Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Philanthropic economists ... Ha!

The problem with the great philanthropic Economists is that they perceived "wealth" in terms of material wealth. Yet they should have realised something... they were prepared to give the poor material wealth because actually their wealth was to do with class and that is something they could not give!

Friday, 26 June 2009

Democracy v Education

Old point but putting it succinctly...

In most societies "education" is considered an essential process that amongst other things improves our judgement so that we can chose better - be that choices as part of our profession like a doctor chosing a diagnosis and course of treatment, or ourselves chosing a suitable partner or job. Our society like most then accepts that the uneducated are not so good a making judgements.

On the other hand however Democracy considers everyone to have equal ability to judge. Democracy ignores the impact of education. Democracy entails a belief that we can live a successful life without any care or attention or education - a kind of in built "ability" to survive.

It seems you can't consistently believe in education and democracy at the same time! John Stuart Mill argued for the educated to have two votes - his thinking seems quite reasonable.

To put it more absurdly you can imagine a reality TV show where medical operations, military decisions or legal judgements were taken by phone vote. I can safely assume that the medical operation would be a disaster. If military decisions came to defending the country I can't see the ensuing battle being a success. And if the morality of friday night pub mentality were unleashed I imagine that most legal judgements would end with the death penalty.

It is not that having a person in charge is the point - isn't it having the right person in charge also. A surgeon does not win a popular vote - they are trained... and so on.

So it seems that there is a big schism here.

Thursday, 25 June 2009

2 types of Self

Considering the SRH ...

When we give something self-identity (that is to say that it exists as a discrete entity separate from other entities - something that might be called itself) we are actually doing one of two things.

1) We are definiting it as separate from other entities. For example I am "Alva Gosson" as opposed to anyone else. "Alva Gosson" thus denotes a self defined in relation to other things. This I will call "typeself". I am one of a type.

2) When we define something as existing as opposed to not-existing - i.e. in relation to "Nothingness" (see previous post on that - Nothingness which is not a thing or self itself) . This I will call tokenself.

The second type is the type of self which provides the true ammunition for philosophy and religion. The first type is trivial.

I was considering my favourite format of sets to illustrate this.

Suppose we construct a universal set {a,b}.

What we have done is take two entities and separate them by giving them different names. "'a" depends upon "b" and vice verse for this separation. Thus we can generate a powerset of 4 useful distinct sets from this universal set and describe 4 states: {}, {a}, {b}, {a,b}.

If we define a universal set with one member {a} a question arises as to what "a" means. What are distinguishing "a" from? What then is the point of naming it since we can only talk of "a". For example when we talk of mathematics to a student we never refer to breathing because breathing is assumed and constant for all mathematics teaching. Why would we keep refering to breathing since it never changes? Likewise in a set with one object what is the meaning of giving it a name?

The reason why it is meaningful is because of the empty set {}. Thus we can derive 2 sets from the universal {a}: {} and {a}.

The names in these two sets are subtly different then: {a} refers to a tokenself only while {a,b} refers to typeself also.

Now the relevance to the SRH is that if it can be shown (logically) that a single reference depends upon its fellow members in some way for its meaning then it follows that the "self" it refers to is actually constructed upon the relationship between the "self" and "others". The "self" then quite apart from being a discrete entity is actually an embodiment of the whole which contradicts the notion of "self".

Now the remaining issue is to find that contradition within some formal system.

Monday, 22 June 2009

Time & The Tradition

Thinking about the Ashes cricket tournament this afternoon on the train I wondered what it must be like to first get handed that tiny urn with the burnt cinders of those bails. No doubt an enormous rush of Tradition. The very memory of that match so long ago now only goes to reinforce the binding of the Tradition. So very oddly as things pass into the Past and become less significant what they leave behind in the Present gains a stronger aura in the light of that Loss. The Passing of Time is the very source of Tradition.

What Buddhist recognise as the most profound and liberating force in all existence - the fact that nothing last forever - is at the same time the force which binds us to the Past! That which has gone, or departed, because it can never be seen again, because of the sense that it is untouchable and unreasonable with, casts a powerful force upon the land of the living where all things are uncertain and the future is infintely negotiable. When they decide whether to play The Ashes this year do they really have a choice in it? After all who cares if there is one less cricket match in the calendar? It makes no difference to anyone... except it violates the Ancestors and The Tradition!

Anyone in the "progressive" West who thinks tribes and cultures who worship ancestors and the Past are primative are - as seems to be the case in every respect as I slowly examine it - can only believe this because of the veil of rejection they cast over their own motives and culture. I imagine that quite contrary to the view of "progress" there is actually enormous conservatism in Man's approach to Life - we are afterall the same and have the same root needs and concerns.
===
Realised that "The Tradition" exists in a dialectic with "The New". In consumerist societies we are obsessed with things being "New". This fetish gains its value because of its opposition to things which are fetished as being "Old" or "Traditional". They are mutual bedfellows. So when we see the "Latest" edition or version of something we can understand that this only makes sense because it is posturing itself against the alternative which is the "Traditional". People who follow fashions and the latest things are thus really conservative in their thinking - only ironically! Quite a suprising find I thought.

