Ships

Reading Alan Bennett last night I thought maybe family history holds some interest to others: a quick blog on the multifarious importance of ships in our family. Here is a ship broken from its bottle made by my father before he was not even 10; placing its launch to somewhere in the early 1940's during the war. At only 65mm high and fitting into a narrow necked bottle not much bigger it is an extremely skillful piece of craftmanship. It is one of many that have been lost, a hobby he had for a some time. In later life he took up sailing and it is out sailing that he met my mother; well more accurately in the club house afterwards.
The family tale is that my name is taken from a sailing ship, owned by the Spanish side of the family. A very successful ship it earned a good deal of money and in good Spanish tradition the name came to be given to the eldest child - male of female - to this day. Thus my grand-mother has exactly the same name as me (her surname being taken by my father) and my father had it as his middle name.
That Spanish connection was made by a distant relative who jumped ship in Spanish waters and married into a Spanish family. His descendents included a line of merchant seamen in the 1800s, the trophies of one of their adventures once adording the dark stairway in my grandmothers house. The two 10 foot Australian aboriginal fishing spears, the shield and boomerang now in the loft above where I write... except my mum reminds me this could have been from my fathers travels with P&O when he worked for them (in computers).
By all rights I should love the ocean. It certainly has a charm for me, and I enjoy nothing more than walking the coast - but to date no major desire yet to cast myself upon the waves.

A complete aside is the importance of the number 8 in the Gosson family. My grandmother and my father were born on the 8th. She was quite angry that I was born at 23.30 on the 7th and my sister 1.30am on the 9th. My mum is born on the 17th. The story goes that my great-grandmother always thought she was born on the 18th. Grandma wouldn't believe it and finally when she tracked down the church and birth records it came as no suprise to her that it was indeed the 8th.

Historic Progresses

1994 was a turning point. The resolution that I called "Harmonic Structuralism" was made as was a reading of Jung's "Man and his Symbols" which launched spontaneously an allegorical consciousness. That consciousness first applied itself to the film "Betty Blue" I had been mesmerised by earlier that in week of April, and which then became officially my favourite film, and which eerily came to be a "blue" print for the years that followed.

Betty never existed. She represents his anima figure and his creative side. Thus the awakening of his creative side and the publishing of his book is revealed as the plot with Betty. Beautiful colours throughout and her haunting melodic motif make it a pleasure to watch. The clue is the very last line of the film which goes something like, "Tu ecrit?" asks the cat to which Zorg replies, "Non, Je pense". It is clear that Betty never lived, and her death marks the absorption of his creativity into himself; and what does he write? The film never tells us, because it can't, because he writes no less than "Betty Blue". It is that circularity which I loved in 1994: it is what I have been calling the Ouroboros recently. Odd things happen when the Ouroboros tries to bites its tail: the writing has stopped, the films narrative has stopped, the Zorg we see is no longer the result of his hand on the page, it is the "real" Zorg and Betty becomes not the character of his hand but the force of creativity which has inspired his writing and now the making of the film. She becomes an ontological entity, through her death she becomes alive always.

It was a bit shaken when it occurred to me a few months ago that this was my own plan. I met a girl who was to be my own muse, who was to inspire me inner self, but I never counted on her dying, and I still wait to begin writing altho that day is approaching very fast. I haven't undergone the right transformation, "my muse" never become incorporated into me. She was a real person, and while I doubt I loved the real person, it would be unforgivable for her to be simply the canvas upon which my own psychology was played out. That someone has died remains a cold dawn that no romance seems to shift. I would be weeping at the tomb of Jesus although I never knew Him, and would refuse to see his resurrection as it might over shadow his death. Is it right that "my muse" might live again in writing as I has always wanted? Maybe in a way she does for I have written so much, but what I write must be good for it to be in Her name, and this has not happened yet. Maybe she will become the constant measure that insists on what is Good rather than accept what is mediocre (and a lot of writing in mediocre I think).

Returning to the "Harmonic Structuralism" - no reference to Structuralism I hadn't heard of this at the time simply a method of resolving the difference between Good and Bad. Heaven and Hell cannot be mirror imagines one good and one bad, because what then is the difference between Good and Bad? Instead I adopted a system where size was important. A system of rules which maintains a large system is better than one which supports a small system. I had the Nazis as my test system. Indeed Nazi Germany was a good time for the Nazis and the Germanic peoples. There was great hope and expectation. But such an idea only makes a small world because it does not include "inferior races". Liberalism is a better idea because it provides a harmonic system for more people. So one acts to support that group which is larger - or which at least has the potential to be larger.

