Meaning of Life

Misunderstanding the senses leads us on the wrong path in life. Many who have followed this path have not seen the falasy and have ended up wasting their entire lives.

The Senses

The senses create a powerful illusion if we don’t understand them. Naively we think what we experience is what is there. Only partially correct. When our senses are intact we get an experience. So the experience depends upon our senses and so it’s not just the world straight and simple.

Eyes create sight experiences, noses smell experiences. We are well familiar. But its wrong to say the world is actually made of the things we see or smell. The sound of a tree falling in a forest with no-one to hear it obviously doesn’t make a sound. You need ears to get a sound.

If one doubts whether the tree needs hearing to make a sound we need only ask a deaf person what sound it makes. However the deaf person may well feel the vibrations. They may also see it, which a blind person won’t experience. So the tree falling creates many experiences in many senses, in many people. There is no single *experience* of the tree falling. Each person not only has multiple experiences themselves like seeing and hearing, but each person has a different experience. This is the source of the Great Illusion because we know in truth there is just one tree falling.

In the East there is a 6th sense in addition to the normal 5. This is the sense that experiences thoughts. When we experience something we may have a sight and a sound but we will probably also experience the creation of a thought about it. This is a source of much confusion. In the case of the tree falling the thoughst will be diverse. But in the context of this discussion one of them may be what is the Truth? What is the correct true thought? Did a tree really just fall? Arguments may break out as people challenge their various experiences. But it is really helpful to see that these thoughts are created by the events as much as the sights and sounds. Less mentally strong people may, like blind people, have duller thoughts but at root thoughts are just part of our experience.

The Way To Freedom

In our thoughts we may pursue this now self generaing snow ball of what “really” happened if our senses are interacting with the tree falling and creating lots of different experiences. What does a tree falling “really” mean. What we conclude after much thought is that a tree falling has no quality of itself. It needs to interact with the world to take on a form, and the form created depends upon what is there. The sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one there, like Schroedingers Cat with the box closed, is what is called Sunyata in Buddism. It can be either, but itself it is neither. It doesn’t mean that it switches between states, or that it is confused about what it is, it IS Sunyata. The confusion only occurs in our thoughts which by definition deal with things that are this way and that. Sunyata can’t be thought. Sunyata is the cause of thoughts! To the wise however they can see that the manifestation of concrete things is itself Sunyata. They are not to be separated. As the Heart Sutra says: Form is Void and Void is Form.

One doesn’t need this level of wisdom however to steer in the correct direction. Mistaking our experiences to be Real and Truthful, rather than created and relative we often attribute far too much importance in them. In particular we pursue a particular aspect of experiences which is whether we like them or not. A person who has not understood that their experinces as just their own, small, local, temporary and created puts a wall around themselves. They become trapped within their senses. In philosophy this position is called Solipsism. How do you prove that anyone else is real? The problem with this is that if start from the awareness that there are other people then how do you prove that your experience is real! If we become attached to our senses then we end up owning them. We are fully trapped and end up believing in a single observer and self experiencing these private phenomena and we end up reject the existence of others.

It is interesting that as a kid I ended up proving the need for Sunyata. But because of a fundemntal attachment to my senses I ended up believing in a personal space in which experiences arose with indefinable sunyata on the outside. Only half correct. I couldn’t see the attachment to my senses that was driving this bubble, private cinema view of life.

Once attachment to senses is gone we live in a world finitely larger than the bubble of private experiece. It means that the worst experiences, while they are indeed happening to us, lose their finality and permanence, and are seen as just a part of the great world. When we see someone else having horrible experiences they are as important to us as our own. Even tho when we have an experience it is real and solid, we understand it in the context of the Great Infinite World of which our tiny bubbles of created experience grow and pop endlessly. We become truly freed from the trap of ourself. Some will say that we lose the intensity of pleasure and indulging our own likes. But do you prefer a comfortable prison or the infinitity of freedom? Red pill or blue pill. Although its not a fair comparison because expanding beyond the senses delivers us into a world without the pressing concerns for like and dislike.

So What is Reality?

So what is out there? The key thing is we uncouple from the endless drive for like and dislike. It is still there but isn’t totally absorbing. Instead we begin to switch to a more universal point of view. Other people become as important to us as ourself. Intellectually we’ve always been able to see this: what in reality actually separated us? Despite thinking we know, no one will ever find an answer to that question cos there is nothing there!