Sunday, 21 June 2009

Life ?

To explore further I've decided to begin a series of audio/visual pieces to ask the question.

(Forgive my crude mixing skills - music made on a number of instruments and played simulaneously for the mix.)

Draft 1 - 21 June '09.

(Pictures off net. Instrument = free soundfont. Freeware MusicLab midi loop. Freeware TS404 arpeggiator http://come.to/richy. Drum machine demo Arturia Storm 3.0. Freeware Audacity to record it. Built AV in Windows Movie Maker.)

Saturday, 20 June 2009

Peasant Economy

New terms...

http://www.answers.com/topic/peasant-economy


Moral economy

Other notes...

Realised that essentialism is rampant in Economics and Ecology. It is all about "types" of species and types of things. In neither case do they consider actual things.

===

The wise prefer peace to pleasure.

So goes a saying from my old master. The reason I realised is that while pleasure is great, it ends and so be must seek it again. Its nature is thus limited. Peace on the other hand doesn't decay it has no landscape and no boundaries. Unlike pleasure we cannot say we have it we don't have it. No seeking, no craving, no loss. It is endless. Its value is different from the highs and lows of pleasure.

===

Arguing with someone about what Self was they said that "what something is" is its self. i.e. they expressed the essence - the substance that makes something what it is as the self. So a tree has a self because it is a tree and not a stone. I thought this a very clear expression of an idea on self so I note it here.

===

They also told me a story about a butcher and a monk but I forget it.

===

Personality can't be learned because two people with same experience can be effected differently. So we can't explain everything in terms of what has happened to people.

===

Musing on the nature of Natural Beauty. Is it Real or Personal Taste?

"Relativity seems to fail when you essentialise the self... But if I or this themselves are relative then what foundation is there? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but where is the beholder? It is not that I create beauty or that I am independent of beauty because I myself am not fixed! It is not me that causes things to be beautiful while only I may find something beautiful. It is interdependent."

Think I am playing here with the extremes of Beauty either being Objective and independent of me, or Subjective and created in my own mind. In truth however it is the interaction of a thing with myself that creates the Beauty. It is only beautiful if I am there to see it, but I can only see it as beautiful if it is what it is.

===end of notes

Consciousness resolved




Finally I resolved a feature of consciousness that had me stumped since school. In this diagram there is an obvious mistake. The ladybird is duplicated. It is both a real ladybird and a virtual ladybird in the brain of the subject. When we see something however we only see a single real one so the question is, which ladybird then does the subject here see? If they see the "real" ladybird directly then what does all the brain stuff do and if they only see the virtual ladybird then how do they know that there is a real ladybird? Indeed what is a "real" ladybird if we think our virtual ladybird is the real ladybird.

Another way to put this conundrum is to realise that the real lady bird is actually what we the scientist sees and the virtual ladybird is only what the subject says they see. Obviously the scientist can't "see" the virtual ladybird but oddly it means that and the subject can't see the "real ladybird".

Expand this implication and it means that we can draw an analogous picture of the scientist. He is looking at the real ladybird and real patient but what he is actually seeing is his brain's processing of this scene. The scientist can't see what is really there anymore than the patient can see the real ladybird that is at some distance away from them.

This is an ancient conundrum going back into the dawn of history.

It is also nonsense tho it has had me stumped for over 20 years.

The point occurred to me that a distinction must be made between what is "actually happening" and what we are thinking about. Like seeing a film on TV and not wanting a character to die and then realising at the same time that it is only a film and coloured lights on a screen. The drama is what we think - what is actually happening is analogous (but not the same) to the coloured lights on a screen. Analogous because if we think about the coloured lights then that too is now drama and what is really happening is we are having a thought!

As I've sort of said before the Now is outside our field of vision but we have this indefinable sense of Nowness and things Happening for Real ... as opposed to the arbitrary nature of our ephemeral thoughts.

Now in the diagram the patient is involved in a stream of happenings that includes for a while the ladybird. The scientist however is involved in a different stream which is the obervations of the patient brain and the ladybird. When the scientist tries to "think" about what the patient must be seeing when their brain lights up they are only having a "thought" about what is really happening for the patient. To say that the patient is "conscious" of the ladybird and that the consciousness must be part of the brain lighting up is to overlook the importance of "the stream". The consciousness arises because the patient's brain at that moment is linked with the stream of motion in the Universe that presented the ladybird and caused all the movements in their brain. The consciousness is the Nowness. The scientist cannot access this Nowness in the Patient because their Nowness (their consciousness) is Of the Patient. The scientist simply couldn't be observing the patient and experiencing the ladybird at the same time. So the duality that is created is a feature of the experiment itself - the very scientist/patient relationship and the "consciousness of the patient" that the scientist thinks he is investigating is actually the same consciousness that both he and patient experience is their Nowness. That original pseudo-haiku

You and Me;
When we touch
Where?

could be applied here as

You and Me conscious of things;
When we become scientist and patient
Where?

