Afraid to be nothing

My sister was commenting on her experience of the wedding and said that at one point she had done barn dancing and socialising and was going to just sit down but was caught by the feeling that if she did nothing why was she there at all? Very valid point. Isn’t a lot of what we do just to justify our existence? What if we just do nothing? That is my plotted path…

Property

Seeing that this Question began with that realisation on the walk to John O’Groats in 2003 (will find the place name and give this idea a name).

The gentleman had the most wonderful mansion and gardens. It was heaven on Earth. Yet unexpectedly after 30minutes walking it was just a tiny spec of green dwarfed by the vast expanse of land, sea and sky. It was then that I realised that altho he was in a wonderful place as far as his eyes could see, as far as he could see was a prison that cut off the outside world. Me on the other hand because I refused to have a wall around me had the indescribable vastness of the unlimited world at my feet. It was not that one was better than the other more that they are incomparable. You cannot easily or logically get the complement of “property thinking” just as those who are used to the wandering life cannot easily complement the infinite to find the concept of property and boundary. I didn’t realise what an impact this idea has had.

This thought came from another contemplation about yesterday which is also linked to ego. After a year of preparations the wedding has evaporated. There is almost nothing left just the certificates, myself and the others as witnesses and some photos. From an egotistical point of view however all this was to create an objectivity to my friend’s relationship with his partner. They now have this but everyone else has nothing. It is impossible to complement the “nothing” that we have to get an insight of the relationship. Likewise they in that sealed relationship cannot logically deduce the emptiness of those who were not married. There are many other ways to think about this I’m just focusing on this dialectic.

Now I see that my attitude to life is becoming exactly this. I have much at my finger tips right now but I am to resist building a wall around anything to call it “my own” seeking to exist outside boundaries. Now it doesn’t mean I can’t wander over the territory inside the wall but I am to ignore walls rather than use them. Problem is that the walls actually create the landscape through which we wander in “human” existence. The human world we talk about is constructed in walls.

My mistake I think is to follow the walking analogy too absolutely. What happened after wandering through this mans gardens was that he told me I shouldn’t be there. This is what created the sense of finitude and infinite after I had wandered out of the gardens. For a true wandered a wall is like a mountain just hard to walk over. For the rest of us it “represents” a boundary which is harder to get over than just the physical wall. My problem is that I am trying to stay out of all walls which is hard in a human world where everything has a name and a place. Anyway this is the direction it seems things are going and so relationships, contracts and jobs etc are impossible.

Interesting I see that my friends children 2 and 3 year are so innately property oriented. They organise things according to a world view with them at the centre. Maybe this is just a cultural or linguistic effect or maybe it is a necessary stage that the mind must pass through in order to understand the notion of separatedness and togetherness. Either way I find it very boring to play with them on this level knowing that these games are going nowhere.

On Happiness

Old point here that began thoughts back in 1997 and which came actually from my friend who just got married… we used to share a laptop… me after midnight and he before so we used to read each others documents and add comments. He added to a discussion on Happiness the words “Eternal happiness is complacency”.

Thinking about a girl at the wedding who I have known for a long time and who is still single and is enormous fun and really would make a good partner I realised something about happiness. She would bring me happiness. But what “my muse” brought me was more than happiness it was something like “peace” (initially).

After recent discussions on peace it was obvious just walking onto this train now… happiness is there and next day it can be gone. I enjoyed the wedding but now the wedding has gone so is the happiness it “caused”. I enjoyed that girls company but now she is gone so has that happiness. We seek to hold tighter and tighter those things which cause us happiness because we don’t like the happiness going. But even holding something tight we find that the happiness gets stale and goes anyway.

Put like this Happiness really is a lowly pursuit.

Peace on the other hand is different. It is a bit like the hard work and planning that goes into an event. The better planned the easier it will occur. The same is true for whole lifetimes. Those with good planning (from past lifetimes) will find that things go very much smoother in this life.

But there is very much more because those who are peaceful can embrace difficulties in a way that is “matter of fact”. One may have enormously “bad luck” and find that everything goes wrong – but the peaceful person just tackles the situations as they arise and just give it their best shot. If they fail then there is a lesson to learn and also the simple acceptance of ones finite limits. It was the first day of rain yesterday in ages and the worst day of the bank holiday; not good for a wedding where everyone was supposed to walk to cut down on fuel consumption etc. It still happened however no problem.

So eternal Peace - unlike Happiness – is not complacency. But Peace can become like Happiness if we try to hold it close. “My Muse” gave me peace (at one level) because she promised (in my mind) to provide me with satisfaction. But realising that she was more interested in Happiness herself (i.e. a good time) I lost the Peace and sort the temporary fix of Happiness. When she died therefore and my fixes stopped it had the opposite effect and made me un-peaceful – it is that lack of peace which is my demons that I battled at the wedding – a feeling that I want to smash the whole thing up like a child in a tantrum.

But logically then Peace is an unconditioned “state of mind” (for want of a better noun cos there is no “thing” called peace), and being such nothing and no-one can actually cause it. Maybe “my muse” showed me Peace but I still have to find it and that quest has nothing to do with girls (except maybe the learning to live without them).

Best Man Speech

Ok was delivered yesterday … great success apparently so job done. Pasted here in case it’s ever of use to anyone. Feedback from my sister was that opening stuff didn’t really work. Opening joke is weak. But people weren’t really that focused at this stage, kids were messing around and people were still talking after the Bride’s father’s speech (it was done in the  wrong order)… where it kicked in was when I started talking about the Groom. This is the main interest for future reference.

Was nervous as hell not so much because of the speech but because I was fighting demons big time – faced a lot yesterday all about ego: it was not ME getting married and why do I do this for other people when they don’t do it for me type of stuff: deep resentment that still exists after “my muse” seemed to abandoned me on the high seas… but it probably only seems this way because I see my own reserved behaviour creates this attitude, if I pull back then it will seem as though other people pull back and that is what I think I experience… this has got to be solved it is the weight that holds me down and probably is the strange-attractor around which a lot of this blog has orbited… that said was thinking yesterday I am orbiting a different star now from other people … I don’t get any deep satisfaction from doing things like the wedding any more it is all just a job… doing the dancing, socialising etc is all just a job. What I have become works well on a desert island (this morning I am cool and back to myself) but in “reality” in social environments I no longer function any more than a robot. I feel good when people warm to me because I know I haven’t hurt anyone and have done my job - but any real closeness doesn’t exist. It was weird with the groom because the situation demanded a honesty and closeness that we only ever play out at arms length – communication break-down we hardly spoke at the wedding. A good joke to have put in the speech would have been the one: so the groom asked me about marriage, I said I was flattered but wasn’t sure it would work. In a way this works for us. I never realised how “male” our relationship was and how difficult we find it to be close despite having spent so long camping together. Hopefully the wedding will have strengthened two relationships.
Despite having attempted to follow Buddhism the search for liberation has actually shattered any possibility of intimacy. It seems, in my mind, that to be intimate creates a bond which when broken leads to suffering so the bond mustn’t be formed. Have analysed love and sexual attraction at length in the blog I realise now that exactly the same process occurs in friendship. My vision of people functioning together is simply robotic, human bonds demand intimacy … yet can this be done without “fondness” and therefore suffering at the break of a bond? Not a step further along the road since “my muse” shucks! and I don’t understand anything about Buddha Dharma yet either even more Shucks!!