The Meaning of Life

So the Meaning of Life reveals itself outside our sense. It isn’t the endless pursuit of pleasure, or escaping the suffering and troubles of our life. It is freeing ourself from these concerns by letting go of the importants of our senses and putting them in a proper perspective of just momentary creations in a vast boundless universe full of endless beings and even more endless experiences. Once we begin to let go, then we will start to experience the fullness of existence.

Practically it means being brave, being bigger than we think we are, being a Hero and achieving what we think is impossible. Faced with difficult situations, or being blinded by bad experiences, we have that faith in the Bigger Thing, the thing beyond our apparent senses and thoughts. Doesn’t matter what that thing is, the issue is unattaching from the specific here and now that has us trapped. Each time we do this we become bigger, or more accurately we let go of the smaller self that has us trapped. Practically it means paying more attention to others, and learning to consider them as much as ourself. If we can serve another then we have truly unattched from our own senses. Of course we can do this too much, their senses are also not to be take too seriously. Perhaps if they are demanding we can help them serve more and unattach from the demands and perspectives of their own sense and thoughts.

What is interesting about this analysis is that it agrees completely with the wisdom of every age and time. Whether it is Jesus or Muhammad, or Krishna, or Buddha the core teaching is to avoid the small of Evil and open our hearts to the big of Good. It means being humble not arrogant, it means subservient not in command, it means listening not commanding, it means being a carer not a warrior. Those who get trapped in the senses gradually get cut off from the world, and while they may feel that they are large, it is because they have forgotten what is really great. By contrast those who know what is really great no longer get impressed by their own tiny existence and become very simple and straighforward. It is sad how often this is misunderstood. The Glory of God so often associated with triumph and success, and personal gratification and winning. You know when you have God on your side, and when you are a truely Great Person not when you win and celebrate, but when you lose and are content with that, because what can we ever gain that is even close to the grandure of the infinite reality that hosts our every experience and thought? When you see people celebrating victory you know you are in the comany of the small people, the servant of the Devil, the victims of the Great Illusion, too foolish (as yet) to escape the trap of their senses.

Fixed Points and God

A Fixed Point is like that point on a map of England that is right over the place where the point on the map is. Easy to see that the operation making a map (which is shrinking and moving it around) has a fixed point for any location of the map within the map area.

Fixed points remain invariant under an operation. Some geometric operation have one like making a map. But due to Kleene there is a proof that all logical systems have a fixed point. I believe a Turing machine has a fixed point. And since a Turing machine can perform every computation possible, and can emulate every computable system possible it means that every system must have a Fixed Point (that argument needs serious work).

It means that every system has an invariant. ow suppose there are systems we make which are designed to discover points of invariance. They cannot discover their own points of invariance because they cannot operate on them. Fixed Points represent “meta” data about a system. Possibility the basis of the proof I need to show that systems cannot be total, because they cannot encompass their own meta data.

Bt vast analogy Religions speak of the invariant nature of God or True Self. And also that this invariance is beyond the power of individuals. It is the given. The presence of Fixed Points in out Existence would provide exactly this experience. The discovery of the Fixed Points that Religion speaks of is not a process that lies within the system but is a feature of the system itself. Human Being may be systems but they belong to a world which ha just one Fixed Point. It is the invariance of that which enables the world to see that it is not a particular System as is the view point of Human Beings. Seeing the meta data releases us from the common system of being a Human Being. We are not ourselves in the system, but rather the whole interconnected system itself. That was the original insight anyway. But back to something concrete and intellectual.

A quine is a fixed point of a computer program. You input the text of a particular program to a computer and it generates the text of that program. So if this (SRH) hypothesis is true then a program cannot find its own quine. Well obviously. A quine must output the program itself. But a search is a program that goes through all options until finds something matching a criterion. So if the output is just a list of possibilities until matching a criterion then so must the program be. But is that a search. Anyway try to write a quine that is both the output of a search and a program at the same time… something obvious I’m missing here?

PI does not contain itself

If PI contains itself then its decimal expansion is a repeating set of digits. Lets just look at the fractional part.

So pi = PI - 3. And pi(i) represents the ith digit of the fractional part of PI. 

pi = 0.141592654...

so pi(5) = 9

Now if pi contains itself then at some value of 'n' it follows that pi(i) = pi(i+n)

pi = 0.pi(1)41592654...pi(n)pi(n+1)41592654...pi(2n)pi(2n+1)41592654...

