Tarski indefinability theorem is very close to the SRH: the idea that metalanguages must be kept separate from languages else contradictions arise precisely when they self-reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem
And it is all to do with the power of the "not" function.
I need to know in what way metalanguages are "bigger'. This is what the +1 theorem would be, and also the sense of how the Horatio Principle or God is bigger also. All these various ideas finding meaning at last due to the great work of these men...
and I need to grasp this bit on diagonalisation full too...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_lemma
otherwise I think I'm finally in the driving seat to deal with the SRH :-)
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Godel + SRH : big step
It seems to me in symbolic logic that the whole Godel problem arises because there are two different ways of constructing a formula:
1) we may construct a formula grammatically by rules of formation (recursion), and
2) also by deduction from axioms using rules of inference.
This gives us two ways of constructing a sentence and this is the problem. We can see that a formula like:
1.0 ∀ x : x^2 >= 0 • x ∈
is a WFF in standard predicate logic and set notation (assuming I've got my grammar correct ;-) While:
2.0 x x : ^2 = x 0 ∀ > • ∈
is just nonsense in any notation that I know (tho one could create a grammar to which this conforms)
Now whether statement 1.0 could be arrived at by a sequence of transformations on axioms is another question.
BUT I answer my own question because consider:
3.0 ∀ x : x^2 >= 0 • x ∈
Statement 1.0 and 3.0 are both grammatically correct but while there is no integer which is an exception to statement 1.0 it is easy to find a complex number e.g. 3i whose square is -9 and so contradicts the statement which states that x*x >= 0 for all x. Statement 1.0 is true while 3.0 is false.
So being grammatically correct, provable and true are all different. Showing that provability and truth are separate is what Godel did. He created a true statement that was by definition not provable. It is fascinating, as I begin to take this in at last, that he has a statement which by virtue of what it says about itself fractures the rest of the system.It is reminiscent in my mind of the ontological argument for God's existence where it is argued that because God is perfect by definition, it implies that by definition he must also exist since not existing would be an imperfection. Can we really pop things (as Douglas Adams jokes in Hitchhikers) into and out of existence on the basis of logic and definition?
===
just found this blog which suggests that godel's 1st incompleteness theorem is the SRH ... but I think its not that simple
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/comment-page-2/
yes this is how not to prove the SRH... but first time I've seen an attempt to show it.
===
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/g-proof.htm
YES!! In 30mins I understand Godel's theorem much better than before!! An excellent summary of the arguments.
Notice that we "prove" that G is true by metatheoretical reasoning, not within S. This is very important to many philosophers pondering the significance of Gödel's theorem and proof. It means that Gödel did something that the system S is demonstrably incapable of doing, namely, prove that G is true. Since formal systems are isomorphic with computers, and since the deficiency proved for S is proved for all systems above a certain threshold of power, one reading of the situation is that Gödel did something that no computer above a certain threshold of power could do. If so, there is something about human intelligence that can never be attained by any computer even in principle. How justified is this reading? Knowledgeable people differ sharply on this question.
G is the statement Godel discovered which states that it is not provable. If it is false then it is provable in which case we can prove a false statement (which is called inconsistent) - this is the bit that is likened to the "this is a lie" statement. If it is true then it cannot be proven whilst being true. Truth is thus distinguished from and lies outside the system of proofs.
My understanding at the moment is not that we can establish a fixed grand division between computers and Man, or Man and God, but rather that any system cannot exist in isolation - this is the SRH. It is not as cosmicfingerprints argues that there is a particular outside-circle outside all others called 'God' but rather the God hypothesis (previously suggested) is that any system (of sufficient complexity to refer to itself) is incomplete and implies a external system... ad infinitum as in Cantors infinity of infinities.
From its very inception the idea is inspired by disbelief in the idea that we can gain a single body of knowledge that is entirely comprehensive to the extent that it explains everything about even itself. That is to say that the Aristotelian Scientific project for example will not get closer and closer to a single dogma of truth that eventually can explain even itself, casting into the flames in a vast Humian Fork all that is absolutely false. Originally it was tried in 2007 as a refutation of materialism - in that the scientific process can't be explained in materialistic terms alone. But how to do this?
The method to approach the SRH has been to examine boundaries. A self-contained system has to incorporate its own boundary. Put another way: to speak of itself it must be able to identify and describe itself which means to place a boundary around itself, but a boundary that can be constructed within itself. I don't know if there are geometries for analogy that allow this - I've seen some very odd ones. Not got very far: only to analysis of circles and boxes within boxes at this time.
Self-reference (after which the SRH was badly named) raises the issue of boundaries as well. When we refer to something we are implying that something exists. To exist implies that it must have features which distinguish it from other things. To exist it must have some boundary that separates it from things that it is not, one must then find such a thing! If we cannot find such a thing, or argue for its existence, then we cannot refer to it truthfully. If we refer to ourselves the question then is how would be identify ourselves? or how would be separate ourselves from other things? or how would be put a boundary around ourselves? This is done by name in logic. But my unresolved query is that simply using a name doesn't really amount to full reference. I may use the name of Theodore Roosevelt (as I just did) but I wouldn't be able to recognise him and I know next to nothing about him. To what extent am I referencing "him" then? A computer can use that name as well (as it just has passing it over the internet) but does this text itself really reference the man? We assume that I am referencing it (as the writer) and that I am somehow acquainted with the man. This is a very complex avenue of enquiry one I have avoided!! However the question of the scope of self-reference and whether systems can ever comprehensively and totally self-reference remains. The SRH belief is that one needs a point of perspective outside a system to create the boundary - just as one needs to enter space to see the circle of the Earth, or Archimedes needs a place to stand off the Earth in order to move the Earth. Some leverage is needed in order to operate upon oneself it seems instinctively. Indeed that is a very satisfying analogy: maybe SRH should be Self-Leverage Hypothesis (stating that it is impossible).
Another analogy I read recently in a maths book. Euclid's geometry can be shown to be consistent if we accept that Arithmetic is consistent. In general consistency can be shown for any system but only in terms of another system that it must be assumed is consistent. There is no absolute proof of consistency: it is relative. This essential is the SRH - but it aint a proof.
The SRH is essentially the opposite of Godel. Instead of showing that a metalanguage (isomorphic with the object language) can make truth statements about the object language that the object language can't, the SRH seeks to prove within the object language the existence of meta-statements that it can't prove. Or something like that: metaphorically the finger on Earth pointing at the moon. Need time for this to all sink in.
to construct a sentence which refers to an entity which can only be constructed if we step outside the system.
===
OK has some nice beer so bad time to be doing this but the pattern seems to be this any system which allows self-reference automatically allows the creation of a contradiction because it can refer to both itself and not-itself. Thus an infinite progression of ever expanding systems is yielded by analogy like the adding of G to the axioms, or each infinity implying a larger infinity... now how does Cantor do this? Is Diagonalisation the key trick?
Is there a general theory of systems that states that the better defined they become the more power they gain at defining things outside themselves... something like that this would be SRH... dream dream
The other thing is Tarski's undefinability theorem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem
A corollary is that any metalanguage capable of expressing the semantics of some object language must have expressive power exceeding that of the object language.
It seems that the semantics/syntax distinction captures the division necessary for the SRH just as the data/code distinction in computing which I first observed the SRH in. Lots of leads... will follow up 2morrow.
1) we may construct a formula grammatically by rules of formation (recursion), and
2) also by deduction from axioms using rules of inference.
This gives us two ways of constructing a sentence and this is the problem. We can see that a formula like:
1.0 ∀ x : x^2 >= 0 • x ∈
is a WFF in standard predicate logic and set notation (assuming I've got my grammar correct ;-) While:
2.0 x x : ^2 = x 0 ∀ > • ∈
is just nonsense in any notation that I know (tho one could create a grammar to which this conforms)
Now whether statement 1.0 could be arrived at by a sequence of transformations on axioms is another question.
BUT I answer my own question because consider:
3.0 ∀ x : x^2 >= 0 • x ∈
Statement 1.0 and 3.0 are both grammatically correct but while there is no integer which is an exception to statement 1.0 it is easy to find a complex number e.g. 3i whose square is -9 and so contradicts the statement which states that x*x >= 0 for all x. Statement 1.0 is true while 3.0 is false.
So being grammatically correct, provable and true are all different. Showing that provability and truth are separate is what Godel did. He created a true statement that was by definition not provable. It is fascinating, as I begin to take this in at last, that he has a statement which by virtue of what it says about itself fractures the rest of the system.It is reminiscent in my mind of the ontological argument for God's existence where it is argued that because God is perfect by definition, it implies that by definition he must also exist since not existing would be an imperfection. Can we really pop things (as Douglas Adams jokes in Hitchhikers) into and out of existence on the basis of logic and definition?
===
just found this blog which suggests that godel's 1st incompleteness theorem is the SRH ... but I think its not that simple
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/comment-page-2/
yes this is how not to prove the SRH... but first time I've seen an attempt to show it.
===
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/g-proof.htm
YES!! In 30mins I understand Godel's theorem much better than before!! An excellent summary of the arguments.
Notice that we "prove" that G is true by metatheoretical reasoning, not within S. This is very important to many philosophers pondering the significance of Gödel's theorem and proof. It means that Gödel did something that the system S is demonstrably incapable of doing, namely, prove that G is true. Since formal systems are isomorphic with computers, and since the deficiency proved for S is proved for all systems above a certain threshold of power, one reading of the situation is that Gödel did something that no computer above a certain threshold of power could do. If so, there is something about human intelligence that can never be attained by any computer even in principle. How justified is this reading? Knowledgeable people differ sharply on this question.
G is the statement Godel discovered which states that it is not provable. If it is false then it is provable in which case we can prove a false statement (which is called inconsistent) - this is the bit that is likened to the "this is a lie" statement. If it is true then it cannot be proven whilst being true. Truth is thus distinguished from and lies outside the system of proofs.
My understanding at the moment is not that we can establish a fixed grand division between computers and Man, or Man and God, but rather that any system cannot exist in isolation - this is the SRH. It is not as cosmicfingerprints argues that there is a particular outside-circle outside all others called 'God' but rather the God hypothesis (previously suggested) is that any system (of sufficient complexity to refer to itself) is incomplete and implies a external system... ad infinitum as in Cantors infinity of infinities.
From its very inception the idea is inspired by disbelief in the idea that we can gain a single body of knowledge that is entirely comprehensive to the extent that it explains everything about even itself. That is to say that the Aristotelian Scientific project for example will not get closer and closer to a single dogma of truth that eventually can explain even itself, casting into the flames in a vast Humian Fork all that is absolutely false. Originally it was tried in 2007 as a refutation of materialism - in that the scientific process can't be explained in materialistic terms alone. But how to do this?
The method to approach the SRH has been to examine boundaries. A self-contained system has to incorporate its own boundary. Put another way: to speak of itself it must be able to identify and describe itself which means to place a boundary around itself, but a boundary that can be constructed within itself. I don't know if there are geometries for analogy that allow this - I've seen some very odd ones. Not got very far: only to analysis of circles and boxes within boxes at this time.
Self-reference (after which the SRH was badly named) raises the issue of boundaries as well. When we refer to something we are implying that something exists. To exist implies that it must have features which distinguish it from other things. To exist it must have some boundary that separates it from things that it is not, one must then find such a thing! If we cannot find such a thing, or argue for its existence, then we cannot refer to it truthfully. If we refer to ourselves the question then is how would be identify ourselves? or how would be separate ourselves from other things? or how would be put a boundary around ourselves? This is done by name in logic. But my unresolved query is that simply using a name doesn't really amount to full reference. I may use the name of Theodore Roosevelt (as I just did) but I wouldn't be able to recognise him and I know next to nothing about him. To what extent am I referencing "him" then? A computer can use that name as well (as it just has passing it over the internet) but does this text itself really reference the man? We assume that I am referencing it (as the writer) and that I am somehow acquainted with the man. This is a very complex avenue of enquiry one I have avoided!! However the question of the scope of self-reference and whether systems can ever comprehensively and totally self-reference remains. The SRH belief is that one needs a point of perspective outside a system to create the boundary - just as one needs to enter space to see the circle of the Earth, or Archimedes needs a place to stand off the Earth in order to move the Earth. Some leverage is needed in order to operate upon oneself it seems instinctively. Indeed that is a very satisfying analogy: maybe SRH should be Self-Leverage Hypothesis (stating that it is impossible).
Another analogy I read recently in a maths book. Euclid's geometry can be shown to be consistent if we accept that Arithmetic is consistent. In general consistency can be shown for any system but only in terms of another system that it must be assumed is consistent. There is no absolute proof of consistency: it is relative. This essential is the SRH - but it aint a proof.
The SRH is essentially the opposite of Godel. Instead of showing that a metalanguage (isomorphic with the object language) can make truth statements about the object language that the object language can't, the SRH seeks to prove within the object language the existence of meta-statements that it can't prove. Or something like that: metaphorically the finger on Earth pointing at the moon. Need time for this to all sink in.
to construct a sentence which refers to an entity which can only be constructed if we step outside the system.
===
OK has some nice beer so bad time to be doing this but the pattern seems to be this any system which allows self-reference automatically allows the creation of a contradiction because it can refer to both itself and not-itself. Thus an infinite progression of ever expanding systems is yielded by analogy like the adding of G to the axioms, or each infinity implying a larger infinity... now how does Cantor do this? Is Diagonalisation the key trick?
Is there a general theory of systems that states that the better defined they become the more power they gain at defining things outside themselves... something like that this would be SRH... dream dream
The other thing is Tarski's undefinability theorem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem
A corollary is that any metalanguage capable of expressing the semantics of some object language must have expressive power exceeding that of the object language.
It seems that the semantics/syntax distinction captures the division necessary for the SRH just as the data/code distinction in computing which I first observed the SRH in. Lots of leads... will follow up 2morrow.
Friday, 27 August 2010
SRH
Once again I'm still trying to frame the SRH problem - it is well known and assumed by all but I can't see the core reason for it. I'll try the symbolic logic approach again...
Take a single sentence such as:
01101100011011011000110110110
Having only one state it is exactly isomorphic with itself. Given that sentence, then you have that sentence. It is not exactly insightful! Something more substantial is required to show up the process by which the self relates to the self in a way that stops the self constructing itself.
Quines are interesting in that they appear to generate themselves. You need the quine before you start of course, but given a quine it output itself. A computer program is just a bit sequence which is isomorphic with a binary number and so a number. A Quine is a program which outputs the number it is isomorphic with. So the sequence of code in a computer memory when run generates the same sequence of code in another part of computer memory. A trivial program does nothing, and another form of trivial program simply copies its own memory block somewhere else. A Quine "generates" itself without taking in any "external" data. "External" here means data that was neither present before runtime nor data that has been created since runtime. An example of a quine in ordinary language is:
"quoted and followed by itself makes a quine" quoted and followed by itself makes a quine
however what is the difference between a quine that simply copies its memory block to output and one that copies a part of its memory block to memory (the data) and then outputs it twice - once in quotes and then again without quotes?
LOOK IN DEPTH AT THE TWO METHODS I THINK THEY ARE DIFFERENT
It seems that the rules for quines arbitrarily demand that the code
OK the problem here is to define EXTERNAL then you got a blog entry!!!!
created by the program at runtime - that is all data is hard coded into the program before "runtime". "Generation" then occurs at "runtime"
This examination of Quines introduces the elements that were lacking in the first example of the number. This number has no "runtime". It does not "generate" anything. And so it has no "internal" form and "external" form.
Separating something into "internal" and "external" form i.e. to recap the state before runtime is called internal here, and the
Now the SRH occurs when something tries to "generate" "external" data. So it seems that
Take a single sentence such as:
01101100011011011000110110110
Having only one state it is exactly isomorphic with itself. Given that sentence, then you have that sentence. It is not exactly insightful! Something more substantial is required to show up the process by which the self relates to the self in a way that stops the self constructing itself.
Quines are interesting in that they appear to generate themselves. You need the quine before you start of course, but given a quine it output itself. A computer program is just a bit sequence which is isomorphic with a binary number and so a number. A Quine is a program which outputs the number it is isomorphic with. So the sequence of code in a computer memory when run generates the same sequence of code in another part of computer memory. A trivial program does nothing, and another form of trivial program simply copies its own memory block somewhere else. A Quine "generates" itself without taking in any "external" data. "External" here means data that was neither present before runtime nor data that has been created since runtime. An example of a quine in ordinary language is:
"quoted and followed by itself makes a quine" quoted and followed by itself makes a quine
however what is the difference between a quine that simply copies its memory block to output and one that copies a part of its memory block to memory (the data) and then outputs it twice - once in quotes and then again without quotes?
LOOK IN DEPTH AT THE TWO METHODS I THINK THEY ARE DIFFERENT
It seems that the rules for quines arbitrarily demand that the code
OK the problem here is to define EXTERNAL then you got a blog entry!!!!
created by the program at runtime - that is all data is hard coded into the program before "runtime". "Generation" then occurs at "runtime"
This examination of Quines introduces the elements that were lacking in the first example of the number. This number has no "runtime". It does not "generate" anything. And so it has no "internal" form and "external" form.
