3 laws of authority

1) If the world was reasonable then there wouldn't be a need for authority

2) People do because they can

3) Happy authority is a happy you.

Explained
1) The only reason why people need "power" is to make sure things happen that would not normally happen. Thus we know the world doesn't work right. And, if it doesn't work right why should management be any different?

2) The only thing that stops people from doing things is the fact that they can't. The moment they can they will do them, regardless of reasonability.

3) You can't expect authority to be generous and constructive if it is itself hassled. The first thing it will do according to rule 2 is use its power to off load the problem onto those below. Afterall what else is the point of being in authority?

Idealists might argue that this is cynical and not what authroity is about, but unfortunately the failings in human nature that are the reason for authority are also the weaknesses of the very people in authority. Giving authroity to a cat so that it can stop other cats from eating the birds is well... who ever thought it would work? Oh sorry its unreasonable ... rule 1

Progress is a modern Myth

I had this wrong. It is true that "Progress" is an illusion that keeps Western people struggling for an unobtainable future. But my reasoning was wrong.

There has clearly been development in the West. Understanding of the natural world in the sciences has expanded enormously. Technology is on an ever speeding upward turn. Mastery of the air, of travel in general, communications, of medicine, of psychology are unquestionably in progress. But this is not real progress!

Hidden within the idea of progress is that humans have a common goal and history is drawn upon a single running track with the past behind us and the future ahead. The West, and indeed every society that has ever existed, believes that it is further along this track than its neighbours. Each human likes to view themselves along similar running tracks, maybe the track of money accumulation, or possessions, or wisdom, or intelligence, or beauty.

In reality human life has no goal. There is no end point in what is a vast and boundless country large enough to accomodate every dream and aspiration. People travel in all directions some in races along set tracks, others in races along different tracks. Tracks spring up and decay, races begin and end, but the result is always the same ... nothing. We may travel some distance in a direction, but this might be the opposite way to that of another race. Our "progress" can only be measured relative to the race we think we are competing in. If we change races half way through we find we might find we are going the wrong way!

Once again the notion of progress stems only from a point of view. Our travelling has no real meaning. Hidden in the view of western "Progress" is a goal, a belief about what life is about: namely that ease of manufacture and ease of getting what we want is what life is about. Of course this is idiotic because just how easy do you need to get? and what do we do once we can achieve everything with no effort? what is life then? We'd just invent new games and struggles to occupy ourselves and give senses of achievement.

Development can occur anywhere whether it is flint axes in the neolithic period, guitaring in rock music, or rockets in space travel... but there is no absolute "progress" by which one person can be measured against another. there can only be success and failure in the rules of the game. The slowest runner, might be the most beautiful, the fastest might be the least intelligent. Which standard do you fix, and why?

Liberation is freedom from absolute measures, the ability to change games and see the global diversity of boundless games and human aspiration, and also the ultimate pointless liberation that this view gives.

s that a new race? The race to achieve liberation? only if you aren't liberated yes.

It Feels Good

We want to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, not because they are hard, but because they feel good.

This is what J.F.K. should have said. In the TV series "Last man standing" last night one of the contestants said how good it felt to win the wrestling contest. Of course his opponent felt bad and that is the absurdity of contest that the result viewed one way is good and viewed the other is bad. How we feel is just the result of a view point. Fixation upon our own view point ties us into the dualism, but any by stander can see the two sides.

We went to the moon, we start wars, we kill, Beethoven wrote his symphonies, we listen to those symponies, we understood physics and Relativity, we have families ... because it feels good and for no other reason. This is the playing field of human biological existence. That desire for what feels good and its corollary - the running from what feels bad - is what drives us around the circle of daily life like a dog chained to a post. Fixation upon our own feeling good and bad makes the play complete and we are driven endlessly and unknowingly by the tight reigns of that master.

That picture of the donkey with a carrot tied before its eyes trudging on toward its unachievable goal whilst carrying its master is a metaphor for so much. I wish I could find a copy of that picture. Whether it is promise of future riches which ties us into busy business whilst we carry the weight of the aristocractic investors upon our back, or more profoundly the endless journeying toward the goal of feeling good carrying our enslaved selves upon our backs it is the same sight to the outsider looking in.

