It was something that struck me when I was young: the world isn't big enough. Here is why.
The land surface area of the earth is 148,940,000 km² (wikipedia)
The population of the Earth is 6,602,224,175 people.
That is 44.3 people in every kilometer squared covering the entire planet. Or, another way that is 150m squared each, which is 4.5 football fields side by side.
Of course that includes the ice sheets, the rain forest, the deserts, the tundra, savannah, mountains etc. Say that even half is good enough to live on and grow food on... in an equal world we have only 2 football fields to support and live upon in the whole universe.
With the population expected to double in the next century our children will be living on just a football field each. That is poverty.
This is reflected as I speak in rising commodity prices, and inflation across the board. It is an odd irony that as resources are becoming more and more limited the human population is responding by demanding more and more.
In my own life I have been going in the opposite direction. I am vegetarian which puts less demand on land (vegetarians use only 10% the land of meat eaters). I live in a garage with no supply of water, electricity or gas. I use solar power for electronics. Jumpers for warmth. 1L of petrol a month on cooking. I would use rainwater but have nowhere as yet to put the collection unit. I use toilets once a day at work, and shower only once a week in the local swimming pool. I do not shop except for necessities. My salary is kept in savings or given to various charities which support the preservation and education of people about the Earth. I share as much as I can. I don't have a car (use public transport), I don't have a washing machine (I share with 50 other people and use the laundrette) - imagine the saving to the environment if the number of cars and washing machines were reduced by 50/100 times simply by sharing. Think of the riches we would gain by living like this! And I still think there is much more to do.
This is not about being good. This is just simple logic and understanding. In contrast one has to accept that the economies, governments, planners and leaders of this country and most others must be ignored. I have voiced already my reservations about the real validity of "government" at all. It is simply a game or an arbitrary idea that we can chose or ignore. In contrast true Government cannot be ignored. And the true governors are holding us account to what we have been doing for the last 3 centuries!
This was apparent more or less to me as a young child (aged 9). I assume it is even more apparent to adults of this world. It has been troubling since quite where my own family would fit into this. I decided as a child it was untenable with reasonable behaviour to have a family for the sake of future generations.
As a Darwinist however I knew that "my" genes were in a struggle for survival. If I did not have children then my genetic line would die out. If indeed I thought myself and my own lifestyle worth preserving then i should have children. I am also the last of my family line so the name dies out as well.
Yet this is exactly what everyone else is thinking so we enter the Prisoners Dilemma of game theory.
It would be wrong for everyone to have children. But also wrong for everyone to not have children. It seems the destruction, or at least grave poverty, of the human race is assured which ever direction we head.
Consider the family who cannot have children and which adopts. Are they not happy? If they are happy then why can't we all do that? Adopt the human race as our family and overcome the tyranny of billions of years of genetic struggle?
We know from monastics that the keys to happiness do not lie within family. Jesus would have taught us the same. The keys to happiness lie with God.
The challenge it seems regarding children is a profound and tough one: to overcome that drive of billions of years which directed our worm like proto-ancestors to mate and spawn the offspring which ensured our eventual physical birth. A billion years is a lot of fathers and mothers honing their desire for creation, and we flourish at the end of that successful tree. It is hardly going to be easy to undo the programming of so many generations. However are we to be just a link in the chain? An automaton like the worms that breed in the soil under our feet? Is that all our life was ment to be? Or can we chose?
So it seems that the challenge is to gain the power to chose. Right now the choice for those who are strong enough is to chose the welfare of future generations by holding back on child birth. The "breeders" who are too selfish or stupid to make this decision are then best suited to create the generation that I am sacrifycing my own progeny for.
So the geneticists argue again. But, then we will have a population of humans who are only selfish and stupid and who will generate too many children and obliterate their own futures anyway. There can be only one answer to this. I am only able to make choices for myself, sadly not for others.
And another problem. Kids cost money. And, money comes from working. And, working involves changing things. So kids involve changing the world. And if the world was fine before then kids involve spoiling the world. which is what is happening with environmental degredation. It is not just the human race we are saving here but the whole planet!
So the choice for me is made, as argued.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Friday, 11 April 2008
Holistic conservation experiment success
10 year holistic conservation experiment in Madagascar: a success
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-miracle-in-madagascar-ndash-a-blueprint-for-saving-species-807799.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-miracle-in-madagascar-ndash-a-blueprint-for-saving-species-807799.html
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Existence is an Affine Space
Is the Arctic at the top or the bottom of the Earth? Convention says it is the top. This means that if the solar system was laid on a clock face the Earth spins anti-clockwise and also travels around the sun anti-clockwise. And we can extend this logic out to give the whole universe an orientations. But, as Australians would remind us this is only covention. The Antarctic could just as easily be the top and then the planets would rotate clockwise and so on.
