Can't believe I didn't see this obvious thing before...
The definition of evil is the turning away from God. This is the ultimate sin and the cause of suffering, hell and damnation.
This definition works in every world religion (including Buddhism). With this equation people since the dawn of time have realised that to alleviate worldly sufferinsg they need to turn to God and appease Him. This is done in a number of ways from making offerings to Him, or making offerings to other people (generosity) through to more sedate methods like prayer and meditation.
What I can't believe has been so profoundly missed however is that the turning to God or not has nothing to do with God at all!
It is clearly written in the Abrahamic religions (Judeism, Christianity, Islam, Ba'hai etc) that Man ate from the Tree of Knowledge and so gained the knowledge of Good and Evil and so gained the power to disobey God. But this then gets forgotten in the delude of spin in favour of God.
The point for every religious person to realise from the humble mendicant through to the fanatical holy warrior is that the only tool that God has over man is persuasion. The choice of Good and Evil lies entirely within Man. Threaten to behead an impious heretic and all that is being wielded is persuasion.
It matters not how Great is God if this fails to impress the free Man.
Now this is probably a lot of Nietzsche. But what it is not is a rejection of God. The fact still remains that if we lose sight of God we suffer - be that through God's active vengence or simply a Law of reality.
So the central tenet of Buddhism that we must seek salvation through our own effort is nothing other than the truth of all religions. Bunyan's Christian seeks God and salvation by no other means than his own efforts - this is the methophor for all our salvations from suffering by whichever road we seek to tread. This is the most established, universal and invariant Truth that Man has realised during his eons upon earth.
A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Wicken, a Jain, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Zoroastrian, a Satanist, an Animist, a Confusionist, a Daoist: all these and more believe that the difference between suffering and well-being lies in our own efforts to follow God. It is not God Himself who makes us well.
BUT how easily this is misunderstood. A Man who belies that God is so easily mastered and bought off by a few prayers and offerings; a Man who becomes arrogant and believes that he can do as he wishes and then attend church or do some dana or charity to appease the God - this man is the worst of all Men. For him suffering is endless and his charity is worthless.
God it must never be forgotten is the All Powerful and only through humble respect of this matter can we follow Him rightfully. It is like the Man who stands at the window to throw himself off. In freefall he believes he need only make amends with the earth before impact to be saved. The wise Man of course realises the Law of Gravity and knows that flight in the face of it is futile. Freedom is not like the former, but continual awareness and respect of the Law like the latter.
This point is a favourite of Jewish writers who explain to the dumbfounded that the Jewish God is All Powerful and beyond comparison and explanation. To worship Him is not to expect anything in return. If one is pious and dutiful but still ends up in a concentration camp to think that God is unjust is simply to lose ones humility and believe ones own judgement over Gods. Here is a lesson for all those who lack faith in God - he is immesurable and humility comes in the form of acceptance and non-judgement!
So why Abrahamic religions should be stereotyped as slaves to God and Buddhists stereotyped as rejectors of God is a mystery. Maybe it is simply the inability of common men to see the duality of all things - that what is one way needs the other way to be what it is. To be free to chose Good over Evil is both to be slave to Goodness and master to Goodness at the same time.
If we want to catch a living fish, must we also catch some river too! Some will say that we haven't completely caught the fish if it is in the bag with a bit of the river too. And yet the man who completely catches the fish soon has a dead fish. But does a man with a dead fish have the same thing as a man with a live fish? So has a "fish" really been caught?
When one speaks of fish:
One must have river and fish as one.
When one speaks of river:
One must have river and fish as one also.
This links with the natural selection, evolution stuff.
p.s. I mentioned Satanists in the list of religions. These are ironic fellows for sure. They believe in Good and Evil. They believe in God and Satan (few religions believe in Satan it is true). They recognise that rebellion from God is called Evil. They probably also realise that Suffering is caused by Evil. Yet they turn to Satan to end their suffering! Certainly he can offer them gains, but these gains lead to suffering. So it is an odd religion for those who wish for anything other than suffering. And if they wish for freedom from the Law then why turn from one master to another? But I include them because at root it is through their own actions that they get what they get.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
My Life - No Action
It is true that everything happens all by itself. We humans don't need to do anything. This does not mean we need to "do nothing" - that is doing something. I mean we simply need to step out of the picture and let things take their course - including ourselves.
This does not mean that we let ourselves indulge ourselves without restraint if we are so disposed to do so. Again such an attitude is firstly going to engage us in a struggle to get what we want and we end up slap bang in the middle of the picture lamenting losses and rejoicing gains once again. But secondly if we look closely at such a motive as selfish indulgence we are not really letting go and doing nothing at all - we are orientating the whole world around us and this implies "working" toward selfish goals. This is not letting things happen.
So their is effort required to "Stop Doing" and that effort is learning that really there is no doing.
A girl has contacted me. A girl I could like a very great deal. I could be in love. I could relive the world of "my muse". This is only possible because I have taken a very long time to clear my heart of my last love so that it is fresh and able to be filled agin by someone new. It is important to note however that this has happened all by itself - how can I control the arrival of people I have never met before? While sitting doing nothing the grass grows all by itself!
It is obvious really. My mother made the decision (consciously or otherwise) to have me. I had no say in this. I am male and 5'10'' etc I have no say in this. I have been born in England and educate in English etc. I had no say in this. I have food to eat which I have worked for, but being able to work for it and not living in a famine region is something I had no say in. Even if I decided to become a doctor and move to the place I wanted to be, and live with the people I wanted to be and have everything that I wanted - I had no say in what I wanted! I "chose" to be a doctor - did I? Why did I want to be a doctor and not a fireman? Did I chose that to?
Outside the wall of our garden lies a world more vast that we can even begin to comprehend that it is there. The sea into which all our actions are dissolved and out of which comes the very soil and water upon which we are grown. I experiened this first while walking to John O'Groats.
I accidentally ended up in this mansion gardens. Surrounded by geometric gravel paths, fountains and perfectly sculpted box hedges - like a mini Palace of Versailles - and in the middle loomed the Gothic ornate masionary of a mansion with long windows into which I could see the indulgent red upholstery and red leather furnatures and stained oak wood panelling and floor. In the drive I met the old owner and his 10 something girlfriend and managed to apologise and get directions to the road. After 3 week of living rough I cannot deny that this place seemed like a paradise.
About 40 minutes later I was clearing a hill that had been on the horizon and looking back I could see the huge expanse of the Scottish boaders streatching flat from the sea and the bay to the left across checkered fields as far as the horizon to the south and and west and above stretched the vast infinite blue sky smudged with whispy and aimless clouds floating free. Looking back to the bay I made out a tiny green spec that was the mansion and gardens and then I saw this: that what had been a paradise when looked at from the inside was really just a spec of the world and to accept that paradise as ones home was to accept a very small prison within an infinite world.
And so don't we all do this. We take ourselves as the limits of the world and seek to make paradise here. Yet we don't see how this desire makes prisoners of us all.
And I have been on the outside ever since. Yet now I am faced with love again I feel the need to climb inside the prison - for in there there is food and sustainance and out here things are cold and harsh.
I have been uinable to explain this until talking to a friend yesterday who reminded me of Christian's last words in Mutiny on the Bounty: We are free says the fellow mutineer as they relax on the islands. 'No we are prisoners but on the outside".
So I am emprisoned between two extremes: a prisoner on the inside surrounded by what "I" love and what "I" want and a prisoner on the outside where I am free from these things. Somewhere in between must lie the true freedom. So this means that Love and Not Love are neither the real prison walls - but something else, and this makes me free at least to love or not love - so which will it be?
This does not mean that we let ourselves indulge ourselves without restraint if we are so disposed to do so. Again such an attitude is firstly going to engage us in a struggle to get what we want and we end up slap bang in the middle of the picture lamenting losses and rejoicing gains once again. But secondly if we look closely at such a motive as selfish indulgence we are not really letting go and doing nothing at all - we are orientating the whole world around us and this implies "working" toward selfish goals. This is not letting things happen.
So their is effort required to "Stop Doing" and that effort is learning that really there is no doing.
A girl has contacted me. A girl I could like a very great deal. I could be in love. I could relive the world of "my muse". This is only possible because I have taken a very long time to clear my heart of my last love so that it is fresh and able to be filled agin by someone new. It is important to note however that this has happened all by itself - how can I control the arrival of people I have never met before? While sitting doing nothing the grass grows all by itself!
It is obvious really. My mother made the decision (consciously or otherwise) to have me. I had no say in this. I am male and 5'10'' etc I have no say in this. I have been born in England and educate in English etc. I had no say in this. I have food to eat which I have worked for, but being able to work for it and not living in a famine region is something I had no say in. Even if I decided to become a doctor and move to the place I wanted to be, and live with the people I wanted to be and have everything that I wanted - I had no say in what I wanted! I "chose" to be a doctor - did I? Why did I want to be a doctor and not a fireman? Did I chose that to?
Outside the wall of our garden lies a world more vast that we can even begin to comprehend that it is there. The sea into which all our actions are dissolved and out of which comes the very soil and water upon which we are grown. I experiened this first while walking to John O'Groats.
I accidentally ended up in this mansion gardens. Surrounded by geometric gravel paths, fountains and perfectly sculpted box hedges - like a mini Palace of Versailles - and in the middle loomed the Gothic ornate masionary of a mansion with long windows into which I could see the indulgent red upholstery and red leather furnatures and stained oak wood panelling and floor. In the drive I met the old owner and his 10 something girlfriend and managed to apologise and get directions to the road. After 3 week of living rough I cannot deny that this place seemed like a paradise.
About 40 minutes later I was clearing a hill that had been on the horizon and looking back I could see the huge expanse of the Scottish boaders streatching flat from the sea and the bay to the left across checkered fields as far as the horizon to the south and and west and above stretched the vast infinite blue sky smudged with whispy and aimless clouds floating free. Looking back to the bay I made out a tiny green spec that was the mansion and gardens and then I saw this: that what had been a paradise when looked at from the inside was really just a spec of the world and to accept that paradise as ones home was to accept a very small prison within an infinite world.
And so don't we all do this. We take ourselves as the limits of the world and seek to make paradise here. Yet we don't see how this desire makes prisoners of us all.
And I have been on the outside ever since. Yet now I am faced with love again I feel the need to climb inside the prison - for in there there is food and sustainance and out here things are cold and harsh.
I have been uinable to explain this until talking to a friend yesterday who reminded me of Christian's last words in Mutiny on the Bounty: We are free says the fellow mutineer as they relax on the islands. 'No we are prisoners but on the outside".
So I am emprisoned between two extremes: a prisoner on the inside surrounded by what "I" love and what "I" want and a prisoner on the outside where I am free from these things. Somewhere in between must lie the true freedom. So this means that Love and Not Love are neither the real prison walls - but something else, and this makes me free at least to love or not love - so which will it be?
Explanation of work... money?
Here's a thought...
So the suggestion is that "work" only becomes work when it is controlled by capital. "Work" that is DIY ceases to have the quality of work that is done under contract.
It is clear that it is the same people and the work regardless whether it is done by your friend under contract for money, or is done by him as a favour. If you doubt that imagine employing yourself and paying yourself through a contract, and compare that with just getting it done. Its the same "action" isn't it? "Professionalism" seems to be a fetishisation of the concept of work. We would rather have something done by a professional than by a non-professional even when the "quality" is the same! And as we often experience the professional does not supply a very high quality. Business is a different skill to craft. Someone may have hidden talents for a craft but never go into business. Someone may be excellent at setting up business, getting clients and all the paraphernalia but actually supply a poor service when it comes down to it. The experts at business know how to go bankrupt and get big redundancy payouts and also how to restart the business again under a different name (I know some who have made millions) - these are true businessmen and they are professionals but their craft is poor.
Craft is maybe the word for the underlying nature of work. It is the word (Techne) from which more modern concepts Art and Technology have been derived. Craft is both art and technology combined. It is the essence of human action. As we mature we develop craft in our relationships, our language, our thoughts, our emotions, our skills etc. Craft is closely connected with quality. It is however free from capital - being skillful in something is simply "doing" it, "being" it. It comes from within, it is an expression of ourselves, of our lives. When someone says "what do you do?" the authentic answer is similar to the answer for "how do you do?" - both enquire as to your state of being. Inauthentically the former now means - which capital reserves do you protect, i.e. what "work" do you do, or what are you paid to do. Someone may be a doctor professionally, but we are all doctors of varying skills in that our lives are based upon the premise ' do not harm' and more proactively 'create wellbeing'. Many people who are not trained or paid to be doctors carry this out far better than any doctor - a mother would be an excellent example. The concept of paid employment poorly fits the notions of skill, responsibility, craft, or life. It does seem better allied to capital and business.
Now the point of this blog is money. For all the rehashed philosophy the concept of money and Smithian economics seems sound. A contract is created in the free market between free agents who decide the terms. One person agrees to pay what he things is a "fair" price and the other does what he thinks is a "fair" job. Assuming all does well the exchange is satisfactory to both parties. The accumulation of money by any party is a record of their completing satisfactory exchanges and their contributing of value to the society. Their then spending of money in fair contract seems only rightful given their healthy membership of society. Capital will "fairly" accumulate where people want it by definition. It is as good as a measure of the General Will as any. The hand of the markets is the Genaral Will - how can Rousseau have criticised this? How can anyone demean money or professionalism in this process?
It escapes me. Yet an equally ugly picture of capitalism can be written. I wonder where the truth really lies.
But, stepping over that issue a suggestion. If all things can be viewed as "action", and work can be viewed as those actions which preserve capital then the movement of money is not caused by "production" and "consumption" as it traditioanlly viewed but rather simply by the action's relationship to capital.
Normally we think a farmer produces and an eater consumes. The farmer exchanges what he makes for money, and the eater exchanges his money for food. Thus commodity distribution happens in one direction and money flows in the opposite way.
But the eater is working isn't he? He needs to shop, and travel, and maybe cook and needs to sit to eat and his body will do the digestion. Once digested the food can be put to use to fuel him in his job for example to do something productive. It is a cycle. If we abuses his freetime eating poorly, living unhealthily etc then that will affect his work. There is a peak in industrial accidents on Monday I understand due to alcohol consumption at the weekend - at college I had a bicycle accident once on Monday due to the same! So while the eater gives money to the farmer in exchange for food, in reality is there really an "exchange" - its just the cycle isn't it? The money comes into it not because the crops cost anything to grow - crops grow all by themselves and the sun shines all by itself and the rain comes all by itself - not because the farmer gives any money to the sun or the ground or the clouds - but because some of what the farmer does involves "capital".
Run out of time and need to explore this more in depth before I write more ....
So the suggestion is that "work" only becomes work when it is controlled by capital. "Work" that is DIY ceases to have the quality of work that is done under contract.