Main point anyway was the groom really liked it which is the brief here! (So blog-wise it means I’m back with vengeance on the ass of the SRH)

BEST MAN SPEECH 29/5/10

GENERAL GOT LOST COMMENT: now this is why you shouldn’t trust me with a map Gavin

START
Ladies and Gentlemen I’m sorry to say that today I’m not feeling very well.
I just mentioned to Gavin that I was feeling a bit funny…
…and he said well get on with the speech then while it lasts… so here I am.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Alva and I’m The Best Man. It is a real honour to be standing here BUT I thought I was safe from this job given the amount of dirt I can produce on Gav… so to be standing here today has really got me wondering what you all must know!

I am quite sure that Lucy is eager to respond to Gavin’s kind toast [and gifts], but before she does may I step in and thank you all on behalf of the “flower girls“… Congratulations on getting Sarah ready and up the aisle.

[I echo Gavin’s words]… It has been a beautiful wedding…[some comments] …
thank you to those who have made it possible and everyone who has helped in making this such a lovely occasion.

ETHICAL
As you can probably imagine this wedding has been prepared with utmost ethical awareness:
>No dangerous weapons have been exchanged during any part of the event or planning… except perhaps some of the [delicious desert].
>Gavin has mentioned/ensured that the wedding rings are made from a legal source of gold. However he was especially happy with the engagement ring which he managed to snap up at a real bargain price on eBay… the seller was having a clearance sale apparently … a Naomi Campbell for anyone interested.
>And finally of course I’ve done my part and made sure that all my jokes are 100% recycled.

Now the speech is running at 7 minutes at the moment so if you could assist by not laughing or interrupting that would be very much appreciated.
[PAUSE]

FALSE START
Gavin is the most handsome, witty, charming, debonair, [look puzzled] soph…istic…ated, ***Look Here***
… sorry Gav I can’t read your writing there.

START
OK! Gavin! Where can one begin with Gavin…[PAUSE]

He is a Poet, a Philosopher, a Warrior, an Adventurer, an Artist, a Pioneer… and I think had things gone differently he would even have made a Rock Star.
But unlike his idol Iggy Pop I am sure he would never have sold out to do car insurance adverts… altho his lawn is looking rather immaculate these days.

So I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you just a fraction of the Gavin that I have come to know over the years… at least those bits not already available in the 100 pages Google throws up… and having hung out with Gav on many occasions… the bits I can repeat here without risking MY own reputation.

HATCHED
As I’m sure many have long suspected GAVIN WAS hatched from a Giant Cosmic Egg. Fighting his way out from the shell is how he came to damage that front tooth of his… so any other stories that you may have heard about Spain are plain ludicrous!

It was the 1st December 1972 which was also the day that gave us Toni Collette the actress and the first Atari game Pong, the day that Iceland approved the worship of Norse Gods, and the day that the staff at the maternity wing of Hammersmith Hospital still call ugly baby Friday.

MET
I met Gavin 15 years ago in the Imperial College Caving Club. It was a cold bonfires night in Yorkshire and he was launching himself rather keenly from a tent … just like the firework that had been lit behind him.

From that moment onwards he has never slowed down… or that was until he met Sarah… but I shall come to that later…

INCIDENT
Caving was going well and then came the infamous incident involving another firework and a fluffy bunny. It required a change of direction… and a new identity for Gavin.

CLUBBING
Inspired by a failed attempt by MI6 to headhunt him, which ought to have gone rather well given that he didn’t answer any of the questions in the interview, he donned a black polo neck and a pair of wide-blue-brogues and headed for the London Dance Underground.

He was easily spotted on a Saturday night bopping away under the ambient lighting, looking A LOT like the SAS brother of Danger Mouse.

For anyone who can’t picture that it is immortalised in the photo on the back of the 1997 LTJ Bukem album Earth!!

ROCKSTAR
Now no serious discussion of Gavin can ever over-look his rock-star pretensions bubbling away just beneath the surface…[GESTURE GAVIN]

OK… well… bare with me here for a minute… He had been a singer in a band at school but nothing was seen of him until one day in a pokey suburb of London, inspired by the local Christian band serenading shoppers outside the local Mecca Bingo Hall, he returned home to express his new found love for the lord … into the answer phone.

The next morning and 2 bottles of wine later the tiny cassette contained the 13 track masterpiece “Soundscapes of Heaven”… featuring tracks such as “Casually Tuning Up to be with Jesus” and evocative lyrics like this one where he cleverly compares the difficulties of walking in Christ’s footsteps with the temptations of shopping in Chelsea.

“Making my way down the King’s Road,
I thought my head was gonna explode”

All sung in a voice reminiscent of David Bowie, I’m sure it will eventually secure him a place in rock history … but it’s probably damned any last chances he ever had of getting into Heaven (I don’t mean the night club btw).

WITNESS
It was around this time that Gavin said he was moving jobs. After saving dolphins for many years in the EIA it was time for a change.
I knew he was sometimes attracted by the allure of the right wing and knew he even read the Daily Mail once… but I was shocked when he said he was going to work for “Global Whiteness”. Happily it was just a misunderstanding… it was “Global Witness”.

BEER
So I remember first meeting Sarah at the Reading Beer festival in 1999 - a few pints of “Piddler on the roof” later and the conversation had turned to “love”. Sarah, I remember, had been rather interested in the discussion… but little did anyone realise then the feelings that were secretly brewing within the party.

RIDGEWAY
This was incidentally the eve of my first expedition with Gav above ground - but our new found past time of surface exploration didn’t quite begin with the shock and awe that was originally planned… still drunk the following afternoon, we stumbled to a bus stop, skipped the first 20miles missing out around 3000years of history and ended up getting lost on a straight track having somehow forgotten which way we were walking.
I was reminded recently that things didn’t get much better. A Heroic decision to take a short cut across a railway bridge almost provided South-West-Trains with a new front logo. Leaping and rolling to safety down the embankment in a cloud of dust we were faced with a group of fellow walkers standing staring in shocked silence.
A man with his son trying to make sense of what he had just seen, asked whether it was done for a bet. Sadly the truth was we were just bad at walking!

Happily for Gavin things in the weeks that followed went very much better with Sarah - and for once the fireworks didn’t get him into trouble.

SARAH
Can I take this opportunity to say how lovely Sarah looks today.

Sarah is a truly wonderful person and really deserves a good husband… so it is a damn job for Gavin that he came along before she found one.

But seriously it  was going to take someone quite extraordinary to balance and slow down Gav and that person is Sarah. She is beautiful, calm, has a great sense of humour and is the perfect partner to Gavin: very much the Yin to his Yang or as Gav’s socks often try to remind me the Ping to his “Pong“.

Where she is methodical he is ma-nic, where she is beautiful … he has nice hands.

It is fair to say that Sarah has completed Gavin, and as the saying goes, like my speech now, he is totally finished.