Basically the answer depends upon what you take as the centre, or point of reference. However there is no fixed point of reference in the universe. There is nothing anywhere in the whole universe that says "I am the centre"... except one... me.
The most important centre that we fixate upon is ourselves... even while we know perfectly well that everyone does the same... we still call ourselves the centre. It is not fixed. Anyone can be the centre.
We do the same in ideas. I do the same in ideas, since I filter ideas in this blog looking for ideas that are more originary, primary and central than others. People argue looking for a root, or centre to tie things together. Looking for common values, absolutes, axioms. There are no such things.
Existence is an affine space. Sure things are related to one another. Relative to one another they are nearer and farther, left and right of one another. But only to one another... not in the eyes of any fixed points. There natures as Buddha would put it are neither eternal nor non-existent, but dependent and relative to conditions none of which have any absolute or fixed nature.
A
> top/bottom of world - fit into affine space blog
Monday, 7 April 2008
The truth of opposites Inside/Outside
Previous posts forming a common threat : that of opposites. A war is between opposites, each believing in itself. It is disaster if the enemy wins... for both sides. And celebration if we win... for both sides. There is always a loser and always a winner... altho in war all sides are losers for having dreamed together a nightmare. Never has any man died valiantly... except maybe Jesus. All have been murdered, and done so because they themselves were on a path of murder.
Yet we are fools who take sides so easily. We watch sports and side so easily, being absorbed into the highs and lows of victory and defeat of only one side - our hearts never able to see the mirrored agitation and celebrations of our opponents. How extra-ordinary this is when you look at it. We follow the story of our favourite team through the championship, fully aware that there are billions doing the same with other teams: but only our team matters.
And, it certainly does not digest well to think after we have lost, "well at least our opponents are celebrating". We can't bring it upon ourselves to give a victory, even when we would have relished its taste so much ourselves. Why are we so bought into a particular narrative, a particular story, hearing only one side of an argument, seeing only one side of a game's fortunes?
The world it seems is in halves, and needs to be. Where is the sport, the entertainment, the passion and energy in a game where we can give the victory away easily. It is precisely the desire to hold that victory which makes the game what it is. "My own muse" if the truth be told became a game of victory and defeat and of halves, which to this day I fail to comprehend entirely. How can love be of halves?
Halves can only exist as parts of a whole. While only one team wins and one loses, there can be no winning and losing if the teams do not play. If we do not risk losing, there can be no winning. We enter the arena as a pair and fight for only a half, yet that is what makes the whole.
It seems we must be willing accomplances in the making of the whole, but taking on the will of the halves and through that we become the agents of the whole. Thus the Gods who see both sides, who make both sides of every game in which mortals play, become our masters and for them we engage in the parts of the play.
Yet Buddha, Lao Tze, Marcus Aurelius and others would say that we need not be the play things of the Gods. Need not be at each other throats for eternity, fighting for the precious halves of existence and suffering their loathed complements. I came to an initial realisation on this path last week.
Being Inside or Outside forms a fundamental concern of our desires. To be inside a family, to be inside a job, the be inside the acceptance of a community and the law. The loathed opposite is being outside: being alone, unemployed, alienated and illegal. Feel the sinking feeling even contemplation of the other half has. I am educated; and fairly well versed in most branches of education. I do writing more or less, maths, science, knowledge in general. I've never specialised just simply always enjoyed the mind. My boss however takes a dim view of this. Since I am not qualified then my job description is poor even while I am eaily able to do most of the research and jobs in the company. In this sense i am outside academia because I never bothered to get qualified. Yet this only occurred to me last week. I am outside the academic world! it never occurred to me as such. What is more satisfying is that I am more capable than many on the inside of this house of excellence (or at least for argument sake "could be" for I have no need to boast) yet i am outside.
It began to dawn on me the nature of being inside and outside. It is like the narrative that I spoke about in the previous blog entries. The story is so arranged that I outside the narrative: I am not accepted because I did not complete the tests. I remember thinking how stupid and arbitrary these tests were. It makes sense now. If I refused to do these tests, whilst being perfectly able to do well in them, then it would reveal how easily the tests failed to measure peoples actual skill and so having invalidated the tests I didn't need to do them. Well that was my under-graduate logic. I could have had a 2:2 after my exams but they couldn't award it because I did not hand in any course work... some feature of the arbitrary rules. It was also a private gesture to the power of the university "establishment" that seemed to control all academic validation. So I came to be outside the academic world. My boss on the other hand fought to be inside and now views me as outside.
