So a big problem. In a world where a "loser" is simply an individual living on the "margins" what place is there for compassion and mercy?
In any population there will be so much resources to go around. Some will be fortunate, or strong, or both and some will be less. Those that fail to provide for themselves will die and above that cut off there will be poverty. Variance in the supply of resources will create a larger marginal zone as monopoly individuals become stressed and marginal individuals get a break.
This is a simple game.
So what attitude to marginal individuals? If we help them then we are spreading stress into the system for other individuals! A problem.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
No matter what u do as long as u become a better person.
In a world of empty games and no substance I realised that this is a pretty good motto:
It matters not what you do as long as you become a better person for it.
This works because like is an endless stream of success and failure with no core, centre or distinct direction and purpose. We each become embroiled in our own streams and games and play along until we get bored and want to change the game... yet it is still just parts of bigger and bigger, more complex games.
So with no clear vision or direction in life what should we do? That has been my issue for day #1. Well it matters not as long as we become better for it!
It matters not what you do as long as you become a better person for it.
This works because like is an endless stream of success and failure with no core, centre or distinct direction and purpose. We each become embroiled in our own streams and games and play along until we get bored and want to change the game... yet it is still just parts of bigger and bigger, more complex games.
So with no clear vision or direction in life what should we do? That has been my issue for day #1. Well it matters not as long as we become better for it!
Hover-fly Illusions
Lying in the sun yesterday morning with my knee raised it became the object of a hoverfly game. It seems that Hoverflys like many insects protect a territory and this fellow had taken claim of the airspace above my knee using it as a watchout post. Either that or he was protecting the knee itself. With lighting speed and agility he would launch himself into the air and dog-fight with anything that came within a yard all done within the blink of a lazy human eye.
Obviously territory is a critical issue given the cost of all this time and activity. Most likely it is linked to mating success.
What the hoverfly didn't know, maybe, was how transitory his territory was. I was going to move in a few minutes and all that territory would vapourise.
I realised that it is not just humans who get involved in transient and vapid status struggles. Not just humans can become trapped by the illusion of territory. This illusion seems to be a central part of Life itself! Certainly a hoverfly does not have the mental apparatus to become "illusioned" he is simply playing out a game. Yet it is a game fo some persistence and standing in Life given that Humans of infinitely greater capacity spend their days accumulating territories and possessions that like my knee will evaporate one day.
Obviously territory is a critical issue given the cost of all this time and activity. Most likely it is linked to mating success.
What the hoverfly didn't know, maybe, was how transitory his territory was. I was going to move in a few minutes and all that territory would vapourise.
I realised that it is not just humans who get involved in transient and vapid status struggles. Not just humans can become trapped by the illusion of territory. This illusion seems to be a central part of Life itself! Certainly a hoverfly does not have the mental apparatus to become "illusioned" he is simply playing out a game. Yet it is a game fo some persistence and standing in Life given that Humans of infinitely greater capacity spend their days accumulating territories and possessions that like my knee will evaporate one day.
Work to Live: Shop for Fun
This is a core inequality which I can't believe hasn't distilled out purely before in these musings.
For all the triviality of shopping - what colour shall our car be? shall we have blinds or curtains? what about a wooden floor in the kitchen? etc etc - the message seems to get lost by the time the workers are queing in the job centre. Anyone would have thought there was a war on the urgency and importants that the economists and government give to having a job.
If you don't work you will get no benefit and you will starve. It is a tough world and our economy must be prosperous.
Cut to the shopping center and the couple deciding whether to replace the toilet rug!
There is very little "important" in our lives and jobs anymore. This is another critical point that is missed in post-industrial economics.
For all the triviality of shopping - what colour shall our car be? shall we have blinds or curtains? what about a wooden floor in the kitchen? etc etc - the message seems to get lost by the time the workers are queing in the job centre. Anyone would have thought there was a war on the urgency and importants that the economists and government give to having a job.