It is clear that it is the same people and the work regardless whether it is done by your friend under contract for money, or is done by him as a favour. If you doubt that imagine employing yourself and paying yourself through a contract, and compare that with just getting it done. Its the same "action" isn't it? "Professionalism" seems to be a fetishisation of the concept of work. We would rather have something done by a professional than by a non-professional even when the "quality" is the same! And as we often experience the professional does not supply a very high quality. Business is a different skill to craft. Someone may have hidden talents for a craft but never go into business. Someone may be excellent at setting up business, getting clients and all the paraphernalia but actually supply a poor service when it comes down to it. The experts at business know how to go bankrupt and get big redundancy payouts and also how to restart the business again under a different name (I know some who have made millions) - these are true businessmen and they are professionals but their craft is poor.
Craft is maybe the word for the underlying nature of work. It is the word (Techne) from which more modern concepts Art and Technology have been derived. Craft is both art and technology combined. It is the essence of human action. As we mature we develop craft in our relationships, our language, our thoughts, our emotions, our skills etc. Craft is closely connected with quality. It is however free from capital - being skillful in something is simply "doing" it, "being" it. It comes from within, it is an expression of ourselves, of our lives. When someone says "what do you do?" the authentic answer is similar to the answer for "how do you do?" - both enquire as to your state of being. Inauthentically the former now means - which capital reserves do you protect, i.e. what "work" do you do, or what are you paid to do. Someone may be a doctor professionally, but we are all doctors of varying skills in that our lives are based upon the premise ' do not harm' and more proactively 'create wellbeing'. Many people who are not trained or paid to be doctors carry this out far better than any doctor - a mother would be an excellent example. The concept of paid employment poorly fits the notions of skill, responsibility, craft, or life. It does seem better allied to capital and business.
Now the point of this blog is money. For all the rehashed philosophy the concept of money and Smithian economics seems sound. A contract is created in the free market between free agents who decide the terms. One person agrees to pay what he things is a "fair" price and the other does what he thinks is a "fair" job. Assuming all does well the exchange is satisfactory to both parties. The accumulation of money by any party is a record of their completing satisfactory exchanges and their contributing of value to the society. Their then spending of money in fair contract seems only rightful given their healthy membership of society. Capital will "fairly" accumulate where people want it by definition. It is as good as a measure of the General Will as any. The hand of the markets is the Genaral Will - how can Rousseau have criticised this? How can anyone demean money or professionalism in this process?
It escapes me. Yet an equally ugly picture of capitalism can be written. I wonder where the truth really lies.
But, stepping over that issue a suggestion. If all things can be viewed as "action", and work can be viewed as those actions which preserve capital then the movement of money is not caused by "production" and "consumption" as it traditioanlly viewed but rather simply by the action's relationship to capital.
Normally we think a farmer produces and an eater consumes. The farmer exchanges what he makes for money, and the eater exchanges his money for food. Thus commodity distribution happens in one direction and money flows in the opposite way.
But the eater is working isn't he? He needs to shop, and travel, and maybe cook and needs to sit to eat and his body will do the digestion. Once digested the food can be put to use to fuel him in his job for example to do something productive. It is a cycle. If we abuses his freetime eating poorly, living unhealthily etc then that will affect his work. There is a peak in industrial accidents on Monday I understand due to alcohol consumption at the weekend - at college I had a bicycle accident once on Monday due to the same! So while the eater gives money to the farmer in exchange for food, in reality is there really an "exchange" - its just the cycle isn't it? The money comes into it not because the crops cost anything to grow - crops grow all by themselves and the sun shines all by itself and the rain comes all by itself - not because the farmer gives any money to the sun or the ground or the clouds - but because some of what the farmer does involves "capital".
Run out of time and need to explore this more in depth before I write more ....
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Zest for Life
"..., her only form of pleasure was to watch the sea, so perpetually alive, whether livid in the dark days of December or delicately green with shimmering lights like watered silk in the early May sunshine."
Emile Zola, Zest for Life
My new favourite author. Reading this last night I realised that I had found a replacement for "my muse", such writing I had previously attributed to her and a personal-myth about Eastern culture. Yet here is that same writing in the hands of a Frenchman, using it is true reference to silk, an eastern material, but never-the-less articulating what he called Naturalism - that same view of the world that I sort.
So I am free from the mistaken belief that such a view belongs to any people, that I need a particular people to have this view - it lies in Europe, in Zola and in Myself. I knew this but I needed proof.
Emile Zola, Zest for Life
My new favourite author. Reading this last night I realised that I had found a replacement for "my muse", such writing I had previously attributed to her and a personal-myth about Eastern culture. Yet here is that same writing in the hands of a Frenchman, using it is true reference to silk, an eastern material, but never-the-less articulating what he called Naturalism - that same view of the world that I sort.
So I am free from the mistaken belief that such a view belongs to any people, that I need a particular people to have this view - it lies in Europe, in Zola and in Myself. I knew this but I needed proof.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Getting what we want
Is there any difference between "getting what one wants" and "wanting what one gets"?
They appear different: wanting what one gets is interpreted as fortunate, while getting what one wants is considered successful. The only difference in interpretation then is due to ego.
But it is recognised that success is part fortune and part hard work - so it is not an indivisable concept. And it is recognised (less clearly) that fortune is part hard work - you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
In reality then a "successful" situation is a combination of things which can be termed "deserved" through hard work, and those which are just luck. However if you examine the idea of Karma you see that actually everything is due to hard work - even what we get and what we desire.
So through sustained effort we can bring about both the things we want, and the wanting of the things we get; they are the same thing. And the process of bring this about is called "being good".
The problem for the Ego is that it only sees things as a product of itself. Luck it can't understand because it doesn't seem to come from itself, and hard work is a strain and fraught with difficulties. Seeing the bigger picture, where even our Ego is a thing we obtain through luck (how can our Ego make itself?), we see that the forces that bring things about are both within and without, both in "our" control and outside "our" control, and the question of whether what we get is what we want and vice-versa is really a matter of perspective and something determined on a scale much greater than a view including only "ourselves".
"Quotation" marks everywhere because all these terms don't really mean anything they are habitual linguistic phrases that are handed down but on examination just dissappear when the lights are turned on them.
They appear different: wanting what one gets is interpreted as fortunate, while getting what one wants is considered successful. The only difference in interpretation then is due to ego.
But it is recognised that success is part fortune and part hard work - so it is not an indivisable concept. And it is recognised (less clearly) that fortune is part hard work - you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
In reality then a "successful" situation is a combination of things which can be termed "deserved" through hard work, and those which are just luck. However if you examine the idea of Karma you see that actually everything is due to hard work - even what we get and what we desire.
So through sustained effort we can bring about both the things we want, and the wanting of the things we get; they are the same thing. And the process of bring this about is called "being good".
The problem for the Ego is that it only sees things as a product of itself. Luck it can't understand because it doesn't seem to come from itself, and hard work is a strain and fraught with difficulties. Seeing the bigger picture, where even our Ego is a thing we obtain through luck (how can our Ego make itself?), we see that the forces that bring things about are both within and without, both in "our" control and outside "our" control, and the question of whether what we get is what we want and vice-versa is really a matter of perspective and something determined on a scale much greater than a view including only "ourselves".
"Quotation" marks everywhere because all these terms don't really mean anything they are habitual linguistic phrases that are handed down but on examination just dissappear when the lights are turned on them.
Beauty
In London yesterday saw one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. Infact she was what I have come to call Transcendental - in that she was without comparison: a beauty of her own to which nothing can compare. I'm also evidently gaining some wisdom and strength because I recognise how dangerous such creatures are!
Some bloke was fawning over her and she walked through the crowd leaving a wake of rubber-neckers. One poor bloke was brought to a complete standstill with his head was spinning. He stopped and had to look around with a look of shock and disbelief on his face.
At times like this there is a razor edge between the path to happiness and the path to unhappiness. There are actually two razor edges. Firstly do you "arretez" or "allez" to use a term from an old post. Is it green light or red light. If its red light you are safe. If its green light, unfortunately this means that you awaken inside to the possibilities and then you are struggling. The two possibilities are success and failure. So you need to enter a struggle with other suitors to gain her attention and affection. This is the path that makes heros and losers, that for which wars are fought. They cynically say the Battle of Troy was fought for money and power - yet why do men take territories if they are honest? It is for breeding rights. That is what we are at war for. In war there are two types of people: winners and losers.
One must feel sorry for all those who get bound into this path because it is for both winners and losers a struggle. I saw myself in bit in the guy who was fawning over the girl - that was me with "my muse" - altho I acted otherwise - inside that was me (especially when I realised that this was never going to work). I feel sorry for the girl herself. She must live in a world where everything is directed toward her. She has no idea what life is like over the fence away from the glare of attention that she must receive. Lao Zi would say that the best way is the middle - neither so ugly that people are repulsed and neither so beautiful that people are attracted. Both ways are "noticable" and both ways are enslaving. The middle way gives us peace and freedom.
There are many dangerous thoughts which then can occur. We may think: "I deserve her", "she will be mine", "I want her", "imagine (while not yet having) being with her" etc. These enrage the territorial instinct and the Ego. Once the situation is framed between self and other: me and her, me and not-her, not-me and her then the suffering begins. A cynical approach is to seek her but not allow oneself to get involved. Those who kill their hearts with cynicism and pain and seek conquest inauthentically simply to try and compensate that pain: the "bad boys": this I imagine is often why these girls will end up with a "bad boy": why they will have unsuccessful relationships and rarely find happiness. It is a dangerous work that she inhabits and a world that will turn men into eager rock-climbers: the precipitous depths below testing their every move. Is it really work the effort?
It is a hard thing to learn but actually nipping that desire at its first outset - taking "arretez" as ones first response ensures peace, freedom and wisdom. Tho the ego will accuse us of being a coward: test the ego and see whether it first has the strength to say no! If one cannot say no how can one say yes! For if we let her say yes for us then we are lost forever (well for many years as I have been)!
Some bloke was fawning over her and she walked through the crowd leaving a wake of rubber-neckers. One poor bloke was brought to a complete standstill with his head was spinning. He stopped and had to look around with a look of shock and disbelief on his face.
At times like this there is a razor edge between the path to happiness and the path to unhappiness. There are actually two razor edges. Firstly do you "arretez" or "allez" to use a term from an old post. Is it green light or red light. If its red light you are safe. If its green light, unfortunately this means that you awaken inside to the possibilities and then you are struggling. The two possibilities are success and failure. So you need to enter a struggle with other suitors to gain her attention and affection. This is the path that makes heros and losers, that for which wars are fought. They cynically say the Battle of Troy was fought for money and power - yet why do men take territories if they are honest? It is for breeding rights. That is what we are at war for. In war there are two types of people: winners and losers.
One must feel sorry for all those who get bound into this path because it is for both winners and losers a struggle. I saw myself in bit in the guy who was fawning over the girl - that was me with "my muse" - altho I acted otherwise - inside that was me (especially when I realised that this was never going to work). I feel sorry for the girl herself. She must live in a world where everything is directed toward her. She has no idea what life is like over the fence away from the glare of attention that she must receive. Lao Zi would say that the best way is the middle - neither so ugly that people are repulsed and neither so beautiful that people are attracted. Both ways are "noticable" and both ways are enslaving. The middle way gives us peace and freedom.
There are many dangerous thoughts which then can occur. We may think: "I deserve her", "she will be mine", "I want her", "imagine (while not yet having) being with her" etc. These enrage the territorial instinct and the Ego. Once the situation is framed between self and other: me and her, me and not-her, not-me and her then the suffering begins. A cynical approach is to seek her but not allow oneself to get involved. Those who kill their hearts with cynicism and pain and seek conquest inauthentically simply to try and compensate that pain: the "bad boys": this I imagine is often why these girls will end up with a "bad boy": why they will have unsuccessful relationships and rarely find happiness. It is a dangerous work that she inhabits and a world that will turn men into eager rock-climbers: the precipitous depths below testing their every move. Is it really work the effort?
It is a hard thing to learn but actually nipping that desire at its first outset - taking "arretez" as ones first response ensures peace, freedom and wisdom. Tho the ego will accuse us of being a coward: test the ego and see whether it first has the strength to say no! If one cannot say no how can one say yes! For if we let her say yes for us then we are lost forever (well for many years as I have been)!
Explanation of Work!
Further to posts on work...
In my mind work is associated with effort. To do more work is to require more effort.
An economic myth is that money repays work. This would mean that money repays effort. Yet we know perfectly well that the builder actually carrying the bricks is paid less than the foreman who just walsk around giving orders.
My father used to say that the extra pay was because of "responsibility". I'm sure I've argued already in this blog my doubts about this concept. Apparently the people who actually did the killing of the Nazi regime were not responsible for that killing - they were only following orders. What a dangerous concept!
Actually - morally at least - we are all absolutely responsible for everything we think or say or do. There is no escape from this. So what is "responsibility" if we are all always responsible by nature of morality? And, what is the extra money for?
We have also seen that the most responsible people are also the least responsible like with the state of the financial system at the moment. Wages are not linked to anything other than supply, demand and dishonesty.
So having eliminated wages from the concept of work, we return to work.
Looking at the increasing numbers of joggers on the streets in the UK these days the issue of work becomes rather poignant. There is more effort in these 10k runs than in a whole day pushing keys on a key board - yet we expect pay for one and nothing for the other!
Playing in a football team we expend vast amounts of energy and effort - yet we don't lament in the changing room after the game the amount of work we have just done.
Yet get asked to do half and hour of unpaid overtime and it becomes a burden.
Once again it looks like a case of relativity.
Working in a busy production line everyone is happy because the team works together. I once worked on a telephone mending line. There was a great work ethic in that company. We had a Jew, 4 English saxons, and a Carribean fellow. The Jew was the hardest working, the saxons came in next and the Carribean sitting next to his reggae music did about half the work of the saxons. Often the foreman set us targets after which we could go home. What was good was the he set those targets according to ability so while the Jew was give 100 phones to fix and the saxons 80 the Carribean was given only 40. Yet the group worked together enjoyed each others company and were a sound team. The "work" was not done by individuals but by the team, and it was a social organism that was created by the work. The only person who did nothing in fact (as usual) was the foreman who was also not part of the team! He spent his time talking to the staff because he was bored. Isn't this an essential experience for the "manager" that to oversee the work they cannot be a part of the work and are relegated to an antisocial position outside the group. Maybe this is what the money compensates. This is also another example of the SRH. If there was any work created it would have been by comparing the effort of the manager with the effort of the staff - this is where the concept of work seems to arise!
So before (in this blog) I have seen Work as an unpleasant part of Life, the effort to keep the ball of creation and decay rolling. The Sysyphine tragedy that is mortal existence. But this is to give is some ontological presumed status - to say that "work" actually exists. In this new view (like with everything) it depends upon a dialectic between effort and non-effort. The class system did not export the unwanted tasks to the slaves (and then "liberated" working class) as though those tasks were in there essence unwanted. Rather two groups of people emerged those whose "society" was generated around working structures and those whose society was generated around "capital". We call the "working" class working class only because there is a "capital" class. On some island with shared ownership there is neither the concept of "capital" nor the concept of "work". Work is Life, Work is Living, Work is Family, Work is Society. They are all one and the same, there is no concept of work. There is no concept of ownership.