Separating something into "internal" and "external" form i.e. to recap the state before runtime is called internal here, and the
Now the SRH occurs when something tries to "generate" "external" data. So it seems that
Macro Stories
OK I never get down to writing any of my stories... so I'm going to do better than Borges and write them, but shall start with a full over view story and then expand each part like a fractal.
The Lamp
=======
Desert (research Jin). Wishes. Wish 1. To see where the Jin come from. Transported to Magical land. Bliss world. Second wish to find out how it works. Slave World. Third wish. The over throw of the Rich and the turning of the whole world to slave hell.
Hidden moral of story - the slave rebellion actual condemned everyone to the slave model of life - rather than the gradual evolution of everyone to the bliss model of life through technology. Allegories are obnoxious when they spell out their meaning - as in why didn't you just write a monologue on the subject - so the meaning is just the inspiration; it's not why it was written. It is a story!
The Lamp
=======
Desert (research Jin). Wishes. Wish 1. To see where the Jin come from. Transported to Magical land. Bliss world. Second wish to find out how it works. Slave World. Third wish. The over throw of the Rich and the turning of the whole world to slave hell.
Hidden moral of story - the slave rebellion actual condemned everyone to the slave model of life - rather than the gradual evolution of everyone to the bliss model of life through technology. Allegories are obnoxious when they spell out their meaning - as in why didn't you just write a monologue on the subject - so the meaning is just the inspiration; it's not why it was written. It is a story!
Lessons in Trading
Excellent repost which amounts to a comprehensive summary on trading:
http://brokermandaniel.wordpress.com/a-must-read-for-every-serious-private-investor/
It supports the lesson I had learned and forgot which is the importance of patience and the power of time to mend a crashed share price. I trade commodities not shares so it is a little bit different since the underlying commodity actually exists (if you believe the ETF copy) and so will always have future demand. Shares on the other hand can become worthless when a company folds and I comprehend the drive to research companies before investment now. Given that commodities will always experience future demand (unless underlying technology changes) it leads to the type of thinking i have gone for which is the total technical trading of charts without much concern for news. Should be bullish for all comms as China's economy grows so its a no brainer really. But it is so true that we over trade and as a result my portfolio is 30% down where as if I had retained my original trade in PHGP gold EFT in 2008 it would be 69% up!! Is that lesson learned or what!
http://brokermandaniel.wordpress.com/a-must-read-for-every-serious-private-investor/
It supports the lesson I had learned and forgot which is the importance of patience and the power of time to mend a crashed share price. I trade commodities not shares so it is a little bit different since the underlying commodity actually exists (if you believe the ETF copy) and so will always have future demand. Shares on the other hand can become worthless when a company folds and I comprehend the drive to research companies before investment now. Given that commodities will always experience future demand (unless underlying technology changes) it leads to the type of thinking i have gone for which is the total technical trading of charts without much concern for news. Should be bullish for all comms as China's economy grows so its a no brainer really. But it is so true that we over trade and as a result my portfolio is 30% down where as if I had retained my original trade in PHGP gold EFT in 2008 it would be 69% up!! Is that lesson learned or what!
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Russia 100 years ago in colour!!
Not digitally remastered but actual colour photos from Russia in 1908.
Its a trivial point but it shatters that black and white dream we culturally have of the Past. Things 100years ago, even 1,000,000 years ago were very like today. And if this is how we facsimile the past pictorally don't we do the same conceptually too?
Ref:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
Its a trivial point but it shatters that black and white dream we culturally have of the Past. Things 100years ago, even 1,000,000 years ago were very like today. And if this is how we facsimile the past pictorally don't we do the same conceptually too?
Ref:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
Chilean Miners - Extension and Self + The Halo
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100825/twl-chilean-miners-trapped-in-hell-told-4bdc673.html
I have been following this story more avidly than any story I have ever heard I think. There is something about it which captures my own very personal issue of life. Partly of course because it is my greatest fear: being unable to escape from an area, and this because of my desire to escape the obsessive thoughts of OCD by physical movement if I wish. It also captures my limited but fascinating experiences of being underground for 3 days, deep in caves at depths slightly deeper than the miners. Of course I had a means of escape but there was always the thought in my mind that - especially after the earthquke one year and the large rock movements - that a boulder would shift and block off one of the tiny passages that linked me to the surface.
Yet the body and mind do adapt and after a day underground it becomes one's home of which one becomes very fond. Hotel Tolminka was the name of one deep campsite which I still regard as one of the best "homes" I have ever had. It was here I understood that it takes just warm food in one's stomach to create the sense of home - from which I deduced the reason why a welcome meal is so important in culture.
Yet the miners have an challenge ahead of them which I have never experienced which is the climbing out of a 700m bore hole 66cm wide. This is probably the worst part of the whole thing.
The actual being "trapped" is relative, and is simply a way of thinking. As long as they have access to essentials (and can physically stay alive) then they are only trapped relative to the "outside" world. If their whole world had been the mine since they were born then there is no such thing as "trapped". This is a good example of how the mind makes the world.
An interesting line of thought then began in my mind about 30mins ago:
Another aspect of this is that whether "in" the cave or "outside" the cave they are bound by the limitations of their body. I can never get beyond my own body to "over there", I must move my body to over there - I am always stuck with this body.
Except we have influence beyond our bodies. Criminals can keep their crime empires going from behind prison walls simply by smuggling out notes. The Chilean miners with video links will be able to interact with their families in every way but physical contact and sharing simultaneous experiences like going to the park together. But even this is not 100% true: there is the feature of Extension whereby we use a fork and feel what the fork tip is doing as though our mind was at the tip of the fork and not our finger tips. A miner could use a robot to do brain surgery from inside the mine or with a 3D display projecting a computer simulation of the surface feel like he was walking about outside. This extreme Matrix type reality really shows that "where we are" is actually an "Extension" of the mind rather than an actual "entity" being somewhere... worth contemplating in depth for access to Anatta (non-self). So I was going to argue that we are trapped together with our bodies - a monks wrote that "mind" is the limit of our sense of bodily feeling - I'm not so sure about this limit to "mind" but accept the distinction. But on reflection it seems that we are not really "with" our bodies but are an Extension projected onto the body but also anything that connects with the body - even quite tenuously like "property". If a Chilean miner was to be told that his house had burned down he would feel it like it was happening to "him". This is extension of himself far outside the mine!
So this Chilean miners situation really captures, very much, the essence of the personal issues that I face in life and are questioning.
=== 29/8/10
My sister has a much more practical and down to earth take on this - and this also high lights another aspect of my approach. She was thinking that the best way to deal with this was to get the miners actively involved in their own escape. This way they have a goal to aim for and can see the gradual progress, and the process will organise them and keep them teogether both physically and mentally. "Genius" was my answer to this, and doubly so because this is exactly what the rescuers have done: lowered a drill bit so the miners can begin to do dig themselves out also. Singing, games and dividing the living space into 3 sections, both for practicality but also for a sense of order, have also been implemented; also along the lines my sister imagined. Indeed I see her point. Our mother is also particularly strong on the issue of "order" in ones life for good mental health.
This morning having let all that sink in it gave me an excellent perspective on my own approach. "Games" I have stolen from Wittgenstein as the process by which "value" and "meaning" are created. Without value or meaning people lose structure and start to fail in playing the games that constitute society: they become what is termed "mad". In our family going "mad" is a great taboo and fear especially because thyroid deficiency (which is inherited) has symptoms which make you feel insane and for which my mother spent time in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager - a truly terrible experience in the 1950s!! But it is also a taboo of the wider community: one only needs look at the way Hollywood treats madness; essentially in place of monsters; poorly understood and abjectly feared.
But for me fear of "madness" is as bad as the prison of madness itself. How many people conform simply to stay away from the fear of madness. This is quite tautological however if one understands madness as simply not playing the Game. Not playing The Game (actually an indefinitely complex fluid interaction of games involving language through to custom, mores and culture) means we step outside the relationship with other people which is constructed by The Game.
There is no doubt that for those who are or who feel mad, the way back to "normality" is to enforce a strict structure and discipline in their lives which must begin at some level to involve the playing of interpersonal games in society: language (talking), friendship, work, family etc. The more embedded in society's games the more sane one feels. This is not to say that huge upheavals in ones constitution cannot find us playing the wrong game or playing the wrong part in the game, madness essentially driving us into a new relationship with society. It is a dynamic liquid broth always simmering away. That idea in 1994 of "harmonic structuralism" which argued that there is no "right" or "wrong" absolutely but only consistency and size of structure. The larger the structure a system of rules could produce consistently the better that system of rules keeps coming back as a good idea. Saw this idea in essence in a maths book this week, it seems quite fundamental.
But my approach has been different - to seek a more substantial basis than just the swirl of ever changing social attitudes and norms. One flawed aspect of the search is to find a solid foundation for my "self" that is independent of "other" people. As a child I was fascinated by the observation that I could not see myself as "other" in the way other people could. Other people can look on me and judge me in entirety as that is "Alva". I on the other hand never seem to be able to step outside myself to look in and gain objective impartial perspective on myself. Why can't I be scientific about myself? My whole mental machinery has been constructed with this goal of being able to step outside myself to see myself unbiased as other people see me. The SRH however is the search for the proof that actually this is impossible. Buddha says that it is impossible because actually "I" am not a substantial thing anyway anymore even that "other" people are. And social sciences would point out that actually the sense I have of "other" people treating me as "Alva" is the only basis for "I" there is. "Other" people create my "I". When I spend too much time by myself I start to step outside the social games so that even a trip to the shops becomes an awkward and anxious time: you find yourself saying odd things, embarrassing gaps occur in your social machinery as you fail to execute social protocols correctly (especially in upper class parts of town) and the connection with people starts to break down: the "Other" starts to reject you and the "ego" starts to go into crisis and it slips away - alienation is death on wheels, it is esectaly the feeling of dying while alive - it is not an easy thing to approach calmly and we seek to run and hide, or to fight for our survival both of which would only make things worse. This is the spiral into "madness". I was analysing this yesterday after several nights of little sleep, admittedly with friends, but the spending of time by myself in this house sit I am doing. This current phase is ironically a direct result of the social approach I began on holiday. Society (meaning, value) is a two edged weapon - one feels secure and alive when it is working and anxious and annihilated when it fails.
So returning to the miners. The practical approach is exactly what is happening to keep the miners in good positive mental spirits, with hope, an outlet for their energies, strong social reinforcements of their existence, their living, their being someone in their work together to escape and to live together. But in my mind when they escape they are really still trapped. The other approach is not practical. It seeks instead to examine the possibility of madness to understand what it is and so overcome it directly - that way seems the only way to true freedom but it is also likely to end in destruction because we can never actually become "mad" with out hurting ourselves and those around us. Our duty is to play the social games and provide meaning and value for people, even if we seek to gain a perspective on the processes by stepping outside society.
Religion is a very powerful approach in stepping beyond society. God, Buddha or whatever we believe in lies outside society. The isolated, abandoned, failed, ill, unfortunate, unloved are all pushed to the edges of society and feel the "madness" that lies in this no man's land. Society is a very destructive creature when we lie outside it: either directly through exile, or by accident when we fall to its edges or it turns up on our shores and wages war (literally) on us. Modern society is much smarter and seeks to befriend alien societies by bringing them into the fold economically - but societies with different value and meaning, i.e. that play different games, are essentially annihilated because meaning and value depend upon a particular set of rules, and admitting relativity puts a crack right through that meaning and value. A whole socity would feel alienation and death if it ever admitted the authority of another society's rules. God however provides the rock upon which people, wherever they are in society, can build their lives. We are only ever on the outside of God's Kingdom when we fail to play by His rules, but the moment we realise we have strayed we can repent and be accepted straight back in. The other view is that we simply cannot escape the Kingdom; it is everywhere and the fallen as well as the righteous are equally within that system. This is the law of Karma that says that whatever we do we simply create seeds of the future and our suffering, alienation, and unhappiness is a product of what we have done. Even our own death only creates a new birth. The fears and joys that occur within us as we cycle around and around, up and down the karmic system are just temporary products of whatever we have created in the past. In this view I am rather unsure whether we are to work to maintain a position in society or realise that falling outside society is of no real concern. While Vedantic indian thought would never has questioned the structure of the caste system, wandering monks who live far outside worldly structures in singular worship of a gods would never have given it any thought at all. To those disciplined in religious structures of thought and living it seems the need for worldly structures is removed. But the question remains what if we have no structure (meaning or value) what so ever: is anything left. I suspect that ironically the most disciplined states of mind that exist: the various meditation states answer that question. Deep within precise structure (of meaning and value) actually lies emptiness and nothing associated with profound peace (and joy in lower states). So what the other way of the yin yang, does precise structure (i.e. the cause of meaning and value) lie within emptiness and nothing? I mean to abandon all structure and let go into the Void would actually get to the same place? Not sure about what this is saying ... need to examine more. Obvious question here tho is why not just follow the Buddha Dharma to get there rather than seek a short cut!
Beyonce - Halo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMmRL6_r24
We rejoice, we believe, we dream that we can be truly found, we turn the corner we are astounded by vistas of light, beauty and peace that have been always waiting for us where we truly belong; in the eyes of the Other we can dream, we can believe.
There is so much joy in this dream but is it true? Do we spend our lives seeking it or do some people find it? I don't know but I don't believe anymore, yet I do accept the dream as long as it is a dream: it is beautiful: song says it all.
I am beyond this dream now, but not happily yet. However the dream is true in a way because the truth does lies in the Other. My problem with Beyonce's dream is that we abandon everything at the altar of our Other and worse we do this because our Other offers us sexual satisfaction so it is a very selfish self-centred sacrifice in most cases. We are all seeking Unconditional Love but who can really give it without hoping they will get something back i.e. conditionally?
The dream also applies in this blog because would the Chilean miners care where they were if they were with their love? When we are in Love we are Found - where our Love is that is Home, the Universe has its centre in our Love, Here becomes Heaven, Everywhere I'm looking now I'm surrounded by your embrace/ Baby I can see your halo, Those walls come tumbling down because I found a way to let "You" in (and myself Out?). The prison that the miners live in is only a prison because in some way Love lies outside the walls. And, Love only means letting the Other in.
So we do by accident or design let the Other in when we form relationships for mating. But, that process of letting the walls down seems to stop as we become selfishly fixated on Our new Self and build a Family wall around that. It is like the Ego reaches this chimerical position reaching out to The Other while at the same time constructing a Self around the embrace - The Halo becomes not Heavenly but really just a version of The Self. Such a chimera will die as its two halves run in opposite directions. Each part of the beast fighting to control the Other and feeling pain at every attempt by the Other to be free. It is like a Chilean miner bringing his loved ones into the cave with him (which is where making a family is actually an unspiritual process).
Linking that with Plato of course the escape from the cave is the awakening to the True world freed from the imperfections of existence and particularity, but in this view that means escaping the Ego. This is what the adventure with My Muse was supposed to be, but in reality when sexual desire is involved I've noticed the desire to take is too great for most - we seek self-gratification as the motive for partnership with another! what a chimera!
All that said my desire to escape all this and the cave myself, or even more the elimination of the concept of cave and outer-world, has gotten me nowhere... yet. Maybe I am better off taking it step by step and seeking harmony with a single other first as a model for the general Other. Maybe Beyonce's Dream is the best door through which all of us trapped Miners can escape.
Is there madness in Love? When I met "my muse" I had no choice but madness, my friends thought I was going insane (more than usual). This is because we join an inner choir much more powerful than anything outside. Normally we are ok to sing to the song sheet of the world - but only OK it has never been satisfactory for me. The inner choir is where we feel we belong. In Love we have our own direction and destiny. Divine Madness is the same but for when God speaks to us and becomes our choir master. Kierkegaard speaks at length about this. It is odd that when in Love we never feel the madness even though we may spin far outside society. Most romantic stories plot the destruction rent by the overwhelming madness of love/desire. The film/story 'In The Realm of the Senses' is a particularly intense true story about this. So that inner desire gives us a structure and game to play that provides the divine meaning and value of love. The scene in the film Inception where everyone wakes on the plane after their shared dream adventures, reminded me exactly of that experience of looking into the eyes of a someone where love has secretly been confirmed and knowing that we adventure secretly in a world that no-one else knows about. That secret world is a large ego in which we may find meaning but which itself may detach from meaning all together. The Chilean miners likewise might not individually go mad, but rather form a society that buds off from the outside world as in Lord of the Flies or The Beach etc. A society in which there was Love that placed Home where they were and which eliminated the concept of "rescuing". This is something I realise I have been playing around with ever since "My Muse" - seeking a source of Love that evaporates the need for rescuing, salvation, freedom or escape that we look for in Beyonce's Dream. A source of Love, a Halo, that won't run away or die, that provides us protection from madness, society and ourselves.