Liberation must be the breaking of that tether, liberation from the selfish fixation upon our own feeling good and feeling bad, to see the boundless horizon in which looked at one way it is good and looked at another it is bad. The freedom that comes from an expansive view that includes all people and places no point of view above another. That is the non-dualism of Hinduism, Buddhism and Western Philosophy the medicine for the very human illness of partiality and enslavement.

Freedom

Its a sadly misused word these days... liberation is better only for that reason.

Freedom has come to mean selfishness. Today it means "I can do what I want".

Of course this is not real freedom because it assumes you know what you want and what is best for you. You might exercise your freedom to drive fast which looks good until you have an accident and are paralised... which ultimately reduces your freedom.

More subtly the exercising of apparent freedom in behaving selfishly and badly toward people - say by lying and cheating - slowly erodes our status in the world reducing our freedom as people learn they cannot trust us. We thereby lose the benefits we once had of friendship and cooperation. Cynical attitudes like this more subtly - and with far further reaching consequences - damage oneself. Upholding the belief that "I am better than others" and can do what i want to them, destroys our ability to relate to the world, shifting us into a lonely and closed existence which is extremely vulnerable.

As many moral philosophers and religious leaders have espoused before - only good behaviour can lead to true freedom. It seems a contradiction that we need to learn how to be free and that it takes effort and wisdom, but that is the truth.

Freedom which had no restraints is what we want. But trying to run before we can walk only leads to bloodied knees. The attitude to freedom as something that we can just take without training is the source of the chaos that it causes. Freedom is built only upon wisdom. Without wisdom there is no freedom.

My father used to say "freedom implies responsibility". I've never been too sure about this word "responsibility"... it sounds like part of the blame process where when something goes wrong those responsible get the blame. If responsibility means instead that we those responsible act with care and wisdom toward their duty then I agree. That is what creates freedom.

On a simple level the signs that this is true are everywhere. If you know what you are doing you can achieve so much more than if you do not. If you want something you are much more likely to get it if you understand what it is and how to get it. Obviously freedom to get what you want requires knowledge and wisdom. How can anyone think that freedom means just having it for nothing? how can that possibly work?

This is a superficial explanation which is also wrong though. A deeper level is the wisdom which sees that the reason why our life is the way it is lies in our attitude. With a positive attitude then even seemingly impossible situations suddenly get all kinds of avenues out. People watching "lucky" people probably think how does he always get away with it. If they are using wisdom it is because they can see the infinite possibilities that lie in ever situation. Nothing then seems like a trap or no-win situation. Negative attitudes is what traps us because we close off the possibilities and feel that life is pushing us around. Thats where the desperation above for freedom comes from, one that the politicians cynically exploit.

The ultimate positive attitude is complete liberation which means cutting the root of bondage to the world which is actually ourselves not the world. The anchor which keeps us stuck where we are is our own desire which becomes attached to things and won't move on. This is the deepest ignorance which challenges our freedom. Its the ignorance I tackle daily so until personal progress is made no point going further. Much written in books though especially in Buddhism.

The other thing I wanted to mention about freedom is the link between Nature and Freedom. This was drawn to my attention by the BBC program "Something Understood" on Radio 4 in the last full week of July "The Wild". I've got a copy and might illegally make that available when its off the BBC site. I need to listen to it all as well.

It concludes that the allure of the Wild and of things natural which surround us from insects crawling to the daily light show of the sunrise and sunset is that most profound and human instinct for freedom. The vast natural world opens our heart to that infinite possibility and unbounded radiance of the human soul. That is my own words for what I hope the program did actually say.

I'd not wanted to make the link to freedom because I know the natural world is a tough place governed by uncompromising and unmerciful laws. You make a mistake, you misread something and Nature will think nothing of wiping your existence out. At the same time, the very same sweep of the hand which removes you from the stage, it sows another in your place. The ego has a problem with Nature cos She doesn't seem to respct us. That is until we learn her laws, then it is harmony and freedom.

I'm not completely clear on this point as I write but isn't the allure of Nature the attitude which sets us free from Life? If you despise nature then it will punish you mercilessly, if you love it and are wise to it then you escape?