Religion and Certainty

Just expanding paper notes I've made over the past month or so. This made while walking the University Lakes and contemplating the beauty of nature.

In Science the Universe we behold today is unimaginably unlikely. Thinking about all the variables and exact requirements for this universe makes this moment virtually impossible by chance. I for example survived pneumonia as a child. My mother is the second child of my rhesus -ve grand-mother and survived only by chance. My parents almost never got married etc etc. Even in my own small corner of the world the chance of me sitting here and writing this is massively odds against.

Yet I am sitting here writing this. (Or at the time I was thinking this I was walking the lake at University.)

Christian Literalists however have an entirely opposite view. There is no chance here at all. God made 1 world and He made is exactly as He wanted. What we see is not the result of googleplexes of chances - of evolution in biology, chemistry and physics. There was never even one dice throw in God's creation. We look upon a world with total certainty - our existence is assured, the beauty of everything assured - it is the world of the Perfect creator. What Science reveals for the Literalist is not the chance outcomes of evolution but the Grand Design - the very Hand of God.

A deeper Literalist might also say that the apparent chances of evolution - the extinction of dionsaurs for example - were not really dice throws but simply part of the Plan. It only looks like a chance because we don't have the full picture. Like someone trying to predict what day someone else will go on holiday without seeing their diary.

One great advantage of the Literalist is that they capture something essential about Life and Now - that there is no question of what is happening. This is the starting point of all our existence and all our research and science. What happens today is certain - everything else speculation.

So it kind of obliterates the scientific view of multiverses etc which would incline us to think this world and this Life is unimportant and arbitrary. Who cares of The Life if there are countless others? And who cares about the special features of this Universe when countless others have their own special features. Science kind of misses the point of Life and creation here.

Capital and Food Additives

In the GCSE past Science A papers one question asks why a food additive might be added to food. The answer given is that it will sell more of the product.

You would expect in a market where people bought what they wanted freely that people would get what they wany - yet it is fascinating that markets often operate against the consumer.

The bias is caused again by Capital. Businesses make moves not toward the customer but toward protection of Capital. If they can trick the consumer then capital will trick the consumer. So food additives like colours which are officially added for the benefit of the customer may actually harm the customer. Sudan 1 you might have thought would have been thoroughily tested before being "added" yet so great is the capital return of colouring a food that the customer's health was risked instead.

How odd that people accept a system which actually puts them second! That is really quite remarkable!!

Of Life itself - the root questions...

An excellent source of Buddhist scriptures

Read the Sigalovada sutta yesterday. Finally I have found a sutta that is aimed at worldly and not monastic life... and what a difference there is!!! Walking through London yesterday I felt reconnected with "the people" because this sutta explains in very simple terms the "Way of the Householder" and it speaks a very ancient code that I recognised in my heart. Some of the contents are a little odd by modern standards but it holds together pretty well as a guide to worldly living.

Seeing what the Buddha said about the domestic life I realise that I have got a very great deal wrong. For example on desire:

It seems that in this sutta Buddha has not bad things to say about desire itself. The problem it seems is when desire is one of the 4 reasons for commiting evil -

"Whoever through desire, hate or fear, Or ignorance should transgress the Dhamma"

This brought me up short and made me re-examine my view on desire. Cycling over Waterloo Bridge I realised that I have had a wrong view on desire since the outset. Thinking back to the situation with "my muse" I saw that intrical to my view of desire was that desire should be stronger than the will. For some Romantic reason I felt that destiny could only lie in desires that were too strong to resist because otherwise it was tainted by one's own rationality. If one could chose a girl then one could also not chose the girl and so it was never a certain destiny. If "my muse" was to Be-The-One then it followed logically that I could not chose her. So the view of desire must be that the Ego is extinguished in desire so powerful that one is helpless and is killed - but from that conflagration one is reborn in a new self and a new destiny. This has been the Romantic dream for almost ever - my desire to stop thinking, my desire to self-destruct in desire and oblivion - so that I might be reborn in a New and Better Life ... this has been the ERROR all along.

From what Buddha says in this sutta "desire" is one of the 4 sources of Evil and therefore we must never let desire become stronger than "us". I knew this as a child and "my muse" was an attempt to break the strangle hold on this as well - to find some kind of Good Desire - what I called Irreason at the time.

It seems that "desire" itself is neither Good nor Bad and we must remain on guard to protect ourselves from actions generated by Bad Desire.