This year was followed up with, in 1997, with a stanza. I had felt more and more clogged up with thinking, books and what seemed and endless path of learning. Walking back from the tube in Hounslow after a visist to the library at Imperial College, I came upon this which set the stage for the next decade.

I will see Existence just as it is,
And through this I will Be,
And with books and systems all behind
I'll live a Life that's me.

I'm think I'll return to this now as it is a good place to be. Indeed things have gotten confused, and at times like that we must return to "What Is". Our thoughts are only the caring servants of Reality. It is when our thoughts gain a life of their own that we drift from Reality and things become confused. Indeed I must return to Reality for a while to check that my thoughts are still firmly saddled upon the World.

A not so successsful idea from later that year was "Irreason". This is to Reason what Irrationality is to Rationality. A name for the idea that we don't need a positive reason for doing something. Somewhere between positive justification for an action and positive restraint is the grey area of Irreason. In otherwords I can't see why it should be done, but I can't see what harm it will do. Danny Wallace recently referred to a similar experiment, saying "Yes" more often. I found tho this causes problems, and while you have a story to tell it goes no where. I realised this after saying yes to a gay guy who asked me up for coffee. He tried to kiss me and I said 'no I'm straight, I was here just for the coffee'. We had a pleasant chat, it was interesting, I said yes to a peck on the lips, but he was just getting frustrated and so I thanked him for the coffee and left. It did do harm because he was confused by my random behaviour, and for me saying yes to a gay encounter is simply not what I want. I could say yes because he wants it, but it is just going to lead to more confusion when he finds out that I'm not "into" it. The conclusion then is simple: if we are not entirely sincere then we should not act. Hesitation, deliberation, consideration are all good. If opportunities are really so short lived and fickle then "easy come, easy go". Like girls they don't seem to wait around long, you have your window of opportunity, maybe a few months and then they are off - "easy come, easy go".

Qustion then is what is not "easy come, easy go"? Well that window of opportunity should be open now... that is what I'm looking for... they call it Enlightenment sometimes.

The Opening Principles...

The opening principles that have guided this enquiry since its inception as a child...

1) Truth is worthy.
1.1) Falsehood is unworth.
2) The Truth is available at all times and places and to all people.
2.1) Anything which is particular to me, or which I have to gain or which I can lose, is by definition not the Truth.
3) Physical existence entails only what we Need for biology. (cf Buddha's "Middle Path")
4) What we call the "Natural World" is Reality and the "location" of Truth.
5) Peace and Truth are brothers.

It follows from these that if we understand the Natural World, live in Peace with it, seek only to Live within it, and aim for nothing which makes us different from another then we are in accordance with Truth.


There are other insights that direct this enquiry.


We can use Greed constructively like this. If I am alive and nourished then I should have no wish. If however I seek something non-essential then why when I have got it won't I seek something else... forever. Isn't it better to nip that "seeking" in the first place. This is what I am experimenting with at the moment. Certainly I have never been happy with what I have because the thought is always there "I can do better". It seems the only way to appreciate what I have is to just accept it, in which case why not just accept where I am now? This is hard, there are a million greeds ... most perplexingly this greed to be "doing something". This blog fails in a fundamental way at the moment because "I want to write it", I am still caught by the desire to "do" something. Now if I do succeed in doing it then I am depriving someone else of doing it. It cannot be the search which is important, only what is found, and this is True only if it is valuable for all.

"Doing" can never be a goal. But it seems that were all the things in the world to be made, and all the problems solved, then people would then be sitting around twitching and being bored. This seems to me to be the biggest problem which must be solved first. This is why I argue for unemployment and peacefully doing nothing as a fundamental skill to be learned. Think what a beautiful world it would be if everyone was happy doing nothing! That is the easiest and most enduring happiness.

Conversely then, the making must be judged by what is made, but importantly the "maker" must be considered independent of what is made (otherwise it is fascism). So in this sense Free Markets are correct in that they determine a value for things based upon what is made - however they are incorrect, like Democracy, in that the value of something like a Van Gogh or the Natural World is determined at a point in time with no regard for the future or Truth. They are also incorrect because they require production before consumption: consider wild food or the products of machinery. This small oversight will be the end of the world because it leads to over production as we must work before we eat, even when food is already plentiful.

If one extracts the arbitrary things from life the problems become clearer. Stripping away the fivolities of employment, families and property the core of life becomes clearer. I'm taking a big gamble in doing this it is granted, but in there somewhere behind the smokescreen of self-perpetuating busyness must lie the tail of the Ouroboros.

