I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves.

I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves. Yet we are told the unemployment rate is rising. These jobs that were lost aren't important.

The employment rate for people of working age (16-65) was 72.7 per cent for the three months to June 2009

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=12

16% over 65yrs and 19% under 16yrs = 35% not working age
So 65% working age of which 72.7% are working = 47.26% of total population working

52.75% of the UK population do not work.

A figure which is rising.

So if half of people are supported by the other half in recesssion what exactly do all the extra jobs achieve out of recession?

The answer I suspect is nothing! It is simply a feature of an out of date economic paradigm.

Animals support themselves with whatever adaptations they inherit. Humans can rely upon ever improving adaptations, economies of scale and most importantly the input of fossil fuel.

(Sources available for what follows).

Hunter gatherers achieve a return on energy invested of 2.5 times. That means for every calory spent in gathering food they get 2.5 back. This decreases until modern intensive agriculture (which is land efficient but not eneregy efficient) where 4 times more energy is invested than gained from the land.

The point is the amount of energy that we utilise and replace human efforts with. Given the vast input of energy in systems that are more efficient than animal systems why do we all need to work?

Survival has always been solved. Since the Neolithic actually work has been the problem that has been solved... but it raises a question, what to do when all the work is done?

===

York notes for "Of Mice & Men" p9

"In 1938, the year that oM&M was published, half of America's grain was harvested by mechanical combines. These machines required 5 men to do the work. Only a few years earlier, the same work had needed 350 men."

Since the start of the industrial revolution there is no doubt that the vast majority of workers have been replaced my machines and "freed" from their labour on the land. What is odd is that new jobs have been created out of thin air ... and seem to continually be created indefinitely. We either have an infinite capacity to consume things (i.e. and infinite market) or our machines are not very good (neither of which is true - limited resources, time and bellies). So we would expect "unemployment" to naturally increase somewhere down the road... or rather we would expect to be "freed" from labour somewhere down the road... or is economics just a rug to pull over the eyes of the working "class"?

Finding our Faults

I have a problem with pride. My sister first identified it last week. It makes sense I've been told this before and I've been aware of it subliminally. So why does it take so long to find?

The problem is that a fault tends to show only when we are faced with someone who has that problem worse, so we justify our actions in terms of them. If someone gets angry with us then then we feel justified in getting angry with the. If someone actacks us we feel justified in being aggressive with them. In my case if someone acts superior to me then I feel justified in challenging their superiority. If someone lies about us then we feel justifed in lying about them. If someone is rude to us we feel justified in being rude to them. If someone is unfaithful to us then we feel justified in being unfaithful to them. If someone hates us we feel justified in hating them... and so on.

There are a variety of explanations for this which don't matter but for completeness. It could be because we project our view onto the world around us. It could be because we actually create the world around us through our actions in the past. It could be because this is actually what happens.

It doesn't matter however. The point is that other people's faults have nothing to do with our own faults. What we chose to do in a situation is up to us and we alone will be judged for it. So even if everyone else is losing their heads and blaming it on us that is not a factor we need to worry about. Thus if we join in then we have that problem to.... etc etc

Mark 6 - The Nature of Faith

Consider this passage from the Bible:

Mark 6

¹And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.

²And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?

³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.

⁴But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

⁵And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

⁶And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

If I read that right (and I first read it in the New International which has a longer passage for comparison) we have Jesus going to His hometown and people not seeing Him as the Messiah but rather as the son of the carpenter who they knew before and they cannot believe that he can make the transformation to Messiah. Stuck in their ways of thinking they cannot believe. Not believeing Jesus has no power!

This parallels the events elsewhere where Jesus says things like "Go your faith has already healed your daughter" etc etc. It has become evident as I read through the Gospels again that it is by Faith in Christ that the miracles happen not through Christ himself.

But this is a very subtle point indeed. If we doubt Christ then we have no faith and Christ becomes powerless which reinforces our doubt. But, if we believe then anything becomes possible and this reinforces our faith.

^{Mark 11: 24} Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Exactly like the stockmarket our fortunes follow our attitude to Christ, they do not come from Christ. But thinking this is because of My Faith and not Christ destroys our faith and so My Faith dies. It is a very subtle circular argument which requires great mastery of oneself to maintain. It is a playground for the devil who can easily topple peoples faith and trip them in positive feedback into Hell. We doubt, things go wrong and we doubt more, and things go worse and we fall faster and faster. Eventually (in America) we pick up a gun to protect ourselves and our world transforms into the bottom levels of Hell.

Now this is a very radical departure from the image of Christ that remains since Medaeval times where he is almost a magician with huge powers. It is through our relationship with Christ that these miracles can happen and the Power of Heaven is opened up. Christ alone cannot do anything!

This now has good parity with teachings from other faiths, in particular my own area of "practice" Buddhism.