It is fair to say this entire journey has been in the wrong direction. It is wrong to seek annihilation and rebirth through desire and destiny - this is not the message of Christ. To lose ourselves is akin to walking away from the controls of a plane, a ship or a car. Being in control need not be an effort, but we do need to be there.

The path to salvation then is actually the other way. We simply need to become more and more skillful pilots. My suffering of the past 10 years has been a desperate attempt to regain control of a plane that I deliberately stalled in the mistaken belief that it would somehow magically be carried upon a wind of destiny. "My Muse" was such a coincidence and occurring of such good fortune that I believed that God might even pilot me to New Lands that I had never been able to dream of in my small and petty Ego.

There are no new lands for the whole universe already exists in our own soul. To arrive at those new lands we need only become the better pilot of ourselves.

It takes a great man to command an army:
But a greater man to command himself.

Of Hamlet? I realised at the time that I had become Hamlet - unable to kiss her because to do so deliberately would be to chose my new life and so always be haunted by the possibility that I might not have chosen her. What kind of certainty and security lies in a world that we have chosen? We could just as easily have not chosen it. The difference is because we "desired" it - so logically desire must be greater than our choice else what we do becomes arbitrary. I hate the arbitrariness of my life - the fact that so much could be otherwise. I could have been a vet, I could have been in the army, I could have been an explorer, I could have been in a band, I could have been an artist, a scientist, I could have been cool, I could have been in so many relationships, I could have been so many people: like Hamlet I have chosen nothing - I neither was and I neither wasn't. This space has fascinated me - the Costner character in Fandango. And while we wait we die.

Now Duty is a solution because we "have" to do our duty and this gives us a force outside ourselves by which our Life can be constructed. The Dao, Logos, Truth and Dharma are Duties and forces outside ourselves - altho it is our True Nature which recognises them. Doing Good is the Law - this way we Live a Good Life. This is what the Sutta above is about. So again I say that I was wrong to seek "destiny" in Desire. Destiny - if anywhere - lies in Duty. Ultimately when we attach no more to our Ego then we achieve the non-action of Divine Grace where all things arise because of Karmas and Happenings and we act only through Good Decision, Duty and Wisdom.

Yet while I've known what I just said since reading Kant in university and later from reading the Bhagavad Gita I still don't get it. Is marriage a Duty? Is "continuing the family line" - as it says in the ibidem sutta - a Duty? If they are then how do the Monastics "chose" a different destiny? There are 2 dharmas here - the worldly and the monastic with different Laws. How can that be - do we chose between them? And if we are free to chose then are we free to chose Evil as well as Good? These existential questions have terrified me since I was a child - how often have I voiced them in this Blog - Not Many! - they are terrifying. Yet are these not the root questions of this Blog - of Life itself?

The Dharma says that if we chose evil we suffer and if we chose good then we prosper. Yet to suffer is this something we "don't want"? in which case if it is then we are driven by desire and so are unable to chose Good over Evil. The arguments go around and around in circles but at least I'm voicing them coherently now - the nausea, the apathy, the suffering at the root of Life.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Even as I agonised over the issue of a new life with "my muse" I used to quote this to myself. I am not Hamlet in that I am afraid of what is right and what consequences await me, I am Hamlet existentially in that I see no substance in resolution. Either we are not free and what we do is destined and solid or we are free and what we do is abitrary and in another universe we do the other.

A Life built upon nothing but choices is no more than a destination
arrived at a thousand tosses of a coin.

Unless we desire a certain path - in which case we are slaves to that desire and our only role is to succeed or fail our master.

As a society we adopt similar desires and believe they are universal - then we measure ourselves against one another by our favour with that global Master. Those who are rich, well housed, in happily families - these are those favoured by the Master of our society.

Yet my conscience has always been revolted with the idea of satisfaction, security and complacency if I was ever favoured by that Master. What of all the other people who are not favoured? I don't want a master who is so poor that He cannot favour All.

If the Jewish God for an example has one weakness in the eye of my conscience it is His lack of Magnanimity.

The True God loves All - for He is All. Why would He spite himself? Those who suffer and fall from Grace are simply those who cannot see He is All. We turn from the All, we turn from having God's Eyes and when we turn from having God's Eyes we end up not seeing the hurt we bring upon ourselves.

Father forgiven them for they know not what they do.

Such is the nature of all wrong doing and suffering. So The Good is easy for those who see the All. The Dharma is a road well signposted for those who have God's Eyes.

Yet again I've known this yet again returning to My Life, My Desire, My Destiny: What do I do? Must we not seek the Eye's of God before we do anything? Certainly this has been my first goal since a very young child. Yet I face death before even having started to attain such divine insight and wisdom.

