What is Evil Part II : Nature, Bird Watching & OCD

started as a footnote to What is Evil and grew...

It is no accident that people find great relief from themselves and their nearby concerns by climbing mountains, but what is not talked about is this is always a temporary relief. True mountains are far away, but they are not really far away like the stars. We need tackle the furthest mountains, the Mountains of Goodness to get real relief.

People say similar things about the relief that comes from being with Nature. Nature is interesting, it is very close by to the Mountains of Goodness. If you can abide in Nature, peaceful and tolerant of the rain, the sun, the discomfort, the comfort, the sublime and the mundane*: if you watch all these things peacefully then you are actually getting very far away towards the stars indeed.

* There is a national bird watch in UK called the Big Garden Bird Watch. One thing that comes up every year is the "No Show". People sit in their gardens and are disappointed that nothing turns up. All the more frustrating for people who know their gardens have many birds to "show" but cannot record them because none turn up in the hour of the bird watch.

Nature is vast. Even when "no show" turns up we are treated to much nature. We experience disappointment, our dopamine levels fall, there is a flatness to life, our expected thrill is not there, and this can trigger all kinds of other latent events: we may feel like a "loser" or "failure", we may feel "abandoned" like Jesus on the cross - albeit a tiny version - as though the world no longer favours us or likes us. It gets really hard when we look on social media at people posting amazing bird visits or bird counts. Then we get all the envy and further self-destructive thoughts and behaviour. A "no show" sown in the right soil could really trigger a total collapse of mood and life. But isn't all this actually a "massive show." Its all nature, this is our body and mind reacting to what has happened. Its as natural as the sun rise in the morning, except this is not beautiful its a fearsome storm that has blown up seemingly from no-where.

Those who know about Karma and Earth-Store (or unconscious in modern speak) know where all this comes from. It's that level of consciousness where all the seeds are planted, they do not show normally but with a bit of watering like "no show" they bloom and often really really fast **. But they are annuals and only bloom once. If we just let them grow they die back quickly and are gone.

The problem with unskilful behaviour is we go over to the bad plants and shake them and throw water on them and end up spreading the seeds far so that the ground is full of even more seeds than before. This is like the Middle East. There are millennia of tensions in the area and layers of seeds buried deep. But rather than just let all these seeds grow and then naturally die; let the massacres happen, let the atrocities manifest, just let all the seeds grow and then pass away *. But no each time something bad happens people are triggered to do more bad things and plant even more seeds. Look at the idiotic Jews right now. After how many 1000 years they never learned that beating people up just leads to more grief down the road. For that matter the Arabs are just as bad, but few people seem to think they are ever right, so that lesson is mostly learned already.

* Its sound ridiculous on rereading to hear the idea of just letting an atrocity pass unpunished. No one says this, which underlines just how ignorant we are. If  1000 "Palestinians" get murdered do the Jews start a war to avenge their death? If 1000 "Jews" get murdered do the Palestinians start a war to avenge their death? What happens is that if  1000 "Palestinians" get murdered the Palestinians start a war to avenge their death. If  1000 "Jews" get murdered the Jews start a war to avenge their death. So its not the atrocities that anyone cares about. Jews don't care about atrocities to Palestinians and Palestinians don't care about atrocities to Jews. What people seem blind to is that the atrocities don't matter. Palestinians were celebrating the recent massacre of Jews. And Jews are celebrating the massacre of Palestinians. No one cares about atrocities!!! Really, really, really, really important to understand. If we cared about atrocities then wars would end, and no one would select military action as a solution. o no we don't care about people dying that is why we kill. All that is left is "sport." We just need make sure we kill people from the other team. Crazy that is sounds, this is the vacuous and pointless truth of war. Looked at the right way, evil always looks stupid.

But anyway Nature is very interesting and is always giving us a "show." of some description. It is just that we most often don't expect the show that Nature gives us and so we respond to it wrong. A "no show "in the Big Garden Bird Watch" may actually be the best show of all! Indeed in spiritual circles they say that the show we get is always the show we need. In Buddhism there is the character of the saint called the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva is the ultimate "bird watcher" because they are ready to record literally anything that turns up even if it is a foul mood or murderous aggression. They just jot it down on their bird recording sheet. They may not submit it, there is a lot of shame in noting all the things that grow from our Earth Store store house. But write them down anyway, let them grow, and let them die away again and know that is one more seed removed from the soil.

We may think our "soil" is just bad soil because we have so many angers, or lusts, or selfishness (the 3 poisons) but its not all "our" soil. The world soil is all connected. If we allow an anger to come and go and burn itself out then we have saved other people from it. If we pick up and knife or gun and go and act out our anger then we make it other people's problem as well and we sow seeds far and wide and can look forward to many more problems in the future than we currently had.

