Faith & Society

Growing idea .. just a note

What is faith?

The Universe is composed from what is and what isn't. In logic if we have some x then Ax | x V -x . If B is a closed boundary region in space then the sum of those points and the sum of those point "outside" the region is everything.

In this way those things within a closed region are the "known." The rest of the space is the faith.

In the case of an organism the organism's system is the known. The environment is the faith.

Now society is a collection of individuals. If an individual has a space "I" then we can say that the society is the same space as the sum of "I", here the square box with only 4 individuals drawn.

With extreme liberalism there is then the view that Society is the same as I since it is made from nothing but I. However this is a mistake.

Take a particular individual A (An individual). The Society is actually not like A at all but actually the negation of A and is unique to this A. Each individual has a different environment and society. Thus when an individual thinks about society that need the faith in an entity that is not themselves. For Individual A the Society looks like the black region in this image, which is nothing like the region A. This is far from the Libertarian view of society as just a collection of entities like oneself.

We see this in many features of society like language, law and peace. These are only possible when an individual realises they are placed in a unique relationship with society that requires faith. They need faith that other people will be peaceful, that they understand what is said. Once these faiths are lost then the society fails.

Speaking to someone from a war zone they said that when war breaks out it is just a madness that runs through the society that makes previous friends take up weapons and fight each other. Once we lose faith in the non-individual then we realise how much the individual depends upon the world outside them self which provides such intangible things as peace and happiness.

Common failings are belief that you can buy peace like have a Police Force or Security. When everyone had their own personal security you no longer have a society.

Perfect Example of Western Brainwashing

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/21/we-have-nothing-left-displaced-syrians-wait-out-war-in-idlib

I clicked on this article to answer the question: what are they running from? I didn't understand. I converted it into something British to help me and it still doesn't make sense: so I'm in Kent and I have the British Army moving toward me removing terrorists. Why am I not celebrating? It can only be that I am a terrorist. (Using US definition of terrorist: illegal use of violence). So if I petrol bombed a police man and got into trouble what am I complaining about: this is rules of engagement. What probably happened (in fact always happens) KGB (that is CIA in Syria) approached me and said you help us topple the British Government and we'll give you a special place in the new administration (here is some training, weapons and money)... (And tell me Russia couldn't mobilise the whole of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, North of Watford and West of Bristol against the stuck up toffs in the South with a simple promise of control of Westminster and the City!). Then US joins the war to save Britain (Russia in Syria) and KGB withdraws support and I'm left high and dry. Meanwhile British Army restores peace with US help. So article makes not an ounce of sense and the journalist is high on drugs. Except all NEWS outlets are reporting the exact same "high on drugs" story.. how can that be possible unless all stories come from THE SAME SOURCE!

OK so what's perhaps hidden in the subtext is that Assad is an evil murderer and has no more right to existence than Hitler and anyone who opposes or executes him belongs in Heaven (with 72 Budweiser and free streaming of the super bowl). Ergo "terrorists" are now justified in violence cos God (aka US) morally said so (without being Jihadist extremists of course just normal US style dudes) and Syrian government magically loses the right to defend itself. #1 This is not what Sovereignty looks like #2 this is what Imperialism looks like #3 The Saud Royal family make the Ba'ath party look like Californian liberals #4 a Mori poll of Syrians said they wanted Assad (hard for Imperialists to grasp but everyone wants their own government). #5 this is what brainwashing looks like!

So which ever way I turn this article is a gold example of the way the press prints verbatim propaganda from single government sources and it illustrates the scale of total brainwashing we experience in the UK. Not good at all! Brexit might have lifted the economic blinkers, but the ideological ones are still firmly fixed on the press.

SRH : +1 phenomenon (again)

If we have n full boxes which can only hold 1 item, we need an extra box to enable a swap operation.

This is a great example of the SRH. The system is so defined that it is "full" and "swap" is so defined that it cannot be completed in the full system. The system needs to expand to enable swapping.

