Self-Explaining Universe (SRH)

More on SRH I will get here one day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

There is definitely a strong connection between the Mind and the Universe. With enough examination we can convince ourselves of this. The idea of the universe existing independent of some intelligence does not make sense.

This is definitely the ancient religious sense that the world was not that old, and Humans had been a critical part of it from the start, and before humans there was the intelligence of God.

Today we have the alternative idea that really the Universe has had almost all its existence with no sentient life at all. It is as though sentience has no place it the world, a side effect of the processes of universe history.

In this view there is no need for sentience and we must explain the world without reference to sentience at all. But isn't there a contradiction there. Sentient beings are trying to understand a universe in which sentience is not a real part, and yet it is a part of it.

We have to resolve this issue before we can make any more progress. Is sentience a fundamental part of the universe or is it not. If it is not, then one has to wonder how the universe can be fundamentally  understood by something that is only superficial. And if sentience is fundamental then we have the SRH problem of eventually we will need to understand Sentience itself.

We can't escape the fact that eventually we need to understand our place in the universe. So far Science has just kicked the tin can down the alley. And of course Science itself will have to change. The scientific method began with the clear distinction between Subject and Object, and the method is designed so that the Subject is as best as possible removed from the experiment. Various levels of "blind" can be used to ensure that the data is not effected by "sentient" responses. But obviously any experiment that requires sentience has a subjective component. The very meaning of the results is a bias introduced and the hypothesis that is being tested is pure subjectivity. If the Universe really was Objective we wouldn't need sentient beings and science at all. As our enquiring of the universe develop we will eventually have to face this contradiction in science, that it tries to remove from the picture the very foundations of its process, and the Universe we try to study we try to see from teh perspective that we never existed. What is the sound of a a tree falling in a universe with no-one to hear? What are the laws of physics in a Universe with no-one to discover them? The answer is that you cannot have one without the other. To already be talking of Laws of Physics is to imply an ontology of sentience: we are assuming that sentient beings exist.

And so the Anthropic principle is an important one. Its not so much a physical principle stating that no eyes will ever look out over a universe unsuitable for light. It is more general stating that the very conception of a Universe implies sentience.

We are back to the beginning again as though no science had ever happened. And this will always happen because science begins in data. And we knew the universe existed from the start, when we first asked the questions that began investigation. The seeds of science were always already there, and science can only grow from that root. When Adam first opened his eyes he already had the root deeply embedded in the soil of the universe from which everything we have learned has come. That inspiration and spark was always there, that sentience, was a bright now as it was with cavemen sitting around a fire telling stories on a dark Ice Age winter night. We always already understood the fundamentals, we just needed to flesh them out. The universe and sentience are intimately connected. That is clear, and always has been, with each photon that we see.

What is the value of nature?

Nature is that which determines whether Science is true or false. A scientific idea is tested against Nature to see whether it fits or not.

This has led to Technology where Human Nature has determined which things to make or not. So while Nature determined whether something can be made or not, Human Nature determines whether it will be made or not. The Nature of Capitalism is exploitation of Human Nature, so that to express Human Nature, humans must drive the mechanism of Capitalism and make things they would not otherwise make. Essentially people are forced to get a job and to spend by paying taxes. As argued Adam Smith missed out that people are not in a market freely but are politically pushed by the Nature of ruling elites to buy and sell against their own Nature. Without Capitalism when machines would replaced labour people would have been free from labour. As we saw before Capitalism, there was a different world with far less work and consumption.

Living within a Capitalist world then we actually live reflecting not Grand Nature but the Nature of ruling elites. Our daily existence reflects the dynamics of an artificial machine. The economic news, the politics news, the concerns over costs and fashions these are all the Nature of an artificial machine. There is a critical mistake here to suggest that this reflects reality as is often done. The biggest myth of Capitalism is that it reflects human nature. It exploits Human Nature.

So Nature does not just determine whether Science is true or false, but all knowledge. And looking at Nature can show us how artificial the Modern World is. If a walk in Nature is more beneficial and has a long lasting effect on mental well being than any drug it is because it enables us to see Reality again and so gain a perspective on the Fiction of Capitalism and Politics that battles for our time.