A sceptic may say, well they deserved it like Palestine attacking Israel or Israel attacking Palestine. Palestinians think the massacre is Divine Retribution for the sacrilege of Israeli troops storming the Al Aqsa mosque in April, and the Israelis think the current attacks are legitimate removal of the rebels in Palestine. But this is exactly how to sow the seeds of evil and make trouble in the future. A bad plant grows in us, and rather than let is just grow and naturally perish, we take it and spread it to others. The only way to end evil, is always just to let it perish by itself, we have nothing to do but be patient. Both Palestine and Israel have just made their futures far, far worse than they already were. Perhaps we can do one thing, and that is encourage others to be patient with evil too. No one in the Middle East appears to have taken even the first step on this journey yet. "Chosen People" has to be one of the greatest and most laughable ironies ever; wasn't it always going to be! Chosen by the Devil perhaps!

There is another name for this practice of "Bird Watching Everything" it is called Vipassana Meditation. It is a practice of mind that encourages a particular strength called Mindfulness. Much is said about Mindfulness in recent Western mental health, but it's an ancient practice I believe practiced across the world at one stage, one known to the Celts and Druids and only eradicated in the West by the Catholic church. What perhaps is not well understood in the West is what has been written here, that Mindfulness is just one mind state and has a particular purpose to keep us free from amongst other things Evil. Even in Occult it is understood that the Dark Arts can only affect a person using the poisons already in them. As Halloween approaches it;s important to understand that no one can harm you, they can only encourage you to harm yourself! And if you are fully mindful there is not even a self to harm!

Another important mind is Concentration. The Meditation to help strengthen that is Anapanasati. Another is Loving Kindness and that meditation is Metta Meditation. The Mind is a vast place, the West tends to package it up, and hope our lives will just carry in as before but with some bonus enhancements bolted on. Really "our life" is what is under scrutiny here, and we need be mindful of that life as a whole.

So that was a massive exposition of Nature and Bird Watching and where that lies in relation to Goodness and the original post: Evil.

** I made the mistake of thinking the "Unconscious" was like the Conscious just in "another room." The idea that there was two people in the one Mind, one who was transparent and you could make freedom of information request to and the other that needed Freud or similar to get access to. In many ways Psychology/Psychiatry is just another perfect capitalist product. It creates the belief that you need pay someone to get access to your self. And the real clue to that being true is the cost of psychology. You know you are being defrauded when it costs a lot just to be normal! Nature is not like this. Nature charges you nothing to be normal, and you only need work and pay for extras (most of which are useless anyway). I mean if Nature charged you for everything then who payed Nature to get life started? And how do butterflies and birds pay nature? Jesus says all this, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them" [Matthew 6:26-27]. We do not need Capitalism in order to be Normal and be with God and his free gift of Nature. And so it is with Conscious and Sub-conscious. They are just natural parts of the whole Mind. If we are really observant we can see the sub-conscious working away. As posted a while back Thich Nhat Hanh notes is as the part of us that drives a car while we are thinking about something else. Its the part of us that works through the night so we wake up with a resolution or answer. It does not sleep, nor wake up, it does not have blanks in concentration or ever get distracted. But it is slow and methodical instead and it reports back to us very slowly compared with the rational mind that races along and involves people in discussion like this very blog right now. This is my rational mind reporting all many remembered sub-conscious events, learnings and other things. This is why I am writing this today and not a year ago in the blog. And of course the big thing the Subconscious does is keep the seeds that will bloom into our experiences and our future worlds. If we have done many "bad" things then expect a dark future. If we have done may "good "things then expect a sunlight future. However whatever future blooms from our store house actually the most important approach should be the same: be mindful and observe the growing and the withering of all things. As every happiness will come and go, so will every sadness. And while this year you may get a "no show" in the bird watch, next year you may record a Golden Eagle (was always the joke with some friends). It purely depends what is in our store house.

We may think I can see an eagle any time, and so prove storehouse wrong! So we get on the ferry to Isle of Skye and spend a week looking for Golden Eagles. If storehouse says "no" then we won't see anything. In fact store house fruited the desire to prove storehouse wrong in the first place. Sitting on the ferry with a need to see Golden Eagles was Store House all along! It didn't exactly build the ferry, but we found our self on this ferry because of Store House. "With your thoughts you make the world" says Buddha. This is what he means by make, you bring it around. That is where the sudden need to see Golden Eagles came from. Many other people don't have that burning desire or thought. Indeed we don't always have that burning desire. It grew because of Store House. Not that things growing from Store House is bad, but it helps to understand the process especially when Store House grows a giant weed.

Ah quick note on OCD. Sudden emergence of thoughts, often concerning and upsetting. This then triggers emotional responses, and physiological reactions like fear and panic. Damn that Store House. So OCD is just a little different. The problem for OCD and non-OCD is that with OCD you cannot tell the difference between "just a thought" and "genuine wish." You stand on the edge of a cliff and you have the thought "wow I could actually just jump off now." It starts as "just a thought." But if we are not absolutely rock solid in it "being just a thought" we can get sucked in. "Shit! goes the panic, I just though about jumping off. I really could do that. What is stopping me. Wow nothing stopping me. And I've had the though again, am I really going tod do this? Stop it you are talking yourself into it now. But I don't know anymore whether I am at risk, or whether things are cool. Really panicking now, I need to get away from the edge of this cliff, I am unsafe here. I need some assurance that this is just a thought and I have none. I could be/am a risk to myself and others.... and so on." Full on panic.