It means that no "full" system can have a "swap" operation defined on it!

This gives us some grip on the idea of a systems "fullness".

This is vaguely akin to the pigeonhole principle. Consider a old style company with 10 employees and so 10 pigeon holes for internal mail. If we learn that 11 items got delivered today then we can deduce for certain that someone received at least 2 items. In the most egalitarian situation where everyone got the lowest amount of mail, all the pigeon holes would be full and so the 11th item would have to be put in a hole with an existing item. At the other extreme someone could receive all the mail. Either way someone has 2 or more. 

This is also similar to the SRH which remains still poorly defined, that a system cannot represent itself because there is "not room".

Self-Reference Revision
There are 2 types of self reference.
(1) Naming
(2) Isomorphism

(1) In Naming we simply identify an object by a name. Then we can reference that object with the name. Thus I can speak of the "Statute of Liberty" and "Unicorn" in the same sentence without any regard what I am talking about.

Predicate logic is so defined to avoid presupposing ontology. So we have sentence like "Ex | x is a unicorn". This is false. "-Ex | x is a unicorn" is true. Which says in English there is no x such that x is a unicorn, or more naturally there is no thing which is also a unicorn. Here we have no knowledge of x other than whether the qualifier selects it.

SRH does not apply to naming. If we are able to list all the statements in a language in order we can generate a Diagonalisation function #(x) which generates the number for each statement. This number list is then isomorphic with the entire calculus and statements can refer to themselves using these numbers. But using numbers is just naming. The actual self-reference lies in the isomorphism between the list of numbers and the list of statements. And this depends upon the Diagonalisation function. This is the important 2nd type of reference. According to SRH then the Diagonalisation function is the gremlin in the system that breaks logic. Is there controversy about whether Godel is correct that such a function can be created? I imagine by now someone would have provided the contradiction if not.

??Note to self: Fixed Point Theorem

So in Full Self-Reference a system must map to itself, be isomorphic with itself. This is like someone finding themselves on a map. The map is isomorphic with the landscape, so when it is opened in the area is represents the user can put a pin in where they actually are. There is in fact a point on the map that sits right over the point on the ground it represents! For this to work the map does not contain every detail just enough for the user to work out a rough area. However in the world of maths and the odd behaviour of infinity it is quite possible for an object to contain itself. However important not to get carried away. When an object contains itself it must repeat. Consider these arguments about the sequence Pi .

Everything can be expressed as a number sequence. In the modern age of digital information everything becomes just sequences of {0,1} which is just a binary number. Is there anything that cannot be stored on disk? If it can be measured then it can be stored. Obviously an elephant can't be stored on disk, but all information about an elephant can. And its quite a philosophical question to ask what an elephant is if its not the information about it? We can dispense with Noumena immediately. But that's something for a later post.

So the question of full self reference is isomorphic itself (or maps) onto the question of sequences containing themselves. As the arguments above show irrational numbers (which are by far the most numerous numbers) are unique sequences/strings which do not contain other irrational numbers. Any number that contains itself repeats. There is an issue here with what Mathematica calls "Flattening." The sequence 123412341234... repeats after 4 digits but if we say it contains itself it is like this:
123412341234... (object x)
____123412341234... (a copy of x maps onto x at position 4 - starting index at 0)

But we have relative offsets and absolute offsets. So the sequence offset by 4 maps into itself at offset 4, which is offset 8 in the original identity sequence. There is an exponential tree of offsets each creating a new object and so new relative base. These can all be flattened to an absolute index. I do not know if this is important, but when we say "maps onto itself" an infinite number of answers apply and these can be in relative and absolute depending which "self" we are talking about. Ignoring for now but it illustrates the literal "hall of mirrors" when things reflect themselves.

So returning to the top. Systems do have sizes. Pi is not an infinite space despite being an infinite sequence of numbers. It contains the sequence of numbers that is Pi and Pi only. It is contained itself it would repeat and so be rational and expressible as a fraction. It is proven irrational. It cannot also contain the sequence of any other irrational number. There are an uncountable number of sequences that it does not contain! (I need find proof of this).