Human Productivity

Certainly it seems to me that every single "official" story has at least one valid alternative. There is a myth that humans are fundamentally lazy - similar to the view that they are fundamentally prone to crime.

It is always satisfying to see TV footage of "primative" tribes, and also of "civilised" society for comparison. Actually I see very little difference which makes me wonder what these words mean. But if there is a difference it often seems to be in favour of the "primative" society and quite often the "civilised" seems quite ill.

Series running at the moment in the UK called "Tribal Wives" - the female version of Bruce Parry's "Tribe" - where English go and live with other communities around the world - especially what we would call "primative".

For primative I would use the word simple. They are simple communities and we are complex communities - that is the difference.

In simple communities humans are seen much freer and in their element. The usual patterns exist of eating, shelter, marriage, childbirth and death. But living closer to nature and in tune with the natural order does seem to furnish these humans with a straight forwardness and simple contentment that is lost in the West's over complexities.

I always compare humans to worms. Which is greater? Well the worm and the human both complete the same biological existence but one makes it so incredibly complicated while for the other it could not be simpler. I'd say the worm was greater for finding the simpler way.

What is also interesting is how productive these humans are. Maybe they are not productive in variety - it seems that often their songs are very simple and their dress codes remains unchanged for hundreds of generations - but then if you have formal wear and a ceremonial song why change it? They are steeped in tradition, everything has its place and people know what works because it has worked before. But within this fixed tradition manufacture of crafts, of homes, of food, of clothing is intricate and never lacking. Why then is it that when people become incorporated into huge society they are accompanied by a belief that humans are bad and lazy and need education and force to flourish?

Certainly anyone knows that humans are naturally productive. It takes years to train kids to sit down quietly. Humans have huge energy and resources that is what has got us so far in history. It is not the systems that have made us so, but us who have made the systems. Odd then that we entertain thoughts about ourselves that seem to contradict this.

One reason might be that while it is Humanity that has achieved all this we have statues in our cities of particular people - invariable from the ruling classes - who we take to be the doers of all this. Of course they never lifted a finger it is the countless people who worked in their name who did the work. It is humanity who wins everytime, but humanity who seems at odds with itself as particular humans wish to take the credit and wish to spread bad myths about the rest.

Belonging to groups

It seems that a fundamental human desire is to belong to groups. My mother is always advising me to join societies or clubs; I may socialise she says. If I join a club I always tell her it is to engage in the activity of the club from which socialisation may or may not arise; joining a club just to be part of a group seems absurd. But, maybe she is right; humans have a deep need to belong to groups so it seems.

In politics we take sides. I always thought politics was based upon policy: but when you meet life long Conservative Party members you realise it is group based rather than policy based. If the Conservatives have absurd policies, the members would rather change the party policy than support an alternative party with those policies. So much for the "vote".

It seems that groups exist as much for their own sake as for the purposes that they were created. This had certainly occurred in the company I last worked for. The company made (and tried to design) medical coatings. You would have thought that decisions in the company would be to that end. Not so. More and more desicions were made as a means of defining the role of management. Whether the decisions were good was of no interest, just that they were made and became effective. I doubt after considerable examing of the process over the years that this is a rarity of the bosses there. It seems deeper.

While the police may have been designed to protect the interests of the ruling classes, and gradually expanded to try and become a group acceptable by "all" people (except those who disagree with the ruling classes), one can see that even in a completely good society the police might become officious or antagonistic on occasion simply to feel their own presence. Without crimes to solve and people to arrest the integrity of the group of people who call themselves police would weaken.

Just linking to the post 2 ago on rules: when a child says they want to be a Policeman do they really know what that entails when the decide? Or are they interested in the uniform and the membership of the group? I don't know just a question.

I first became aware of this in a temple. While there was a clear manifesto and reason for the temple's creation it became more and more obvious that membership of the temple was more important than what it did. I imagine this is common. How many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Conservatives, Labour etc really have any idea what they are doing. I called myself Buddhist for a while and I don't so that is 1 at least.

Is human group membership really this important to life. Human society is without question this I grant, but is membership? My argument regarding this is that the harder it is to enter a group the more it means, and the more it means to not be a member. Like being rejected from an exclusive night club we only want to get in more. However once in we realise it is just a night club like any other and the only thing special about it is that the other people had to get in as well. How self-generating. Thus exclusivity becomes its own attraction in the end and you get a speculative bubble like the stock markets - but there is nothing there just speculation.