So in a way this is Storehouse in that the emergence of these thoughts is obviously a seed growing. But the key issue is not the thoughts but the Cartesian Doubt. Did I turn the light off? Let me turn it on again to be sure. Oh now its on, did I turn it off. Got stuck again. The problem lies in the doubt. I really think Descartes was suffering from OCD in fact. The whole of Modern Philosophy comes from a few days in winter and a case of OCD! Indeed winter would make sense as lots of brain chemicals change and things like depression and low Dopamine I believe trigger OCD. Eat fish get that Omega 3 and green vegetables it helps!

So the doubt is what is really what is coming from Store House. And going half circle it is Mindfulness to see all this OCD doubt breaking out that is really needed. Before long you can stand on the edge of cliff and actually enjoy the breakout of thoughts and doubt (up to a level - panic is always a tough physical response to observe impartially especially in an unsafe situation because you start to be believe you really are in danger and that adds weight to the belief you are in danger and makes the panic worse) because you can just see it all and know your feet are firmly on the ground and you see they are going to stay there. But OCD while looking like Evil is not actually evil. No one who is really experiencing evil stops in a moment of doubt, indeed the lack of doubt is the while problem for evil people: they have real conviction in what they are doing: see Palestine or Israel for solid examples. They could do with OCD!

Group selection

I know this has been done to death, but still think we're not seeing the whole picture.

When an animal competes and loses the "fight" for survival its tempting to think that animal and its genetic contribution is lost.

But competing and losing is necessary for another individual to win.

Bacteria just growing on an infinite petri dish will not undergo adaptation because there is nothing to adapt to.

A central part of Free Market Theory is that competition drives down prices and encourages innovation.

So without the losers, the winners gain nothing.

And that means that a "loser" not contributing their DNA, is however helping select the DNA that does make it through to the next generation. And so if we rethink organism allegiance and undo the necessary connection between an organism and "their own" DNA, then it makes perfect sense for an organism to sacrifice "their" DNA to promote "another" DNA. Why can't their work to promote another's DNA?

Darwin's original definition of Evolution by Natural Selection was that variation was necessary for natural selection to work upon. SO that raises the question that, if you had a choice in the matter, would you be conservative and just chose the tried and tested genome or would you roll a dice and try to get lucky by taking on some variation. If no one did this then adaptation would stop and inevitable extinction for that genotype would occur as it eventually became poorly adapted to eventually changing conditions. Everyone who takes a risk, even if they lose, is actually contributing to adaptation.

Again in Darwin's original conception organisms kind of worked together as a species. Variation was then a necessary feature to give the species resilience to environmental change. But obviously too much variation could lead to new species and they could out compete the parent species. So at what point does variation benefit a species and at what point does it destroy the species.

This is an identical problem to the question of whether an individual that loses still becomes part of the survivors in some way.

Dawkin's would say that no genetic inheritance means no place in the future. But he is obsessed about "units." His description of being able to whittle out the strongest oarsmen from multiple trials of rowing teams points to his utter obsession with individuality and separate units. Its is wholly unrealistic as in reality properties are co-dependent and you cannot isolate components. The gene for a finger is of limited value without pairing with a hand. You can do as many team trials as you like, eventually you will discover that finger is just a really bad oarsman, that is until you pair it with hand when it suddenly and unpredictably becomes excellent. The magic exists in no chemical, gene, individual, or species but in their interactions.

So what remains is to rethink some modelling to try and capture how "fitness" really works and contributes to adaptation and evolution, and exactly how are we to understand the "elements" of this process. 

 ===

Quick review of previous work.

So the classic Prisoner Dilemma gained wide exposure due to Robert Alexrod (1984) publication "The Evolution of Cooperation."

Alexrod explores "round robin" games where every participant meets every other participant.

In reality however we are more selective. Families and friends stick together. Territories and geological boundaries like rivers also limit movement. We never meet everyone.

This means individuals are more likely to meet "their own kind."

It is frowned upon to draw parallels between the natural world and humans (as this is see as prescriptive and is often used by the "right-wing" to argue that things "are like this, so we should keep them like this" an modification of which argument I use a lot "things are like this for a reason, understand that before changing it.") However much of human existence is about limiting or exposure to those we trust, share common traits with and punishing or excluding those who do not conform. In what follows this makes a lot of sense. 

Many games, like Prisoner Dilemma only work when players conform to the same winning strategy. Prisoner Dilemma however is designed in such a way that the very best outcome for an individual cheating. In a community which works together and shares the results the temptation is just to avoid work and take the profits all the same. Capitalism is built upon this cheating strategy, where the majority of people are tricked or forced into working, while a small minority cream off the profits. Normally we punish the cheats, but if we don't and this strategy spreads then soon no-one is working and then there is nothing to share so everyone loses. As Capitalism spreads everyone is starting to lose.