Yet it is obvious that we are not really different. We each have out strengths and weaknesses regardless of the official stamp of being inside or outside. Such is the fickle nature of the official stamp. This is why I imagine a good boss sees people for what they are capable of rather than simply the words on that paper currency called CV.
But the purpose of this blog entry is done! The official stamp is not the nature of the underlying thing. The goal of vipissana meditation. Nama and Rupa are different. So I walk into a house and call myself inside: down the stamp comes and I am "inside". And then I walk outside and down the stamp comes again and i am "outside". But when did this state of affairs change? In the doorway, and where in the doorway? And am i any different for being inside compared with outside? Indeed the stamp fails to really stamp me, it is just a word and an arbitrary measure of the world, but one that does not reflect me at all. Like the air that mixes inside and outside the house: it knows not whether it is inside or outside, it is a single body that flows throughout the house, joins with the air in the sky and everywhere it knows nothing of this label. Is the air inside an house any different from that outside? Test it and find the difference called inside and outside.
Inside and outside are different, but neither reflects me in anyway. I am the same for being inside as for being outside.
But now we introduce the things which matter and the purity of that equanimity evaporates. I am ugly. Suddenly the stamp hurts. I am short. I am stupid. I am horrible. I am bad. I am worthless. I am useless. I am a loser. I am poor. I am weak. These stamps suddenly hurt. Yet we know that they do not reflect me at all, they are arbitrary. Find the "ugly" that exists in me, find the "handsome" that exists in another man. Show them to me? Are we actually different?
So no this realisation is not deep enough to break the bond I have to halves. But maybe it is no more than habit, that our desires cling to the halves and hurt us so.
Yet I'll add that I also know that without the halves there is no whole, so I don't get it yet. How can we abide in that eternal peace that comes from rising above the halves that everyone talks about, that heaven beyond the duality, while at the same time being in halves. I once thought that sexual union with "my muse" would bring me that enlightenment: that never arose and I have tried to seek it elsewhere: I mean how many girls exist who take sexual union as a means of enlightenment these days? Anyway the quest continues: my birthday to day also: a moment to remember the remarkable chance of this existence at all. Extraordinary universe that nurtues beings like us isn't it :-)
Yet we are fools who take sides so easily. We watch sports and side so easily, being absorbed into the highs and lows of victory and defeat of only one side - our hearts never able to see the mirrored agitation and celebrations of our opponents. How extra-ordinary this is when you look at it. We follow the story of our favourite team through the championship, fully aware that there are billions doing the same with other teams: but only our team matters.
And, it certainly does not digest well to think after we have lost, "well at least our opponents are celebrating". We can't bring it upon ourselves to give a victory, even when we would have relished its taste so much ourselves. Why are we so bought into a particular narrative, a particular story, hearing only one side of an argument, seeing only one side of a game's fortunes?
The world it seems is in halves, and needs to be. Where is the sport, the entertainment, the passion and energy in a game where we can give the victory away easily. It is precisely the desire to hold that victory which makes the game what it is. "My own muse" if the truth be told became a game of victory and defeat and of halves, which to this day I fail to comprehend entirely. How can love be of halves?
Halves can only exist as parts of a whole. While only one team wins and one loses, there can be no winning and losing if the teams do not play. If we do not risk losing, there can be no winning. We enter the arena as a pair and fight for only a half, yet that is what makes the whole.
It seems we must be willing accomplances in the making of the whole, but taking on the will of the halves and through that we become the agents of the whole. Thus the Gods who see both sides, who make both sides of every game in which mortals play, become our masters and for them we engage in the parts of the play.
Yet Buddha, Lao Tze, Marcus Aurelius and others would say that we need not be the play things of the Gods. Need not be at each other throats for eternity, fighting for the precious halves of existence and suffering their loathed complements. I came to an initial realisation on this path last week.