I have been following this story more avidly than any story I have ever heard I think. There is something about it which captures my own very personal issue of life. Partly of course because it is my greatest fear: being unable to escape from an area, and this because of my desire to escape the obsessive thoughts of OCD by physical movement if I wish. It also captures my limited but fascinating experiences of being underground for 3 days, deep in caves at depths slightly deeper than the miners. Of course I had a means of escape but there was always the thought in my mind that - especially after the earthquke one year and the large rock movements - that a boulder would shift and block off one of the tiny passages that linked me to the surface.
Yet the body and mind do adapt and after a day underground it becomes one's home of which one becomes very fond. Hotel Tolminka was the name of one deep campsite which I still regard as one of the best "homes" I have ever had. It was here I understood that it takes just warm food in one's stomach to create the sense of home - from which I deduced the reason why a welcome meal is so important in culture.
Yet the miners have an challenge ahead of them which I have never experienced which is the climbing out of a 700m bore hole 66cm wide. This is probably the worst part of the whole thing.
The actual being "trapped" is relative, and is simply a way of thinking. As long as they have access to essentials (and can physically stay alive) then they are only trapped relative to the "outside" world. If their whole world had been the mine since they were born then there is no such thing as "trapped". This is a good example of how the mind makes the world.
An interesting line of thought then began in my mind about 30mins ago:
Another aspect of this is that whether "in" the cave or "outside" the cave they are bound by the limitations of their body. I can never get beyond my own body to "over there", I must move my body to over there - I am always stuck with this body.
Except we have influence beyond our bodies. Criminals can keep their crime empires going from behind prison walls simply by smuggling out notes. The Chilean miners with video links will be able to interact with their families in every way but physical contact and sharing simultaneous experiences like going to the park together. But even this is not 100% true: there is the feature of Extension whereby we use a fork and feel what the fork tip is doing as though our mind was at the tip of the fork and not our finger tips. A miner could use a robot to do brain surgery from inside the mine or with a 3D display projecting a computer simulation of the surface feel like he was walking about outside. This extreme Matrix type reality really shows that "where we are" is actually an "Extension" of the mind rather than an actual "entity" being somewhere... worth contemplating in depth for access to Anatta (non-self). So I was going to argue that we are trapped together with our bodies - a monks wrote that "mind" is the limit of our sense of bodily feeling - I'm not so sure about this limit to "mind" but accept the distinction. But on reflection it seems that we are not really "with" our bodies but are an Extension projected onto the body but also anything that connects with the body - even quite tenuously like "property". If a Chilean miner was to be told that his house had burned down he would feel it like it was happening to "him". This is extension of himself far outside the mine!
So this Chilean miners situation really captures, very much, the essence of the personal issues that I face in life and are questioning.
=== 29/8/10
My sister has a much more practical and down to earth take on this - and this also high lights another aspect of my approach. She was thinking that the best way to deal with this was to get the miners actively involved in their own escape. This way they have a goal to aim for and can see the gradual progress, and the process will organise them and keep them teogether both physically and mentally. "Genius" was my answer to this, and doubly so because this is exactly what the rescuers have done: lowered a drill bit so the miners can begin to do dig themselves out also. Singing, games and dividing the living space into 3 sections, both for practicality but also for a sense of order, have also been implemented; also along the lines my sister imagined. Indeed I see her point. Our mother is also particularly strong on the issue of "order" in ones life for good mental health.
This morning having let all that sink in it gave me an excellent perspective on my own approach. "Games" I have stolen from Wittgenstein as the process by which "value" and "meaning" are created. Without value or meaning people lose structure and start to fail in playing the games that constitute society: they become what is termed "mad". In our family going "mad" is a great taboo and fear especially because thyroid deficiency (which is inherited) has symptoms which make you feel insane and for which my mother spent time in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager - a truly terrible experience in the 1950s!! But it is also a taboo of the wider community: one only needs look at the way Hollywood treats madness; essentially in place of monsters; poorly understood and abjectly feared.
But for me fear of "madness" is as bad as the prison of madness itself. How many people conform simply to stay away from the fear of madness. This is quite tautological however if one understands madness as simply not playing the Game. Not playing The Game (actually an indefinitely complex fluid interaction of games involving language through to custom, mores and culture) means we step outside the relationship with other people which is constructed by The Game.
There is no doubt that for those who are or who feel mad, the way back to "normality" is to enforce a strict structure and discipline in their lives which must begin at some level to involve the playing of interpersonal games in society: language (talking), friendship, work, family etc. The more embedded in society's games the more sane one feels. This is not to say that huge upheavals in ones constitution cannot find us playing the wrong game or playing the wrong part in the game, madness essentially driving us into a new relationship with society. It is a dynamic liquid broth always simmering away. That idea in 1994 of "harmonic structuralism" which argued that there is no "right" or "wrong" absolutely but only consistency and size of structure. The larger the structure a system of rules could produce consistently the better that system of rules keeps coming back as a good idea. Saw this idea in essence in a maths book this week, it seems quite fundamental.
But my approach has been different - to seek a more substantial basis than just the swirl of ever changing social attitudes and norms. One flawed aspect of the search is to find a solid foundation for my "self" that is independent of "other" people. As a child I was fascinated by the observation that I could not see myself as "other" in the way other people could. Other people can look on me and judge me in entirety as that is "Alva". I on the other hand never seem to be able to step outside myself to look in and gain objective impartial perspective on myself. Why can't I be scientific about myself? My whole mental machinery has been constructed with this goal of being able to step outside myself to see myself unbiased as other people see me. The SRH however is the search for the proof that actually this is impossible. Buddha says that it is impossible because actually "I" am not a substantial thing anyway anymore even that "other" people are. And social sciences would point out that actually the sense I have of "other" people treating me as "Alva" is the only basis for "I" there is. "Other" people create my "I". When I spend too much time by myself I start to step outside the social games so that even a trip to the shops becomes an awkward and anxious time: you find yourself saying odd things, embarrassing gaps occur in your social machinery as you fail to execute social protocols correctly (especially in upper class parts of town) and the connection with people starts to break down: the "Other" starts to reject you and the "ego" starts to go into crisis and it slips away - alienation is death on wheels, it is esectaly the feeling of dying while alive - it is not an easy thing to approach calmly and we seek to run and hide, or to fight for our survival both of which would only make things worse. This is the spiral into "madness". I was analysing this yesterday after several nights of little sleep, admittedly with friends, but the spending of time by myself in this house sit I am doing. This current phase is ironically a direct result of the social approach I began on holiday. Society (meaning, value) is a two edged weapon - one feels secure and alive when it is working and anxious and annihilated when it fails.
So returning to the miners. The practical approach is exactly what is happening to keep the miners in good positive mental spirits, with hope, an outlet for their energies, strong social reinforcements of their existence, their living, their being someone in their work together to escape and to live together. But in my mind when they escape they are really still trapped. The other approach is not practical. It seeks instead to examine the possibility of madness to understand what it is and so overcome it directly - that way seems the only way to true freedom but it is also likely to end in destruction because we can never actually become "mad" with out hurting ourselves and those around us. Our duty is to play the social games and provide meaning and value for people, even if we seek to gain a perspective on the processes by stepping outside society.
Religion is a very powerful approach in stepping beyond society. God, Buddha or whatever we believe in lies outside society. The isolated, abandoned, failed, ill, unfortunate, unloved are all pushed to the edges of society and feel the "madness" that lies in this no man's land. Society is a very destructive creature when we lie outside it: either directly through exile, or by accident when we fall to its edges or it turns up on our shores and wages war (literally) on us. Modern society is much smarter and seeks to befriend alien societies by bringing them into the fold economically - but societies with different value and meaning, i.e. that play different games, are essentially annihilated because meaning and value depend upon a particular set of rules, and admitting relativity puts a crack right through that meaning and value. A whole socity would feel alienation and death if it ever admitted the authority of another society's rules. God however provides the rock upon which people, wherever they are in society, can build their lives. We are only ever on the outside of God's Kingdom when we fail to play by His rules, but the moment we realise we have strayed we can repent and be accepted straight back in. The other view is that we simply cannot escape the Kingdom; it is everywhere and the fallen as well as the righteous are equally within that system. This is the law of Karma that says that whatever we do we simply create seeds of the future and our suffering, alienation, and unhappiness is a product of what we have done. Even our own death only creates a new birth. The fears and joys that occur within us as we cycle around and around, up and down the karmic system are just temporary products of whatever we have created in the past. In this view I am rather unsure whether we are to work to maintain a position in society or realise that falling outside society is of no real concern. While Vedantic indian thought would never has questioned the structure of the caste system, wandering monks who live far outside worldly structures in singular worship of a gods would never have given it any thought at all. To those disciplined in religious structures of thought and living it seems the need for worldly structures is removed. But the question remains what if we have no structure (meaning or value) what so ever: is anything left. I suspect that ironically the most disciplined states of mind that exist: the various meditation states answer that question. Deep within precise structure (of meaning and value) actually lies emptiness and nothing associated with profound peace (and joy in lower states). So what the other way of the yin yang, does precise structure (i.e. the cause of meaning and value) lie within emptiness and nothing? I mean to abandon all structure and let go into the Void would actually get to the same place? Not sure about what this is saying ... need to examine more. Obvious question here tho is why not just follow the Buddha Dharma to get there rather than seek a short cut!
Beyonce - Halo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMmRL6_r24
We rejoice, we believe, we dream that we can be truly found, we turn the corner we are astounded by vistas of light, beauty and peace that have been always waiting for us where we truly belong; in the eyes of the Other we can dream, we can believe.
There is so much joy in this dream but is it true? Do we spend our lives seeking it or do some people find it? I don't know but I don't believe anymore, yet I do accept the dream as long as it is a dream: it is beautiful: song says it all.
I am beyond this dream now, but not happily yet. However the dream is true in a way because the truth does lies in the Other. My problem with Beyonce's dream is that we abandon everything at the altar of our Other and worse we do this because our Other offers us sexual satisfaction so it is a very selfish self-centred sacrifice in most cases. We are all seeking Unconditional Love but who can really give it without hoping they will get something back i.e. conditionally?
The dream also applies in this blog because would the Chilean miners care where they were if they were with their love? When we are in Love we are Found - where our Love is that is Home, the Universe has its centre in our Love, Here becomes Heaven, Everywhere I'm looking now I'm surrounded by your embrace/ Baby I can see your halo, Those walls come tumbling down because I found a way to let "You" in (and myself Out?). The prison that the miners live in is only a prison because in some way Love lies outside the walls. And, Love only means letting the Other in.
So we do by accident or design let the Other in when we form relationships for mating. But, that process of letting the walls down seems to stop as we become selfishly fixated on Our new Self and build a Family wall around that. It is like the Ego reaches this chimerical position reaching out to The Other while at the same time constructing a Self around the embrace - The Halo becomes not Heavenly but really just a version of The Self. Such a chimera will die as its two halves run in opposite directions. Each part of the beast fighting to control the Other and feeling pain at every attempt by the Other to be free. It is like a Chilean miner bringing his loved ones into the cave with him (which is where making a family is actually an unspiritual process).
Linking that with Plato of course the escape from the cave is the awakening to the True world freed from the imperfections of existence and particularity, but in this view that means escaping the Ego. This is what the adventure with My Muse was supposed to be, but in reality when sexual desire is involved I've noticed the desire to take is too great for most - we seek self-gratification as the motive for partnership with another! what a chimera!
All that said my desire to escape all this and the cave myself, or even more the elimination of the concept of cave and outer-world, has gotten me nowhere... yet. Maybe I am better off taking it step by step and seeking harmony with a single other first as a model for the general Other. Maybe Beyonce's Dream is the best door through which all of us trapped Miners can escape.
Is there madness in Love? When I met "my muse" I had no choice but madness, my friends thought I was going insane (more than usual). This is because we join an inner choir much more powerful than anything outside. Normally we are ok to sing to the song sheet of the world - but only OK it has never been satisfactory for me. The inner choir is where we feel we belong. In Love we have our own direction and destiny. Divine Madness is the same but for when God speaks to us and becomes our choir master. Kierkegaard speaks at length about this. It is odd that when in Love we never feel the madness even though we may spin far outside society. Most romantic stories plot the destruction rent by the overwhelming madness of love/desire. The film/story 'In The Realm of the Senses' is a particularly intense true story about this. So that inner desire gives us a structure and game to play that provides the divine meaning and value of love. The scene in the film Inception where everyone wakes on the plane after their shared dream adventures, reminded me exactly of that experience of looking into the eyes of a someone where love has secretly been confirmed and knowing that we adventure secretly in a world that no-one else knows about. That secret world is a large ego in which we may find meaning but which itself may detach from meaning all together. The Chilean miners likewise might not individually go mad, but rather form a society that buds off from the outside world as in Lord of the Flies or The Beach etc. A society in which there was Love that placed Home where they were and which eliminated the concept of "rescuing". This is something I realise I have been playing around with ever since "My Muse" - seeking a source of Love that evaporates the need for rescuing, salvation, freedom or escape that we look for in Beyonce's Dream. A source of Love, a Halo, that won't run away or die, that provides us protection from madness, society and ourselves.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
An earner
Was walking at dusk in Reading watching the cow herd settling down for the night on the flood plain when a man scurried around the corner, like a wild eddy of wind scruffling leaves, his head low as a bull ploughing through difficulties, his purpose earnest. He gathers a chain from the ground and pulls his bike around to mount it and cycle past. As he passes he stops with the words "you wanna do an earner?". I have no idea what this means and queried him. He looked solidly at me, the eddy stopped for a second studying me in the darkness. His hair was wild and wind blown, his eyes small but eager, dark as the night; Dickensian. He saw what he needed and the whirlwind started up again, he turned to mount his bike again with the dismissive words, "You don't do earners do you". "What are earners?" I asked again. "Thieving" came back the faded reply from the darkness.
Was fascinated by the world that I was briefly revealed. This Dickensian world of thieves sneaking around after dark still exists, it is not all guns and bank robberies as the movies would make us believe and the people who do it really are a different species of people, not with a grudge against the world, but simply living in a different niche. There was no fear or malice in this man's demeanour this was just what he did. It was also interesting how thieving was understood as they way to make money "an earner". This is such a far cry from Adam Smith and the view that wealth is created by labour... but then I suppose the physical reappropriation of goods from ones property to another creates a lot of wealth. There is the exchange value of stolen goods. The salaries of the crime prevention system, police, judges, the lock smiths etc. There is the insurance industry. There is a lot of money changing hands due to this man's "labour". This highlights how markets are not intelligent. It is crime which is ironically the main lynch pin of the establishment as the reason the establishment most often gives to justify itself is the fear that crime would increase without it... maybe only because the crime that the establishment commits like rent isn't called crime!
Was reading recently that Adam Smith only envisaged his economic system working within a legal system and amongst moral agents. He never saw the markets as creators of morality or I will add rationality. So it seems that the "invisible hand of the markets" is not so invisible at all but is actually the presumed intelligence, morality and rationality of the agents who make up the market. Once there is no sense but personal gain then what is wrong with thieving? it is actually very good for the economy, for people's livelihoods, for GDP and growth!
Adam Smiths argument, as is so often the case, ends with what is presumes - rational agents. The markets are only rational if the people who make them up are rational. The market doesn't actually do anything - it is another modern smoke screen to avoid the truth! Good people make good economies and bad people make bad economies - it's as simple as that. It is not the economy itself which makes any difference. Well that is my conjecture here. So why has UK done so well and Argentina for example done so badly? Can it really be down to the people, the customs and culture? Shall consider.
Was fascinated by the world that I was briefly revealed. This Dickensian world of thieves sneaking around after dark still exists, it is not all guns and bank robberies as the movies would make us believe and the people who do it really are a different species of people, not with a grudge against the world, but simply living in a different niche. There was no fear or malice in this man's demeanour this was just what he did. It was also interesting how thieving was understood as they way to make money "an earner". This is such a far cry from Adam Smith and the view that wealth is created by labour... but then I suppose the physical reappropriation of goods from ones property to another creates a lot of wealth. There is the exchange value of stolen goods. The salaries of the crime prevention system, police, judges, the lock smiths etc. There is the insurance industry. There is a lot of money changing hands due to this man's "labour". This highlights how markets are not intelligent. It is crime which is ironically the main lynch pin of the establishment as the reason the establishment most often gives to justify itself is the fear that crime would increase without it... maybe only because the crime that the establishment commits like rent isn't called crime!
Was reading recently that Adam Smith only envisaged his economic system working within a legal system and amongst moral agents. He never saw the markets as creators of morality or I will add rationality. So it seems that the "invisible hand of the markets" is not so invisible at all but is actually the presumed intelligence, morality and rationality of the agents who make up the market. Once there is no sense but personal gain then what is wrong with thieving? it is actually very good for the economy, for people's livelihoods, for GDP and growth!