Congratulation to them both, we all know they make the most wonderful couple.
READ telegrams
One from David Cameron … Congratulations Sarah and Gavin. I didn’t believe it either but it seems coalitions do work. All the best for a happy partnership.
And one here from Tracie.
Hey Big Boy. How come you no write no more. How come you no send money no more. When you come back Bangkok?

FINALE
And now I can’t think of a better way to round things off than to remember what Sarah asked during that discussion at the Reading beer festival and which Hammerstein answered so well in the “sound of music”, words to which I’m so happy that She and Gavin both heeded the call …

A bell is no bell till you ring it
A song is no song till you sing it
And the love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay
Love isn’t love
Till you give it away

So with that let me ask you to charge your glasses… and for those who can still stand
to join me in a toast to the happy couple and to wish them a long and happy marriage…

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the new Mr and Mrs Hayman.

The destination or the route?

 

Occurs to me as I rework the wedding speech that one of my great problems is staying on the path. I’m much more adapted to wandering and streams of conscious. The speech isn’t bad but I would like it to have more backbone so the audience will know exactly where they are and why. Still I’m growing tired of changing it all the time. Time to rehearse and memorise for Saturday.

So the question here is:

Does the path lead to the destination? or Does the destination lead to the path?

There seem to be two attitudes, two people with the latter by far being the dominant in this teleological culture we have. It seems that without a reasonable destination these days no journey is worth it. Is this true? Can the journey justify the destination?

I think yes because this is my way. But am I right and has our culture made a decision between possibilities that it didn’t need to. Shall think more…

Evolutionary Biology

 

An “Evolutionary Biologist” was arguing on Skinner’s Opinionated on Friday night that the male who spreads his genes furthest will be the most successful. Ergo males seek to mate with as many females as possible. Females on the other hand being only able to conceive ever 9months at most and investing a very great deal in their offspring can’t afford to be so carefree. They must be choosy. This is the origin of “female choice” which this blog has investigated before I think. The female has a dilemma. Does she sleep with the Lethario to ensure that her children become Letharios as well. Or, does she form a bond with a more reliable male who can support her children.

The genetic evidence is that a few men are Letharios and the majority are faithful, while most women are unfaithful with those Letharios. Now this fits the logic in 1001 Nights (Sheherezard).

What seems to happen the Evolutionary Biologist was arguing is that females form a bond with a reliable male and then sleep around to ensure that they get genes in with the successful Letharios too. This does seem to fit the reality.

However he has forgotten something. For Mallard ducks, in which extra-pair copulations are most prevalent, the males end up guarding the females from impregnation by other males. This is exactly the logic argued later in this blog for males protecting their women from unfaithfulness so that they can be sure that their children are theirs. This leads to the institution of marriage. As best-man in a few days I am traditionally there to fight off other men laying claim to the bride.

In Hero terms the institution of marriage – which the Legend of the Battle of Troy brings out too where the failed suitors of Helen formed an alliance to protect her – forms to end the state of war with males fighting each other endlessly for breeding rights with women. A species that fights itself this much to breed would just go exitinct.

There seems to be a belief in today’s society that “marriage” is an outdated institution. Maybe as I always argue with revolutionaries we should understand exactly why things are the way they are before we try to change them. Most revolutionaries become revolutionary because they are too stupid to understand – look at me ! as I seek to understand even the most basic reasons for why things are the way they are. Once we understand why things are the way they are then we are likely to not want to change them!

A circular argument previously noted in females opens up because whatever female choice dominates (by accident) in the next generation will becomes the choice that females need to make. There is no reason for what a female chooses other than to follow the crowd genetically.

So males actually guard their females to ensure that they produce their children. This is why females feel that marriage is an abusive construction. Yet at the same time they welcome support for their children because the children of supportive families will be less but prosper further than those of single parent families with half the resources. The evolutionary biologist then was making a social point in the end then by suggesting that there was reason in “free love” when actually this is a strategy that ends up with capital retribution for both wife and lover. There is no greater sin for a woman than to be seen to be untrustworthy by men – for who is going to have children and spend time with a woman who cannot guarantee that they are your children! Such women become out casts and their children the lowest social level. The men who sire those children are equally failed therefore and as a result it is not a good strategy at all it seems to me.

So there are reasons for why things are exactly why they are.

Peace = Liberation

Had a thought that an important part of pornography is the sense of “wow! he got that girl to do that”. So it occurred to me that actually (and discussed this before) the point is ego.

Another thought entered my mind looking at a girl yesterday. She was beautiful but my new consciousness would not recognise this beyond what I could see. Analysing that I saw that to me she represents trouble. Analysing that I saw that really this trouble lies in the process of competition that exists with attractive women. They are commodities and one must fight to own them. So actually they are like everything else in the world that to “have” them one must push other people off them and prove ones ability to do this. Attractive women are normalised to this process and sit at the centre of male fights and competition… as indeed do handsome men.

With regards the Peace argument – there is no peace in this world and the value of things that are competed for are only relative and diminished.

This it would appear is the quest. To seek that authentic experience where things just are. If there is competition between individuals then actually it is the source of allegiance and friendship rather than quarrel and fight.

Genetic thinking and game theory don’t really recognise this because they restrict the starting conditions. I will need to explore this in a lot more depth. But between higher individuals where starting conditions are infinite and unrestricted or dogmatic this way of thinking is fallacious.

The path to Peace is I suggest the same as the path to Liberation.

Property is War (Republic of Minerva)

 

Found the Republic of Minerva whilst looking for stuff for the wedding speech. Interesting that it was claimed by the Republic of Tonga.

According to Glen Raphael, "The chief reason that the Minerva project failed was that the libertarians who were involved did not want to fight for their territory.” [Reference: http://www.impel.com/liblib/NNLFAQ.html#12]

So if ever proof was needed that property means war here it is. If we claim anything as our own we will need to fight for it. So if we have property we have war always. Hence the absurd oxymorons produced by Nations like fighting for freedom and fighting to bring peace.

A priori then and now it is clear in my mind “peace” can only exist when we have abandoned our claim on anything.

Anyone who speaks of possessions or nations at the same time speaks of war. It is these people who have blood on their hands using these very words.

Love & Loneliness & Unity

Just finishing off the wedding speech … found this quote

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.  ~John Bulwer

… I very rarely feel alone because I think I have learned at some level to love. It is astonishing how often people live in fear of being alone and I think this is a force that drives a lot of relationships. Yet I do question myself a lot.

In a night club yesterday I proved to myself that really I do not fit in. When dancing for example my greatest pleasure has always been to dance to the music. This forms a relationship between myself and the music. It is like when one goes walking one dances to the sound of nature – it is a relationship between oneself and nature. Yet in a night club I was watching that actually people tend to form couples and dance with each other. I try to do this and I confirm yesterday what I have always felt that it feels wrong for me – I try to dance with a girl and I now have two masters: the music and her! Which is more important? I watch her and I try to see how she is interpreting the music and then I try to understand her interpretation to copy that and I find it boring, so I do my own interpretation and that is different from hers because I always change – I don’t ever stay in one time or with one motion – I am impossible to follow and I find following someone else boring. It is the same as playing in a band – I cannot listen to my own heart and the other musicians as well. I either play what I feel should come next or I am left trying to stay with them which is boring. What I have never mastered is think “with” someone else so that she and I think the same dance, the band thinks and plays the same music. I know in jazz this is considered the special moment that every free-form jazz group seeks when there is synergy between all players and that higher unity and emergent property is created that enriches the participants. This is indeed my dream of relationship – yet I never find it, it always seems so hackneyed, trivial and robotic in practice. I see girls and guys “on heat” and they dance together obvious driven by need for sex and driven by fear of loneliness and the music I fear is just a tool to these other instincts. Is there really a higher unity, an emergent property something greater? I believe so, but don’t find it myself.

