addendums…

I must make earnest moves toward preparing my speech for a wedding next month and also with the GCSE exams approaching I should put down these topics until June. Hopefully then I will be able to do some proper intensive learning and get up to scratch on mathematical logic etc altho it is still my hope to get through the SRH without being too embedded in the subject (it is only a tool), for people like Godel, Zermelo etc it was their whole life!

The SRH/Plus-One/Horatio Hypothesis

It occurred to me that at first sight the “complement of a formal system” lent little to a “proof” itself that systems exist outside themselves – it only serves to show that a system is built from the outside rather than the inside. The SRH was based upon the loose intuition that a full scale of a system could not be “known” within the system, and so the very existence of a system of knowledge meant that it could always expand its knowledge by adding itself. This I see forms a new hypothesis the plus one or Horatio hypothesis after Hamlet saying “There is more in Heaven and Earth than is accounted for in your philosophy Horatio”. I need a clear and un-distracted mind to approach this and I see that putting off the wedding preparations has actually been distracting me!

I think the best formulation of the SRH will be of the form that any system can always accommodate another “term” (quite probably “itself”) and so will always be short of “totality”. It is the notion of capturing Totality in a formal system that is being attacked here from the start. The God principle is that any formal system will always fall short of capturing the “entirety” so that some notion of a god must always be included to include what is “not known” by necessity. In other word a system can never capture “itself”. But what does capture actually mean? A lead for June not now!!!

My Muse

It occurred to me after watching Stardust last night that I do still believe in “love” even after having thought I had totally removed all relevance of it and even recently of sexuality. I realise that my mission to escape my love for “my muse” which has been running since the day I met her and when I had that single thought “yes”, from that moment it was a lost cause. Given this I have to simply accept that I love her and there is nothing I can do about it. Reality seems to be like a broken space in which she is simply obscured from view by some folds, that the division between the void and existence, or between life and death doesn’t seem so absolute anymore and that peer over the edge and you can see into the realms of non-existence just as easily as we see into the realms of existence. Anyway I have to just love with this now and move on.

OK that is the last update on this blog for a few weeks, in a probably vain attempt, to focus on some pressing issues that require actual action rather than words and theory.

=== just clearing up notes and buffers

> SRH - what is produced by the world becomes the exactly the only raw materials for the next cycle. It feeds on itself. But this violates the SRH so Time (& space) are necessary so that the start and the end of the cycle are distinct. Suggestion that SRH could be an axiom from which time and space are derived!

> Ouroboros

The Viper/serpent is the original symbol of the unchanging because it flows through all things! But cf with the Devil in Xianity who led Man to the Tree of Knowledge and brought us to eat via the woman! Knowledge in Jewish thinking is opposed to God, or at least leads Man to challenge God. Interesting that the serpent also feeds on its own tail to show the eternal recycling of the universe (the Universes efficiency and completeness). - indeed the "things" are made from the universe only so the "things" are illusions and the universe real, the knowledge is of "things" (emergent properties), the serpent = the universe that seems to flows through the things because the "things" are changing so the serpent seems to flow, but really it doesn't, and it only seems to feed itself, because the "things" are flowing.

> Opposites both violently oppose one another but also enable balance when their oppositions are matched. The scales can only be equal because of opposing forces! This is the essential nature of dialectic!!

> Sexy Son Hypothesis

There is a certain self-fulfilling nature of genetics, but I can’t remember quite what I meant by this note:

> SRH sexy son = if i do then other girls do if not no them either

> “My” Child’s genotype

I was also interested by the probability of someone else’s child being more genetically similar to me than my own. Taking gene frequencies of each gene in a population there is a probability that someone else’s children could be more genetically related to me than my own. Want to look at this quantitatively… would certainly throw the genetic argument for having children.

Complement of a formal system

In set theory because it is easier for me.

I remember reading that Turing argued that a symbol set (alphabet) must be finite for the symbols to have meaning. Does this also apply to the complement of an alphabet? I may have a universal set E composed from the 3 members who I will name 1,2,3. I chose these from an infinite number of possible symbols (one for each counting number). So any universal set is going to be finite but with no upper bound to its possible size (maybe the number of atoms in the universe). The TransUniversal Set (T) will be the Union of all the possible universal sets. T will then also be finite! We can define the complement of a universal set E thus:

E U E` = T

Where E is formed by positive choice, E` is equally defined by negative choice. The same actions define E and E`.

Now I am deviating from standard set theory because I am dealing with meaningful symbols here. {x in N} is not allowed here. Need to work out details why.

So we can then construct our hierarchical system as the union of an infinite recursion with the Power set function. S = …P(P(E)) U P(E) U E. This set is now infinite.

Now if we use some system of Godel numbering then each set maps to a Natural number, and conversely each Natural number maps to a set.

e.g. I’ll use 2 bit bytes for simplicity. The = symbol means corresponds in the metasystem.
{ = 11
} = 00
, = 01

With an empty universal set we can then construct the natural numbers as cardinals of the sets as usual. Each set corresponds to the given code which can be interpreted as a binary number as given in decimal.
{}    = 1100 = 12
{ {} } = 11110000 = 240
{ {},{{}} } = 111100011111000000 = 247744
{ {},{{}},{{},{{}}} } = 11110001111100000111110001111100000000 = 259780452096

In reverse using the meta mapping, the number 15 = 1111 corresponds to the string {{ which isn’t a set in our system.

Worse the random number 267453 = 1000001010010111101 can’t even be mapped.

There are three levels then at which the system maps to Natural Numbers:
Level 1 – S1 – the set of numbers which correspond to valid set strings – this is S. {…,240,…}
Level 2 – S2 – the set of numbers which correspond to strings – which includes nonsense strings. {…,15,…,240,…}
Level 3 – S3 = N – which includes even numbers that cannot be mapped to strings at all. {N}

I imagine that S2 and S3 can be merged with a suitable “choice” of meta system. I’ll assume this and call it S*.

So the complement of S can be defined as:

S U S` = S*

So a system has a complement at two levels. The complement of the elements (character set) and the complement of the set of possible sets of these elements. And now I’ve run out of steam this morning… but can’t these two sets be put into correspondence?

SRH - onward

Just watched this. Its kind of obvious what is missing. Godel as they say got himself in his own mess by trying to break out from formal system by first isolating himself in formal systems. They also point to the experience of revelation, they even quote Turing as saying that the notion of computers came in “a vision”, this is exactly what the behaviour of formal systems is not. It is as though peering into the mirror we have forgotten that we are only in the reflection because we are not! Formal systems only exist because we are not! Penrose goes to lengths to clarify that incompleteness does not apply to the mind but to the formal systems that may be “run” in the mind. My favourite enemy (after Dawkins) D.Dennett argues that the human brain runs a virtual computer – the Turing in all our minds that enables us to sequentially work our way through systems of rules, working out what will happen tomorrow if certain things are true. I’d say that Turing machines start up whenever we start thinking within a set of fixed rules, rather than have some permanent software running in our brains that handles Turing machines. It matters not, the point is that we are outside the systems that we imagine. We create these things as Turing did to investigate formality but not because we are formal. Rules as I’ve analysed endlessly are the foundations of meaning but we don’t have to obey them. We don’t have to be meaningful (within a fixed singular system of meaning). Just watched “Golden Child” as I lay here ill these past two days. The Tibetan monk says you need to know when to break the rules – when to step outside the system. We aren’t going to get anywhere if we refuse to work within any system (which would be my failing – I refuse employment, religion, science, marriage, sexuality, politics etc) – we need to know when to work within and when to work outside the systems – or more accurately we able to chose the appropriate system – that is wisdom that is mind.

Humans can chose which system of rules to use, even create their own systems of rules (maths, culture, politics). Computers I don’t know. There are sophisticated adaptive genetic algorithms etc that I know nothing about but I guess they will always be limited by the physical hardware on which they run which itself is limited by incompleteness. I guess we humans chose computer architectures and softwares for our own purposes so I suppose we are choosing the systems of rules just as we do in our own heads.

Someone in the random comments after this video said something about evolution. Dennett loves the idea that evolution is a mechanism that could have given rise to humans. Referring to the random comment, evolution is not computable, like the three body problem we can only approximate (I am wrong here – need to understand more). I don’t remember Dennett covering this in Consciousness Explained but computability is very limited and the human mind must be beyond computability for us to entertain half the idea we have.