I am reminded of a Nepali friend telling me that pre-development the communities in the hills used to each meet up at sunrise and head off to the fields for the days work. It was a great social event that everyone looked forward to. There was much talking and laughing and in the fields the people sang all day enjoying and celebrating what they were doing. There is much more work to this than any penpusher in an office on 10000 times the equivalent wage but while the penpusher sees his experience as work, for the field labourers it is just life and society.
In Do Botton's talk he touches on exactly this (still to read the book). That work can be an enriching part of life. Yet I would argue it actually is Life, except that it has been distorted through the lens of property, and now Life is fragmented in an economics that breaks everything up and disintegrates what once was a more fluid and less distinct society. What we call free-time is clearly no different from what we call work-time - but the labels have arisen because the capitalists "own" our actions in work-time while we "own" our actions in free-time. We experience this notion of self in a dialectic with capitalist. This is where the concept of working class comes from. When we are on holiday and we feel "free" this feeling exists only in dialectic with capitalist. Private and Public likewise. None of these things actual "exist" they are created because opposing things (with no existence) are brought together (and made to exist) in a dialectic.
I'm seeing again that it truly can be said that all existence is relative-existence.
So my previous rejection of "work" has some sense to it. I am not averse to work - I enjoy helping my mother (or friends) in the garden, I enjoy jogging and cycling and walking, I enjoy writing this blog and trying to make sense of a world that I refuse to be bullied into thinking makes any sense (and I refuse to be cynically resigned to the belief that it can't make sense), I enjoy cooking, I enjoy my GCSE tuition etc etc. I enjoy these things because they are Life not work. What I do not enjoy is "work", that is providing effort for capitalists. And now I understand why! Because it is vis-a-vis capitalists that our efforts get the meaning and feeling of work! And if free effort is actual Life then effort brought to bear by capital is Death! Rather shocking result but isn't that the killing feeling of spending ones life in the slavery of capital ownership? Isn't that what we all complain about and get drunk at weekends, and take long holidays and try to get rich to get away from?
In my mind work is associated with effort. To do more work is to require more effort.
An economic myth is that money repays work. This would mean that money repays effort. Yet we know perfectly well that the builder actually carrying the bricks is paid less than the foreman who just walsk around giving orders.
My father used to say that the extra pay was because of "responsibility". I'm sure I've argued already in this blog my doubts about this concept. Apparently the people who actually did the killing of the Nazi regime were not responsible for that killing - they were only following orders. What a dangerous concept!
Actually - morally at least - we are all absolutely responsible for everything we think or say or do. There is no escape from this. So what is "responsibility" if we are all always responsible by nature of morality? And, what is the extra money for?
We have also seen that the most responsible people are also the least responsible like with the state of the financial system at the moment. Wages are not linked to anything other than supply, demand and dishonesty.
So having eliminated wages from the concept of work, we return to work.
Looking at the increasing numbers of joggers on the streets in the UK these days the issue of work becomes rather poignant. There is more effort in these 10k runs than in a whole day pushing keys on a key board - yet we expect pay for one and nothing for the other!
Playing in a football team we expend vast amounts of energy and effort - yet we don't lament in the changing room after the game the amount of work we have just done.
Yet get asked to do half and hour of unpaid overtime and it becomes a burden.
Once again it looks like a case of relativity.
Working in a busy production line everyone is happy because the team works together. I once worked on a telephone mending line. There was a great work ethic in that company. We had a Jew, 4 English saxons, and a Carribean fellow. The Jew was the hardest working, the saxons came in next and the Carribean sitting next to his reggae music did about half the work of the saxons. Often the foreman set us targets after which we could go home. What was good was the he set those targets according to ability so while the Jew was give 100 phones to fix and the saxons 80 the Carribean was given only 40. Yet the group worked together enjoyed each others company and were a sound team. The "work" was not done by individuals but by the team, and it was a social organism that was created by the work. The only person who did nothing in fact (as usual) was the foreman who was also not part of the team! He spent his time talking to the staff because he was bored. Isn't this an essential experience for the "manager" that to oversee the work they cannot be a part of the work and are relegated to an antisocial position outside the group. Maybe this is what the money compensates. This is also another example of the SRH. If there was any work created it would have been by comparing the effort of the manager with the effort of the staff - this is where the concept of work seems to arise!
So before (in this blog) I have seen Work as an unpleasant part of Life, the effort to keep the ball of creation and decay rolling. The Sysyphine tragedy that is mortal existence. But this is to give is some ontological presumed status - to say that "work" actually exists. In this new view (like with everything) it depends upon a dialectic between effort and non-effort. The class system did not export the unwanted tasks to the slaves (and then "liberated" working class) as though those tasks were in there essence unwanted. Rather two groups of people emerged those whose "society" was generated around working structures and those whose society was generated around "capital". We call the "working" class working class only because there is a "capital" class. On some island with shared ownership there is neither the concept of "capital" nor the concept of "work". Work is Life, Work is Living, Work is Family, Work is Society. They are all one and the same, there is no concept of work. There is no concept of ownership.
I am reminded of a Nepali friend telling me that pre-development the communities in the hills used to each meet up at sunrise and head off to the fields for the days work. It was a great social event that everyone looked forward to. There was much talking and laughing and in the fields the people sang all day enjoying and celebrating what they were doing. There is much more work to this than any penpusher in an office on 10000 times the equivalent wage but while the penpusher sees his experience as work, for the field labourers it is just life and society.
In Do Botton's talk he touches on exactly this (still to read the book). That work can be an enriching part of life. Yet I would argue it actually is Life, except that it has been distorted through the lens of property, and now Life is fragmented in an economics that breaks everything up and disintegrates what once was a more fluid and less distinct society. What we call free-time is clearly no different from what we call work-time - but the labels have arisen because the capitalists "own" our actions in work-time while we "own" our actions in free-time. We experience this notion of self in a dialectic with capitalist. This is where the concept of working class comes from. When we are on holiday and we feel "free" this feeling exists only in dialectic with capitalist. Private and Public likewise. None of these things actual "exist" they are created because opposing things (with no existence) are brought together (and made to exist) in a dialectic.
I'm seeing again that it truly can be said that all existence is relative-existence.
So my previous rejection of "work" has some sense to it. I am not averse to work - I enjoy helping my mother (or friends) in the garden, I enjoy jogging and cycling and walking, I enjoy writing this blog and trying to make sense of a world that I refuse to be bullied into thinking makes any sense (and I refuse to be cynically resigned to the belief that it can't make sense), I enjoy cooking, I enjoy my GCSE tuition etc etc. I enjoy these things because they are Life not work. What I do not enjoy is "work", that is providing effort for capitalists. And now I understand why! Because it is vis-a-vis capitalists that our efforts get the meaning and feeling of work! And if free effort is actual Life then effort brought to bear by capital is Death! Rather shocking result but isn't that the killing feeling of spending ones life in the slavery of capital ownership? Isn't that what we all complain about and get drunk at weekends, and take long holidays and try to get rich to get away from?
Saturday, 18 April 2009
East v West
If I ever doubted the interconnectedness of true society and the fact that my own mind is really made from bits of the world outside me, it was again crushed last night. Just reading "The Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger. They said it was a classic; I figured I should have read it - so I have.
Toward the end our young man Holden Caulfield experiencing a continuing disquiet and nausea with the world has called upon a school acquaintance to meet him at a bar. Luce is a smart, philosophical and self-obsessed fellow. During their conversation it emerges that Luce has a Chinese girlfriend. When examined on whether her being Chinese is a feature of the relationship he says 'I simply happen to Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask.' (Chp 19. p152)
Amazing to read that - these are my most intimate words from 10 years ago. Since then I have found that Eastern people are no more aware of Eastern philosophy than Western are of Western philosophy - and my old dream that somehow the wisdom is present in an organic implicit way - in the mythos - in the culture - so that in a smile or touch one may be able to discern like with an intoxicating liquid a change in one's own outlook and wisdom: that dream I woke up from.
Maybe 6 years at a Chinese Buddhist temple layed the ground-work for re-reading the Dao De Ching last month. But without the groundwork in Dialectics from a Philosophy BA and a lifetimes interest in this material, and my own catalogue of mistakes and blunders it would have ment nothing.
My great disappointment is realising that the immigrants to UK from China and India (never having visited the places myself) are as ignorant of Life as the Westerners. The Human Race is blind and wisdom is only thinly and evenly spread. "My Muse" never read the Bhagavad Gita despite me insisting it was a very good book. I once argued that I could cook a better curry than her and she protested that this was impossible because I was not Indian. Yet she had to learn it - so anyone can learn it. Indian, Chinese, European - they mean nothing.
Another feature of that exchange on the book is reflected upon by Edward Said in his thesis of Orientalisation. The myth we have of the Orient in the West as being one of mystical wisdom and alluring exotic delights is a simple dialectical negation of our view of the West. By implication the West views itself as explicitly rational and restrained and sensually dull. Not far off the Protestant puritanical view. Of course it is the West seeking to negate their own view of themselves - and any view of oneself is inauthentic - that leads to this equally inauthentic view of the East. Distinctions are always false.
The type of arguments that I practice here of late are calssically viewed as Eastern - yet I learned them in Western philosophy first. Some want to argue that the Western philosophers got them from the East. Schopenhauer inspired by reading the first Buddhist translations, Heideggar inspired by his Chinese students. I imagine that mankind was mixing a long time before modern history and these ideas are as old as the hills. Modern distinctions do little to inform.
So I realise that what I once thought was mine, reallybelongs to History and the Human race.
Toward the end our young man Holden Caulfield experiencing a continuing disquiet and nausea with the world has called upon a school acquaintance to meet him at a bar. Luce is a smart, philosophical and self-obsessed fellow. During their conversation it emerges that Luce has a Chinese girlfriend. When examined on whether her being Chinese is a feature of the relationship he says 'I simply happen to Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask.' (Chp 19. p152)
Amazing to read that - these are my most intimate words from 10 years ago. Since then I have found that Eastern people are no more aware of Eastern philosophy than Western are of Western philosophy - and my old dream that somehow the wisdom is present in an organic implicit way - in the mythos - in the culture - so that in a smile or touch one may be able to discern like with an intoxicating liquid a change in one's own outlook and wisdom: that dream I woke up from.
Maybe 6 years at a Chinese Buddhist temple layed the ground-work for re-reading the Dao De Ching last month. But without the groundwork in Dialectics from a Philosophy BA and a lifetimes interest in this material, and my own catalogue of mistakes and blunders it would have ment nothing.
My great disappointment is realising that the immigrants to UK from China and India (never having visited the places myself) are as ignorant of Life as the Westerners. The Human Race is blind and wisdom is only thinly and evenly spread. "My Muse" never read the Bhagavad Gita despite me insisting it was a very good book. I once argued that I could cook a better curry than her and she protested that this was impossible because I was not Indian. Yet she had to learn it - so anyone can learn it. Indian, Chinese, European - they mean nothing.
Another feature of that exchange on the book is reflected upon by Edward Said in his thesis of Orientalisation. The myth we have of the Orient in the West as being one of mystical wisdom and alluring exotic delights is a simple dialectical negation of our view of the West. By implication the West views itself as explicitly rational and restrained and sensually dull. Not far off the Protestant puritanical view. Of course it is the West seeking to negate their own view of themselves - and any view of oneself is inauthentic - that leads to this equally inauthentic view of the East. Distinctions are always false.
The type of arguments that I practice here of late are calssically viewed as Eastern - yet I learned them in Western philosophy first. Some want to argue that the Western philosophers got them from the East. Schopenhauer inspired by reading the first Buddhist translations, Heideggar inspired by his Chinese students. I imagine that mankind was mixing a long time before modern history and these ideas are as old as the hills. Modern distinctions do little to inform.
So I realise that what I once thought was mine, reallybelongs to History and the Human race.
Hard Work?
Buying an apple yesterday the shop keeper was remarking on how short lived the get-rich-quick schemes of his mates are. What you need he says is just plain honest hard work - that is where the money comes from.
Good advice - yet the apple cost me 30p. It was a very very nice apple no doubt but as I ate it I wondered what "hard work" the shop keeper had done. He had barely touched the apple, yet he was charging 30p for it. Maybe I thought most of the money does to the distributers. But they touch it even less. Maybe to the picker. It is probably a machine. Ok maybe the farmer. He has done the actual work to make the apple. Yet did he do anything to make the sun? the water? the CO2? the seed? All he did was fertilise the soil and plant some apple seeds. Then may be spray with some pesticide and maybe if its a greenhouse monitor the temperature and water supply. The actual hard work hosever was done by the sun pumping out its light eneregy for the plant photosythesis. And, we can't forget the DNA and the seeds cells who did all the replication and chemistry which converted the inedible environment into the delicious apple.
All that these men did it seems was attend to a process that would have happened all by itself anyway. I accept that wild apples are very hard to eat because of the tannins - but natural selection would have led to better varieties all by itself as humans took the sweeter varieties. Create of managed orchards to select against weeds and unwanted competitors would be a simple step to the tasty juicy varieties we enjoy today.
"Hard work" I thought - this man doesn't know the meaning of the word! We rely upon the infinite histories that create today to enable us to live at all - where does the idea of "work" come into it at all?
30p does not repay hard work - the sun gets nothing. 30p is simply the exchange mechanism that measures the supply and demand of commodities. Whether apples grow on trees or are manufactured at great personal expense - the 30p is still supply and demand. If no-one wants your lifes work then it costs nothing even after all the hard work.
"Work" like so many things I'm seeing more clearly these days is a fake. It is peculiar to the Abrahamic religions I suggest - where even God is said to have worked upon the world.
In those same relgions and in common with other parts of the world Jesus says that we do not own the fruits of our labours for everything belongs to God. This is not fake. How can we own anything when we don't even own our own bodies!
To "own" something is to say that once we did not own it and also that maybe in the future we will not own it. It entails the idea of losing it, and having it stolen. When we own something we say - this is obviously not "me", yet I am going to enforce a notion of "me" on it. Alva's pen, Alva's blog. When I die these things will remain yet I will not. Clearly they are not me. But I enforce against the evidence that they are part of "me". I feel personally affected when anything happens to them. Yet they are not me.
There is a dialectic between me and not-me present in the notion of ownership. That which is truly "me" we don't even notice because we can't ever be parted from it so we can't even be with it - it is empty. That which we call "mine" is already dialectically lost. In Bono's cannibalised (The Fly) words (???) "If you hold on to something so tight you've already lost it".
We acknowledge in ownership that all these things are not really ours - that is why we have to make such a big deal of them. Like with "happiness" to seek property is to become inauthentic immediately, to become not oneself.
So if we can't truly own then what is "work"? It is just something that happens.
While sitting doing nothing
The Spring comes
And the grass grows all by itself.