3am (eternal) this morning after leaving the night club and doing night shift at the Buddha Birthday celebration I speak to an elderly gentleman about his marriage. I described how after 4 years living very closely with a girl I met her again after the relationship had ended and realised that even after all this time together she was like “another” person – a stranger and I felt that I never really knew her. He confirms what I guess I am beginning to realise: he says that he likes sport and his wife likes shopping. There is give and take in their relationship. He goes shopping and just sitting on a chair outside the shops with a newspaper catching up on sports results and at home he watches the sport and she goes about her other interests. This way they work together but he doesn’t really know her at all. My dream of some kind of unity of mind and spirit so that partners both think and work as entities joined in some kind a higher emergent property is maybe a myth. He said there are maybe those few partnerships that work like this – but I am reminded of what another friend said that women and men think differently. Indeed I realise they do - they have completely different interests and roles in creation. We are different.

But it all makes me question where the fault lies. Do I seek a myth? Am I somehow at fault – I feel on a completely different level to other people. In metaphor I was thinking I get bored by simply flowing together with other people; I like angles and edges with which to push off from and gain momentum and direction. It seems other people are happy to just forget things and ooze together in an amorphous amalgam. Is that the dissolution of self that I sort in “my muse”? Is that the ecstacy of the Bacchic dance? Or am I right to continue in the Apolloine mould and seek distinction and definition from the crowd – remaining true to my own instincts, directions, knowledge and integrity?

Maybe this is just the great question that faces Man. Do we seek entry to Eden again and be like the animals (like they do it on the Discovery Channel) or shall we eat from the tree and seek Self and Knowledge? One of the first things I wrote my muse was an extended image of two eagles encircling together over Eden on the rising thermals of that original sin… (before crashing to earth together – I do not know what that symbolised)… certainly it seems that my thoughts then are as they are now and awareness of this problem is once again being awoken.

Folding in the blog on houses and separateness and togetherness – there is allegory in the words that I write. Each word is very lonely being utterly separated from every other word. Yet “reading” creates an emergent property which provides a structure in which they are unified. Inancientgreeceandprobablymanyancientlanguagesspaceswerenotputbetweenwords. Separate the words from the continuous text then depended upon understand the meanings. There is a dialectic (more evident in the ancient from) that separateness is only possible when we look from the higher emergent level back at the “components” and vice versa unity is only comprehended when we see that the components really do compose the higher form. The true structure is actually both unity and separateness together.

So I say that in a night club I see people paired off in couples. I say that I see them dancing to the music and together. I say that I feel more together with the music than the partner I dance with. (I should add when I imagine dancing with a partner it is a much more formal arrangement of learned steps and agreed protocols). Really if I look more closely all this is only possible because of a very high level unity that is already present that determines which components I identity and also how they fit together. What I can’t figure out however is how “I” fit into that high level unity? I dance there on the dance floor watching and musing upon what I see unfolding around me – how am I related to unfolding events? In Vipassana meditation they would be just unfolding events with no witness (or maybe the unfolding philosophical thoughts about the witness and the nature of that witness). But can one really participate in a dance floor as a fully meditative monastic? What is dancing like when we meditate! What does our partner think! Needless to say my “partner” got as bored as I was and went back to her friend.

Watching Peter Owen-Jones (POJ) on Friday who I think suffers from my problem but even worse. His shows are unmistakably about “himself”. This blog maybe is just about “me” not the search for some great truth in life at all. [Writing structure being abandoned]: I advised someone that he was a coward at the night shift as well – in him i saw myself – he was suffering in a relationship that he had agreed too out of convenience and hoped that he would end up loving his partner – of course he never has and now is trapped. He is a coward and maybe I am too because to be happy in a relationship one must first risk everything. The more one risks the greater the reward. If one risks ones life one receives Life back (that is the message of Christ). I think I risked everything for my muse – she has been the only girl I’ve said yes to and pursued, yet I held back because I didn’t want to risk hurting her through my own weakness (lack of money, career etc). Writing now I see that to say yes to her is really to say yes to “the world” as well. This is why I hold back. Something in the “world” is distasteful – that is what I need to resolve before any talk of relationships. Anyway he needs to meet a girl his feeling for who frightens him, and then to use that fear to risk everything. That is the way to growth and happiness. Maybe advice I should take one day … again. So Owen-Jones is following the life of Saint Francis and goes a step further than my own walking. When I walked my logic was to minimise my needs so that I could travel as far and as easily as possible. I carry a logic from my father not to burden those around me. Yet Saint Francis had it different. It is by placing oneself at the mercy of others and needing their charity that ones finds the mercy and charity in others! So he lived in a way that required the support of others entirely. Buddha did the same and by chance the husband of an ex-girlfriend at the Buddha’s Birthday event was explaining that UNESCO published a book on Barlaam and Josaphat which explains that early links between Christianity and Indian Buddhism probably gave the Christians their monastic traditions (as they did the Chinese). POJ said that he found it hard to live this way in UK today because of what he described as “fear”. I guess that “fear” comes from the attachment to property and possessions – we are unwilling to be charitable because we are scared of our possessions and security being damaged. Result being that we don’t see the good in others our self but rather the bad – see the nations consciousness i.e. the newspapers for more on that! POJ also saw a simple problem that I don’t understand yet. It is true that there is little difference between a “scrounger” and a “saint” in appearance. How do we know that our charity won’t breed a population of people who have no interest in seeing the good but are just lazy and undisciplined. This is the right wing argument. India is seeing this happening and the very old traditions of supporting travellers are being lost – monasticism in its original form is dying there. So it breeds by argument a culture where people cannot “connect as deeply” as POJ says living like that creates. Being self-sufficient it seems creates disregard for others rather than love. That I fear then is one of my great weaknesses. My walks were to some extent wasted because I never threw myself at the mercy of people. Instead I threw myself at the mercy of “Mother Earth” and I guess this is why I have strengthened my relationship with her (to the point of actually spiritually speaking to her once) – it is her I try to love. That is why my loneliness has gone, that I guess is my relationship – yet it is not as fulfilling as a relationship with a physical girl I fear. I need to throw myself at the mercy of a girl one day for that it seems – I never did that to “my muse” I thought it cruel for her as how do you respond to someone who seeks your mercy in love if you do not love them in return? Horrible. If you are weak and cowardly you will pretend to love them and that is evil. Can we really do this out of love for someone? The saints seem to… hmmmm