One of the biggest clubs of all is not exclusive at all and so most people don't even notice it: it is the club called Humanity. We are all members already. Given that everyone belongs to this club already why do we need to join any others? Is membership of 10 exclusive clubs better than 1 to which everyone joins?

You decide, but membership to me is a name for nothing, and the more time spent preparing omeself for memberships the more time is wasted. And to add insult to injury if we join a club for memberships sake we had better hope that no-one else has done so because otherwise the people we meet would be equally misguided.

What is fascism?

Certainly a post from 10 years ago. A personal definition:

"any action where the intention deliberately favours the actors perceptions over the nature of the subject"

In other words whenever the nature of something is deliberately overlooked in favour of the actors wishes it is fascism. This makes a very great deal of human activity equate to fascism. Obviously it was most extremely expressed by the Nazis in their treatment of Jews. The problem is that even an idiot can see that a Jew does not want to die or be treated horribly. What is extraordinary is that the Nazis were able to hold on to a world view that was so blatently alien to the nature of Jews as living feeling human subjects. But we do the same thing with animals. It is almost as extraordinary to me that we are able to block out the nature of living things and simply execute our desire to eat them regardless. Isn't this the same as a murder or rapist who just blocks out the wishes of their victim in favour of their desires? This is all extreme fascism.

More subtly if we take an apple and we throw it in the bin because we don't like its flavour this is fascism. Why? because looked at soberly this was grown and bought with the intention of being eaten. It is good food. It is also the fruit of a tree which quite apart from any use is an extraordinary thing. Imagine never having seen a fruit before. Or imagine that it had just been discovered on a distant land or planet. Looking at a fruit with respect for what it is, it is quite a sobering entity. Indeed then we may discard it in the bin if we agree that this is a fitting future for such an entity. Though I can't see how, isn't it better to just eat it, or give to someone else, or at least know not to buy one in future, or even leave for a bird to eat. It is the consideration given to the entity from its side that stops the action being fascist.

Is it illegal to break the law? The foundation of rules

It seems that threads on my blog are of two types at the moment... those to do with the nature of illusion like the previous post and those to do with the Ouroboros like this.

If one breaks a law then what of it? In reality you can't break a law because laws describe reality. When a law is broken the law is patched up to reflect the break - that is science.

In the realm of authority laws must be enforced. This means that other laws must exist to guide the behaviour of the enforcers. And, what if they break the law? Then other laws must exist... and we have an ouroboros. The law cannot justify itself. So where does the authority of the law come from?

A lot of my thinking seems to be picking up from where I was 10 years ago. Maybe the spell "my muse" cast on me has broken and I am returning. Even the job I had was got to get money incase I decided to get married. I'm free ... maybe the spell really is finally broken.

10 years ago while watching the F1 grand prix the house opposite was burgled. The first anyone noticed was the police turning up. They asked us if we had seen anything and we hadn't. Despite it being a small street with houses packed on both sides, everything on view to everyone, no-one anywhere saw anything. It was then I realised that law and order has nothing to do with the police. They are simply a token force. There is simply not the manpower to watch every single person all day and night - and if there was who is watching them? And if they don't need watching then why do we need watching? The police rely upon a simple fact that most people are good. There was a sudden increase in police presence around where I live a few years ago. I asked them why. Apparently a known thief had been released from gaol and immediately the reports of thefts had increased. They were just waiting to catch him again. This seems to be the way, that a small minority live in a dishonest way and the majority are good.

Sadly however the whole of society is organised according to this small minority. Indeed the small dishonest minority are what justify the existence of the small ruling minority. It is intolerable really that we live in a world where every door has a lock (even in my lifetime in the UK it wasn't like this). If we leave something unlocked and it is stolen people have normalised this state of affairs to such an extent that they argue it is our fault that it was stolen! And if people find something unlocked it is ok to take it! Are we accepting theft as a normal part of the world these days? So if I don't arm myself and someone attacks me that is my fault? Maybe I should take preemptive action, be responsible, and kill everyone in the world to make sure that they can't do wrong to me! American logic is not so far away from this hyperbolic absurdity.

But, it is a mistake to blame a "rotten" part of the world for the evils we all endure. Certainly the temptations of greed, anger and ego exist within us all; it is only that some people are weaker in the defence of themselves from these temptations. And, certainly once weakness has been shown it is even doubly hard to recover ones original strength. A bitter irony that the people who need the strength and the support are least likely to get it. The winners get more accolade and strength, and the losers have more taken from them.