So simple question. Do I get married and treat my wife dutifully and protect the family name and lineage - seek immortality in the eyes of a Lover. Or, do I become monastic and seek immortality in the Eye's of God. Buddha gives two Dharmas! Are we supposed to chose? And so it starts again... I have only one avenue that I think may resolve this and that is extinction of the Ego. But this sounds very like the path I took with "my muse". Here are the issues laid bare at least...

Friday, 19 June 2009

Northern Sunset


Don't see this very often in Southern England (at least I don't). 11.10pm on June 16th in Reading and the twilight is in the North! (Casseopia is highlighted in the top right to prove it)
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Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Way Of Life

The post on Grasping Nothing leads to a new approach to issue of Life.

Life is not to be approached as a concept. It is rather a "practice" which must be undertaken. It is only when we have perfected the practice that the concept will have any meaning!

This is the concept of Dharma (Dhamma) or I believe also Logos and Tao. Jesus was not the conceptual Truth but the Way.

Self -Reference Proof :-)

Totally informal and very simple...

Consider an entity that we will call self. To do so we are distinguishing it from other entities which are not-self. If there was only this entity then could we call it self?

Note: "Self" is relative not absolute since all entities have a "self" reference... which is unique for each entity.

The problem with the construction of "self" then is that it then depends upon other non-self entities for its construction.

Thus self would reference bioth itself and other entities and so not be self referential.

The original insight was this. That self reference is impossible intrinsically - it can only be done from the outside and so is constructed upon non-self. Thus no "self" can be absolute. This was the argument years ago against anything being True. True means self-true which is then impossible.

Stock Gradient Index

Idea for a stock chart index...

The change in price divided by the total path length so that for a stock that heads straight for the price it reflects the gradient and deviations from the gradient are caused by fluctuations.

Build as a floating value.

How useful?

Grasping Nothing

One thing that is happening as I wander into new lands is that I am developing a deeper understanding of emptiness.

It occurred to me yesterday that the problem with previous attempts to grasp this "concept" is that I did not make a distinction between form and content.

When we grasp any mental object - whatever that may be - we take hold of a thing: a discrete object. It is discrete because it is separate from other objects, or in this case other ideas. While we are contemplating an idea we are not contemplating other ideas - it is discrete.

Thus when we contemplate the idea of Nothing we may be doing so but we are packaging it as something.

The mundane use of Nothing goes like this. We are looking for something and someone asks what we found and we say "nothing". An empty room has "nothing" in it. Yet each of these "events" and "results" is a discrete something. As Lao-Tze points out "nothing" is a very useful something when we consider a door or the hole in a wheel for the axle. Nothing and Something are both results, they are both something.

To consider Nothing as it truly is we need to consider it packaged as Nothing also. Then it is self-similar: or it describes itself. Now SRH alert but I'm passing this time...

A naive way to do this is to "clear the mind". This is often a beginners approach to meditation. It is strictly warned against by meditation masters, but as a thought experiment it is revealing. If we gain a clear mind then that mind can be distinguished from an unclear mind: therefore having a clear mind is a discrete phenomenon and so it is something. "Clearing the mind" is actually filling the mind with "Nothing"!

It should be apparent at least logically that to grasp Nothing is actually to not obtain any state or concept that can be distinguihsed from others. It is not the holding of anything, and Nothing is to be found in Everything. Nothing and Everything cannot be distinguished!

Now it is clearer what the nature of the Absolute is. It explains also the importance of "impermanence" in the Buddha Dharma. He taught this by getting us to profoundly live with the fact that Everything is temporary - that is to say that all Things can be distinguished from one another and so none of them are absolute and fundamental. To Truth must therefore be "not a thing".

Nothing is thus not only a concept, but a "Way of Being" which enables us to package the concept not as a discrete idea to be grasped and held at the expense of other ideas - i.e. not as something to be placed before our inner eyesight for a duration - but rather existing so that Nothing is seen as common to all things and All things are unified in Nothing.

Thus we have Nothing, Emptiness, God and Absolute all as One. Arguments, agreements, beliefs, dis-beliefs, affiliations, memberships, non-memberships: how can there be any of these in the Kingdom of the Lord!?

Sunday, 14 June 2009

Sex n Yoga

After a yoga session yesterday I feel much more in tune with my body and I realise this is what I used to get from sex and what I crave from in a sexual relationship - sex is an opportunity to relate to "another" person physically and understand ones own physical existence more naturally.

The problem is that sex is hijacked so aggressively by desire so that it becomes dominated by a selfish need for gratification which negates opportunity for yoga. It is also hijacked by status and social existence in structures like "relationships" and "families" etc. People even become politically aware based upon their sexuality like feminists and even sexual preference like homosexuals. Reproduction is the root process by which sex has developed but it operates "through" the body and existence and so gives the opportunity for yoga and profound meditation. Without a physical body what life would there be anyway? Having a partner or lots of partners, being good at sex, etc are features which become status issues and this also annihilates the yogic potential of physical existence.