So no real conclusions yet but an exploration this weekend of unity,love and loneliness… back to the wedding speech (I’m sure all this thinking about marriage I’m being forced to do is for some kind of reason – or punishment ;-)

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We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love.  It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.  ~W. Somerset Maugham

Just read this quote too. It is fascinating and I am rethinking all this like I used to with “my muse” that all the problems of existence are no better perceived that at the junction where two people meet. I wonder why my chance to explore all this was never available with “my muse”. I also think that my opportunity will never arise because also out of my musings this weekend is the thought that I am truly different from other people. People it seems are mostly quite lowly creatures – more akin to dogs and cats than saints and gods. It is a horrible thought but I must entertain it that the common state of mankind is actually virtually on a level of unconsciousness… this is too depressing a thought to be worth saying… anyway the place I wish to be not this but in the full brightness of an alert consciousness, fully aware and sensitive to things as they are. Any partner will simply have to be seeking the same to even show up on a radar… and there is never anyone on the radar because women seek material wealth and material child birth rather than the wealth of insight and brightness. Twice this week men have also expressed the importance of children – but ironically it is that strength of devotion to ones child that I understand blocks ones path to liberation. Buddha legendarily called his son Rahula (राहुल which looking up on Pitarau.com means able/efficient… I’m corrected from thinking it meant of “burden”.. in the west apparently it takes the form Ralph which is a middle name of myself by chance). But the legend does so that Buddha saw his love for his child as a hindrance to liberation simply because it makes one want to stay in the world of imperfection. If our child dies suddenly we see with unimaginable shock and misery the depth of Buddha’s realisation about our ignorance of impermanent forms. We can only pray that our child lives so that we are spared learning the truth of our ignorance, and can continue to maintain that love which is ignorant. I understand this is what he meant. Anyway S.Maugham sees in his relationship that most extraordinary feature of emergent properties that they can remain unchanged while their components are changed – viz the long discussions on the Argo before in this blog).

…

I feel like I’m living in an Earnest Hemmingway novel now… I just looked up the name of “my muse” and it’s the Sanskrit for "melted, dissolved, vanished"… how odd and allegorical is that … how can that be :-(

SRH – is this it?

I know I’m not supposed to be thinking about this till after the wedding but the speak is in its 1st draft and I still have 2 weeks to go… hmm not convincing… anyway SRH seems to be based upon this distinction present in the literature to do ith Impredicativity…

If we encode things with the intention of simply describing what already is then indeed this description can represent “all things” and it need only be self-supporting and not self-contradictory to include itself. The coding is really just a grouping of the things like sets.

However if we seek to “construct” something through our encoding – as a Constructivist would – then we have the chicken and egg problem whenever we try to construct our self.

It seems it is the Constructivist problem which lies at the heart of the SRH. Scientists are not simply describing the world as it appears but are seeking a way to construct it. Construction of the world was the role taken previously by God. We may ask who made God, and as a child I wondered whether God was powerful enough to make himself – I figured at least he could step forward in time to when we was made and then like Bill and Ted he only needed to go back in time at some stage to make sure he really had been made. Absurd thinking really – this is God creator of Time and Space! Why does he need to prove anything! Anyway pointless discussion. The point is that Science strays into the SRH whenever it tries to take on the role of creator.

So we will always be left with “descriptions” of the world and our minds remain powerless to tackle (in a constructivist way) the more fascinating question of how it all got here… that is always a religious point.

On Dawkins … again

 

Been toying with these ideas for years. It occurs to me yesterday that there is this potential problem in Evolutionary theory. Evolution is usually considered one dimensional. It is about the gene frequency in successive generations. But actually it can be considered as binary i.e. survival or not. The common garden worm is a form that has survived as is the human species. In terms of evolutionary success there is nothing between them. They each occupy their niche stably. People might argue that humans were superior because we command control of so much of nature. The problem for us is becoming ourselves – can we command ourselves? I personally fear not – there is a contradiction in commanding oneself (SRH). So the human race may indeed be out lived by the worms. This makes the worms more successful than humans. Yet we know in another sense that humans are “superior” to worms. Humans for example can codify and discuss this issue… can even gain liberation from material entanglement. It is blatant then that against the yard stick of evolutionary success most of what humans are about does not get measured. Even those individuals/species that go extinct have qualities and values that evolution does not respect.

The argument can be put this more interesting way. Dawkins has an idea that gene frequency explains everything – call it Selfish Gene. He even extends this idea to the spread of ideas themselves. Suppose there was a gene which corresponded to an interest in the idea of Selfish-Gene and another gene that lead to bearers rejecting the idea. It may sound absurd to say a gene exists for such a specific trait – that is exactly one of the weaknesses of this thinking!

For the gene to spread there has to be selection in favour of the Selfish-Gene gene, in other words those who bear the gene that stops them from believing in the Selfish-Gene suffer some increased mortality as a result. How can this occur? It can’t. There is just as much chance of the people with the anti-self-gene gene winning and those with the selfish-gene gene. This is the problem noted before that there is no selective advantage to Evolution Theory. It is not the product of evolution itself! Which would run foul of the SRH anyway.

Both these points taken together point to things that are fundamental to human experience which transcend survival and existence – things which transcend evolution, chess and game theory. Death as is oft noted in religious circles is not the end, not even a concern of true mankind who see that survival and existence are just a diversion of reality and not its basis. The problem with Dawkins is that he is so blinded by his own dogma that he will never see “the light” it seems.

p.s. I need to look up the official game-theory/computability approach to chess. Is chess a formal system?

On Peace and Security

I sit on King Henry’s Mound in Richmond park. I first came here three days ago and as I walked into the poets corner was impressed by the energy. The mound is built on an old burial mound which I then concluded was the source of the energy. So I come here to meditate. It is a lovely spot though a shame it is such a tourist spot. The Vista Line runs from here to St Paul’s Cathedral which can be seen through the eye hole shown in the picture to the right. My feeling about all the history here when I first visited was a bit like being shown around a kids bedroom – there is an amateurish and unbalanced seeking to find more worth here than is actually present. The poem at the entrance to the gardens with its worthy theme of celebrating nature and the poet who used to come here, is not a good poem. Amazing that it has survived for almost 3 hundred years. There is just this clawing feel in the vistas to Windsor Castle and Runnymead etc that the area is seeking too hard to connect itself to the ”heart” of England and its royalty. This blog doesn’t believe those things are more than mytholo gy like King Arthur but what reason has Richmond to have some central place even if it were real? I compare the area to poorer areas which are necessarily marginalised if Richmond gains some central status. It is such a shame that humans are so stupid. Richmond is no better that Whitely in Reading yet the atmosphere here is peaceful while in Whitely the locals turn it into a dump. It is because they believe it is marginalised and the Richmonder’s believe that here is important and central. Actually there is no difference – ask the squirrels running around the tree in front of me!

