must accept that you are in the wrong - here the traffic light is useful to resolve the argument about responsibility. But we can easily envisage a situation where the person going through green was wrong and the person going through red was right.

Suppose you advance cautiously through a red and get hit by someone driving carelessly going through the green. They are lucky the law will smile on them. But if you were a child running into the road then while the law will smile on them the Law will not. No matter how "correct" you are, the laws of physics mean that the child will be seriously hurt. Now the "fascist" will maintain that they are "right" and dismiss all other aspects of the situation. But this situation is "out of the box". If they had been driving more carefully then they could have reacted better - it is a fact. The law defines a very rigid box into which all situations must fir. Reality only fits into boxes when it is forced and it takes the mentality of a fascist (as defined earlier in the blog) to do this. To illustrate: this is how some people could think it correct to exterminate Jews: they simply avoided reality and stayed in the rules of the Nazi box.

The simplicity and practicalities of a legal system in essence miss this point. A cautious driver going through a red is actually a better person to have on the road than someone who drives carelessly and without regard for other people - it is simply practicality not some essence that stops the law from measuring this fundamental point.

So in a better world we would be able to rely upon all people to be careful and responsible drivers and to then obviously allow them to ignore automated (fascist) traffic signal when the don't apply. But we can't assume all people will be careful drivers so the law has to create artificial goal posts to attempt to catchout offenders. The logic is that "bad" drivers are more likely to disobey the rules of the road. But it means the rest of us have to obey the rules, not for any utility, but simply to enact the image that we are "good" drivers. Since it is just an image - bad drivers can learn to enact it also - like slowing down just for the cameras!

A worse effect of the law is that it can sanction irresponsible driving! If the light is green then "I" can Go regardless what other people are doing. When it is green, I can be fascist, I have the law behind me, I don't need to think about other people!

Being in the "right" is a great feeling because it means we can act with total disregard for those people in the "wrong". Sometimes those people in the wrong deserve some kind of admonition. But equally likely they are blameless. A recent example is my mother who is the most responsible and cautious driver, yet has been penalised for speeding at a new road layout where the speed limit now changes suddenly from 40 to 30. Someone with a tom-tom that could tell them the speed cameras could then drive with complete disregard for human life and go undetected.

We can't improve the pratctical weaknesses of the legal system, but we can realise the difference between Rules and Laws. Sadly there remain two types of people in the world. Those that use Rules like Laws (I imagine it is psychological because it gives them a sense of concrete power) and those who realise the utility of rules. This is no trivial matter. The holocaust during the second world war was carried out by the former. The human rights abuses by American soldiers during the Iraq war by the former. These types of people are a great danger to humanity - yet they are the ones who gravitate toward positions of authority and I realise now that my argument is not so much with the transparent impartial system of Rules of the country, but with that type of person who thinks the Rules are more important than their utility.

Now that undermines some of the quoted great achievements of UK law - especially the Magna Carta at Runnemead which places the law above all people! As with everything we have a double edged sword here... something to think more about on my bicycle... ok lunch now.

No place like Home (unless its Rihanna's home)

Interesting to see pop singer Rihanna all beat up in the press last week. We see pictures like this alot and we are reminded that violence is a shocking part of "human" reality. What is interesting is that with Rihanna there is a extra flavour that this shouldn't happen to someone in her position with her success. Actually it is part of life and happens to us all. I thought this was especially ironic given that great track she sang on "Living a Lie". This reminds me of "Wizard of Oz" made early on is the days of colour cinema and a wonderful fable and bildensroman warning us of the nature of pursuing "dreams" and the wisdom that the true goal is finding ourselves. She becomes lost and thinks that the Wizard of Oz will get her home. On the way she meets three characters: one stupid, one heartless and one lacking courage: she herself is lost. The journey provides her with the opportunity to develop these qualities but she still thinks the Wizard will get her home. He turns out to be fake but he reveals that all along she had the power to get home - her shoes. We are reminded as the film goes black&white again that "there is no place like home". I wonder how many film audiences really get this message and go home after they have been dazzled by the dreams of the media world? Reminds me also of the speech given at the commencement of TV broadcasts in Bhutan. The people were reminded that the images on the screen are just trasient phenomena and they should be treated with the same disregard as mirages. It didn't work and within a year the population was hooked on imported soap operas and murdering each other to steal money for the impossible Hollywood dreams. It would have been wiser to keep the ban on American culture - but America would then use the TV to make them look bad. Bhutan has to realise the illusions have now become the reality and the human race is l-Oz-t.

Images like Rihanna's remind us of the paper thin nature of the media illusion...but then isn't that image just media also... so what is the reality?... all phenomena not just commericial media are illusions at root.

I dreamed I was King of a golden palace...

An addition to the Night's Camp blog entry... in particular where I was observing the wastefulness of "house" living... occurred to me this morning to remix that old Zhuang Zi thought...

Last night I dreamed I was the king of a golden palace and a mountain top. Today I AM the king of that golden palace and a mountain top dreaming I am no-one and living in a garage.

This is perculiarly more insightful to me than the original... (and there is some nonsense on the wiki page - the notion of 'spontaneous order' ... how could we ever speak of "order" if it wasn't a given and innate to existence? There is no more "sponteneity order" than "spontaneous disorder" - order in dance with disorder is the very nature of existence... anyway I digress)...

It illustrates the emptiness of phenomena and of ourselves quite well. That what we may struggle a good part of our lives to achieve i.e. being King of some empire and have the money to build a gold palace on a mountain (no doubt some feat!) is of no use if when we dream, we dream of being back in the gutter! A King dreaming he is a poor subject is still a King it is true, but the "being a King" has no solidity or importance anymore! If he is so completely distracted from his "being a King" by just a dream how insubstantial and empty this "being a King" is. Now we ask is such an transparent thing really of any value? Was it worth all the work? And the King realising this might well feel profound unease about what he really is. He may well turn nasty and tyrannical to continually prove his power so as to chase the fears of insubstantiality away - but it is a losers game. The self ultimately evaporates - this is the emptiness of self. We are all Kings, we are all losers in this game of "being someone".

On the more trivial level the issue of "having a house" is of little value if we always dream we are homeless. Likewise the no-one and who is homeless but who dreams always that he is a King and lives in a Palace: is he really any poorer?

Anatta and Dukkha are thus related - fear of non-self creates dissatisfaction as we realise that we are nothing, and everything that we may "believe we own" is just an imaginery relationship.

p.s. in the original Zhuang Zi dreams he was a butterfly.

Stock market gambling... what I've learned

I just pulled out of the gold market for a breather with a 7.8% return for the year... rubbish if you compare what was available (more like 60%) ... but I've learned alot.




Stock prices show a random undulating pattern - tomorrows price is based upon todays price. Ideally we predict every trough and buy and every peak and sell. I buy into the wave analysis and fractal guys in that peaks and troughs occur at different scales. You can pitch your scrutiny of the graphs at whatever interval you like - weekly, monthly, yearly and follow the peaks and troughs at those scales.






I'm currently playing around with weekly and 3monthly to try and slow my trading down and make predictions on these scales. When I first started I paniced at every down turn thinking the price was going off a cliff and bought whenever the price looked to be going up. Such behaviour leads to being "out of sync" with the trend and buying at the peaks and selling at the troughs! If you make a loss just wait until the market recovers is a slow but sure way to get the value back. Continual shifting capital around looking for profit seems only for the real dedictaed and is highly risky plus expensive given about a 0.5% cost to buy and sell.






Key things to look out for are the patterns of peaks and troughs which tend to have multiple highs and lows - in particular the head&shoulders for a downturn and the cup& handle for an upturn. I am currently wondering what the handle&cup in the silver price means?

Another crutial understanding is the awareness of bubbles. They say a bubble has many stages the last of which is euphoria, "when even the shoeshine boy is giving stock tips" it's time to sell. I got hit by the gold bubble burst last time expecting the financial crisis to play out fast and logically - but it didn't and investors were remarkably slow to digesting information. What is unfolding now we knew about 18months ago yet it has only just hit the markets for real! The economy has a lot further to unravel and gold has a lot further to go, but the timescale is years not weeks!