Such a sequence can be expressed as a fraction:

For example:

0.12345612345612345612345612345612... = 123456/999999

So pi would be:

1415926..pi(n)/9999999..n times

But Pi is irrational so we know that Pi is not built from a repeating finite sequence and does not repeat after a finite n.

This leaves 2 options. Either Pi repeats after a countably infinite n, or it does not contain itself.

Let us supposed that pi repeats after a countably infinite n.

This means that:

pi = lim(n->inf) 1415926..pi(n)/9999999..n

As I understand it all Real numbers can be expressed like this so the question of "contains itself" starts to get rather ambiguous. Repeating after an infinite sequence of digits is the same as not repeating it seems. To be confirmed.

Death

This blog was an investigation of Life. My life. My disaster of a Life and questions that it raised. It is 11 years since it started and I realised today that almost no progress has been made. Blundering around wondering whether to form sexual relationships, whether to work, buy a house, become a monk, abandon myself to pleasure, find some magical Enlightenment that would lift me out. What?

But realising that almost no progress has been made is the result of considerable progress. I realised that I need go back to Death first to see what is this Life. So what is Death? I shall present some ideas, none better than the rest, but all insufficient to capture the miraculous nature of Death.

A common view is that it is lights out. Game over. Oblivion. But consider the smaller death of closing our eyes. The world goes out. There is nothing but blackness but we don't for a minute think that the world has ceased to exist. We can think ourself into confusion here, but that isn't productive, so lets step around that quagmire. With out eyes closed we know the world carries on as usual. Our body is still here, our heart keeps beating, the sun keep moving through the sky. So when we die what makes us think anything changes then? Obviously our heart stops, and our brain shuts down and lots of other changes, but nothing actually changes. The world goes on. So what is this "oblivion" people speak of in this view of Death?

Another view is that we remain aware and while our physical eyes shut and our mortal body shuts down our hidden eyes are able to separate and travel to other places unseen by the living. This is a comforting thought. I have witness from several people on their death bed of being visited by people to take them away. Near death experiences are scientifically recognised. There is much mystery here. But like Oblivion it doesn't quite capture the whole mystery. If this "spiritual" body is always there then there is no real Death so we haven't got any closer to Death.

A common problem with ideas of Death is focus on the time and the body. We say of a child when they die what a tragedy that they didn't get to live their whole life. We know they are a child because their body is young. Older people look in the mirror and know that Death is approaching and accept it much more readily - I am satisfied with my life, or I have regrets. Although I know of some elderly who at Death were afraid by it, and others at younger age who were not concerned by it. We worry also about health and whether this body will last or give up on us. But our bodies, like our age and time, is not really connected to the question of Death. All these concerns are a side show to what is really going on in Life.

The key to the mystery of Death is linked to the mystery of Life. When do we Die is like the question when do we Live? Do I live yesterday? No. Do I live tomorrow? No. I live right now. In fact if I look at it, I always live right now. There has never been a moment in my life when I haven't been alive right now. And, I have never been alive yesterday, or tomorrow, only ever now. That sounds weird because I remember being alive yesterday and I expect to be alive tomorrow. But the point is those are only a memory and an expectation. If I had lost my memory it would be clearer: I am alive now and only ever now. That is where life happens. Our common view of Time is exactly like a wall calendar... it isn't time as it happens as we know it.

It's an odd way to see things to begin with, this "Present Moment" as it is usually called. But with practice we start to get the hang of it. We have many movies playing in the theatre of the Present Moment carrying all sorts of memories of the past, plans, thoughts. Often like with TV we get stuck watching them. But if we step back and survey Our Life as it stands we see that it is only what is happening that is Real. Everything else is a movie we are playing ourself along side what is happening.

So what of Death? If we look in the private movie theatre we see pictures of us as kids, and sketches of us as old people, and then perhaps brief glimpses of a funeral or grave, or perhaps a disaster where we die, or a peaceful scene with our loved ones around. Perhaps we play a film of us floating off to Heaven and being in the company of ancestors and God. But from the perspective of My Life this is all movie, a piece of entertainment. It isn't Death at all.

What emerges in the Present Moment of Life is that actually there is no exact thing called Death. The nearest thing to the opposite of Present Moment is day-dreaming on auto-pilot and we do that all the time. Indeed most of us spend most of our lives not in the Present Moment. We spend most of our lives not aware of Life, not actually Being Alive, and so in a way we are Dead most of the time! Ironically particularly when we are day dreaming about death!