Just fold one thing else into the mix of this blog. In GEB I read the bit about complementary systems. The example was the prime numbers. They are defined negatively (not the numbers with factors other than 1 and themselves). So we have two sets of numbers those that have factors other than 1 and themselves and the prime numbers that don’t. Defining the former set is easy we just check for factors. Defining the prime is impossible it is just made up of the leftovers when the non-prime are removed from the natural numbers. Interesting that along with all my other hopeless tasks (given that my maths is so bad) I should have some scribbled notes this year on this problem also (why I bother given that no-one has got there and no-one includes the best minds ever in maths bewilders me, the problems just seem to want solving). So Hofstadter points out that the complement of a set doesn’t mean that the logic that created it is complemented also. This was a bit of a revelation because my whole approach to all of this is to do with the relationship between sets and complements of sets.

And, that is my answer to the Dangerous Knowledge doco. The mind doesn’t exist in any of the sets or imaginations that might occur within it. And once these imaginations have been created we may seek to get outside them like Godel. But as Buddha would remind us in the Shurangama sutra, given an imagination the mind exists neither inside nor outside, nor inside and outside, nor not inside and outside. The point is that the mind underpins the very possibility of that imagination at all. We accept a system of rules, how are we to understand our freedom to chose these rules if we are bound within the system. But at the same time how are we to understand our freedom without the rules: freedom requires first of all imprisonment. Godel sort the greatest freedom by first of all creating his prison so solidly that he couldn’t escape (a battle of will more than anything – he could have just given up!). We may become the best chess player in the world, or we can just toss the pieces on the floor. The skill (after Golden Child) is knowing when to play – I do not possess this skill, I don’t play anything yet, not even Buddhism! So the SRH is seeking naively but sternly a formal proof that self cannot be defined in terms of self that forces all systems to be defined in terms of things that are non-self. This forces all systems to acknowledge their complement as integral to their construction. This doesn’t break out of systems but forces them to see within themselves the isomorphism with their “other” or complement. Thus totality is created just as yin-yang is the symbol for totality between opposites that bear each other within. It seems so simple yet I have no idea where to turn. Hofstadter may have put the cat amongst the pigeons however because if the complement is not derivable formally in a way isomorphic with the system it represents something “new” to the system.

Also and this goes right back to the start of this enquiry in 2007 how do we define the complement of a system? It depends upon our universal set (the set from which we chose our system) and this itself is chosen…until when can’t we chose…and what is the complement set of a formal system for example? I know Turing had stuff to say about the limits of the symbol set for Turning machines… but the what of the rules, what is the complementary set of a system of rules?

It is worth reminding myself also that my 1984 experience of the inverting light circle effectively was the process of seeing and isomorphism between something visible (the circle of light) and its complement the rest of the infinite mind something which is far from isomorphic with the circle of light. Just writing this fills me with fear, yet I know it was the most beautiful experience. What am I afraid of?

===

So from the stand point of a formal system there is an indefinable world beyond it that coincides with the notion of the “choice” of that system. The very restrictions that were put in place to create formality depend upon an informal world. This is analogous to the religious idea of the gods creating/choosing the world. The same problem in physics of why are things chosen the way they are from the infinite possibilities, indeed transinfinite possibilities – because they are infinite within any tuple of numbers, but there are infinite tupes to chose from in describing a universe. So the popular version of Godel is not that there are worlds beyond the mind, but worlds beyond any consistent fixed system created to model the world. Now what can we say about the informal world from inside the formal world? Well we have only the complement to go by… what is the complement of a formal system?

===

btw on Cantor. Why did all of us miss this in elementary maths?… the tangent function was the first function we saw which maps a subset of the Reals onto the whole of the Reals. I remember playing around with it a lot but never thought of this: Every number in the interval (-pi/2,pi/2) is mapped onto every number between (-inf,inf) by the schoolboy function. And conversely every number in the Reals can be mapped onto the interval (-pi/2,pi/2) by its inverse the arctan function. How odd!! We know that there are an infinite number of (-pi/2,pi/2) intervals in the Reals so we automatically have an infinite number of intervals which each embody the infinite real numbers!! But wait doesn’t this structure get mapped into the (-pi/2,pi/2) interval also… so we have a fractal ad infinitum. Choose a different function and the fractal is different which suggests that it is arbitrary how the infinites are related.

Take the Exponent function at A-level. This maps all the Reals to the positive Reals. Again this mapping of the Reals into half themselves can be repeated so it’s another fractal, but a different one from above!.

==update 1/9/10

Need to be careful with above. The uncountably infinite reals map into a real sub-interval. There are only countable sub-intervals however. These countable sub-intervals form the fractal within the reals with at the limit the whole of the uncountable reals mapping into a countably infinitesimal interval (not an uncountably infinitesimal interval). This isn't news however tho would have woken up my O-level brain if I'd noticed it then however!

GEB & SRH the deal!!

I am being put off from reading this because it is so huge (and life isn’t that long… and so is this blog!!! will weed through it an condense it down to less than 1000 words when I get to the destination!!!), but I get the feeling that Hofstadter has trail blazed through the very land which I have been looking towards all these years. That said I don’t think there is a proof of the SRH or given the work last week that he even has it right! Dipping in last night for the first time I came to this:

However, it is important to see the distinction between perceiving one-self, and transcending oneself. You can gain visions of yourself in all sorts of ways – in a mirror, in photos or movies, on tape, through the descriptions of others, by getting psychoanalysed, and so on. But you cannot quite break out of your own skin and be on the outside of yourself. .. A computer program can modify itself but it can’t violate its own instructions-it can at best change some parts of itself by obeying its own instructions. p478 GEB.2000 edn

Now this is exactly the SRH, but Hofstadter has made a very fundamental mistake. If we logically cannot get outside our ”self” then what exactly are we talking about? In other words what we think is “ourself” is exactly not ourself because such a view would break the SRH. What we think is “Ourself” is always just a trivial construct within our “true self”. Ergo we can’t know self, for the very idea of self defeats itself in a viscous circle. That is the SRH.

Hofstadter seems (at this point in the book) to keep the idea of self as a fixed “reality” that somehow he magically knows about even while admitting that we can’t step outside ourselves. He seems satisfied somehow that this isn’t self-defeating.

This is Descartes in a way: “I think therefore I am” doesn’t construct an individual self it only implies a larger self – that self is exactly what allows B.Russell and A.J.Ayer to say, “I think therefore there are thoughts” – if there is are thoughts then there is also a world and then there is also be a self for they are the same!

I can’t remember what is in notes and what is blogged at this stage but last week it became clear that the only necessary object of study is the circle.

[while just looking for some reference for what I was about to write I looked at http://www.themathcircle.org/coursenotes/settheory1.pdf and saw a very simple demonstration of NULL as discussed before in this blog: {All x such that x is not in a set} which they decided was identical with {}. It is not quite the discussion of True/False/NULL but I blog it for future reference]

Circles are interesting for two reasons:

(1) They are isomorphic with the notion of set theory via Venn diagrams. So to define the set of points “within” a circle (using set theory) is at the same time isomorphic with defining what a set is (via Venn Diagrams)!! E.G. I may draw two circles and put names in each meaning that there are two sets. But I may also write a set constructor which defines two circles. It works both ways. Can I use this? Also what about the boundaries – is the line around the set in Venn Diagrams part of A or ¬A. Also the issue of open/closed sets. If A is an open set then ¬A is closed and vice versa. The points of the “edge” condition belongs to either A or ¬A but the condition cannot be “in” the set. I.E. the elements may conform to a rule, but the rule cannot be in the set itself. The points of the boundary cannot be the rule!!! This needs to be explored
  
as well as I know set constructor logic at the moment : it is the set of points within a circle (the unit disk), a subset of the Euclidean plane where x and y are members of the real numbers. It’s an open set without a boundary.

The boundary is given by

So the  union of the two sets is the closed set of the unit disc with a boundary. There are a number of points I’m not analysing now just splattering down on the scrapbook: but one is whether the set of the boundary can be used to construct the closed circle… basically impredicativity.

 

(2) They are also interesting because all this is becoming identical to that experience I had as a child with the angle-poise lamp. Last night I realised that everything here is heading to that one point.