Quickly ethics. I'm only trading in silver and gold because their prices don't really impact on peoples lives, they are not shares in anyone's labour, and they are a good alternative to fiat money while the banking industry messes up its own value system. However I am accutely aware that the markets don't create wealth at all because there is no labour. Any profit I make is at the cost of someones else - it is the old mercantile system in full display!



Finally a point of interest that no-one seems to ever discuss. The price is purely the result of investor behaviour. If confidence is high: the price is high and vice-versa. When reading any technical analysis then it is worth bearing this in mind. If people will be inspired toward a stock by news, trends or technical analysis even if there is no real underlying logic then the price will rise and vice-versa. It is good to be irrational in trading. Smart in predicting the wolf but then like a sheep in prediction how the market will behave.



Now for the really smart of course we are in game-theory territory here. The movement of stock trends is really just a vast game of various competing strategies. At some time in the past certain trends have been noticed and now people follow those indicators and trends which thus makes the market behave according to the indicators and trends. So while technical analysis works it is simply because people follow technical analysis that it works - a self fulfilling prophesy not a principal of the markets - something worth remembering. But of course what I say here if it affects market behaviour will simply feed back on itself untilw e have some kind of stable population of strategies out there... that is the real secret to understanding the market - the population of strategies amongst investors.



I look forward to seeing what happens here in the gold trend. A double top I believe may have been formed and this will be viewed by the technicians as the end of the 8 year run for gold. Given the amount of caution thus generated many people will be talking this market down now - as indeed I'm doing sort of. Of course all this plays out over the battle between fiat currency and gold currency and the results depend more on who wins that. While being very bullish for gold given awareness of the weaknesses of the capitalist system, for some reason I sense the end of this episode coming and the fiat system having survived... this time. Then of course there is the vast inflation comming when the banks start working again. So there's got to be plenty of upside for gold in the future.

That all said its like Heisenberg: you say something and you change the system. A writer when asked on his next book said ' you can either talk about something or you can do it, and I want to write about it'. Decisions for tomorrow's investments are only based on sentiments today, they are not dictated by today...

-- update : interesting post from a fractal analyst

http://www.kitco.com/ind/nichols/feb272009.html

Bad because it is Good

Wanted to briefly explain a way of writing that often puts rationalists and scientists off religious texts.

To demonstrate: consider the recent election of Barack Obama. That he was a black president is considered an landmark event in American history.

Analyse this a bit. The problem that is being addressed is that historically black people have been distinguished from white people by the colour of their skin alone. Indeed we can distinguish them based upon their skin colour - some people are white (or pinkish, brownish) and some are dark and black - its a fact. The problem is that some people use this distinction to build other distinctions - like intelligence, social status, value. Clearly this is nonsense: we don't judge a car's performance by its colour: so why a human? So if we don't judge people by colour then where is the landmark event? A man has become president - no big deal. That he is black - no big deal.

What this reveals is that America is still in the grip of racism. That infact they do still notice a man's colour and judge him accordingly. This is partly the fault of the racial equality brigade who will never let us forget what colour people are!

So now the relevance to religious texts. The election of Barack Obama could be described as "Bad because it was Good". I've seen many people, highly educated people, screw their noses up at statements like this saying that it is nonsense and contradictory. But it is plain English really: the fact that people thought it good is itself bad - because really in an ideal world no-one should have even noticed it!

Thus when we read statements like "The world is Nothing precisely because it is Something" or "God is Everything because He is Nothing" we realise that contradictions don't necessarily signify nonsense.

Also I'd like to add in line with previous posts that "Progress is bad because it is good". It is precisely because we think that things in the future will be better that we as a species become worse. The common explanation for machines is to make labour easier - but what happens to us as things becomes easier? Well for one simple example we become unfit and this leads to associated illness. In our minds also we will become less able to cope with Life without these machines. This dependency of body and mind turns us into cripples! Cars as I've commented upon before are like voluntary wheelchairs. What is Good is Bad precisiely because it is Good!

Do Atheists give presents to their Kids at Xmas?

This should be an interesting blog - based on a waking thought this morning but I've no idea where it will lead...

Firstly I am not a believer in God... in the traditional sense. I am certainly not a "non-believer" and I'm not an agnostic either in that I do know that there is more to this than just superficia. For me there is something - but I've failed to understand it yet... i.e. there is faith, but the journey is not complete by any means. For that reason I can't claim membership of a religion - for people in religions seem to know already so many things about God like for example other people are wrong, or they are right... I genuinely don't understand how they can do this! But Atheism is the most foolish because it denies something before it has even found out what it is denying.

Dawkins, Dennett and a lot of others find it easy to deny God because they make a strawman call it god and then stick it on a fire. Job done.

I wondered this morning whether these Christian Atheists follow the trend and give their children presents on Christmas Eve. If they don't then I respect them more... at least they are sincere about their rejection of illusions. If they do however then what is going on here?!

I don't know about individual Atheists, but I will make my strawman Atheist so I can burn him. I imagine they harmlessly let their kids believe in Father Christmas because it is exciting and good fun and makes the holiday magical for them. I imagine they go through the ritual of pretending to be Father Christmas and put presents in the stockings during the night. I imagine they eat the mince pie and drink the brandy. I imagine they rejoice in the happiness of their kids. Yet we all know that Father Christmas doesn't exist...Or does he? If he doesn't exist then how do all those millions of stockings get filled each Xmas Eve?

Certainly the strawman father christmas with his white beard and slay who has to pop down 100's of chimneys every second and Rudolf who has to be able to fly and lots of other phantastic things - certainly this does not actually exist. But while we concentrate on this absurd illusion all the Atheists and millions of other rational adults actuslly become Father Christmas for the night and do all his work. So although he doesn't exist, just the thought of him, has filled the stockings of millions of children the world over. So maybe Father Christmas is to be understood as something oblique to the unbelievable old man, maybe more a "spirit" of giving something that exists in all of us. When birthday comes so does Father Christmas again, but in a different disguise - I'll let parents work out why they give presents to their children on birthdays. For birthdays there is no myth to poke skepticism at, yet they still do it.

Now some cynics will say that we only give presents at this time because we would feel awful if we didn't and we would be socially criticised too - that would be my social heirachy argument that we would not want to sink socially. And they might agree amongst themselves to mutually not give presents. If their motive is because they have seen through the symbolism of Christmas that is probably ok, but if their motive is because they don't want to "give", that the "spirit" of the gestures is lost on them then it might be that theirs is the poorer life (briefly: if your neighbours are richer than you then you enjoy a better and more secure life than if your neighbours are poorer than you - so it is better to give. The only counter argument is selfishness and ego - these are negative thoughts and make our life one of suffering and ultimately death.)

So belief in God doesn't need to be a belief in a factual objective substantial entity. Whoever said it was! That, just because there is no man in the clouds is proof that God is no longer a feature of our existence. Scientists who limit everything so that they can get exact answers also eliminate most of the important features too. The reason they know so little about "life" is because by the time it gets under the microscope it is dead!

Not a massive argument, but an addition to the on going debate.

Category mistake made by authority...

There's a very subtle problem I notice this morning with the idea of "authority".

Traditionally those in authority are superior to those they rule - that is the reason that they rule, and the reason their subjects are ruled.

However in todays democractic equality what gives those the authority to rule? Today it is a career decision to become a manager or a politician and only those who are successful either in getting promoted or getting elected will rise to positions of authority. Those who are ruled do so by contract which they agree to - however they don't have a lot of choice either - you can't opt out of the democracy and you can't opt out of employment ... i.e. you have to accept someone as your leader and you have to accept someone as your boss!

What seemed odd to me however is that you have a career politician who makes his living doing politics passing laws to interfer with those for example who make a living through theft. (very Durkheim this...)

The career politician is likely to be well educated from a good background, likely to be quite intelligent, hard working, and respectful of the establishment. The criminal on the otherhand is likely to have been frustrated by his opportunities in life and exercised his abilities contrary to the law and the establishment. Yet there is no difference between them. They are both making a personal living the best they can!