Good advice - yet the apple cost me 30p. It was a very very nice apple no doubt but as I ate it I wondered what "hard work" the shop keeper had done. He had barely touched the apple, yet he was charging 30p for it. Maybe I thought most of the money does to the distributers. But they touch it even less. Maybe to the picker. It is probably a machine. Ok maybe the farmer. He has done the actual work to make the apple. Yet did he do anything to make the sun? the water? the CO2? the seed? All he did was fertilise the soil and plant some apple seeds. Then may be spray with some pesticide and maybe if its a greenhouse monitor the temperature and water supply. The actual hard work hosever was done by the sun pumping out its light eneregy for the plant photosythesis. And, we can't forget the DNA and the seeds cells who did all the replication and chemistry which converted the inedible environment into the delicious apple.
All that these men did it seems was attend to a process that would have happened all by itself anyway. I accept that wild apples are very hard to eat because of the tannins - but natural selection would have led to better varieties all by itself as humans took the sweeter varieties. Create of managed orchards to select against weeds and unwanted competitors would be a simple step to the tasty juicy varieties we enjoy today.
"Hard work" I thought - this man doesn't know the meaning of the word! We rely upon the infinite histories that create today to enable us to live at all - where does the idea of "work" come into it at all?
30p does not repay hard work - the sun gets nothing. 30p is simply the exchange mechanism that measures the supply and demand of commodities. Whether apples grow on trees or are manufactured at great personal expense - the 30p is still supply and demand. If no-one wants your lifes work then it costs nothing even after all the hard work.
"Work" like so many things I'm seeing more clearly these days is a fake. It is peculiar to the Abrahamic religions I suggest - where even God is said to have worked upon the world.
In those same relgions and in common with other parts of the world Jesus says that we do not own the fruits of our labours for everything belongs to God. This is not fake. How can we own anything when we don't even own our own bodies!
To "own" something is to say that once we did not own it and also that maybe in the future we will not own it. It entails the idea of losing it, and having it stolen. When we own something we say - this is obviously not "me", yet I am going to enforce a notion of "me" on it. Alva's pen, Alva's blog. When I die these things will remain yet I will not. Clearly they are not me. But I enforce against the evidence that they are part of "me". I feel personally affected when anything happens to them. Yet they are not me.
There is a dialectic between me and not-me present in the notion of ownership. That which is truly "me" we don't even notice because we can't ever be parted from it so we can't even be with it - it is empty. That which we call "mine" is already dialectically lost. In Bono's cannibalised (The Fly) words (???) "If you hold on to something so tight you've already lost it".
We acknowledge in ownership that all these things are not really ours - that is why we have to make such a big deal of them. Like with "happiness" to seek property is to become inauthentic immediately, to become not oneself.
So if we can't truly own then what is "work"? It is just something that happens.
While sitting doing nothing
The Spring comes
And the grass grows all by itself.
Choice
Again using dialectics to look at "choice" shows this up as a fake also.
The famous story (and I can't be bothered to source who it was) is of the American businessman who insisted on kippers each morning on the train to work. They were never on the menu, but eventually they came onto the menu and the waitress presupposed that he wanted the kippers. Yet instead he took the usual American breakfast. When questioned why he replied that he was never interested in the kippers he only wanted the choice.
Normally myths are remembered because they contain an element of wisdom worth remembering. It seems to be a feature of American myths that they remember only what we should forget. Not sure why this is - maybe to give us the choice between good myths and bad myths.
What our businessman forgets is that he may have a choice between breakfast items on the menu, but this is only because he has no choice about using a menu and eating breakfast, and even taking the train to work, even work, and even being a powerful businessman, speaking English and being an American.
A wiser quote from an American film is "Does a man chose what he desires?". A king lamenting the nature of destiny and our powerlessness even while he is king.
All these things are essentially presupposed to put him in the position where a choice can be made available. When we speak of choice we automatically speak of the infinite elements of our situation which were not chosen. We realise dialectically in choice that really nothing is chosen... except this businessman didn't... or is that the point of the myth?
On an aside the famous American quote is equally baffling - "When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver." Is this ironic? Because isn't this the essence of American culture - when there is a problem take a shooter at it. If it is ironic then it recognises that while most nations can list something worthwhile and civilised in their "culture" like music, dance, festivals, beliefs, customs etc which help a community thrive, the Americans can offer us only guns, bar fights and social disintegration... which have been exported around the world with such success that it is hard to find a culture anymore that does not glorify violence and social delingency. Hmmm harsh but essentially fair.
Returning to choice isn't this the essence of Evolution also. Natural variation offers natural selection a "choice", and differential mortality eliminates those choices not taken. Likewise and sadly for the businessman (even with all his business prowess) in a Capitalist world kippers won't stay on the menu for long if no one orders them.
Yet that "choice" is only a choice when the possibilities are paired in a dialectic. It is only when we have apples and oranges in the same green grocers do we have a choice. Apples and Oranges on trees around the world are not considered a "choice". Short or Long tail feathers are only considered for selection when they compete, when the birds occupy the same niche or "grocery store". Sexual selection for these feathers for example only occurs when birds with different lengths of tail feather "compete" for the same mate.
So the question for Evolution is not what happens within a niche or a context or a grocery store - this is simple and understood: it is evolution by natural selection. The bigger question however is how does variation get dialectically paired in the first place.
As with almost everything in this blog there are two levels and the SRH suggests that they must be different - you can't explain one level with the other level and vice-versa. It is not enough at first glance then to suggest that competition and differential mortality are the mechanisms that create the Niches within which competition and natural selection operate!
So what does shape the environment - or arena - within which organisms compete? Well it is not entirely planetary abiotic features because Life is the larger part of the environment - consider even the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere - this the excreted by-product of ancient bacterial photosynthesis.
This is like Indra's Jeweled Net where each crystal hanging at each knot reflects all the other crystals in the infinite net. Each organism has all other organisms as its environment - some construct the niche and some compete within the niche. Natural selection only works within the niche however! What about the interactions of the rest?
The famous story (and I can't be bothered to source who it was) is of the American businessman who insisted on kippers each morning on the train to work. They were never on the menu, but eventually they came onto the menu and the waitress presupposed that he wanted the kippers. Yet instead he took the usual American breakfast. When questioned why he replied that he was never interested in the kippers he only wanted the choice.
Normally myths are remembered because they contain an element of wisdom worth remembering. It seems to be a feature of American myths that they remember only what we should forget. Not sure why this is - maybe to give us the choice between good myths and bad myths.
What our businessman forgets is that he may have a choice between breakfast items on the menu, but this is only because he has no choice about using a menu and eating breakfast, and even taking the train to work, even work, and even being a powerful businessman, speaking English and being an American.
A wiser quote from an American film is "Does a man chose what he desires?". A king lamenting the nature of destiny and our powerlessness even while he is king.
All these things are essentially presupposed to put him in the position where a choice can be made available. When we speak of choice we automatically speak of the infinite elements of our situation which were not chosen. We realise dialectically in choice that really nothing is chosen... except this businessman didn't... or is that the point of the myth?
On an aside the famous American quote is equally baffling - "When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver." Is this ironic? Because isn't this the essence of American culture - when there is a problem take a shooter at it. If it is ironic then it recognises that while most nations can list something worthwhile and civilised in their "culture" like music, dance, festivals, beliefs, customs etc which help a community thrive, the Americans can offer us only guns, bar fights and social disintegration... which have been exported around the world with such success that it is hard to find a culture anymore that does not glorify violence and social delingency. Hmmm harsh but essentially fair.
Returning to choice isn't this the essence of Evolution also. Natural variation offers natural selection a "choice", and differential mortality eliminates those choices not taken. Likewise and sadly for the businessman (even with all his business prowess) in a Capitalist world kippers won't stay on the menu for long if no one orders them.
Yet that "choice" is only a choice when the possibilities are paired in a dialectic. It is only when we have apples and oranges in the same green grocers do we have a choice. Apples and Oranges on trees around the world are not considered a "choice". Short or Long tail feathers are only considered for selection when they compete, when the birds occupy the same niche or "grocery store". Sexual selection for these feathers for example only occurs when birds with different lengths of tail feather "compete" for the same mate.
So the question for Evolution is not what happens within a niche or a context or a grocery store - this is simple and understood: it is evolution by natural selection. The bigger question however is how does variation get dialectically paired in the first place.
As with almost everything in this blog there are two levels and the SRH suggests that they must be different - you can't explain one level with the other level and vice-versa. It is not enough at first glance then to suggest that competition and differential mortality are the mechanisms that create the Niches within which competition and natural selection operate!
So what does shape the environment - or arena - within which organisms compete? Well it is not entirely planetary abiotic features because Life is the larger part of the environment - consider even the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere - this the excreted by-product of ancient bacterial photosynthesis.
This is like Indra's Jeweled Net where each crystal hanging at each knot reflects all the other crystals in the infinite net. Each organism has all other organisms as its environment - some construct the niche and some compete within the niche. Natural selection only works within the niche however! What about the interactions of the rest?
Happiness
At college someone once commented that the moment you realised you were happy the happiness started to fade. Certainly the happinest times for me have been the ones where I was not even aware I was happy. It is often/always in retrospect.
Following the Dao argument this makes perfect sense. If one was always "happy" one would never comment upon it, or never have reason to think "oh I'm happy". To become aware that one is happy is to compare it with an experience of unhappiness. So we may have been miserable and now when we remember we were miserable we realise we are no longer miserable so we realise we are happy. Likewise when we end a period of happiness and start to become unhappy - like when a party is ending - we realise that we have been very happy.
This seems to be the pattern that the cost of experiencing ourselves as an object is to become other than ourselves. When we look at someone else we can comment upon them because we are not them. But to do the same for ourselves is to reject ourselves, and take the perspective of someone else - it is always thus "inauthentic". To be truly ourselves is to be subject and to have no object. Self is empty. To have a relationship with another is to realise that they are truly subject and not object also. We should have no opinion about another that we "love" or have an authentic relationship with since the essence of that relationship is nothing. This is why I believe that sexual relationships can never be authentic... altho I do try to resolve this issue.
Being truly social as argued before is not something that can be measured. To think "I am sociable" or "I am loved" etc is to impose upon oneself the label of another person. We are alienating ourselves from ourselves. This is the danger of "society". True society has no form it is based within what is called morality - it is being Good. If you are Good, you are sociable by definition. If you are bad it does not matter how many friends you have, or how good your parties are, or how often you are out at night - you are a fake and all this is fake.
Thus seeking happiness and society are two more fake keys to Life. Pursue these and we become fakes; mere shadows and puppets of the real people we are underneath.
Following the Dao argument this makes perfect sense. If one was always "happy" one would never comment upon it, or never have reason to think "oh I'm happy". To become aware that one is happy is to compare it with an experience of unhappiness. So we may have been miserable and now when we remember we were miserable we realise we are no longer miserable so we realise we are happy. Likewise when we end a period of happiness and start to become unhappy - like when a party is ending - we realise that we have been very happy.
This seems to be the pattern that the cost of experiencing ourselves as an object is to become other than ourselves. When we look at someone else we can comment upon them because we are not them. But to do the same for ourselves is to reject ourselves, and take the perspective of someone else - it is always thus "inauthentic". To be truly ourselves is to be subject and to have no object. Self is empty. To have a relationship with another is to realise that they are truly subject and not object also. We should have no opinion about another that we "love" or have an authentic relationship with since the essence of that relationship is nothing. This is why I believe that sexual relationships can never be authentic... altho I do try to resolve this issue.
Being truly social as argued before is not something that can be measured. To think "I am sociable" or "I am loved" etc is to impose upon oneself the label of another person. We are alienating ourselves from ourselves. This is the danger of "society". True society has no form it is based within what is called morality - it is being Good. If you are Good, you are sociable by definition. If you are bad it does not matter how many friends you have, or how good your parties are, or how often you are out at night - you are a fake and all this is fake.
Thus seeking happiness and society are two more fake keys to Life. Pursue these and we become fakes; mere shadows and puppets of the real people we are underneath.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Manihar Cat Pics
Normally I find these kind of wisdom words that get dumped randomly in email a bit insulting - to the words! Spreading them with such carelessness amidst the tsunami of media that we get bombarded with daily is like taking painkillers everyday with no regard for whether we have a headache. I'd rather find them when I was in the mood, which I'm not when wading through the days emails... well that's the way they seem to me... But these I saved ages ago and just found and just thought were good... Ironic after the post on cats :-)
Monday, 13 April 2009
Workaday World
"One of the strongest themes in the series is the idea of work holding meaning. This has little to do with status or pay.... Meaning depends on being able to see the big picture.". This point came up in Alain De Botton's talk.
Basic Statistics Method (BSM)
BSM on Housing
There are 25 million homes in the UK. With a population of 60 million people that means that each home needs to house 2.4 people. With children being unable to live alone and the elderly often moving out of single accomodation, with pairing being an important structure in UK society and with the population fairly stable where is the suggestion here that we need new homes in the UK?
As we have seen recently houses have become an important part of the UK economy. And, as I hope has been made clear in the blog all things economic are idiotic not least because economics is based upon made up cultural rules (like the concept of employment) with no sound reality.
The concept of "housing" which I've challenged by an alternative means by making a garage into my house, and the concept of poverty (likewise) is gaining deeper and deeper economic and hegemonic bias. As the end of the day it is anything which keeps the rain off and somewhere to maintain the concept of "property" (if you subscribe to that).
BSM on Cars
According to What Car in 2006 there are 33 million registered vehicles in the UK. Each one needs a driver so that at any one time half the population could be behind the wheel of a vehicle. With children and the very elderly unable to drive that means that most of the population can be on the road taking a separate journey.
Of this in 2004 the car population was 26 million. There is one car for every house in the UK, and one car for every 2.4 people. This means that each house and family can take a unique journey at the same time.
This seems a vast over allocation of resources. Most journeys (or portions of journeys) are similar or share largely similar routes (e.g. with buses taking more than one passenger). And not everyone takes a journey at the same time. You only need to see a car park, or the road verges in domestic areas after dark to see the huge redundancy of vehicles. Even after the pulse of transportation that is required at certain times due to social "serialisation" (synchrony) as people go to and from work for example - there is still huge over allocation. Simple staggering of opening hours would save vast amounts of energy and time all by itself.
The model of private ownership again proves inappropriate here.
In UK there are 8,000 cars for every km of its motorways, that is one car every 125m nose-to-tail or every 500m with 4 lanes. Or if you sit by any stretch of motorway anywhere in the country that would be a car passing every 4 seconds all day and all night every day on average.
The article argues this is less than elsewhere in Europe - but if you sit or live by a road this seems far too excessive already to me!
randon facts for comparison:
A car uses 1.6 million joules/km (50ml petrol/km)
A walker uses 294 j/km (112.5 cal/mile)
That means that the energy that powers a car could power 5442 walkers ... or 5% of the UKs cars would power the whole world to walk the same distance!
Except that 4 times more fuel is used to make crops than is available to eat after harvest ... so really if that petrol was used for intensive agriculture it would fuel 1360 walkers... or the 20% of the UKs cars would fuel the whole world to cover the same distance... still a lot!
Bicycling is even more efficient. I now consider cycling 30 miles with a backpack as normal. Time was when a 10 mile run to the pub I considered normal too. It really is just a matter of culture and what we are used to. Most people just learn to jump in a car - its not better just what they are used to.