The conclusion last week was that to construct the set of points within a circle we need to agree on a system of defining points. But as soon as we do that we define a space larger than we need. Within this canvas we then create a rule to define the subset which will be our circle. Thus a circle presupposes what is not the circle. To have a circle means that we must already have not a circle. This is the same as saying that every set has a complement (I wonder what the official proof of that is … explore). “A” seems to imply in some sense “A U ¬A”, or at least is presupposes … I have a bad cold and not much sleep at the moment and my brain isn’t up to all this today (I just had difficulty following the plot of The Departed – not good !!) … this is Hegelian Logic and inside here somewhere is this realisation that an entity implies (at some level) its opposite – not literally but at a deeper level. Is this isomorphism between something and it’s opposite expressible in some logic. That was the goal of the SRH.

===

Returning to GEB I have issues with the the concept of perceiving oneself too. How many photos can there be of “oneself”? There is no limit. How many selves can there be? By definition the latter question can be only one. Thus no picture (of which there are endless potential copies) actually “contains” in any way something that can be called self (of which there is only one). It is at best just a name for the self. “My Muse” had an imaginary friend called George. Just because George has a name doesn’t mean that George exists. In fact just because “My Muse” has a name doesn’t mean that she exists either. That relation which by definition must remain singular to qualify as “self” cannot be experienced; if it is perceived it is through intellect only not through sensory data. The search for a definition of self in symbols has been the failed quest for the SRH. Given a symbolic model of “self” the rest of the SRH should follow simply.

The best example of self found so far is Smullyan’s “norm” based on Quine. To recall the norm of a sentence is that sentence followed by itself in quotations. It is a purely mechanical function. Thus,

1.0 norm(A) = A”A”

1.1 The norm of.

1.2 The norm of “The norm of”

Identifies the norm of the sentence “The norm of” (1.1). The norm of 1.1 is 1.1 followed by its quotation which is 1.2. So 1.2 identifies itself.

I know there is still something interesting about the self-reference because of the way that a system can be committed to an inescapable contradiction or an inescapable truth – that inescapable relationship is interesting. However it is not “very” interesting anymore. I feel like Gilbert Ryle removing the mystery of knowing one’s own thoughts “privately”. The set of things that an axe can cut in half includes anything wood. It even includes its own handle in a general sense and the tree that formed the handle. The only reason that these two examples become a problem are not because of something intrinsically mysterious about “self” but simply because those system contain a contradiction. But, there is not anything intrinsically mysterious about contradiction and self is only one way to create contradictions. (This is more the way of my mind after last weeks analysis). One may create a system where an axe is shared by two lumber jacks who accidentally agree to use the axe on the same day. They can’t both use the axe at the same time: this is just a factual limitation of “being one thing”. There is no issue of self here just issues of existence as an individual thing. That is what seems magical about “self”.

So the SRH had been much more precisely demarked and errors in my original conception finally exposed. It is not actually about self very much at all! Rather to do with self being a conception that presupposes non-self. “Self” can never be everything, no construction can ever be everything, and also that every self implies a greater self which is composed from the old self and its antithesis exactly like Hegel. Hofstadter over looks the fact that for a system to know itself it must actually be not itself!!

SRH - Real progress - Boundaries

I went to the library with the intention of getting somewhere with this and realised that there are really 2 possible proofs of SRH:

(1) The Boundary proof
This proof aims to show that a system cannot contain its own boundary.


(2) The dialectic proof.
This proof aims to show that a system cannot define itself without reference to things which are not within the system.

I realise today that they are the same thing. The SRH is not really about self-reference this has been a red-herring: there are lots of examples of self-reference. The problem is to do with self-definition.

Now if something cannot define itself then it must be defined in terms of things that are not part of the system. This has two implications

(1) A system is never complete. No system can construct "All Things", so there is no system called "Totality"

(2) A system is really "not itself" since it is defined with elements that are not itself. The Yin-Yang.

It is easy to see that a circle boundary is not contained "in" a circle. But there is work tio do

Identity is isomorphic with membership (SRH)

interesting point to highlight from last post: Identity is isomorphic with membership.

When we define something in maths we can do so simply by identifying it in a set to which it is a member. Thus we might say that there exists an x such that x is in the set of natural numbers and x > 4 and x < 6. This is true when x=5 so we are talking about x being 5.

But this is ironic also. Because to be a member of the natural numbers is to define some property (or predicate) of x which it shares with all other natural numbers – hardly making it unique and individual. So to find my identity in being “black skinned” is hardly making me an individual but really just making me a member of black skinned people in which I would lose my identity. We must have some other notion of identity which is separate from the predicate to ensure that we gain some identity when we become a member! I believe that this unconditional entity which we feel enables us to add a unique 1 to what is an homogenous membership is what Buddha considers an illusion.

In maths I can’t find a way to “add 1” to a predicatively defined set, since all members that fit the definition are automatically members and so there is no way that some entity can be added.

However “countability” is an interesting concept. If the set can be ordered – like numbers are usually ordered according to the property of their magnitude 3 being larger than 2 comes after 2 – then each number has a unique place in the set. Suddenly its uniqueness is assured within the membership.

So we humans feel that there is some analogy to countability within the human race or the black race or the Arsenal football stand that preserves our identity while allowing us to be a member.

Interesting that some memberships have their own countability like height or bank balance. People can order themselves in a room according to height and people order themselves according to how rich they are. But again there is some individual countability that places each person as an individual within the set of human beings, or friends or whatever. This property for now must be the property of being a self.

Now I sat today to get a step closer to the SRH but have been forestalled. Yet here have run into it again. The hypothesis is that self-reference is impossible. I have been forced to modify this as self-reference is quite easy. Impredicativity was a step further but draws in the idea of constructivism. Am I saying that you cannot construct a self-reference because you don’t know what to predicate before it is built.

Fractals repeat a form which must be completely built in order to build any part of them so this is not a problem. The assumption here is that the fractal exists and we merely have algorithms which find the points in the set. The set is defined then by conditions which allow a solution to exist which repeats itself.

So it does seem that self-reference may exist and we are only producing expressions to represent this. While the SRH is saying that nothing can exist which depends upon itself.

Looks like I need to clarify my notion of “existence”!

Making

 

Occurred to me last night that this concept is incredibly complex. It relies upon that well examined feature here now called “emergent property”. When we make something we are relying upon the feature of the world that what we end up with is different from what we started with. Yet in material terms this is absurd since you can’t make matter or energy. We conclude rather paradoxically that when we make something we actually make nothing!

This is the source of the ancient observation that the “world” is made from nothing. This because the “world” is not to be counted as the matter or stuff (in its modern conception) in the universe but rather the emergent forms into which this is made.

Did God then make the stuff of the universe or the forms?

Man can make forms. One assumes that God makes matter.

From Buddhism however we know that there is no such thing as matter – at best it is a form (idea) made in the mind. After all how can you separate the matter of the universe from the form? What is pure matter (matter without form) is like asking what shape is water?

Whites are the Problem

There is a mural in Reading which grabbed my attention a few years ago. The quote is given as from Malcolm X:

Until the Black Race
Uses its own Talent,
Takes Pride in its own History,
Expressed its own Culture,
Affirms its own Statehood;
It can never fulfil itself.

Unfortunately this talk is exactly the same talk that ever led “Blacks” to see themselves as abused. Malcolm X is expressing exactly the same views as his enemy; indeed he has become his enemy as is always the fate with those who fight.

My point to Malcolm X would be “but I don’t see any Black Race, I don’t see any White Race, I don’t even see any Race.” I don’t see any necessary solidarity between any two people based upon anything; be that colour, custom, belief, hobbies, hair type, shoe size etc. If I told you that someone had a black skin colour would you say that they were more or less likely to steal from someone with a black skin type? According to Malcolm X somehow there is a magical solidarity which makes people with a black skin type stick together. Are we supposed to believe that there is a solidarity based on this skin colour? In reality there is no such connection. A black skinned person is just as likely to steal from a black skinned person as from a white skinned person, and a white skinned person is just as likely to steal from a black skinned person as from a white skinned person: and while there may be a statistical differences there is no law that says skin colour defines anything. Theft in Africa is not reduced because everyone is black and shares some solidarity, anymore than theft in England is reduced because everyone is white skinned.