Certainly as I review my own life to date it seems to be a struggle within between two worlds. The world of games and worldly vanity - the job titles, positions, wealth, qualifications, skills, clothing labels, friends and partners (i.e. the CV) - and the actual reality of sensations and things I can see and touch. The two are as different as oil and water to me. Stick me on a beach with the wind, elemental whiff of sea air, the waves, the subtle tones of blue fading across the sky any day to the icecream vendor in gawdy colours and the girls and guys vying for each others attention. True there is as much nature in the ice cream and attraction of sexes as in the sky and sea but the latter is naked and free; the former wrapped up in a maelstrom of glitter and glass which obscures to the point of distraction. Give me something that does not shapeshift upon which to rest my gaze, upon which to rest my hand and I know that it is real. Clarity of vision like glassy waters cascading over angular mountain slopes under the gaze of vast horizons that is nature and freedom itself... simple, unobscure, full of vitality.

Wages and Usary are different types of money

What is money?

The most obvious feature of money is that you can exchange it for goods. And why would you do this? If apples grow in my back garden why buy apples?

It is because (1) theft is illegal i.e. I cannot take apples from someone elses garden and (2) because it saves the trouble of having to pick them myself.

Essentially then: money is the power to get another to do work for us restrained within property laws.

With money at root we buy other peoples time.

There are a whole complex of issues underlying this. There is the belief that people have talents. Some people are good at writing music so we are compelled to purchase their music and time because we cannot do it ourself. Some people have physically issues which mean they are unable to perform the actions required to even stay alive... they are especially compelled to purchase other peoples time. Time is differently valued depending upon whether there is a demand for what we do with it.

We gain the ability to purchase other peoples time by selling our own time. At root in the monetary system we are exchanging time.

In a simple game this sounds like fun. Unfortunately money can be gained by other means than expending your time. Money can be gained by trading and investment. This is not the same kind of money as that which exchanges time, yet it is an identical currency in current economic theory. Thus the rich can earn the right to buy other peoples time without having to trade their own time.

This is the old system of exploitation and slavery that we have sort to get away from. A class of people who have the right to determine the actions of others without any real existential involvement themselves. By existential I mean that giving your time for someone is the giving the most central part of your existence and humanity to them. But if they have that right through anything other than their own human commitment to the exchange then it is slavery and builds inhumanity and alterity into the system.

The Bible says that usary is not allowed. If derivative incomes were paid in separate currency to wage and sales income it is obvious how parasitic and meaningless this currency would be. Capital raise through shares cannot be used to buy anything other than other shares and we see the true criminal and insidious nature of this apparent wealth.

I am opposed to all income based on investment. The Bible seems to be correct to outlaw this. Our western societies seem to be wrong in their liberal attitude to it. But of course the law makers get their funding from this kind of income so they are never going to stop it!

Journal entry

its easier to enter personal stuff here I'm finding, worthless reading for anyone else, just journal entries

Was going through old course notes from my ship wrecked zoology degree 18 years ago. Its amazing how much I've forgotten... whole courses for which I remember absolute nothing... makes one wonder just how much I've done and known that I have now forgotten. Memories certainly cannot be a mainstay of life because they are so patchy and incomplete.

It was also good looking at the comments on essays for me as an 18 year old. I was lazy, unfocused and disorganised. It is certainly true that I was not interested in doing any work, had my head in the clouds exploring the issues that I still explore of the nature of perception and scientific truth, and saw no meaning in the work I was doing. I also thought that I was better than what we were being asked to do... so it was last minute lab write up, and badly researched essays. This is what contributed to my downfall, and also illustrates that I was in no way ready or motivated by what I was doing.

Had I done all this again I would have had to realise that the time was not right and I needed to go through the process I'm currently going through of finding a meaning to life and a direction before the prescribed expectations of academia and qualification. Not much space for that in this world, but unfortunately that is the way of "reality" not often seen by the establishment and the employers and dictators of the system order that we like to believe in.

Dissatisfaction really is key to life

What makes things problematic? simply dissatisfaction. If we want something and we don't get it, or it is not quite what we wanted, then we are dissatisfied.

A hundred complex ideas have issued surrounding this. Things which try to fix our desires in a material and secure world. Things like justice, law, politics, religion which at root aim to secure a belief that we deserve and can get what we want. They are ideas built only from experiences of dissatisfaction.