If you don't work you will get no benefit and you will starve. It is a tough world and our economy must be prosperous.
Cut to the shopping center and the couple deciding whether to replace the toilet rug!
There is very little "important" in our lives and jobs anymore. This is another critical point that is missed in post-industrial economics.
Fake & True Society and Fake & True Self
Society as it is usually used is an incredibly dull, conceited and artificial conception. The bland idea of "type" of people, and fixed lifeless institutions with staid regiemes and protocols. It is a museum piece, dead and stuffed for the satisfaction of the perusing public.
Of course in reality Society is a dynamic changing things which has taken on endless convoluted indefinable forms in its history and has been composed from an endlessly changing sea of people.
An indefinable sea of people is a more authentic conception of society but it is not favoured because it diminishes our conception of our individual power. If we consider society ruled by a monarch for example and then consider ourselves in favour with the monarch then we have a conception of security. Likewise if we consider financial wealth as the backbone of society then we need only accumulate some money to be able to hold the secure conception of ourselves as "in" society.
It is all lies and self-deception. As if society were so simple as to be controlled and wrapped around such entities as "monarchs" or "gold".
The bedrock of society is more vast than any one of us and any one of our "conceptions". This is the authentic Society which simply couldn't be mapped as there are too many people, holding too many conversations and doing too many things to even begin to model or understand.
But one day in our blissful childhood we experience rejection. Maybe we can over look this. But if it happens a lot and seems to be to do with "us" then we have a very dangerous conception to form... it is the idea that people do not like "me". "ME" is an idea that never forms on its own, but we do form the idea of other people. Jane is taller than John and is better at climbing trees so I will ask her around not John. John will probably survive that rejection, he can rationalise that he can't climb trees well so it makes sense. But Jane is funnier than John so she can come to my party. John will find this harder to explain and it starts to become personal. I get on better with Jane than John so she is my friend. Now it is really personal. John has no option but to understand that I favour Jane over him, that "he" is not my friend. He experiences this as rejection not of his qualities; but of "himself".
Oh Dear! So begins the life time of ignorance and suffering for John that we all know. So where was the error.
John should have continued on the path of rationalising the qualities. The "ego" is formed because we crudely and carelessly package a whole load of qualities together as a distinct entity. We call humour, gaity, energy, intelligence, spontenaity, mood, opinions, like/dislikes, memories, intention, will, motivation etc all these we crudely stick together as personality and imagine that "someone" has these qualities. So we characterise John and make our crude decisions based upon this prasy of his "being".
That is our mistake. John's mistake is to accept this crude basket of qualities as "himself". Or while he may disagree with the qualities that are placed in the basket, to at least accept that there is a basket. He may be inspired therefore to improve his qualities - which is a good thing - but no matter how good his qualities become he is still burdened with the concrete basket - the illusion of a solid self, upon which the ornaments of personality are hung. A solid self tying together the qualities of personality into one discrete concenient person to take his place on the waxworks display of the world alongside all the other waxwork people.
It is no wonder that psychopaths exist who really do see people as waxworks. We are all psychopaths of varying degrees having our routine, fixed views of other people - the stuffed museum pieces, the lifeless waxworks that fill our scheming imaginations as we decide who this and who that. Only family and very close friend are allowed to gain true life and live more freely of the judgements and personality and fixed boundaries of self. Friends can occupy the same room in a loose and liquid affiliation; mixing conversations, laughter, touches, jokes, ideas with no recourse to distinct personalities or selves - until a name is mentioned in gossip and one is outcast and feels the walls of self close around them becoming objectified and alienated. And, we struggle to get back into the melay and that is where we are inauthentic fighting for our own existence in the group, our own status: we are fighting to be freed from the prison of objectification, fighting to have other people accept us as friends rather than waxworks in the psychopathic imaginations of other people - other people who we accept without thinking to have personalities and identities.