In the Medicine Buddha Sutra Ananda says to Buddha and Buddha replies:

Ananda: "World Honored One, there are sentient beings deficient in faith who hear about the extremely profound practices of all Buddhas and think to themselves,' How could one obtain such supreme merit and benefit merely by reciting the name of a single Buddha, Medicine Master Vaidurya Light Tathagata? 'Due to this lack of faith, they give rise to slander. During the long night they lose great benefit and joy and fall into the evil destinies, where they wander ceaselessly."

The Buddha told Ananda, "If these sentient beings hear the name of the World Honored One, Medicine Master Vaidurya Light Tathagata, and sincerely accept and uphold it without any doubts, they cannot possibly fall into the evil destinies.

In Buddhism deep faith is associated with Samadhi, or level of concentration, and doubt is a distraction that means that the mind will not allow itself to become focused.

The implication from both Christian sources and Buddhist sources is that no deity alone can confer any blessings or powers, but that they assume these powers only when we believe with pure heart and without distraction and without doubt in them.

It is an odd circular argument which leads the mind into feedback. If you have doubt the doubt is only made stronger if you believe the belief will only get stronger.

The choice then depends upon our own mastery of our minds and their ability to focus and avoid the trap of loss of faith. Once our mind is pure and focused on whatever object of Faith we have infinite power and nothing becomes impossible.

This is the greatest Truth. The greatest Logos even greater than the Law of suffering caused by sin. Next up: how does this relate to the previous analysis of Logos and NULL?

Finally on a personal note I'm hoping the long sort after recioncilation between my two streams of activity may have been found - between the Christian and Buddhist.

===

Update 27/8

Of course this also treats a critical problem. According to each Abrahamic Faith the other Abrahamic faiths are going to Hell. This is not true in other faiths.It seems like a bug in the comprehension of the teachings yet Jesus clearly says that He is the only way.

Well looking at Mark 6 if you consider any other path than Jesus then you are entertaining doubt and so your faith is weak and it won't work. So it is true that you must remain faithful to Jesus 110% and no-one else will do.

But, this does not mean that were you to meet someone else who had 110% faith in someone else that they are doing anything different than you.

The problem then is to understand how to have 110% faith in our own Teacher, but at the same time accept that other Teachers exist and other people have 110% faith in them. i.e. Those teachers are not for us, but this teacher is: and vice versa our teacher is for us, but not for others.

It is the weakness of Faith which requires the crutch of Absolutism and Necessity: it seems so that we translate Faith into Necessity so that we have no chance to be weak in Faith. Yet if you HAD to believe in Christ then where is the Faith? So it must be a choice, and so it must be personal.

If this little issue could be cleared up how peaceful the paths of religion would become.

What has NULL got to do with Logos

Seeds of this were sown yesterday writing the last blog... If G-d is to be considered as the Void which rather than thought of like Emptiness I have realised is better considered like NULL (see computer science for a definition) then what has this to do with The Word or The Logos?

To recap The Logos is the Law of the universe described variously around the world. Cudely: if we do wrong we suffer.

In the Middle East it is the anger of G-d who punishes those who disobey or ignore him (in Christianity) or who are not favoured (in Judeism) - but as I have discussed previously this cannot be the only conception because punishment is also conceived as being administered in Hell by Satan which makes Satan in the employ of God and thus not His rebellious angel afterall! It was explained to me in Church group in 7oaks that really Hell is created when we are abandoned by G-d and I was given a conception of an empty void - cold, dark and lonely. A better conception of Hell but also extremely ironic.

In the East while the Logos is usually thought about in the same way as in the Jewish faiths - as seeking favour with spirits/gods/buddhas etc who then alleviate suffering - it also has another conception. It is a Law of the universe called Karma enacted by "no-one" to which all "beings" are subject. (If you enacted it then you are a "being" and if u aren't a being how can "you" be subject - i.e. enlightenment). In Madonna's (mother of Jesus?) libretto 'Every little thing that you say and do ahaa (pain :-) its coming back to you'.

The latter exposition of The Logos is the key which explains the relevance of NULL.

recap: Logos is the Greek for measure, law, word. Thus a scale is logos because it measures the weight of things. Justice is analogously measured and it is logos. Words of Law are logos. Words, in that they name and distinguish things, are logos. To illustrate: to make a judgement that this is a tree is logos. When the planets move around the sun according to Laws in Physics that is logos. The heighest indisputable laws of the Universe are capitalised Logos of which there is only One. When G-d speaks it is Logos. That Logos is that human life and death is miserable without G-d. In other languages the same idea if expressed variously as Dao in Chinese, Dharma in Sanskrit, Dhamma in Pali. These are the highest Law which is taught by the wise. Pre-Socratic Western philosophy used the Logos in this way. (They say Socrates began Western Philosophy actually I think there is a case to say Plato ended it because he began to distinguish parts in the Logos). (God written G-d to respect the original conception of G-d as being beyond names - as indeed the all powerful would be, no?).