If we return to our bodies for a moment. Or great fear is that the body will fail. But if we look at the body we have seen lots of bodies fail. It is on the news all the time. What we mean is that "our" body will fail. That is the one body amongst all the others that is our major concern. And now we enter the rabbit warren of the actual cause of the problem that Death poses. It is not Death itself, that happens all the time, it is "our" Death.

If for a second we ignore "our" Death and look at all the other Deaths. It is quite remarkable that they don't really make much difference. 80 million people died in World War 2. It is totally incomprehensible but every one of them was a person like you are I worrying about their Life, trying to stay alive and live a happy life. And all of them perished in a way we cannot even comprehend. And yet today for all that tragedy and disaster it makes no difference at all. The Sun still rises each day as though nothing had happened. Planet Earth is still blue. Its almost as though Death didn't exist!

What is surprising is the observation that a life ending is quite natural and normal. It is no great disaster. Every living thing will end its life at some stage. It is not really an event worth mentioning. Yet when it happens to us, or our loved ones then it is a matter for profound concern. I won't complete this now but I shall leave it here at the glaring contradiction between seeing so much death and destruction in World War 2 and it leaving almost no trace on the world, and the feeling that our own Death will be some cataclysmic event that will knock the stars out of the sky and cause Game Over or perhaps a celebration in Heaven.

Perhaps I will add one note that while I push toward a balanced and simple view of Death, this does not distract from the fact that in its reality it is a very traumatic experience for most, and thus always demands our deepest sympathies and support.

Death is certainly a mystery. One as great, deep and unfathomable as Life itself.

BBC Salaries do follow the market

BBC salaries follow a perfect inverse square root. This is what you’d expect from a pure free market. It seems unless they deviously had this is mind, they are simply following the market rates.

The take home from that this is that people compliaing about the salaries, are really complaining about Capitalism and Free Market valuation. Which interestingly is why the BBC was set up, and why it is wrong to force the BBC to start competing ina free market.

Load of nonsense isn’t it.

Deep Ecology vs. Human Progress vs, Interconnectedness

An interesting article at least raising the central points of Human Ecology.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/philosophic-roots-paris-agreement-deep-ecology-vs-human-progress/

However like so much in the modern press it only does enough to raise and problematise an issue.

Deep Ecology is more than just a reaction to Capitalist Economics. It is based upon this idea of "inter connectedness" that is raised in the article. It is not a simple idea, but one of such deep importance that Western Civilisation can be characterised as having developed without it.

"Inter-connectedness" changes the view of reality from "bricks" to the "whole" wall. As can be seen it challenges the basis of the Western civilisation and science as composed from discrete things, atoms, things, individuals.

"Deep Ecology" is not discussing "Human vs Nature" as the article instructs its reader but rather looks at the "whole" picture of Human And Nature.

Ideas of "progress" have no place in this view. How can you progress from point A to point B when A and B are part of the whole. You can only progress from point A to point B when you are stuck at point A.

"Deep Ecology" is "deep".

Anarchism, Alt-Right, Molyneux, Government, Freedom and where it is all Wrong

It is a very American thing not to trust the Government. The 2nd Amendment is justified by the fear of allowing an armed Government to exist unchallenged by a disarmed People. And, of course as with everything there is A Truth to this. But, it is not the Whole Truth. The key problem is this "straw man" thing called Government and People.

Politics is the process of creating divisive ideas and then working to get support for those divisions. The general process is to cause a division and then get people to support one side against the other. Classic divisions/dualisms we have seen are Roundheads/Cavaliers in English Civil War, Loyalists/Patriots in US Independence War, Communists/Capitalists in Cold War, Socialists/Imperialists in 18/19th century revolutions, Collectivist/Individualist or Group/Individual and we have Government/People.

What is Government? The extreme view is that it is a Closed group of super powerful people who are unified against the rest of Humanity. In the most extreme view they are not even Human themselves, perhaps Aliens like in the Carpenter film "They Live". Perhaps they are humans but are racially insular like Jews, perhaps they are like "us" but are just super powerful like Bilderberg or Illuminati. But in reality no "group" is really like this. And of course as soon as we take sides in a division like this we join a group and become collectivist ourselves. This is a logical problem with dualism itself.

I'm no expert on the widely read and deep thinking Stefan Molyneux, he certainly seems to have risen to prominence in the Anarchist movement, but from what I hear from supporters he must be misunderstood. Ayn Rand also runs into a similar problem with the concept of "group". Perhaps easier just to do a straight paragraph on that.