How ironic!!! So this is the whole mistake of fake society and status. We accept without thinking the label of self, as we use it against other people. And being isolated as a self we fight to free ourselves from the label in the eyes of the very people who we objectify and think do have a self themselves. The cult of celebrity is born as we view some people to be mroe solid and real than others, and seek to associate in false society with these Egos so that we might gain solidity to our Ego and at the same time paradoxically be freed from the alienated Self that comes from being rejected and "out of the loop".
Odd isn't is that we feel most distinctly ourself when we gain entrance to the exclusive night club AND when we get refused from the exclusive night club. In both cases we gain a "self" but in the former we like having that self and in the latter we don't like it. Since being in prison is an unpleasant experience something very odd must be happening to those people who get access to the exclusive world because they like the fakeness and the feel of their false ego! They like the prison!
===
I'm expanding from notes made on my phone under the tree I've been sleeping the last 3 days. The note goes: Tue soc then ego = false soc then competition then status. Competition and Status in society are products of Ego.
Of course in reality Society is a dynamic changing things which has taken on endless convoluted indefinable forms in its history and has been composed from an endlessly changing sea of people.
An indefinable sea of people is a more authentic conception of society but it is not favoured because it diminishes our conception of our individual power. If we consider society ruled by a monarch for example and then consider ourselves in favour with the monarch then we have a conception of security. Likewise if we consider financial wealth as the backbone of society then we need only accumulate some money to be able to hold the secure conception of ourselves as "in" society.
It is all lies and self-deception. As if society were so simple as to be controlled and wrapped around such entities as "monarchs" or "gold".
The bedrock of society is more vast than any one of us and any one of our "conceptions". This is the authentic Society which simply couldn't be mapped as there are too many people, holding too many conversations and doing too many things to even begin to model or understand.
But one day in our blissful childhood we experience rejection. Maybe we can over look this. But if it happens a lot and seems to be to do with "us" then we have a very dangerous conception to form... it is the idea that people do not like "me". "ME" is an idea that never forms on its own, but we do form the idea of other people. Jane is taller than John and is better at climbing trees so I will ask her around not John. John will probably survive that rejection, he can rationalise that he can't climb trees well so it makes sense. But Jane is funnier than John so she can come to my party. John will find this harder to explain and it starts to become personal. I get on better with Jane than John so she is my friend. Now it is really personal. John has no option but to understand that I favour Jane over him, that "he" is not my friend. He experiences this as rejection not of his qualities; but of "himself".
Oh Dear! So begins the life time of ignorance and suffering for John that we all know. So where was the error.
John should have continued on the path of rationalising the qualities. The "ego" is formed because we crudely and carelessly package a whole load of qualities together as a distinct entity. We call humour, gaity, energy, intelligence, spontenaity, mood, opinions, like/dislikes, memories, intention, will, motivation etc all these we crudely stick together as personality and imagine that "someone" has these qualities. So we characterise John and make our crude decisions based upon this prasy of his "being".
That is our mistake. John's mistake is to accept this crude basket of qualities as "himself". Or while he may disagree with the qualities that are placed in the basket, to at least accept that there is a basket. He may be inspired therefore to improve his qualities - which is a good thing - but no matter how good his qualities become he is still burdened with the concrete basket - the illusion of a solid self, upon which the ornaments of personality are hung. A solid self tying together the qualities of personality into one discrete concenient person to take his place on the waxworks display of the world alongside all the other waxwork people.
It is no wonder that psychopaths exist who really do see people as waxworks. We are all psychopaths of varying degrees having our routine, fixed views of other people - the stuffed museum pieces, the lifeless waxworks that fill our scheming imaginations as we decide who this and who that. Only family and very close friend are allowed to gain true life and live more freely of the judgements and personality and fixed boundaries of self. Friends can occupy the same room in a loose and liquid affiliation; mixing conversations, laughter, touches, jokes, ideas with no recourse to distinct personalities or selves - until a name is mentioned in gossip and one is outcast and feels the walls of self close around them becoming objectified and alienated. And, we struggle to get back into the melay and that is where we are inauthentic fighting for our own existence in the group, our own status: we are fighting to be freed from the prison of objectification, fighting to have other people accept us as friends rather than waxworks in the psychopathic imaginations of other people - other people who we accept without thinking to have personalities and identities.