Now the point. This morning I woke up considering this issue of “middle path” and comfort. I am tired. I have been working till 10.30pm the last 2 days with a student, followed by the 1h20m journey back to London. I am getting no pay now from either students due to money troubles – though I expect money from at least one when their father returns in a month from visiting his poorly mother. I am due to visit the doctor on Monday with a acute bowel pain – though I realise this is just a development on something I’ve not paid attention to for over a year. Probably an ulcer with the stress I feel and the amount of chillies I consume, though worst case cancer – at least I’ll have an early chance to face that most fascinating of things called death (mean that sincerely). I have this best man speech to give in 2 weeks and the stock markets have gone chaotic (as expected) and I’m busily trying to keep up with the crazy stock trends. The builders wake me at 7.45am each morning so no chance to make errors with sleep. Not much really but enough to make me consider “well being”. My cousin is moving into this 5 bedroom house. It will be an amazing place when the builders finish and it makes me think about “middle path”. Certainly I do not need or even desire such an extravagant place but there is no doubt that living in Richmond and having a house and place to stay peacefully is a good thing for body and mind. I feel better for sleeping in this house and visiting the park each day which I have not been able to find in the garage where I have to sneak around like a criminal avoiding unwelcome attention that could lead to having to move out. Even on my long walks sleeping rough carries some stress because there is the worry of rain, of mosquitoes, and being woken by a disgruntled local. I used to argue with a friend at the temple the exactly placing of the “middle path”. It seems that I am not quite there, I am a little too ascetic for the middle path. Not completely certain but my feeling now is that I would be better with just a bit more security. So this morning I consider this: how can Buddha and his monks have had security living entirely off alms and sleeping (initially) rough in the forest? They could be attacked, they could starve if people didn’t give them food. There is risk of illness, snake bite, tigers, mosquitoes carrying disease – very many things that it seems upset the mind/body system enough to diminish its power to peace and clarity (or so it seems to me now). So how to find a bit more security without owning, or paying someone to own, a property?

Of course the worry is that too much security and one forgets and becomes complacent and lazy. Certainly all those people who find like a bit flat have simply forgotten how much they have. Ideally I believed that non-self would give security but it seems that security is needed to get the peace and clarity to find non-self… maybe.

While writing this what I imagine is a robber fly has just crashed out of the sky with its prey of black fly and is doing battle to contain its breakfast. Shocking how brutal but equally amazing.

On Butterflies

 

Just sitting here in a field at the university and I see my favourite butterflies: first a female orange tip and then about 5 minutes later a male. Some 30 minutes after that they are fluttering aro und together. To my left there is a long-tailed tit with food in its beak just resting and scanning the area before heading to its nest to feed the young. The male orange tip just lands on a flower right next to me. It is so like clockwork this breeding thing; it is ubiquitous. The long tailed tit flies back from the nest over my head. I think for a moment as I see that pair of butterflies together of my muse and myself. I wonder whether they experience the extraordinary quality of it, as I did or is it as I see now just plain and simple. I tried at breeding I say to myself and it didn’t work. So I imagine a conversation with an adversary who says that I should just try again, it will happen. I reply that making it happen isn’t the interest for me. I look at the birds here who will fledge their young in a few weeks and I look at the human responsibilities. I suppose we invest equal amounts – birds produce broods every year that take a month to fledge but only live a couple of years, we on the other hand produce just one brood which take 2 decades to fledge but live for 80 years. It is not the making it happen that is the point I think again, it is the cost. An advert in the paper I was reading says get paid to do the thing you something you enjoy most. Two thoughts enter my mind. My first ever realisation about the nature of “work” was that you didn’t enjoy doing it. True this isn’t universal but the most important jobs like cleaning and manual labour are not the things we chose to do for enjoyment. My mother calls them chores – this means they are not things we chose to do. Fact is work is mostly that assignment of things that have to be done but no-one wants to do them so they get a salary attached. Another way to see that is if doing something is so enjoyable then why would anyone pay you to do it, wouldn’t they just do it themselves? Labour and reward this is at root why I am reluctant to make it work. In a Malthusian, Efficiency-of-the-markets way if something has great rewards then the cost will go up (either in price, or in population) until the cost balances the rewards. Fact is having a family is extremely costly and the cost just keeps going up. My cousin is renovating a new home at the moment and I am utterly bewildered at the sheer complexity of planning regulations and the like. With each generation the amount of work required to provide an environment of nurture for children increases. Time was like the animals that you simply grew what you needed from the ground. Now with increasing population pressures and the ratchet of capitalism (increasing efficiency requiring greater complexity to create jobs) the environment is becoming chocked and there is simply no space for anyone. I made a half resolution today never to own any property: it is abhorrent I have decided, not because of what I shuts in but because of the principal of shutting people off land which I consider an act of violence against my fellow man. We go to all this trouble to ensure safety and security for the next generation at the cost it seems of the current generation. Space and Land quite evidently precedes the act of partitioning spaces – enjoying that primary Space and Land cannot be affected by the trivial creation of spaces. Of course people are welcome to divide the world up into little properties but it is a petty and trivial activity. Looking at the butterflies again the overwhelming sense is that breeding and property are actually petty and trivial activities. Not that this perspective is easy to reach. I have realised with great humility recently that the path I think I’m treading is difficult, at least as difficult as a good marriage – it is not the easy way at all. Up here in the cold mountains there is great perspective (occasionally when the clouds shift) but the going is most certainly harder than for the folks in the valleys. This must be accepted. So the sense grasped today is that there is clear space beyond the confines of the concepts of sexual relationship, marriage and breeding.

I forgot to add a central point to the discussion on work. There is an assumption in this society that “doing” is a given and we simply need to decide what flavour of doing we will be employed in. My genuine question since the outset has always been “why?”. Maybe a childish question but I don’t see the source of the premise that we need to do. Doing is always in response to something: a need or desire in ourselves or in someone else. Without need or desire what doing is there to do? Folding that into the question of breeding produces the other flavour I missed out.

Resource Allocation

The idea was first put in my mind by a girl I lived with at college who commented on the regimented rows of houses that make up suburbia. I could see what she meant but didn’t understand. That thought has grown.

Here is the view from my window this morning as I stay with my cousin. Beautiful in one sense but completely absurd in another. Mathematically exact delineations of space everywhere. This is the beautiful part until you realise what it means – every single identical patch of land is a single human being (or genetic line i.e. family) marking out its territory. As though we were barnacles on a floating stump of wood in the ocean, is this only as far as the human race has got?

I don’t understand it yet but what has got into us that we who share a language, a conception of the world, a culture, a knowledge, we even look the same; that we can’t even work out how to live together and default to rigid absolute cut boundaries that mark out the influence of neighbours. I saw myself and my family as dysfunctional and unable to resolve conflicts and reach agreements – it seems it is a pathology that is assumed in the fabric of our very culture!

Maybe I ask too much but I' don’t accept second best. We want the best mp3 player, car, house, wife and kids, why not start with the best way of life?