Looking from the outside we can see animals vying for political position every day. Squabbling over pecking orders and access to resources like food and mating rights. This is Nature. Politicians fighting for power, and Capitalists fighting to own companies is all quite Natural. But the problem is that from the inside Politics and Capitalism appear to be world of their own. You can spend your whole life shopping and working and never realise what you are doing. You can spend your whole life supporting a political party and think it so important that your candidate wins, and never see what you are doing.

A walk in Nature gives us the Absolute perspective from which all other things are judged true and false.

Another problem with Conservation and the solution to the whole problem

The mentality of conservation is that we need to do more the protect wildlife. Yet the problem is clearly rather that we are doing something wrong. Conservation is not about doing anything, but about stopping or changing something that we are doing.

Now the problem is really a problem of the last 50 years. It is true that over the last half a million years humans have created many extinctions from Wholly Mammoths to Dodos but the problem has never been systemic before. Now the whole planet is threatened.

Many targets have been selected and picked up by the media and politics.

Invasive species is one. Rodents and cats on islands have decimated native populations around the world. Some funding can bring in a Rentokill company to eradicate them and problem solved.

Habitat loss is mentioned, and the solution is the power of politics and the law to protect land in reserves. (capitalism)

Plastics have recently been mentioned and the solution is for consumers to reduce our use of plastics and push industry to use it less.

Climate Change is the big one and the solution is again the power of politics (but not the law this time) to force industry to reduce CO2 emissions.

Acid rain was one and the solution there was the power of politics to reduce sulphur emissions. This has allowed forests and wildlife to recover.

Ozone hole was another and again power of politics over industry limited the release of chemicals that were seen to damage the ozone. There is evidence of a recovery here and harmful radiation levels are reducing.

In all these programs the solution has been government enforcing change in industry. Or it has been governments using its power of property to force protection areas. In almost no situation ever has industry led to conservation efforts. One possible exception is wildlife tourism which is the great hope of conservation. Yet it is usually government bans on the actions of industry that create a space where the conservation industry can get a foot hold.

So it appears that the problem is industry itself. And why should industry be a problem? Industry is a machine with a goal of wealth creation. In particular since the 1980s the single goal of industry and business graduates has been financial profit. Thus left to its own devices the result of industry will be financial wealth. Yet conservation has a different goal: natural wealth. As a result industry and conservation are working towards different goals.

Now the industry theorists will say that the two goals are the same. Adam Smith argued that in a free market with every agent working towards their own selfish interests the market will act to arbitrate supply and demand in an optimal way. Its works by setting the price so that high demand goods have an upward price pressure, and high supply goods have a downward price pressure. The result is that goods find their way to where they are needed. Industry will argue that conservation concerns will be expressed in the market as buying and selling actions that benefit the natural world. So for example concern for the welfare of the Tiger will result in money finding its way to tiger conservation and out weighting the income from hunters working either for trade or to protect live stock.

But it is clearly not working. Does this mean that people simply do not care about the environment and so market choices are not being made in favour of it? The recent concern over plastics has shown that people action in markets can work and changes of behaviour can effect conservation. The BBC, as a service provider rather than profit driven, is in a central position across the Common Wealth to educate people of the impacts they are having on the planet and the extraordinary and invaluable work of people like David Attenborough and Chris Packham are central to this. But not again it is not industry here but publicly funded, government run, media that is leading the way. Industry somehow is opposed to conservation. Industry is not working.