How ironic!!! So this is the whole mistake of fake society and status. We accept without thinking the label of self, as we use it against other people. And being isolated as a self we fight to free ourselves from the label in the eyes of the very people who we objectify and think do have a self themselves. The cult of celebrity is born as we view some people to be mroe solid and real than others, and seek to associate in false society with these Egos so that we might gain solidity to our Ego and at the same time paradoxically be freed from the alienated Self that comes from being rejected and "out of the loop".
Odd isn't is that we feel most distinctly ourself when we gain entrance to the exclusive night club AND when we get refused from the exclusive night club. In both cases we gain a "self" but in the former we like having that self and in the latter we don't like it. Since being in prison is an unpleasant experience something very odd must be happening to those people who get access to the exclusive world because they like the fakeness and the feel of their false ego! They like the prison!
===
I'm expanding from notes made on my phone under the tree I've been sleeping the last 3 days. The note goes: Tue soc then ego = false soc then competition then status. Competition and Status in society are products of Ego.
=== adding notes 5/4/10 - (found the original note from which above was written)
> Slow disintegration of "society" - being a "member" compensatory mechanism for lack of recognition of "true" society - article on "loneliness" measuring social contact and structure as though "society" can be measured. We are never apart from other people, we are never with other people. Fighting to be "with" other people as though physical proximinity actual means anything. Maybe the "intention" of a touch, or sexual encounter, or speech, or look provides "proof" of being "with". Yes if someone is talking to you then u feel recognised and included. But this depends upon them identifying you as someone - how do they do this? By how u look etc. Thus such thinking binds us to a conception of outrselves and our society as based on "physical identity".
More on Games...
We satisfy ourselves playing the various games of life be they relationships, money, social status etc. We are like people stuck in a cosmic chess game who spend so much time working out the next move that they forget to look around and decide whether they even wanted to even play chess in the first place! But how many people ask themselves whether they want to play these games? We accept that we are in games of economics or sex for example but why don't we question the games themselves? Can we chose the games that we play and is it possible to escape from games.
The kids today (like in my day) are stuck within incredibly defined boundaries. The media hypes kids as rebellious and a danger to society but after several months of GCSE tuition I can say that the lives' of the youth are even more hijacked by the games of the establishment today than ever before. Maybe kids think it cool to carry knives etc but at the same time they have got to support the right trainers, or mobile phone or listen to the right "under ground" music. All this is commercial, strictly controlled marketing - unawares they are playing within the rules of society. Being kids they never realise because kids have small unworldly brains - that is a feature they will always have. The question is how many people ever grow out of being a kid however. I am lucky I never understood what the establishment was trying to say to me - so by default I rebelled - I simply couldn't/can't understand how the clothes we wear make any difference. Maybe I'm mildly autistic, but its a blindness which we need if we are to have any choice about the games we play. On the other hand people pretend to understand but can anyone really explain how the fabric that we surround ourselves with makes any difference to anything (apart from being dry and warm)? So if we can't explain it, have we really chosen to play the fashion game? And if we can explain it we have done so "outside" the fashion game (self-reference hypothesis) so what reasons for fashion are their that are not fashion themselves? tricky waters!