Amazingly Malcolm X was using the same absurd basis for his “cult” of the black person as the whites used for their various absurd racist cults. It was not solving anything but simply rebranding the problem in a black version. It is to be understood why he did this of course – the consciousness of people being brought up in a society that marginalises them for some irrelevant reason is obviously going to get distorted by that discrimination. But then I’ve experienced discrimination from jobs and colleges because I have refused to do what they wanted – naturally my mind is distorted by this but I don’t embrace that quality and seek to reverse the discrimination. I just see the arbitrariness of it all. I mean Africans have got to realise that they were brought to America as slaves to build the new world. Right or wrong this is not a good place to be. But no reason to feel embittered, this wasn’t the first time or the last time this has happened. All human beings use slavery every day to get things done (in sweat shops in the East or with cleaners and house maids all round the world, or even with wives in most parts of the world). Blacks enslave blacks just as much as whites. It is not a colour thing, it is a human thing. Throw a rock in the air you will hit someone guilty. That the European American colonists came to see themselves as “white” and destroyed everyone who was not considered “one of them” seems to have been a feature of the colonisation as the invaders struggled for an “identity” and a proof to justify the crime they were committing (that was the crime of “property” which must have looked odd as people walked into the East and stole everything they could find). White Americans still struggle for an identity in the World as they run like teenagers from the parental home of Europe. Although today is St Patricks day and I see that Google has a St Patricks themed logo as though St Patrick has anything to do with America? But a lot of Americans are finding identity by tracing lineage to Ireland and Scotland (after William Wallace was sanitised by the film). Interesting to see if they do a St George Day on the 24rd April, or a St David’s day. African Americans are doing the same seeking lineages to Africa. So the world that Malcolm X tried to understand is a complex world but it certainly has nothing to do with skin colour.

I wonder where the world has really got to on this issue. The day it is solved is the day when everyone has simply forgotten this idiocy and can’t remember what they were ever supposed to be solving.

While here: that is another thing that I find annoying about people especially ethnic minorities is this assumed, undiscussed notion of “identity”. Apparently psychologically we need some identity. Yet a moments investigation of the trash that we identify with shows it up as nonsense. I may identify with some music, my parents, my country, my football team, my career, my house and address, my home town, my favourite colour, my skin colour, my religion, my eye colour, my hair colour, my sexual preferences, my race, my culture, my favourite food, some clothes etc etc etc etc etc etc ad nauseam. People from minorities talk about “identity” as though it was some solid definite thing which they carried over in slave ships or aeroplanes. Worse the “British” have been asking what their identity is too. Well my word to all of them is join a football team and get this identity thing out of our blood stream in the stands every Saturday afternoon. Any sense of identity is morphous and changes with the wind so don’t take it so seriously…and no we don’t need identity for psychological well being – Identity is isomorphic with “membership” and that I have discussed many times prior to this entry. Everyone has the same parents (apes in Africa), lives on the same planet, eats the same nitrohydrocarbons and worships the same God (be that God in the form of money, Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, Science, Atheism as nauseam) – how do I know the last bit so certainly?

Assuming that people do not believe in things which are factually at fault then there are no phenomenal reasons to disagree with any one. Given that all appearances are to be accepted, the only argument then is whether they have a deeper explanation. Whatever anyone cites as an explanation of a phenomenon I will suggest has an even deeper explanation still ad infinitum. That infinite infinite, a la Cantor, is essentially God. Anyone who claims to follow the True God, who thinks they know the identity of their God, is a self-deluded fool who has simply chartered and boarded a new slave ship.

p.s. sorry for the inflammatory title I couldn’t resist it.

On Peace and the Path

Reading last week I found passages that spelled out a very important point. To achieve the higher states of mind one must have a foundation of peace and security. I have been extremely stressed for a decade because of the issue of “my muse” and the hopeless struggle to make a sunken ship float. All the while I have known that my mind and body were not really suitable for spiritual cultivation: there has been extreme anger, fear, anxiety, grief, hatred, sadness, despair, indeed many very negative states of mind. My answer was to soldier on seeking that imagined place of indifference and freedom from such dualisms. It didn’t work and I got no where.

I can say now that actually I was in no place to really cultivate. My understanding was intact and I could explore and understand the path: good homework well done. But for actual attainment it was impossible. Only now that relative peace has returning to my system (far from perfect) but peaceful enough that I can string together some energy and concentration do I feel that I can begin that path again that was so easy as a pure child.

I am struggling because the first destination is back to the energy levels I had with “my muse” and naturally my attention is drawn back to blissful relationships. I am questioning whether this is a destination I have to visit in order to settle matters and enable me to put this behind me and silence the urges and passions. On the other hand a moments thought suggests that this would be highly foolish since that is exactly what got me in this messed up situation in the first place. Best to stay off the drugs! Easier said than done… on going investigation.

But, for now and here an important understanding which is that progress does really depend upon what perhaps seems an unenlightened requirement of peace and tranquillity to practice. I was under the misunderstanding that strength of mind would be arrived at through struggling against distractions and demons of the soul – when in actual fact peace is required before you do battle! If you cannot find the required peace in your soul to get the purity and lack of distraction required to progress then there is only the choice of shutting down the mind, turning it to wood, and waiting until the karma passes and we can return to peace. In this sense it is often a good idea to rest at a road side motel, but only long enough to get ones peace of mind back again.

Sexuality and Spirituality – OK this is the deal

 

The situation seems to be like this. Imagine that we are on a road and are starving hungry and tired. We know that the road leads to a paradise where we can eat and rest for ever in peace. As a child I remember having visited a part of this paradise, but the memory is vague and it was a long time ago. I wonder even whether this memory is just a dream, but I know that many speak of this paradise in all tongues and in all ways, although like hearing the many versions of an urban myth this itself can cause doubt. As we walk we come to a road side burger bar and motel. The issue for our road weary self is do we stop and rest here or do we continue over the mountains toward what is incomparably better.

An obvious answer is that we stop and rest. This is a good idea but it turns out that we have stopped and rested so many times that we haven’t made much progress. Each time we stop and rest we risk forgetting the goal all together.

This is what I have realised about my friends. They speak of sexuality and marriage as they do because they really don’t know of anything else. The burger bar and motel really is the best lot in Life. Maybe there is a squabble for the best rooms in the Motel, or to get the money to buy the biggest burger – but beyond this they have forgotten that there is anything else in Life.

Heaven we say in scorn. This is the dream of those who have lost in Life and turn their attention instead to hopes of what comes after life. God we say in scorn, what proof is there – we have science now which can provide the answers for everything. Tomorrow we say in scorn, who cares about tomorrow we have today. And, so we feast on burgers and sleep at the Motel and put off ideas that there could be anything better.

Well I know for sure that this doesn’t add up. I don’t know about God or Heaven (save that one experience a quarter century ago) but I have always known that “this” whatever that is that we are supposed to be satisfied with doesn’t add up.

So the choice is maybe more realistically between so I setting for rest time in the world of senses and finite things, or do I have the strength and desire to keep pushing along the road? One must realise that maybe I can’t complete the journey this life and it would actually be counter productive to exhaust myself on the road. A rest and continue next life (as a friend has done) is actually the wiser route. At the same time however how can we be happy with the minute confines of a worldly life, and be satisfied with its miniscule pleasures when we know that the infinite awaits all of us just over the mountains?

My favourite creatures out of hibernation 2010

Went for a walk this morning looking for recently emerged snakes like I did last year and almost trod on these two splendid specimens out basking in the gentle heat of the early spring sunshine. I can’t tell if they are male or female or even whether they are recently emerged from hibernation and have mated yet. I am guessing the coiled one is female and one lying stretched out is male owing to the broadness of the female head and the length of the male tail. Neither have cloudy eyes suggesting the will slough their skins, but the female has mud on her face which I’m guessing means she hasn’t sloughed yet so is newly emerged. The male looks a bit thin so maybe hasn’t eaten yet. So i guess they are newly emerged after 6 months underground and are yet to eat, slough and mate. Wonderful to see them again :-)

Also amazing to see these extraordinary fungus fruiting bodies – small baskets holding what look like eggs or bread buns. I tweezered one out and it is a flat disk with a pimple on the bottom. Rain drops or wind have dislodged some which have become fixed to the wood around the parent bodies. Wood from a discarded palette so don’t know if the parent hyphae are indigenous to the area.

Self-Reference & The Occult

Don't aske me how I get this quote (following up something for a friend about J-Zay and the occult)

“There are no “standards of Right”. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with “moral principle”; there is no such thing”
-Crowley, Aleister. The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL, II,28.

The principal here is that the Self has its own orbit, or its own nature and we need to remove external restrictions in order to allow ourselves to become what we are.

Needless to say that this itself is balderdash - but I can't prove it yet. The obvious error in it is the belief that something can be itself.