But of course there is an enormous difference between them if you view it traditionally. The politician is not a "career politician" but I dutiful person who does what he does on behalf of his constituents (or subjects in the case of Kings & Queen) ... what he wants does not enter his public life. On the contrary the criminal has no sense of duty to the society as a whole or his fellow men in general. The thief may make exception for family and friends but this type of partiality is simply self-serving. There is no sense of the greater duty which puts others first and oneself second.

What drives a lot of UK debate at the moment is this issue of "duty" - altho it hasn't been identified as such. People in the commons and lords abusing their powers for personal gain. The financial sector of course is being criticised on moral grounds but uses the escape clause that it owes nothing to no-one - and we trust them with our money!

I'd like to roll into this mix the issue which I'm heading toward recently of the Rise of Atheism. I heard an episode of "The Moral Maze" on Radio 4 a few weeks ago in which they were discussing essentially the foundations of morality in a "post-religious" society. Despite the quality of the panel I was actually quite shocked at the ignorance of the discussion and especially how it was assumed that Atheism was the correct platform. And again on Question Time anyone who says that God does not exist gets a round of applause.

This is the root of the issue that I discuss here: how can any human justify authority over another if they do not in some way represent a "higher" order - and that "higher" needs be defined outside of humanity (again self-reference argument). Yet the atheists see no problem is saying that Man is all there is and Man is the source of all that is Man. Thus Man can do whatever Man decides by this equation and so people in authority can do whatever they can get away with. This is what is happening, this is what the same atheists are complaining about in the financial markets and in the common and Lords - atheists are truely ignorant and confused people, but they are slowly numbering the majority as are the people in negative equity! What an ironic unconnected trend :-)

If there is to be any Official society at all it can only be based upon people's understanding that it represents something real and greater than any of its parts. Now it has been shown in this blog that this is actually an "empty" entity, so until people can return to living their lives according to such transcendental entities as Nothing there can be no society and no authority (other than violence and fascism). If I am an anarchist it is in the sense that I believe "it is the People, stupid"... and only the People. The Atheists, by contrast, are Anarchists is an extreme way because they can't accept anything other than "it is Me, stupid".

The category mistake lies in the fact that someone cannot define themselves as in authority - so technically they can't even chose to be in authority - it is always Given and it can only be accepted with Duty. The authority that one accepts as part of their job is conferred to them by another authority... and so on until we ask where did the original authority arise? It is historical and it evolved. So we have the force of tradition which governs authorities from table manners, to English grammar, to living in houses, to the Queen. But, critically, we don't live in the Past and Life is lived in the Present and people are not automata executing instructions from the Past (well some are). Our very Life in the Present requires personal Judgement informed by the historical rules - like Mozart perfecting the musical forms of his time, and not writing house music. In this we adopt historical authority not as superior people, but as equal people who are performing an historical goal with "Duty". That is the critical word that comes with authority - sine qua non. What God represents and what the Atheists are hungry to ignore is that everything we have is Given by outside forces. Atheists would like to claim all achievements and all works for Man (which means ultimately themselves). This is simply factually wrong - each of us is 100% constructed and we own and have achieved nothing by ourselves: why? because ourselves is 100% constructed from things other than us. Where people claim authority for themselves there is no authority. Where people believe in society for themselves there is no society.

Can't meet yourself.

Do u realise that u have never met yourself! It is a necessary fact because it is impossible. Isn't this another aspect of the self-reference problem.

What can the body do?

What are the limits of the physical body? It's always interested me. Climbing is a natural interest and in the mid 90's with friends after clubs were closed we often ended up playing the game of travelling as far in London as we could, roof top to roof top, without reaching street level. I broke my ankle whilst trying a drunken jump in 1992 that I was sure was possible - sober with the right landing I'm sure it was possible.

Reading that Alexander the Great used to get his army upto 50miles a day opened my eyes to the possibilities of endurance. The most I've done yet is 40miles in a day - but that is with a rucksack. The taking of his army from Macedonia via Iran to India opened my eyes to the idea of distance possible with the physical body. Bach walked 250 miles to his organ school without issue. Have we forgotten what the body can do?

Heard about Mark Beaumont on holiday from a fellow camper and especially the 6kcal he needed each day to cover the 100miles a day on bike. That is 600ml of straight veg oil a day in calories! Or 1.2kg of biscuits! This was an important eye opener for me, the size of diet when you are energetic. This video is inspirational (altho my mother's answer is always NO WAY :-( )

Here's something else inspirational - free running. Finding out what this body is, and what it can do. Our relationship with space and the world about us is so dull in modern life. We learn how to sit in a car and operate the pedals, we learn how to perform dull repeatative movements with our girl-friend, we learn to walk the same way in the street and stand the same way - it is an icing over of our physical existence. I learned to juggle once just to break the uniformity and monotony of our expected gambit of physical movements and how we think about our physical relationship with the world. I chickened out of jumping a gate in holiday - I'm 37 people my age don't do that... I was wrong I should have jumped it ... I will find a gate this week and jump it - why open it, walk through it, and close it again - have we no imagination! 

===

So I jumped it after some hesitation n practice - this is an unusual movement until you are familiar with it - but very useful afterwards.

Goody, goody for Jade Goody

The unhappiness machine is in full swing I see. Apparently a commentator has declared how disgraceful that someone should be dying of cancer at the tender age of 27. The newspapers are having a field day over the suffering and tragedy of it all and the brave way in which Jade is coping. Well I can't detract from the last part: cancer has done what Big Brather failed to do, reveal the human inside the monster. But the rest of the saga is a sad reflection on the illnesses and cancer of our very society.

People die. It's a fact. Its more than a fact, the ticket to life has a ticket to death printed on the back. We each carry both. Jade is in no circumstance different from our own. If there is pity for her, there should be equal pity for us. The only difference is that she is "only" 27 and may leave 2 children without a mother (she's not dead till it happens, and I may die in a road accident today so lets just look at life for now). This "only" is the problem. Where in all the universe does it say that we "should" live longer than 27? There are statistics maybe; so she's a rarity; and the problem with being a rarity was?

Its because this society views death as a bad thing. It has been used by politicians and kings since the dawn of time as the ultimate demontsration of power. I suppose this way it is associate dwith criminality. But didn't Jesus put the record straight on that? Death is the ending of something that was given free of charge in the first place - who are we to demand "more" life any more than we should demand less life - of ourselves or another (i.e. suicide or murder). Any life we get is good and that is all we can say. To die a criminal death on the cross at 33 is of no consequence when we have lived a good life in the eyes of God - that is all that matters. If we have lived a bad life, then the suffering is ours it is true, because a bad life by definition is a selfish life and then the loss of life to a self-serving selfish person is a most difficult thing for sure! But if we can let go gracefully then it is a good life, and the happiness and ternal freedom is ours.

So hopefully in her reality there is nothing extraordinary about what she goes through, it is the path we all must walk, she is just the soldier of her generation that walks before the rest. And if she can let this life go as easily as it came, then happiness is hers. For her children they start life with a profound lesson on the transience of this world and hopefully a wisdom that will help them when they face death themselves. For material needs we still thankfully live in a state that respects a commons sense sentiment that the fortune of the many is shared with the few, and the misfortune of the few is shared with the many so that each one of us has richer neighbours and when misfortune strikes us we have our neighbours to help us.

As John Dunne so famously meditated, "ask not for whome the bell tolls for it tolls for thee.".

Giving the politicians a break

It occurred to me yesterday that the life of a politician is very hard. Where the job of a trader is to gain money, the job of politician is to gain power. Evereything they do is directed toward gaining personal power. This is why they behave the way they do and seem to compromised and dishonest, they take whichever route serves the goal of greater acceptance, status and power. There are a few "honest" politicians notably Robin Cook and Tony Ben in the UK and Colin Powel and Ron Paul in the US who serve idealistic and moral goals but as we have seen this only diminishes their power in the long run and they get over taken by the game players.

Given all this and the sense that the leadership therefore bend over backwards to please the voting population, to look good and to maintain their status it is a wonder that they don't all end up paranoid. Their whole existence depends upon nothing more substantial than public opinion. They are like pop stars or actors who have no concrete status - everything is based on whim. So I saw that the rigid fixation on dogmas like the old view of "employment" is a comfort to the politician because it means that he has a fixed framework within which to deploy his power and within which to feel secure about the attitudes to his work. Stats like lowering unemployment become tools of comfort, and things that are easily manipulated to comfort the voters. It brings back a sense of control to the politician.