Being Inside or Outside forms a fundamental concern of our desires. To be inside a family, to be inside a job, the be inside the acceptance of a community and the law. The loathed opposite is being outside: being alone, unemployed, alienated and illegal. Feel the sinking feeling even contemplation of the other half has. I am educated; and fairly well versed in most branches of education. I do writing more or less, maths, science, knowledge in general. I've never specialised just simply always enjoyed the mind. My boss however takes a dim view of this. Since I am not qualified then my job description is poor even while I am eaily able to do most of the research and jobs in the company. In this sense i am outside academia because I never bothered to get qualified. Yet this only occurred to me last week. I am outside the academic world! it never occurred to me as such. What is more satisfying is that I am more capable than many on the inside of this house of excellence (or at least for argument sake "could be" for I have no need to boast) yet i am outside.
It began to dawn on me the nature of being inside and outside. It is like the narrative that I spoke about in the previous blog entries. The story is so arranged that I outside the narrative: I am not accepted because I did not complete the tests. I remember thinking how stupid and arbitrary these tests were. It makes sense now. If I refused to do these tests, whilst being perfectly able to do well in them, then it would reveal how easily the tests failed to measure peoples actual skill and so having invalidated the tests I didn't need to do them. Well that was my under-graduate logic. I could have had a 2:2 after my exams but they couldn't award it because I did not hand in any course work... some feature of the arbitrary rules. It was also a private gesture to the power of the university "establishment" that seemed to control all academic validation. So I came to be outside the academic world. My boss on the other hand fought to be inside and now views me as outside.
Yet it is obvious that we are not really different. We each have out strengths and weaknesses regardless of the official stamp of being inside or outside. Such is the fickle nature of the official stamp. This is why I imagine a good boss sees people for what they are capable of rather than simply the words on that paper currency called CV.
But the purpose of this blog entry is done! The official stamp is not the nature of the underlying thing. The goal of vipissana meditation. Nama and Rupa are different. So I walk into a house and call myself inside: down the stamp comes and I am "inside". And then I walk outside and down the stamp comes again and i am "outside". But when did this state of affairs change? In the doorway, and where in the doorway? And am i any different for being inside compared with outside? Indeed the stamp fails to really stamp me, it is just a word and an arbitrary measure of the world, but one that does not reflect me at all. Like the air that mixes inside and outside the house: it knows not whether it is inside or outside, it is a single body that flows throughout the house, joins with the air in the sky and everywhere it knows nothing of this label. Is the air inside an house any different from that outside? Test it and find the difference called inside and outside.
Inside and outside are different, but neither reflects me in anyway. I am the same for being inside as for being outside.
But now we introduce the things which matter and the purity of that equanimity evaporates. I am ugly. Suddenly the stamp hurts. I am short. I am stupid. I am horrible. I am bad. I am worthless. I am useless. I am a loser. I am poor. I am weak. These stamps suddenly hurt. Yet we know that they do not reflect me at all, they are arbitrary. Find the "ugly" that exists in me, find the "handsome" that exists in another man. Show them to me? Are we actually different?
So no this realisation is not deep enough to break the bond I have to halves. But maybe it is no more than habit, that our desires cling to the halves and hurt us so.
Yet I'll add that I also know that without the halves there is no whole, so I don't get it yet. How can we abide in that eternal peace that comes from rising above the halves that everyone talks about, that heaven beyond the duality, while at the same time being in halves. I once thought that sexual union with "my muse" would bring me that enlightenment: that never arose and I have tried to seek it elsewhere: I mean how many girls exist who take sexual union as a means of enlightenment these days? Anyway the quest continues: my birthday to day also: a moment to remember the remarkable chance of this existence at all. Extraordinary universe that nurtues beings like us isn't it :-)
Tyranny of Narrative
And now something I noticed whilst watching Treasure Island at the weekend. Isn't it strange how people can be murdering one another on all sides, and the story can select quite arbitrary who is good and bad. Cowboys killing Indians. They are both murders yet films call the cowboy good and the Indian bad. Could be just as easy the other way around. I call it the "tyranny of the narrative" because the narrative or story can be brutal to those who it doesn't like. Which reminds me also of the old testament style. Nothing particularly good about God's chosen: they murdered, raped, lied, commited adultery, cheated, stole yet those who God chose were good and the others (even those of better quality) were bad. There is no knowing the God of the old testament, and so it is simply luck if we choses you are not. Murder, don't murder it makes no difference: God moves in mysterious ways. But this is the power of the narrative also: to forgive even the worst and make the best look like criminals. Politicians use the tyranny of narrative quite unashamedly in every speech to condemn those who challenge power. Watch for it.