ANARCHISM AS I UNDERSTAND IT IS THE TRUTH. We are all always free to be whatever, whenever. Even if I am imprisoned by a powerful state I am still completely mentally free. I just have some superficial limitations to my physical movement and circumstances. Even in a perfect world I can get a stroke and get locked in syndrome. Has my "freedom" really been taken by the stroke or state? The TRUTH is always true and ANARCHISM is the truth that we are always free to chose. But we must accept the situation before we chose in any world. I may chose to save myself, but I need to know what I am saving myself from first else I will fail. The Anarchists are quite rightly reminding us this: WE MUST MAKE WISE CHOSES. It is the same message as all the Religions: we will be judged alone for what we do. Sin is ours and ours alone. We must therefore chose well. It is the foundation of Protestantism and Western ideas of Individuality and Democracy. It is an old and very important idea, simply being rehashed.

So far so good. So how has it gone wrong. The problem is that Alt-Right Anarchism has become politicised and has formed into Groups. A person who choses to work with government or socialism or communism or anything that is deemed "anti-anarchistic" is viewed as not-Anarchistic even if they have made a well reasoned decision. Yet the whole point of Anarchism is that we must make a choice for OURSELVES. Some people think that government is a good thing. As Anarchists they must chose that. So there is a form of Anarchism that has arisen that is deeply ANTI-ANARCHIC but believes it is true Anarchism. Ayn Rand and Stefan Molyneux seem to be the worst offenders here. The argument is that a member of a political party has lost all freedom to chose. But this isn't true. They chose whether to follow party line or risk their carriers (I'll deal more with compromise below).

Ayn Rand knew this problem. We must be extremely careful as ANARCHISTS not to become influenced by the group. Our choses must be OURS and not the GROUPS. Anarchists will argue that being a member of a political party will compromise ones choices and therefore cannot be allowed. But what if I chose compromise? Reality is actually all about compromise. I consider a stupidly simple example of a compromise we all make.

I want to go on holiday with my partner and children. This means I must  chose a time which is convenient with them and they with me. So we work together and pick a suitable date that works BEST. "Best" might not be "my" choice were I holidaying alone. But since I want to spend my holiday with my family the parameters change and I chose a different date that suits that wish. There is no absolute "right" answer. Anarachists seem to think there is a single "true" choice I will make when unhindered by "The Group". You cannot escape "the group" to make "free choices". Even if you buy something a group made that.

Obviously there are times when "The Group" seems dangerous. Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia with the mass killing. How is it that a mass of people can be organised into a killing machine that terrorises the country like this. The panic answer is that people must realise for their own good not to organise into mass movements that can become unstoppable killing machines. But wait a second, this conclusion is based upon complete bias. The Allies were an even greater killing machine than the Axis powers. The American War of Independence where the American's fought off British rule and the English Civil war where we fought off the King were achieved by mass killing machines. War is about matching mass killing machine against mass killing machine. And the bigger killer wins. This is why the US currently spends more on weapons of mass destruction than any other country. They understand that "freedom" depends upon punching harder. So Anarchism must be saying if we want Peace then we must not organise into government, nations or even armies. There is great sense to the last one. I no one ever joined an army or picked up a gun then war is over. But we have the contradiction now: what to do with people who use the 2nd Amendment. If they think this is correct then as Anarchists we must respect their decision.

And so it goes for government. There is an argument that government is both unavoidable and essential. I may as well make that now.

How did government arise? There is the Feminist argument that Patriarchy is a conspiracy of men against women. But how did *that* arise? A few options: If they were never equal it is not a conspiracy. Men are just more powerful. If they were equal then women allowed men to conspire against them. Either way there was a due process. There was no "unfair" conspiracy. The anarchist argument is the latter. People were all equal and the mass allowed an elite to conspire against them. This is the call to arms for the mass to rise up against the elite. Ironically this is exactly the process of Socialist Revolution; an uprising that the elite are genuinely afraid of, which is one reason why Communism is so hated in the West. The problem with this view is that it is once again part of the truth. Some history to illustrate.