So how do we get from a conception of the Void as NULL to the Logos which mankind has observed since the dawn of time. Why is being bad the source of suffering?

NULL expresses itself in a beautiful way to mundane man: irony. As Lao Tze loves to baffle his readers with, the tall is short and the short is tall when you stand with the NULL. The problem with the mundane mind is that we take what "is" as itself. Thus "what is tall is tall dumb arse!". With irony comes hubris tho. The certainty that the mundane mind has in its pronouncements is actually sinful and so comes suffering - only G-d can make such pronouncements (so words of caution to myself - if I call what I write here Logos then I instantly erase any value that it has - just write and read).

What our mundane stereotype forgets is that tall is only tall next to short, and vice verse. Compare "tall" with NULL and then what? So Mohammed, Krishna or Buddha takes a mountain. The mountain is large in the world of men and takes many days to climb over. It is a large massive thing and there is no question. Our mind stands this mountain against the many small things in the world and it looks big. Yet stand it next to NULL and suddenly there is nothing small to compare it to. NULL looks huge instead and limitless and then what was large is also small. Then we do the same with small and what was small next to the mountain is suddenly large next to NULL. Actually large and small are themselves NULL but the habitual force of the mind to produce dialectics creates these ironies. Mohammed, Krishna and Buddha with the power of G-d subdue the mountain and it becomes nothing at all.

So how is badness created. The most habitual dialectic is between ourselves and other people. Badness can only occur in a relationships with other people (or lack of). So we think there are other people and as sure as large things need small things to tower over, we believe in ourself. The more other people the more self. The more self the more other people.

Standing next to NULL however the Self no longer has Other people standing over it. NULL seems like the Self and we seem like the Other. This is the experience of those who find personality in NULL. An assumption in Jewism religions but only an argument in Hinduism - most say Brahman has personality but some say not. Actually I assume when the habitual dialectical comparison of things calms down you get the Buddhist conception of NULL being without personality - its a trivial point really whether G-d has a personality... does the soul?

When we don't learn to stand with NULL however and tall becomes tall and short becomes short then sadly I become me and you become you. A relationship is then necessary between me and you. Relationships that respect the illusory nature of the division between people are good, those that abuse that reality are bad. The happiness of good relationships is really discovery of the true nature of undivided reality. The misery of failed relationships is the suffering of enforcing a fake structure on reality - how can something fail if it never even existed? Loss of faith is simply this - giving into the belief that I and You are separate and accepting the myth of isolation. No wo(man) is an island...(John Dunne). When Jesus heals it is by the faith of the ill not Jesus Himself. The suggestion then is that illness itself is a product of the myth of separation - getting out of my depth here but certainly if I and You are not separate then how can the experience of You or I dying happen? Faith in the absurdity that what looks like nonsense is actually the truth is the way of G-d and NULL.

Faced with the myth of separtion - that I am I and You are You - we end up doing some silly things. So the right-hand and the left-hand have a fight over who is going to be the writing hand. And the right hand ends up cutting off the left hand. It has won and can enjoy being the writing hand. Won the battle, lost the war. It goes to applaud a friend and find it can make no sound. So it is with I/You creatures. We fight to win but actually we lose. Prisoners Dilemma only works when you see the truth and have faith in it. Start to really believe in the isolation myth and the applause dies. Just watching War of the Worlds on TV - the whole Cruise escaping in the car and then people stealing it off him thing - the people escaping in the planet Earth and the Aliens stealing it off them - sides of the coin of no-faith. So we suffer because blind to the truth, we try to save ourselves only to find other people attack us more; ignoring NULL we put the mask of self on and attack ourselves in the darkness.

But this is only the mundane view of sin. It goes further. Standing next to NULL how can "I" even be hurt? So those who go to their deaths in the Name of the Logos really do gain eternal life because no longer can "they" die.

The benefits of NULL

It has become clear to me what a friend NULL is. On first approach it seems negative and depressing - the idea of a void with nothing in it is like space - lonely, barren, cold and lifeless; not a welcoming place. But this is not the void because it is not NULL. Such a conception is simply negating what we call the world of things. We think: what if I remove everything I can think of - then I have the Void... No!

I got angry with my sister yesterday so I position myself against the void. Something had been important to me but against NULL it is pointless. We are all going to die and remember nothing and take nothing with us so what is the point. So I found no more reason to be angry. We are only angry I saw when we hold onto something too tightly and someone tries to take it away.