What is extraordinary if we review our knowledge of history is the horrific behaviour of people who we class as heroes. Conquerors laying siege to cities, killing women and children is common practice in the ancient times. Yet these people who built their early empires get happy mention in children's history classes: brutal compassionless murders one and all. Our own leaders who effectively command the murders of hundreds of thousands - they are great leaders. (I know the official narratives say it differently - but it's the same facts)
Yet the man down the street who pulls a knife in a fight and cuts just one person's throat: they are to be feared as much as death itself? Doesn't sound right. Say worse, cuts their throat and hangs them from a tree. Clearly insane, and dangerous. Lock this person away. Yet our own establishment decided this was good behaviour only a matter of centuries ago. In tune with modern sentiments: we lock someone away for a week. We are clearly insane: yet the government will go on to do exactly the same in response.
The only difference is the narrative. It is hard to provide a narrative for just ourselves. Much easier for the establishment to switch on the printing presses and fill our minds with clever stories to explain and justify what it does. Simply look as the narratives came and went over Iraq. Firstly Hussein was a bad man. Remember Colin Powell before the UN trying pathetically to convince people that trucks were evidence of WMDs? Then we were trying to help the people of Iraq. Two top level stories for the same gravely serious event - confusion? Now see the Chinese government trying pathetically the convince the world that the Dalai Lama is man of violence... and succeeding in China. This is the power of narrative. What must be hard for the Chinese to explain is that for 60 years and the majority of his life he has talked of nothing but Peace... clearly a long term (and pointless) strategy aimed at shielding him from blame for the only recent violence. If the Chinese are right, it tells us one thing only that the Dalai Lama is much better at this game of narrative than they are.
Locking people away, calling them mad, erasing their voice, not listening or accepting their narratives are all essential tools of the establishment narratives that put power in the hands of the powerful and take power from the hands of the many. I suppose my words here would be dismissed as madness and dangerous if the establishment saw them as a threat (which I hope it doesn't) because whoever is reading them (from the establishment) should have realised by now they are an individual with a choice who can perform a duty to the establishment if it is right, or not and ultimately resign if it is wrong; and so judge these words for what they are rather than a threat to some vapid non-existent ghost called "The Establishment".
And of course I have here rubbished establishment voices, not because it is hard but because it is easy (to mis-quote Kennedy). Establishment narratives are built of the same substance as any fairy tale, but when the fairy tale stops working then the bought people (for whom the fairy tale still works) will have to enforce power and then our "free" country becomes just as China, a brutal oppressor as the ITN camera man found out.
Behind the duelling narratives are the people who have to believe all this stuff and in that "lies" the truth, and the weakness of the tyranny of narrative for those who wish to use their own eyes and consciences to look.
What is extraordinary if we review our knowledge of history is the horrific behaviour of people who we class as heroes. Conquerors laying siege to cities, killing women and children is common practice in the ancient times. Yet these people who built their early empires get happy mention in children's history classes: brutal compassionless murders one and all. Our own leaders who effectively command the murders of hundreds of thousands - they are great leaders. (I know the official narratives say it differently - but it's the same facts)
Yet the man down the street who pulls a knife in a fight and cuts just one person's throat: they are to be feared as much as death itself? Doesn't sound right. Say worse, cuts their throat and hangs them from a tree. Clearly insane, and dangerous. Lock this person away. Yet our own establishment decided this was good behaviour only a matter of centuries ago. In tune with modern sentiments: we lock someone away for a week. We are clearly insane: yet the government will go on to do exactly the same in response.
The only difference is the narrative. It is hard to provide a narrative for just ourselves. Much easier for the establishment to switch on the printing presses and fill our minds with clever stories to explain and justify what it does. Simply look as the narratives came and went over Iraq. Firstly Hussein was a bad man. Remember Colin Powell before the UN trying pathetically to convince people that trucks were evidence of WMDs? Then we were trying to help the people of Iraq. Two top level stories for the same gravely serious event - confusion? Now see the Chinese government trying pathetically the convince the world that the Dalai Lama is man of violence... and succeeding in China. This is the power of narrative. What must be hard for the Chinese to explain is that for 60 years and the majority of his life he has talked of nothing but Peace... clearly a long term (and pointless) strategy aimed at shielding him from blame for the only recent violence. If the Chinese are right, it tells us one thing only that the Dalai Lama is much better at this game of narrative than they are.