If Aleister Crowley removed all external restrictions so that he could become what he was then he is no longer a slave to the ethics of the outside wold and instead a slave to whatever is inside! Either way he is a slave and has not discovered freedom. But actually he is more a slave of the inside than he ever was of the outside because by his own words he doesn't know what he "is" or "will become". While for the ethical person they know what is ethical and what they will become - that is the notion of the Good. Turning to the light we can see. Crowley turning to the darkness is facing into void into which he cannot see.

No this is not what selfhood is about it is based upon the classic error that everyone is subject to and which we must learn to free ourselves from. Crowley simply gave up the will to learn and instead abandoned himself to his reflection and become totally enslaved.

SRH to be proven one day!

Cars - the most absurd things ever

A Reading street at 4pm on a Friday.

There are in excess of 20 cars sitting idle. I gave it some thought. The reason for this is “convenience”. The owners of these cars know where the car is and can use it any time they like. I got to thinking would it be more difficult to hire a taxi? The loss is that you need to think 15minutes ahead and it will cost you a lot of money. The gain is that you have a chauffeur (which I assume is a good thing since people with money chose one), you don’t have to worry about the upkeep of the car or the petrol and probably best you can order the car to anywhere that you are so that parking isn’t a problem and returning to the car park after an excursion isn’t a problem. So the only real cost is the money against what are considerable gains.

Combine this with the concept of public transport. People don’t like public transport because of the cost, the crowding and again the inconvenience. You need to get to a bus station or a railway station and then wait for a vehicle. These modes are not ideal for carrying items, say returning from a shopping trip, and they are not really kid friendly. The most common citation for having a car I have noticed is children. One wonders how we ever survived before the advent of the motor vehicle! Basically kids walked and cycled – wonder if cars correlate at all with obesity? Another problem is that it is dangerous for a child to be out – not because of paedophiles but ironically much more likely because of cars accidents! The very cause has become the solution! In fact car accidents are such a major killer (3000/year in UK) that they rank higher than some of the diseases that get millions of pounds of research. Of course this is offset by the perceived benefit of cars; evidently we think the risk is worth it.

The worst part though is the picture above. Look at the inefficiency of this mode of transport. All these vehicles everyday being left idle and no one is allowed to use them. The same with houses and gardens, TVs, Videos, bathrooms, beds; everything that is privately owned. In my mind the real problem lies in the concept of private ownership.

Obviously private ownership is a solution to a very real problem which is “neglect”. People tend to neglect and abuse things. If we opened our garden to the public we can be sure that soon it would be a rubbish dump, with dog faeces everywhere, graffiti, any plants uprooted trodden on and potentially undesirable people making the place a hell on earth. What was a place where we could relax and feel safe and enjoy some peace becomes a place where we are marginalised and unhappy with the behaviour of others.

Now are we sure that we don’t do the same when we leave our place of sanctuary? Say when we send our army to Iraq? I wonder how we would feel if a war was waged on English soil (the last one was the French in 1066) – the French, Spanish and Germans never actually landed (except for that bizarre French invasion in Cornwall where the town’s women captured them). What of our sanctuary then? This I imagine is why we wage wars on other soils to protect our own soil from being invaded and fought over. But, the point is that we don’t care about another land as much as we do our own… and that reinforces the logic that we should protect our own. Like a dog chasing its tail and not recognising our own reflection, the reason for protecting our own land is actually Our (societal) disrespect for the land of others. Now I believe and they are the same thing: private property isn’t a concept that arose from protecting ourselves from injury but is the concept that causes us to injure others and so experience injury ourselves. It is a paradigm in which man is set against man, outside which man lives alongside man. If the Jehovah’s witnesses want a land where everything lives side by side the solution lies in the concept of property.

To be honest we are not going to escape the paradigm that easily. Jesus and Buddha both accept property as a normative condition of worldly living. Only the monks and those preparing for Heaven need abandon ties to worldly possessions. To ask a whole society so deeply steeped in this idea is ridiculous. But that doesn’t make it right, and proper political decisions should be made realising that it is only a custom rather than a truth – like for example drinking the UK. All the evidence points to alcohol being only a force for bad in the country, but because there would be civil war if it was banned the country has to leave it legal. Likewise property which is an even more deeply engrained culture effecting everything.

So recognising that car ownership is the problem what can we do? Well I cannot believe that providing a government subsidy for taxi services is impossible. Then linking this with an improved public transport system would provide the country’s entire needs. Remove the car industry and the saving in resources would be magnificent.

This way we would get a better transport system with the only habit to learn, the thinking ahead by 15 minutes on a journey, and the gain being able to get transport everywhere without the overhead of parking and maintenance. All this for less manpower and less expense…but in our misfiring economic model that is somehow a bad thing! The problem there is the allocation of resources… and that boils down to private property also.

On the PPP thing which is the most beloved of modern political economics in the UK: the principal that the private sector and public sectors can somehow share their good qualities. Of course what really happens is that the public sector’s efficiency is reduced by competition and private sector helps itself to government money. As was noted in the FT, the free market seems to find 3 prices in the PPP scheme of things. First price is the lowest which is what the analysts decide the industry is worth. The government and tax payer gets cheated. The second price is the price that the shares shoot up to in the free market – the highest price. The third price is the price the government buys shares back again after the venture has failed. The only gainers are the city and the tax payer loses. This pattern has been enacted in a grand scale in the recent highway robbery of government treasuries around the world. Cars seem to me to simply fit neatly into the mould of private versus public (which itself fits into the paradigm of private ownership). Industry makes the big money through cars. A huge car lobby make it impossible for politicians to freely administer a public transport system – if they ever did it would end the car industry. The public faced with a failed public transport system then flee into the mouth of the lion and have to sort out their own transport… each and everyone one of them.

Think of it this way. In a private car system we each have to drive for say and hour a day, find parking spots, spend time looking for insurance, getting the car moted, passing our test, getting it off to the garage for repairs, find petrol stations. All this that we do is unpaid – we are effectively wasting time that we could be either making money or enjoying ourselves. In a public health system someone is paid to do all this, and yet the total output for £ is more under the public system than the private. I’ll work it out one day but the effort required to make millions of cars and transport them all over the country and then have millions of people drive them all far exceeds the effort required to just make 1 central transport system that works. So more of the work is paid, but less people are employed. It is a genius solution. But instead we chose the hard way where we individually do most of the work unpaid and have to manage own private transport. The more I live in this society the more Alice In Wonderland it seems. What is up is really down and vice versa. Maybe the failings are just endemic of worldly living.

I notice that Reading Borough Council has been running a "Your Reading" scheme. This is genius but shows up the insanity of our society. They have used the concept of private ownership to refer to public property :-) It works too because you begin to take pride in the public spaces. But why does this pride need to be encouraged by the government? It is because the government owns the public space and we own the private space and so naturally we are conditioned to not care about those things which are nothing to do with us ... i.e. the public space. How utterly insane. The planet will burn and we will be sitting within the tiny boundaries of our private home saying it's not our problem. The litter, dog faeces, grafitti, pollution, cars, noise, ugly industry, wars, violent behaviour all safely outside our private space - doesn't interest us. Multiply this attitude by 7 billion and you have a recipee for mass unhappiness in the world as everyone disregards everyone and the efforts of mankind are fragmented into 7 billion plots of identical tiny space. I make this point again and again in the blog and everytime I look at it is becomes more absurd.

I don’t drive after failing my driving test back in 1994. I decided no point putting good money after bad (why should I pay money to be told whether I can spend more money!). In any case I didn’t need a car as the public transport in London is so good and I was normalised to using it. I have also cycled since a child and that is normalised. Now aged 38 I never have the occasion where I think I need to drive as I have never done so before and I always think in terms of legs, bike, a lift from a friend who drives, or the train. This seems to prove to me that it is paradigmatic. Change the way we think and suddenly cars don’t feature anymore.

Riswey visits Dublin

I cannot believe how cryptic this is! By good fortune 1999 it turned out that both “My Muse” and I were planning independently to go to Dublin for St Patricks day. It seemed the perfect place to meet up, give her her birthday present and complete what had remained unsaid for a whole year (she was still with her boyfriend but may be just desperation or a sense that it was ending made me change my approach). The issue of being in love without a word of it ever having been said remained and I believed that true love would never need to be spoken because a true flower is what it is whether you name it or not (to paraphrase less poetically Shakespere ;-). Thinking about this and having re-read the text it seems to remain true that, while impractical, a love which has been declared and officialised in words cannot be “true”… “I Love You“ is the greatest lie we ever speak because while we may be motivated to say such a thing by love such an utterance is not love and speaks of no such thing. Isn’t silence the true voice of love? Looking into a girl’s eyes, every time I know it is. Anyway I decided to break my silence but in silence so I wrote this as a follow up to the “Book of Seven Stories” the month before.