===
BSM is now the name here for the method that I used as a child to frighten myself by the world population - that we each have only (137 metres) squared of land each. This led immediately to an awareness of the impact of mankind on the planet and the need for conservation, and also the impending problems of environmental catastrophy and human starvation. All I didn't know was how this was going to hit the news. The details are that "global warming" was the media story some 10 years after this school boy took a calculator and the Boys Book of Facts! That's how simple these issues are at root.
Often we can't see the wood for the trees in statistics so its good to ignore the minutae and start again with the braod facts. This seems to rather efficiently simplify the picture in many cases... (obviously with treated caution in case the details prove to be relevant to the overall view)
There are 25 million homes in the UK. With a population of 60 million people that means that each home needs to house 2.4 people. With children being unable to live alone and the elderly often moving out of single accomodation, with pairing being an important structure in UK society and with the population fairly stable where is the suggestion here that we need new homes in the UK?
As we have seen recently houses have become an important part of the UK economy. And, as I hope has been made clear in the blog all things economic are idiotic not least because economics is based upon made up cultural rules (like the concept of employment) with no sound reality.
The concept of "housing" which I've challenged by an alternative means by making a garage into my house, and the concept of poverty (likewise) is gaining deeper and deeper economic and hegemonic bias. As the end of the day it is anything which keeps the rain off and somewhere to maintain the concept of "property" (if you subscribe to that).
BSM on Cars
According to What Car in 2006 there are 33 million registered vehicles in the UK. Each one needs a driver so that at any one time half the population could be behind the wheel of a vehicle. With children and the very elderly unable to drive that means that most of the population can be on the road taking a separate journey.
Of this in 2004 the car population was 26 million. There is one car for every house in the UK, and one car for every 2.4 people. This means that each house and family can take a unique journey at the same time.
This seems a vast over allocation of resources. Most journeys (or portions of journeys) are similar or share largely similar routes (e.g. with buses taking more than one passenger). And not everyone takes a journey at the same time. You only need to see a car park, or the road verges in domestic areas after dark to see the huge redundancy of vehicles. Even after the pulse of transportation that is required at certain times due to social "serialisation" (synchrony) as people go to and from work for example - there is still huge over allocation. Simple staggering of opening hours would save vast amounts of energy and time all by itself.
The model of private ownership again proves inappropriate here.
In UK there are 8,000 cars for every km of its motorways, that is one car every 125m nose-to-tail or every 500m with 4 lanes. Or if you sit by any stretch of motorway anywhere in the country that would be a car passing every 4 seconds all day and all night every day on average.
The article argues this is less than elsewhere in Europe - but if you sit or live by a road this seems far too excessive already to me!
randon facts for comparison:
A car uses 1.6 million joules/km (50ml petrol/km)
A walker uses 294 j/km (112.5 cal/mile)
That means that the energy that powers a car could power 5442 walkers ... or 5% of the UKs cars would power the whole world to walk the same distance!
Except that 4 times more fuel is used to make crops than is available to eat after harvest ... so really if that petrol was used for intensive agriculture it would fuel 1360 walkers... or the 20% of the UKs cars would fuel the whole world to cover the same distance... still a lot!
Bicycling is even more efficient. I now consider cycling 30 miles with a backpack as normal. Time was when a 10 mile run to the pub I considered normal too. It really is just a matter of culture and what we are used to. Most people just learn to jump in a car - its not better just what they are used to.
===
BSM is now the name here for the method that I used as a child to frighten myself by the world population - that we each have only (137 metres) squared of land each. This led immediately to an awareness of the impact of mankind on the planet and the need for conservation, and also the impending problems of environmental catastrophy and human starvation. All I didn't know was how this was going to hit the news. The details are that "global warming" was the media story some 10 years after this school boy took a calculator and the Boys Book of Facts! That's how simple these issues are at root.
Often we can't see the wood for the trees in statistics so its good to ignore the minutae and start again with the braod facts. This seems to rather efficiently simplify the picture in many cases... (obviously with treated caution in case the details prove to be relevant to the overall view)
More Grass Snakes :-)
It is a great year for Grass Snakes. Maybe it is me also who is waking up from a long hibernation. Also being unemployed and having a bike to get out and around a bit more may also contribute - is this the value of doing something rather than pumping the never satiated engine of employment?
Two more grass snakes this time found yesterday on Easter Day in Sevenoaks. Both around 4 years similar to the ones in Reading. Found these under a piece of corregated metal taking a break from the gloomy Easter weather. I was prepared for the photo so took it quickly and gently replaced the covering on the snoozing pair. This always worries me and I wish I hadn't moved it - I lifted it again to see that it hadn't squeezed them and they were uncoiled this time and lying up and down along the corregated grooves. I gently returned the cover and left them in peace.
It is quite possible that the recent wet and warm summers may have benefitted the amphibians which make up their primary food. This also means that the frog fungus and the decline of frogs may have slowed. With global warming we will see a lot more of them :-)
p.s. Notice the beautiful iridescence of the freshly sloughed scales in the flash light (that is shinyness no slimyness as my mum thinks). These guys must be fairly newly out of hibernation.
Man need do nothing - all things happen by themselves!
There is one thing which is certain about the world arounds us: human beings had no hand at all in the creation of life, the world or the universe.
One might imagine an exotic reality where a future human did something which subverted time and started these things in motion, but then they would be trapped by the realisation that this action had been predestined, the necessary precondition to their own existence. Things being interconnected would all become a clock-work existence whose only purpose was its foundation of itself. The Sysyphine punishment played out in real. (When proof of the SRH comes this will be evident).
So without mankind lifting a finger the entire universe, the earth and Life came into existence. Even mankind came into existence all by itself. So looking at the aeroplanes and the telecommunications age can man really be so dazzled by his inventiveness. Is it really so unreasonable to say that with or without man it would all have happened anyway all by itself!
Obviously mankind is the mechanism by which these things happened - what use is the internet without communication and aeroplanes without humans who wish to move around? But to say that mankind made these things is a bit like the bird landing on the branch which dropped snow and started the avalanche which destroyed the village and caused an international agency to get formed which studies avalanches and discovers an aspect of chaos modelling which is used to correct irregularities in heart beats which saves the president one day: a bit like the bird saying it saved the president.
Ego, individualism, ownership: these concepts have no use in the real world, only a place in the fantasies of human infants.
One might imagine an exotic reality where a future human did something which subverted time and started these things in motion, but then they would be trapped by the realisation that this action had been predestined, the necessary precondition to their own existence. Things being interconnected would all become a clock-work existence whose only purpose was its foundation of itself. The Sysyphine punishment played out in real. (When proof of the SRH comes this will be evident).
So without mankind lifting a finger the entire universe, the earth and Life came into existence. Even mankind came into existence all by itself. So looking at the aeroplanes and the telecommunications age can man really be so dazzled by his inventiveness. Is it really so unreasonable to say that with or without man it would all have happened anyway all by itself!
Obviously mankind is the mechanism by which these things happened - what use is the internet without communication and aeroplanes without humans who wish to move around? But to say that mankind made these things is a bit like the bird landing on the branch which dropped snow and started the avalanche which destroyed the village and caused an international agency to get formed which studies avalanches and discovers an aspect of chaos modelling which is used to correct irregularities in heart beats which saves the president one day: a bit like the bird saying it saved the president.
Ego, individualism, ownership: these concepts have no use in the real world, only a place in the fantasies of human infants.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
What is Poverty?
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/poordevelopment.html
The findings show that poverty correlates with stress which correlates with poorer working memory.
What is missed from the Wired article but included in the Economist article (ed. Natasha Loader?) is an analysis of "poverty". Sir Michael Marmot of UCL apparently have shown that it is social heirachy which is the active agent in poverty which has been concluded by other means in this blog (worth considering how facts can be revealed without evidence) ... so happily I'll rest that line of enquiry.
http://www.euro.who.int/socialdeterminants/socmarketing/20050912_1
If social climbing is the way to happiness then we are doomed to mediocrity since only some people can be "rich" and by definition they need a poor class with whome to compare themselves and consider themselves successful and happy. In themselves they are not successful and happy! And, following from the recent dialectics analysis to consider oneself rich by looking through the eyes of a poor person is actually to make oneself poor for the benefit of the spectacle of seeing oneself rich!
(In dialectics lies the SRH (self reference hypothesis) that we cannot be ourselves. It seems that this is implicit in dialectics but remains to be uncovered why.)
If we are poor while we enjoy the spectacle of being rich, what is the actual meaning of poor and rich? The rich must be poor at least for the purposes of seeing themselves as rich.
The materialists would have argued that the rich were "actually" rich and the poor "actually" poor as proven by the research. Not enough food = death. Poverty is real. But if poor and rich are simply dialectical and poor and rich swap places all the time in order to see what they are then it isn't real. The name for real poverty is absolute poverty. Relative poverty doesn't exist.
Yet relative poverty is bad for your brain as the research shows. The key then is that thinking about the world the wrong way is actually bad for your health! This blog - as I think was discovered another way not long ago - is not simply arguing the toss over the abstract Nature of Life but is actually questioning the very mechanisms of welfare and Life itself.
It's not the measurable circumstances that determine "Poverty" but how people think! Thus winning the lottery guarentees you nothing if you can't change how you think. And if you can change how you think then why do you need to win the lottery?
Its very trivial and common sense - yet the European Enlightenment has built its entire palace on the wrong foundations! A quote I like from Raiders of the Lost Arc when they see the rest of the amulet and figure that the french archaeologist is "looking in the wrong place".
This it seems (unbelievably!) is the most important thing to realise about the mainstream narrative of Life that we are bred upon: it is looking in the wrong place. The nature of richness and the key to life lies elsewhere; even if we can't work out exactly where that is. Remarkable to think that armies of powerful, educated and rich people have wasted their whole lives looking in the wrong place: but dialectically it is no suprise... but a word of caution... in this blog lies no wisdom and no Key to Life for to think one has the key to life is to become authentic and to contract out Life from oneself to the Key. If there is a truth it is We are the Key, a story that we each still have to write. So all this blog can ever hope to achieve is to show that the Keys that we can get our hands on are fakes. Richness, Material well-being and Status being the first key to Life which I hope is soundly here and elsewhere shown to be a fake.
The findings show that poverty correlates with stress which correlates with poorer working memory.
What is missed from the Wired article but included in the Economist article (ed. Natasha Loader?) is an analysis of "poverty". Sir Michael Marmot of UCL apparently have shown that it is social heirachy which is the active agent in poverty which has been concluded by other means in this blog (worth considering how facts can be revealed without evidence) ... so happily I'll rest that line of enquiry.
http://www.euro.who.int/socialdeterminants/socmarketing/20050912_1
If social climbing is the way to happiness then we are doomed to mediocrity since only some people can be "rich" and by definition they need a poor class with whome to compare themselves and consider themselves successful and happy. In themselves they are not successful and happy! And, following from the recent dialectics analysis to consider oneself rich by looking through the eyes of a poor person is actually to make oneself poor for the benefit of the spectacle of seeing oneself rich!
(In dialectics lies the SRH (self reference hypothesis) that we cannot be ourselves. It seems that this is implicit in dialectics but remains to be uncovered why.)
If we are poor while we enjoy the spectacle of being rich, what is the actual meaning of poor and rich? The rich must be poor at least for the purposes of seeing themselves as rich.
The materialists would have argued that the rich were "actually" rich and the poor "actually" poor as proven by the research. Not enough food = death. Poverty is real. But if poor and rich are simply dialectical and poor and rich swap places all the time in order to see what they are then it isn't real. The name for real poverty is absolute poverty. Relative poverty doesn't exist.
Yet relative poverty is bad for your brain as the research shows. The key then is that thinking about the world the wrong way is actually bad for your health! This blog - as I think was discovered another way not long ago - is not simply arguing the toss over the abstract Nature of Life but is actually questioning the very mechanisms of welfare and Life itself.
It's not the measurable circumstances that determine "Poverty" but how people think! Thus winning the lottery guarentees you nothing if you can't change how you think. And if you can change how you think then why do you need to win the lottery?
Its very trivial and common sense - yet the European Enlightenment has built its entire palace on the wrong foundations! A quote I like from Raiders of the Lost Arc when they see the rest of the amulet and figure that the french archaeologist is "looking in the wrong place".
This it seems (unbelievably!) is the most important thing to realise about the mainstream narrative of Life that we are bred upon: it is looking in the wrong place. The nature of richness and the key to life lies elsewhere; even if we can't work out exactly where that is. Remarkable to think that armies of powerful, educated and rich people have wasted their whole lives looking in the wrong place: but dialectically it is no suprise... but a word of caution... in this blog lies no wisdom and no Key to Life for to think one has the key to life is to become authentic and to contract out Life from oneself to the Key. If there is a truth it is We are the Key, a story that we each still have to write. So all this blog can ever hope to achieve is to show that the Keys that we can get our hands on are fakes. Richness, Material well-being and Status being the first key to Life which I hope is soundly here and elsewhere shown to be a fake.
Stories
After a day playing in the world of a 2 year old I have become rather absorbed into her fictional narratives. Clearing away the play room in the evening I came to think of all the characters and places of her toys in the names and events of the days playing. It is a mad world of no real logic or reason - the pans on the toy stove were probably still hot, the baker probably still waiting for "robot" to buy a bun. Yet there is a kind of logic to this world, it doesn't stick together but there are pools of meaning.
I came to realise that it is no different from the "official" world. We are surrounded by the make believe world of newspaper editors, political power groups, marketeers, religious groups, some scientists (since science never makes it into the human world in a series of dry facts - they always come with spin and spoon-fed significance from the scientist whose career they promote and whose funding depends upon them), even blogs like this!
We are all each surrounded by a bubble of meaning no more limited than a 2 year old child. We tie the fragments of our play pen more or less together into stories and games. This person is the baker, this person a terrorist, this person the policeman, this person the politician, this person a homeless bum, this person the leader. This thing is a chair, this thing is a spade, this a radio, a phone - we use them like this.
We believe our world is real while the 2 year olds is just make believe. But we worldly adults are really just 2 year olds to the really wise: we believe in things like love and property and usefulness and death and ourselves; how can this be tenable parts of a "real" world?
There is a lot of growing up to do: the most growing up for those who think they are grown up!
I came to realise that it is no different from the "official" world. We are surrounded by the make believe world of newspaper editors, political power groups, marketeers, religious groups, some scientists (since science never makes it into the human world in a series of dry facts - they always come with spin and spoon-fed significance from the scientist whose career they promote and whose funding depends upon them), even blogs like this!
We are all each surrounded by a bubble of meaning no more limited than a 2 year old child. We tie the fragments of our play pen more or less together into stories and games. This person is the baker, this person a terrorist, this person the policeman, this person the politician, this person a homeless bum, this person the leader. This thing is a chair, this thing is a spade, this a radio, a phone - we use them like this.
We believe our world is real while the 2 year olds is just make believe. But we worldly adults are really just 2 year olds to the really wise: we believe in things like love and property and usefulness and death and ourselves; how can this be tenable parts of a "real" world?
There is a lot of growing up to do: the most growing up for those who think they are grown up!
