Economy & Prisoners Dilemma

The most morally upstanding country in the world has done it again ... failed the prisoner's dilemma. The home of game theory and trillions of dollars in military spending on optimal equilibria and they still can't figure out what the rest of the world had normalised before time even began. "You only get what you give". Problem is to understand this you have to be wise, and what America lacks is wisdom. It is the child of the world, the New World, the Immature World. Anyway they voted for protectionism ...

there is a profound sickness that is America which has led to paranoid strikes on Korea, Vietnam, Columbia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan to name the principal ones and has led to the deaths of 10's of millions of people (both directly and indirectly)... that has led to and endless string of Enemies of America from Communists to Militant Islamists... wars and paranoias that extend through many governments and generations. The sickness cannot be levelled at any one person or regieme but only at America itself. There is only one thing to fear and that is America itself. It is impossible to see any good that is "America". Every act of apparent "generosity" turns out to be a disguise for a more cynical exploitation.

Discussing the Bush administration a friend pointed out how pleased Africa is with Bush because under him aid to Africa increased. Yet I have always had a problem with the notion of "Aid". Why does one country "Aid" another? Is one country a qualified doctor and the other a patient who has come for treatment? What is the sickness in Africa that we keep being reminded of by the governments and aid agencies? If Africa is really so inhospitable how come people have trived there long before "aid", indeed it is the "cradle of mankind". It can't really need "aid" unless the people have forgotten how to live...

Oh yes there is our anwser! The African people have forgotten how to live. Instead they got taught in Missionary school all the useful things like English and Christianity, and Western History and Western Economics and cash crops ... all the things that have helped them to survive the millenia before the arrival of the West. Now the children are models of Western people, except they don't have a Western society to live in. So they starve waiting for the West tries to make Africa like the West. But as Sach's the book "The End to Poverty" has argued Africa is a special case having in particular no natural transport links and having high rates of illness. Two centuries after we decided to make Africa like France or UK we discover that there are fundamental problems with this. So the Africans are dead people ... adapted to a world that doesn't exist... and into this collonial mess up America exploits the Africans for cash crops further eroding any chance of survival and then exploits the situation further by handing back a fraction of the revenue in aid of apparent generous motives. Collonial people were arrogant and ignorant, but the Americans are knowingly cynical and evil. The Christian aid agencies most ironically are also tied into this bundle of agents of the Devil, helping the apparent victim without any humility or respect from which would arise the obvious question already asked, "Why them and not me?". It is the fundamental arrogance that Africa is the primative and West is the Best which blinds people to the very evil that creates the inequality. It would be good to remember that Africa is the birth place of all our ancestors, and the original culture and society that made Man. It would be good for America the realise that the rest of the world is the original birthplace of all its ancestors, and the original culture and society that made America. Then they might be more outward looking and less Protectionist.

Present Moment

It has been very cold of late, but expecting a friend to visit yesterday I did some work on the garage and put in place some nice new systems for comfort. Carpet is laid, things repositioned for easy access and a tarpaulin rigged in place to capture heat. My friend couldn't make it because of the icy roads so I enjoyed it all to myself last night. At -2oC outside I was roasting in +13oC, with all this heat created in just 1 hour by just 3 vegetable oil flames: completely carbon neutral and very satisfying. With 4 flames you can reheat 1Kg of food in the same time, or slow cook for much longer. Its the simplest possible system.

As I lay there watching the flames enjoying this little oasis of forgiveness against the harsh weather that lay only feet away it was one of those rare periods of great satisfaction and peace. I had a similar experience on a mountain years ago with nothing of comfort but a plastic survival bag and freezing cold soaked sleeping bag. But even here at rock bottom, exausted on the side of a freezing mountain in driving rain and sleet and shivering on and off, I pulled the plastic bag over my head to keep the rain out and found complete satisfaction in the small pocket of warm air I exhailed into that space. So miniscule the roots of satisfaction. Yet we struggle to overload and overstimulation in this society like kids looking for 11 on their power amps: when it is already ear splitting you have only deafness and poverty ahead.