Even had she gone to Dublin I doubt in reflection she would have gone to the Ha’penny bridge at midnight as I remember being the meeting message – at least in this version of the play it is not obvious. On the plane over I read a letter that had arrived that morning explaining a change of plan – that was the end for me destiny had abandoned me and the heart ache was complete.

Also, I cannot believe how bad my dialogues are – this is a weakness I have to strengthen before I ever write for real. The rhyming couplets are quite juvenile as well; can’t remember what I was thinking. I knew nothing of iambic meters or anything and this is just a brute force attempt at copying Shakespere. Not too bad but misses the technical details. I only know this because I’ve come to tutor GCSE English this year (for which I got a U at o-level!!!) and have had to learn it ALL!

Kind of obvious but maybe cryptic names of Irish writers here: James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Yeats

Walk J.J., and read the streets, which boast
Names none more wilde and swift
Than when they ask whY he eats:

p.s. bridges = passage over water. Water = emotions, time, mortality, difficulty, separation. Meeting on a bridge is meeting between worlds and times… this is the kind of constellation of ideas I think I meant.

================================================================================

That we mortals do become poised on the bridge of indecision,
Reflecting on the waters of our dreams and memories below,
Should carry no odds with the reading eye; for this is the bridge of Stories,
And o’er mighty Time it flow.

ACT 1
SCENE 1 – Unlit room in early morning.

Ris. Oh my dear Imia.
If only it were that my words were as lucid as the starlight in yonder frame,
Which o'er remoteness so great as to quake mere mortal mind,
Still she hath impressed mine eyes so certainly
With the impassioned song of that fervent heavenly creature.
If only it were that shadow's mischief I could tame:
Find these words that quell, naturally as spring-water on my lips
A channel in which to run, a dew upon morning gossamer come,
A freedom for the dove of a heart's intricate construction.
But alas, poor fortune! I strain against the hidden canvas
As the seas lapping waves do roll upon silence shores:

For I am before the meter of the world, and in that I am every man.
Damn these words which do taint me most horribly:
What foreign food can there be in my mouth, which
With such nourishment, poisons so sweetly?
Silence I hesitate not! You are a friend I have not recognised:
Yet now come the twist; today you ally with mine enemy!
Sorry-day it is when I am supposed at odds with brethren
Now that our country Atlar is torn by war.
Imia, there was no midnight toll in the land between Miou and Amindor -
Fickle time he serves only History -
And our ancestral quarrel is now our own
Come from the waters on which this world stands
To turn back the clocks and cast silence between lands
Now that words between friends means death.
Speak Silence! Why so forsake me?
Why leave me alone in this terrible night?

SCENE II – On wooden steps of a house.

Imia.    Solis, Your cheerful gaiety this morning sweetens my sorrow
Each day, you rise and fall to be just as bold in the morrow
But your light today alas, has cast a fearful new shadow,

There are not one to pass through, but two skies for you now.
And it is as though your face is doubled
And your hidden light falls on memories troubled.
You remember once childhood days found Riswey's seat by my side:
We are still friends, and I know he still watches your mornings rise
And I am so happy that to another soon I am to be married;
But now I have a pained thought: A separation for life?
No sign in earthly form is there now between us
But we are free still to think of each:
And as friends? that they cannot deprive us:
Are yesterday's ways still within our reach?
Oh Riswey! No! Look! where have you gone?
Life! Life, blood and bone! They are one!
Land without war or bloodshed? There is none!
Love without flesh! It is words without breath - alone.
Now there is war between these lands
Silence fallen, no pen, command only your hands!
Animal! strain your sinews and muscular limbs
Life has always lived in the light of our sins.
How can you be gone my fool, if you were never here?
How do you think the separation of war, if you were never near?

ACT II
SCENE I – Meeting in suburban street.

Will.    How now Riswey, why your wistful countenance?
Be cheery today for I did certainly spy spring dancing
Through the cherry blossoms and doves courting,
And my path along the daffodils of the green
Was checked by a hare -
Who had the most distinct air of madness,
And if pushed I would say the fair mademoiselle Roche
Had designs for your family name.
Ris.    William why speak of marriage and public display,
Privately my heart is bleeding in such taught disarray.
And I would give the world, for me, this not to say
But I fear most horrid fate, that I have lost a friend today!
    Will.    Pray you do not bear ill news of Pierre or his battalions
Who have fought to see this very day.
And, you to be called to join the fight?
What greater honour could they pay.
Ris.    William, Tell me: what is there in knowing?
When 'now' leaves? Knowing is king,
How pointless! such words befriend a thing.
As friend I know you, your name, your face
Know that we have shared both time and place.
Roll the die! see what changes
Before the words come the pages
Of a city of ten thousand stories.
We turn the corner, we turn the page.
I ask you, immediately, what colour the sky?
'Tis blue and no mistake. Now look with thy eye!
I would have the sky no other way
'Tis truly perfect as she looks today.
She is as a friend I know.
    Will.    Riswey thou art in love?
    Ris.    Beneath summer trees moss and grasses grow
To make tender cushion and soft pillow,
And on the meadow breeze sweet scents come
- O'er a brook absorbed in song, never sung -
To play kiss-chase with the leaves
Translucent, and glowing with summer sun;
As these, her face is radiant.
And where she stands the ground bows down   
On golden sunbeams she walks without a sound
And as the night entwines the moon so curles her raven hair
Around a smile borne only by the spirits of the air,
And around her teeth silent snow-falls, even whiter
Each sound the first exquisite from beauties writer
And was the evening dew ever so soft as her lips,
Or her skin: rich partner to gold; complexion of petal;
And her nose of softest proportion most gentle:
Oh her eyes, in whose sparkle shines the cosmos
No less! she is a child of the stars
For she surely hath been blessed by the moon,
And where Amrit mere mortals rejoice even to touch
She has been bathed and upon it excess been drunk.
Like armies she has stormed the plains of my heart
But ne'er in grace would she and water nymphs be apart.
I remember, as always has its way, when days were young,
Upon desert beaches naked in the freedom of this sun
Caressed and chased by sea-forest scents and laughter tears
As we played under skies that burned out our years.
In words, never she speaks: and hear? I simply understand,
For I am happy to be by her side, for a moment her man.
Oh how I wish it to be yes: Do I speak of a friend?
But if no then apart we must stay, forever 'till the end.
Oh what cruel devices play with our hearts?
I once thought man were the wolf and love the child
Oh no! It is I who is scared and runs in the wild.
Love is a book we can't put down:
Freedom submit chained, whipped till you can utter no sound
Or hide as Love shakes the earth to which our mortal root is bound
And although Heaven be so close and in our grasp
What tragedy when it is death to which we clasp.
Now that there is war and death has finally come
Reason sees clearly my choice of Heaven or Freedom:
But choice is freedom! And Wo! Death you have already won.
    Will.    Riswey we are but actors in the Almighty’s design
We have no sway in our hearts fortune or rhyme
But I know what's best for you as for any man!
I am travelling with friends to an Island off Atlar's coast,
Where celebrate my people a great festival of good host.
For a week we can forget all that is here at home
Join us in an ancient land, my guest, you are welcome.

SCENE II – In a Park

    Imia.    Katrin, I am at a loss as to where she escapes winter,
But as though nature was only sleeping
She is out merrily busying herself today.
Like the morning that follows the virgin night
I swear she is with renewed vitality,
And so joyfully unashamed is she in her one intent.
Either Eros has spilled his store of arrows
Or whichever God breeds sobriety he is terribly drunk,
But from the trees around the croaking lakes
To the birds gathering twigs in the skies
Without ceremony, ever creature I would say
Was in love: nothing more simple or ordinary.
I am envious. If only it were so plain.
That nature chooses silence: that is her key!
But one wonders how any creature does know
That the amorous eye is upon them.
Katrin? Has Love ever declared himself to you?
    Kat.    By my own mouth Imia, I am not sure,
But through other's lips! More often than the Fall.
    Imia.    Then you believe in Love.
    Kat.    How empty a temple when the altar is gone
Or lifeless night-seas without moon above.
What is life without a heart?
And what be a heart without Love?
But to rashly answer so old a riddle I would be a fool.
Only the bravest may call themselves fools
And Love is certainly game for only the very bravest.
So send me folly 'till I make only sense and then I say:
I know not my love, but yes I believe in him.
    Imia.    And if I were to say your words had the ring of truth
Then the flutter of Apollo, for Eros I might mistake.
Let us rejoice that the greatest folly will never be sane
And in madness speak of things words do not forsake.
    Kat.    It has come to my ears that if we are careful
We can steal away from this war and join friends
In freedom on a misty island where it is said
The people pray for nothing but beer and love.
But we should be quick, for soon I hear there is a festival
And there I fancy Baccus, to be sure at his most majestical.