The kids today (like in my day) are stuck within incredibly defined boundaries. The media hypes kids as rebellious and a danger to society but after several months of GCSE tuition I can say that the lives' of the youth are even more hijacked by the games of the establishment today than ever before. Maybe kids think it cool to carry knives etc but at the same time they have got to support the right trainers, or mobile phone or listen to the right "under ground" music. All this is commercial, strictly controlled marketing - unawares they are playing within the rules of society. Being kids they never realise because kids have small unworldly brains - that is a feature they will always have. The question is how many people ever grow out of being a kid however. I am lucky I never understood what the establishment was trying to say to me - so by default I rebelled - I simply couldn't/can't understand how the clothes we wear make any difference. Maybe I'm mildly autistic, but its a blindness which we need if we are to have any choice about the games we play. On the other hand people pretend to understand but can anyone really explain how the fabric that we surround ourselves with makes any difference to anything (apart from being dry and warm)? So if we can't explain it, have we really chosen to play the fashion game? And if we can explain it we have done so "outside" the fashion game (self-reference hypothesis) so what reasons for fashion are their that are not fashion themselves? tricky waters!
What is Life?
This question was going to have to asked sooner or later in this blog - but it has been avoided because exactly where do you start? Well I'm ready to start ...
We think we know what Life is. This is why we pay it little attention. I'm reminded of Heideggar's opening of "Being and Time" however: 'Those of us who thought we knew what Being was have since become perplexed' (based apparently on a line from Plato I forget).
Those of us who thought we knew what Life was have since become perplexed.
I'll cut to the chase. If we can live Life without knowing what it is, then we don't need to know what it is! Or at least knowing what it is, is not important to living!
So there is the key that crystalised this morning as I awoke under a tree (taken to sleeping out again) watching the birds and the insects busying themselves: Life is actually nothing - it is the unjudgemental canvas or soil upon which we paint or grow our lives. This is why (upon realising this) we are able to accept whatever life throws a us without concern. Lose everything in the stock market, have our house burned down, have our whole family killed in a car accident, contract terminal cancer, even become faced with a gun in a bank hold up and lose one's life; or more positively win the lottery, get the job promotion, find the perfect job, get married, have a child, find ourselves famous and successful - whatever Life throws at us comes without judgement - for the canvas upon which it is painted cares not what pattern the colours make and the soil cares not whether the plants flourish or die. In the words of Kipling we really should be able to:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
For in the grand scheme of life what is loss in one place is a win in another. Not literally - but to illustrate that it depends upon your franme of reference to see something as a win or lose. There are win-win, lose-lose, and win-lose outcomes for games - but the issue in Life is who chooses the games? A lose-lose game may be win-win in the larger game. Two armies may decimate each other in a battle, but find that the mutual defeat leads to a strong alliance and economic domination in another "theatre".
All the world's a stage and we merely actors. It occurred also during this investigation that my favourite questioning of "role" took a further development. We act out our roles not because of what we thinkwe are: but the acting out of roles determines what we think we are. In theory sleeping under the trees at night could make me into the role of a vagrant, vagabond or tramp. On the other hand it could make me into a romantic visionary. On the other hand it could just be plain "Tom Sawyer" type fun... to name only three "roles". I have a palette of narratives to chose from. It takes only a few people to chose one of those narratives for me and I may start to play that role. Once I am reading from the script then I start to believe I "am" that person - this is the origin of inauthenticity. Life has no definition and the script is fluid and changeable. But the mind cannot grasp at water for there is nothing to hold on to. So in confusion it grasps at the jug with water in it and believes that the jug is water. Of course in time the water in the jug goes stale and Life loses its edge.
So Life by definition escapes definition. Whatever game we think it is, whatever system of rules or descriptions we think it is, whatever role with set and stage directions we think it is: we forget that our definition belongs to a larger world from whose perspective the definition becomes quite inappropriate.
Politics is fashion. Why? because what seems so apt and sensible for a community at a moment in its history will seem quite idiotic and futile at another moment in its history. Take extra-ordinary moments in Britains history like the Crusades. It seems nonsensical to modern heads why people would waste so much effort on possessing a city: plain football in modern thinking. Stock-markets are fashion also hence "bubbles".