I Love Robot
A friend's daughter has a cute habit of wanting a robot made from mega-blocks and then wants to hug it. However Mega-blocks don't stay together very well and soon she is back with the bits of "robot" anjd nothing to hug anymore.
Isn't this such a poignant illustration of the problem we will face again and again in life as we search for something solid to rely upon?
It is interesting that she says that "robot" has fallen apart and needs to be rebuilt. Looking at this through Buddha's eyes it is clear that there is no "robot" in reality. The multiple bricks could make anything, they are only "broken robot" when we have in our mind a desire for "robot", the context of "robot". Thus when equipped with this game of robot she returns with the pieces and says "robot" has fallen apart. "Robot" is not an existing entity but simply the context, or object of a game - robot is in the mind entirely.
Even when we rebuild "robot" and there he is in all his glory waiting to be hugged - of course there is no real "robot" there just a collection of mega-blocks. Another child elsewhere uses exactly the same blocks in his favourite game of making a castle. There is no castle, there is no robot!
Love and attachment are thus futile when they focus upon imaginery objects!
Isn't this such a poignant illustration of the problem we will face again and again in life as we search for something solid to rely upon?
It is interesting that she says that "robot" has fallen apart and needs to be rebuilt. Looking at this through Buddha's eyes it is clear that there is no "robot" in reality. The multiple bricks could make anything, they are only "broken robot" when we have in our mind a desire for "robot", the context of "robot". Thus when equipped with this game of robot she returns with the pieces and says "robot" has fallen apart. "Robot" is not an existing entity but simply the context, or object of a game - robot is in the mind entirely.
Even when we rebuild "robot" and there he is in all his glory waiting to be hugged - of course there is no real "robot" there just a collection of mega-blocks. Another child elsewhere uses exactly the same blocks in his favourite game of making a castle. There is no castle, there is no robot!
Love and attachment are thus futile when they focus upon imaginery objects!
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
R.I.P. Grass Snake 8.2006 - 8.4.2009
Sadly, after making it through many winters, this 3rd year male grass snake came to its end. I found it 20 meters away from the group of mating snakes I had seen last month, but not in seclusion like then, but on the grass by the path and the trimmed hedge which runs nearby, its neck broken and its belly split open. Maybe this snake had found a mate during this warm spring, maybe not; this would have been its first sexually active year.
Unfortunately this is what so often happens when humans and animals come into contact. It was evening when I found it, its flesh still glistening in the warm sun - killed sometime earlier in the day. Undoubtedly it had been sunbathing in the morning when attacked. Maybe it was by human - but I think most humans have sensitivity and its injuries seem odd for a stick or stamping as you might imagine or even for some childish sadistic killing. It seems much more likely this is the work of an unrestrained dog, its teeth biting clean through the narrow neck crushing the spine and ripping the belly. It is not the fault of a dog, too stuffed on tinned meat to eat its own prey, it is not entirely the fault of the owner (who clearly didn't heed the signs insisting on a lead, and reminding them they are in a nature reserve) because a dog needs to play. It is just the fact that humans are animals and where animals compete there is death.
Yet humans are not entirely animals, it is when we realise (dialectically) we are animals that we become man. No animal creates a Nature Reserve. Few animals lement the loss of creatures from other species. It is a shame that so many humans are still only animals.
Unfortunately this is what so often happens when humans and animals come into contact. It was evening when I found it, its flesh still glistening in the warm sun - killed sometime earlier in the day. Undoubtedly it had been sunbathing in the morning when attacked. Maybe it was by human - but I think most humans have sensitivity and its injuries seem odd for a stick or stamping as you might imagine or even for some childish sadistic killing. It seems much more likely this is the work of an unrestrained dog, its teeth biting clean through the narrow neck crushing the spine and ripping the belly. It is not the fault of a dog, too stuffed on tinned meat to eat its own prey, it is not entirely the fault of the owner (who clearly didn't heed the signs insisting on a lead, and reminding them they are in a nature reserve) because a dog needs to play. It is just the fact that humans are animals and where animals compete there is death.
Yet humans are not entirely animals, it is when we realise (dialectically) we are animals that we become man. No animal creates a Nature Reserve. Few animals lement the loss of creatures from other species. It is a shame that so many humans are still only animals.
Dialectically I should not lash out against dog ownership but over the years I have developed nothing but disdain for dog owners. I've commented upon this before in the blog. Take a walk anywhere in the UK and you will meet other people taking a walk... and you will meet their dogs. I have always wondered whether these people would take walks if they didn't have dogs. If not, then the dogs are really walking the humans - a very sad state of affairs! The other time you will see people walking is when they have kids with them - this is very good, but what happens to kids that they stop doing this? All kids are fascinated by living things - the movement even from a snail is a wonder to a child. How do adults become so jaded that they learn to take for granted the one thing which dominates this planet and our whole existence namely life itself? Without the bird in the tree and everything that this entails this is just a barren rock where nothing stirs and the shadow of the rising and setting sun falls upon forgotten lands.
Yet you almost never see a "human" walking. It is because we are dead - dog owners are dead - preferring to mediate their experience of life through the childish yapping of their captured creature enslaved unknowingly into an ungodly alliance between man and animal. It is rather good for the dog - a social animal instinctively tuned to "status" struggles in the pack finding a new master a whole order of morality and intelligence higher than the top-dog, a master who also liberally shares out the packs kill. For the human however one wonders what can be sought in a dog? It is alive, so is a snail. It is intelligent, so is an octopus. It was once a critical member of a long standing symbiosis with man where dogs and man hunted together - but so are E.colli bacteria in the gut. It is very unclear what the concept of "pet" brings to the symbiosis these days. Dogs have been morphed like freaks at a circus into bizarre unworkable shapes, with no logic or purpose - living works of art. Would it be disgraceful to bioengineer further freakishness like double heads or six legs? Or just stick to the tail removing which is like having the muscles for our smile cut out?
This however is not my main criticism. I'm not always careful (at this stage) about by sources I'm more interested in getting the overall picture and fine tuning critical specifics when that is visible - but here is a statistic for the "recent" population of dogs in the UK 6.2 million. That is a dog for every 10 people in the UK. The dog niche is taken by the fox in the UK with a rough population for between 0.5 and 1 million. Crudely the UK environment could support around a million dogs - yet each day 7 times this are unleashed on the environment (6.2 + the foxes). While these pet dogs are mostly kept under control, their kills like the grass snake above represent a massive pressure on the environment.
Interesting facts unearthed just now. Only out a third of foxes find mates and breed, the rest are sub-ordinates who must wait for dominant individuals to die. If this is true there is evidently large competition for burrow sites in foxes. In harem animals the competition is for females - like with deer and some humans strategies also. I realise that many viable individuals may naturally never breed because they are low in the "status" heirachy, but this inefficiency enables rapid response to environmental changes. Fox hunting doesn't work because you kill one dominant fox and another comes out of the margins to take its place. This is exactly what auditing firms discovered in the 60s when over streamlines companies were seen to fail because they had no surplus resources to mobilise in times of stress. Low Status and non-breeding are critical aspects of Life's mechanism - tho from the individual perspective it amounts to being a "loser". Now that is more dialectical than anything on the subject of Status so far!
An irony is also found here. Foxes are hunted because they kill game birds (apparently). But game birds are hunted and eaten anyway. And the dogs used to hunt the foxes are fed from farmed meat also. And actually more meat is consumed by the hunting dogs than is consumed by the foxes that are hunted! The only difference is that dog owners pay farmers for the meat the dogs eat, while foxes don't pay farmers. So the simple economic argument to fox hunting is to replace hunts with compensation for farmers who lose livestock to foxes. This would cost the huntsmen less than the rigmaroll of hunting... now it is clear what hunting is - a culture and a sport - its got nothing to do with foxes! Hunting is an aristocratic sport. If it wasn't foxes it would be lions or elephants or something. How the whole UK media got all mixed up on this simple subject is beyond me.
Worse than dogs are cats. These creatures do still have a symbiotic relationship with man. With or without pet shops cats would still gravitate to urban environments and live near humans because of the population of rodents that abound near the amassing of foods in cities. I am very thankful to the cats near my garage. But at the same time there is 1 cat for every 6 humans in UK! With cats quoted as preying on 300 million animals a year (which is an underestimate I would have thought - it could be ten times this) there is a huge pressure on the environment - far greater than I suggest is warrented by the population pressure of rodents.
The obvious solution in both cases of dogs and cats is to either exclude dogs and cats from the environment all together, or stop feeding them and let there population come to carrying capacity. The former solution is simply cruel and raises the important question of what point dogs and cats do serve at all - we can just take walks ourselves why have a dog? In the latter case we would find out what pressure the UK environment really can sustain from cats and dogs by letting the cats and dogs take the pressure themselves. The one thing which would come under pressure is the industry of pet ownership and pet food and most of all the enduring idea that we must individually replicate each item in this country for each person so that each person can see themselves as the same as everyone else. I get all the pleasure of cats without the ownership from the cats that live near my garage - indeed propably more than the owners who evidently hardly ever see the cats because they are with me. I get all the pleasure of nature without the faintest whisp of ownership. As is always the case ownership distorts things and ultimately leads to death as we see in this picture. R.I.P. Grass Snake Aug 2006- 8 Apr 2009
Malthus
After digesting the opening chapters of Gregory Clark's 'Farewell to Alms' I've gain a greater respect for Malthusian economics. This theory is not some precursor to Darwin and a casual aside to Smithian economics: this completely demolishes the whole Western economics argument!!
In a nutshell its Parkinson's 1st law of business writ very large. Living things will expand to fill the available 'space' until it is full and the "need" for more is as great as the growth.
Reproduction/Replication is recogosed as the key to evolution and "life" like processes. Anything that replicates will evolve simply because that replication will eventually fill the space, meaning: the boundaries will push back and opposite the replication. This is called "competition" but really it is the pressure exerted by the boundaries of the 'space'. Put bacteria in a petri-dish and there is very little competition until the petri-dish is covered then competition escalates exponentially!
One addition to the evolution model I want to make clear because it wasn't foremost in my mind earlier is that boundaries to growth are set by biotic and abiotic features. The supply of physical resources forms a boundary, but also the presence of other organisms themselves forms a boundary. Niches include both physical environment and the rest of the community: inter- and intra- specific. To understand Community Life is to understand the phsyical space, but also the interactions of all the organisms: Niche boundaries are thus most probably chaotic and fractal in dimension! Let alone the number of dimensions to the niche which is probably fractal also! Available resource types will be dynamically linked to other species and individuals! Which means that competition (the pressure exterted by the Niche boundary will be a function of chaotic functions in a chaotic number of dimensions!). How mind boggling! At the species level this means that species populations regulate each other in a community: however species is only one level! No wonder modeling of populations in communities has been so stuck.
So if Human Populations behave like this then Malthus argues that poverty is simply an inverse function of reproductive pressure. The poor are known to breed the fastest: so which came first? High reproductive pressure, or poverty. It seems obviously the former. After the previous Dialectics essays it comes as no suprise that actuially everything is upside down. To help a child live is to create a reproductive pressure that leads to eventual poverty.
It's already been noted in this blog that by simple logic the WHO (World Health Organisation) has been responsible for the world's poverty. It was suggested then that this was cynically engineered to keep the 3rd world poor and wages low to power the West's riches. Intentional or just ignorant it certainly seems that way now. For every child that survives the 3rd world becomes poorer, requires more land, and since this has run out, more aid, and becomes more dependent upon the West. It has become a very subtle form of bonded labour.
The actions of the WHO have ironically led to a mis-understanding of economics. By way of illustration of how this happens I read recently of a mis-understanding between fishermen and dolphins in some distant place. Over fishing for Trade has led to dwindling fish stocks. Dolphins are thus forced to risk coming further inshore in search of food. The presence of the Dolphins has been linked to the low fish numbers and they have been blamed. The Dolphins have thus been hunted. Moral: we need to be very careful in attributing causation!
Returning to the WHO. We look at declining infant morality rates as a sign of progress and we see progress as the path to welfare. However the welfare of the West is partly because of declining birth rates. Recent immigration has actually reduced the welfare of the West: there is more competition for land, jobs and food these days and we are all poorer as a result. And this I suspect to cover the government pension scheme which is a Ponzi scheme that assumes population growth. The only thing that has off set this has been the utilisation of cheap fossil fuels to replace expensive workers. It is enormously wasteful however (4 times more energy put into food than its calory content!). In the 3rd world however there is no declining birth-rate so poverty is created by the WHO and development!
Maybe this is one reason why sexuality is traditionally so hugely controlled - it is the realisation that unrestrained childbirth creates poverty. Sex = Poverty. Restraint = Wealth.
But Malthus surely applies psychologicfally also. A peoples' appetites will grow until they have consumed all that is available and want more. This would be the rachet that drives the western economies. Each generation we are brought up with more, and so we expect more and so we need even more to feel wealthy. And so the appetite version of reproduction which is greed creates poverty. The Capitalists who promote market expansion are like the WHO who promote reproduction both paths lead to poverty.
How ironic since Development was supposed to lead to Wealth. Ofcourse for those who see the Dao: Poverty was was already written into the hearts of those who sort Riches!
In a nutshell its Parkinson's 1st law of business writ very large. Living things will expand to fill the available 'space' until it is full and the "need" for more is as great as the growth.
Reproduction/Replication is recogosed as the key to evolution and "life" like processes. Anything that replicates will evolve simply because that replication will eventually fill the space, meaning: the boundaries will push back and opposite the replication. This is called "competition" but really it is the pressure exerted by the boundaries of the 'space'. Put bacteria in a petri-dish and there is very little competition until the petri-dish is covered then competition escalates exponentially!
One addition to the evolution model I want to make clear because it wasn't foremost in my mind earlier is that boundaries to growth are set by biotic and abiotic features. The supply of physical resources forms a boundary, but also the presence of other organisms themselves forms a boundary. Niches include both physical environment and the rest of the community: inter- and intra- specific. To understand Community Life is to understand the phsyical space, but also the interactions of all the organisms: Niche boundaries are thus most probably chaotic and fractal in dimension! Let alone the number of dimensions to the niche which is probably fractal also! Available resource types will be dynamically linked to other species and individuals! Which means that competition (the pressure exterted by the Niche boundary will be a function of chaotic functions in a chaotic number of dimensions!). How mind boggling! At the species level this means that species populations regulate each other in a community: however species is only one level! No wonder modeling of populations in communities has been so stuck.
So if Human Populations behave like this then Malthus argues that poverty is simply an inverse function of reproductive pressure. The poor are known to breed the fastest: so which came first? High reproductive pressure, or poverty. It seems obviously the former. After the previous Dialectics essays it comes as no suprise that actuially everything is upside down. To help a child live is to create a reproductive pressure that leads to eventual poverty.
It's already been noted in this blog that by simple logic the WHO (World Health Organisation) has been responsible for the world's poverty. It was suggested then that this was cynically engineered to keep the 3rd world poor and wages low to power the West's riches. Intentional or just ignorant it certainly seems that way now. For every child that survives the 3rd world becomes poorer, requires more land, and since this has run out, more aid, and becomes more dependent upon the West. It has become a very subtle form of bonded labour.