ACT III
SCENE I – On large ship

    Kat.    Imia! Come quick! Come brace the bow wind.
Is there nothing more ecstatic, more absorbing
Than in feeling the sea's course hands through ones hair
Feeling! I think fighting through one's clothes.
Liberty! I should become naked and give myself away,
My dolphin-body enter the foaming wake
Swim with love, a merman into the depths to make.

    Imia.    Katrin! Look! Is that the city to where we head,
That flock of twinkling stars descended to bed?
Oh how peaceful the land in that great valley
And the mountains watching around: serenity.
Already I smell the fires burning in the woodlands
And hear the drunken laughter in the streets
And the stories of strangers surrounding me
As the city breathes long to speak.

Stra-    And no better place to hear stories.
-nger.    Find a street whose secrets,
Do not die into the night -
But on the breath of a thousand tales:
Feel the Celtic spirit; its strength is here;
Tread well, and know ones foot print
Falls into those of five millennia or more.
In these ancient mountains the Gods have fought,
Here, upon these plains, kingdoms wrought;
Do you smell insurrections gunpowder?
See! a dark lonely gaol: Kilmainham 1916.
Into a candles light a man is thrown
To be married. At dawn a widow is sown –
He was fighting his last stand
In the post office of wide O’Connells Street.
See a 1000 years rise in Christ Church towers
And see the fallen castle, and Royal Crown Jewels
Gone to make a mystery still complete.
Walk J.J., and read the streets, which boast
Names none more wilde and swift
Than when they ask whY he eats:
But this be just the stage
So I bid thee ladies farewell,
To come write on this islands page.

SCENE II – Both dialogues concurrently in various separate streets.

Dialogue 1 
  Adam. The evening is running out!
What say we make haste to Temple Bar
Meet the others and there forget tomorrow!

  Ris: Forget tomorrow?
I have forgotten today!
‘Tis the thirteenth, nay? The day we arrived
And already I feel in the cities sway.

  Will: That’ll be the ale Riswey!
  Ris:  Speak for yourself!
If you think that’s us done for tonight
I proclaim to this city, I’m only begun!
Let me at it! Let me sacrifice myself in Temple Bar!

  Adam:  I can second that Hurrah!
I spy the lights of the Liffey Bridge
Watch out beer and women
In my pants I feel a twitch!
  Will.  Adam ! Have no fear, somewhere
There’s bound to be a toilet up here!
  Adam.  Amusant! Give this a try:
Your round quadruple whisky.

  Ris: Go on ahead, mine’s a Stout:
Leave me here silent a moment
To stand upon this iron bridge
And watch the crescent moon
Sail her face upon the river.
That I might hear time, free
In this quite different land
To sing her midnight song.

Dialogue 2
Anna. I fear that Davey Byrne’s will come
To claim me tonight less we move on.
Let us find new sites,
New music, drink and men to merry ourselves!

Imia. I am drunk! and wish to dizzy myself
More! to the tireless jigs that
Flit and dance these city street;
Grafton Street we’ll take a gambolling stroll,
See what delights come and excite our soul!

Kat. Anytime! anywhere!
That is where we are!
Before that splendid custom house
Whose reflection admires it so;
I am a queen and this my Queendom.
My ladies, usher me along my river
That I may explore my freedom.

  Anna. With what majesty my mind and that
bridge do greet
It looks as a place where strangers might meet,
Its crescent lights…
A necklace upon the night!
Till another day my Ha’penny bridge
Come girls to these streets, I care not which.

  Kat:  Where now Anna is Imia?

Imia: Riswey?

End of the Empire

I watched the 1940 version of “Pride and Prejudice” yesterday. I’ve not watched any version before, but as a period drama I found it infinitely superior to modern adaptations simply because the characters were believable. The failing of any modern piece of work set in the Past, in my experience, is the total inability of actors to rethink that Past. In UK we had a BBC soap opera called Rome a few years ago; it was interesting to think what living was really like at that exciting time; they would have to weave an entirely different cosmos together one populated by a pantheon of man-like gods who demanded probably quite different virtue from today; I thought it would have been an been at least interesting. A total failure. It was essentially “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (which is a great movie :-); simply modern people in fancy dress pretending to have gone back in time. Totally unbelievable and the adoption of ancient practice just the meaningless going through the motions. Acting is not just woodenly performing some actions: a robot can do this. “Troy”, on last night, is virtually unwatchable – apart from it being a terribly scripted film anyway, there is absolutely no consciousness of the Past. That said I do like Brad Pitts portrayal of arrogant invincibility; a good interpretation of Achilles.

Now “Pride and Prejudice” on the other hand is different. All the characters actually believe what they are doing and saying. The days of Jane Austin are not so far behind them that they are just myth. They can remember a time when their world actually was like the one they are acting. My own father behaved in a way that was informed by this time now gone, although the cultural memory was fading – he was born 1933. My mother remembers another side being the grandchild of Hollands - who share a mother with King Henry II – aristocratic consciousness alive and well in her youth. It was evidently a time of great elegance, respect and dignity. It has now totally gone. That world was the world of the Aryan, the noble-man. Today (in UK at least) it is fair to say that the Asian goal (I include Europe in the Asian continent) that has driven the cultures since at least the last ice age has finally died. We now no longer look to any Saviour defined by quality of superiority or perfection because we are cynical enough to not believe such a thing exists. Our eyes are so dirtied by the mud from the gutter that we can no longer see the stars.

I am reassured by “Pride and Prejudice” that nobility does exist. This is not about “class” or “wealth” (which are used only to obscure the issue of nobility): we are all nobles when we act with accuracy, wit and wisdom. It is a wake up call to myself how far I have fallen in search for some base on which to stand. Time to take up flying again I realise. The film acts as a brilliant record of our proper behaviours and attitudes, and a sad reflection upon my own existence.

This morning I was brought once again to revisit the question of “my muse”. I believe this has finally run its course. The failings are on both sides – that is difficult to accept because my first premise was that she was perfect. I am almost ready to accept that she was not. But for my own part I realise this morning that I have been hindered by “greed” and “lack of self-esteem”. Essentially I have been unable to ask directly for what I want from girls – this because I am afraid of rejection, afraid of hurting their feelings and afraid that, actually, demands on others are morally wrong. The last two are noble fears but through my instinctive search for nobility I have ironically done a lot of harm because I am not straight-forward. I will have desire for a girl and she for me, but I will not act for fear that I will be bound by the emotions of another rather than my own. It is true that we have to be clear with our communications to enable both parties to prosper. I have been a coward and not expressed my true feelings (positive or negative) for fear of doing harm. This is not noble behaviour. I, and others, have suffered.

But “My Muse” for her part was not noble either and this morning I am prepared to admit that she was “not the right sort of girl to fall in love with”. She was from Essex and of lower class and it is sad to say that this does seem to map on to expectations of nobility. The lower class actually behave with less nobility – they don’t have to, but I think society (and they themselves) expect themselves to. Worth adding that the upper class don’t behave with much more these days – which is a far greater crime since it is their duty to do so and they have only themselves to blame. After all this analysis I can say I did the right thing and that the fault was that she was not the right girl. Odd that I should have been convinced all these years of the opposite.

If we wish to speak to someone of an urgent matter we seek their attention. We do not hold a conversation with someone else and we wait until they have finished speaking with whoever they are conversant with. This is noble and polite. “My Muse” on the other hand was not polite and didn’t know politeness. She was in a relationship with someone who was in turn in a relationship with someone else. Her boyfriend was not polite or respectful to be holding two conversations at the same time (at 33 he certainly should have known). “My Muse” it seems wanted to hold a conversation with me and I waited for her to finish speaking. No end ever came to that other conversations so I was right to have never spoken. This is correct behaviour. Dionysian thinking would say that I should have abandoned myself to my passions and acted impulsively and with conviction, worked my charm, seduced her and stolen her from the other man’s bed in the dead of night, stolen her away through the velvety shadows and satin moonlight. This itself is seductive and I was thinking “irreason” (previous posts) in those days. But this is actually not correct behaviour; it is not noble. This is the sword of perfection that anoints the noble and cuts away the ignoble. Maybe it is hard for modern thought to comprehend: I refer above.