Markets are considerably more complex that Adam Smith could have ever known in the 18th Century. They are fractal for example with complex feedback loops, they suffer from all kinds of network problems. But the main problem is that they are not free. Obviously this is true in that it is in financial interest to fix markets: like all gambling halls the outcome is rigged. But more intrinsically people must make a living. We do not have a choice to buy and sell in a market: we have to buy and sell to live. The unemployed, without a government social system, are dead. This is because we live in a system of property where by law things are owned. It means that you cannot gain access to anything without ownership, and to own we need money. And you get money, by selling the things you own, or critically renting the things you own. That latter option is the essence of Capitalism which we will see is a essence of the problem for conservation. If you find anything physical it will be owned by the land owner, so you if you don't own any land you cannot gain possession of anything. The only place that property does not exist is in inventions and ideas. So unless you are lucky enough to think of something valuable and original and you can get property rights to your idea, or exploit it quick enough before others copy you then you can only gain income from "employment." That means accepting labour from someone who owns. This is the first principle of Capitalism that those who do not own, must gain employment from those that do. Without ownership starting up a company is difficult because you cannot even borrow money without collateral. In Capitalism how much you can make, depends a lot on how much you already own. So there is a whole class of people who have no choice in life but to work for a living. They do not care what they do, they just want an income so that they can buy the bare essentials upon which to live.

This would work fine from a conservation perspective but for machines. Economies are never static. Changes in technology quickly make people redundant and they need to reskill and exploit new markets. One might think that when combine harvesters made 120 people unemployed for each harvester these people would be able to finally sit down and enjoy the productivity of those machines. Indeed where is the John Steinbeck story of itinerant workers saving their income to buy a combine harvester and then lazing the summer away while it did their work for them. Of course no such thing. The land owner makes them redundant and buys the machine himself. These unemployed people then need to find new work and so economies are always been driven forward. This is not a free market, there is no choice but to keep producing for its own sake and this endless engine is at odds with the natural world which exists untouched and unimproved by industry.

The second principle of capitalism is that ownership can provide returns on investment if we invest it: that is give it up for rent. This means that capitalists have a vested interest in growth. So as a result in capitalist countries government is lobbied to encourage growth. This policy is sold to the public as job creation, but no one ever asks where the jobs went in the first place so that new jobs needed to be created. As just explained those jobs were swallowed up by machines and improving efficiency, but the benefits of which are never seen by the wider economy obnly the owners of capital. The beneficiaries of growth are actually mainly the owners of industry and with a simple equation that greater growth means greater returns on investment the endless machine of industry forever expanding and using natural resources is assured.

Capitalism is often argued to be the "natural" state of humans. It mirrors the natural world. But this is not true. Capitalism is based upon property and that is enforced by government. Capitalism is a government decision and the maintenance of capitalism is government policy. This is why government reforms in the 80s caused the current hyper expansion of economies. If capitalism was natural it would have happened by itself.

What is natural however is mafias, or the wild west. What naturally happens in a power vacuum like post war Iraq is a battle for power. Gangs form both opportunistically to exploit people, but also defensively to protect one from other gangs. This logic drives a system of conflict until large gang leaders exist like in the maffia. In British history this process of endless warfare and uncertainty eventually led to a "social contract" where the Barons agreed to all support one leader, in UK history that was the King. This is a Nash Equilibrium. The king was leader, but with extremely restricted powers. And the rest of the gang leaders agreed to support him and so defer their own powers in return for peace with the other gang members. And so you end up with government as the final process of succession in the struggle for power. This is the natural process. Capitalism is not natural and was invented in the 18th Century at the advent of the Industrial Revolution to organise the transitions in economy to ward mechanised mass production and huge profits generated by factories.

So with government both behind Capitalism and behind Conservation efforts actually the problem lies in government balance of decisions. Industry has a disproportionate lobby group in parliament. There are probably less that 5,000 significant capitalists in the UK but their voice is heard much louder than the 66 million other people. This makes Capitalists lords with voices 13000 times greater than the common man. And within them are a few whose voice is absurdly loud: the kings so to speak of the modern system. The problem for conservation is that Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan only have limited mandate given to them by government, while the heads of the bank of England for example have a voice in parliament thousands of times greater than these two. But these two do have the ears of the population and perhaps with 66 million people listening to the concerns of Spring Watch, even if they do not watch it, government can be persuaded not to listened to the Capitalists so much. What a nonsense Adam Smith would make of the system today, with his free market being abused by a handful of incredibly powerful people lobbying government decisions on economic policy.