On the other hand something like this blog that argues for equanimity and the power of common sense and reality must be rather unsettling to the politician. The thought that the masses can really control their own lives without the need for institutionalised economic and social structures is the death knell to politics. That the solution to crime for example is just people being generous, rather than being stingy and paying for a police force to enforce that stinginess, will strike paranoia into the hearts of politicians who need people to think that they are the solution to problems and will therefore be invested with the power. If the population just gave up on their faith in the institutions it would all be over in a flash. As the economy demonstrates confidence and faith are everything in this game of illusion and dreams. So ironic in a climate of people attacking religious faith - how much faith they don't realise they have! 

Wise words from Monkey Narrator

The Japanese TV series of Monkey (King) based on the Chinese literary master piece Hsi yu chi was my first introduction to Buddhism and I guess was the seed from which it eventually grew. Here are the closing words of wisdom for the first 15 episodes which I am finding evber more useful and profound.

01. /

02. Monkey was trapped by desire and released by a boy priest. An abbot died for greed. The Buddha taught: whatever you do, you do to yourself. We want so much when we need for so little, but the illumined man wants for nothing.

03. The monstrous is only a question of opinion. To some of us opinions are so precious that we will die for them, again and again.

04. Love is no escuse. Like a mountain, a good man is visible from afar

 said the Buddha. What is Goodness? you already know. If Goodness is like a mountain sometimes it is equally hard to achieve and someone must first find the way. The master goes beyond the boundless land and nothing, neither men nor demons nor gods, nothing in all creation, can hold him. Monkey is magic, a god an immortal, but he is less than the Buddha in you!

05. Youth and love, sage or fool, whatever one says about them may be right. The world is a product of mind, and love and youth make their own reality.

06. You are your only master said the Buddha. To straighten out the crooked you must first do a more difficult thing, you must straighten yourself as even monkey learned.

07. Certainly all of us and everything is the eternal omnipotent

 Buddha.

08. Not everyone can say they are gods, but Buddha himself said everyone was Buddha if we can but realise it.

09. Change is the only certainty. Yin Ching lied to save her mother. She said you can't help what you are. But you can! you can choose. With a cold father and a mad mother Yin Ching chose goodness for hertself. The bUddha said: your work is to discover your work, then with all your heart to give yourself to it. No one purifies another.

10. The winner sows hatred because the loser must suffer. Give up winning and losing then find joy.

11. As there are questions which have no answers, so there are answers to questions that were never asked - opposites balance both are essential. Everything that ever was is essential to make what is.

12. Sometimes to make the stupid grow discipline is essential. The wrong in stealing something so useless as jewels is less that they belong to someone else and more that you offend against yourself by coveting them at all.

13. If life is a gift can it ever be right to refuse part of it? A few rare souls may transcend individual love and love everyone, no one is diminished by that. If Tripitaka has not yet reached this state, one day he may.

14. Evil destroys! it opposes even other evil. Evil must have good to feed upon. Goodness nourishes itself. When evil has conquererd the Good, evil dies. Then, the Good will grow again. In these truths is a hope for the world.

15. Grey hairs do not make a wise man. A man may waste a lifetime digging up a mountain in search of mythical crows eggs. A man may waste a lifetime growing rich or chasing power. What is a life that's not wasted? Perhaps one in which we learn, a little.

Darwin and Compassion

It is an essential view that is emerging this year about the theory of Evolution, that Darwin intended his theory to break down the barriers between races... and ultimately species to create a more caring and inclusive attitude amongst Man. This is the truely noble side of the theory quite removed from the heartless banging on from R. Dawkins and E.O.Wilson.  

How ironic also that the Creationists should uphold a theory which seeks to justify the iniquities of Man rather than the theory which seeks to harmonise and create understanding between God's creatures.

Something else I'm beginning to see more clearly is the "economy of the world", that where this side is light the other side must be dark, and this side good the other side evil. Never hold on to anything too tight for unbeknownst to you, you also hold its darkside! As again the economy now reveals: good at one end but evil when it turns around!

In the Moment

Sure I've been here before but on holiday came to consider the "moment" again. I had just taken a paddle in the sea at Dungeness and while drying my feet realised that this was the first time I had entered the sea this year. The first time since I was at St Ives on holiday last year some 5 months before... and I had missed the "moment" not realising that it was of some significance.

So I thought at bit and examined the moment I was in now which was being spent thinking about the nature of moment. Realising quickly that I shouldn't waste my holiday in thoughts I can have any time I returned to being on the beach. But it became hard working out what exactly constituted the moment I was supposed to be in. The moment drying my feet? The moment standing on the beach with the wind in my face? The moment hearing the fog horns from the light houses (it was foggy)? The moment feeling the shingle under my other foot? etc etc. I left the thoughts till today...

What was clear is that none of these were "the moment" because each was a thought about the moment. As I'm slowly beginning to realise about everything: the labels we put on them are empty... a chair is not a chair precisely because it is a chair (in confusing speak) in more sensible language: what we call a chair is actually just the assembly of parts, it has no nature itself - the "chair" is nothing (its just a word) but what is really there is there, it just isn't a word! Yes we sit down, but what we sit down on must be separated from the word and thoughts we have for it. Put that another way: a real chair is just the assembly of parts. The idea of a "chair" however has no parts! You can't make the "idea" from chair legs etc. They are not the same.

Returning to the moment: the moments I have listed are thoughts about the moment. The moment I first put my feet in the sea. The moment I hear this, or see that. I am measuring the moment according to my senses.

The actual "Moment" is not measured. It has no form. It can't be thought because this moment is the condition (in Kantian language) for thought itself. The label "moment" must be separated from the real thing. This is hard and it is why I am still at some confusion on what "being in the moment" really means.

Nights camp

Before	After

So here is my last night's camp of the holiday. Every luxury, but light enough to carry in a rucksack. And, its environmentally sensitive because 40 mins later breakfast is eaten and everything packed away and all that remains is some slightly flattened leaves, a urine patch and a pile of extra porridge oats for some lucky rodent. Better than return it to almost normal I took out some rubbish as well so it was clearer than when I arrived.

Details of camping picture left to right:

>A bike - travelled 170miles on this to complete my holiday without any fossil fuel transport at all. (With more time, feet work as well and I've completed a 950 mile holiday on foot in 2 months.)
> £5 Tarpaulin + 2 x 2m string + 4 tent pegs (tho sticks will do). Weight 650g. Not ideal as moisture collects on the tarp so need to rig away from sleeping bag and allow ventilation. But, for £120 you can get a 1.5Kg gortex bivvy bag which leaves you damp as well! Or carry a tent.
> Hanging on cross rope is a radio and LED torch. Both running on rechargables but could be replaced by wind-up these days however at greater weight. Radio important: it is lighter than a book and gives weather forecasts, + as you travel local radio stations are always interesting!
> In tent: 4 Season sleeping bag (the main weight, but a warm nights sleep is the most important thing of all!). Roll mat - essential for heat insulation from ground. Rucksack containing 1 change of clothes (u wear one while you wash the other and dry it). (Bird identification book - personal preference.)
> 3 bags in front of tent. 1) Toiletries + toilet roll. 2) Food 3) other: maps, compass, camera, pen, diary, phone, recharging gear, wallet, first aid kit (binoculars - personal preference).
> MSR Whisperlite Internationale (multifuel) camping stove with 2 pans, a lighter and 3 days fuel. 1Kg. Chopsticks made from twigs not visible.
> 1.5L water bottle. Though 2 bottles better because can balance in rucksack.

That's it! Everything that is needed for completely satisfactory existence. This includes many luxuries as well. Buddha placed the middle path somewhat over to the simpler side even than this! There is absolutely nothing outside this picture that we need except the inflow of food and water and the outflow of extretia and of course transcending it all our interrelation with other people and the world. Survivalists forget the last bit - all this picture shows is the physical aspect if life.