Locking people away, calling them mad, erasing their voice, not listening or accepting their narratives are all essential tools of the establishment narratives that put power in the hands of the powerful and take power from the hands of the many. I suppose my words here would be dismissed as madness and dangerous if the establishment saw them as a threat (which I hope it doesn't) because whoever is reading them (from the establishment) should have realised by now they are an individual with a choice who can perform a duty to the establishment if it is right, or not and ultimately resign if it is wrong; and so judge these words for what they are rather than a threat to some vapid non-existent ghost called "The Establishment".
And of course I have here rubbished establishment voices, not because it is hard but because it is easy (to mis-quote Kennedy). Establishment narratives are built of the same substance as any fairy tale, but when the fairy tale stops working then the bought people (for whom the fairy tale still works) will have to enforce power and then our "free" country becomes just as China, a brutal oppressor as the ITN camera man found out.
Behind the duelling narratives are the people who have to believe all this stuff and in that "lies" the truth, and the weakness of the tyranny of narrative for those who wish to use their own eyes and consciences to look.
Your conscience needs you!
In the final analysis we are judged only by what we do.
Responsibility thus always falls upon oneself and no-one else.
Too many people it seems perform duties to uniforms where duties to ones fellow man is the only duty.
Police and Soldiers under any command structure especially take note: your conscience is the final judge.
That many establishments take such brutal action against those who refuse orders is evidence alone of their corruptness. We fight for freedom, but we do not do it freely.
Anyone who accepts money from a master as ruthless as this has already sold their soul. What if you are then ordered to murder? You realise it is you who is judged in the eyes of God for what you do, not those who order you. We say, "Of course our masters are good, we trust them, they would never order us to murder" and that is why our reasonable masters will shoot us if we disobey.
Sadly history paints a different story. Every atrocity the world over has been committed by bought hands. People who have sold their souls to authority that they trusted, and which ordered them to murder.
The establishment has made it illegal to question the horror of the holocaust. I cannot understand this because the holocaust is evidence par excellence of the evil that the establishment can do! If ever we had a reason to mediate authority with our own conscience it is the holocaust. Please for the sake of global establishments may the holocaust be a lie! It was a network of bought people, too scared to break ranks, too cowardly, too immoral to raise a voice against their masters; and their masters encouraged by their apparent compliance. Each person who worked within the system has blood upon their own hands, in their houses.
Yet name an establishment that does not have blood on its hands? We have the blood or Iraq and Afghanistan on our hands. We have the bruises of an ITN reporter on our conscience after the demonstrations in London yesterday. The Chinese the blood of their own, which is what they call Tibet? And the list of people and countries is endless. And, all this because some people have been bought and are willing to inflict injury and murder because they are told to.
What a peaceful world it would be, right now, tonight if all the people of the world put down their weapons and refused to take orders.
They say that violent anarchy would break out. Theft, rape and murder rampant like in New Orleans. And so it would but I would like to see people even try to match the 200,000 killed in Japan with just 2 bombs. The death toll of organised violence in the last century is just staggering. (A statistic due here to show that during the 20th Century more people were murdered by the establishment than in the whole of history previous. And if they weren't then they're not far off). Suicide bombers in Iraq doing their very best to bring chaos have only managed 10,000 at absolute most.
For generations we have heard the military bands in UK. Saluted the flag, stood to the national anthem and believed in Britain. We have fought for what we thought was good, and believed what we have been told. But then a moments thought tells us that everyone else has done the same: even our enemies. We have all believed our masters, lost our lives for what we thought was good. Yet our masters have brought us to level guns at the heads of people, who under identical orders have levelled guns at our heads, and both us have thought it good and our masters right. How foolish our masters. How foolish us to have ever listened. In all of this our conscience was all that we could trust, but our kind masters brought a gun to its head to save us the trouble of listening.
Be in no mistake this is no call to dismantle the establishment, simply a call to remind each person that they are responsibile for everything that they do, and to ensure that if we find ourselves in a contract which turns bad to walk away at all cost and rescue our soul. Without this the 21st Century will be more bloody than the last. Your fellow man first, your master last.
If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it upon you...
Responsibility thus always falls upon oneself and no-one else.
Too many people it seems perform duties to uniforms where duties to ones fellow man is the only duty.
Police and Soldiers under any command structure especially take note: your conscience is the final judge.
That many establishments take such brutal action against those who refuse orders is evidence alone of their corruptness. We fight for freedom, but we do not do it freely.
Anyone who accepts money from a master as ruthless as this has already sold their soul. What if you are then ordered to murder? You realise it is you who is judged in the eyes of God for what you do, not those who order you. We say, "Of course our masters are good, we trust them, they would never order us to murder" and that is why our reasonable masters will shoot us if we disobey.