The actions of the WHO have ironically led to a mis-understanding of economics. By way of illustration of how this happens I read recently of a mis-understanding between fishermen and dolphins in some distant place. Over fishing for Trade has led to dwindling fish stocks. Dolphins are thus forced to risk coming further inshore in search of food. The presence of the Dolphins has been linked to the low fish numbers and they have been blamed. The Dolphins have thus been hunted. Moral: we need to be very careful in attributing causation!
Returning to the WHO. We look at declining infant morality rates as a sign of progress and we see progress as the path to welfare. However the welfare of the West is partly because of declining birth rates. Recent immigration has actually reduced the welfare of the West: there is more competition for land, jobs and food these days and we are all poorer as a result. And this I suspect to cover the government pension scheme which is a Ponzi scheme that assumes population growth. The only thing that has off set this has been the utilisation of cheap fossil fuels to replace expensive workers. It is enormously wasteful however (4 times more energy put into food than its calory content!). In the 3rd world however there is no declining birth-rate so poverty is created by the WHO and development!
Maybe this is one reason why sexuality is traditionally so hugely controlled - it is the realisation that unrestrained childbirth creates poverty. Sex = Poverty. Restraint = Wealth.
But Malthus surely applies psychologicfally also. A peoples' appetites will grow until they have consumed all that is available and want more. This would be the rachet that drives the western economies. Each generation we are brought up with more, and so we expect more and so we need even more to feel wealthy. And so the appetite version of reproduction which is greed creates poverty. The Capitalists who promote market expansion are like the WHO who promote reproduction both paths lead to poverty.
How ironic since Development was supposed to lead to Wealth. Ofcourse for those who see the Dao: Poverty was was already written into the hearts of those who sort Riches!
Dao, Dhamma, Dharma, Logos and Word
Are these all the same thing? I am lately inclined to think so.
What is the Law at the centre of Life? What is it that Man seeks to fulfill His existence? What is it all about? I'm lately inclined to think it is this Dao, Dhamma, Dharma, Logos or Word.
For each word we have a teacher. Dao is Lao Zi. Dhamma is the Pali for what Buddha taught. Dharma is the Sanskrit for the plethora of Hindu teachings. Logos is the Greek which became adopted by early Christian writers for the Law of God and also in John's gospel Jesus Himself. In English it is transcribed weakly as The Word. I'll use Logos in place of all these.
What is Logos (Word). Logos is the measure. Ordinary words are logos because when a word matches with a thing we know what it is: it becomes measured. Jesus is The Ruler: He is The Measure of all things: The Final Judge. All these are logos.
In Dhamma and Dharma there is also the implication of the Relgious Life. This is understood by Christians to be the "following of Jesus" which means the acceptance of his Rule. As indeed Islam itself means (submission to the Will/Rule of God).
Dao has a further implication which means Path or often translated as Way. The Way of Lao Zi, The Way of Jesus, The Way of Mohammed, the Way of Buddha: Logos is also Dao.
So comparing these terms is actually insightful as to the meaning of each one. As I have found myself studying Buddhism has led me closer to Jesus rather than away! In that we see a snippet of the Logos. This Law is truly profound, something that sets the mundane mind from the transcendent mind. So what is the Logos of Life?
It was covered in the dialectics post previous and I propose now (tho it will take a long time to full sink in - if at all) that this is the same insight as the Logos. This if I am right is the door to Heaven.
The Logos is the Fundamental Law from which all other things become. This is why Lao Zi says that for those who know the Dao the short look tall and the tall look short. Both tall and short depend upon the Dao. This is why Jesus' teachings seem counter intuitive. Nietzsche made a life's work from showing that Jesus teaches the exact opposite of what life is all about. Yet Nietzsche didn't see that from the Logos all things look upside down. It is not the powerful proud leaders who will inherit the Earth (as we would naturally expect) it is the meek: completely incomprehensible to the mundane mind: yet log-ical to the logos.
So why is everything upside down in reality? It is because of dialectics. A very tall person taken to a universe where everything was the same length: would they still be tall? This is a many layered question. It is not simply a matter of there not being anything taller or shorter than the person. In such a world there would not even be a concept of height or length. It is hard to imagine a world where things have no length, but it is important to realise that this does not mean that they have no matter. We can all exist quite happily as we are without length! Infact we do. Length only arises when we come to compare things. A tall thing is only tall when it is intentionally compared with a short thing, and vice versa. Thus the person who identifies with being tall can only do so by living in relation to short people. Ironically (and irony, hubris and tragedy are the eternally appearing cracks in the mundane reality reminding it of the Transcendent Divine Logos) then the tall person sees himself through the eyes of the short person. They are thus a short person! QED: and the Logos creates its mark upon the living and the dead.
Yet how does the Logos operate in less personal reality? I return to 1985 and the white board at school registration with my friend Tim. In a world all of green then nothing is green. Its an inexact thought experiment so it didn't reveal the truth very clearly: and I was ridiculed by others for the propositions of worlds of green and pure geometric shapes. Yet in a world without other colours how can there be any colour? It is not that things do or do-not have colour in this world, the point is that "colour" simply isn't applicable. The inhabitants of such a world just don't look for colour in things - there is no intention. It is interesting in the mundane world how humans (who don't have a colour) have become stuck with this concept and applied it to one another and themselves!
At the root then is the issue of existence. It was by birthday yesterday and I am each year becoming more aware of my mortality and conditional existence. In particular the practice that remains in the East of recognising the crutial role played by ones mother in our existence. It brings up the central problem of our Life that of trying to exist. Very quickly viable individuals balance their body functions and learn to feed thesmelves, but from here onwards the struggle is for "recognition": trying to exist socially and be recognised by others. Don't we see the Dao already?
For the mundane we seek to understood and acknowledged by other people: this gives us our spiritual nourishment. It is no accident that I missed "My Muse" yesterday: she was the One who for me at least gave me a belief in myself as a "real entity": through her eyes at least I could Live. Yet she died: what a catastrophy for that model of existence! This is mundane life: I livd through her eyes. When she died so did I!!! Yet I didn't: how ironic - the sign of lacking transcendence.
To the transcendent, from the standpoint of those who see from the Logos, those who Exist infact do not exist and those who do not exist do infact exist. Those who Live are Dead and those who are Dead Live. Why? Because to be recognised socially is to accept another persons word that you exist! Thus it is actually their existence that you know and not your own! "My Muse" existed while I did not! (This is a negative Hegelian dialectics).
Thus to see myself as Alive is really to see myself through the eyes of Death - I am Dead to have such a thought. To see myself as Dead is really to see myself from the position of the Alive. It is the understanding of Mortality which confers the meaning of Life. Tentatively suggest that this may be a more fruitful approach to the relationship between Jesus' Death and Eternal Life. In reality however we know that we neither live nor die outside the dialectic, and those who see the Logos see those who run to Life as the Dead and those who face Death as the Living.
And so the mirror world goes on. Those who are convinced they are morally good are really looking through the eyes of the Evil... etc
Those who think they are Correct are really looking through the eyes of the Ignorant: and at that point I must stop incase I come to think that this writing is either Logos or not-Logos!
What is the Law at the centre of Life? What is it that Man seeks to fulfill His existence? What is it all about? I'm lately inclined to think it is this Dao, Dhamma, Dharma, Logos or Word.
For each word we have a teacher. Dao is Lao Zi. Dhamma is the Pali for what Buddha taught. Dharma is the Sanskrit for the plethora of Hindu teachings. Logos is the Greek which became adopted by early Christian writers for the Law of God and also in John's gospel Jesus Himself. In English it is transcribed weakly as The Word. I'll use Logos in place of all these.
What is Logos (Word). Logos is the measure. Ordinary words are logos because when a word matches with a thing we know what it is: it becomes measured. Jesus is The Ruler: He is The Measure of all things: The Final Judge. All these are logos.
In Dhamma and Dharma there is also the implication of the Relgious Life. This is understood by Christians to be the "following of Jesus" which means the acceptance of his Rule. As indeed Islam itself means (submission to the Will/Rule of God).
Dao has a further implication which means Path or often translated as Way. The Way of Lao Zi, The Way of Jesus, The Way of Mohammed, the Way of Buddha: Logos is also Dao.
So comparing these terms is actually insightful as to the meaning of each one. As I have found myself studying Buddhism has led me closer to Jesus rather than away! In that we see a snippet of the Logos. This Law is truly profound, something that sets the mundane mind from the transcendent mind. So what is the Logos of Life?
It was covered in the dialectics post previous and I propose now (tho it will take a long time to full sink in - if at all) that this is the same insight as the Logos. This if I am right is the door to Heaven.
The Logos is the Fundamental Law from which all other things become. This is why Lao Zi says that for those who know the Dao the short look tall and the tall look short. Both tall and short depend upon the Dao. This is why Jesus' teachings seem counter intuitive. Nietzsche made a life's work from showing that Jesus teaches the exact opposite of what life is all about. Yet Nietzsche didn't see that from the Logos all things look upside down. It is not the powerful proud leaders who will inherit the Earth (as we would naturally expect) it is the meek: completely incomprehensible to the mundane mind: yet log-ical to the logos.
So why is everything upside down in reality? It is because of dialectics. A very tall person taken to a universe where everything was the same length: would they still be tall? This is a many layered question. It is not simply a matter of there not being anything taller or shorter than the person. In such a world there would not even be a concept of height or length. It is hard to imagine a world where things have no length, but it is important to realise that this does not mean that they have no matter. We can all exist quite happily as we are without length! Infact we do. Length only arises when we come to compare things. A tall thing is only tall when it is intentionally compared with a short thing, and vice versa. Thus the person who identifies with being tall can only do so by living in relation to short people. Ironically (and irony, hubris and tragedy are the eternally appearing cracks in the mundane reality reminding it of the Transcendent Divine Logos) then the tall person sees himself through the eyes of the short person. They are thus a short person! QED: and the Logos creates its mark upon the living and the dead.
Yet how does the Logos operate in less personal reality? I return to 1985 and the white board at school registration with my friend Tim. In a world all of green then nothing is green. Its an inexact thought experiment so it didn't reveal the truth very clearly: and I was ridiculed by others for the propositions of worlds of green and pure geometric shapes. Yet in a world without other colours how can there be any colour? It is not that things do or do-not have colour in this world, the point is that "colour" simply isn't applicable. The inhabitants of such a world just don't look for colour in things - there is no intention. It is interesting in the mundane world how humans (who don't have a colour) have become stuck with this concept and applied it to one another and themselves!
At the root then is the issue of existence. It was by birthday yesterday and I am each year becoming more aware of my mortality and conditional existence. In particular the practice that remains in the East of recognising the crutial role played by ones mother in our existence. It brings up the central problem of our Life that of trying to exist. Very quickly viable individuals balance their body functions and learn to feed thesmelves, but from here onwards the struggle is for "recognition": trying to exist socially and be recognised by others. Don't we see the Dao already?
For the mundane we seek to understood and acknowledged by other people: this gives us our spiritual nourishment. It is no accident that I missed "My Muse" yesterday: she was the One who for me at least gave me a belief in myself as a "real entity": through her eyes at least I could Live. Yet she died: what a catastrophy for that model of existence! This is mundane life: I livd through her eyes. When she died so did I!!! Yet I didn't: how ironic - the sign of lacking transcendence.
To the transcendent, from the standpoint of those who see from the Logos, those who Exist infact do not exist and those who do not exist do infact exist. Those who Live are Dead and those who are Dead Live. Why? Because to be recognised socially is to accept another persons word that you exist! Thus it is actually their existence that you know and not your own! "My Muse" existed while I did not! (This is a negative Hegelian dialectics).
Thus to see myself as Alive is really to see myself through the eyes of Death - I am Dead to have such a thought. To see myself as Dead is really to see myself from the position of the Alive. It is the understanding of Mortality which confers the meaning of Life. Tentatively suggest that this may be a more fruitful approach to the relationship between Jesus' Death and Eternal Life. In reality however we know that we neither live nor die outside the dialectic, and those who see the Logos see those who run to Life as the Dead and those who face Death as the Living.
And so the mirror world goes on. Those who are convinced they are morally good are really looking through the eyes of the Evil... etc
Those who think they are Correct are really looking through the eyes of the Ignorant: and at that point I must stop incase I come to think that this writing is either Logos or not-Logos!
Monday, 6 April 2009
Dialectics
This must become fully incorporated into this blog...
I disagree with the analysis in this page but it is a start. For example presupposition and statement themselves form a dialectic - one cannot have a statement without a presupposition and vice versa. So the very "nature" of dialectics is dialectical and does not lend itself to fixed unilateral definitions where a single position that is "true" can ever be presented.
Anyway to present dialectics as it stands for me at this moment I was considering the notion of sexuality. Classically this is a dialectic between male and female. Now we may consider that a Man has a sexuality and a Woman has a sexuality - somehow embedded in their material bodies. After all what is there to a Man and a Woman than there bodies so the sexuality must be "in" the body. So we have the scientists looking for genes and chemistry upon which to found the notion of sex. But maybe it isn't a "stuff" at all!
If aliens took a Man off to their planet and paraded him around in a circus or a zoo as a specimen of an alien would they ever have reason to think of him as sexual? They may find the penis and wonder what it does - this they may agree is for excretion. So they find the genitals and the haploid sperm inside - but they don't seem to do anything. Maybe they see the man masturbate and orgasm. If we presuppose that they know what enjoyment is they may decide the function is enjoyment - this is what many humans think! Yet if they think evolutionarily it will be hard to see how it evolved.
Maybe they can work out that man is mortal and must have some way of replicating. They may spend a long time trying to get sperms to fuse to make diploid cells. They may work out that maybe two men are needed since gene mixing would be beneficial. Maybe eventually some alien scientific genius will propose that they are missing something that maybe sperms are only one type of gamete and there is another type.
They still don't have a concept of sexuality though they are deducing that one must exist. In their minds still Man is just Man - his "maleness" doesn't exist yet because all Men are the same.
When finally they provide a female she may be considered a new type of creature with clear physical differences. However very quickly they will realise that Man and Woman are actually versions of the same thing and their difference is sexuality. Now the concept has been born and Man becomes male and Woman becomes female.
Thus while Man and Woman form a single species, it is a fractured unity because Man and Woman are also not the same. They are in this particular case distinct in sexuality. Yet they are not completely distinct because a Man cannot be a "male" without Woman and vice versas. Thus when we think of "maleness" it is actually pointless to picture a "man" because nothing is indicating what is "maleness" is. It would be just a meaningful to picture a "woman"! For a complete answer we need to picture both a Man and a Woman and "maleness" becomes one half of the picture. This way we recognise that "maleness" depends upon "femaleness" and vice versa in a unity which is at the same time a duality.