I have argued at length recently the vapidity and obvious illusory nature of these ideas. They simply do not exist. We can agree that they exist in the same way that we can agree that a character in a play is who they are. But in reality they are a fiction. There are NO higher elements in existence than the experience of dissatisfaction and the "real" world does not care for our dissatisfaction. It will administer luck and bad luck, injustice and cruelty at random and we can only believe that in the end we will get what we want.

The issues of murder for example are enshrounded in so many complex ideas. Especially that each human being "should" be free from threat to life, they have a "right" to be free from threat. The "real" world does not know about this. Disease, "natural" disaster and death are administered without any knowledge of human "rights". And at root if or whole family is murdered in front of us, as happens in places of war and turmoil, the only problem is our dissatisfaction. Had for example we wanted them dead the apparent problem would vanish.

This sounds harsh but consider like this. We often want people dead. We are fighting wars throughout the world especially in Afganistan and Iraq. With billions being spent on bullets and bombs how can we imagine for a minute that we are not seeking the death of people? We want and are directly spending our money through taxes on the death of people. These people have families who love them as any family would. We are perpetrators of the acts of killing families. But, we do not see a problem because it creates satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction for us. However were it our family being killed then suddenly and miraculously we would see a problem.

This is unclear maybe because of so many "unreal" ideas. We might argue that we have a right to kill out of self defense, or that the terrorists started it. Arguments that are undoubtedly used to create a sense of justice/injustice on the "other" side also. So these ideas have no friends and only seek to justify and create a sense of injustice in whoever holds them. The reason we hold these ideas is to support our acts to escape dissatisfaction... that is the only root.

What causes dissatisfation? It is exactly as Buddha stated. It is the failure to gain satisfaction and that means to, "get what we want". That is the Law.

How do we cure dissatisfaction. The obvious way is to "work" for what we want. In which case our world gets orientated around our desires. But this is as unreal as an actor playing out a role. as the props move around the stage there is no absolute meaning to these movements it only makes sense within the "narrative" or story. As a stage hand we might have to place a gun on a table at the beginning of a scene and then remove it from the floor at the end of the scene. That is our job, that is all we need to know. To the audience of course we can assume that the gun has a whole new "unreal" meaning within the illusion of story that is played out.

Of course maybe the stage hand is part of a bigger play. Maybe there is an audience (as I have created by writing about it) or maybe there is not were it to happen for "real". But the story I tell is an illusion the same in "reality" as in the pages of this blog. What is the difference?

So it is with our lives. An alien anthropologist studying humans could not make any sense of our lives without knowing about our desires. If we were to watch them get depressed because their tentacles didn't meet in a certain way we can only assume (from our own experience) that this was some desire of theirs. There is no absolute meaning behind tentacles meeting in a certain way, any more than the gun playing an obvious role in the world.

Sex for example is the same for us. We understand the hormonal, nerological experiences of sex and love. Within the framework of our desires it makes perfect sense. But in reality to someone without such desires it is simply to moving of a gun around, the touching of arbitrary tentacles.

So it is desire that fashions the whole world and makes its juxtapositions of relevance. And what causes desire? It is how we think about things. Think about her as a desirable female, think about her as your mother. Same person different thoughts, different desires, different actions, different satisfactions, different dissatisfactions.

So this is the root and route and it is the confusions created by our multifaceted broken mirror world of mirages that makes this issue so hard to comprehend.

I champion non-violent, harmonious, respectful truth and "reality" seeking anarchy as a way of breaking the link with these mirages that have us so tightly bound. And what makes it worse is that we are always on a stage performing the multifarious roles and plays that we are born into and people expect of us. If we break with character, let people down, don't perform the play right then we find ourselves pushed off the stage and onto other stages. There is no end of stages: be it the successful business and family man stage, or the penninless homeless tramp stage. Each with their role and each acting out to the audience of other players. People who believe they are in governments and institutions (but who in reality are just reading a certain script) will hand you a script and expect you to read from it. It is wise to do so because reading from your own script is just as bad and these official scripts are "really" dangerous though the perpetrators don't see what they are doing (qv the worst case in History the Nazis - though that is another script).

The aim is no script. No prepared answers, no expectations of oneself or others. Seeing things as they "are". Seeing desire as a product of belief and thought and seeking to free oneself from these... by understanding at least even if another place called "no desire" does not exist.

Now Freedom or Liberation is the next thread to expand because that is the true heart of these enquiries and I'm beginning to see Life itself.