But then we can grasp at that level of negation and think that all of life is pointless so why are we alive, why do we bother to do anything? We can get very depressed. So we stand next to NULL again and realise that there is no point in being depressed, or lamenting the pointlessness of everything either! Such a move is really just holding on to tightly to something else. The point about NULL is that whatever we think we can just stand next to NULL and it will give us an alternative point of view.

So being the alternative to all things we never need get stuck with anything. Our mind can escape the clawing tentacles of ideas, identities and beliefs.

Now some might say that this is irresponsible that as adults we need to get an identity, we need to become someone, to be a part of society: it is normal to have favourite things and familiar habits so that people can say that we are like so and so. Well yes and no. Yes because against NULL it doesn't matter if we do and no because against NULL it doesn't matter if we don't.

My current understanding of NULL and Void - that is Logos, Dharma, Dao, G-d etc - is that being outside all things we can always turn our back on anything and stand next to NULL. It is thus like the centre from which all things radiate. This now sounds like the more classical descriptions of it.

SO I could continue with an endless series of refutations and counter-refutations and analysis and descriptions but each of these stands next to NULL and makes the exercise rather pointless.

Relativity/Absolutism & Mind/Matter

Consider the stock market. To say "stock values rising is a good thing" is to be Absolutist. Actually it depends what your position Relative to a stock is. I just sold and the stock is still rising - this is a bad thing. If I had shorted the stock it would have been even worse so I'm somewhere in the middle. Even if I had not sold I only had 25% of my potential cash invested so I was still missing out.

There is a fact however that stock values are rising. This is the realm of matter.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing in reality depends upon our position relative to this fact and this occurs in the mind.

Thus the matter/mind contrast is actually the absolute/relative contrast.

This solves the old joke. An Irishman runs home behind a bus to save £1 then he realises that he could have saved £10 by running home behind a taxi.

This seems true but it is also nonsense.

In reality Absolutely he has no extra money after his activity give this a value of £100. But relative to a position in his mind he is different. Relative to the bus journey that £100 is £1 better off, and relative to the taxi that same £100 is £10 better off.

In the stock market the value of my stock (in GBP) is currently remaining unchanged because I have sold. But if the GBP falls against the dollar I am losing money, if stocks fall I am gaining GBP... but only relatively.

Looking more deeply hopwever whatever we posit as a fact only stands relative to some other situation which we have identified as false... this is why we call it a fact! The sun rises every morning is a fact (a priori since the sunrise is the morning) but we only consider it a fact because mornings don't come without sunrises... it is fact then because it is relative!

Life?

Life?

Truly is a draft! Hacked together the sound with TS404, drum machine, recorder and keyboard playing midi through - real mess not sure how to sort it out without rerecording. Anyway an impression of the idea...

Insight into "My Muse"

Occurred to me the other day a key feature of the crisis that occurred with "my muse"...

Why did I have to get her? To most people to win a conquest is success in itself. But to me to have had to embark on a conquest in the first place counts as a loss from which you can only ever draw even.

As some old saying goes, let your enemy do the marching. When we have to walk to the battle field hasn't one battle already been lost? Better to have no battle to fight and not waste the morning marching!

So with "my muse" it was only ever going to be an act of destiny and pure grace if neither of us had to do any marching. If we were brought together by providence then together we were, why was marching required.

Yet it seems that marching was required and it was my ego I now suspect that made me refuse to take that journey. If this hasdbeen given, then why did I need to complete the journey? To have had to fight for her means that she wasn't really mine and she became conditional. Once she was open to any comers then was she worth fighting for anymore? If a girl will take whoever fights the hardest - she becomes a trophy and he will be the one most desperate. There is no dignity or value in this. How under these conditions can we believe in destiny.

So romance and destiny seem to stem from Ego. To believe that in some way fate smiles on ME, or that in some way "I" am chosen or special is seductive to the Ego because it enables us to fantasise in our own existence and divine power. Yet in reality we are owed nothing, and we will get only that which we fight for - or at least submit to: to win the lottery we must be humble enough to join the lottery in the first place by buying a ticket.

So there it is the source of the catastrophy which was "my muse" - in a moment of clarity waiting for a train the truth at last. I needed to be humble and accept my place amongst the suitors before I could even begin to consider myself an inheritor of destiny.

In that lies the great irony of life - that to live we must first die!

Two story ideas spawned by Harry Potter

Anywish

Suppose there was a single way to attain any wish. What is most interesting about this is the realisation that the concept of "production" is nullified. Suddenly a crack appears in reality which completely nullifies the foundations of capitalism - that something may be obtained at no cost. Against this concepts of wealth, class system, success, progress and technological history are all nullified. Very interesting short story (or part of the Anura series maybe?)