It is interesting I think to note that even the richest person in the world has no more than is in this picture. They may have quantitatively more and larger versions of it, but qualitatively it is the same. The bike becomes a private jet. The tent becomes a 400 room palace. The pot of porridge becomes a banquet. The water becomes the finest champagne. The radio becomes a private cinema. The sea or rivers (out of shot) becomes a personal heated pool. The first aid kit becomes private health care. But they experience nothing that I don't experience in that small dwelling - just more of it!

Also want to add another interesting perspective. Herodotus tells us the story of when Alexander the Great met naked monks in India. As his army passed this field they stood in a circle and began pounding their feet on the ground. Alexander, alwasy inquisitive and ready to learn, and a translator, went over to enquire what the matter was. They said that they were perplexed by this man who went to such a lot of trouble to conquer so many lands when the only land a man can ever occupy is the land on which he stands. In the same spirit I always remind myself that when asleep we do not know whether we sleep in the gutter or a golden palace on a mountain top. For this reason I always feel the waste when I sleep in a plush hotel! all that luxury and I am asleep! Part of the reason for sleeping in a garage lies in this. The other, is that I am always aware of the waste in leaving the house in the morning and even when in a house only ever occupying one room at a time. A busy social person probably only returns home to sleep, what a waste! Houses are a very inefficient and wasteful approach to living, they are purely cultural and have no actual value - house prices an even greater phantom than they already were! Consider the camp above - when I have slept there is nothing left and the land is freed for whoever, or whatever, wants to use it. This, rationally and sensibly, is how we should live! but it has been made impossible by centuries of ignorance and petty squabbling by the western races. We are even stupid enough to demonise such living - how irrational!

So this is how easy life is. Why all the endless hassle and economics and mortgage crisis etc etc etc?

After thought: of course this is a limited illustration. The universe is interconnected and I can't really isolate myself as simply as I tried to show. One thing that has become apparent to me is that while I may have used only a small amount of electricity and petrol on this 4 day holiday - those oat flakes have been grown in an incredible intensive agricultural climate using vast amounts of fossil fuel. I will get as little as 25% of the fossil fuel energy that has been pumped into making them - and that excludes the transport costs and the packaging. Modern agriculture cannot be green :-( It is by design wasteful and unsustainable. The problem is that the world depends upon it, and so the world population is sadly unsustainable even if we do all live simply like this. A sobering thought.

Materialism and the nature of Happiness

That there is no connection between material circumstance and happiness can actually easily be seen.

Many of us will remember the world without mobile phones. If we are separated from our mobile phone now it causes great distress. We cannot imagine going anywhere without it. If the government was to ban mobile phones imagine the uproar. Yet quite naturally not so long ago we all used to live without mobile phones at all.

Were we happy before mobile phones?

Most people imagine what it would be like to be without a mobile today and conclude that life without mobile phones is like that i.e. unhappiness.

But there was a big difference in the past: we didn't know about mobile phones.  We neither had them, nor did we not have them! As a result they had no bearing on our lives at all. They neither made us happy or unhappy.

What is different between then and now is not actually the advent of mobile phones themselves: but rather the knowledge that there are mobile phones. It is the knowledge that makes us miss the phone, or reach for it in a situation, or want one.

Some people will argue that the phone meets an actual need which wasn't met in the past and so the past was objectively poorer. In other words people had to go without in the past and lived a more restricted life.

This is partly true. But it is not completely true. An example will do here. A friend bought his gran a smart new fast boiling electric kettle expecting this to make her happy. She found out some while later that actually gran did not like the kettle! The reason she had said was that where once she could put the kettle on the stove first thing and then gone to making toast, now the kettle boiled so quick that she couldn't do anything while she waited for it. So the "advance" messed up her routine. Bigger and faster are obviously not always optimal.

Returning to the main point of living a more restricted life. It is certainly true that in the old days (4 years ago when I got a mobile!)  if I was delayed I had no way of phoning ahead, and sometimes in the past I remember it would have been handy. But I also remember that people behaved differently then. Firstly we made more fixed appointments that we tried to keep. Secondly if someone was late you just went along with the plan and they caught up. If the plan changed you left a message with someone like the bar. It was also possible to ask customer services to make announcements etc. There were unlimited ingenious methods of achieving what is done with a mobile.

The point is that people made do with what was available and lived their lives through that. There was never any undue unhappiness caused by not having a mobile phone. People were as happy with the technology then as people are with the technology now. The technology makes no difference!

It is arguable that the opportunities for unhappiness have actually increased! Losing our mobile phone or having it stolen is a cause of unhappiness that never existed in the old days. Having to pay the fare is another cost that never existed before. Keeping up with the endlesly complex hoops of ungrades and the absurdly complex pricing systems that exist in mobile world is another headache that never existed. For each satisfaction that comes with getting the new phone comes an equal array of headaches and dissatisfactions.

So its an odd thing thing this consumerist, economic view of life. It is like a rachet forever tightening with new advances that we can never do without. It is hard to imagine life without mobiles, internet, computers, cars, TVs, healthcare, houses, electricity etc (tho I'm doing my best) and certainly most of us couldn't stomach it. So all these things stand as opportunities for unhappiness in the modern world. Our ancestors who would have been ecstatic to find a strong stick to fashion a spear with had almost nothing to make them unhappy. Food, water, shelter, clothing, health, family life and maybe some shells or whatever they found pretty would have been all it took for them to live in bliss. Now look at what we have to achieve to reach the same state! And there is no going back - it takes a very hard discipline to wean us off these addictions. So we are sadly confined to the ever tightening screw of progress and economic growth, and all the labours that this entails.

Personally I've no problem with people struggling aimlessly for ever greater addiction to technology and material comforts, but the problem is that as life gets more expensive the environment is damaged as we have to extract more resources and labour harder on those resources. We have astronomical population growth so that the margins for development are shrinking all the time. Yet the rhetoric persists that growth and enslavement to materialism is the only way.

The world now leaps upon this band-waggon like children in a sweet shop. I remember seeing a Tibetan lama on TV saying that he wanted the electricity, the cars, the computers, the phones. It is not as argued these things that are the problem - but the fact that people start to base their happiness upon these things and then they become slaves. Like moths around the candle these attractive things will burn us if we get too close. Again I've no problem with people being burned by their foolishness - this is the path of growing up, I'm on it too and I've been burned many times! not least by "my muse". The problem I keep reiterating is the damage that the environment sustains as a result. Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last fish poisoned etc etc will white man realise he can't eat money ... or something like that...  goes the famous Amerindian quote.

Mankind has been exploring what appears to be a cul-de-sac so far in its history. Someone time we need to get out and join the main stream of life again, back to the process of living and not dreaming. There are basic eternal truths that are inescapable; that we are born and we will die and that a life of love is Life and a life of hate is Death. There is little to add to this, and oneday by exhaustion of all the other possibilities it seems we'll realise that.

The key to happiness - eliminate all negativity!

OK this is for sure now. Our mood and satisfaction with life is completely separate from our circumstances. The former is a choice (with long training) and the latter is a fact.

The problem with this statement is that we under-estimate the amount of training.

Normally our moods come and go and we have no control over them. We find that a particular food makes us feel happy. We seek that food because we want happiness. Then we find it no longer works and we are seeking something else. Boredom becomes our arch enemy because when we become bored with the old tricks we lose the possibility of happiness.

Actually it is about unhappiness and the cause of this is negativity. Master negativity and we never need to feel unhappy.

Negativity is all those dark thoughts which enter our minds when faced with certain situations. I am single, I have no job and I have no-where to live. All these because (1) they are too much effort and (2) because I've come to doubt the logic which says we need them. However this sets me up for a lot of nagative thoughts. I feel lonely, I feel sad, I feel worthless, I feel depressed, I feel bored. What then is worse is seeing people with the things I want: nice houses, attractive partners, lots of friends, even just happy. Then the real negativity starts as I criticise, pick faults, and feel angry in defence of what inside is pain caused apparently by not having these things.

Looking deeply and over a long period of time with patients it becomes clear that really it is our negativity to these situations that causes the pain. This means that the struggle to obtain these desirable situations is actually just a running from our negativity which we cannot control.