So the idea of "full self reference" does seem to be in trouble as isomorphism with oneself means that you must be expressible as a fraction. It is that repeating that creates the redundancy and "space" in order to perform self isomorphism.

This also suggests that like swapping, self-reference is a function that requires "room". It is not a transparent property that sits on top of a system without taking up discrete "space" within the function.

As fractals demonstrate the closing of a system by feeding the output into the input generates constraints around fixed points. It is these fixed points like the repeating in a self-isomorphic sequence that limits the system and creates the repeating patterns and constraints. Closed, self-referring systems are not free. They internally define constraints and structure. The whole idea of SRH was to prove God, or at least end the idea of Full Knowledge. That the unknown is an essential component of known. Indeed to know something proves there must be things you do not know. If we were to know everything, then knowledge would be isomorphic with itself. The binary sequence of all knowledge would have to be isomorphic with itself, otherwise its own sequence would present new knowledge that was not known. But to know everything would place rigid constraints on the "space" in the system of knowledge.

Some people like Wolfram argue that this internal structure is isomorphic with the structure we see in the universe. The universe is a fractal generated around fixed points within the rules of dynamic physical systems. That is the positive take. The negative take is that there are immovable structures generated by self-reference.

The interest in fixed-points earlier in this blog arises because these structures that are created by self-reference certainly puts self-reference at the centre of the world (and perhaps consciousness) but can these structures that are generated around the fixed points of the system be isomorphic with the system? The Mandelbrot set famously is self-similar but each copy is different and occurs at arbitrary locations. If we can show that any of these locations are irrational then even the sequence of co-ordinates of repeats cannot be contained in itself so the Mandelbrot set is definitely not self isomorphic. This means that the set provides information that is not present in itself.

I would guess then that if something is self-isomorphic then the fixed points are new information which is outside the system, beyond the space of the system. And if something is not self-isomorphic then it itself is extra to the system. Either way no body of information can be complete. There no limit to knowledge. God is safe in the awareness that knowledge is bounded.

That's the best account of SRH so far. Perhaps getting there.

What is Reality? The most important question for living a Life

Before we ever get into the question of what to do with Life, we need to establish what is Real. If we fail to do this correct we will be distracted by what is not real, which will waste our life.

All mental illness derives from getting this wrong. And much physical illness also.

The mind has both abilities to explore what is unreal and also what is real. We normally live in the world of the Unreal because it is so much more varied and easily graspable.

Consider the humble apple, the object of attention for so many artists.

As far as a child's book is concerned, or a dictionary, or a discussion about what to buy at the market, or for that matter the grocer selling bags of apples: as apple is just an apple. All apples are the same. Plato concluded that this is what is real. But he had it the wrong way around.

When you go to the market and chose an apple, chances are you will examine each one to some extent to ensure that it is not damaged. It is at this moment that you engage with the reality of the apple. What you probably do is ensure that the apples you buy conform to the unreal image you have in your mind, and reject those which have a reality that is different. But to do this you are engaging with the reality.

Quite obviously where Plato is wrong is that you cannot eat the unreal apples of your mind. The apple that you eat is the real one, and that experience of eating the apple is unique in time and space. This is the apple that gives you nutrients today, quite different from all other apples.

Meditation is the exercise where we examine in detail the difference between our ideas of apples and the actual apples that we see and eat. The former is unreal and the latter is real.

What Buddha noticed is that suffering only occurs in the unreal world. There is no suffering in reality, because things are what they are. It is only suffering when compared with the unreal world. But we don't have the unreal world, we only have the real world. This is the trick played by the devil. He makes us believe in the unreal. All our memories, our ideas, expectations and beliefs become real when we get this wrong and we lose touch with reality.

Its a very special state of mind to be present in reality, and it is the key one required to live properly, and not waste our time in unreality.