Reverse Entropy

So any wizard worth their trade even Mary Poppins has the ability to increase the entropy of a room by magic - i.e. clean it up. But apply this magic to a burned love note and suddenly what was irreversably destroyed is recreated. In other words the Past can be resurrected and all information recovered. Such a magic does more than clean up rooms it can locally and asyncronously nullify the concept of Past! I mean by that we can recreate a burned love note (setting it back in time) while letting all other things remain present. What does this mean for our concept of Time!

Difference between production/consumption

Action towards a desire = production

Action from a desire = consumption

It is the vector relationship of action and desire which determines whether the flow of energy is perceived as production or consumption.

We may build a house for fun and it becomes consumption of materials. We build a house for people to live in and it becomes production. Yet both activities consume the same raw materials and produce the exactly the same product!

=== update 11th Feb 2010

Also if the product is "worth" more than the raw materials then it is production, and vice-versa is consumption. The "worth" of something is the supply/demand: which is the dynamics of production divided by the average desire for something across a population, so it's a community understanding of the interaction of technology and desire rather than just an individual feature alone.

Never-the-less the issue in the first place is the same that exactly that the same "material" activity can count as production or consumption given only a change in the technology/desires of the community.

Using the language of the current trend in science: production/consumption are in the mind and have no actual reality. A change in brain state could thus turn consumption in production and vice-versa. Another nail in the coffin of the concept of "employment", but also "leisure" and even market exchange!

Why do things happen to me?

Its kind of the same as the analysis of entropy and boundaries...

Say 10% of cars will experience a crash at some stage in their existence. This statistic never changes. It is also an irrelevant statistic. The point is not whether "a" car has a crash but whether "my" car has a crash!

When we buy a car we end up in a lottery, not because we have a car but because we now feel that a car is part of us... it has become mine. If the car crashes so does a part of us.

The intelligent person thus won't own a car. At least it isn't them.

The wise person will be able to "own" a car but not let it become part of them. In a sense then the ownership is simply practical and on paper - in reality they see the car like all other cars.

Isn't this all that "non-attachment" is? Isn't this all that the Arahant needs to become wise to.

Substitute body, perceptions, consciousness and soul for car and you have the full achievement of enlightenment.

Thus Karma is not the happening of things - it is the happening of things "to me". It is that we attach to certain things that makes it "happen to me" - not the happenings themselves.

Things can only happen to you if you first make things "yours" - whether you do this is 100% your choice.

Immanent contradiction

Following links from Google on Orsted found this. Congratulations to Galileo on using the method of argument par excellence - that of immanent contradiction - also allegedly used by Socrates and documented by Plato - show that holding a particular opinion actually leads to its opposite: something which is always true isn't it?

Salviati. If then we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly retarded by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me in this opinion?

Simplicio. You are unquestionably right.

Salviati. But if this is true, and if a large stone moves with a speed of, say, eight while a smaller moves with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed less than eight; but the two stones when tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter; an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than ' the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

Being Good

I don't claim to be writing a consistent, coherent, organised argument here - this blog is as it says a scrap book to capture "states of thought" during the process above cos my head ain't big enough to keep track of all the bits at once (yet). Its the stage before the polished product normally found in text.

Anyway Goodness ain't a new subject and I'm sure I repeat myself here...

I've resisted "goodness" as the key tolife. There is a book called "Being Good" written by the master of my temple. .. I hated that title and haven't read the book! Why?

Goodness is in my mind associated with fakeness, dogmatism, dualism, criticism and hypocracy.

Being Good seems to me to be avoiding the truth and aiming for something we "want" to be, or feel we "ought" to be, rather than firstly seeing things as they are.

Yet this view is poisoned and itself fake.

Good is a huge word and covers many things. Being Good is also

Being Excellent (after Bill and Ted)

Being Skillful

Being True

Being Noble (after Arya)

Being Graceful

Being Happy

Being Peaceful

Unfortunately Goodness has become an imperative rather than a Way of Being, and Goodness has become "imposed" as the rules (law) of society is imposed. It has become dogmatic, fixed, and separated from the people that it instructs. It has become a Platonic Leviathon against which we are all sinners and all imperfect miscreants who do not deserve the Life that we have been given.

Ironically then Goodness makes us Bad! How many people shun the law or adopt heretical views simply to escape the gravitational force of this monster of Goodness! It drives an Existential mob to rise up against the Law so that they can gain some semblance of true Life. Where does this hyperbolic individualism in the West come from? It is Lutherism and the rejection of the Catholic church born again and again as we seek both Truth but also Life. Kierkegaard a favourite of mine struggled with this (at least officially - he was clearly working with personal issues in the subtext). How can we align ourselves with the Universal Truth in which we are all the same - timeless and spaceless and characterless - yet also live our own particular life (and death)? How in other words can we have death as well as Truth? Or: What is the Truth of Death? How am I to face this inevitability? Ironic to since Death is what we would avoid, and what the Law tells us is the cost of sin! Yet we would taste it all the same - a chance to be ourselves alone for 1 moment and face Death in his true terror. Somewhere between Existentialism and the Catholic church lies Truth!