Adam Smiths argument, as is so often the case, ends with what is presumes - rational agents. The markets are only rational if the people who make them up are rational. The market doesn't actually do anything - it is another modern smoke screen to avoid the truth! Good people make good economies and bad people make bad economies - it's as simple as that. It is not the economy itself which makes any difference. Well that is my conjecture here. So why has UK done so well and Argentina for example done so badly? Can it really be down to the people, the customs and culture? Shall consider.
Monday, 23 August 2010
What is the nature of Labour?
In my incredible hectic lifestyle I had the task today of clearing up my cousins garage for a tenant. I did a good job I think shrinking the whole garage down to a third and creating a lot of neat space, well delineated for the tenant. I even swept the floor.
This I did without any payment at all and yet it never crossed my mind to get a reward for the job. The point was that the tenant needs some space to store bikes and so I have made some space to store bikes. Really jobs are no more complex than this. So why do they get so complex?
The standard argument is "cheats". I may end up doing a lot of work and some people may do no work and just enjoy the fruits of my labour. In a way does this really matter? It may matter if I did a lot of work and saw none of the fruits - this might even jeopardise my life. But apart from extremes it doesn't really matter. I think the real complexities lie elsewhere.
The garage is in Richmond, which is where I am staying at the moment. A job like clearing out a garage I felt is rather "beneath" me in a place like this. My cousin has a house cleaner and a gardener; this is more their type of activity - I am related to the capitalist class. Now the cleaner and gardener get a good rate of pay so in one sense I am even lower than them in that I don't get a reward. But in my way of thinking, working in exchange for things lacks any grace and amounts to being bought. Only the free individual works without pay because they haven't been bought by the capitalists. They work entirely for the sake of the job they do and nothing more or less. If the job isn't worth doing, then no amount of money can buy that job. This is my own take on freedom and higher class, but maybe that is just me.
I have seen this idea of "that job is beneath" me in the work place. The normal argument is that a skilled worker wastes his time doing a menial task that could be done by anyone and removes him from the task that only he can perform. This is entirely true, but few jobs are so time consuming that there is no time to shoulder menial tasks and the real point is that there is an enormous difference in not doing a menial task because you don't have time to do it, and not doing it because it is "beneath" you. It is this latter sense which makes work much more complex.
Working in the garage today was what I call work. It feels natural and makes one happy to do it. There is a direct and simple relationship between the worker and the task. I was given my instructions by my cousin, I understood what was required and have done what was required as best I understood it so that after the work the situation is better suited to peoples' needs than before. This is the true and proper nature of work. There is simply no concept of reward in the proper understanding of labour. There is only the state of people before and after.
It may be that because it is my cousin who I have always known that there is a secure reward. But I know there isn't. I have helped by cousin before and reward is never an issue. I certainly don't know the tenant or get any of the rent. This argument doesn't work. Working for a complete stranger shouldn't be any different. The reason for the work is simply that things will be better after it is done. What more reason to do something than that it will make things better? Isn't money a bastard version of this because with money we think we can make our life better - but really it was the work that we (and others) did that made things better - the money doesn't actually "do" anything. This would be yet another of my criticisms of capitalism that the quality of work will always decline because people work for money not the goods, and goods are created for profit not for their own value. It is a form of inflation as what we can buy with our money becomes progressively less valuable. In medieval times we could buy highly skilled carpentry, now we spend our money down Ikea.
So in a very simple way today I felt what labour really is and allowing myself to do this really shows up what is wrong with the system of labour that we have adopted. It goes so deep into the mess of economic thinking that we have that to see the truth really does requiring throwing away everything that has been thought on the subject in 3 or 4 centuries if not more.
Just adding some more. The proper mode of labour is actually "giving". When we work we give something. How may people who have negotiated a good salary consider what they are doing as giving? If we didn't give something how is there anything to buy! When we buy something we are accepting what someone else has made for us. This is the supply led economy and it is something that we have forgotten about in this Keynesian climate of demand led - the climate that has informed the massive government stimulus' of late which have sort to encourage people to spend and therefore hopefully encourage people to work. In actual fact (in this analysis here) this is exactly the wrong way around. It is human giving which drives the economy: this is the nature of work. The economists Veblen even goes so far as to say that capitalist economics is designed to limit the amount of giving the proletariat can do so that Capitalists can control the flow of goods and so maintain power. I didn't accept this when I first read it but now think it is a better examination of Capitalism than the view that Capitalism stimulates productivity. Humans give - that is what we do.
Now this is not new the very same thing exists in much, much older texts. Both the Bible and Bhagavad Gita remind us that we did not make ourselves and so we can't own what we do. In the terms of these books God owns what we do and what we do we do for God. What we do is a gift already because it never came from us in the first place! This is why when we work we give and anything else doesn't make sense. Another important thing in ancient books is the error of usury and lending at interest. As I understand it this is the single biggest cause of poverty in the world and also the biggest break on the economic development of people and countries in debt. A far cry from the dogma that lending leads to economic growth!
Thinking further this comes as no suprise. The vast amount of work done on this planet is actually done as "gift" already. Economy has only managed to suck up into the trade system a tiny amount of very specialised work. Parents for example who provide one of the most important services do so without reward. It is true that people used to have children to look after them in old age - but only after they themselves had already looked after their own parents, whether this is a reward or a basic necessity of getting old is open to debate. Then there are all the social interactions from giving a mate a car lift, to lending a friend some money. It is only mass produced traded goods that show up in GDP which is only a special type of "work" and one that I am saying has been divorced from its true nature.
===CONTRADICTION
1.0 I make the point that the modern economic system creates a situation where people work for things that are made by machines ... in other words they labouring for something that is made automatically, or which is surplus through efficiency.
2.0 Yet here I make the point that labour in its pure nature operates without reflection on reward... the labour and what it creates is the purpose of that labour.
3.0 OK not a contradiction... the point then is that true labour does not claim the fruit for itself. It does of course pay especial attention to the fruit of the labour to ensure it is the right fruit and a good fruit for purpose, but that purpose is a general interconnected one that may include the self but does not seek exclusive detached rights over the labour. It is this thinking of cutting the world into isolated organs and units, hours of work and individual rewards which misses the point of labour, people and the world.
This I did without any payment at all and yet it never crossed my mind to get a reward for the job. The point was that the tenant needs some space to store bikes and so I have made some space to store bikes. Really jobs are no more complex than this. So why do they get so complex?
The standard argument is "cheats". I may end up doing a lot of work and some people may do no work and just enjoy the fruits of my labour. In a way does this really matter? It may matter if I did a lot of work and saw none of the fruits - this might even jeopardise my life. But apart from extremes it doesn't really matter. I think the real complexities lie elsewhere.
The garage is in Richmond, which is where I am staying at the moment. A job like clearing out a garage I felt is rather "beneath" me in a place like this. My cousin has a house cleaner and a gardener; this is more their type of activity - I am related to the capitalist class. Now the cleaner and gardener get a good rate of pay so in one sense I am even lower than them in that I don't get a reward. But in my way of thinking, working in exchange for things lacks any grace and amounts to being bought. Only the free individual works without pay because they haven't been bought by the capitalists. They work entirely for the sake of the job they do and nothing more or less. If the job isn't worth doing, then no amount of money can buy that job. This is my own take on freedom and higher class, but maybe that is just me.
I have seen this idea of "that job is beneath" me in the work place. The normal argument is that a skilled worker wastes his time doing a menial task that could be done by anyone and removes him from the task that only he can perform. This is entirely true, but few jobs are so time consuming that there is no time to shoulder menial tasks and the real point is that there is an enormous difference in not doing a menial task because you don't have time to do it, and not doing it because it is "beneath" you. It is this latter sense which makes work much more complex.
Working in the garage today was what I call work. It feels natural and makes one happy to do it. There is a direct and simple relationship between the worker and the task. I was given my instructions by my cousin, I understood what was required and have done what was required as best I understood it so that after the work the situation is better suited to peoples' needs than before. This is the true and proper nature of work. There is simply no concept of reward in the proper understanding of labour. There is only the state of people before and after.
It may be that because it is my cousin who I have always known that there is a secure reward. But I know there isn't. I have helped by cousin before and reward is never an issue. I certainly don't know the tenant or get any of the rent. This argument doesn't work. Working for a complete stranger shouldn't be any different. The reason for the work is simply that things will be better after it is done. What more reason to do something than that it will make things better? Isn't money a bastard version of this because with money we think we can make our life better - but really it was the work that we (and others) did that made things better - the money doesn't actually "do" anything. This would be yet another of my criticisms of capitalism that the quality of work will always decline because people work for money not the goods, and goods are created for profit not for their own value. It is a form of inflation as what we can buy with our money becomes progressively less valuable. In medieval times we could buy highly skilled carpentry, now we spend our money down Ikea.
So in a very simple way today I felt what labour really is and allowing myself to do this really shows up what is wrong with the system of labour that we have adopted. It goes so deep into the mess of economic thinking that we have that to see the truth really does requiring throwing away everything that has been thought on the subject in 3 or 4 centuries if not more.
Just adding some more. The proper mode of labour is actually "giving". When we work we give something. How may people who have negotiated a good salary consider what they are doing as giving? If we didn't give something how is there anything to buy! When we buy something we are accepting what someone else has made for us. This is the supply led economy and it is something that we have forgotten about in this Keynesian climate of demand led - the climate that has informed the massive government stimulus' of late which have sort to encourage people to spend and therefore hopefully encourage people to work. In actual fact (in this analysis here) this is exactly the wrong way around. It is human giving which drives the economy: this is the nature of work. The economists Veblen even goes so far as to say that capitalist economics is designed to limit the amount of giving the proletariat can do so that Capitalists can control the flow of goods and so maintain power. I didn't accept this when I first read it but now think it is a better examination of Capitalism than the view that Capitalism stimulates productivity. Humans give - that is what we do.
Now this is not new the very same thing exists in much, much older texts. Both the Bible and Bhagavad Gita remind us that we did not make ourselves and so we can't own what we do. In the terms of these books God owns what we do and what we do we do for God. What we do is a gift already because it never came from us in the first place! This is why when we work we give and anything else doesn't make sense. Another important thing in ancient books is the error of usury and lending at interest. As I understand it this is the single biggest cause of poverty in the world and also the biggest break on the economic development of people and countries in debt. A far cry from the dogma that lending leads to economic growth!
Thinking further this comes as no suprise. The vast amount of work done on this planet is actually done as "gift" already. Economy has only managed to suck up into the trade system a tiny amount of very specialised work. Parents for example who provide one of the most important services do so without reward. It is true that people used to have children to look after them in old age - but only after they themselves had already looked after their own parents, whether this is a reward or a basic necessity of getting old is open to debate. Then there are all the social interactions from giving a mate a car lift, to lending a friend some money. It is only mass produced traded goods that show up in GDP which is only a special type of "work" and one that I am saying has been divorced from its true nature.
===CONTRADICTION
1.0 I make the point that the modern economic system creates a situation where people work for things that are made by machines ... in other words they labouring for something that is made automatically, or which is surplus through efficiency.
2.0 Yet here I make the point that labour in its pure nature operates without reflection on reward... the labour and what it creates is the purpose of that labour.
3.0 OK not a contradiction... the point then is that true labour does not claim the fruit for itself. It does of course pay especial attention to the fruit of the labour to ensure it is the right fruit and a good fruit for purpose, but that purpose is a general interconnected one that may include the self but does not seek exclusive detached rights over the labour. It is this thinking of cutting the world into isolated organs and units, hours of work and individual rewards which misses the point of labour, people and the world.
On the search so far...
A central search in this blog feels like it may be reaching its conclusion...
Just watching Michael Wood and Seamus Healey talking about Beowulf I am gripped by the fundamental elements of all narratives that i seem to be hell bend on subverting...
The Hero undergoes trials both physical and spiritual that are driven by the need to win; even if this is the destiny of the hero, failure is not an option; becoming the very best we may be is the struggle and the destiny of the hero.
This is in absolute contrast to my own direction of approach for the last few years. What I have been gripped by is the relative and temporary nature of everything. We may indeed win but it is only until next time. We may indeed conquer, build and acquire but it is only until it is lost. Furthermore that which is lost can not remain so forever it will of its own accord become found. There is also the awareness of dialectic that a hero can only be so at the expense of a foe. There can only be triumph at the destruction of adversity, which is great as long as you do not seek to gain from another adversity. As a friend always points out death is good business for undertakers, and I will add, until it strikes at home.
The instinctive narratives we feel the logic of innately only ever seem good in the telling of half the story. The tragic nation of Grendels who are outcast from human society and even the patronage of God; we don't hear their story. As Kierkegaard notes about all love stories we only hear of the conquest, we never have to endure the years of the tale that lie idle in port afterwards [my metaphor].
And so I have been drawn in stages to the ideal of Peace where all narratives stop without want of more or echo of the past; the silence between the words of the bard; that satisfaction that looks neither forward nor gloats upon what lies behind. The death that we can enjoy as the living. This is the true heroic death in this view. Not the ecstatic death of the fallen in hectic and bloody battle, nor the noble death of those burned upon the funeral pyre of past achievements, but simply the death of those who strive no longer for tractable evidence of ones own virtue or existence in this world.
But let me now that I have pursued this line for a few years consider Nietzsche and the alternative views again.
The Nietzschian argument against my view is that this is exactly the view that the Lords would wish... or at least a variation on that view. The Lords want a passive people who are hard working without complaint, who even eschew the liberties and indulgencies of the powerful. The Lord, so argues Nietzsche, of these lower people turns people away from worldly pleasures in favour of a dream of afterlife, even accepts death without struggle, offering up taxes to the Lords without complaint (give unto Caesar what is Caesar's etc). This is coincidentally exactly the mind set that a class system needs so that the Lords can rule. Christianity et al. are simply the products of the slave minds and the True way of man lies in the behaviours of the Lords - almost diametrically opposite to the slave mind. Thus fighting, posturing, indulgence, egoism, wealth, flamboyance, opulence, ostentatiousness, indulgence etc etc are the real free mode of human life from which the slave class have simply gained their code by negation.
There is some truth - but my view of Peace seems at odds even with Nietzsche and Christ because I don't accept taxes, ownership nor even labour in any fundamental sense. Certainly I accept them as they actual do exist, and have a long history and there is no sense that they will ever change - but i don't accept any argument based upon them. They are unfortunate symptoms of misunderstanding much deeper realities and truths it seems to me... (hence my search.). A ruling class I simply don't accept. They may believe they are a ruling class but they are not really ruling in any demontsrable way other than they can pay enough people to kill dissenters - it is that simple law of nature which is what ruling means... everything else - all this talk of Magna Carter and law etc is a thin paper facade over the fundamental law that the strongest can do what they want. It was because the King ran out of money that he was ever brought to bear; if he ever gained the money again I'm sure he would rip that piece of paper up. Problem is History is not a Markov chain and the Future cannot escape the thin windy mountain path of the Past.
But again that said I disagree with the program The Medieval Mind. Professor Robert Bartlett, undoubtedly bound by the need to make exciting TV, seems to me to force the Medieval period into a rather stereotypical mold - that of a brutal and impoverished time of oppression, plagues and torture chambers ('get Medieval on yer ass' from Pulp Fiction). Yet the small amount of reading I did on work in the medieval period (for my book 'Work on Work' which seems ever further from completion - it's a huge project) threw up a completely different view of certainly the existence of bad land lords but a complex land system with itinerant workers benefiting and wanting to work within the confines of a Manor where they had higher wages and access to justice, and the tenants themselves varying from those paying high rents to completely free holders. The idea at the the start of the program that we should be shocked at the prices put on people is a joke to me. Killing a noble man demanded 6 times the compensation payment to killing a serf - I remember the police didn't even want to investigate the Ipswich murders of prostitutes until it became a press story. A homeless person get murdered and a doctor gets murdered - is the police interest and legal fees really going to be the same? An Indian get killed abroad and an American gets killed abroad do they really get the same response? And more of a joke does a cleaners really sell their time (and working life) at the same rate as a doctor? Is the life of a cleaner really equal to that of a doctor since 25% of it is going to be spent at a 20th of the rate. If anything inequality is worse now than in the Medieval period. The difference it seems to me, which plasters over the cracks well, is that people are not dying in the street (in UK) anymore because of the invention of oil driven machines and a vast global surplus of food - not the economics, politics, legal system or wisdom of ruling class - as we are daily told is the cause of our prosperity. I am suspicious of the daily avoidance of the link between cheap oil and global food. It seems more and more that things are going well and the ruling classes simply take the credit for things they have no interest in understanding. Of course when things go badly we can be sure they will quickly side step any involvement. Reading 'Mice and Men' (and 'Grapes of Wrath' by association) for GCSE revision also highlights that things certainly hadn't improved, probably even got worse, almost a 1000 years later - in America of all places: the land that was supposed to be the model for the rest of the world.