So in that peace watching the flames I could see a few things more clearly. I confirmed something realised in meduitation a few weeks ago, that I hate myself. If I was truely to meet myself I would not want to face myself and look myself in the eye for I am ashamed at how I have failed to be what I know I can be. I have given into temptations of laziness, greed, anger, lust, foul mouthedness, unhelpfulness, obstinancy, negativeness, obstructiveness, selfishness, jealousy, envy, revenge, hurtfulness etc etc the list goes on. Not all the time, but I have given in when deep down I know I should not have. So I have myself. And as argued in the last blog when you hate yourself you don't want to be with yourself and you hide in dreams of tomorrow or memories of yesterday. Or if you don't like where you are, you are disgusted by the people around you: you find them ugly, or the cities ugly, or the words that people say ugly, or the life you are expected to live ugly: then you don't want to be here and you dream of tomorrow and you remember yesterday. A whole country springs to mind here! But actually that ugliness you see is a projection of the hatred you feel for yourself.

I found "my muse" beautiful in many, many ways and for a short while I wanted to be here, today. I loved the world for those few years. Each day was the only day in my life, and there was no tomorrow and no yesterday. I imagine that the satisfaction I felt came more than a bit because she was something that I could be positive about, and someone who was positive about myself.

Ironically I have had to be negative about her of late because she "failed" in the most fundamental way. A very natural way, but not the idea of perfection that I had loved. And that leads directly into the 2nd Buddhist Lakshana that i will write about soon - that the enlightened see all "things" as undesirable and imperfect precisely because they will fail like this.

Regardless what happened since, I found that peace with her as I found it again in the candles and warmth of my hide away last night. This is the value then of the "present moment" that they talk about in Buddhism. Yet there are two immediate problems. Firstly is attachment and greed for this "present moment" and the peace. We like it and want it again and this creates a craving and inauthenticity. I felt envy today as I saw people camping down by the lake because I thought they must be having more peace than me!!! This is exactly how we lose the present moment: yet here it is destroying itself! Such are the ironies of the hall of mirrors we call our minds.

The second problem is related which is "looking for it" when we don't have it. If we ever "look for" the present moment then we will not find it because we are looking "in" the present moment. We find things "in" the present moment: it is the stage on which things get found. On what stage would we find the stage itself?

The way to "present moment" is through deep relaxation. Letting go of things, of worries and disturbances, and seeking deep satisfaction within ourselves and with ourselves. This is why we must be "good" to achieve progress. Our deep self knows well what is good and when we are bad we turn away from ourselves and become a non-person. Non-people turn from goodness deliberately and do bad things to hide from themselves. They are therefore always on the run, can never settle, can never be at peace, can never know satisfaction.

This is a difficult process. I am doing it. But to get here I have done some major things. Ending my pointless and negative employment. Disregarded my citizenship of negative Britain. Tried to be positive to the people around me, and removed as much attachment and confusion from my life. Maybe I'll find this was too much: but it is worth anything to find oneself, to be at peace with oneself in the mirror of the present moment.

Got my tutoring now must dash...

The state of Goodness

The Children's Society publish 'A good Childhood' on Thursday: the results of their 2 year research into modern childhood. Listening to a representative on the radio yesterday was like listening to myself in many ways and it was uncanny to find myself agreeing so wholeheartedly with someone. The data seems to have supported the line of reasoning - but I was suspicious of this: can "data" really be such an ally in support of what we know is good by virtue of something quite separate from data: our Morality? The report concludes what is true across all of society not just children, that our happiness is nurtured best by a sense of care for our fellows rather than by a sense of personal achievement.