I turned to exploring an old subject of tail flagging. Many herbivorous animals that feed in herds have a conspicuous white rump and tail that they flash to signal to predators that they have seen the predator. This deters the predator from wasting energy.

The tail flagging can also distract the predator by drawing it attention. Now this strategy only works in a herd. Standing up to attract a predator is risky, but if everyone does it then over time you will benefit more than you lose.

In mobility is limited then cheats are rare. But variation always risks creating a cheat in the heart of the community. Cheats emerging within a flagging community do extremely well. They are surrounded by altruistic individuals tail flagging, and if they never tail flag then they got all the benefits of protection from predators without any costs. Their cheat genes will spread far.

Now I did a model that compared the benefits of the strategies across whole population. What was interesting is that in no situation did the individual benefit from switching to a flagging strategy. It always increases the risk of being attacked for the individual.

However because individuals in altruistic herds do so spectacularly well compared with their cheating counterparts, the total benefit for flaggers far outweighed the benefits for the cheats as a whole.

So we have this strange situation where flaggers do best overall, but never the less each individual cheat does better than any flagger. As a result it has been noted that cheats will eventually prosper and take over.

But with one problem. If populations are patchy, and mobility and probability of natural arising of cheating is low, then cheats will quickly overwhelm any population they occur in and destroy any benefit for cheating. Cheats will quickly wipe themselves out!

Given that altruistic individuals do so much better than cheats, the arising of a small family of altruists will quickly produce multiple spin off populations that if rapidly isolated will take back places decimated by cheats.

At least this is how it seems. Altruism is not doomed, but is actually expected in populations with enough protection from the free spread of individualistic "Dawkinsian" type strategies.

I say Dawkinsian because his "selfish gene" is based upon exactly the argument that the free spread of self serving strategies will always defeat collective strategies. yet for this to be true, you have to make certain absurd assumption like genes are free to flow and that genes are self contained and do not interact.

Anyway that was over 10 years ago and I have still not got round to modelled this properly yet.

Adding to this then are further questions about the "contribution" of each individual to the next population. For Dawkinsian it is just the genetic. But can we expand that to measure other contributions that "failed" genetic lines made in "setting up" the successful genomes.

To show that we would need to prove that the "path" taken by a particular passage of evolution was necessary for the result. In other words the result is not enough. It is well acknowledged that the loss of Dinosaurs for example created the opportunity for mammal evolution. While people look at birds to see the literal remnants of therapod dinosaurs, actually you can look at mammals too! Dinosaurs failing is intimately wrapped up in the actual form of mammal evolution!

What is Evil?

This is becoming much clearer looking at the Middle East, but also myself.

The world is not equal. Some things are near to us and some things are far.

What is near is particular to us and just those people close to us, but what is far like a mountain is part of the lives of many, and the stars high above in the cosmos are far but belong to us all. 

So this is the problem for people: seeing what is near and also what is far at the same time.

In the skies is a bright star that everyone sees that is called "Don't Kill." Everyone knows this star and is familiar with it, and knows it from long ago and holds it dear. We all know it is not nice to be killed, and we know its not nice to kill.

But then things near-by turn up like we get angry, or we feel indignance about something and want justice or revenge and the distant star Don't Kill seems faint and not so important. We get angry and we kill. Yet knowing the star is still there but it is overwhelmed by nearby things, we look down, get distracted and forget about it. 

Distant things don't change much, nearby things are ephemeral and change quickly. So before long whatever was near and seemed so important is gone and then what is left is the distant star "Don't Kill" and we remember and we suddenly realise that what we did transfixed by what was near was wrong.

And this is the moment when a Sinner is made. It is not the action itself, which is simply ignorance, short sightedness and lack of skill and wisdom. A Sinner cannot bear the shamed and can no longer look upon the star "Don't Kill." They turn their eyes down and lose sight of what is far. Now they are stuck with what is near, and what is changeable. They have no compass any more and determine their days by what is near.

This is how Sin causes suffering.

The only way forward is Repentance. And this requires extraordinary bravery to face what we have done, and see the distant star again and know that we and what was close and what seemed right is really wrong.

But to do that we need relativise and weaken our grasp on what is nearest: Our Self. Indeed it is this Self that makes things nearby at all. Our Self was wrong and that is an existential crisis. To move on we must abandon that wrong self and grow. But the Self or Ego fights to survive and does everything to mask awareness that it was wrong. It tries to blinker us to see just what is near and close to the Ego, and sets up a smoke screen to stop us looking into the distance and seeing the star. When asked to look into the distance we get irritable and fidgety and go looking for near by things to distract us.

When Jesus died on the Cross, he died for our sins, and that means that he kept his Mind on the distant stars and completely abandoned what was nearby and temporary. He struggled with what was near, the pain, humiliation and suffering; but he never stopped looking at what was far (except arguably at the very end where even Jesus came to know the despair of mortals "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?") The Saint is such a person who is prepared to abandon local concerns for what is distant, eternal and right.