The most famous twisting of government policy incidentally was the phase of market liberalisation under the Republican and Labour tenures. The first thing Labour did when they took office in 1997 was hand interest rates to the Bank Of England. That is the decisions for the whole economy started to be made by a private company with no democratic mandate or responsibility! Unsurprisingly interest rates were kept low and the markets were over heated. They were able to do this by not including housing prices in the inflation figures. Thus they reported low inflation, when in fact it was run away and a bubble was forming. Mervyn King went on radio to explain that they couldn't include houses in the inflation figures because it was impossible to do in a standard way that would make inflation figures comparable across Europe. What a standard "legalese" "paperwork" way of avoiding the point. It's not the inflation figures that matter, but rather setting inflation figures to stop the markets overheating. And this guy was left in charge of the Bank Of England. This episode with years of the hand over of control to the city demonstrates to my mind what a collection of klutzes work in that sector and why democratic government should never trust them with the keys to the economy. Needless to say the markets over heated and then government was then twisted to bail them out, with tax payers money paid by people whose control of the economy had been handed away in the first place. A perfect example of absolute power corrupts and our financial centres have too much power. A real sceptic would say the whole thing was centrally planned to inject wealth into the economy to protect it from the aftermath of the DotCom bust. But all this policy is designed to do one thing: maintain growth and protect the assets of capitalists. And that mentality is against even Adam Smith  and certainly is the root of the Conservation problem.

So there is something fundamentally wrong is the way we do things, and there is no fix other than stopping doing things this way. The key bastion of contemporary economics that must go is Growth. Economies must be driven for stability or even reduction in size. How ludicrous it is to have conservationists calling for Reuse, Reduce and Recycle while at the other lobby group is asking for Increase, Increase, Increase. Reduce means Economic Reduction as a whole.

This is the stuff of revolution. We sit on the edge of a paradigm where the mentality and fabric of class system and Owners and Non-Owners, or Haves and Have-Nots is under threat. And there is no other way. We either lose the Planet and spin it all up in products to generate profit. And when this planet is exploited we move someone else to exploit that. Or we stop. These are the clear battle lines. Conservation and Have-Nots say stop. Industry and Capitalists says accelerate.

Now the Capitalists own the media and they spend a lot of time printing certain ideas in the hope of fooling the public. One such idea is that economic growth is needed to create jobs and that benefits the have-nots. What a coincidence that the thing the Capitalists most need which is returns on investment is not sold as personal gain to the owners of industry, but is rather sold as the benefit of the common people.

To bring the economy to a stand still there needs to be another way to redistribute wealth other than labour. Working for a living is a rather new concept that arose originally around 7000 years ago with the start of farming. Before that hunter gathers did not work, they rather reaped the benefits of a rich natural world. Work done on the lifestyles of existing hunter gatherers estimates that they need to do been 2 and 6 hours of searching per day to get the resources they need to live. Polynesian Islanders have it easiest with just 2 hours fishing and gathering shell fish on the shore. But they don't see it as creation or labour and there is nothing to own except perhaps a boat. They are simply going to Nature's Store and taking whatever they need, and there is no rush because on the next tide all the shelves are restocked. I have a video of a tribes person from South America having seen the white Mans world puzzling over the use of money. He cannot understand why you need money to get things from a shop when he can just go into the jungle and take everything he needs. Hunter Gathering is not based on exchange value, Nature is the generous provider and she is loved deeply for that as much as a mother. This is the mentality of Mother Earth. This is the mentality of Conservation also: that Nature is the generous provider and something to be deeply loved as it is unimproved before industry owns it, does any value added and attaches a price to it. I have another video of Kalahari Bushmen having been relocated to purpose built housing and given jobs complaining how hard and boring this new life is. It is quite a far cry from the Capitalist propaganda that life before the rise of factories and industry was "nasty, brutish and short." Ironically it is the rather the rise of Capitalism that is the cause of most of the world's hardships and woes. when we think of abject poverty we are thinking of displaced unemployed people from the Victorian or Colonial periods when capitalists owned all the land, and people were left starving with no means of sustenance. Indeed one of the worst genocides in history was caused by the British in Bengal exporting food for their war effort and leaving millions to perish instead. How ironic that we celebrate liberating the Nazi Work camps and saving millions, while the cost was millions dying in the work camp of Bengal: a whole country turned in a work camp by Capitalism where the local people of that country had no access to food because it was all owned by the British. That is the power of Capitalism to deprive people. And this is the power that drive industry endlessly forward and which ultimately causes the current Holocaust of Nature.