Life is a grander entity than anything that the mind can harness to grasp it... except the mind itself.
Returning to less lofty speculations on Life some challenges to the common held view of life. It seems easy to say when something is alive or dead. So surely we know what life is. Yet when an animal has many offspring and then dies itself we are left with more entities than we had before. Has Life multipled? What then is the unit of life? We say the individual but consider a sponge which can be broken down into separate cells. What of a sperm and egg fusing? Life is neither single or multiple... tbc
We think we know what Life is. This is why we pay it little attention. I'm reminded of Heideggar's opening of "Being and Time" however: 'Those of us who thought we knew what Being was have since become perplexed' (based apparently on a line from Plato I forget).
Those of us who thought we knew what Life was have since become perplexed.
I'll cut to the chase. If we can live Life without knowing what it is, then we don't need to know what it is! Or at least knowing what it is, is not important to living!
So there is the key that crystalised this morning as I awoke under a tree (taken to sleeping out again) watching the birds and the insects busying themselves: Life is actually nothing - it is the unjudgemental canvas or soil upon which we paint or grow our lives. This is why (upon realising this) we are able to accept whatever life throws a us without concern. Lose everything in the stock market, have our house burned down, have our whole family killed in a car accident, contract terminal cancer, even become faced with a gun in a bank hold up and lose one's life; or more positively win the lottery, get the job promotion, find the perfect job, get married, have a child, find ourselves famous and successful - whatever Life throws at us comes without judgement - for the canvas upon which it is painted cares not what pattern the colours make and the soil cares not whether the plants flourish or die. In the words of Kipling we really should be able to:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
For in the grand scheme of life what is loss in one place is a win in another. Not literally - but to illustrate that it depends upon your franme of reference to see something as a win or lose. There are win-win, lose-lose, and win-lose outcomes for games - but the issue in Life is who chooses the games? A lose-lose game may be win-win in the larger game. Two armies may decimate each other in a battle, but find that the mutual defeat leads to a strong alliance and economic domination in another "theatre".
All the world's a stage and we merely actors. It occurred also during this investigation that my favourite questioning of "role" took a further development. We act out our roles not because of what we thinkwe are: but the acting out of roles determines what we think we are. In theory sleeping under the trees at night could make me into the role of a vagrant, vagabond or tramp. On the other hand it could make me into a romantic visionary. On the other hand it could just be plain "Tom Sawyer" type fun... to name only three "roles". I have a palette of narratives to chose from. It takes only a few people to chose one of those narratives for me and I may start to play that role. Once I am reading from the script then I start to believe I "am" that person - this is the origin of inauthenticity. Life has no definition and the script is fluid and changeable. But the mind cannot grasp at water for there is nothing to hold on to. So in confusion it grasps at the jug with water in it and believes that the jug is water. Of course in time the water in the jug goes stale and Life loses its edge.
So Life by definition escapes definition. Whatever game we think it is, whatever system of rules or descriptions we think it is, whatever role with set and stage directions we think it is: we forget that our definition belongs to a larger world from whose perspective the definition becomes quite inappropriate.
Politics is fashion. Why? because what seems so apt and sensible for a community at a moment in its history will seem quite idiotic and futile at another moment in its history. Take extra-ordinary moments in Britains history like the Crusades. It seems nonsensical to modern heads why people would waste so much effort on possessing a city: plain football in modern thinking. Stock-markets are fashion also hence "bubbles".
Life is a grander entity than anything that the mind can harness to grasp it... except the mind itself.
Returning to less lofty speculations on Life some challenges to the common held view of life. It seems easy to say when something is alive or dead. So surely we know what life is. Yet when an animal has many offspring and then dies itself we are left with more entities than we had before. Has Life multipled? What then is the unit of life? We say the individual but consider a sponge which can be broken down into separate cells. What of a sperm and egg fusing? Life is neither single or multiple... tbc
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