And so a soldier going to fight may be seen as one such person. Putting their own welfare aside they step up to defend others, prepared to die with their eyes fixed on the stars.

But the Ego is non other than the Devil and is extremely subtle. Having a "cause" or "distant beacon" to follow is a great way to validate ourselves, to in fact distract us from what is distant and true. "I am a hero", "I am a worthy part of this war", "I will save you", "I have sacrificed myself nobly for the cause" &c.

It is no accident that people find great relief from themselves and their nearby concerns by climbing mountains, but what is not talked about is this is always a temporary relief. True mountains are far away, but they are not really far away like the stars. We need tackle the furthest mountains, the Mountains of Goodness to get real relief.

People say similar things about the relief that comes from being with Nature. Nature is interesting, it is very close by to the Mountains of Goodness. If you can abide in Nature, peaceful and tolerant of the rain, the sun, the discomfort, the comfort, the sublime and the mundane*: if you watch all these things peacefully then you are actually getting very far away towards the stars indeed.

We know deep down when we are quietly looking at the star "Don't Kill," when the heat of battle and life has calmed down and we have a quiet moment of reflection, when we are strong and full of shame for what we are and what we have done: then we look upon "Don't Kill" and we know it for what it really is, quietly shining in the clear sky telling us what we deep down know is true: don't kill.

So we look to the Middle East and everyone is currently consumed by what is near. Everyone is concerned by the temporary things. But even when this dies down there are mountain ranges of more permanent concerns around the area so people look at the peaks and think they know. The Devil has managed to completely corrupt the region and must be laughing His loudest. All those people who think they are noble and close to God have been tricked and now stand as puppets of the Devil. And the more they think they are fighting for what is Good the more the Devil laughs and drags them deeper into his web of evil. Satan is dancing a brilliant dance right now, baptising people's souls with his urine, trampling over the holy sites, and defaecating on the places where the prophets spake. Great days for the Great Deceiver.

High above it all however shines the eternal star "Don't Kill" but the eyes of mortals are turned away for the shame is too great for frail creatures to bear.

Cranberries "Zombie" actually the ultimate anti-war statement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/13/ireland-embrace-zombie-song-rugby-world-cup-stirs-debate-lyrics

Good to see Zombie having a resurgence during World Cup.

The song is so much more important than just the Anglo-Irish war.

There is never war without humans. There is no natural disaster called "war", it is purely invented by humans.

And where things have no natural existence then they are by definition "in your head."

That is why people like Churchill devoted their entire later life to getting a version of WW2 into people's heads.

Its what the NEWS exists for. Why are there "free" papers like Metro in UK in a world driven by profit? Where is the profit in "free news"? Its because of what ends up "in our heads."

And yes the people who fight are always Zombies controlled by nothing more than whatever is "in their heads".

But people may go "but my reason to fight is so *real*". Well if its so Real then let Reality do the fighting for you.

The Sun rising at dawn: now that is "real." and no one needs to push it, or indeed do anything about it. It happens by itself. That is what is real. Everything else is "in our heads." If we need to do it then its completely "in our heads."

Humans literally need a Reality check. Most of us (no exaggeration - myself included) are complete Zombies, so totally dominated by what is "in our heads" that we almost completely miss what is Really going on.

I wonder if the Cranberries really understood the universal nature of what they were trying to say.

===

So someone may argue: well isn't everything in your head?

1) Can apply SRH (see previously in blog) here. Well if *everything* is in my head then my head must is in my head. In which case my head is both inside and outside my head. So not everything is inside my head. So its a contradiction to say this. (You can see the parallels here with Godel's Theorems.)

2) There are many ways to see this same truth. Another is that if everything is "in your head" then it makes no difference whether we say it or not. "in your head" becomes surplus and the more we include in "everything" the more surplus it becomes until it is meaningless.

Consider another statement: "Everything is Detromahesive".

Is a banana Detromahesive? Yes.
Is the planet Detromahesive? Yes.
Is God Detromahesive? Yes.
Are ideas Detromahesive? Yes
Is Detromahesive itself Detromahesive: Yes.
Is anything not Detromahesive: No.
SO you can't get an absence of Detromahesive: Yes.

Ok this is not as clear as I wanted, because you need get into the real boundary stuff of existence/non-existence.

But general point: if it adds nothing to say something then you can just as well leave it out. SO adding "oh btw that is Detromahesive" is just a waste of ink. And that indicates its pointlessness in the context. And if its pointless in all contexts then its meaningless. So "everything is in your head" is meaningless.

3) Another problem is the "your head" bit. For that to be meaningful we must have encountered other heads so we need to call this one "your head." If there was just one head, we would say "everything is in The head." So we know there are many heads already. Is the person saying "your head is special because everything is in your head but not our heads." Starts to get stupid, this rabbit hole not even worth it. 

Its actually absurd to take sides in war

There must always be two sides to a war. If there was not then we would be fighting ourselves.

If there are two sides to a war the actual problem is not the war itself, but which ever side we find ourselves.

We could be on either side.