The one thing that I must uncover is more about the Saxon and Celtic land systems that preceded the Norman and Roman invasions respectively. Attitudes even amongst the experts seems to sway between extremes so it is any ones guess what life really was like for the ordinary people in any century in the past. Were Celts peaceful or violent warriors? If they were violent warriors it seems odd that they were completely annihilated by the Saxons. But even the Nordic people it seems to me had very just and noble kings, and systemic hardship doesn't seem to have been the way of things. A book I had time to read only a page of spoke of the noble kings of India in a time when Rulers felt strongly the duty of leadership - very much the spirit of nobility that I sense in the Saxons. It is the spirit of nobility (the arya) that I believe got passed down generations. My mother (brought up in the Mansion house in Ashbourne) with Holland and Sadler grandparents is my only testament to the spirit of arya - but from her the strength of duty and social obligation is unquestionably the main driving force of the gentry. Of course the gentry are human and have failing, but these failing have become the exceptions that the bourgeois revolution have capitalised (irony ;-) upon - in my developing view anyway. You simply cannot expect someone who was brought up to be concerned about a livelihood and a trade to suddenly take on social responsibilities - it simply doesn't make sense. It makes even less sense to me to have private individuals who are motivated by the accumulation of private wealth, power and influence to suddenly switch to a magnanimous outward social perspective. Not impossible, but made all the harder by their up bringing. Kings born of kings it seems to me are the best suited to politics and power. It is a logical point, I need read and understand a whole lot more history to substantiate that point. I also mean History that lies outside the tiny confines of the Western Dogma which is the interpretation of the UK period from 1066 to present that has been hijacked by the apologists for the current liberal, democratic, free market system. I feel even the experts are hopelessly seduced by the narrative of power evolution between church, monarch and people. Or is it that any other view at this point in unfashionable. There is a sense of this narrative being an opium to the masses to make them feel that they are in power. My own view is that in reality nothing ever changes (relatively). Obviously we can fly around the globe now which gives UK people the option of a weekend break in the tropics which they never had even 20 years ago, but relatively this "new experience" must rank distant second to the possibility of picking up a book when printing first made texts available to the masses. The "technology and form" may change but the "experience of the people" (which is what we are interested in when we compare human lives) I am saying doesn't. It's an almost impossible hypothesis to prove, but so is the current dogma that things are getting better, or the negation that things are getting worse. Remember that for most of Christian History the view was that things were getting further way from God's initial "good" creation and so worse, the renaissance Humanists simply turned that on its head - naively, egotistically and pointless I reckon. What if there is no change at all and we just live with what we have got? and that links to the point on Peace.
Returning to the concept of Gentleman professor Robert Bartlett takes the John Ball line that the one cannot be born into a way of life - that we are all free to pursue our own course in life: freedom to exercise one's destiny being critical. But this isn't the medieval mind but the birth of the modern mind. Only the modern mind reels at this thought, and I think equally erroneously. We are very much born into ways of life - language, parents, wealth. These are things I cannot really change. I may indeed become poor through choice (I have to some extent), and I could change my language and even my parents and even my race and sex by plastic surgery but it is a lot of work just to alter what you were "given". Consider also how many doctors have doctors as parents? I don't even need to do the statistics: there is an overwhelming correlation. This can't be explained by freedom to exercise our destiny can it? We speak of genes all the time these days: either our parents brought us to be a doctor or it is in the genes - either way it was not a "free" choice. Indeed this issue of freedom is one of the great metaphysical questions that remains unexplained at the heart of Protestantism - but while people like Dawkins strip away everything Godly from the movement they seem oddly reticent in approaching the aspects which underpin their own world views! (Isn't this always the case!!). John Ball it seems to me is part of the much larger movement which culminated in Martin Luther and the break from Catholic domination in the church too... will need to investigate that interesting link... Interesting that "gene" then has always been at odds with the notion of freedom and "gene-tleman" was just a part of a larger picture. Such a view as Bartlett's over looks the use of Arya (noble) in India for example. It was used by Buddha to speak of those people who had become masters not of others but of themselves (the highest mastery). It is in this latter sense that I understand my mother's talk of the gene-try. As power shifted from aristocracy to bouregoise (my mother's father was a mixed product of aristocratic and in part bourgeois pairing), the basis of gene moved from blood to one's behaviour. Except that refined behaviour is how Buddha and the Vedic books spoke about the gentleman 2500 years ago so it seems to me that it is part of the concept long before contemporary historians imbued it with revolutionary implications and progressive class struggle - I say progressive because I am maintaining that nothing has ever changed, that all the narratives that historians find in history are fabrications with contemporary motives - like putting Cleopatra's Needle by the Thames: a link to an extinct pagan empire, why? Maybe to give the illusion that London is the natural successor to Egypt... just a myth to satisfy and justify the establishment. So I don't buy the narrow concept of "gentleman" that is handed down by revolutionaries and I don't even accept that John Ball or his successors made any valid points about freedom, liberty or equality. It was simply that falling population placed power in the hands of the workers - but as Buddha says all things change, eventually; and I add, the reason, excuse or narrative is secondary. So Grendel was going to die, as was his mother, anyway whether at the hands of Beowulf, another hero or just mother nature and where I disagree with Michael Wood is that unfortunately Grendel will die in another way as the story itself gets lost and the monsters of the past are replaced by new ones. And, in an anthropomorphic way, we only speak of Grendel anyway because it was found, and only seek to preserve it because it was found by chance anyway.
A point I have raised a few times in this blog is the question of what would have happened had the Nazis won the war. I have suggested before that nothing would have changed for the masses. The Norman conquest it seems is a perfect example of what would have happened and it does seem that the Medieval period is basically what the Nazi occupation of UK would have been like with us paying huge rents to the Nazi over lords. But not wishing to get too swept along by this nightmarish suggestion it is worth pointing out that has always been the lot of the masses in this country. We payed rent to the Romans, then the Saxon kings, then the Norman, then to the Bouregois and Germans (when the Monarch changed) - nothing ever changes always seems my conclusion! What difference the Nazi? Honestly (war time propaganda aside). This point really rests upon the state of Medieval Britain under the Normans which needs to be seen comparatively against life under the Saxon kings like Alfred (comparative because we have no way of understanding what was the normatively accepted standard of comfort to people in that period).
Briefly raising that old argument: absolutists will say that things are absolutely better today than in the past so today is better than the past. My argument is that things will be absolutely better in the future given the rate of technological development, so therefore things are absolutely worse today than in the future. Now do we feel that things are absolutely worse today than in the future? Does this reduction in our quality of our life compared with the future affect our lives? Well it may do if we dwell on it (I wish I could have free energy for example), but in reality it makes no difference because we live with what we have and what is normative. In the same way the Medieval mind would not be really lamenting the lack of clean drinking water, mechanised agriculture or TV! Hence things must be contextualised and comparative to have any meaning - which puts all modern propaganda somewhere out of the park.
There is an extreme view (narrative) that the world is undergoing a vast shift at the moment toward global governance, but in a planned and hostile way by some supreme elite. I happen to agree with a friend who works in an NGO and has first hand experience of the "elite" who says that humans simply don't have the capacity for such high level agreement and planning. However I do agree with another friend who says that the masses are very much the victim of this shift. Intentional or otherwise the media (and I realise the markets, and politics) are all manipulated in the interests of the powerful and against the interest of the masses. Ian Stewarts 'From Here to Infinity' p17 he makes the interesting comment:
'...and it would be unthinkable to release [the key to secret codes] to the enemy (or the public, which many governments seem to view in the same light)...'
I think it is more a matter of psychology than deliberate machination for the powerful to behave in such a manner. If someone really believes that they have the best interests of someone at heart then they will feel justified in giving themselves unlimited license over that person. I can genuinely see some leader protecting himself by killing his own people in the belief that protecting himself is in their interests. There is a whole world of power psychology I realise I have to explore some day - the complex dialectic between myself as myself and myself as myself for someone else or The People. Probably accepting in the process the obvious conclusion that people can achieve "more" together under a strong leader than apart without one. However i still question what real gain there is to be had: a strong leader may bring a nation to win the war but then what?Alexander the Great a prime example... but then what? Lots of nice stories but the crops still need the sun and rain regardless what stories fill the heads of the farmers.
Reading this back I am made nauseous by the references to the world political stage - what a world teeming with lies, deceit and the most basic of human instincts, or so it seems to me on reading back. One thought about the vast complexity of the legal, political and economic edifice which seems to achieve nothing but shore up the existing structure sends a shudder through me - it seems as though I stare at the decaying bodies in the mausoleum of Caesar: the workers in the city the ants and other insects which scurry across the fragmenting burial shroud. All this built upon a dream of what the West should be like, dreamed in pagan times, and endlessly patched up and refounded. It doesn't sound like "Life" to me at all - it never has, I have always dreaded like death this thing busyness. I see the sun setting over the sky scrapers downtown and all I see are trees.
OK enough of the metaphor and emotive stuff, it is not my intention to persuade (I disagree with GCSE here on the use of emotive writing) it is simply to entertain and describe my own attitudes and feelings for fun of writing and to open the window and fly language outside the limited mode of factual analytic writing for a short mental break.
In summary of the current position: things never change so Peace is what is left when we stop trying to change them. That has been the approach and now the summary and I will try and test that view by shifting back a bit to hegemonic view of progress and change.
Just watching Michael Wood and Seamus Healey talking about Beowulf I am gripped by the fundamental elements of all narratives that i seem to be hell bend on subverting...
The Hero undergoes trials both physical and spiritual that are driven by the need to win; even if this is the destiny of the hero, failure is not an option; becoming the very best we may be is the struggle and the destiny of the hero.
This is in absolute contrast to my own direction of approach for the last few years. What I have been gripped by is the relative and temporary nature of everything. We may indeed win but it is only until next time. We may indeed conquer, build and acquire but it is only until it is lost. Furthermore that which is lost can not remain so forever it will of its own accord become found. There is also the awareness of dialectic that a hero can only be so at the expense of a foe. There can only be triumph at the destruction of adversity, which is great as long as you do not seek to gain from another adversity. As a friend always points out death is good business for undertakers, and I will add, until it strikes at home.
The instinctive narratives we feel the logic of innately only ever seem good in the telling of half the story. The tragic nation of Grendels who are outcast from human society and even the patronage of God; we don't hear their story. As Kierkegaard notes about all love stories we only hear of the conquest, we never have to endure the years of the tale that lie idle in port afterwards [my metaphor].
And so I have been drawn in stages to the ideal of Peace where all narratives stop without want of more or echo of the past; the silence between the words of the bard; that satisfaction that looks neither forward nor gloats upon what lies behind. The death that we can enjoy as the living. This is the true heroic death in this view. Not the ecstatic death of the fallen in hectic and bloody battle, nor the noble death of those burned upon the funeral pyre of past achievements, but simply the death of those who strive no longer for tractable evidence of ones own virtue or existence in this world.
But let me now that I have pursued this line for a few years consider Nietzsche and the alternative views again.
The Nietzschian argument against my view is that this is exactly the view that the Lords would wish... or at least a variation on that view. The Lords want a passive people who are hard working without complaint, who even eschew the liberties and indulgencies of the powerful. The Lord, so argues Nietzsche, of these lower people turns people away from worldly pleasures in favour of a dream of afterlife, even accepts death without struggle, offering up taxes to the Lords without complaint (give unto Caesar what is Caesar's etc). This is coincidentally exactly the mind set that a class system needs so that the Lords can rule. Christianity et al. are simply the products of the slave minds and the True way of man lies in the behaviours of the Lords - almost diametrically opposite to the slave mind. Thus fighting, posturing, indulgence, egoism, wealth, flamboyance, opulence, ostentatiousness, indulgence etc etc are the real free mode of human life from which the slave class have simply gained their code by negation.
There is some truth - but my view of Peace seems at odds even with Nietzsche and Christ because I don't accept taxes, ownership nor even labour in any fundamental sense. Certainly I accept them as they actual do exist, and have a long history and there is no sense that they will ever change - but i don't accept any argument based upon them. They are unfortunate symptoms of misunderstanding much deeper realities and truths it seems to me... (hence my search.). A ruling class I simply don't accept. They may believe they are a ruling class but they are not really ruling in any demontsrable way other than they can pay enough people to kill dissenters - it is that simple law of nature which is what ruling means... everything else - all this talk of Magna Carter and law etc is a thin paper facade over the fundamental law that the strongest can do what they want. It was because the King ran out of money that he was ever brought to bear; if he ever gained the money again I'm sure he would rip that piece of paper up. Problem is History is not a Markov chain and the Future cannot escape the thin windy mountain path of the Past.
But again that said I disagree with the program The Medieval Mind. Professor Robert Bartlett, undoubtedly bound by the need to make exciting TV, seems to me to force the Medieval period into a rather stereotypical mold - that of a brutal and impoverished time of oppression, plagues and torture chambers ('get Medieval on yer ass' from Pulp Fiction). Yet the small amount of reading I did on work in the medieval period (for my book 'Work on Work' which seems ever further from completion - it's a huge project) threw up a completely different view of certainly the existence of bad land lords but a complex land system with itinerant workers benefiting and wanting to work within the confines of a Manor where they had higher wages and access to justice, and the tenants themselves varying from those paying high rents to completely free holders. The idea at the the start of the program that we should be shocked at the prices put on people is a joke to me. Killing a noble man demanded 6 times the compensation payment to killing a serf - I remember the police didn't even want to investigate the Ipswich murders of prostitutes until it became a press story. A homeless person get murdered and a doctor gets murdered - is the police interest and legal fees really going to be the same? An Indian get killed abroad and an American gets killed abroad do they really get the same response? And more of a joke does a cleaners really sell their time (and working life) at the same rate as a doctor? Is the life of a cleaner really equal to that of a doctor since 25% of it is going to be spent at a 20th of the rate. If anything inequality is worse now than in the Medieval period. The difference it seems to me, which plasters over the cracks well, is that people are not dying in the street (in UK) anymore because of the invention of oil driven machines and a vast global surplus of food - not the economics, politics, legal system or wisdom of ruling class - as we are daily told is the cause of our prosperity. I am suspicious of the daily avoidance of the link between cheap oil and global food. It seems more and more that things are going well and the ruling classes simply take the credit for things they have no interest in understanding. Of course when things go badly we can be sure they will quickly side step any involvement. Reading 'Mice and Men' (and 'Grapes of Wrath' by association) for GCSE revision also highlights that things certainly hadn't improved, probably even got worse, almost a 1000 years later - in America of all places: the land that was supposed to be the model for the rest of the world.
The one thing that I must uncover is more about the Saxon and Celtic land systems that preceded the Norman and Roman invasions respectively. Attitudes even amongst the experts seems to sway between extremes so it is any ones guess what life really was like for the ordinary people in any century in the past. Were Celts peaceful or violent warriors? If they were violent warriors it seems odd that they were completely annihilated by the Saxons. But even the Nordic people it seems to me had very just and noble kings, and systemic hardship doesn't seem to have been the way of things. A book I had time to read only a page of spoke of the noble kings of India in a time when Rulers felt strongly the duty of leadership - very much the spirit of nobility that I sense in the Saxons. It is the spirit of nobility (the arya) that I believe got passed down generations. My mother (brought up in the Mansion house in Ashbourne) with Holland and Sadler grandparents is my only testament to the spirit of arya - but from her the strength of duty and social obligation is unquestionably the main driving force of the gentry. Of course the gentry are human and have failing, but these failing have become the exceptions that the bourgeois revolution have capitalised (irony ;-) upon - in my developing view anyway. You simply cannot expect someone who was brought up to be concerned about a livelihood and a trade to suddenly take on social responsibilities - it simply doesn't make sense. It makes even less sense to me to have private individuals who are motivated by the accumulation of private wealth, power and influence to suddenly switch to a magnanimous outward social perspective. Not impossible, but made all the harder by their up bringing. Kings born of kings it seems to me are the best suited to politics and power. It is a logical point, I need read and understand a whole lot more history to substantiate that point. I also mean History that lies outside the tiny confines of the Western Dogma which is the interpretation of the UK period from 1066 to present that has been hijacked by the apologists for the current liberal, democratic, free market system. I feel even the experts are hopelessly seduced by the narrative of power evolution between church, monarch and people. Or is it that any other view at this point in unfashionable. There is a sense of this narrative being an opium to the masses to make them feel that they are in power. My own view is that in reality nothing ever changes (relatively). Obviously we can fly around the globe now which gives UK people the option of a weekend break in the tropics which they never had even 20 years ago, but relatively this "new experience" must rank distant second to the possibility of picking up a book when printing first made texts available to the masses. The "technology and form" may change but the "experience of the people" (which is what we are interested in when we compare human lives) I am saying doesn't. It's an almost impossible hypothesis to prove, but so is the current dogma that things are getting better, or the negation that things are getting worse. Remember that for most of Christian History the view was that things were getting further way from God's initial "good" creation and so worse, the renaissance Humanists simply turned that on its head - naively, egotistically and pointless I reckon. What if there is no change at all and we just live with what we have got? and that links to the point on Peace.