General vs Particular

To recap on the above. Its extraordinary how something so everyday and simple has been so misunderstood at least in the West. Here are some apples:

We are correct to call them all "apples" this is the word in this language. But when it comes to a meal we have to chose an apple. You could indeed eat them all, but to do so would involve eating each one, and it is each one--and not the apples--that provide the food.

Now it is true that any apple will do, and usually we are happy with any of the apples. But this is only one way to look at things. When we switch to being aware of what is real we don't miss "the wood for the trees" but instead we see what is there, which if we are eating an "apple" is the apple. When we examine the apple like a painter we will see it different from any other apple we have known, we will in many ways find it unfamiliar. It is this unfamiliarity which is reality, and a painter must relish this because it is the connection with the unfamilar aspects of an apple which provides the inspiration for a painting. Thus you have Monet painting what to the mind is just the same lily pond again and again, but to those interested in reality each painting captures a different version of that lily pond, under different lighting, under a different experience.

So it is often said that each thing is unique. Heraclitus said that you cannot dip your toe in the same river twice, and commonly this is taken to mean that the river, being fluid, has flowed a bit and changed between dips and so is not the same. But this is still an unreal thought. This is not what Heraclitus really meant. What Heraclitus meant is that were you to dip your toe in a river it is something you can never repeat. You can do it again, but this is a different event. That original event is gone. And it means that each time you do it, it is unique. It draws one's attention away from the "apples" and toward the apple that we currently posses and which we will eat today. It makes today special as this is the day we are really living. We are not living yesterday or tomorrow: these are only ideas that we can at best imagine. They are unreal, while today is real. We are familiar with the idea of "my life" and being a "unique person", but often this comes just an idea by which we justify ourselves and which we fight for. In reality these things are always true, because we only have our self and our life. What else could possibly be true? There is nothing to justify we can't have ourselves or our life ever separated.

It's important to realise that the mind can do both reality and unreality. We can just as easily absorb into a film and occupy that reality for a while, before switching our attention to reality. Religions the world-over ban entertainment for this very reason. Books and films are diversions from life, they are not real and while we are absorbed into them we are not experiencing our life. We could spend our whole life immersed in films or games and never actually live one moment. Religions warn strongly against this. God (as they call it) resides in the present and in the reality of our life, not in imagination, books or intellectual speculation. Organised religions fail when followers replace their own life with that dictated to them by others. This is a stage in religion, but if the religion becomes nothing else but losing oneself then it fails. What does God want with a collection of zombies who have lost themselves in stories and unreality and can't see for themselves His reality as it is right now? 

Enlightenment and Liberation are none other than being absorbed into reality in such a way that we can no longer be confused by the unreal. The devil (as they call it) can no longer tempt us away from what is real, can no longer get us to waste our life in frivolous false realities.

So why do we spend so much time in false reality, or the unreal: what is the attraction? It is ego. Like superman we can imagine that we are a superhero, we can imagine we have special powers, or can fantasise about what we want or will achieve. We can, as the Americans like to say, Dream. But Dreams are unreal, and they waste our time. Our true life is now. But "now" may seem overwhelming with many things we have been avoiding. It may be boring, it may be unsatisfying, it may make us depressed, it may be quite a shock to see how different our reality is from our fantasies. For so long we believed we were an immortal god, but then we discover we are just an ordinary person with a limited life span, and will die soon. It is a lot to take on board, so we retreat into unreality to block it out.

So why then if reality is so hard to face, is meditation so successful as curing depression and other mental illnesses? Isn't the cold hard face of reality what causes depression, anxiety, drug abuse and other avoidances. This is exactly the work of the devil. The Devil makes the Unreal look attractive and makes us think that the Real is fearful, boring or worthless. Particularly in today's busy world of news flashes and mobile phone notifications the Real seems worth no attention. But this is exactly the nature of the Illusion of unreality itself. These ideas of worthlessness are not based on reality but upon what we expect from reality. It is actually the apple we are eating that nourishes us not the brand, restaurant name, the crowd we are with or the Twitter stream we are reading while eating. These are distraction from reality. The reality is that we are reading Twitter, not whatever we are reading. The reality right now is that you are reading, what is said here is not real. How can it be real? It was written a while ago, but a complete stranger, and is just marks on a computer screen that need to be turned into meaning by a reading mind. How can what is said be real? The real is just that all this is actually happening as you read these words.