Now this seems a bit counter intuitive. But if we think that everyone could only ever find themselves on one side then this is another way of saying there is only one side. We already established this is absurd.

What we end up doing is thinking "well the other side is just mad or bad or both and needs to be destroyed."

But of course this is just what the other side thinks, and so which ever side we end up on we will think this.

The point is that only small minded creatures who cannot see beyond their own side could ever get tricked into war.

It is an illusion that once you gain the vision to see both sides can never fool you.

So there is only one rational approach to war and that is not to take sides. This is the third and correct option. 

Ah says the antagonist, but you just took sides: just a new 3rd side. Your side is the "anti-war" or the "conscientious objector" side. You are thus still involved in the war just another side.

And this is true. The "Anti-War" movement in its simplest form "opposes war." Where there is war it stands against it and everyone involved.

But the higher perspective is not this. It is understanding of everyone involved in war without regard for sides. Médecins Sans Frontières for instance ignores which side you are on, they are only concerned in offering relief to those injured in war. Given that 99% of people injured in war are innocent civilians this approach makes immediate sense without any profound wisdom.

It is easy to hate those who foment and build wars to further their own political power. The West has spent the last 300 years creating wars in every country on the planet in order to expand its influence. There are those who believe the lies, who believe that it is normal to be in a permanent state of war like the US or UK. But just look at other countries like China or India who are rarely at war, and only ever with neighbours. They do not export war around the globe like US or UK.

But in truth we should not even take sides against The West. We should practice the highest wisdom of not taking sides at all, which is the same as taking all sides. When someone asks you do you take sides you say no. When they then ask you so you do not take sides you also say no. "sides" is not your thing either positive or negative. Its like asking a blind person which colour shirt they like. "Sides" are simply meaningless to the wise. And obviously so too, nothing that profound here. Most people don't get confused by their mirror reflection. Even though it appears over there and I am over here, we still see it as the same as us. With just a little bit more insight and illumination a war becomes nothing more complicated than a mirror. And your enemy punches you and you think "this is no mirror! That hurt!", but how many times have we looked in the mirror in the morning and got a punch cos we look dreadful. Mirrors can hurt more than punches. You can walk away from your enemy, but you can't walk away from your reflection. So if we can understand the mirror, why not our enemy? Sometimes the world is ugly, we just learn to accept it. It is interesting that Jesus said **exactly** this. How many Christians join the army and wage war not understanding what Jesus said. Do they really think Heaven awaits them? Do they really think they will be saved if they die in war? That is just as stupid as breaking the mirror and thinking we now look great again. That is not the way to Heaven.

Its an irony, that will be lost on the war mongers, that if everyone took "all sides" then war would end. War only exists while people take particular sides, and while it suits the politicians who seek to control us and use us to promote their interests. But you ask them why they took sides and they will probably say cos there is a war and I need defend myself. Not realising of course that this is the very same reason that the enemy is entering the war.

We do not take sides because of war; there is war because we took sides.

That is the core truth of war. we should never forget it under any amount of provocation.

Who is racist?

Racism is where we treat people according to their race without due respect for the personhood.

A non-racist world is not a world without race. But it is a world where people come first and arbitrary features like their age, skin colour, intelligence, disability, religion, hair colour, nationality, employment status come second.

We see racism all the time. A black person in the UK is 62x more likely to stab another black person than you would expect at random. This is likely linked to black people only mixing with other black people. And that means that black people in the UK select their friends based on skin colour and that is racist. The UK is doubly racist because rather than asking black people to mix more with white people, it is asking just white people to mix more with black. the UK establishment is itself racist. 

Right now we have another extreme out break of racism in the UK. There have been more deaths in the on-going Israeli/Palestine War.

A quick look on the internet puts this in perspective.

https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties?fbclid=IwAR0FeJQQ8apR1sOIgMhWJin1fB7kQPJDbhly4zIGxUXvKa9BHuDbSpqnl64

Fatalities in the Israeli/Palestine war for the 15 year period 1/1/2008 - 19/9/2023:

Palestine: 6,407
Israel: 308

Given that the two countries are of different sizes and Israel is 1.9x as big as Palestine you can increase the Palestine count so the rate of murder matches per capita:

Palestine: 12,173
Israel: 308

Recently 700 Israelis have been killed so the death tolls currently look like this:

Palestine: 12,173
Israel: 1,008

So in the last 15 years for every Israeli killed 6 Palestinians have been killed, and if we scale the two countries that is as if 11 Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli. As non-racists we believe that every human life counts.

To put that in perspective 335 people died on Israel's streets in car accidents in 2019. So the entire effort of the Palestinians to fight the Israelis in 15 years amounts to 3 years of car fatalities. Hardly worth worrying about.  

Now if we are political and allow state murder it is worth pointing out that in any conflict at least 99% of the casualties are always innocent civilians (collateral damage as the US calls it). In the case of the US War on Terror 99.4% of casualties were innocent civilians and that is with the best weapons and best intelligence and yet the US still has to kill 165 innocent people to get just one enemy.