So how can we distribute wealth? Reading any Jane Austin or contemporary novel it can be seen that Capitalism famously enabled the landed gentry to have an "income." This is actually the same as the feudal system where ownership of land came with an income paid by the tenants of that land (the people whose home it was!). Throughout history the wealthy have always enjoyed a free income, that they are deserved by virtue of their status. The problem in fact with free handouts in that the poor are still not considered worth it. This part of the class system is still strong. When Thatcher called for an end to the class system I'm not sure she quite knew what she was asking for. She was asking for the right of anyone to gain a free income not just the wealthy land and share owners. In a genuinely free society the right to income must be uncoupled from labour. For the working class to be finally buried in history means that workers and owners both should be able to gain free income. Its interesting that the word Business is derived from the word "busy", and the word lazy and laziness is still seen as the opposite of busy. The busy shall be afforded income, but the lazy shall perish I can imagine the Bible saying for this is certainly a biblical way of thinking. Remembering the hunter gatherers: treat nature well and she will provide for you. There is no need for business. This is a creation of capitalism to encourage growth and returns on investment for the owners of industry.

There are calls for Universal Credit at the moment. I have not read the arguments but in this post exist plenty of arguments. Free income has been an established feature of economies since the start of property ownership. We don't need to argue for that, we simply need to argue that it is extended from the rich to also the poor. This has one immediate economic benefit as it will remove the need for labour in acquiring money and so will actually increase the money velocity and grow the economy. But at the same time will remove the necessity of people to work for their basic survival. People will finally return to a state of near freedom like they had 7000 years ago. What we do with our life will not be driven by the fear of starvation like it is today, a problem first created by property. Look at the Bible for the stories of famines in Egypt and elsewhere in the Bronze age. This was never a problem before. All humans will be able to enjoy the life style of the aristocracy and we can see that some wasted their lives in drugs and parties these were a minority that were frowned upon. It is from the aristocracy that came have all the advances in science and art. Humans are creative, it is not something that needs to be forced from them like a performing animal. And following on from the previous post this belief in the Nature both human and non-human and valuing it just as it is is the essence of a happiness and fulfilled life. Indeed Capitalism creates unhappiness, because only unhappy people are busy struggling endlessly to make themselves happy. This is not quite true: compassionate people can be busy too as they try their best to help the people around them: but their goal is not exhaustion but just to use their time well.

So when the government finally wakes up the problem their are truly radical changes to be eased in to society and the vision we have of human life. It will not be without its opponents however as the whole ruling class of the globe are opposed to this as they currently enjoy enormous power and wealth from the current system. They may need to be publically named and shamed like in Ancient Greece where the aristos constantly felt a need to be popular with the demos not least because they faced ostracism. A system of ostracism for the likes of Mervyn King and others who have shamelessly protected the interests of a select few is a fanciful possibility. Perhaps the internet is enough to provide a voice to the people and free from the editorial controls of the Capitalism owned media, a free space to actually criticise the real problems of the oligarchy the control policy in the country and abroad.

Conservation then like the last post is not a trivial add on the status quo. It is a fundmental uprooting of a tree that does not work. A revoicing of mentalities that have been taken a back seat for 7000 years or more, and a look toward a world that appreciates itself as it is, appreciates everyone in it, and asks us each to appreciate ourselves and the world just as it is.

Why should we protect the environment

The most recent BBC SpringWatch series was excellent as it went a lot further into the urgent need for and the reasons for conservation. But I always feel that modern conservation makes it sound like a luxury rather than a necessity. And when conservation is made a necessity it is done in terms of its benefit to humans. It appears that there this no argument for Life itself. And that was the original purpose of this blog (more of less). What is the point?