To liberate for the journey then physical existence has to be separted from state and social structures, status and all conceptual modes of existence and desire. Physical is just physical.

So have teezered all that apart finally I might be able to proceed on the journey that hit the buffers so destructively a decade ago with "my muse". Last week also I finally said goodbye to her. Thinking about her and "what was" again I saw it in a different light at last - as being beautiful but small and limited. Evidently I have succeeded in climbing much higher on a nearby mountain. Looking across into the Eden I once occupied I can see it is far from everything and the landscape I now gaze over stretches to distant new horizons. This is what growing must be like! I have got out of the valley that has been my home for 12 years. If it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger.

I saw also that Yoga is a huge discipline from which Buiddhism has adopted only a tiny fragment of practice. Anapanasati is just one of 6 breathings yogas we did. One of the opening exercises I also recognised from the Chinese temple. The mudras we have learned in meditation have meanings which were explained and again are part of a much larger family. No wonder I originally looked to sex with my western consciousness for exploration of physical meditation! It is amazing how straight-jacketed the society in which we live is. It is all because of status and rules as previously discussed but it leaves us thinking that the limitations are Real not self imposed. Not that we need to explore all areas of Life - that is impossible - we have only one body and one lifetime - but when we realise the hugeness of our natures we see that even within a limited mortal physical existence we are at the same time Boundless and Divine.

Thursday, 11 June 2009

Back to the Gospels - who was Christ?

Right time to sort this one out... (need to redo the references as they don't seem to make sense... but here is a start on this huge subject...)

As a child being first taken through the gospels at Sunday school in Otford,UK one thing struck me more than anything else about Jesus. I couldn't frame the observation because it was so odd and why it takes this long to get to saying it ... who knows. Anyway the observation is that Jesus never acts upon what we call in the Modern world free-will. Instead everything is done to fulfill the scriptures and propheses. Now that is a very odd idea to a child.

This is an odd idea even to an European adult today but we realise that Jesus was not a Modern human being but deeply embedded in Jewish Middle Eastern culture and tradition of 2 millennia ago. It makes Jesus a far cry from the Modernist interpretation of Him and God also. If He was God - God is all powerful. Why then does Jesus feel the need to follow only the propheses of mortals? If he Created the Universe I'm sure he can decide his future? Modernism and NT conceptions of the Human Being don't mix at all. How Luterism is supposed to be anything to do with Christ becomes a mystery also. Where is the celebration of individuality?

So to sort this out I spent last night reading up in the university library and in particular Sir William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible dated 1873. May as well get the official anti-semitic view.

So what is Christ anyway? Christ comes from Greek Xpistos (as well transcribed pictorially as I can) which is pronounced Christos and is the rendering of the Hebrew word Masiach or Messiah. It means 'annointed'. Kings of Israel like David were Xristos. But it specifically refers to an on going prophesy of a Messiah from the lineage of David that would lead the Jews to liberation (or something like that).

The propheses of the Messiah paint a variety of pictures however. Early Messiahs (before David) were men of peace while the later Messiahs after David were more conquerors, judges and redeemers of sin. Some suffering is present in some Messiahs also. Nowhere though does the OT refer to the Messiah as a divine being - only someone who completes God's work. Jesus had quite a number of propheses to chose from when He painted his own picture of the Messiah, but the becoming Divine is new.

A small point but Jesus as a Man had only an Earthly mother yet Matthew writes the lineage from David via Joseph! who wasn't his father?

The famous terms "o uios tou theou" and "o uios tou anthropou" which mean "son of God" and "son of "man" respectively are titles of the Messiah. They mean exactly what they say and here is the problem because it seems that Jesus referred to himself literally as a mortal man but also a divine being.

So now the "crux" of the point. The logic here is extraordinary and I can't believe this isn't widely considered...

The Jesus was charged with blasphemy. Deut xiii I-II instructs the killing of blasphemers. No where do the propheses say that the Messiah would be Divine. It is his claim to Divinity and not his being the Christ that was the problem.

So if Jesus was not Divine they were only acting in accordance with God's Law and Jesus was rightfully executed.

Yet if Jesus was Divine however then he was wrongfully executed.

But to emancipate sins (at least in the Christian story) he needed to be Divine and suffer the humilition and injustice of wrongful punishment and death. In this way he takes our rightful place on the cross.

So the whole story is a Tragedy of epic proportion and intricate dimension with Jesus acting out the script as written by the prophets. The propheses omitted the detail of Divinity so that when a Divine being was born he was destined to be executed for blasphemy as no-one would believe Him but in so doing complete God's plan of the emancipation from sins.

Thus the Jewish leaders were intricately involved in their own emancipation from sin.