Hers was in reflection a series of steps towards imperfection. She always used to say to me that she wanted to be “corrupted”. I have no idea what demon tainted her with that poison but in reflection that is all it was. She had had 6 months of relationship when I met her. Maybe he had succeeded in corrupting already what was probably an impressionable teenager. I always thought she had more strength; was her own person already. Maybe here I was wrong again. From the imperfections of that relationship from which she was eventually ousted to one night stands and seeking sexual thrills drawn by some taint toward something which I am discovering within myself does not exist. Eventually she met what by all accounts was a charming fellow and got engaged, but her sister says even this was imperfect for her. She called this “realism” but it is all still imperfection, sullied and ignoble. So it was a mistake to seek perfection with her who herself did not know perfection.

This must be the end of the issue of “My Muse”. That is a term I will no longer use for her. My musing now source from myself and the world. On April 17th it will be the 10year anniversary of the last time we ever embraced and I ever heard her voice and ever looked into her eyes. I still remember her hands seeking me through my shirt and the tears in her eyes; things which I assumed were just fake because I had ceased to make sense of her loyalties. I know now (after speaking with her sister) that she actually had a high regard for me and that these were genuine and I made a mistake to walk away without talking things out and saying what I really had to say: but it was too late by then and my own ignoble actions and cowardice had gone on long enough: that day of December 4th 1997 when, as we parted, we caught each other’s glance looking back, which has been on freeze frame ever since I had to stitch off and walk away… and walk away… and walk away…

It is odd writing this: I can’t do it. I still can’t walk away. Somehow my life is still there. What lies out here is still wilderness; a wilderness I have walked in for almost 10 years. Is their life after love? Not really. (For that matter was their life before love? I have wondered this also). Yet I have faith: that will never go, that is the air that fills my lungs, but it is thin up here in the mountains and I must have walked a long way down now because all the familiar things are back; the scrubland has become trees and there are rivers and butterflies. Yet when I speak of Her sincerely and remember I see that actually it was better then. Somehow being alive right now is not as good as what I remember. This is a truly ignoble thing to say but it is just how I feel. My head asks: How can “this” which is Real compare with what is only a vague memory of something that never really happened? but my heart tells me otherwise. But my head gets the last word because stupid heart what you seek is nowhere in all this universe or beyond to find. And, yet it still seeks it. Is this how I was born? With this insatiable yearning for something which doesn’t anywhere exist – or when you find it dies? How many lifetimes does it take to learn that this is an endless road? So still I cannot walk away…but returning to the issue…”Pride and Prejudice” and especially Greer Garson actually, has reminded me what I also instinctively know in that stupid heart that nobility is the only true way and that gains approval from my head as well… and of the end of empire? How many speak like this these days, when in times gone by it was our only code of living?

The choice...continuing

I was reading the section in http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ on the Vinaya Rules for monks. If i am serious about this path then I need to start preparing myself. I was suddenly filled with a cold freeze when I read that abortion is considered murder (strictly it seems after the consciousness has joined with the foetus). On November 2nd 1995 at around 11am my first girlfriend had a termination - my child also. I had given her no choice since he was unplanned and I had not banked on continuing with this relationship or this style of life. It was my fault, I take the blame.

I made a mark in the mental sand to remind myself in the future that I had spent three sleepless nights thinking hard about it and only then decided to reverse my initial support and seek termination. I was not to regret this I said at the time, the decision was well made. I was very aware that every day made the decision more morally complex and urged my girlfriend to decide quickly - it was hard for her, she wanted to keep the child. I had read something that made 8 weeks a limit in mind. Our child was known about at 6weeks and was 10 weeks old at the termination date I believe. I was relieved that this responsibility had passed so much so that I never thought about my girlfriends difficulties after the operation - it was a tough time for her, I didn't understand.

With more mature wisdom I see that the decision was based on greed. I was not satisfied in that relationship. It would have taken me down a road that would not have satisfied me and I wanted satisfaction. It would have done no real harm to me to say yes to marriage and having a child. It is not as though I have done anything else that would have contradicted that choice since.

So I was chilled to think I may not be able to be a monk having essentially committed murder. Parallel to this I have renewed interest from that girl I mentioned before. The problem in this society after fielding endless questions from friends and their partners last weekend on the issue of whether I am gay is that not everything boils down to sex and reproduction. I criticise gays for this, but maybe sexuals (in that gays are not really "sexual" being only 1 sex) are equally at fault for identifying themselves with their sexual behaviour. Certainly society in the mind of politicians is founded on sexuality, marriage, reproduction and family. But actually it isn't; it's a stereotype and to be free from the prison of sexuality doesn't turn someone into another type of sexuality... It is just called resisting one's urges - is that so alien? Maybe I'm seeing that it is, and at the same time seeing why instinctively I am an alien and why I don't think how I'm "supposed" to. I'm a little shocked how hard it is for people in my "society" to think like that - how self-imprisioned we are. I've entertained and explored the foundations of society and why things are the way they are but I'm losing patience - why understand that which is when you look hard at it is actually irrelevant?

I notice an odd irony here. Being gay is not about reproduction in that sexual reproduction requires sex. Humans are too specialised in biological terms to undergo asexual reproduction without cloning assisted by the laboratory – maybe the future of human gay reproduction is beginning but oddly such reproduction doesn’t require a relationship! It is auto-reproduction. Quite how a “gay-sexual-relationship” is to be understood as anything other than a friendship is a mystery from this perspective (I’m not excluding such things just challenging the conceptual apparatus that we use to understand them). So the irony is in the assumption that because I am not married and reproducing I must be gay. The implication to me is that sexual partnerships must be only about sex?? Why? It is still within the mental framework of sexual-partnership to consider someone who is not reproducing – such a person is gay. This they can understand. But what sexual partnerships cannot comprehend is someone who rejects sexuality itself. That somehow is outside the box. Ergo the box is simply sexuality itself. I’m not saying sexuality is easy to understand I am still struggling with it – but to not even be able to thinj outside the box! Wow!

Another question: Why does everything happen at once taking me in opposite directions? I have to resolve this choice and anyway if I can't be a "monk" it's just a name: it does stop me seeking wisdom and freedom.

Speciation accidental

Just saw this in the New Scientist...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527511.400-accidental-origins-where-species-come-from.html

Mark Pagel shows that speciation occurs at a random rate not something you would expect if it required the accumulation of genetic errors and selection. Obviously random events like geological or climate changes would effect speciation but whole trees exhibit this character of exponentially reducing length of non-speciation e.g. 1/5, 1/5*1/5, 1/5*1/5*1/5, 5^-4, 5^-5 ... (if probability of speciation is 1/5).

Now this strikes me as correct. The forms that we see in nature are a combination of developmental restraints (symmetry) , adaptation (evolution of water-tight coverings) and accident (why are female peacocks like big tail displays?)

Just looking at some excellent VRML models of insects yesterday really showed up the extraordinary shape of nature... and also its arbitrariness. Why did this help consider the problem? In VRML the possibilities are infinite save only the creativity of the modeller. Thus when the modeller copies natural forms they are inadvertently copying shapes that have hidden causes. A butterfly is a very complex form - with a long, long, long genetic history and unnumerable physical, chemical, biological restraints: none of which are present in a VRML environment. The only restraint in that environment is physical consistency so that for example a keg cannot spiral around through the body. The shape that is being copied is the product of an as yet incompletely defined function: life. It makes it more vivid how undefined it is when we see the modeller having to apply his skills to all those legs and hairs and joints without necessarily understanding why this is this and that is that.

Does it "have" to look like this is the question? What would aliens look like given the same raw physical environment, but a different family tree and random events?

here also...

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/03/evolution_and_accident.php

Adder Stones

 

Well didn’t know this: there is folk lore attached to those pieces of flint with a hole in that you sometimes find… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_stone

here one from the Thames a few years ago… and another made roughly into a necklace (in about 5 mins). The can’t remember where the latter was found.