Have been arguing further on the “culture of violence” on facebook. Logically it follows that man needs to put Peace before all other delineations. Thus at its limit Peace requires that we put people before even family. It makes sense intellectually: what reason have we to put our wife and children, mother and father “before” another person who is also a mother, father, wife or child. True we owe the debt to our parents – but everything is interconnected and we owe that debt really to everyone. If a friend were to repay some of my debt to my parents on my behalf and me to his on his behalf is anything the less? Maybe some egos are dented because “my” son didn’t respect “me” – my mother might think – but this is exactly the thinking that founds the culture of violence. So my mother gets resentful at a friend helping instead of me and doesn’t see the human value of that person. And so it propagates throughout the culture right up to the Nations. The hidden violence that comes from affiliations and organisations. I commented in Facebook on the absurd situation we have internationally where US senators have a mandate only to their own people and yet whose actions affect the whole world. Precisely because we are all inter- connected it is meaningless to delineate so absolutely as we do. Above all must come the value of Peace that lays over all delineations. Like the churches of old: if a man is thirsty and needs water then give him a drink before you ask who he is, what money he has, why he is there, has he a passport, is he a criminal etc. If you believe in God isn’t it Him who does the judging and we who are reminded not to judge lest we be judged ourself?

Argument went towards “Ubuntu” – that African concept of friendliness and the observation that there is a pathology in being “sociable”. I mean that in the sense that famous, popular, high profile people have something wrong with them if they seek objective measures of their sociability – like being members of groups etc. A sociable person is just friendly to the “people” they meet irrespective of what societies they have joined or belong to. In this sense, exactly, societies are actually antisocial because they exclude as well and include people (been argued before). Social delineation is actually an antisocial structure that puts a barrier between men and women that doesn’t need to exist. Looked at like this our organised modern “society” is actually the most pathological and unnatural structure of mankind. When you meet someone there are so many layers to get through before you see “them”. The job, class, sex, race, family, politics etc. All these are trivial compared with “them”.

And so returning to the picture; altho there is no easy alternative, to comprehend there is a pathology also in this exact replication of unit of living one for each person as though we saw ourselves as replicates of each other with boundaries around each other rather than the more realistic view of us all living together in an inter-connected world where we share everything from the sky above us to the air we breathe and the language we think and write about all this in.

I should use the words on this page as a metaphor for the notion of individuality, separatedness and interconnectedness. True the page can only become a page of meaning because each word is separate and occupies its own place in each sentence and on the page. It is that separatedness that enables the words to come together as a whole… and I need join the others down stairs for breakfast rather than be separated up here with these words… shall think about that more.

Testing Non-Violence

OK remembered the ultimate test of non-violence from Tour of Duty series. The pacifist doctor is faced with the classic situation where he has a chance to shoot an enemy soldier before that soldier takes his comrades life. He stumles and his friend is killed. The enemy solder is then shot anyway... what did his pacifism achieve?

A biger example just to leave no doubt of the problem. Imagine that the enemy soldier had been heading toward a village of known innocent women and children to commit a massacre. After the masacre he was going to die anyway would we shoot him to save all those lives?

Traditional wisdom is actually a bit more complex, it runs like this: those women and children have more reason to live than the solider heading toward the massacre. Why people would ask should he live given that he is going to commit such a terrible action. After the massacre that turns into the argument he has no right to live given that all those good people just died at his hands. Leaving him alive feels like an insult to all those who died. They have lost their lives while he still has his - it is basically unfair and unjust. Probably simpler in terms of property: if someone takes money from everyone it seems that he has lost his right not to have it stolen off him. We steal it back Robin Hood style and feel justified. So in convential wisdom it is not just a matter of stopping him in his tracks, it is also a second layer where his desire to commit massacre means that he forfits his right to life himself. Both these end with him being "justly" shot.

A true pacifist has a hard problem here. However now I'm a bit clearer on this idea the solution is simple.

We lay down our weapon (if we are even carrying one). This is the 1st absolute imperative of Peace. We then have no choice but to approach the gunman, unarmed with hands above head and intervene. Now chances are we will be blown away and just add another body to the body count of the massacre. The reason however that this is not a problem is that the second argument above is invalid. The women and children do not have more right to live than the gunman! It sounds odd. The point is that the gunman is wrong to be bearing arms. In some ways the pacifist is being cruel in not shooting the gunman because he is allowing him to commit an action that will ultimately hurt the gunman far more. Dying is easy it won't take more than a day at most from mortal wounds. Trying to balance a mind that has commit an atrocity is virtually impossible. How can we know happiness in a mind that has experienced the hatred of violence? It is impossible. Such a person enshrines themselves inside a dungeon of unhappiness for a very, very long time with no way out! When the pacifist takes action it is to stop this type of suffering, not the death of the women and children: after all we struggle through to keep them alive and come back in a 100years and they are all gone anyway.

What is also worth bearing in mind is that the assmption that the pacifist will be blown away is important to assume, but it probably won't happen. The reason is that sacrifice is a very, very powerful weapon. The reason is where is the point in shooting someone who has evidently accepted death and who poses no threat? We shoot because we are either afraid or we are takng revenge for another death. There is no fear in someone who has submitted their life to you, and there is no debt for death when you see that someone can give their life away so cheaply. Sacrifice destroys violence. It uttely cuts the tree down. I have seen this to some extent myself when faced with dangerous people I offer my life - it wakes them up out of their hatred.

Now Tibet seems to challenge this argument. I thought even the Dalai Lama was questioing non-violence these days. I would say his weakness (if I should be so bold as to suggest he has one) was that his first premise was "Tibet". I don't know the history of Tibet but I assume that it arose like China from conflict. The Dalai Lama has been reborn to wield the hidden swords in his nation state. This is what has fuelled the hatred from China (which also has its hidden swords) and so there is violence without end. Tibet should submit to 'China' as Hero argues, exactly as China should submit to the U.S. - it is their argument ;-) Ah we see another weakness of the Hero (Violence) argument that it is great to submit to Chin (when you are Chinese) but not for the Chinese t submit to U.S. I should have put this in the last blog for it supports my suspicion that the Hero argument only really works retrospectivel after Chin made China not before.

This is another version of sacrifice. The Chinese (if they were really without violence) should submit to the U.S. and become Americans. Why would the Americans (converted Chinese) possible be annoyed at being American? Violence is all absurd when you look at it from a few angles.

So sadly the pacifist has to reconcile the massacre of the village in his world view. Pacifists have to accept that the world is a really bad place and that violence is truly horrific and that people will do obscene things to one another in the name of hatred. This is the way of the culture of violence. We cannot take up arms to stop it, only sacrifice on the cross of non-violence along side all the other innocents and know at least that we lived and rest in Peace and didn't live and rest in Violence.

11th Hour

Watched this yesterday – wished I had seen it ages ago would have saved me thinking out a load. It shows at least that a good deal of thought does exist in the right direction it just hasn’t seen made very popular.

Interesting ideas throughout. This was quite revealing:

The annual work done by nature was roughly estimated at $35 Trillion dollars compared with $18 Trillion done by humans. The only difference was that humans did all that work in an exchange system, while Nature did it all for free! Doesn’t this more than anything else throw a grenade into the concept of “exchange value” and “price”. It is like Structuralism arguing that nothing exists “outside” language because everything has to be communicated for “proof” – so you can’t by definition “prove” that anything exists outside language. I need to get that SRH sorted out after this wedding! The same is true with the paradigm of “price” they say how could anything be valued without an exchange system? We know perfectly well that it is, just it can’t be proven – though well done to the people who did the study in attempting to cross the boundary!