So we stop thinking about what is happening across the world, or what our friends are doing, or what we have to do in the meeting this afternoon, or what happened this morning, or what we think about our self, whether we think we are good or bad, or successful or failure, or liked or disliked, or worthy or unworthy, or whether we are well or unwell or any unreal imaginations or thoughts we can conjure up in the cinema of our mind. We leave the projector running, but we at least look at the edge of the screen and see the illusion, or out of the cinema window at the real world for a second. This will probably be us sitting in a busy room with the sound of chatter in our ears, hopefully we are warm and comfortable of perhaps we are near the door and get the draft when it opens. Light will probably be streaming in through the windows. There will be the smell of coffee and food in the air. Like a writer we examine all our senses to see what is Really going on. We can even examine our mind to see what is going on there. What is it thinking, is it peaceful or unset? It doesn't matter what the answer to any of these inquiries is there is no right answer but just what is the case. If we are unhappy for example it doesn't matter there is no scoring system and no top and bottom. There is only what is: if that is unhappy then that is unhappy. In fact that is the same as happy in Reality. Whatever we are is what we are. But it is a very special state of mind that we rarely explore.

Perhaps we have a big meeting or presentation to give in an hour and it is really important. When  we examine ourselves and realise we have doubts and don't think we can do it. This is the crux of Reality and Unreality. The Reality is that we have doubts, the Unreality is that these doubts are true!!! When we examine our mind we look only at what is going on i.e. what is showing on the cinema screen. We don't actually start watching it! This is how mental illness starts. We must train ourselves by continual practice to know the difference between the fact that our mind plays a film and the actual contents of the film. So we have play a film of our failures in the Past, with lots of sad music and people criticising us and when we watch it we can really believe it is true. It is just a film it is unreal. What is Real is the fact we are playing that film! This is the only reality. It takes considerable meditation practice to see clearly the difference and be able to distinguish the two all the time.

In Pali the distinction is between Nama and Rupa which translate as Name and Form. The distinction is so simple yet it has alluded almost everyone in history so there is no crime in not being clear the difference. Wittgenstein notes how odd the connection between the experience of something red and that word "red": "what actually is the connection?" is a mysterious and very odd question. It is not something we can answer in language because words can never become what they name.

What we can do is watch closely the Reality of language and mind. In breathing meditation which is the foundations meditation we have the simple training of watching our own breath. Nothing particularly special about the breath other than we will definitely have one to watch all the time! The first thing to notice is that while we have a breath all the time, we are almost never aware of it. Note the power of awareness to bring things into reality! But the issue which gradually emerges as we watch our breath is wondering whether we are looking at what we think is there compared with what is actually there. We observe the in breath and the out breath and know the difference. But soon we will just see an "in-breath" and an "out-breath" and will no longer be seeing each breath as it is. We will be looking at the pile of apples rather than each apple. We know there is a real breath, we can feel it and we know we are really breathing this isn't complex, but when we come to identify it we get caught in the fog of thoughts and reality: where is the real breath rather than the imagined breaths of what I expect. It is a constant struggle of long practice to keep the mind fresh and subtle and able to interact with each breath as it is. In fact this is the hardest task there is. But at some point we begin to let go of the labels (the Nama) and can see the Rupa which is the actual breath free of names and labels and existing quite unique. This may be the first time we have ever seen Reality. The first time we have shaken off the veil of ignorance cast by the Devil and the first moments of our life we have actually lived! If we perfect this we begin to live the enlightened life, free from the trickery and unhappiness that plagues the imaginary life of Unreality.