Returning to the concept of Gentleman professor Robert Bartlett takes the John Ball line that the one cannot be born into a way of life - that we are all free to pursue our own course in life: freedom to exercise one's destiny being critical. But this isn't the medieval mind but the birth of the modern mind. Only the modern mind reels at this thought, and I think equally erroneously. We are very much born into ways of life - language, parents, wealth. These are things I cannot really change. I may indeed become poor through choice (I have to some extent), and I could change my language and even my parents and even my race and sex by plastic surgery but it is a lot of work just to alter what you were "given". Consider also how many doctors have doctors as parents? I don't even need to do the statistics: there is an overwhelming correlation. This can't be explained by freedom to exercise our destiny can it? We speak of genes all the time these days: either our parents brought us to be a doctor or it is in the genes - either way it was not a "free" choice. Indeed this issue of freedom is one of the great metaphysical questions that remains unexplained at the heart of Protestantism - but while people like Dawkins strip away everything Godly from the movement they seem oddly reticent in approaching the aspects which underpin their own world views! (Isn't this always the case!!). John Ball it seems to me is part of the much larger movement which culminated in Martin Luther and the break from Catholic domination in the church too... will need to investigate that interesting link... Interesting that "gene" then has always been at odds with the notion of freedom and "gene-tleman" was just a part of a larger picture. Such a view as Bartlett's over looks the use of Arya (noble) in India for example. It was used by Buddha to speak of those people who had become masters not of others but of themselves (the highest mastery). It is in this latter sense that I understand my mother's talk of the gene-try. As power shifted from aristocracy to bouregoise (my mother's father was a mixed product of aristocratic and in part bourgeois pairing), the basis of gene moved from blood to one's behaviour. Except that refined behaviour is how Buddha and the Vedic books spoke about the gentleman 2500 years ago so it seems to me that it is part of the concept long before contemporary historians imbued it with revolutionary implications and progressive class struggle - I say progressive because I am maintaining that nothing has ever changed, that all the narratives that historians find in history are fabrications with contemporary motives - like putting Cleopatra's Needle by the Thames: a link to an extinct pagan empire, why? Maybe to give the illusion that London is the natural successor to Egypt... just a myth to satisfy and justify the establishment. So I don't buy the narrow concept of "gentleman" that is handed down by revolutionaries and I don't even accept that John Ball or his successors made any valid points about freedom, liberty or equality. It was simply that falling population placed power in the hands of the workers - but as Buddha says all things change, eventually; and I add, the reason, excuse or narrative is secondary. So Grendel was going to die, as was his mother, anyway whether at the hands of Beowulf, another hero or just mother nature and where I disagree with Michael Wood is that unfortunately Grendel will die in another way as the story itself gets lost and the monsters of the past are replaced by new ones. And, in an anthropomorphic way, we only speak of Grendel anyway because it was found, and only seek to preserve it because it was found by chance anyway.
A point I have raised a few times in this blog is the question of what would have happened had the Nazis won the war. I have suggested before that nothing would have changed for the masses. The Norman conquest it seems is a perfect example of what would have happened and it does seem that the Medieval period is basically what the Nazi occupation of UK would have been like with us paying huge rents to the Nazi over lords. But not wishing to get too swept along by this nightmarish suggestion it is worth pointing out that has always been the lot of the masses in this country. We payed rent to the Romans, then the Saxon kings, then the Norman, then to the Bouregois and Germans (when the Monarch changed) - nothing ever changes always seems my conclusion! What difference the Nazi? Honestly (war time propaganda aside). This point really rests upon the state of Medieval Britain under the Normans which needs to be seen comparatively against life under the Saxon kings like Alfred (comparative because we have no way of understanding what was the normatively accepted standard of comfort to people in that period).
Briefly raising that old argument: absolutists will say that things are absolutely better today than in the past so today is better than the past. My argument is that things will be absolutely better in the future given the rate of technological development, so therefore things are absolutely worse today than in the future. Now do we feel that things are absolutely worse today than in the future? Does this reduction in our quality of our life compared with the future affect our lives? Well it may do if we dwell on it (I wish I could have free energy for example), but in reality it makes no difference because we live with what we have and what is normative. In the same way the Medieval mind would not be really lamenting the lack of clean drinking water, mechanised agriculture or TV! Hence things must be contextualised and comparative to have any meaning - which puts all modern propaganda somewhere out of the park.
There is an extreme view (narrative) that the world is undergoing a vast shift at the moment toward global governance, but in a planned and hostile way by some supreme elite. I happen to agree with a friend who works in an NGO and has first hand experience of the "elite" who says that humans simply don't have the capacity for such high level agreement and planning. However I do agree with another friend who says that the masses are very much the victim of this shift. Intentional or otherwise the media (and I realise the markets, and politics) are all manipulated in the interests of the powerful and against the interest of the masses. Ian Stewarts 'From Here to Infinity' p17 he makes the interesting comment:
'...and it would be unthinkable to release [the key to secret codes] to the enemy (or the public, which many governments seem to view in the same light)...'
I think it is more a matter of psychology than deliberate machination for the powerful to behave in such a manner. If someone really believes that they have the best interests of someone at heart then they will feel justified in giving themselves unlimited license over that person. I can genuinely see some leader protecting himself by killing his own people in the belief that protecting himself is in their interests. There is a whole world of power psychology I realise I have to explore some day - the complex dialectic between myself as myself and myself as myself for someone else or The People. Probably accepting in the process the obvious conclusion that people can achieve "more" together under a strong leader than apart without one. However i still question what real gain there is to be had: a strong leader may bring a nation to win the war but then what?Alexander the Great a prime example... but then what? Lots of nice stories but the crops still need the sun and rain regardless what stories fill the heads of the farmers.
Reading this back I am made nauseous by the references to the world political stage - what a world teeming with lies, deceit and the most basic of human instincts, or so it seems to me on reading back. One thought about the vast complexity of the legal, political and economic edifice which seems to achieve nothing but shore up the existing structure sends a shudder through me - it seems as though I stare at the decaying bodies in the mausoleum of Caesar: the workers in the city the ants and other insects which scurry across the fragmenting burial shroud. All this built upon a dream of what the West should be like, dreamed in pagan times, and endlessly patched up and refounded. It doesn't sound like "Life" to me at all - it never has, I have always dreaded like death this thing busyness. I see the sun setting over the sky scrapers downtown and all I see are trees.
OK enough of the metaphor and emotive stuff, it is not my intention to persuade (I disagree with GCSE here on the use of emotive writing) it is simply to entertain and describe my own attitudes and feelings for fun of writing and to open the window and fly language outside the limited mode of factual analytic writing for a short mental break.
In summary of the current position: things never change so Peace is what is left when we stop trying to change them. That has been the approach and now the summary and I will try and test that view by shifting back a bit to hegemonic view of progress and change.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
notes on inside medieval mind - power
if harold have won then avoided subjugation of britons?
5% pray, 5% nobles + knights, rest -> work
william langland - 14th century poet on serf women
Vision of piers plowman - bad living of serfs
gentleman - same root as gene
knights waring class. war enobling + more land
terrorize locals for they toil the land for fear of being destroyerd
i think this program over plays it + caste system + aryan nobl;eman longer history
King John pissed everyone off -> magna carter 1215 put him back under law (no action taken without agreement of peers and the law)
Parliament evolved thru need for cash to fund wars -> this way funders came into the fold of the nations power structure -> step toward demcracy
but still 1/3 population in bondage mid 1300s
black-death put value of labour up
laws rushed thru - including branding peasants so class could be reinforced
John Ball on blackheath (church)
Poll tax
Tyler
5% pray, 5% nobles + knights, rest -> work
william langland - 14th century poet on serf women
Vision of piers plowman - bad living of serfs
gentleman - same root as gene
knights waring class. war enobling + more land
terrorize locals for they toil the land for fear of being destroyerd
i think this program over plays it + caste system + aryan nobl;eman longer history
King John pissed everyone off -> magna carter 1215 put him back under law (no action taken without agreement of peers and the law)
Parliament evolved thru need for cash to fund wars -> this way funders came into the fold of the nations power structure -> step toward demcracy
but still 1/3 population in bondage mid 1300s
black-death put value of labour up
laws rushed thru - including branding peasants so class could be reinforced
John Ball on blackheath (church)
Poll tax
Tyler
The Lamp
After being positive about economics since starting Buddhist thinking I picked up a book in the library [name] which took a critical position against corporate capitalism and reading a chapter it reinforced my thinking that it is not only corporate capitalism that can be criticised but the whole edifice of modern dogma can be crumbled to dust with only the most trivial of arguments. As argued the only reason it survives is because of the status quo and power structures rather than any inherent logic. It led me by thoughts I've forgotten to The Lamp - a short story I'm supposed to be writing now but diverted to a blog entry instead...
So there is the legend of the desert jin trapped in lamps by sorcerers. On release they are bound to grant their liberator a wish. Now imagine that we are introduced to a world whether these jin are not bound to give a single wish or three, but a world were wishes all come true - an extraordinary palace in the sky and like Marco Polo we live there a while experiencing what it is like to have our hearts desire instantly without working, shopping or having to wait for technological progress. My argument at this stage is that we would not grow weary for lack of work! The argument that we instinctively like work is instantly disproved if you say to a rich person "park your own car" (which is a reasonable implication of personal property and responsibility) and this also instantly proves that having money is simply to pay people to do work you would otherwise do yourself or not at all. So in The Palace this is not an issue and we can feel the freedom from labour that we never dare to dream, or feel guilty for dreaming. Now we discover the truth that there is no free lunch and there is another place The Prison where enslaved creatures have to work to produce all the gifts in the Palace. The challenge for our hero is whether to turn a blind eye or to somehow break the system... not decided what he does... obviously we don't really want to break the system because it would mean the 1st world having to live like the 3rd world, but maybe there is a smart solution... shall consider... standard economic argument is that capitalism creates wealth so we can all live like the 1st world...altho I rather think the truth is that western society uses cheap oil and technological advances to mass produce cheap goods with high income for the few capitalists, low labour costs and therefore little wealth distributed to everyone else. Once the poor need a job then the capitalists can get them to do anything they want... like park their cars.
Just on the absurdity of modern dogma regarding work. People talk about work like it was gold, but if someone gave you some gold you would be happy while if they gave you some work you would be unhappy. If work was really so valuable then why do we like something in return? Whenever we ask for something in return it means we feel we have lost something that we wish to have back. Work makes us feel like we have lost something, it is not something that provides us with worth in itself. We don't work the fields for 6 hours for no reason; it is because we wish to enjoy the fruits of that labour. The fruit is what we want not the work. It is a remarkably simple point yet one that seems to have got people in the Christian world very confused. If you do not want the fruit then don't do the work. Or alternatively if the fruit has already been harvested then you don't need to do any work... except that ownership arrangements mean that you can't enjoy the harvest unless you were in someway involved in reaping it and if the harvest was reaped by a single person with an army of machines you have no right to the harvest. People only say they want to work because this is the only way to get access to the harvest, but the work they do is arbitrary and unnecessary in any causal sense; the link between work and fruit is only maintained by the artificial rules of a man made game that ensures huge wealth and power to a few owners (capitalists) who no longer need to work. Again I repeat this is so trivial that a preschool child can see this is how it works - yet centuries of indoctrination have twisted the minds of the dependent class (who depend upon capitalists for work) so that there is a great call for people to work as though it was some God given imperative wholly dislocated from the fruits of that labour. As argued at length, in this blog, in reality the continual advance of technology over history (especially the shifts to agriculture and then oil energy) have been leading to the opposite argument which is a reduction in the link between labour and fruit, and a reduction in the amount of work that can be done. If people really do like working we need to go back to the days of smashing up the machines so that humans can once again do labour again. The creation of document jobs (legal, accounts, banking, administration) which basically just build rules upon rules and entrench people in indefinitely large bureaucratic structures is one way to create labour because these jobs don't actually do anything and just waste human time and effort. I have spent many hours for example watching stock markets so I can make investments - in the end wins and losses mostly balance and all that time and effort equates to nothing. A wonderful waste of time. Labour is only one of the huge frauds that mankind manifests against itself simply because it has to keep busy for one reason or another. Something I certainly wish to end (without creating too much work in the process). What is needed is a smart solution to The Lamp (indeed the real light of the lamp rather than the Jin of capitalism).
So there is the legend of the desert jin trapped in lamps by sorcerers. On release they are bound to grant their liberator a wish. Now imagine that we are introduced to a world whether these jin are not bound to give a single wish or three, but a world were wishes all come true - an extraordinary palace in the sky and like Marco Polo we live there a while experiencing what it is like to have our hearts desire instantly without working, shopping or having to wait for technological progress. My argument at this stage is that we would not grow weary for lack of work! The argument that we instinctively like work is instantly disproved if you say to a rich person "park your own car" (which is a reasonable implication of personal property and responsibility) and this also instantly proves that having money is simply to pay people to do work you would otherwise do yourself or not at all. So in The Palace this is not an issue and we can feel the freedom from labour that we never dare to dream, or feel guilty for dreaming. Now we discover the truth that there is no free lunch and there is another place The Prison where enslaved creatures have to work to produce all the gifts in the Palace. The challenge for our hero is whether to turn a blind eye or to somehow break the system... not decided what he does... obviously we don't really want to break the system because it would mean the 1st world having to live like the 3rd world, but maybe there is a smart solution... shall consider... standard economic argument is that capitalism creates wealth so we can all live like the 1st world...altho I rather think the truth is that western society uses cheap oil and technological advances to mass produce cheap goods with high income for the few capitalists, low labour costs and therefore little wealth distributed to everyone else. Once the poor need a job then the capitalists can get them to do anything they want... like park their cars.
Just on the absurdity of modern dogma regarding work. People talk about work like it was gold, but if someone gave you some gold you would be happy while if they gave you some work you would be unhappy. If work was really so valuable then why do we like something in return? Whenever we ask for something in return it means we feel we have lost something that we wish to have back. Work makes us feel like we have lost something, it is not something that provides us with worth in itself. We don't work the fields for 6 hours for no reason; it is because we wish to enjoy the fruits of that labour. The fruit is what we want not the work. It is a remarkably simple point yet one that seems to have got people in the Christian world very confused. If you do not want the fruit then don't do the work. Or alternatively if the fruit has already been harvested then you don't need to do any work... except that ownership arrangements mean that you can't enjoy the harvest unless you were in someway involved in reaping it and if the harvest was reaped by a single person with an army of machines you have no right to the harvest. People only say they want to work because this is the only way to get access to the harvest, but the work they do is arbitrary and unnecessary in any causal sense; the link between work and fruit is only maintained by the artificial rules of a man made game that ensures huge wealth and power to a few owners (capitalists) who no longer need to work. Again I repeat this is so trivial that a preschool child can see this is how it works - yet centuries of indoctrination have twisted the minds of the dependent class (who depend upon capitalists for work) so that there is a great call for people to work as though it was some God given imperative wholly dislocated from the fruits of that labour. As argued at length, in this blog, in reality the continual advance of technology over history (especially the shifts to agriculture and then oil energy) have been leading to the opposite argument which is a reduction in the link between labour and fruit, and a reduction in the amount of work that can be done. If people really do like working we need to go back to the days of smashing up the machines so that humans can once again do labour again. The creation of document jobs (legal, accounts, banking, administration) which basically just build rules upon rules and entrench people in indefinitely large bureaucratic structures is one way to create labour because these jobs don't actually do anything and just waste human time and effort. I have spent many hours for example watching stock markets so I can make investments - in the end wins and losses mostly balance and all that time and effort equates to nothing. A wonderful waste of time. Labour is only one of the huge frauds that mankind manifests against itself simply because it has to keep busy for one reason or another. Something I certainly wish to end (without creating too much work in the process). What is needed is a smart solution to The Lamp (indeed the real light of the lamp rather than the Jin of capitalism).
Thursday, 19 August 2010
LivingLite - The Minimum Inventory for Outdoors
This is the full inventory of what we "need", as personally established over 9 years of walking and outdoors living.
Everything that is assumed in "normal" living is present here altho in a much reduced form, but never-the-less all the enjoyment and luxury of modern living is present using this minimum tool set as long as we remain organised, focused and positive. If we allow ourselves to get exhausted, hungry, thirsty, wet and cold this will obviously damped spirits be us outdoors or in a mansion!
Shelter
Bivvy Bag (keep sleeping bag dry). Essential on mountains where rigging tarp in wind unreliable.
Sleeping Bag (4season) - keep in bin bag
Roll Mat (insulation from ground)
Ground sheet; thin;waterproof (easy to see bugs + lost items, protects from mud)
Tarpaulin;2.5mx2.5m (waterproof)
Tent pegs x4 (can peg 4 corners of tarp down flat on ground for high wind resistance; 2 sides peged + 2 sides high for a basher)
Bungie chords x2 (allows for taught but flexible attachment for tarp)
String 1m x4 + 3m (alternative to bungies; can rig 4 corners high as a portable ceiling - Ray Mears style; use long string to create A frame tent in terrible conditions)
Mist netting/net curtain (insect barrier - absolutely essential for comfort and health against midge + mosquito)
Tent - optional if taking tarp. Has advantage of complete isolation from environment, extremely useful against insects and persistent poor weather, comfort improves x3 compared with tarpaulin which means can travel for longer. Disadvantage: heavier.