This exact idea is more commonly seen for the concepts of "black" and "white" and famously pictured in Daoism as the Yin-Yang symbol (which is also the male-female symbol). This is what I mean by dialectics. Not just the existence of an underlying presupposition and unity which has a dual expression but the deeper realistion that even that duality between unity and duality is a further dialectic. The Unity needs the Dualism. The One needs the Many and both exist as sides of the same coin at the same time as both One and Many. Until this position is reached then dialectics is an endless and eternally twisting vortex of disputes.
We may think that we know more than we did in 1800 and that by 2200 we will finally have the Truth : the dialectical engine will have processed all existence and we will inherit full knowledge of reality and the underlying reality. Yet by 2200 the world will have changed and we will no longer be pursuing the Post-Modern realities of today. The dialectical engine will be arguing in new territories. Plato never thought to answer his questions with brain imagingp; we will never have thought to answer our questions with whatever new fad has evolved by 2200.
The end of Reasoning can only occur when division and unity have been seen to be so mutually dependent as to be seen the same.
My sister studies Peace and Conflict Studies at the moment. Isn't the clue in that oxymoron - how can you study opposites? The reason is that to have Conflict one must have the possibility of Peace, and to have Peace one must have the possibility of Conflict. What they search for in this particular area of investigation is actually the removal of Peace & Conflict together. However since it is bound into economics and people make a living from this process this cannot happen. Like with charities, politics, health-care etc the infection of the raison d'etre with economic logic means that solutions can and must never be found. The dialectic as with Virus Software and Virus writers as another example must be maintained to create a fixed status-quo.
Mundane Society MS (a term I will now use for the base notion of people living together by enforced laws - as opposed to Elevated Society ES which is the actual dynamics of group-consciousness which subsumes even the rulers and the rule systems): I realise MS actually depends upon the monitoring and maintenance of dialectics to create fixed order. Again we can use the case of Terrorists of Western Power and Western Power itself: two opposing positions have been bound together into a dialectic creating antagonism and the possibility of resolution has been framed within this dialectic as the eradication of one of the sides. In reality there are only sides because of the dialectic between the sides (they need one another) and the process to resolution thus needs both sides equally. A simpler resolution is to deny the dialectic in the first place. If someone punches you I remember a very famous person saying "turn the other cheek": in other words take no offence because there is no dialectic... until you join the battle that is.
Heraclitus a big hero of mine was first recorded in what has become Europe to fully propose that everything is in flux: an eternal dance between opposing forces. A book I'm to write called "Alexandria" proposes that the course of world history has been the creation of stable order by supression of this idea and the replacing of it by the Platonic idea of Essence (backed up by the Theory of Forms). Socrates' Trial was a show trial for someone far more dangerous to the Right Wing - read the book when I write it. (Alexandria is a girl btw - and the place - but it aint Sophie's World.) Yet maybe the maintenance is opposing forces is just the ignorant man's way of Living - the Sysyphian struggle to keep the chaos of the world at bay. If Work has a founding concept it is in ignorance of Dialectics - yet to read Do Botton but he made little reference in the talk to a such an elemental nature to Work (there is more in Genesis). Dialectical thinkers point to the absence of work in the world - the Eastern concepts of non-action. The existence of action arises only when we get bound into a dialectic and find ourselves struggling against an "opposite". The world is in eternal change anyway so if we wait all things will come to pass all by themselves as Basho says in that fabulous saying "While sitting doing nothing the Spring comes and the grass grows all by itself." The downside is that what we wish for decays all by itself - ignorance of which I expressed fully regarding "my muse"!!! - but the upside is that what we wish for will oneday arise all by itself. And, more wisely, wishing for these things is like betting on a horse race - without a bet we accept any horse winning - it is only once we have become bound to an outcome dialectically that the tears and joy are created. Dialectical because we create sides and tension between sides by first perceiving there are sides and then taking sides. It is not the horse-race which creates the tears and joy but simply our internal binding to the outcome. Always be in charge when binding to sides of a dialectic - it is when the sides chose us that we suffer!
And why do we join the roller-coaster of sides? This has another name Ego. The gambler gambles because on teh one hand they get greedy when they win, and on the other they wish to prove themselves a winner when they lose. Thus they get bound into the dialectic. Taking sides again when they win, and taking sides again when they lose. Even after the Casino is closed the gambler will find sides upon which to bet: which bus will come first, who will win the election, will I get through that red light etc etc. There are sides everywhere if we look, and there are opportunities to take sides everywhere if we look, and there are opportunities for joy and tears everywhere if we look. Then again we don't have to look.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Group, Consciousness, Killings
Moral Panic is part of the popular consciousness. It is the idea that society becomes orientated radically against a sub-group.
Unlike with racism and what is now called discrimination in general it is supported because it is considerted to have a "moral" basis.
The most recent moral panic is "Terrorism". The flames of this have been very carefully monitored to stop it becoming out right racism and imperialism - which would have made "Terrorism" look suspicious. We have been told it is moral to "hate" Islamic Extremists but not Islam which rejects the extremists. Interestingly those who have told us this are considered extremists by the vast majority of peaceful Christians who follow Christ in suffering the iniquities of evil men. This has been blogged to death as well.
There seem to be many analyses of the cause and nature of "moral panic" but I want to analyse a a particular one here: the media and its role in consciousness.
Each one of us has a media reporter inside us who edits and composes narratives about themselves. Things are screened for particular audiences and manipulated to provide effects. It is only 20% what you say and 80% how you say it (good old 20/80 rule). I have not filled this blog with pointless personal narratives about my life (truth or lies) - maybe these are entertaining but this is not entertainment.
If there is one piece of evidence that the Society has a Group Consciousness it is the existence of the media. The Media functions as the story telling engine of a nation. It IS social consciousness. Prior to printing it was a job done by playwrites and before that travelling poets who for a hundred thousand years have told the stories that are the life blood of group consciousness.
I remember staying late at school one day and a guy in our year who I never spoke to normally (he was in the borders and part of a different group) came up to me and reported that the Challenger Space Shuttle had exploded. This news represented a greater social group than just the school sub-groups and he felt compelled to transfer the news not because he cared that I knew, or even that the news ment anything to us, but this imperative lay in his membership of social concsiouness.
I have argued at length about Groups, Group Membership, Status in a rather Materialistic way - whereby people are involved in a game of survival. I realise that this has been the prelude to a deeper understaning that began on Thursday... briefly slot that story in this blog here...
Went to see a book launch talk by Alain De Botton on work - a birthday present and material for my own book on work. At the book signing I was faced by a social situation I could not compute. You give the book for signing but also need to engage in some conversation. I did not and became very clear that it was socially imperative that I did. My sister bailed me out but this was not how it was "supposed" to work. What do you say? I've never read De Botton so can't say anything about being a fan or liking his work, I had a billion things to argue about but this was not the place, he doesn't need to hear that he was good or you liked it - I was buying the book wasn't I! he doesn't know me and I don't know him and we'll never meet again, so actually silence to sign the book seems the best way: yet there is a dominating social imperative to speak, to engage in narrative, to fulfill our membership of the social consciousness. They call it cynically the social airs and graces: but this is for fake social climbers - behind this is a real substance, a genuine imperative. It is worth adding that speak or not speak a narrative was fulfilled and I've said it here! So "Narrative" is a vast dialectical engine that constructs a consciousness outside the boundaries that we "think" we have mastered because we can talk. Talk or Not-Talk consciousness and group consciousness was.
This fits well into the growing analysis of self. We are not islands unto our self. We are not archipelagos surrounded by seas. We are not even dry lands at all. We are the oceans and the lands together because without one there is not the other. What is water on a planet of deserts? What is land on a planet of fish? And so by the same token: What is land on a planet of deserts? What is sea on a planet of fish? This fits with the recent blog on evolution. And so it is, what is the self without society? What am I if there are not we? This is most famously from Hegel (1805), "The I that is We, and the We that is I". I read that over 10 years ago, yet still struggle to grasp it.
It is no accident then society models our own inner world. No accident that both I and society have a media centre. The reason? because we are the same thing looked at through the broken window of multifarious existence. It is that ancient shattering of the One into the many which creates existence, and the beguiling feature of the world of many things is that its broken face hides the Unity : indeed creates the Unity because how is there unity when all is One! Just as how can there be seas on a planet only of water. (Which is an interesting image by itself: imagine a planet made entirely of water - a huge rain drop in space).
So now to something darker. Again the Media reports a new gunning in America. It is not that a thousand people haven't died since yesterday, it is that these few died at the end of a gun, and that fits a pattern, and that pattern is easily grasped and distinctly emotive and ready for consciousness. In reality of course we know it is a particular event with particular causes and that man had a particular life and particular issues and it is just a coincidence that it has happened - something that is begin exploited to create a story and the sense of something else in American society - the material to create a "moral panic".
Or is it? We also know of copy cat killings (CCKs). It is remarkable that in this "advanced" society this issue is always pushed under the carpet. Maybe it is because it challenges the idea of men being "islands unto themselves", independent and free. But when we see that actually we are all one (at least in the sense that we are individuals only because we are all One - is an immortal alien on a planet of only himself an individual? or a Society?)... when we see we are all One we suspect suddenly that we have a hand in everything. The idea of mass killing with a gun has two sides: it requires the perpetrator and the victims, and it needs the audience to witness it. All these people form consciousness.
So where did this idea form? It is a common tale that the Chinese had used gun-powder for millenia before the Europeans found it and realised it could be used to foprm weapons. It was not the technology of gunpowder that caused weapons, but the culture - the consciousness. The idea of mass killing existed already it just needed the technology. Wind forward to September the 11th - a remarkable idea to use planes as explosive - something that was dreamed up long before and not by the Mujahadin (who became Al Qaida). Likewise to use of guns on civilians because you are angry. All American films use the gun to satisfy injustice and anger - the idea is out there it just needs actors and an audience.
If we don't like the stories on the media it is not the media, or the people that we don't like, it is not even us who is disliking them - it is a nausea within social cosnciousness itself.
Unlike with racism and what is now called discrimination in general it is supported because it is considerted to have a "moral" basis.
The most recent moral panic is "Terrorism". The flames of this have been very carefully monitored to stop it becoming out right racism and imperialism - which would have made "Terrorism" look suspicious. We have been told it is moral to "hate" Islamic Extremists but not Islam which rejects the extremists. Interestingly those who have told us this are considered extremists by the vast majority of peaceful Christians who follow Christ in suffering the iniquities of evil men. This has been blogged to death as well.
There seem to be many analyses of the cause and nature of "moral panic" but I want to analyse a a particular one here: the media and its role in consciousness.
Each one of us has a media reporter inside us who edits and composes narratives about themselves. Things are screened for particular audiences and manipulated to provide effects. It is only 20% what you say and 80% how you say it (good old 20/80 rule). I have not filled this blog with pointless personal narratives about my life (truth or lies) - maybe these are entertaining but this is not entertainment.
If there is one piece of evidence that the Society has a Group Consciousness it is the existence of the media. The Media functions as the story telling engine of a nation. It IS social consciousness. Prior to printing it was a job done by playwrites and before that travelling poets who for a hundred thousand years have told the stories that are the life blood of group consciousness.
I remember staying late at school one day and a guy in our year who I never spoke to normally (he was in the borders and part of a different group) came up to me and reported that the Challenger Space Shuttle had exploded. This news represented a greater social group than just the school sub-groups and he felt compelled to transfer the news not because he cared that I knew, or even that the news ment anything to us, but this imperative lay in his membership of social concsiouness.
I have argued at length about Groups, Group Membership, Status in a rather Materialistic way - whereby people are involved in a game of survival. I realise that this has been the prelude to a deeper understaning that began on Thursday... briefly slot that story in this blog here...
Went to see a book launch talk by Alain De Botton on work - a birthday present and material for my own book on work. At the book signing I was faced by a social situation I could not compute. You give the book for signing but also need to engage in some conversation. I did not and became very clear that it was socially imperative that I did. My sister bailed me out but this was not how it was "supposed" to work. What do you say? I've never read De Botton so can't say anything about being a fan or liking his work, I had a billion things to argue about but this was not the place, he doesn't need to hear that he was good or you liked it - I was buying the book wasn't I! he doesn't know me and I don't know him and we'll never meet again, so actually silence to sign the book seems the best way: yet there is a dominating social imperative to speak, to engage in narrative, to fulfill our membership of the social consciousness. They call it cynically the social airs and graces: but this is for fake social climbers - behind this is a real substance, a genuine imperative. It is worth adding that speak or not speak a narrative was fulfilled and I've said it here! So "Narrative" is a vast dialectical engine that constructs a consciousness outside the boundaries that we "think" we have mastered because we can talk. Talk or Not-Talk consciousness and group consciousness was.
This fits well into the growing analysis of self. We are not islands unto our self. We are not archipelagos surrounded by seas. We are not even dry lands at all. We are the oceans and the lands together because without one there is not the other. What is water on a planet of deserts? What is land on a planet of fish? And so by the same token: What is land on a planet of deserts? What is sea on a planet of fish? This fits with the recent blog on evolution. And so it is, what is the self without society? What am I if there are not we? This is most famously from Hegel (1805), "The I that is We, and the We that is I". I read that over 10 years ago, yet still struggle to grasp it.
It is no accident then society models our own inner world. No accident that both I and society have a media centre. The reason? because we are the same thing looked at through the broken window of multifarious existence. It is that ancient shattering of the One into the many which creates existence, and the beguiling feature of the world of many things is that its broken face hides the Unity : indeed creates the Unity because how is there unity when all is One! Just as how can there be seas on a planet only of water. (Which is an interesting image by itself: imagine a planet made entirely of water - a huge rain drop in space).
So now to something darker. Again the Media reports a new gunning in America. It is not that a thousand people haven't died since yesterday, it is that these few died at the end of a gun, and that fits a pattern, and that pattern is easily grasped and distinctly emotive and ready for consciousness. In reality of course we know it is a particular event with particular causes and that man had a particular life and particular issues and it is just a coincidence that it has happened - something that is begin exploited to create a story and the sense of something else in American society - the material to create a "moral panic".
Or is it? We also know of copy cat killings (CCKs). It is remarkable that in this "advanced" society this issue is always pushed under the carpet. Maybe it is because it challenges the idea of men being "islands unto themselves", independent and free. But when we see that actually we are all one (at least in the sense that we are individuals only because we are all One - is an immortal alien on a planet of only himself an individual? or a Society?)... when we see we are all One we suspect suddenly that we have a hand in everything. The idea of mass killing with a gun has two sides: it requires the perpetrator and the victims, and it needs the audience to witness it. All these people form consciousness.
So where did this idea form? It is a common tale that the Chinese had used gun-powder for millenia before the Europeans found it and realised it could be used to foprm weapons. It was not the technology of gunpowder that caused weapons, but the culture - the consciousness. The idea of mass killing existed already it just needed the technology. Wind forward to September the 11th - a remarkable idea to use planes as explosive - something that was dreamed up long before and not by the Mujahadin (who became Al Qaida). Likewise to use of guns on civilians because you are angry. All American films use the gun to satisfy injustice and anger - the idea is out there it just needs actors and an audience.
If we don't like the stories on the media it is not the media, or the people that we don't like, it is not even us who is disliking them - it is a nausea within social cosnciousness itself.
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