It is a plain fact that I realised on holiday this week - in fact as I cycled in the dark a 50mile return journey from holiday, tired, cold and knowing that I had nothing to return to and thinking of friends who had all these comforts - that master my negativity and I do not need these things for happiness. And this is exactly what I did there and then and it worked. I was truely happy in the dark, cold and tired with no where to go.

The first stage is to learn to ride out the storm of desires that flare up when we think or see things that we deeply want. Mastering that is the hardest and longest part.

Once we can sit out a desire that starts and let it go (not easy) then we can begin to get our mind back and analyse the situation. Often it is a happiness that someone else has apparently on gaining something we want - for example an attractive partner. What could be better than the comfort and bliss of being with her we think. Our friend is happy we note, it must be because of her. Therefore I should be unhappy because I don't have her and for that I am envious and now I can't be positive for them and I am negative toward them... or I force myself to be positive because it would spoil the friendship and everyone would think me a bad person. But inside I hurt and I must lie that I'm ok.

What is happening is simply that we can't control our negativity. Then we feel unhappy because we are negative. Then we think that the other people are happy because they don't have the negativity and we think that having what they have is a cure for negativity. Then we desire what they have got which we don't have and we get more negative. We end up in a cycle of negativity and desire.

If someone told you that actually what they have got hasn't made them happy, if they are happy it is because they found the happiness inside themselves. And, if that happiness coincided with an event like marriage or the birth of a child, that event is simply enabling them to clear their negativity for a while then actually the whole process of negativity inside us is extinguished.

There is thus no need to crave for anything outside us in the long run. In the short run we may still continue our habits like knowing that sex gives us a fix during which time we feel less negativity. But the route to happiness is not the fixes, it is the mastery of our negativity.

Once we can shake off the negative minds and accept other peoples happiness as easily as our own then we are free from all cravings and needings and life is simple and easy.

What is extraordinary is that this is well written in the books so I have good guides. And, I've had an incling it is true for a long time from happy experiences in miserable conditions down caves and up mountains. But we live in a world where you could be forgiven for not understanding because all political, economic and common talk says that possession and consumption of things is the way to happiness. Yet categorically I can say from personal experience now (and backed by a wealth of ancient and modern religious literature) that this is simply a life being busy in building unhappiness. How insane is that!

An advert on TV at the moment pictures our white lives and culture against the lives and cultures of others coloured people (well you know who I'm talking about!!) and asks for money to improve the situation of these children. Yet it is so blatantly ignorance on the behalf of the charity workers thinking that because they wouldn't bring their kids up like this neither should anyone else. In UK I'm sure that intervention would be illegal - but in the white-designated "3rd" world apparently we can do what we want. Kids will come to whoever gives them sweets and presents so the aid workers are very popular - but that doesn't mean that they are doing anything worthwhile. If at anytime they teach these kids that actually they are not poor and they have an equal chance of happiness to any of the kids in "rich" countries then they will have done the service. Anything else will lead these kids onto the treadmill of personal unhappiness and environmental degredation (given that effort to provide for oneself damages the environment).

Polar Marine Survey results coming in soon...

I'm a bit behind here. International Polar Year 2007-2009 ends next month look forward to the findings: http://www.ipy.org/

Part of larger Consesus of Marine Life http://www.coml.org/ which should go along way to opening up the final frontier of Earth's life.

The homeless in Reading

Got chatting to some ex-drug users here in Reading earlier in the week and I was gobsmacked by what I heard!!

One is selling big-issue to get some money together to try and get off the street, get a job and house and make a fresh start. The other is waiting till his divorced wife and child can move out of his house, but remains homeless in the mean time.

What I could not believe is that these guys who were fit and healthy and seemed in good spirits already had everything they needed to be completely happy yet they still had their eyes set upon the standard images of houses and jobs.

The system has failed them more completely than I can believe. They have no reason to be anything up happy, but they are brain washed by an unforgiving and uncaring system into thinking that they must attain a standard of living, even against all the evidence of their senses.

They have solved the real problems of moisture and cold (which I am happy to say I've achieved also) have enough money for food and I presume can rely upon the good nature of the health professionals if they fall seriously ill. Yet they still view themselves as "bottom" of the pile. That is appauling and serves as the single biggest failure of our "society". I've never seen the dark side of "Progress" so blatantly before.

The destruction of the environment that comes with Progress is more subtle for most to see and I can understand why most city people don't get it. But to see the blind mindless way in which people think they "have" to attain the standards of living before they can be satisfied is insane.

However I realised an important thing also. These drug addicts have to believe that having a job, car and house is a type of nirvana as an inspiration to get them off drugs. If someone was to say you will be as happy in your "normal" lifestyle as you are on the street they may lose the incentive to give up drugs.

What is it that we are all running from, that we need to believe that "Nirvana" will happen if we carry on working, or shopping, or even being good, or bad, or starting drugs, or giving up drugs? What is this deep unease about life that keeps us all running, even those who were so close to stopping but have been encouraged to carry on?

I found their attitudes the most depressing thing I have witnessed in a very long time.

To change economics I must first appreciate it.

The more I read on economics the more I appreciate the wonderful nature of the changes that have occurred. When one criticises modern economics it cannot be the dismissing of a weak and feable foe, but only the engaging in battle of a valiant and glorious opponent. It is becoming easy to see the attraction of the work of economists which explains why their ideas have become so captivating - it also raises the bar on how good the alternatives have to be!

A note to check up how the BOE can blatantly lie about "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of ..." without being sued. Never has there been in the history of humanity a more wilful and unashamed deception of the common man. Everyone of us carries a piece of paper with the signature of Andrew Bailey undersigning a direct and undisputable promise. Yet it is a lie! because we are in a fiat money system and that paper actually is the money. The signature and promise are carried on to try and imbue the paper with the old "feeling" of wealth which is held by gold.

Either Keynesian economics works in which case we accept fiat currency or it doesn't in which case why not have the gold standard back? In which case do away with the promise or keep it as it was. What beggars belief is that the fiat system is so insecure that it must lie to confidence trick people into using it! What kind of people are these? It is no wonder that the economy is collapsing under unpaid debts, frauds, dodgy building scams when the very people who run the system are themselves liars! Truely extra-ordinary. That we are expected to take the "system" seriously and the people who take up positions in the system seriously is ludicrous... and the system had failed to impress me before even thinking about this!

Start of Self-reference proof?

The hypothesis is that

No statement can be made whose locus of reference includes itself

It is a very powerful tool in argument and serves to puncture any statements that claim to encompass a "whole". All statements are thus to be understood as dialectical in nature and exist in opposition to others. This is also why notions of an "Absolute", "God", "Buddha" or "Noumenon", "Self" cannot be expressed because such expression would entail self-inclusion.

The only exception that I am aware of is this, "All rules have exceptions". This is unique because it allows for its own exception and so remains true for all rules!

The latest approach to prove this starts as follows:

Suppose we have a system with 4 states. It can occupy only these states. Analogously in logic there is a grammar which determines the form of wff.

This system may be so designed as to express a "null" state, or default state, or reference state, for example in electronics we set "ground" in maths there is the "0" in set theory the "{}" null set etc.

Any value is state "of" the system.

Now construct a meta system, a system whose states refer not to the elements in other systems, but to other systems themselves. Thus we may have a system whose elements are all the possible 4 state systems (the example above being one).

Now there is a difference between a system being at "null" and that system not existing. It may be a null and still can be referenced in the meta system, but if it doesn't exist then it can't be referenced in the meta system.

Consider hearing. Silence is an essential part of hearing. But if we are deaf then not hearing anything has no "suprisal" value, there is no information in not hearing anything, it is no longer silence. Silence has no meaning because the meta-system doesn't include the system of sound.

This is the classic distinction between being/not-being and nothingness. Not-being and nothingness are different.

But there is not just one level at which this happens. Consider music as a system within sound. In music silence is essential notated as rests. In C20th music which is often quite precussive it is as important as sound. But one would not describe the "silence" in the auditorium before the performance starts as part of the music.

The difference between meaning of these "nulls" reflects the deep issue of bi-levels between being inside and outside a system. [It has a name in semiotics - look this up]

What is interesting about "null" values is that they have no content so it highlights the play of this heirachical feature. Is this the same as Russell and Whitehead envisaged to escape paradoxes?