Food
Stove (MSR Whisperlite International works well for me); can make camp fire, with practice can make very small and burn completely to leave only fine grey ash which is easily dispersed to leave no trace.
Cigarette Lighter in waterproof holder (+emergency back up)
Pans/Mess Tins x2 (boiling water; cooking)
Reused Boil in Bag (useful for cooking noodles/soups etc; eating from)
Knife (sharp e.g. pen knife 4 preparing food)
Spoon (can improvise chopsticks from any sticks)
Water 1.5L x 2 (adjust as required)
String or equivalent (tie up food packets to stop spilling out)
Water purification tablets (can also bring to boil clear water - no sediment - and let cool to make utterly safe to drink. If sediment present boil for much longer. No protection from chemical contamination can try spagnum moss packed into plastic bottle with bottom removed as natural filter. Collect immediately drinkable water from near springs and uphill from cattle and human habitation. Have collected rain water funnelled from tarp or roll mat into pans before.)
Clothes - keep in bin-bag
Waterproof (lightweight)
Jumper (as needed)
Underwear x1
Shirts x2 (rough, smart)
Trousers x2 (longs, shorts)
Socks (1x long pair - protect ticks/scratches, 1x short for casual)
Trainers/light weight walking shoes x1 (buy more if required)
Swimming trunks (in using a pool)
Detergent (optional for laundrette); have used hand soap in sink/scrubbed on rocks in river=gets whites white again!/ to try vinegar)
Transport
Rucksack/Paniers etc
Compass (can use sun + watch)
Map
Train tickets/Passport/Visa as req
Insurance as req.
Tools for bike (if using)
Alarm clock (for maintaining schedules - mobile will work)
Toilettries
Soap
Towel (optional, useful in winter when drying a problem)
Razor
Toothbrush/paste
Tweezer; recurved (thorns, ticks [do not crush tick when removing as can inject disease] etc)
Toilet paper (burn after use) - (books say spread faeces about to aid decomposition, I think messy + attracts flies. Bury in small 1/2L hole but mix thoroughily with soil using a short stick)
Accessories
Torch (optional windup)
Bin bags x2 (min)
Plastic bags (general organisation, keep dry)
Radio; light weight (weather, entertainment + +ve psychology if travelling alone for long periods, listen to local radio for insight into community)
Camera (+ battery recharger)
Phone (+ recharger)
First Aid (bandages, antisceptic cream) - [have never used as prefer let body toughen up by itself] - also natural remedies and experimentation can work, faced with a rash once I strapped some dock leaves on - it vanished within an hour. Open sachet of butter strapped on a sore blister improved it but smelt awful! Willow bark is a source of asprin. Soap wort, soap. Garlic/turmeric etc antiseptic. Pepper on wounds stops bleeding and aids healing. etc
Insect repellent (ticks, mosquito, midge) - (can transmit debilitating diseases + extremely uncomfortable -> poor sleep/psychology - at time of writing it is 10days after multiple deer tick bites, possible 14 day incubation period for symptoms, serious problem if occurrs while walking. 2007 possibly contracted leptosporosis in Cornwall from tick bite; in sleeping bag for a day and weakened for a week with low mileage.) Wind blows midge/mosquitos away. DEET. Avon Skin-so-Soft body oil works. Can try eating marmite against midges.
Everything that is assumed in "normal" living is present here altho in a much reduced form, but never-the-less all the enjoyment and luxury of modern living is present using this minimum tool set as long as we remain organised, focused and positive. If we allow ourselves to get exhausted, hungry, thirsty, wet and cold this will obviously damped spirits be us outdoors or in a mansion!
Shelter
Bivvy Bag (keep sleeping bag dry). Essential on mountains where rigging tarp in wind unreliable.
Sleeping Bag (4season) - keep in bin bag
Roll Mat (insulation from ground)
Ground sheet; thin;waterproof (easy to see bugs + lost items, protects from mud)
Tarpaulin;2.5mx2.5m (waterproof)
Tent pegs x4 (can peg 4 corners of tarp down flat on ground for high wind resistance; 2 sides peged + 2 sides high for a basher)
Bungie chords x2 (allows for taught but flexible attachment for tarp)
String 1m x4 + 3m (alternative to bungies; can rig 4 corners high as a portable ceiling - Ray Mears style; use long string to create A frame tent in terrible conditions)
Mist netting/net curtain (insect barrier - absolutely essential for comfort and health against midge + mosquito)
Tent - optional if taking tarp. Has advantage of complete isolation from environment, extremely useful against insects and persistent poor weather, comfort improves x3 compared with tarpaulin which means can travel for longer. Disadvantage: heavier.
Food
Stove (MSR Whisperlite International works well for me); can make camp fire, with practice can make very small and burn completely to leave only fine grey ash which is easily dispersed to leave no trace.
Cigarette Lighter in waterproof holder (+emergency back up)
Pans/Mess Tins x2 (boiling water; cooking)
Reused Boil in Bag (useful for cooking noodles/soups etc; eating from)
Knife (sharp e.g. pen knife 4 preparing food)
Spoon (can improvise chopsticks from any sticks)
Water 1.5L x 2 (adjust as required)
String or equivalent (tie up food packets to stop spilling out)
Water purification tablets (can also bring to boil clear water - no sediment - and let cool to make utterly safe to drink. If sediment present boil for much longer. No protection from chemical contamination can try spagnum moss packed into plastic bottle with bottom removed as natural filter. Collect immediately drinkable water from near springs and uphill from cattle and human habitation. Have collected rain water funnelled from tarp or roll mat into pans before.)
Clothes - keep in bin-bag
Waterproof (lightweight)
Jumper (as needed)
Underwear x1
Shirts x2 (rough, smart)
Trousers x2 (longs, shorts)
Socks (1x long pair - protect ticks/scratches, 1x short for casual)
Trainers/light weight walking shoes x1 (buy more if required)
Swimming trunks (in using a pool)
Detergent (optional for laundrette); have used hand soap in sink/scrubbed on rocks in river=gets whites white again!/ to try vinegar)
Transport
Rucksack/Paniers etc
Compass (can use sun + watch)
Map
Train tickets/Passport/Visa as req
Insurance as req.
Tools for bike (if using)
Alarm clock (for maintaining schedules - mobile will work)
Toilettries
Soap
Towel (optional, useful in winter when drying a problem)
Razor
Toothbrush/paste
Tweezer; recurved (thorns, ticks [do not crush tick when removing as can inject disease] etc)
Toilet paper (burn after use) - (books say spread faeces about to aid decomposition, I think messy + attracts flies. Bury in small 1/2L hole but mix thoroughily with soil using a short stick)
Accessories
Torch (optional windup)
Bin bags x2 (min)
Plastic bags (general organisation, keep dry)
Radio; light weight (weather, entertainment + +ve psychology if travelling alone for long periods, listen to local radio for insight into community)
Camera (+ battery recharger)
Phone (+ recharger)
First Aid (bandages, antisceptic cream) - [have never used as prefer let body toughen up by itself] - also natural remedies and experimentation can work, faced with a rash once I strapped some dock leaves on - it vanished within an hour. Open sachet of butter strapped on a sore blister improved it but smelt awful! Willow bark is a source of asprin. Soap wort, soap. Garlic/turmeric etc antiseptic. Pepper on wounds stops bleeding and aids healing. etc
Insect repellent (ticks, mosquito, midge) - (can transmit debilitating diseases + extremely uncomfortable -> poor sleep/psychology - at time of writing it is 10days after multiple deer tick bites, possible 14 day incubation period for symptoms, serious problem if occurrs while walking. 2007 possibly contracted leptosporosis in Cornwall from tick bite; in sleeping bag for a day and weakened for a week with low mileage.) Wind blows midge/mosquitos away. DEET. Avon Skin-so-Soft body oil works. Can try eating marmite against midges.
Saturday, 14 August 2010
The Direction of Time
Watching the "What If" video by Jason Derulo makes it clear that in a universe with time flowing forward or backwards makes no difference to the people in that universe.
This has two meanings.
1) When they reverse the scenario in the video it reverses everything so the protagonists also forget that she dies. It means that the mental state of everyone is the same irrespective of the flow of time. One cannot even speak about causation having a direction because if asked at any point in the video why they are together they would recall the meeting at the park bench even though in the "reverse" time this hadn't happened yet.
In this view the direction of time is actually a narrative construct and time itself does not exist. It also makes the notion of time a relative concept since it is us in our own frame of reference watching these individuals on TV and having their lives played forward and backward relative to our own, and watching it with an irony that is necessarily external to their narrative that is the source of the sense of time and even "what if".
2) If they were allowed to be free thinking as the tape is played backwards then he would know that "she" dies before he has it revealed who she is. But again this is relative because in such a world it would be normative to have the ends of stories revealed before what the ending meant. That would simply be the way time worked in such a world and there would be no sense of "backwards".
It has been commented on before that physics still can't nail time into a direction. The typical answer that entropy must increase isn't an answer because reverse the tape in mode 2 above and entropy must decrease, and worse reverse the tape in mode 1 and it still increases!
I've always thought that time didn't exist - seems here the definitive illustration of 1 is that it is just a concept rather than a reality. This is deep shall consider more.
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Harry Potter and the We
On the ferry on way back from Skye I spoke to a guy who had booked to take the Harry Potter train from Mallaig - properly known as The Jacobite Steam Train. We visited the train station and it was pulling in - the steam engulfing the station from the sturdy dark stallion of a machine. Maroon carriages snaked behind it exactly reminiscent of the Orient Express and evoking that age of opulence and romance. The door opened and a deluge of Potter fans flooded onto the platform - a group of girls with the potter lightening mark on their foreheads reminded me of the ACDC symbol, and I chuckled to myself. It was odd out here in the remote highlands to be thrown into the dense civilised hysteria of a hollywood consciousness. I began to feel slightly drawn into the community of it all.
In the tourist shop I suddenly spied a postcard of the Glenfinan viaduct with the Harry Potter train on it and realised that this was the same scene as from the film. (Always make beeline for postcards when entering an area to see what is to be seen). Suddenly I felt a link to the three heroes of that film; a way into their magical world. I was gripped by the challenge to out cycle the train and capture that picture for myself. It was a hopeless task. On the flat I might have been able to keep up the 20mph needed by with the hills and the wind against me I had to realise I wasn't going to get it. Stopping and racing up a nearby hill, and then another and another, against the clock, looking for the perfect shot I finally got to a vantage point just as the trains smoke appeared on the horizon and made its way toward me. I had one chance at the shot and took the photo as the train huffed and puffed in the valley below.
There was a great sense of achievement in being a part of this Harry Potter experience, being linked to the stories, the characters and the thousands of fans on that train and around the world. I haven't felt like this for a very long time. This I realised was an experinec of the "WE". I sat down looking at the view of Skye and the peninsula before me to muse at what was unveiling before me and wrote:
'I' became 'we' through someone who we all individually identify with. A generation of people are joined and sympathise with the plight and narrative of Harry. He of course could be a private person with a life of his own behind the scenes - but his public self unifies each of us because we can individually identify with it. But NO! He is not a private person, he IS Harry Potter. Harry assists us in the stories because he makes the decsions, but we go along with the rest.
That "self" narrated in a public medium creates the possibility of "we" as ourselves sympathise with His narrative instead of our own. This is the great feeling - the 'WE'. The membership (I was calling it before) gives us release from the existential issues that Harry must himself feel.
"I that is we through Him" is a common motif especially for the Christians and other religious mentalities.
"My Muse" I saw broke my feeling of "we" that is what changed and I just got it back today: that is the magic of Harry Potter!"
Slighly messy exposition as I try to handle the irony that comes from many individual people finding sympathy with a single individual who as a result unifies the multiple individualities as one individuality. That is the social consciousness.
We see it in many guises from film heroes, to music icons, to leaders and politicians, football clubs, interest groups, countries, nations, races etc. It is a great feeling being part of the "we", feeling that I am not really an isolated individual, but am like the page in a book (or the frame in a film) and through me a larger self runs that replaces that little self for a big self.
Still captured by the euphoria of the experience of being somehow magically linked with the quest of Harry Potter - reenjoying a feeling of youth - I camped with the plan to get the real photo on Glenfinnan viaduct the next day. I knew what time the train had left, how fast it travelled and estimated when it must reach the viaduct. Next morning not wishing to be hanging around and playing with the time rather I left with enough time. I stopped to check the train times and suddenly realised that the train waited in Glenfiddan for 30mins. I was going to arrive 10 minutes too late. All the same I raced another impossible race hoping that somehow I had made a mistake. Walking to the top of the viewing point it was obvouis I had missed the shot. In retrospect I ought to have joined the crowds on the road into the hills for shots of it there. I spoke at length to a couple and their kids who also misjudged it - real Potter fans as well so they should have been more gutted than me - but somehow I felt it meant more to me!
Lesson I learned here was that if something matters do not leave it to chance - over plan! My great pleasure in life is cutting timing tight so that I arrive in a great heroic last minute struggle (like the films!), or alternatively don't plan at all so that what happens is a magical suprise (like finding out about the Potter train from a guy by accident on the boat).
Once the euphoria had passed in the following days I entered my more usual sceptical and critical mentality. Is it really good that we give up our "self" to be part of a mass self that has no guidance, direction or even any real substance. The Potter fans enjoyed the collective experience of the Potter hysteria. I felt a closeness to the Potter narratives that I never felt before, felt I wanted to be a part of the heroes' adventures (like when you hear people narrating good times and you wish you had been there too) and found a softness for Hermione... or in the words of Hot House Flowers (that I used to listen to with my 1st girlfriend)
Do you go to the movies
Find a friend in a film
Holding hands with the heroes
Fall in love with the heroine?
But, there is nothing here. I have been on no adventure. I have taken no critical decisions, or had to endure difficulties, fears. I have certainly not had the weight of a narrative rest entirely on my shoulders. As a 'we' we become liberated from the existential issues: what do I do? is this correct? etc.
There is clearly a balance here but the dialectic is much more than being sept along by an imaginary hero. That hero becomes a role model upon which we are inspired to act ourselves. For those who are discovering new levels to themself the Hero is a guide to the way. This is exactly what the religious leaders of all types are!
In the tourist shop I suddenly spied a postcard of the Glenfinan viaduct with the Harry Potter train on it and realised that this was the same scene as from the film. (Always make beeline for postcards when entering an area to see what is to be seen). Suddenly I felt a link to the three heroes of that film; a way into their magical world. I was gripped by the challenge to out cycle the train and capture that picture for myself. It was a hopeless task. On the flat I might have been able to keep up the 20mph needed by with the hills and the wind against me I had to realise I wasn't going to get it. Stopping and racing up a nearby hill, and then another and another, against the clock, looking for the perfect shot I finally got to a vantage point just as the trains smoke appeared on the horizon and made its way toward me. I had one chance at the shot and took the photo as the train huffed and puffed in the valley below.
There was a great sense of achievement in being a part of this Harry Potter experience, being linked to the stories, the characters and the thousands of fans on that train and around the world. I haven't felt like this for a very long time. This I realised was an experinec of the "WE". I sat down looking at the view of Skye and the peninsula before me to muse at what was unveiling before me and wrote:
'I' became 'we' through someone who we all individually identify with. A generation of people are joined and sympathise with the plight and narrative of Harry. He of course could be a private person with a life of his own behind the scenes - but his public self unifies each of us because we can individually identify with it. But NO! He is not a private person, he IS Harry Potter. Harry assists us in the stories because he makes the decsions, but we go along with the rest.
That "self" narrated in a public medium creates the possibility of "we" as ourselves sympathise with His narrative instead of our own. This is the great feeling - the 'WE'. The membership (I was calling it before) gives us release from the existential issues that Harry must himself feel.
"I that is we through Him" is a common motif especially for the Christians and other religious mentalities.
"My Muse" I saw broke my feeling of "we" that is what changed and I just got it back today: that is the magic of Harry Potter!"
Slighly messy exposition as I try to handle the irony that comes from many individual people finding sympathy with a single individual who as a result unifies the multiple individualities as one individuality. That is the social consciousness.
We see it in many guises from film heroes, to music icons, to leaders and politicians, football clubs, interest groups, countries, nations, races etc. It is a great feeling being part of the "we", feeling that I am not really an isolated individual, but am like the page in a book (or the frame in a film) and through me a larger self runs that replaces that little self for a big self.