Sadly history paints a different story. Every atrocity the world over has been committed by bought hands. People who have sold their souls to authority that they trusted, and which ordered them to murder.
The establishment has made it illegal to question the horror of the holocaust. I cannot understand this because the holocaust is evidence par excellence of the evil that the establishment can do! If ever we had a reason to mediate authority with our own conscience it is the holocaust. Please for the sake of global establishments may the holocaust be a lie! It was a network of bought people, too scared to break ranks, too cowardly, too immoral to raise a voice against their masters; and their masters encouraged by their apparent compliance. Each person who worked within the system has blood upon their own hands, in their houses.
Yet name an establishment that does not have blood on its hands? We have the blood or Iraq and Afghanistan on our hands. We have the bruises of an ITN reporter on our conscience after the demonstrations in London yesterday. The Chinese the blood of their own, which is what they call Tibet? And the list of people and countries is endless. And, all this because some people have been bought and are willing to inflict injury and murder because they are told to.
What a peaceful world it would be, right now, tonight if all the people of the world put down their weapons and refused to take orders.
They say that violent anarchy would break out. Theft, rape and murder rampant like in New Orleans. And so it would but I would like to see people even try to match the 200,000 killed in Japan with just 2 bombs. The death toll of organised violence in the last century is just staggering. (A statistic due here to show that during the 20th Century more people were murdered by the establishment than in the whole of history previous. And if they weren't then they're not far off). Suicide bombers in Iraq doing their very best to bring chaos have only managed 10,000 at absolute most.
For generations we have heard the military bands in UK. Saluted the flag, stood to the national anthem and believed in Britain. We have fought for what we thought was good, and believed what we have been told. But then a moments thought tells us that everyone else has done the same: even our enemies. We have all believed our masters, lost our lives for what we thought was good. Yet our masters have brought us to level guns at the heads of people, who under identical orders have levelled guns at our heads, and both us have thought it good and our masters right. How foolish our masters. How foolish us to have ever listened. In all of this our conscience was all that we could trust, but our kind masters brought a gun to its head to save us the trouble of listening.
Be in no mistake this is no call to dismantle the establishment, simply a call to remind each person that they are responsibile for everything that they do, and to ensure that if we find ourselves in a contract which turns bad to walk away at all cost and rescue our soul. Without this the 21st Century will be more bloody than the last. Your fellow man first, your master last.
If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it upon you...
Creationism, Multiverse, Interdependence and my boss
My boss believes himself a success in discovering, patenting a chemical technique and setting up a company to market products produced thereof. Has he not done well?
However we the employers have a different view. It is very unlikely that we would be working for him had he failed to do these things. It follows that our boss is a success as a matter of necessity. It is not a remarkable thing at all.
There must be a million such entrepreneurs out there each trying their hand at success and some will make it and some will not. But we only hear, and work for, the successes. Does this then mean that the ones we hear of are actually successes?
A million monkeys tying at random on typewriters will one day produce a monkey that has typed the works of Shakespere. Does this monkey then elevated to the status of genius actually call itself genius?
So we demand reproducability and ask my boss and the monkey to do it all again: a new technology and the works of Plato. That is the acid test, but also an unreasonable test when we talk of such huge events as ones life's work.
Consider then the universe. The Creationists marvel at the wonder of the creation. The intricacy the improbability of it all. What chance that all the parameters are to quote baby bear - just right. But like my boss is it really - just right? The multiverse proponents argue that with a vast number of trials and errors of course it will be just right because universes that failed are no longer extant. And like the monkey hailed the genius or my boss believing in his success, would we be here to attest to our wonderful existence had it not happened (anthropic principle)?
It is easy to get wrapped up in the course of one's life, and overlook completely the chance event that it might have been. I say "might" because we don't know whether God made us or we evolved, (and I believe neither are really true). But if we do contemplate the possibility that we are literally like the words of Shakespere from that random monkey, hailed a genius in the face of sheer good fortune, and we realise the countless universes where we did not happen we understand 2 things. (1) that the substance of our existence is chance and not some "intention" or "purpose" but (2) we realise that the substance of our existence is as wonderful as "intention" or "purpose", it is the unimaginable workings of a universe before us, a billion, billion monkeys typing away in blindness, of which one has produced me. The monkey is no genius and I am no miracle, although looking back after the event - like my boss over his work - it is easy to claim or oneself all that has happened and try to embue it with some meaning, right, necessity, determinism and fulfillment. Of course before I was created who was there to plan to events that made me? How was I to determine before i was made how I would turn out? If I am born clever, determined, skillful, lazy, stupid, fast, slow, tall, short: what say do I really have? Surely we take what we are given with humility, be they qualities viewed as good or bad. They never belonged to us, they are gifts. Even if my boss is able to design a brand new technology: is he then a success? By all meanings of the word yes: but in reality can he really claim those qualities for himself? Did he decide to be good at what he does? If he did, then did he decide one day to make a date to decision to be good at what he does? Where within him did that success originate?