Happy Birthday Mr Darwin!

Here's a question... did the idea of "Evolution" evolve?

From the self-reference paradox (stilllllll unproooovveed) the answer is no. Dawkins take note.

something to think about today...

Emergent properties

This has been a long time coming! It has been discussed before but just want to provide a clear discussion...

It is obvious to anyone that miracles happen all the time. You mix flour, butter and sugar and put in the oven and somehow this inedible mix becomes delicious biscuits. Where does this "delicious" form come from? There is nothing in a biscuit except flour, butter and sugar yet with some heat these change.

I've argued before with chairs. There is nothing in a pile of chair parts that is not in a chair, yet the "orientation" makes one a useful chair and one a useless pile. What is "orientation"? Does it actually exist? Is it worth wanting?

We may pay a large some of money for what is essentially just wood and labour. Is labour anymore real than orientation? If so what is it made from?

We accept in normal every day thinking that most of the world exists but isn't made from anything. "Money" exists yet what is it made from? When someone is described as a billionaire, what is the stuff that makes him such?

We live therefore in an odd world. There are real things like food. And there are completely imaginary things like unicorns. And then there are the majority of things in between that are not real like unicorns, yet we use them every day. What are these things? In religions they are called "illusions". They look real, we use them all the time: yet when you investigate them you find there is nothing there.

The odd things is that absolutely evereything turns out to be an illusion! But this is a seriously profound point to take on board all at once if it is new - so don't try.

In science they are called as best as I can see: "emergent properties". Thus when you arrange a chair in a certain configuration the forces interact to create an upright structure you can sit on. Now when we claim this seat as ours and pay money for it: we are not actually owning the wood or the configuration but the emergent property of a seat. When it is stolen and we feel sad, we are feeling sad not for the loss of wood or even the configuration, but for the loss of the emergent property. Altho really we may feel sad for what the loss represents rather than the loss: like someone disrespecting us etc which are even more emergent things.

If we had a Ikea flat pack of a chair and someone stole that : again it is not the flat pack we will miss but the chair which is just the same thing in a different orientation - yet we do see a difference.

So our lives are governed not by real things, but the cinema projection of emergent "things" that we place on top of the world. Like in the previous post about animal "types" versus the individual animals: we see "types" everywhere even while in reality there is just an endless flow of reality.

So don't we starve if we don't eat. Food is not an illusion. Yes and no. Food as a nutrient is not an illusion. We can find food in extraordinary places like uncooked flour and even human bodies. But we overlay on top of food the emergent properties of cooked, uncooked and nice, nasty etc. Eating of human bodies is probably not a sign of enlightenment however unless it is done without preference, in which case there is plenty of other food about so it won't happen.

It will take me many years to let all this sink in, like it has taken the best part of 10 years to get this far! But certainly the issue of "things" being a part of mind and not being part of reality which is characterised by a steady timeless flow is becoming clearer... and hopefully as Buddha promised such understanding leads to liberation and an end to suffereing!

The Anti-Easterlin Paradox

Just reading 'A Farewell to Alms' by Gregory Clark: in the closing paragraph of his introduction comes this,

'The contented may well have lost out in the Darwinian struggle...' (p16)

This is the main paradox that seems to exist... one that I only hear in Buddhist circles because the vast mass of Western commentators on "life" seem to view struggle and consumption as the key to life.

Richard Easterlin famously published work in 1974 that suggested that there was a plateau beyond which increasing wealth did not correlate with increasing happiness - it even suggested a fall in happiness. This was dubbed the "Easterlin paradox" which reveals the prevailing culture in which he published. What has emerged since is evidence that contentment does increase with increasing wealth: now that to me is the paradox!

Why? because to gain increasing wealth one must work harder, and to utilise increasing wealth one must spend harder (in classical economics tho I've argued recently this is a myth). Either we perform these extra actions randomly or we are being driven to do them - and it is that drive which is the problem. What drives people to work and spend harder? The answer is desire and the cost of not attaining one's desire we know as unhappiness and dissatisfaction. So it is true that we are happier and more satisfied when we get what we want - which is what the data bears out. But, the solution to unhappiness and dissatisfaction is not to work and spend harder: quite the reverse! it is to relax and master those desires. That is true unlimited happiness and not only is this not tested for, I don't even believe that modern analysists are even aware that it exists anymore! for they are too busy themselves furthering their careers in the fields of social research.

A simple example is the mobile phone. We are very satisfied with our new iPhone, or we are very unsatisfied with our last phone. However a hundred years ago before even phones what was there to worry about? We neither wanted or didn't want phones - nothing to excite or dissappoint us. This is phone-happiness: being free from the ups/downs of phones. Now they always argue in Buddhism that one can be free and have phone-happiness while having a phone: but to do this one must "unattach" from phone which means we claim neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction from the phone - and to do that is to undermine the whole import of modern thinking!

Using the self-reference argument (which remains to be proven :-( if wealth makes us happy, then where is the wealth in social-research? or are these researchers unhappy?

p.s. the arguments present recently in this blog for social structure being the primary force in human activity are seem similar to what I find is called the Hedonic Treadmill.

This leaves the paradox however that once one is truely content and happy then ones motivation shifts from limited personal desire to more global compassion. What I do not understand yet however is that biological processes then become purely survival in nature and no longer pleasure: which harks back to the days when reproduction was something done out of duty not out of pleasure. I understand we have a duty to eat, how can there be life without food? but it seems odd in this culture to engage in marriage and childbirth simply for the sake of generating more people.

Can it really be the case that the Human race is destined to solve the question that desire poses and then cease to exist? or remain tethered to the post of desire and driven to greater and greater need and subsequent satisfaction? and also greater and greater suffering in the process?

I really have no idea at present about this!

Ideas on Life, Change and Identity inspired by Evolution.

Attenborough does it again another spectacular program on the natural world and man's place within it, 'The Tree of Life' on BBC1; just watched it on iPlayer. But something about evolution by natural selection has always puzzled me tho, its a bit of a non-theory - it simply doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know.

Watching the latest offering and its unusual defence (there is nothing to defend since there are things de facto to explain and any explanation will do) of evolution w.r.t. creation makes one thing clear: the importance of Darwin's theory is not in-itself but rather its relevance to a culture that has assimilated some very useless ideas. What is sad about Christianity is that it has absorbed these Western ideas as its own and now wastes its energy supporting them when they are little to do with God and nothing whatever to do with Jesus! All the atheists who use this strawman argument to fire shots at Xianity are wasting their energy especially!

I imagine - and this remains to be tested - that Darwinism has never been news in the Indian subcontinent, for example, because they don't hold ideas of a fixed world.

So what is different between Creationism and Evolution by Natural Selection (ENS)?

Evolution says 2 things: (a) that things change and (2) that the change is the accumulation of hereditary variance in survivability.

It is the first point which has been the most contentious! The reason is that people think that "things" really are themselves. But when I hear people (even Attenborough) say that "species evolve" I cringe a bit because "a reptile" for example is not a "thing" it is simply a "likeness" amongst a branch of living things. "Reptiles" don't become "Mammals" by any process of evolution because "reptiles" and "mammals" don't exist. It is not Attenborough's fault, he knows perfectly well, it is just a limitation of language, but some people really do take this literally! It is as mad as saying the stream becomes a river and believing that a physical thing "stream" magically transforms into a different physical thing called "river". They are just discrete names for what underneath is not "change" between discrete things at all but simply "flow". There are not really "things" in the natural world just "Life" and that is the key issue of this blog - how do we talk about this thing "Life" (which has so many elements from physical to spiritual and transcendent).

Another example which the Creationists somehow miss is the very process of birth, aging and death. If they don't accept evolution then presumably they believe that an embryo, a baby, a child, an adult and a corpse are all the same. It is the most central fact of our lives that we undergo a "continual change". At some points we call it child, at others we call it adult, at others we call it alive and at others we call it dead - but like the river there is no point when it "is" a stream and no point when it "is" a river - these are features of the flow of our langauge and mind not the flow of water. Likewise Life constantly evolves. Sometimes the flow is called "bird" and sometimes it is called "fish" but these do not name static things - even in their own lives they are not static.