In passing he mentioned one thing, that I knew economists would criticise, that "there was only so much success to go around". This is the "protectionalism" of the Mercantile economists who viewed value in terms of gold of which there really is only so much to go around. However the Classical school diagreed and after Adam Smith argued that the amount of value is only limited by the amount of labour. I agree to some extend - "value" is not a fixed quantity so arguments of "there is only so much to go around" are falacious. But then often arguments proceed by believing that value can be measured e.g. in GNP. These suffer from the same criticism because value is not quantifiable. Anyway I digress...

Interesting not everything went the way of Morality and common sense. Apparently the data show that child suffering does not correlate with having both parents at work. What seems to cause suffering is poor relationship with the parents and poor relationship betwen the parents - which may be caused by both parents always being at work, but this is not the root. Does this then suggest that nanny's can replace parents? I've always thought that multi-parent creches is the most likely "natural" state.

But, the main thing I disagreed with was that the solution to these deeply felt moral arguments, with apparent data to support them, was education. Somehow if children were educated of the source of happiness and wellbeing then they would live better lives.

I used to argue like this as a child. The moment you perceive something that is wrong you seek for a power base to try and enforce that view on other people. This is self-defeating because you will come up with other people competing for those power bases, and who ever wins will end up enslaving the population to whatever ideology - standard political nonsense. I've argued at length the falasy of people who think like this, and who do jobs that follow this type of thinking.

It occurred to me this morning that the problem with these people is that they have a profound lack of faith in People and in particular Goodness. We don't have political departments to make the sun rise every morning because we have faith that it will. (Ironically we are more faithful than our "primative" ancestors who had exactly this!) Likewise why do we have moral shepherds of "the people"? Do we believe that they are prone to badness? And do we believe that the goodness in them is derived from external forces initiated by the "good shepherds" who by miraculous fortune have been born with a moral compass that "the people" somehow lack? Idiotic and absurd arguments, yet the root of the lives of many "do gooders" and politicians who self-appoint themselves as miraculously superior to "the people".

Buddha and Jesus by contrast, for example, are quite different from this. These great teachers cast the seed, some falls on good soil and some on bad. Where it falls on good the seed grows, where it falls on bad it perishes etc etc. Who keeps throwing seed upon the desert in the hope that it will germinate? If people don't have the moral compass already then they won't ever know goodness. It is not for us as people to bring goodness into the hearts of people: it is a gift if we ever find it in our own. It can only be that good people will recognise the lives, actions and words of good people and rejoice in these things: and bad people won't. There is no education, or enforcement of these things: they are gifts. And when we see a bad person (assuming we know goodness) then it is enough to realise that "there, but for the grace of God, go I".

But do we really believe that there are "bad people"? This is an element of faith that is central to Buddhism at least: that at root all people are good, we simply have differing levels of haziness obscuring that rich core. Christians may believe the same given that, God made Man in his image. And then Islam and Judeism must believe the same. So none of the major faiths East or West believe in Evil at the root, it is only an oscuration of Goodness - a turning from God in Christian words.

So the majority of us already belive in Goodness being at the root of us all. It is the thing that unites all people. And the evils we see are but clouds in this perfect sky. This is what we believe. So where is the need to teach people Goodness? All children know what is right and wrong - talk to them and you will be amazed, even the "hoodies" n "yobs". They just learn to turn away from it and ignore it because it represents weakness, and because Goodness, being their true core self, means that they must face themselves: and this they cannot do because they hate themselves, and everyone else hates them, and they have done bad things that concretes over the grave of themselves. They either commit suicide, or they kill other people because at the heart of childhood in this authoritarian uncaring society of bureaucrats whose job is to be morally superior to others, who take the blood money but offer no heart in return, who return correct paperwork on other peoples' suffering and take the money and run, who document and measure and budget for misery: this society makes enemies of the people who is governs and hates the very blood that flows in its veins. That is the problem, that sadly is the obscuration that hides the Goodness.