In place of all this maybe there is another way tho: neither Creationist and neither Chance. Isn't the key point that we find ourselves in a universe looking out and trying to make sense of it all. That in the end, whatever evidence or theories we find or fashion, it is the quests to make sense of that "looking out" that we seek. That wonder at the events that have unfolded to provide me with this moment of existence, but less wonderfully to claim those events for ourselves. To shore up the chance upon which we are built, to shore up the creation upon which we are built, to discover how to build ourselves and ensure our mastery of our place in the universe.
We are becoming like the eternal dog chasing its tail again. The myth of self-reference. The belief that we can really grasp a notion of ourselves that is complete and sufficient.
There is - and i still seek proof - a flaw in any statement of the form "I am...". Such statements cannot be.
However we the employers have a different view. It is very unlikely that we would be working for him had he failed to do these things. It follows that our boss is a success as a matter of necessity. It is not a remarkable thing at all.
There must be a million such entrepreneurs out there each trying their hand at success and some will make it and some will not. But we only hear, and work for, the successes. Does this then mean that the ones we hear of are actually successes?
A million monkeys tying at random on typewriters will one day produce a monkey that has typed the works of Shakespere. Does this monkey then elevated to the status of genius actually call itself genius?
So we demand reproducability and ask my boss and the monkey to do it all again: a new technology and the works of Plato. That is the acid test, but also an unreasonable test when we talk of such huge events as ones life's work.
Consider then the universe. The Creationists marvel at the wonder of the creation. The intricacy the improbability of it all. What chance that all the parameters are to quote baby bear - just right. But like my boss is it really - just right? The multiverse proponents argue that with a vast number of trials and errors of course it will be just right because universes that failed are no longer extant. And like the monkey hailed the genius or my boss believing in his success, would we be here to attest to our wonderful existence had it not happened (anthropic principle)?
It is easy to get wrapped up in the course of one's life, and overlook completely the chance event that it might have been. I say "might" because we don't know whether God made us or we evolved, (and I believe neither are really true). But if we do contemplate the possibility that we are literally like the words of Shakespere from that random monkey, hailed a genius in the face of sheer good fortune, and we realise the countless universes where we did not happen we understand 2 things. (1) that the substance of our existence is chance and not some "intention" or "purpose" but (2) we realise that the substance of our existence is as wonderful as "intention" or "purpose", it is the unimaginable workings of a universe before us, a billion, billion monkeys typing away in blindness, of which one has produced me. The monkey is no genius and I am no miracle, although looking back after the event - like my boss over his work - it is easy to claim or oneself all that has happened and try to embue it with some meaning, right, necessity, determinism and fulfillment. Of course before I was created who was there to plan to events that made me? How was I to determine before i was made how I would turn out? If I am born clever, determined, skillful, lazy, stupid, fast, slow, tall, short: what say do I really have? Surely we take what we are given with humility, be they qualities viewed as good or bad. They never belonged to us, they are gifts. Even if my boss is able to design a brand new technology: is he then a success? By all meanings of the word yes: but in reality can he really claim those qualities for himself? Did he decide to be good at what he does? If he did, then did he decide one day to make a date to decision to be good at what he does? Where within him did that success originate?
In place of all this maybe there is another way tho: neither Creationist and neither Chance. Isn't the key point that we find ourselves in a universe looking out and trying to make sense of it all. That in the end, whatever evidence or theories we find or fashion, it is the quests to make sense of that "looking out" that we seek. That wonder at the events that have unfolded to provide me with this moment of existence, but less wonderfully to claim those events for ourselves. To shore up the chance upon which we are built, to shore up the creation upon which we are built, to discover how to build ourselves and ensure our mastery of our place in the universe.
We are becoming like the eternal dog chasing its tail again. The myth of self-reference. The belief that we can really grasp a notion of ourselves that is complete and sufficient.
There is - and i still seek proof - a flaw in any statement of the form "I am...". Such statements cannot be.
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