So Israel can claim that Palestinian deaths are terrorist deaths, but we know this is pure unproven wishful thinking. And equally the Palestinian can claim that all the Israeli deaths are terrorist deaths and we know that too is pure unproven wishful thinking. In ALL conflicts it is innocent civilians who are by far the most affected. This is why sane civilians will always try and stop wars at any cost. It is a serious error of judgement to ever promote war as a civilian: your fellow civilians will suffer by far the most for that mistake.

And so how do we explain the western media perspective. They should be reporting a massacre of Palestinians over the years. The evidence is there for a massacre of Palestinians so why are they not saying this.

It can only be because the Western media judges people according to race and a massacre of Palestinians is not important while the relatively trivial loss of Israeli life is important. And so unfortunately the western media and the people working in it are racists.

There is much to do in the world of anti-racism then. Firstly we need educate and change our own racist media.

Gay behaviour is the norm for most animals (really?)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12588175/Gay-behaviour-norm-animals-Scientists-study-homosexual-acts-1-500-species-say-sex-displays-evolved-repeatedly-increase-social-bonding-reduce-conflict.html

"same-sex displays evolved repeatedly to increase social bonding and reduce conflict." exactly which is why gay-marriage is nonsense. Marriage is about procreation. It evolved so that males could ensure female fidelity if they were going to invest that much in child rearing - the only way a male knows who his children are is through trust of his wife (so feminists basically don't even understand the problem yet). Homosexuals, feminists and a raft of idiots hijacking marriage simply destroys it.

Although with the advent of DNA tests a male should have the legal right to request a DNA tests and that be the basis of liability for child rearing. A male may wish to honour the proceeds of an EP copulation but that should be a known choice. Marriage is dead really, and gay marriage was the final nail. As for children the genetic family is dead, you belong to the world now. This was the socialist dream anyway its the only way to equality. Inheritance needs die with it: after death everything belongs to the state, at birth everything comes from the state (well most of it does already). This is what you get for to tinkering with marriage. #BraveNewWorld indeed!

p.s. not new science, but the observations of the 60/70s was that "homosexuality" was all about social hierarchy. Subordinates have sex simulated on them by their superiors in most animals and their submission is what maintains social cohesion. Didn't read the NS but suspect they just rediscovering what already known. Interesting parallel how often sex is used in human conflict. This is where expressions like "go fuck yourself", "fuck off", "screw you", the middle finger etc get their meaning. Its a linguistic version of homosexuality, expressing superiority through sexual expression. All old stuff. It must be a mystery for most how the "romantic" "love" of a constructive, healthy heterosexual relationship built around the long term investment and commitment required by childbearing has anything to do with "fuck off." How far we have fallen.

Romance is itself rather odd. A fairly recent invention of the French that developed through Chivalry into chivalric love and reheated Platonic ideas of ethereal perfect idealised love. Really very far from its origins in procreation, or even social bonding.

Emptiness

Not a great post, but just vague summary of current journey.

I made a bad mistake as a kid.

When we discover science and knowledge there is a hunger and also an ego that makes us think perhaps we can understand it all.

In particular the Platonic idea that there are fundamental laws that in some way replace the phenomena they explain.

Newtons simple laws of motion, with rudimentary calculus seemed to explain all the previously complex motions of planets and earth bound objects. Its as though armed with this book we can miss out reality and speak directly to God.

Perhaps there is a law of everything?

Well in a way there is, but not like this.

The problem with this type of thinking is we start to step back from what we experience and put it in a suspicious box where we can examine it as something alien, not satisfactory, something that is to be understood in terms of something better.

This alienation from reality, is essential in a way for the scientist so they keep looking, but it produces a fundamental misunderstanding of the world.

It has taken me all my life since a teenager to really understand this mistake.

There was a time when I asked "why" to everything. Especially interested not in the law of physics like the acceleration, momentum and gravity but interested in why even they were true. Why does a football move when kicked was the perennial question seeking to get into that deeper layer of understanding of how the world is.

I came to a normative, empirical kind of understanding. We expect it to move simply because that is what it does. But this still didn't satisfy that need to get to deeper laws.

Eventually that all ends up with SRH. The question of why? runs aground when you start asking things like "why are there questions?"

Anyway the normative understanding was actually very close to the exit, but I was facing the wrong way and went back in.

The thing about life is that first and fore most it is here. That IS the most important thing. No getting away from that.

We can sit there and puzzle over how weird it is that we have a hole in our faces that we put food in periodically. We can explain this through need for nutrients etc but it doesn't get away from how weird this is, and also the sense of "is this really all life is?" or "is this really what we got?" It starts getting religious "why did God make it like this?", "have I a purpose?". And if perhaps "why am I in such a world as this; why isn't it different?". To think that my whole life will be spent under this particular set of star constellations like this and not another. It seems to "need" more reality and significance to it than it has. Its all the same kind of thing.

But when sensing these questions we are actually very close to the truth, but probably facing the wrong way.