So clearly the very last thing we should do in society is to legislate for anything else ever. We have hundreds of years of rules: we need no more. L:ike a good computer program we should be able to recode the laws and make them more efficient, simpler and faster to process. There would be less people in government, and more people in "Life" flowing through the arteries of this society and making it live. But this is a futile last paragraph because am I going to legislate for a reduction in Law :-) No! let Goodness work all by itself.

While sitting doing nothing;
Spring comes!
And the grass grows all by itself.

The state of rotteness.

Reading that poem reminds me that there is a very good case for the world being rotten. The sad news is that this is not news... we all know it already and yet no-one does anything about it... least of all the people who have actually taken it upon themselves within the game of "political power" to actually have some "power".

People are not waiting for conclusive evidence, or good arguments - all these exist. The problems lie in the very state of rotteness.

The rotteness is just this, that people don't do what they should whether in power or not, whether responsible or not.

It's a dream then to think that if we provided evidence or good argument we could change anything. Nuclear power, perfectly calculated and researched as well as anything ever could be, was used to kill and create a state of global insecurity and unease. Was all this what was argued?

The cult of Diana on a small Aegean island during the days of Antiquity illustrates an important logic of those hellbent on surmounting their opponents. So desirable was the position of Guardian of the temple of Diana that young men were always battling for the post. Few realised however that the day they won they took over a life of terror, for each day and each night for the rest of their short lives they would have to hide with sword drawn to defend themselves from the next suitor. Thus if we ever take up arms to win a position over someone else, then it follows that when we take up that position we will need to defend forever from those same arms and so ensure our demise by their very hand. So it is true that "he who lives by the sword, so shall he die by the sword."

So stupid are men that we get caught by our own aspirations and drives in such dead ends, unable to see as we are the mirror that stands before all our actions. They call it karma in the East as though it was a Law which had to be applied, when it is present in our very actions themselves if only we had the eyes to see it.

How futile then that we seek this position, over that position. Hope that our well fashioned arguments are swords that will win. Designate this as rotten and that as healthy.

After many millenia doesn't History tell us but one thing that the book of History will never be finished and that the writers spend their time on an endless wheel. The foolishness of even our contemporaries who claimed that "boom and bust" were finised, or Fukayama who claimed even that "History was finished". Whatever is finised is just the next page of History (and there surfaces the self-reference argument again).

So are we doomed to try and try-not and achieve just the same nothing in the long run? That what is this, is really that, and it is only our ignorance that sees them as two. That the labours that gave us Rome are the labours that gave us equally the Dark-Ages? And who would work to create a Dark-Age? but only a horse blinded by the arrival at Rome who failed to look where the Northern roads out of the city do run.

I lack the energy and the inspiration at the moment to complete the gargantuan task of asssempling all the information required to show that Mankind has gone the wrong way of the past 1000 years. And in any case Mankind will find out what the future holds with or without prophets.

And all those who would listen to evidence and argument already know that we have made a gigantic mistake. And all those who can't see because Rome is so close wouldn't listen anyway.

Again my roads seem to point upwards to transcendence and I'm beginning to realise all other roads are futile and endless, going here and then there, but never arriving anywhere.

topical little poem...

Topical little poem posted by Guardian reader "judyg"