In Isiah ii 1xvi both Heathen a Jew would benefit from the restoration. So it seems that were Jesus a divine being it would have been essential for God's plan to succeed and for Jesus to be executed for the Jewish leaders to have not acknowledged him as such. Yet for the Jews to then take part in the emancipation of sins they would then need to turn around their view and realise their part in God's plan.

Is this really very likely? Are the Jews simply the Deus ex machina of the Christian Tragedy story of Christ which liberates them only from sin and suffering? The other Judas' in the story? Why also was Jesus blindly following the scriptures and evidently failing to do so very well since no-one important and educated believed that he was the Messiah? Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey for example clearly failed to get recognised as the Sign of the Messiah. The fact that the Jews still don't recognise his as the Messiah must raise enormous questions about whether he was the Messiah since it is a Jewish idea. On the other hand what exactly are the Jews waiting for?

"Christians" going it alone and breaking from the Jewish faith seems to be a big problem. I don't undertand the Jewish faith and Christians equally won't understand it so how can we walk away with a half baked idea of a Messiah and hope to understand Jesus who was acting out the ancient Messiah role of a different people a long time ago? There is much work to do and huge questions.

Finally the Trinity. Son of Man and Son of God. Christians make a big deal of this. There is only One God and so there is only One Jesus. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Through me, and through me alone etc etc. Thus they argue we all have to be Christians.

I still wonder however if they are missing something here. When Jesus says he is God and Man at once he is not the only one to have said that. It happens a lot in ancient thinking where gods take human form regularly. Indeed the issue of Trinity is not an issue for other faiths because there is no confusion between the "Divine" and "Form". The Absolute, Eternal, Divine is actually demonstrated in every Form. Krishna shows his Universal Form to Arjun in which the whole Universe is present within Him and He is present in everything. Thus Jesus claiming to be the Divine is not miraculous at all from other persepctives. It is only an issue within the Jewish faith where he was punished for such a claim. So its a bit of a hermaneutic circle. If you accept that way of thinking then you accept the internal logic of Christ being the Only One. But if you don't accept the circle then its not an issue.

Can thuis really be explained in Christian terms? I tried in the high street a few weeks ago and as usual each person must follow their own way.

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Willing Slaves

A tutee is asking for me to discipline him as tho he can't do it himself.

I have to accept something: that the vast majority of people - à la Hegel - are willing slaves.

When America or Alexander the Gr8 walk overthrow a country and declare the people "free" there is not a big deceit going on: the people know perfectly well they have gone from one master to another (a bigger and stronger master). The accept this because they actually want enslavement.

Hard to accept with all the Hollywood propaganda and Protestant Lutherism etc.

I first met this idae when reading up for that book (which is in writing). That the land closure laws and the movement of people into the service of Capitalists was a willing movement not just governed by money but by the realisation that under proper management they were more productive. Like a horse with a good rider we can gain greater heights as a slave.

It is also frightening to face oneself and this is the greatest challenge that few will ever wish to be involved in.

Modern society for all my (and others criticism) is exactly what most people want - willing enslavement.

True Self - Apolline n Dionysian

Occurs to me that that model of self with the ego being constructed by a greater self sits with Freud and ancient Greek concepts as well.

For greater self read Id; for ego read Apolline and greater self read Dionysian.

This is where "my muse" began because I wished to access my Dionysian to rid myself of Apolline and have always asked girls one thing: to stop me thinking.

Really then I wished to destruct the social construction and free myself from it.

Dionysian/Id tho has a bad name. It is unruly, unreasonable, unpredictable etc.

I had that idea of irreason which was supposed to be space between the rational Ego and the dangerous Id. Load of rubbish.

From Buddhism (Religion in general: Man in God's image etc) we know that the True Self is Good. If my Id broke through the tired constructions of myself in class on Monday that is because my Id has not been educated very well. It is one thing to apply the teaching to ones Ego and "act" out the answer - it is another to truly comprehend and become enlightened. Beautiful Machine is what one monastic calls it - the person who can act beautifully.

So this is why meditation etc are so important because they get beneath the constructed Ego which I have sort in all the wrong places like Love and Orgasm etc ...

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Other mornings thoughts...

== On Pain ===
Unpacking stuff from the dinner party I realise that I can now be completely honest at the white out of pain that I experienced regarding "my muse". I must be a very small person to have taken 11 years to digest that - but we take as long as we have to. Now I'm back within normal operation parameters I can start to function again. I realise that all people experience huge amounts of pain as a normal function of unenlightened life - maybe not going over registerable levels that often but some may be always be in unregisterable territory and so not even know that they hurt so bad.

==Capitalism and Well Bein ===
Answre to GCSE chemistry question: food colours are added to make food look more appealing to customer.

Amazing that we pay good money simply to have our "food" "look" better. What is the actual connection? It is the capital trying to fool us into buying its product rather than another. We pay for this capital distortion of our selses.