Life being what Life is you apply a force and it evolves. Life will outstrip all churches and all governances - but what is sad is that it is the rejected "peripheral speciation" which will make the chief cornerstone (Matt 21: 42-43).

NOTE: yes this is not how it is "officially" interpreted but show me the book which tells us the official interpretation and I will reinterpret that! Logos v Mythos - SRH again - how things are interpreted is the received wisdom - the Tradition as I called it recently - the Holy Spirit in chrisitian terminology - so how can the book itself actually "be" the word of God? It is only The Tradition - the Spirit - which insists so! I know this is huge issue in Islam (sort it out guys).

Why do we waste our time going round and round in circles millenia after millenia. Get to the Truth - the empty axle hole at the centre of the wheel - and lets get off this ride!

So "Being Good" is essential - it is the Truth - but I at least have had to rid myself of many centuries of built in rejection of this Truth because it has developed a rather monolithic quality suggesting oppression and death rather than freedom and life!

Exchange value

It seems that in the under-class parts of Reading one game is prevalent - exchanging things. It seems that every kid and adult is obsessed with swapping things so that they can get a "good deal" and raise their "wealth". Just the other day a kid calls over at me "want to swap bikes?" then realises my bike is not as good as his and say "na your bike's shit". What is the point i got to thinking is all this exchanging of things?

Most famously exchange is done via a middle man "money". This is the ball in this game and obsession. It really made me realise the limited nature of "exchange value".

If I have an apple and you have an pear and we exchange them then has anything changed?

We "own" different things. But "ownership" is not the issue under scrutiny here.

The point at issue is how we "value" these things. I may like pears and you may like apples. The exchange thus enables us to both get what we want; it enables things to find their way to places where they are valued.

It is not value itself. Thus the orchard farmer who has more apples than he can eat finds apples of very low value himself but move them to market and suddenly they have value.

Value is thus dependent upon location and environment. Money then measures the potential difference between places where value is low and where it is high. It is a relative measure and the "value" it measures is transient and conditional itself.

A sum of money however is a relatively solid thing. It equates to the "power" to move things. A large sum of money can shift things which are already in a place of high demand.

Money and exchange is a funny thing then more aligned to velocity and movement than to mass and substance.

The conflict then is between the more natural view of an apple measured as a "stuff" we can eat and an apple measured through its movement - its being a ball in the exchange game.

I'm reminded here of the old saying that an accountant is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Boundaries

Realise that a central theme of this blog is actually boundaries and specifically the question of whether a boundary can be defined with terms derived from what is bounded. Put another way is the garden fence part of the garden or the outside world.

This is the centre of the SRH issue also. When we refer to something is that reference inside or outside the thing? Can a reference be internal to the thing referenced?

So it raises question of what "internal" and "external" mean and how they might be defined.

I'm reminded of an old conundrum. We can agree that we can put things on the table. If there is a glass on the table we can agree that the glass is not the table and vice versa. The question is where the boundary then between the glass and the table occurs. What we will agree is something like there is a row of atoms that are glass and an adjacent row of atoms that are table. The point is that a boundary is actually a pair of boundaries with "nothing" in between. A boundary is not a single entity - or that entity is actually NULL. Yet by implication of that NULL boundary we then define to substatial adjacent boundaries one on either side.

Conclusion at least Boundaries are very complex entities!

The underclass and violence

Was discussing with my sister my observations of the "underclass" in Reading and why violence figures so highly (or so the middle class think).

The thing to remember is that "they are humans". Sounds awful but I at least so quickly forget that the inarticulate, foul mouthed, swaggering throw back is underneath all that slack jawed, menacing, in-yer-faceness just a sensative human being. Realising this even in the midst of a potential fight is key!

All humans/animals are "sensitive". Humans especially get cut inside very easily. The middle-classes have it slightly more easy. They can express themselves through a diverse range of systems from language, to legality. Faced with a problem they can vent their frustrations through mirid games like the police, solicitors, politicians and letters to newspapers all involving a rich language. They experience enormous empowerment as these systems emrace their view points and their "problems". One might even embrace problems because of the power that it affords!

The underclass on the other hand look out at the world from a very different perspective. The police for example are more likely to look at them as the perpetrator than to be their friend! How infinitely frustrating and insulting when you are the one who is hurting! Asian lads I know rarely experience a week without being stopped by the police. Me - white middleclass - has never once been stopped! When the very structures of "your" society exclude you then you experience an enormous loss of power and control and lowering of self-esteem.