The seas are all polluted and theres over fishing too
They tell us then to be more green when we are feeling blue
Our food is full of chemicals, stupid then is that?
The toxins that we eat we shouldnt put out for the cat!
Nuclear waste is hidden too, underneath our soil
They say this the way forward as we grow more short of oil!
Our medicines, have side effects, while killing off disease
The side effects are sometimes worse than the illness if you please!
Herbal cures and vitamins are scorned by ‘experts though
And anyway drug companies would lose out-what a blow!
Pollution from our vehicles is causing many ills
For chesty coughs and asthma were given then more pills!
Were warned of global warming and that we must recycle
Are they really serious or just taking the Michael?
The earth it keeps on spinning, turning the same way
But may not always be the case, it will change round one day!
Meanwhile we have corruption, mostly in high places
Often this is hidden, and the villains hide their faces
Were told we have democracy, to vote in who we choose
But who is there to vote for? We have so much to lose.
Who is pulling all the strings in this our great ‘free world?
Not the politicians at whom bad eggs are hurled
The money men lay hidden, the power in their hands
Big trans national companies now cover all the lands
Warmongers and evil seem to rule the day
We need a New World Order! the leaders now do say!
What we need is honesty and decency again
A world not ruled by Mammon and usury! insane!
A world of great equality and food for everyone
A roof then over every head to rest when the day is done.
These things wont come about though by just some heavenly prayer
A paradigm shift of thinking the new way forward here!
We really dont want fooling by media and biased news
We dont want suffocating by preachers from the pews
Need new ideas and trust again and less of all the gloom
And throw out all the rubbish, then buy a big new broom!

What is human life really like?

Recent research I'm doing points to working hours being about 6/day. That means that all subsistence work (shopping for essentials, commuting, grooming, actual work, eating etc) shouldn't take more than 6 hours of the day. With 8 hours sleeping that leaves 10 hours for socialising, chatting and spirituality (personal development, relaxing and destressing).

This is the current best guess at the correct style of life.

Life is shit! - that is the root fact, but...

OK seems I've been banging on the same door for too long now. Done a bit of reading... the question of this blog "what is life?", with a view to knowing what to do with it, is inspired because I and each one of us knows deep down that it is shit. Uneqivocally shit! and we only try to pretend otherwise because we are too egotistical to admit that we have failed to be happy. And what little happiness we do get is tainted because we are then afraid it will go and we will have to face the base fact again that life is shit!

I've made a double error because I thought that I could solve this issue all by myself as though it was a problem that people haven't been struggling with since the dawn of time. For me I saw the news as a kid and thought these people are idiots let me find the answer. But I see that there is no need for me to find the answer because it really has been found many times over by many people. Most coherently (for me at least) Buddha, but I have been held back because I lacked faith and accurate teachings - the latter my fault again because I didn't look! (or was not ready).

Anyway when you finally realise that "life is shit!" and there is no little escape passage that you've not checked - you've tried money and success, and love and sex, and knowledge and truth and all such things and you realise that each is tainted by its own shit! and the best you can do is pretend that everything is ok because your friends seem to be ok (when really they just pretend also). Well I'm ready to accept that it really is shit!

OK now what? Well here's a start...

http://www.maithri.com/links/articles/tri_lakshana1.htm

I particularly liked the honesty here...

"It is this instability that makes Dukka or the unsatisfactory nature of life bearable. Otherwise human beings would die of boredom with what we call pleasure, and the agony of what constitutes suffering."

So I'm sold finally no more tedious searching for answers in this mode of existence ... come back in a thousand years and everything we build today will be gone anyway, time for something much more fruitful.

I realise prior to this in meditation earlier that a characteristic of us all is that we spend our whole time struggling to gain control over our worlds - little tanks we are pulling levers and pushing buttons to try and negotiate some kind of satisfactory existence. Its never very satisfactory and what builds up is a resentment - I at least realised that were I to me made ruler of the universe there is a very good chance I would be literally terrible because the temptation to pull my extremely powerful levers and push my very powerful buttons to gain that dreamed of complete satisfaction might well destroy me and make me one of the really bad guys. Were I ever to lose sight of the people around me I could be very bad.

So in contrast to this pathetic view of each of us walled up in our own tanks looking through tiny periscopes and limited to pulling levers it seemed completely preferable to get out of the tank (which has the down side of "getting over ourselves") and working to make it a better world for all the other tank drivers. The gain is freedom and not being limited to using bulky levers, the downside is that we aren't stuck in a metal cage (hmmm but that's a good thing!)

Anyway slow realisations that I am shit also and need to do a damn sight better to achieve any of this enlightenment I pretend to seek!