So what we have played out on the "official" stage today is a play where a small and clearly identified righteous group (the good guys) take on an equally small but dishonest group (the bad guys). The rest of us are the "innocent" audience of this show, at best giving evidence to the police, or being caught up in a shoot out. If anyone ever wondered why the good guys always win its actually because of simple logic. The problem with bad guys is that their badness is shown to everyone including each other - so you can always rely upon the bad guys imploding due to their own greed, anger or selfishness. Indeed the good guys don't need to do anything - the bad guys will always implode by themselves! No actual need for crime fighters - the bad guys always lose anyway (that is what is wrong with badness - its the Law see below).

Returning to the start before putting all this together: so where does the authority of law come from? Well this is what has been established in the recent bundle of posts - it can't be established! it just "is". It is a normative assumption we must make - after all if rules didn't exist then how can I be using these words correctly/incorrectly butterflies. Instantly we know the last word in that sentence doesn't belong there... how? It is because of rules we learned "as" we learned to read - so no point in writing them down! No-one enforces these rules, indeed what language would the rules of English be written in! And what language would those rules be written in ... ouroboros again. This is the hemaneutic circle argument - that we enter into the game by learning how to play it, not once we have learned how to play it. Once again there is this fundamental irony, something Wittgenstein spent his later life examining, that the human condition is not one of approaching things face on, but rather looking backwards over territory we have already covered (I believe but haven't read it that Heideggard amongst other may make similar points). When we enter into language classes we do it with a full working knowledge of a language already. Our teacher can talk to us in one language and explain a second language. But the real progress is made in "practice" of that language "submerged" in the language culture. This is backwards, because as a child our primary language is learned through the submerging and practice first and then only much later the instruction from a teacher - I knew english long before I was taught it! Wittgenstein would argue that this process of practice and submergence is analogous to playing games and we learn the use of words just as we learn the use of objects like balls in various games. Likewise we don't get taught culture it occurs to us through submergence and practice - we just go along with it. It is a process with things one after another, not equivalences running side by side (like this word = that word). So humans are well accustomed to laws and rules - these indeed are the foundations of the human world of myths that I have been highlighting of late. It is a normative part of the human mind to embrace law, custom and rule. This is why we enjoy football, or even stories and films, where actors are put through the hurdles of a make believe world of rules.

Now just quickly that raises the point of dualism. In games and in stories the fundamental rule seems to be of sides. We instantly look for the side of the narrative voice and the other side (which causes what I've called in the blog the tyranny of the narrative where you are excluded from any rights if the narrative does not favour you - which seems to be the nature of Yahweh in the Old Testament stories). We instantly look for the good guys, and the bad guys; the winners and the losers. Then you have the film noirs and the anti-heros where the narrative is reversed: the Bogart's who while the "other" guy and who lose are followed by the narrative and so oddly "win". And obviously in sport which is between winners and losers. So the foundations of human meaning: unwritten rules seem to entail dualism and setting of one thing against another. So it follows that we eat with a knife held in our right hand and with the handle concealed in the back of the gripped palm, and those who do not obey this unwritten rule are excluded.

Yet we also know that human meaning and so dualisms are a myth. There must be a deeper reality beyond this. This deeper reality is what enables us to adopt the rules of football when that game begins and the game of rugby when that game begins. That deeper reality enables us to speak English when that game begins and Chinese when that game begins (assuming we are bi-lingual). That deeper reality enables us to play a character in a play, and then become ourselves afterwards, or watch a film and turn back to our "reality" afterwards. In this deeper reality it is no longer a myth that we are watching a film, or speaking English. That is Reality. In this Reality we do not simply obey the rules of business if it entails our actions becoming "wrong". It is from this Reality that we can say that the rules and mores of the various games are myths, suitable at a time, for a time, and only where they do not contradict the higher Reality. This higher reality like the passage of the planets is not breakable: you do wrong, you will suffer: because there is only "Good". This is what the religions speak of.

Now the problem for me it seems is that a contradiction has occurred in my rules. Like HAL in Kubriks 2001 I'll go mad unless this is resolved. Put alternatively the games I have learned to play tell me different things, and these often contradict what seems to be the Higher Law. My culture tells me to use a knife and fork, but actually I can see no advantage except when eating steak (which I don't because killing obviously breaks the higher Law). Practical Reality has taken presidence in my mind. This is the contradiction between my deeply tradiational upper class mother, and my laisez-faire rationalist father - which turned into irrationalist authoratarian in later life. Who do you listen to mum or dad?

This is what must be resolved before I inevitably mad. But the bits and pieces are all expressed in this post.