SpringWatch has always, since the days of Bill Oddie and his depression, referred to the benefits of Nature on mental health. Now there seems to be more evidence that nature provides health benefits far exceeding any medicine. But no one ever asks why? Chris Packham argues that we evolved in a natural environment and so this is why we have the connection. But it suggests had we evolved in a city we wouldn't need nature: it makes it rather conditional.

All this misses the point that Nature IS essential. But why?

Watching nature does one absolutely fundamental thing, more fundamental than anything else that humans can do. Nature asks us to see things the way they are. That is the reason it is the core of good mental health and a happy life. All unhappiness and mental illness comes from seeing the world in an artificial unrealistic way. Think of the worse mental illnesses where people have delusions and lose touch with reality. Psychiatry says that this is due to chemical imbalances in the brain, or genetics. But why are the chemical imbalances there, and why did the genes gets switched on? It is to do with not looking at the world the way it is in the first place. You can take drugs to treat the symptoms but to cure mental health problems requires rebuilding the habit of seeing the world as it is. That means not the way we want it, but just as it is. And appreciating Nature is exactly that, learning to see Life as it is.

Seeing a bird come to rest on a branch, study the ground for food and then drop down to feed may seem like an interest for an ornithologist or ecologist. But it requires exactly the same mind that we would use to observe ourselves. If we are not feeling well we will observe our own coming to rest, and look closely at how we feel. The mind that watches nature is exactly the mind seated in reality from which perspective we can see how not just the world is, but also how we are, that is our own Nature. This is the true mind. It is a mind very different from the argumentative mind that jumps between perspective, trying to justify one or the other. It is very different from the fantasy mind that dreams of the future, or recalls the past, or day dreams about the things that are of interest to us. The mind that watches nature must see what is there, that is its only subject matter, and that is its only goal. Meditation is a practice developed thousands of years ago across the globe to strengthen this "seeing things as they are" mind, this mind of reality. This is the true mind, and straying from it, is straying from ourselves. we become fake, we become gradually more unwell.

Now this is all no trivial thing. The whole Western World is built upon this mistake. We live in a world that is essentially mentally ill because it has ceased to be interested in the world as it is. we are more interested in how the world could be, its possibility, its fantasy rather than its reality. And our view of reality has been altered. We have replaced the "world as it is" with Science or more precisely "knowing" how the world is. I used to dream as a child that eventually the day would come when I knew everything and I could close my eyes and bury myself in a darkened cell and within my mind I would know the world. This is Science with its vast database storing everything there is to know, and then destroying the world because it is no longer needed. We see this mentality in the idea of conservation DNA databases where it doesn't matter if the animal goes extinct because we have its DNA and we can recreate its type any time we like. But all this is not "things as they are" it is the "fantasy mind" filled with potential and the blue prints of the world, but without an actual world. This is the mind of illness and unhappiness and non-reality. In more biblical metaphor this is the trap that the Devil is luring mankind into. His fantasy mind is the witches house made of sweets that looks so enticing but when we are inside we realise it was a trap and only death awaits us.

One result of this fantasy mind is the idea of "improvement" or "progress.," We take a glance at the world as it is, but then immediately start dreaming about what we can do to improve it. We conjure up fantastical possibilities of happy worlds where no one is ill and no one dies, where every need is met by machines and government is liberal and grants us every freedom. Caught up in our fantasies we start working toward a better world. we come to hate "the world as it is" because it is so unlike what we dreamed of. And maybe we will be successful in achieving our dream or maybe we won't, but there is a fundamental problem: our children will not care for our labours and our dreams! Why is this? Because all we taught them to do was take a glance at the world and then dream of something better, and so before long they will hate the world we created as much as we hated the world we inherited from the previous generation. And as the generations tick past, no one will ever be happy. Each generation just teaches the next to ignore the world and chase after fantasy instead. This is the tread mill of progress upon which mankind has been walking and then running for many centuries now.