The thing is, it IS like this. Its good to have seen the way it is. That shows unattached and clear mind. But the problem becomes when the Self/Ego takes a grip on that. It is threatened by things "just being this way." How can I change it? Why do I have to put up with it? Why does a profound and magnificent being as "me" which is beyond description end up in a world that is actually like "this". In the world of fantasy we are used to changing things all the time. Don't like it, change it. The idea that the world is a particular way, is refreshing in a way but also has an uneasy feel. IS this really IT?

If we are a being able to fly around the universe and occupy many other being and lives we might think of our life, well when I die I get a new life, or go to a different universe where there is no longer breathing and eating and I can fly and be magical. But actually which ever existence we take it will still be a certain way. Unicorns are still stuck with horns. Somewhere along the line the very nature of existence is "things being a certain way" and the Ego must suck that up. I am not handsome, suck it up. I am short, suck it up. I am not rich, suck it up. Its raining today, suck it up etc etc etc

So there begins meditation. Suck it up.

Once we are no longer opposed to the world, then it no longer needs explanation. We are happy with it being which ever way it goes. Like a leaf dropping into a stream we just go with flow. Does the leaf ever stop to think how weird it is to be drifting down on water?

Well this is where we are close to the answer. There is a way of just being with things where they look odd, but its not an unfriendly suspicious "need to know". Its not like meeting a stranger and sitting them in an interrogation chair to find out all about them. We can just enjoy being with them and all their "strangeness" without needing to smash it open to see anything more. The leaf can indeed feel how weird to flowing down the river now after a summer in the branches, but without drifting off into mental inquisition of the events, it can just sit with the new situation and go for the ride.

Not needing to smash the world open to peak inside is a great step to recover from the mistake I made.

And it leads to a wonderful thing about life. It doesn't need to be this way or that. There are those moments, particularly when we see other people living lives we have a desire for , of thinking that our life is not good enough. Our life is like this, and we think it should be like that. Standard self-alienation. This can get really bad to the point of really hating our own life and not wanting to live it or even not wanting to be ourselves. This is no different from the leaf deciding its had enough of the ride and wants to get out of the river. Leaves never do this. The world never actually does this.

But then we are back to the meditation and having to "suck it up." Turns out the world is like this, so suck it up.

What is interesting is that no matter how great our desire to be someone else, actually we didn't always have this desire, and so we know we will not always have this desire. That car our mate got which is so much better than ours; well yesterday you were happy with our car. What we notice is not so much that our mate got a new car, but that we got a new envy ;-) Suck it up, this is the way it is. Its odd how much we do just to get rid of envy, we end up with all this junk that we think we want, when actually it was the envy that we wanted to get rid of.

So looking at reality, but not wishing to undo it, change it, understand it, replace it with equations, fix it etc is the key.

Its got to be some way, turns out today it's this way.

This is actually what in Buddhism is called emptiness.

Not that we need a rationalisation of that, we can just accept it as it is. But what we are doing when we accept reality, is we are not grasping onto reality this way or that, but we are indeed getting to the underlying truth. How ironic that the journey above that we though was get us to the underlying truth was actually taking us away. Its very hard to say what the truth is in fact because its more an attitude of being with the world rather than holding on to a knowledge. As said above you can get to the door, but we are looking the wrong way. Stand right next to truth and not see it because we are expecting to get given something to hold and take away. The point about reality is that it is a certain way, we can examine that as deep as we want, but the moment we grasp hold of it to bring it "closer" it becomes like a fish out of water and we end up eventually with a dead museum specimen. Reality cannot be separated, not for very long at least, into bits and pieces. We can't go around saying "his life is better than mine" for very long because quickly we lose reality. "his life" and "your life" belong in the same fish tank, you can't go pulling one or the other out. Grasping at "his life" to "want it" and try and "have it for oneself" will kill it and you. It all goes together, including the envy or whatever other things turn up in "your" life.

This everything-going-together is only possible because of emptiness. Things are what they are, but they also go seamlessly together. It seems like a contradiction, but only when we try to hold the "strangeness" and get closer to it. How can the water and the fire go together? Yet they do don't they. You can go swimming on a sunny day feeling the burning of that fire in the sky, while having the waves gently washing over your shoulders. If you took one and left the other it would make no sense. True you can go to a parasol to get shade from the sun, but its just for now you are not going to extinguish the sun. It all goes together and there is nothing in particular to grasp or get the truth of, the truth is that everything goes together.

===

Reading that back its interesting that one path of Buddhism, the oldest in fact, is the Four Noble Truths. The first Noble Truth is almost like an alienation describe above. Buddha famously experienced this alienation. When he saw that life was not a single beautiful thing but fundamentally tainted by death and disease he was alienated from it. He didn't recognise it any more and he realised that there was a problem in life. So he set out to fix it. And that did not go very well. We can start with some basics: you are not and never will be immortal. Indeed nothing is. We can't fix it like this. Indeed like above there is no underlying truth or secret that if you could just discover like an alchemist could give you immortality and solve the problem of death. This is not the right way to go about it. Anyway just noting how science's Platonic removal from the world is also one of the starting approaches of Buddhism.