So what do you do? Firstly strengthening bonds with other people in your position occurs and a rejection of the "establishment". The underclass is spontaneously born as a group of people who positively embrace poverty and social exclusion! (Very Nietzsche). Short term solutions to pain drive them into the net of pain! Football is the saviour of the lower classes because it enables bonding and membership that is free from the social structures that problematise their life. This kind of "local", near-horizon thinking is the problem. Society ghetoises not only the under-class physically but mentally. Now the real problems begin.

Faced with a problem and frustration there are few channels to mediate. Desperate for money - there is only one short sighted solution steal. Short of respect and power - there is only one short sighted solution: violence. The under-class are led automatically into "anti-social" behaviour in order ironically to achieve what the upper-classes gain through society!

With a knife drawn the under-class individual has the apparent control of the porche driving professional who is otherwise untouchable. Such power for someone who has no other mode of expression is a persuasive approach.

The professional while weak in the near-horizon knows they have the "system" to mediate this situation: private medical care in the event of injury, sympathetic police, best solicitors, politicians etc.

Both individuals however are sensitive and seeking exactly the same thing - they are just brought to conflict because of the very different worlds they find themselves in.

The solution? The professional who is mentally articulate has to realise that it is their responsibility to mediate this situation. Fighting either physically or via the system is naive and trivial. Getting the police to "hunt" down your attacker is no better than being "hunted" down and attacked in the first place - it is just as brutal and ignorant.

The problem is "sensitivity". The most violent person is the person who seeks comforting the most - this is why they are fight so hard for respect. Returning Love in the face of abject violence is the only solution.

How is that possible with fear, anger and hatred poised to anihilate ones own system? If these evils win then we have taken exactly the same route in life as the under-class individual. We may mediate via politics and "the system" but we are still seeking self-protection and responding to our own "sensitivity".

Jesus taught us the true response very vividly. We go to our death (if need be) with bravery and peaceful acceptance. If we are going to die in a street mugging then so be it. What we must NOT do at all costs is die in fear and hatred. The key thing as we die is to realise that our assailant is only trying to get respect from us - but in their inarticulacy and desperation they have only been able to demand it through fear and alterity. So profoundly ironic that the person they wanted to call friend they have been brought to hate and kill.

If we face death like this however amazing things happen. What human being can face a display of love like this without recognition of themselves? The very recognition that they are so desperate to find? It is through facing the loss of ourselves in death like this that we can show even the most "messed up" to find themselves. But to do this we must find ourselves. So the lesson for the middle-classes is the fear of the under-class is that they are really under-class themselves and that the noble aryan see all people as friends.

The atheists fallacy

It's a question of whose NULL is better.

The belief I will question is that which states that at death we disintegrate and become nothing, and there is nothing else to say.

There are two problems with this view.

1) It defines death as a limit between things, but it doesn't have anything to say of these things. The athesist holding such a view point still knows nothing about life or death. They hold instead to the limit between life and "nothing" (whatever that is). Holding such a view adds nothing to our knowledge of the world. This view point is really then just a repackaging of the far more honest agnostic viewpoint which is "I don't have evidence to know". The weakness of the view is that holders believe they actually know somthing!

2) The other problem is to do with materialism. What happens when an object "dies". Say some ice melts. So where is the ice? Worse if the ice was in the shape of a swan where is the swan?

The materialist can grasp the answer to the first. The ice is only apparent. In reality there is just energy and this doesn't change. "Apparent systems" however are characterised by entropy. A question I once grasped for in chemistry (and not only failed to get an answer to but failed even to communicate the question) was this... why are changes in phase discrete? The answer is simply that solid and liquid represent systems characterised by physical rotation of molecules and liquid and gas by the overcoming of electrostatic charges. There are two digital questions here.

	Can the molecules rotate?
		YES	NO
Do the average molecule momentums	YES	GAS	-
escape the electrostatic charge field?	NO	LIQUID	SOLID

And you don't get a hybrid slurry of ice/liquid because the ice system actually spawns a spontaneous liquid system that has to physically move away from the ice system. This way ice and water remain discrete. (OK there is liquid crystal but its only another discrete phase). And here I already have problems with the materialistic view point (exactly the same problems that I have with the evolutionists) that the main assumption of entropy is the system/environment distinction and yet in reality its only a fleeting temporary boundary not dissimilar to a national boundary or even the marking on a football pitch. Leave it for a while and it is simply forgotten! Doesn't sound very material to me! If they say that universal entropy is increasing this is ONLY true WHILE the boundaries have been drawn out. Ice and water do not absolutely exist - they are simply boundaries that are assumed during observation and analysis. They are conditional in every sense. They cease to exist when the game ends. It is true that England won the 1966 World Cup at Wembley. I was at Wembley last month to see ACDC. There were no markings cos the game had changed that day. There was not even the same stadium - it has been rebuilt. But when we think of 1966 we reset the conditions and reimagine the "rules" that enabled England to beat Germany in extra time. It just takes us to "forget" the rules, or a sudden bump on the head, and we suddenly can't understand what balls going into nets means. To say we "won" is even more tenuous then!