But why would mankind have got trapped in chasing after "improvements"? It is the same reason that individuals get caught up in improvements: they do not want to see things as they are, they do not want to look at Nature. Sometimes it is hard to see things as they are. It requires facing reality, and seeing both the good and the bad. Our bird jumping down onto the ground to feed may catch a mouse and start to bite its head, or another bird may swoop down and piece the flesh of our bird with its talons. The way things are is not guaranteed to be a fairy tale and so it is often easier to fly off into fantasy and imagine how we want things. But this way unhappiness and eventually madness lies. In reality the mind that is honest and fixed in reality is not that troubled by the difficult to watch things; after all unlike the fantasy mind it does not have a blue print of how things should be. It is instead able to see how they are, how things operate together, what the reality is. And it loves this reality more deeply than anything.

The maker of a violin does not buy wood and then look at it with loathing, hurrying to make it into a violin that he can then look at with love. The maker of a violin loves the wood as much as the work to make the violin, as much as the finished product, as much as the music that is sounded through that wooden box. Sitting in the forest from which the wood came, the violinist can play the song of the dead tree to its companions, not to say that the violin is better than the tree from which it came, or the music better than the labours of the violin craftsman but to love the world that gives us trees, and crafts and violins and music and ears to hear, and minds that can appreciate music. To say thank you. As we listen to that fantasy scene, if we were truly there, we would be able to see everything just as it is: tree become violin become music.

The West has gotten stuck in a terrible loop since Plato and perhaps before. The fantasy world of The Forms: the world of perfect moulds from which all the world is mass produced copies is very much a vision of Mechanised Industry. No longer are we interested in the raw materials, we quite possibly loathe the raw materials if we see the meat being pureed in giant machines or the hectares of monoculture stretching to the horizon. We are no longer interested in the work, paying workers the bare minimum to get them to turn up for employment, spending as little as possible on their training to ensure they know just enough to do the job. Sacking them if they don't maintain productivity. The final product is all that matters and the customer is only interested in getting this home. But the love is shallow. The have no invested love in the product, the affection is likely only skin deep. And as fashion changes, or the novelty wears off the item is on eBay or down the rubbish tip and customer is out buying something new. The problem is that minds no longer look at how things are, but instead are more interested in how they could be, in the chasing of their fantasies, or worse the fantasies implanted in us by marketing divisions seeking to entice and control the population to buy their products.

Interestingly the conservation world is noting how this wasteful consumption is partly responsible for the ecological problems. The plastics problem arises from the mass wasting of single use plastics. But at root it is nothing to do with this, but the deeper problem of people harbouring fantasy minds and not minds involved with the way the world is: Mind that are not involved with Nature.

The wars that we see ravaging the world these days are driven by a desire to make the world a better place. If we just depose one more dictator, or bring one more country out of socialism then things will be better. We hate the world as it is, and dream of this better world. The kind rooted in Nature doesn't see this: the mind rooted in nature sees the world as it is. And this mind loves the world as it is. As said above there is no point changing the world, if we don't already love it, because our children will just be taught to hate it and try and change it themselves. We must love the world as it is, and teach our children to love it as it is. We must show them to love themselves as they already are, not in need of improvement at all. How odd is it that in relationships people dream of a partner who loves them for who they are, loves all their flaws. How odd when if we ourselves already did that then we wouldn't need to dream of such a partner, we would just love ourselves right now, and love the life we live and love the world we are a part of: we would quiet simply love nature.

Now I had this discussion with my sister and she said this is hard for people who have for example been abused in some form. How can someone who as experienced years of abuse, never been shown love, been taught to hate themselves, is filled with anger, guilt, revenge, loathing, disgust, hopelessness, emptiness, sadness, depression, darkness, self-destruction, feelings tearing the soul apart... where there is nothing to hold on to, a quick-sand of spiralling unstable emotions that never stops: where is the love?