Thinking aloud: the way they did it was by asking how much it would cost for mankind to generate all the services that nature currently performs like fixing sun energy in plant material, bio waste breakdown, CO2 recycling, water recycling etc. I can’t believe it would not be more myself given that every heart beat would have to be performed by a human… SRH showing its head!

So maybe a similar question works for Structuralism and the SRH? Need a break from writing…

Non-Violence

Facebook comment quoted:

The non-violence paradigm isn't to do with other people, that is the violence paradigm - for example if other people behave well then so will I, if they pick up swords so will I... non-violence means that we never pick up a sword or even think like that. If we get killed this is bad, but better die peacefully than pick up a sword ourself and make things worse - that is how wars start and the whole cycle kicks off again leading to Chin and Nation states. In any case the only reason most (all) people pick up a sword is because they are taking revenge for some hurt they feel... hurt is hardly cured by picking up a sword ourself! The non-violence paradigm has to be personal choice. If we live in a society dominated by the violence paradigm (which we do) then it makes life hard to be peaceful but to those who see that fighting really is harder it is just a sad fact that must be endured. Hopefully people will see the peaceful way and make their own choices - but not while every politician, film, newspaper and knife carrying kid worships violence.

Was thinking again about Gandhi … think i commented before on him not really being an advocate of non-violence. I think I still agree with that. It is true that he didn’t pick up a sword but he still fought and it is what he fought for which lets him down. Basically he swapped white rulers for brown rulers. Now how absurd is that! This is the let down. How can you build non-violence on something that is basically hatred based on skin colour!! If not skin colour then he was gripped by the concept of “nation” which I’ll explain is based upon violence.

The Facebook discussion began with the film “Hero”. In a nutshell Emperor Chin unified the warring states in what became an empire named China after him. As far as I can see the argument is the same as Hobbes in Leviathon that in terrible war people eventually realise that endless attrition is worthless and they settle for being ruled. The cycle seems to be here that at first people pick up swords to be free, or to avenge death (as with the assassins) but when retribution comes from other people with swords it turns messy and everyone loses. Eventually everyone sees that endless retribution is self generating and the swords become internalised and the ruler can rule without violence (the film’s conclusion).

I saw something else though. I don’t accept “China” (or any Nation) as an axiom (after discussion held in this blog). “Nation” has to be explained which is what the film tries to do (and many political philosophers have). The argument here for China is based upon the assumption that people will fight without a mutual contract to keep the peace. Exactly the same as Hobbes’ state of nature “nasty, brutish and short”. It is as though people are cellular automata and follow the same solutions as game theory predicts. I know from watching that MIT course that people working in emergent properties are using game theory (solutions to prisoners dilemma, Nash equilibria etc) to understand and predict mass behaviour (a study started by the Nazis) and to evolve a new type of warfare (the Joint Vision 2010/20 US military stimuluses). Certainly these forces exist but the idea that humans behave as mass entities simply isn’t true. However this presupposes that humans have an element of socio-pathology – I met a borderline sociopath during the week and it got me thinking. If people who are averted to social interactions are considered to have a pathology, by symmetry isn’t there another pathology which is people who cannot separate themselves from social interactions? This is hard to understand given that “self” is constructed within society “us” – but a sociopath has a self that is Socially constructed! There are two levels of society – the true level that constructs even the mind of a sociopath and the superficial level of game theory based on individuals. My argument is that violence is a process that calculated on the superficial level between “egos”. But those egos that either do co-operate and are peaceful, or do not-co-operate and fight, are constructed within Society which is Peaceful because you can’t get outside!! So why the contract? Why the game play? So what if people just chose Peace in the first place before they started fighting?

Things to clear about with True Peace however is that it cannot be “enforced” and it can’t be punished – these are within the violence paradigm. Forces enforce peace through violence, nations work by violence because as pointed out in Hero the sword is still there it is just “not in hand or heart” anymore. We just need to look at Tibet to see the violence inherent in the concept of China. Indeed anyone who speaks in the language of “nation” speaks the language of war and violence. National authorities like the police are also the language of violence. It is totally obvious when you see the activity of police and armies they are the epitome of violence – this is one of those realisations that was always there under my nose but never saw it.

So what happens when you ignore the systems of violence? Well you don’t dismantle the systems of violence that is just remaining in the paradigm of violence. You simply ignore them. If everyone ignored them the systems of control and violence would naturally collapse. Mankind would experience much greater freedom and something like Heaven on Earth. Now according to game theory chances are that many individuals would fail to understand this and would be tempted toward greed, anger, jealousy etc. In a non-violent culture they would seem rather odd and presumably the culture would have its ways of dealing with these pathologies like talking them out and seeking personal balance again. If too many people at once started on the path of violence again it would simply lead back through the warring states period and back to Chin.

What is important to understand however is that individuals don’t have to get involved. The sociopaths who make up society (small ‘s’) the ones who get involved in politics, social climbing and war, these are the ones who make and break systems of control and these are the ones who seek peace. Those who seek True Peace don’t actually “do” anything because there is no such thing as Non-Peace. How can a power attack itself through entities built from that power! This is the SRH… In contrast to the version “How can beings attack the conditions for their own power” which is possible. The only way to identify them is that they don’t see any reason to use state apparatus and see any reason ever to inflict harm. True that people who think in the violence paradigm will exploit and hurt people in the non-violence paradigm, and non-violence individuals will seem to lose out in situations that violent individuals see as conflict situations – but this is only an illusion. In conflict someone has to die and non-violent individuals accept that it will be them – the argue that it should be someone else (the reason we pick up weapons and become skilled in swordsmanship like in “Hero”) is the essence of violence and all the compromises and loss of freedom that it entails.

Violent individuals really are absurd creatures. We fight to preserve ourselves. This leads to endless war so be accept a nation state in order to survive… and then we end up having to die for the nation state when it goes to war. If violent people were prepared to die for their country why didn’t they just do this at the outset and resist the temptation to arm themselves and start the “state of nature” which lead to the creation of contracts and nations in the first place!? And if we die fighting and the nation wins we have only maintained the status quo that arose out of wanting to survive the “state of nature” – in other words we were only fighting to enforce the solution to warfare in the first place – how absurd and twisted is that!

Other absurdities of the violent paradigm are present in the film “Hero”. The most powerful man in the ancient world Chin who controlled the largest empire spent his whole life living in fear of assassins. In other words he never enjoyed the ”peace” that he was supposed to have created. As Lao Tze was to point out later opposites stick together. The more powerful you are the weaker you are. Another irony was that for all his power he could not defeat Death and even went mad taking mercury remedies speeding up his death. His violent path in life certainly is not a model for anyone! If he wanted to live unhappily and die young why didn’t he sacrifice himself for True Peace rather in the creation of a Nation which has confused the minds of people for thousands of years. In the West we have Jesus as an even more powerful individual who did exactly that and left no Nation behind. The attempt to create Christendom is the most embarrassing interpretation of non-violence yet, a sign that the Western mindset is just as stupid as the Chinese. In both cases we have excellent examples of non-violence: Christ, Buddha and Lao-Tze (true he was a civil servant) and yet no-one understands them.