Ludwig Boltzmann didn't commit suicide because somehow increasing entropy leads logically to "nothing" he committed suicide simply because of the "idea" of entropy. It was just the implication for him of accepting rules and imagining that entities really do exist! Isn't this the same as poverty and class systems - that the "rich" are not really rich but simply a state distinguished from the environment. Watching human interactions with glasses that polarise these two states means that the decreasing of the entropy of the apparent "rich" classes indeed looks like increasing the entropy of the "poor" - but only when imagining these distinct groups. In reality they are not different - there is no entropy outside such analysis!

And this brings me neatly onto the swan! The swan disappears also along with the ice. But actually just like the ice is never really existed either. It is just a swan given a series of rules about language and the world. The rules that decide that a particular animal is a "swan" can be used on the ice. But the ice isn't any more a swan in Reality than a "real" swan: only in a mind which plays the game of identifying "types" of animal and bird. As evolution will tell us there is no Platonic archetype of Swan (unless you believe in Creationism) - i.e. a model upon which all Swans are made reference to ensuring that they are all truely the same - and that "swans" vary endlessly according to gene population flows as do all birds and animals. It is Life if anything that is the constant as is - by implication - Death.

So we've handled the arrival of two types of Nothing - the ending of a "make believe" form (the Swan) and the ending of a "real" form (the Ice) and see that actually they are bed fellows. Yet neither corresponds to Death as it is for a Human! So the materialist so far hasn't understood anything about Death. With the ice and the swan we can say they have ended because we have some idea what they were - altho it seems a superficial idea. But to say a "human" has ended puts us into even murkier water. Is a human simply another form like "ice" or a "swan"? "Alva Gosson" is even murkier. I am neither ice, nor a swan but a particular swan called "Alva". If "Ice" ceasing to be, and a "swan" ceasing to be are both rather trivial then how much more trivial is a "particular" swan ending?

But the Existentialist complains loudly and says there is nothing is names and essences, only in existences. And I agree. Actually that which is crudely disgarded with the name "Alva Gosson" is what is really alive - the rest is just empty names, fleeting ideas and rules that can be forgotten in a moment. But without these essences where is the atheist and the materialist? They have had their entire ontology (belief in what exists) swept away! How do you talk about existences without reference to "types of things", or "what things are" or even "things" at all!!! In that lies the rub! As Humans we are not ultimately concerned with what?, or where? or when? or even which? or how? or even who? When we are married in our deepest moment of love we are no longer concerned with these trivia we simply are there and so is our partner - as Susan Vega in Language from Solitiude Standing so eloquently puts it:

If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be

These words are too solid
They don't move fast enough
To catch the blur in the brain
That flies by and is gone
Gone
Gone

Gone

Yet as I found out the hard way even love does not put us outside the grasp of Death - and by implication it does not therefore encompass the whole of Life - at least not this type of love. True Love that of which is spoken by the prophets et al., this as far as I can see, is the boundary that transcends Death. A Life that is more profound that the mortal life/death that even we mortals can't grasp properly.

The key to this Love seems to be NULL or Nothing. Yet I hope it can be seen this is a creature more vivid and extraordinary than the dull lifeless concept of the atheist and materialist. This NULL avoids all context and definition for it is beyond ALL "things" but it is at once With "all things" because it has no point of reference with mundane mortal things at all. I wouldn't even try to position NULL in the world or universe that we commonly speak of - who cares about position anyway - it is only relative! By definition you can't map NULL or grasp it with the mind - it is rather than NULL maps and grasps you! ! Speaking like this I may as well use the name of G-d but there is the ancient problem that even naming G-d misrepresents His status of Absolute NULL. Think how much baggage comes with the name of God and you realise that this name is just a rubbish dump for Histories ignorance and prejudice. They say in the old books that we should respect this NULL - that seems to be as far as most can go. Buddhism goes further but not without multiplying the misunderstandings. If Absolute NULL is not to be spoken of then how much more Enlightenment - the acceptance of Absolute NULL! When we hear Dawkins or Dennett or their army of progedies speaking of God it looks no more sophisticated than a child shouting at his fears in the dark - there is nothing there to shout at guys but what is in your heads!

So when we speak of Death or Life we are seeking something like Absolute NULL - that against which all things remain unchanged - the Ground Zero of the Mind and All Existences - a Ground Zero that is both above and below us and beside us, far away and near because to have even a particular conception is to fall back into mundane thinking and take sides and accept rules.

So Atheists how dare you speak of Death or Life and even begin to use the word of Nothing as though you know what Nothing and Something is! (Word of warning to myself and this page of text also)