Love is not a nice feeling, or a sleep by a warm fire. It is not the loving hug of our mother, or the company of friends. It is much more. It is watching nature. When we watch nature we may see warm feelings, we may watch joyful emotions rise, or great clarity of mind, peace and tranquillity. But in some ways these are the unlucky people because they may come to see these experiences as Nature itself. Watching their beloved scarlet macaws feeding on fruits in the canopy of a tranquil forest: how oblivious they are to the true scale of nature. A hawk dives from the air and in a puff of feather our beautiful scarlet macaw is snatched from the branch and from the clutches of the hungry shadow soaring away, it now hangs lifeless with a broken neck. The watcher of nature must watch it all and deeply appreciate the world as it unfolds, as it is. And so it is for the abused. I am not particular abused, I come from a standard dysfunctional family so in most ways I am not in a position to speak. The path away from abject desolation and despair is potentially long and difficult, but we should not fantasise about a time when we feel as want, this is not the nature mind. Instead if this is where we find ourselves then this is reality, and it is the road we are travelling, there is no other. It is of course much more compelling to enter into fantasy when the road is this bad, and perhaps it is too hard not to reside in fantasy for a while. And indeed if we must we need rest there. But eventually step by step it is the road of reality, seeing things as they are, that we must take: the natural road. Whatever resides in our memories, is the Past. If we see reality as it is, we will see that the past is just the past and exist only in our memory : just a part of our fantasy. And whatever we desire is just in our imaginations : which is also just our fantasy. The reality is here and now, it is outside our fantasy, outside the past and the future and if we learn to see what is happening now as it is, as Nature, then we are actually free from almost everything. Even right now if we watch Nature carefully we will see that most of what is going on is actually that common species of animal called the "thought." Thoughts are also a type of fantasy. These animals like birds fly into our consciousness constantly like voice-overs or subtitles, and it is very easy to get distracted from what is going on and start watching them instead. This can be alright, but thoughts like birds fly off and take us on a journey into fantasy and sometimes this fantasy is story that we don't like and is very unhelpful. It might be a fantasy about how we hate ourselves, or how we are a bad person, or how we are a failure, or it may be one about how amazing we are and how worthy we are. All these stories are not real and distract us from watching what is going on which is always much more subtle and honest than these fake fantasy thoughts. If we watch them carefully, then like we watch birds, we let them come when they come and we let them fly off when they go, then we are becoming very good nature watchers. This is the essence of a perfect and true mind.

Watching carefully we will notice something very important especially about thoughts: their attractiveness and why we are so keen to follow them more than reality is because we believe they belong to "us." Being a part of "me" we feel compelled to get hooked on them and get distracted from reality. But this is a trap. Thoughts are no more "us" than birds in the tree. They are just a part of reality and nature. As Hindu writers often point out, this physical arm that seems so intrinsic to me and seems so "mine" can very easily be lost and amputated making us puzzle as to whose it really was. Now there is a great comfort and peace in residing in the "mine" and I have not resolved this entirely myself, but certainly this issue of Nature required the greatest careful observation as it is the most confusing.

Finally what has been written here suggests that our life just comes to a stop when we watch nature. We are already perfect, there is nothing to do. The world is already completely lovable and appreciated so why change it. And this is true. But it also doesn't stop us from doing things. We can certainly build violins from trees. Its not that we don't like trees, and its not like violins are the only things that matter. But the difference between this and the unhealthy mind and world of fantasy and improvement, is that we don't need to, we just think it might be worth while. Humans are after all creative and active beings. It is our nature to do things like this and enjoy music, and if we watch that nature in ourselves we will see how humans come to do these amazing things that no animal does. And if we watch that carefully we will probably see that the truest actions that humans do are probably those centre around other people. The violin craftsman for all their love of wood and craft must also love other people to whom they will eventually give their violins. But its all part of the process of the world, part of the unfolding of time and the way things are that some people make violins and some play them. But there is no before or after, no start and end, and no better or worse in this unfolding of nature. We loved the world at the start, and we will love it at the end no matter what.

So protecting the environment is not a choice, it is not a value added, it will happen when humans become happy and start watching and appreciating their lives, the world and nature as it already is, when they step out from their fantasy minds into the bright sunshine of Nature, or as Plato put it when they leave the cave.