In Ancient Greece the highest level of organisation was the city state (Polis). An Anarchist utopia where every city state of a few thousand people had its own rules, customs, economics. Some were Oligarchies, some Democracies, Theocracies, Plutocracies.. the Greeks had names for all the ways of organising a city. One thing that was constant tho: there were hereditary families of great power that could travel freely between the city states and mess up the politics. Alcibiades is a famous character of noble background who had constant changing allegiances between Athens, Sparta and elsewhere. This money class had their good uses as well as bad. Athens used to tolerate them because they were forced to pay for the many public festivals that were held. But occasionally this relationship turned sour and the Aristos would rise up and take over. But before long power shifted and the Demos would wrestle back power and castrate the power of the elites. This constant battle between oligarchs and people is as old as Humanity.

In Britain we have one of the world's worst class systems that goes back to the invasion of the Island by the Normans. The Saxons were put into slavery and the Nobles developed the class system we have today. This is the typical way in which inequality is generated. The reward for victory in battle is supremacy and the vanquished are subjected to the power of victors. The series of victories that the US has enjoyed over the last 100 years means that many countries including Britain are now subjects of US power. Britain is only granted so much power to deal with trivial local matters. Important matters are decided in Washington. This kind of process is the key structure across all history.

On a small scale you see it with gangs. You are not in a gang. You get threatened so you either agree to join, or you go and join another gang that you think will support you. By doing this you make the gang stronger and you increase the problem for people who want to avoid gangs. England could have remained in defiance of the Normans, it could defy the Americans. But would it benefit or is it better just to accept the situation for now. But by doing this it must fight in US Led Wars and so makes the problem harder for countries that want to avoid being in the US Gang. This is the problem.

Power is the name of the game. Power exists. If I can't do something by myself I will ask a friend. Together we are stronger. But by doing this people who disagree with me must join forces also. This is the nature of things. It is called Politics. Even many fake Anarchists, as already said, have joined forces now against government and supporters of socialism and government etc. This process of actual political alignment is the process to watch, not the divisions in some intellectual argument.

Can we--like Ayn Rand and Molyneux argue--all join together to reject this "evil" tendency to gang up against each other? The problem is that this is really hard to define. I want to build an oil pipe line so I form a company and contract out skills and everything seems fine. That is until a bunch of people say that I am building on Spiritual Land. I have no idea what they are talking about, I never even thought of it. Suddenly my innocent collective of people bringing needed oil to market has become an offensive force against some people. Naturally they see us as a powerful force so they gang together to attack us. What did we do wrong? People must work together, and when they do this they will necessarily work against the interest of some people.

The solution is called Politics. This is where we don't try to kill off power (baby and bath water) we simply accept THERE IS SUCH A THING AS POWER, but we argue out who is going to get this power. Sometime it is around a table, sometime it is by force. These laws are bigger than any social organisation. Anarchists are RIGHT in that we must always remember around that table or in that army that we are making choses for ourselves and not to live unthinkingly. If we obey the orders of our Sergeant we do so willingly because we think it is best, and if it turns out he was an idiot and we made a mistake to trust him that is our responsibility. If we are told to shoot on protesters this is a decision we must take for ourselves. No one in Nuremberg should have been able to say they were "following orders". But obviously no army would operate with people disobeying orders so people joining an army need understand that the Army is fundamentally opposed to freedom of thought. This is something for their consciences to work out. No blog entry or you-tube channel can replace a person's conscience.

The problem for anarchists tho is that most people are too busy earning a living to really have the time to think everything through. Only the elite like Plato and Molyneux have the time. I call Molyneux elite because he lives through a You-tube channel discussing philosophy. Traditionally this was the lifestyle of highest elites. It is the main fault of Capitalism ironically-- the thing championed by the anarchists--that having to depend entirely upon ourselves for our income we have very little time for higher thought. Even the elite Aristotle argues free time is essential for politics. But historically Free-time has always been bought by slavery and elite power. The rise of Capitalism has destroyed politics and with that the elite have been able to take over in a way never seen before. In the Middle Ages, despite the Tudor propaganda, people were highly literate and fully engaged in politics. The Peasants Revolt led by Walter Tyler in 1381 gives some idea the political intelligence of the "peasant". Equally the ignorant mass of the French Revolution were actually an intelligent politically engaged peasantry. The irony is that the modern industrial worker has no political capability. We are the drones and zombies that Anarchism is riling against. But we are the product of industrialisation, mass production, machine labour, TV, internet and electronic progress. It is not a simple disease that the Anarchist argues against. It is not something with a quick fix. It is certainly not a political debate with sides.

What we are seeing is just the ancient battle of Good against Evil, or people's hearts, souls and consciences. Sadly it appears to me a political popularist dogmatic consciousness had crippled any meaning, intelligence and debate in the always present issue of how we live.