I do have to accept that there are levels of change however. While each bird evolves a lot in its lifetime, changing shape and colour, each bird begets its own "type" so that chicken gives birth to chicken and turkey gives birth to turkey. This gives rise to the idea that there is some fixed "type" that links them and is passed between them - similar to the idea of family "blood" that people envisage is passed through the generations of a family. However such a view only arises when we try to view the flow as discrete things and see similarities between the things when actually it is just one flow - a chicken begets a chicken because really they are different forms of the same underlying process. You might think of a year giving birth to a new year, while at the same time seeing it as a continual process with no start and no end (where was the Earth when it "started" orbiting the Sun?).

But ouch! that means that we as "individual" human beings can be seen as really just an evolving originless and endless process ... so what of the self, that separate thing apart from everyone else and the world? That, Buddha says, is just a fiction, like the chicken and the stream, the bubble and the flash of lightening - his idea of anatta.

Science has discovered the mechanism that enables the chicken to evolve through to death yet produce a new chicken with distinct likeness. That which we call "chicken" is not an indivisible form but a superficial result of underlying processes - especially those involving a molecule called DNA. Where once we thought a "chicken" contained chicken-ness now some people think that DNA contains "chicken-ness" - not realising that a stream does not contain anything called a stream! it is just a stage in the flow of water. A chicken does not inject anything "chicken" like into its offspring to make them chickens - any more than rain injects anything into a river. But at the same time a river can't be made from trees. The processes do exist, but existence does not come in the form of discrete "things" - which makes the word "process" here unique is naming nothing discrete and separate from anything else. The argument here is not about the physical world - mankind has indeed learned a great deal about this - it is about how we understand what we learn.

The other point of Evolution is actually the more interesting one... the mechanism. What it seems to say is that those things that are no good at existing won't exist. It explains why you don't get for example 1 legged creatures. But it doesn't actually give us any idea at all what "life" should look like. This has been the great challenge since Darwin to try and find explanations for the actual shape of things that have occurred. How much is chance and how much obeys laws is very hard to decide. Does life "have" to look like this? Would beetles dominate the macrofauna of alien planets too?

All animals have 5 fingers and toes (ignoring thumbs etc). This seems to be a historical feature, surely on other planets they could have any number. Higher animals are bilaterally symmetrical (have a left and right) is this a must or a feature of embryo formation? It seems to be the latter. As Gould argued much of the way things are is chance and historical and the idea that things focus in on optimal adaptations is over played. When we look at the diversity of life then we don't just see free adaption to the environment but rather a chunky historical display with superficial adaptation. Much of what we see is simply left overs from the past that are sufficiently successful and too fundamental to change - deep local minima in the entropy of life forms. But then is there any meaning in fact to saying that something is perfectly adapted without testing an unlimited solution space?

Another feature of Creationism is the "blind watch maker" that: finding such intricate mechanisms as living things we would expect them to have a maker. Problem with the analogy with a clock is that a clock clearly has a "purpose" and that purpose is what causes it to be replicated in human societies. A living thing however has no purpose - it simply replicates as part of its very nature. Thus for a clock purpose, use, creation and making all have relevance which they don't for living things. What is the purpose of life? has been an long standing conundrum something that the Creationists most obviously don't address. If you found a clock you would look for a maker because it can't make itself. You find a pregnant woman and you see you don't need a creator. Thus pagans worship fertility which seems here to be an advance over creationism - the worship of that ability of living things to make themselves - or of life to pass by in countless forms one to another.

It can also be seen that really the clock is the product of evolution (maybe by Natural Selection also). It began with the notion of time in natural cycles like days which would be priordal - even our cells tell the time. As the human mind and culture developed these notions would have been central. The physics of movement of the sun (in a circle) led to the measurement of the sun in circular sundials. Quite how ancient man solved the issue of the tilt of the Earth and the mythology that surrounded this I do not know - and will investigate. Anyway sometime between Stonehenge and renaissance sundials the gnomon became slanted and the dial face became symettrical. Then with the evolution of machines it became possible to provide a wind up simulation of the suns movement and eventually came the clock. What we see as hands and a dial is really a historical development on ancient ideas of the sun going around the Earth. Digital clocks are more abstract by contrast and an interesting question would be to wonder what time instruments might be like in alient civilisations with a different solar system e.g. 2 suns.

Jewish religions seem to place importance on the "Will" of God rather than on natural processes - they do in many ways seem opposed to Nature and very anthropocentric placing importance on God/Human qualities like will, intention, labour, productivity, creation. This clearly have founded the Western world and ENS seems to challenge all of these: important for my book infact - will consider this in more depth. What has Jewish philosophy got against Nature? and more importantly what do they have to gain by this stance.

What is neat about the method of Natural Selection is that the "chicken-ness" of a chicken is created by the same process as its strutting about now as you look into the chicken coup. What I mean is that if that chicken died it does not matter for the type because there are other chickens. But if the death was caused by something general to do with its "chicken-ness" then all chickens would start to experience this culling and the type "chicken" would probably start to go into decline. (Well that is an expected scenario, while for humans that eating of it has caused it to go into massive 'acline' - i.e. de/a-scension).

So the individual life that we see, is connected with the "type" that we see and which it shares across the species. So "what" something is, is a function of "who" it has been so to speak. So each individual human life that has been played out in the history of the human race has gone together to determine what human's are like. "Our" life will contribute to what it is to be human in the future (well aspects of life that effected our children's fitness anyway).

This may look confusing - it is! The whole notion of an "individual chicken" for example becomes very confused in evolution because "chicken" is a type while individual is the particular - but it is the selection on the individual which determines the future characterists of the type. The "tree of life" that is often drawn (in the BBC program being one case) is not a tree with individuals at the end (although they do draw individuals at the end of the branches) it is a make believe tree of types. If we were to put a human at the end of the human branch who shall we chose to picture: you or me? What does a "human" look like? This is Plato's problem - what does the "Form" Human look like? what does this word refer to?

As already argued stream and river don't refer to anything discrete - they are imaginary stages in a process. Another example I neglected to add earlier was experienced as I walked the coast last summer. At one point I have the sea to my right, the next I have a river to my right - but at what point as I turn into the estuary does the water change from sea to river? Maybe there is a transition zone... but where are the boundaries of that? and so on. Things are not discrete and not separted from other things by actual boundaries - it is all in the mind. Likewise if someone asks you to point out "a" human you can do this, but you can't point to actual "human".

The "tree of life" is an imaginery painting that ties together all the imaginery "types" that we see. But as Darwin so profoundly recognised each one of these "types" differs from each other just as Plato recognised millenia before. For Plato this variance made real things inferior to their Ideal, for Darwin these variances created variance in the survival of the things and where those things replicated created a force for progressive change. But if there is no real "type" then where is the variance? A "horse" with longer legs, and a horse with shorter legs only differ because we liken them and imagine that "horse" is something they share. Actually there is no "horse", this is a discrete invention of the mind linked to language. In the great process of Life horses never come about there is only the slow morphing of generations some growing into likeness of "pigmy horses" and some growing into the likeness of "plains horses" at no point do all the animals that exist constitute "horse" or "mammal" or "ape" or "man". This is the true inter-connected view of Life that I have been seeking: Life is both each living thing and every living thing: at the same time. In this it holds an animate version of the general description of God or Buddha which are both each thing and every thing at once.

Pleased I got here. Just to catalogue one last thought. Last year I saw a duck. A few weeks later she was being followed by her ducklings. I imagined now the future where she had died. One animal has literally become a half dozen. It is easier to comprehend after the proceeding outpouring that she was not a discrete entity that somehow transformed into 6 similar entities: but rather flowing through all these forms is an endless flow of "life" akin to the flow of a river which takes the forms of streams and rivers in sequence.

==== Add 28/2/09
I see news that a new interpretation of fossils shows conclusively Pacoderms were viviparous. The argument then - since they are a different evolutionary branch to vertebrates who also show vivparity - is that viviparity is an "adaptation" which has been evolved separately at many different points. At least here Gould it seems that adaptation has been proven. The question now is what environmental conditions favour viviparity and placentality.