Worse given health risks capital will try to sell the product rather than benefit the customer. Thus we actually end up paying to hurt ourselves. Extraordinary really.

==Ecology n Genetics===

I'm beginning to be happy with the ideas of evolutionary biology. Before I was depressed by the dissolution of the "organism" in favour of population of competing genes. This is highly important but it is not everything.

Looking at Nature again with a more peaceful mind the genetics are everywhere and in everything.

==Invisble hand of the Ecology===
It seems that there is a sort of "conservation of diversity" in ecology.

In simple computer models, evolution doesn't work well because the selection criteria are so stuffy, static and contrived. In reality however the incomprehensible complexity of interaction forces from physics, chemistry, mathematics, information and logic means that evolution has endless selection forces to mediate.

Thus when a particular "form" becomes too dominant it simply creates an opportunity for a specialist to evolve that transforms (or preys) upon that form.

In Reality - "if you can you do". There is no morality outside maybe the constructed self I referred to this morning.

Evolution always does. Thus balance seems to be more likely than one would expect. Any imbalance simply provides a easy opportunity for a specialist to exploit which simply returns diversity back upwards. Its as though there is an invisible hand guiding the ecology and finding a energy price for interactions. Once something becomes profitable then it is exploited and redirects energy into that form. Diversity and Complexity are thus assured.

The greatest danger from the human race is the accumulation of so much of natures biomass in a simple to exploit form. A suitable disease for example will have a field day in the world's current mono-culture of human societies.

Long Live Diversity!

True Self

After a night without sleeping at the weekend I am alittle short tempered and exploded into rage at one of my students. Not a professional or personally skillful action... but I realised something

The "nice caring self" that I portray is actually a construction made by... my true self!!

It also means that "my True self" is still highly ignorant because it exploded into rage. Irony, irony since hours before I recognised that to be "provoked" by someone makes you a slave and makes them master of your actions. To have pure choice we must be unprovokable. Patience, tolerance, forebearance etc are key qualities of liberation - Jesus being a prime (but not supreme) example (he got angry and facing the cricifixion involved much doubt, fear and self control - but in the desert he was not provoked by the devil rather than be slave he became master of evil) .

But "my true self " was provoked and so I am not truly wise.

Yet it shows up very clearly the difference between my "actor self" or to give it its psychological moniker my "Ego" and an entity that I do not know called my "True Self".

The first Buddhist I ever met said that Ego is bad because it works for its own benefit at the expense often of the whole self. This was one of the truest things I ever heard.

A Chinese story I heard much later and never made sense of goes like this. Usual man seeks Enlightenment under great master. Nothing happens and there is no instruction. The man disillusioned walks away and the Great Master suddenly calls him by name so that he turns around. That says the master is your true self.

This is where our "self" exists at the horizon of the "self" that we play with like a puppet in our lives. We plan based upon this mental model of a self of Alva in my case. We experience emotion based upon the narratives that we construct for this actor yet that actor has no soul.

More alarming I realised that my True Self manipulates people through the performances of Alva. When I got angry I decided to construct a fearful self that was quite in contrast to the nice self that I work on usually. My tutee said "your mad" as he was confused by the evaporation of the "nice guy" and the sudden skillful creation of the "bad guy". This was my intention! It gave me power.

So the Ego is a tool to trick other people also and enable us to hide our vulnerable "true self" from them. Yet actually such thinking only shows immaturity and lack of wisdom because such construction of self gives the True Self away immediately.

So "I think therefore I am" is true and it passes the SRH because the thinking self is different from the existing self!!! They must be different by SRH anyway - but what we think we are is Ego and what is thinking is empty and non-existent!

Monday, 1 June 2009

End of the Production

Spent most of Saturday in a dinner party discussing in one way or another the awful truth that we are all going to die - not in a depressive way but in a desperate way because what else is there in life then. Probably not the best subject for a dinner party but as the morning came and conversation continued on the heath under the illumination of the rising sun I came to realise that I am not interested anymore by the dream. I am a romantic and hiding behind by cynicism was the observation given of myself ... and yes I was but on Sunday morning I realised that the play has had its run and the huge set that was built all those years ago in my childhood or before to stage this romantic quest is starting to be dismantled. The painted panels of sunsets and dusky forests ornamented with sprites and magical creatures turn from their fixments as the stage crane lifts and the illusion is suddenly replaced by another reality.

There is some sadness and disbelief at the end of party that the magical world has no depth and cannot be a world in which I can live. This is not what life is about and I no longer think I live there; inhabitant now of another less endearing world.

Done it: proof that Jewish thinking is limited. Spent most of the day avoiding triggering ChatGPT but it got there.

So previously I was accused of Anti-Semitism but done carefully ChatGPT will go there. The point in simple terms is that being a Jew binds y...