Still captured by the euphoria of the experience of being somehow magically linked with the quest of Harry Potter - reenjoying a feeling of youth - I camped with the plan to get the real photo on Glenfinnan viaduct the next day. I knew what time the train had left, how fast it travelled and estimated when it must reach the viaduct. Next morning not wishing to be hanging around and playing with the time rather I left with enough time. I stopped to check the train times and suddenly realised that the train waited in Glenfiddan for 30mins. I was going to arrive 10 minutes too late. All the same I raced another impossible race hoping that somehow I had made a mistake. Walking to the top of the viewing point it was obvouis I had missed the shot. In retrospect I ought to have joined the crowds on the road into the hills for shots of it there. I spoke at length to a couple and their kids who also misjudged it - real Potter fans as well so they should have been more gutted than me - but somehow I felt it meant more to me!
Lesson I learned here was that if something matters do not leave it to chance - over plan! My great pleasure in life is cutting timing tight so that I arrive in a great heroic last minute struggle (like the films!), or alternatively don't plan at all so that what happens is a magical suprise (like finding out about the Potter train from a guy by accident on the boat).
Once the euphoria had passed in the following days I entered my more usual sceptical and critical mentality. Is it really good that we give up our "self" to be part of a mass self that has no guidance, direction or even any real substance. The Potter fans enjoyed the collective experience of the Potter hysteria. I felt a closeness to the Potter narratives that I never felt before, felt I wanted to be a part of the heroes' adventures (like when you hear people narrating good times and you wish you had been there too) and found a softness for Hermione... or in the words of Hot House Flowers (that I used to listen to with my 1st girlfriend)
Do you go to the movies
Find a friend in a film
Holding hands with the heroes
Fall in love with the heroine?
But, there is nothing here. I have been on no adventure. I have taken no critical decisions, or had to endure difficulties, fears. I have certainly not had the weight of a narrative rest entirely on my shoulders. As a 'we' we become liberated from the existential issues: what do I do? is this correct? etc.
There is clearly a balance here but the dialectic is much more than being sept along by an imaginary hero. That hero becomes a role model upon which we are inspired to act ourselves. For those who are discovering new levels to themself the Hero is a guide to the way. This is exactly what the religious leaders of all types are!
Monday, 9 August 2010
Joanna Baillie
Dear Agnes, gleam'd with joy and dash'd with tears,
O'er us have glided almost sixty years
Since we on Bothwell's bonny braes [hills] were seen,
By those whose eyes long closed in death have been,
Two tiny Imps, who scarcely stoop'd to gather
...The slender harebell, or the purple heather ;
No taller than the foxglove's spikey stem,
That dew of morning studs with silvery gem
Then every butterfly that cross'd our view
With joyful shout was greeted as it flew,
And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright
In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight.
Then as we paddled barefoot side by side,
Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde,
Minnows or spotted par with twinkling fin,
Swimming in mazy rings the pool within,
A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent,
Seen in the power of early wonderment."
[Lines to her sister Agnes on her birthday]
This says it all about that mind of wonderment that is too precious to ever lose for anything.
O'er us have glided almost sixty years
Since we on Bothwell's bonny braes [hills] were seen,
By those whose eyes long closed in death have been,
Two tiny Imps, who scarcely stoop'd to gather
...The slender harebell, or the purple heather ;
No taller than the foxglove's spikey stem,
That dew of morning studs with silvery gem
Then every butterfly that cross'd our view
With joyful shout was greeted as it flew,
And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright
In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight.
Then as we paddled barefoot side by side,
Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde,
Minnows or spotted par with twinkling fin,
Swimming in mazy rings the pool within,
A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent,
Seen in the power of early wonderment."
[Lines to her sister Agnes on her birthday]
This says it all about that mind of wonderment that is too precious to ever lose for anything.
Raoul Moat
Think it must have been the headlines but of all the thoughts to flood my head while cycling through Glencoe the idiocy of this man and his fans got in there.
The situation for anyone confused is that Raoul Moat is in American terminology a "sad loser". This is because of two things he did.
(1) He got that worked up over some one.
(2) He didn't have the guts to shoot himself at the outset.
In detail...
(1) The point is that a true man (noble man, Aryan) has the strength to just get over it. If the girl is so bad then walk away, she's certainly not worth getting all mixed up over. If she is so good then he must have messed up so that she was so unhappy. Either way it's nothing to do with her but the battles within himself. Raoul Moat wasn't man enough to sort himself out so he lost the will to live.
(2) Having lost the will to live he didn't even have the guts to kill himself, but instead went out with a gun to shoot other people. Eventually (and he must have been in a pretty desperate state by the end) when he realised that killing other people doesn't make the pain go away he did the obvious thing and killed himself.
Looking back though what a ridiculous waste of time when he could have just packed his bags and be down the pub with his mates right now having a drink and a laugh.
Sadly there are people who are very confused who see a resolution to their own pent up frustrations, angers and confusions in this man's actions. I blame the US film industry more than a small amount since 80% of US films operate by first building up enormous anger and then releasing it by killing things. This is absolutely the wrong way of looking at it! If you are going to kill make it yourself (killing other things still leaves you and the problem you have), but realise that this is an enormous waste, and the very worst solution. Unfortunately US films would be much fun to watch if the "hero" shot himself when the tension got too great ;-) The best films would be where the Hero got over his personal issues himself and then went out on a sunny day to help the people around him who were struggling to sort out their issues... that is a true Hero for anyone confused. A lesson to learn there for the worlds governments who also think (like Moat) that when things get bad you go out and kill people!
The situation for anyone confused is that Raoul Moat is in American terminology a "sad loser". This is because of two things he did.
(1) He got that worked up over some one.
(2) He didn't have the guts to shoot himself at the outset.
In detail...
(1) The point is that a true man (noble man, Aryan) has the strength to just get over it. If the girl is so bad then walk away, she's certainly not worth getting all mixed up over. If she is so good then he must have messed up so that she was so unhappy. Either way it's nothing to do with her but the battles within himself. Raoul Moat wasn't man enough to sort himself out so he lost the will to live.
(2) Having lost the will to live he didn't even have the guts to kill himself, but instead went out with a gun to shoot other people. Eventually (and he must have been in a pretty desperate state by the end) when he realised that killing other people doesn't make the pain go away he did the obvious thing and killed himself.
Looking back though what a ridiculous waste of time when he could have just packed his bags and be down the pub with his mates right now having a drink and a laugh.
Sadly there are people who are very confused who see a resolution to their own pent up frustrations, angers and confusions in this man's actions. I blame the US film industry more than a small amount since 80% of US films operate by first building up enormous anger and then releasing it by killing things. This is absolutely the wrong way of looking at it! If you are going to kill make it yourself (killing other things still leaves you and the problem you have), but realise that this is an enormous waste, and the very worst solution. Unfortunately US films would be much fun to watch if the "hero" shot himself when the tension got too great ;-) The best films would be where the Hero got over his personal issues himself and then went out on a sunny day to help the people around him who were struggling to sort out their issues... that is a true Hero for anyone confused. A lesson to learn there for the worlds governments who also think (like Moat) that when things get bad you go out and kill people!
Friday, 6 August 2010
SRH/SIH is back - monobox
Returning my mind here it seems simple...
The issue is that if something "does something" then if it does that thing to itself and succeeds in changing itself, then it also changes itself, and therefore changes what it can do.
An empty hand for example can't grasp itself because in grasping itself it becomes a full hand and that changes (in this case defeats) its ability to grasp.
A box cannot contain itself because in containing itself it changes itself into a full box and so destroys its ability to contain anything.
It seems in these cases what I failed to see before was that the process creates changes to the object which mirror and cancel the process.
Wait a second... when a hand shakes someone else's hand don't they both become full hands ... why does this work... ok thinking aloud need to reconsider...
===
Let us create an entity which is a box but can only hold 1 entity after which it is full: a monobox for short. It performs a binary function then either empty or full.
An empty box can accept and item, but a full box obviously cannot. Simple.
Now let us remove the subject/object, self/other "rule" of nature, that the SRH/SIH seems to be trying to enforce, so that the box can accept itself if required.
The formula in the first section notes that "self" here is a strong self so that changes to the self instantaneously relect upon the function (i.e. the self). It is not an iterative system where simply that data is fed back into the "same" function, nor an iterative system where the function is changed by successive iterations (e.g. an iteration writes new version of the function which is executed at the next iteration), instead using that example the code is edited directly in memory as it executes. A failure of the code in the last example thus halts execution immediately not at the end of the iteration (important point). The first example is not self. The second example is weak self (new self executes at each iteration) and the third is strong self (self updates as it processes).
A strong-self monobox thus changes its status as it goes. OK I realise here that to contain itself is not a problem because a monobox can contain a full and an empty monobox, so changes to the self do not affect its functioning upon itself.
However with the shaking hands I think it does because a hand can only shake hands with an empty hand, not with a full one. Usually the two hands become full simultaneously as they grasp one another - ok need to think more ... in a hurry to make temple
=== 9/8/10
Meditation this morning I let my mind wander to this issue again... and concluded something different from what I write next...
A hand shaking another hand renders both hands full at the same time. But a hand shaking itself might render itself full twice...
It is full because it is the recipient of itself, and it is full again because the received hand is also filled by itself.
Now tweezering that apart will take some brain power.
The monobox is different. A monobox is filled by itself, but that it fills a monobox is not breaking the rules. A monobox which is filled either by containing an object or by being contained by an object leads to the shaking hands problem.
What is interesting about a monobox is that it completely messes up space. Standing next to a monobox if we then put the monobox inside itself, we are at the same time putting the monobox outside itself. With a sheet of paper its more common to say this. You can put something in wrapping, or you can wrap paper around something. A monobox does both to itself - so saying can you put that monobox around itself is the same as can you put that monobox inside itself. No contradiction however just finding an identity (identical) in its operations.
Its the same as the
A := {A}
problem before where I envisaged an infinite regression and infinite progression since A so defined means that:
A = {{A}}, A = {{..{....}..}}
are all true. Basically such a definition defines an (countably) infinitely deep set of sets. What I complained about before is what I've found is called "undecidable" in the vernacular of this quarter of thinking. But is that a problem?
Anyway monoboxes can't contain themselves because of something simpler - that there is not enough room inside something to fit itself. That circle example - a circle radius=1 can contain any circle
radius <>
The issue is that if something "does something" then if it does that thing to itself and succeeds in changing itself, then it also changes itself, and therefore changes what it can do.
An empty hand for example can't grasp itself because in grasping itself it becomes a full hand and that changes (in this case defeats) its ability to grasp.
A box cannot contain itself because in containing itself it changes itself into a full box and so destroys its ability to contain anything.
It seems in these cases what I failed to see before was that the process creates changes to the object which mirror and cancel the process.
Wait a second... when a hand shakes someone else's hand don't they both become full hands ... why does this work... ok thinking aloud need to reconsider...
===
Let us create an entity which is a box but can only hold 1 entity after which it is full: a monobox for short. It performs a binary function then either empty or full.
An empty box can accept and item, but a full box obviously cannot. Simple.
Now let us remove the subject/object, self/other "rule" of nature, that the SRH/SIH seems to be trying to enforce, so that the box can accept itself if required.
The formula in the first section notes that "self" here is a strong self so that changes to the self instantaneously relect upon the function (i.e. the self). It is not an iterative system where simply that data is fed back into the "same" function, nor an iterative system where the function is changed by successive iterations (e.g. an iteration writes new version of the function which is executed at the next iteration), instead using that example the code is edited directly in memory as it executes. A failure of the code in the last example thus halts execution immediately not at the end of the iteration (important point). The first example is not self. The second example is weak self (new self executes at each iteration) and the third is strong self (self updates as it processes).
A strong-self monobox thus changes its status as it goes. OK I realise here that to contain itself is not a problem because a monobox can contain a full and an empty monobox, so changes to the self do not affect its functioning upon itself.
However with the shaking hands I think it does because a hand can only shake hands with an empty hand, not with a full one. Usually the two hands become full simultaneously as they grasp one another - ok need to think more ... in a hurry to make temple
=== 9/8/10
Meditation this morning I let my mind wander to this issue again... and concluded something different from what I write next...
A hand shaking another hand renders both hands full at the same time. But a hand shaking itself might render itself full twice...
It is full because it is the recipient of itself, and it is full again because the received hand is also filled by itself.
Now tweezering that apart will take some brain power.
The monobox is different. A monobox is filled by itself, but that it fills a monobox is not breaking the rules. A monobox which is filled either by containing an object or by being contained by an object leads to the shaking hands problem.
What is interesting about a monobox is that it completely messes up space. Standing next to a monobox if we then put the monobox inside itself, we are at the same time putting the monobox outside itself. With a sheet of paper its more common to say this. You can put something in wrapping, or you can wrap paper around something. A monobox does both to itself - so saying can you put that monobox around itself is the same as can you put that monobox inside itself. No contradiction however just finding an identity (identical) in its operations.
Its the same as the
A := {A}
problem before where I envisaged an infinite regression and infinite progression since A so defined means that:
A = {{A}}, A = {{..{....}..}}
are all true. Basically such a definition defines an (countably) infinitely deep set of sets. What I complained about before is what I've found is called "undecidable" in the vernacular of this quarter of thinking. But is that a problem?
Anyway monoboxes can't contain themselves because of something simpler - that there is not enough room inside something to fit itself. That circle example - a circle radius=1 can contain any circle
radius <>
===
On the containment issue - another rehashing in terms of measurement.
A system must be measured by what is not the system, as if it is measured by itself it is always equal to 1.
Indeed isn't this the definition of self.
Self is that which lies in proportion to something else necessarily in the ratio of 1:1
While two people may be identical one may put a hat on and so no longer be identical.
A mirror image is identical in that one may put a hat on and the other also then wears a hat, but one is recognised as the image of the other but not vice-versa.
One may refer to oneself in speech as in "I am going for a walk" in which one refers to oneself and means that the speaker is necessarily identical with the person who is going for a walk.
However a self-measurement is also meaningless as it is tautologically = 1 and so void of information. In other words to speak of self is not to tell anyone anything they didn't already know.
So a measurement implies non-system, and meaning implies non-system. The old "problem" of Solipsism only works if we are abandon meaning - indeed Solipsism is madness. Psychologically Solipsism is the ego becoming so insecure and desperate to affirm its existence that it denies the Other all together and retreats into a secure world of itself - at the cost of anything being meaningful as all things become measured 1:1 and nothing can be right or wrong etc.
To accept that anything means anything or has any intrinsic existence or value automatically implies an external judge and measure of what "I" apprehend.
It is this that the SRH seeks to prove - but once again HOW?
Loch Lomond Rubbish
There is a lot of rubbish in the lay byes at Loch Lomond, Scotland. Astonishing for two reasons (i) Loch Lomond is a beautiful place to outsiders (ii) The rest of Scotland is remarkably litter free. I wondered who had left the litter and examining it I had my suspicions - how many American families do you see on holiday with 6 packs of Carlsberg in their lunch hampers? I made some enquiries and the blame was firmly placed on the Glaswegians from 15 miles to the SE. The locals called them "visitors" but a distinction had to be made because I pointed out that the average American, Japanese or even English tourist who has come here to enjoy the place is quite shocked by the litter. To me the Glaswegians were the locals relatively. It made me realise something that bodes badly for property.
The usual argument is that when we own something we look after it better. But this isn't the whole truth because visitors to Scotland don't own it yet they probably value it the most. It might be because they have spent time and money to get there and so they have invested something, but this leads to the more general appreciated of the area which is why they came in the first place. No! here you have people who don't own even a pebble treating it as well as their own. As that thought experiment goes - imagine finding the Earth wouldn't it be the most precious thing ever discovered yet we behave like Glaswegians here.
So why do the Glaswegians not respect it like the visitors from afar or those who live there? I thought it was because the idea of owning something means we look after it carefully, so automatically and dialectically the idea of not owning something means are more careless about it. What is the meaning of being House-Proud if you don't treat the land around you with disregard? How can we be more careful about "this" without at the same time and in the same mind be less careful about "that". So the property system seems to imply that while we look after what is ours we will mistreat that which isn't ours.
This seemed to rather open the hermetically sealed tin of property logic.
The usual argument is that when we own something we look after it better. But this isn't the whole truth because visitors to Scotland don't own it yet they probably value it the most. It might be because they have spent time and money to get there and so they have invested something, but this leads to the more general appreciated of the area which is why they came in the first place. No! here you have people who don't own even a pebble treating it as well as their own. As that thought experiment goes - imagine finding the Earth wouldn't it be the most precious thing ever discovered yet we behave like Glaswegians here.
So why do the Glaswegians not respect it like the visitors from afar or those who live there? I thought it was because the idea of owning something means we look after it carefully, so automatically and dialectically the idea of not owning something means are more careless about it. What is the meaning of being House-Proud if you don't treat the land around you with disregard? How can we be more careful about "this" without at the same time and in the same mind be less careful about "that". So the property system seems to imply that while we look after what is ours we will mistreat that which isn't ours.
This seemed to rather open the hermetically sealed tin of property logic.
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