How Humans can become Squirrels

 

Been having some fruitful meditations on our squirrels and the bird feeders.

So the truth is captured by the camera. There are 3 squirrels: one is bigger and has used this to finally get to the feeders. There are 2 others who cannot do this and feed from the crumbs. What is very interesting to observe over several weeks is the skilful squirrel never once drops peanuts for his family. This squirrel does not see what the camera sees, but is biased towards itself. It has a small, local and conditional* perspective. For this small squirrel death will consume it entirely. Its a prefect demonstration of Capitalism in fact... but this is just squirrels; humans have the potential to escape death, though few develop it. So where does this potential lie? This is the subtle bit. No-one can become a dispassionate camera and have an "out of body experience". Ok arguably they can, but they don't need to. Much better than a literal camera perspective, is separating ones actual awareness into that which is small and conditional and that which is large and unconditional. When we awake and become aware we are awake we don't just see, we are aware that we see. Indeed we have the potential to observe everything in our minds, even our mind state. We can see whether we are happy or sad, we can see whether we know something or not--even before we recall it--, we can see what we are thinking--that is we don't just think, we can see ourselves think. We have the potential to observe everything about our small conditional minds. Now how is that possible? It is possible because we are not our small conditional minds. We are actually much bigger and unconditional. We actually look at the world from an unconditional perspective like a camera, and within that we see the conditional world that we habitually think is our self.

The tricky problem is that we seek to own that small conditional self that we see, and that anchors our unconditional free mind to the conditional prison world of death. In meditation people from Capitalist countries have a particular problem of trying to own their breath and trying to work on it. It is extremely difficult just to leave it alone to be what it is. In the same way its extremely difficult to give up our conditional existence and remain at the level of unconditional mind. In squirrel terms its very difficult--faced with hunger, tasty peanuts and the success of having got to the feeder--not to sink into that moment in a toxic way and lose touch with the bigger view that is freedom. We have hit the jackpot, we're prepared to give up freedom cos we have what we want. We don't realise that in giving up freedom there is now no escape. Our fellow squirrels go hungry, but right now that doesn't matter cos I have tasty food filling my senses. I am all that matters. This becomes in the extreme solipsism and madness but right now that is fine.

However soon I will be full and the food has no use to me, eating no longer has value. So I am satisfied, but now I am now trapped inside my own small perspective. I am unavoidably conditional Me now. OK maybe this time I can work to give this up, renounce the Devil etc but it becomes harder every time until I am just small minded, trapped in the mortal shell of me facing death eventually. But its actually not true. I just got tricked by sense and desire.

If George Orwell was to write a really profound story it would be the one where Humans become squirrels under the influence of Capitalism.

* Conditional here means subject to conditions. That means it changes in different situations, and it depends upon situations. This is our experience of constantly changing senses, emotions and desires. Our world is constantly changing. One minute we are hungry, the next full, the next we are bored, the next we are sad, the next enthusiastic and positive, the next negative. It's forever changing. A bad thing happens and we are immediately plunged into emotions, a good thing happens and its the same. Obviously in this world eventually the very bad thing will happen and we will die. Things are always balanced in this world however. We can only die because at some stage we were born. It is a "relative" world too. We are only happy because before we were unhappy. We are only full because before we were hungry. If we were always full we would forget about food and eating all together. Its the constant moving between opposites that keeps our lives forever moving and stops us finding peace. Often we like this constant moving because peace is initially quite a struggle. We find it boring, or even frightening as the clouds of our busyness settle we start to see ourselves as we are. That can be a moment of honesty we are not ready for, and something we avoid through habitual activity. The Unconditional is quite something else. It is always with us, it is the perspective inside which everything happens. Regardless whether we are happy or sad, excited or bored the unconditional just watches unjudging. We can block the unconditional out however. This is what is called The Unconscious in psychology. We can be unaware of things, even actively avoid them in our lives. Some time in the future we see them and can't believe we didn't see them before. Well actually our unconditional self did see them, but we hid from it. That line reminds me of Adam and Eve hiding from God in Eden. Perhaps Nietzsche has a point that the Genesis story is actually a good analysis of consciousness.

Just War?

One of the great problems in the world is the idea of Just War. This single handedly has caused more deaths than any other idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

The problem obviously is that each party in any war thinks they are Just. So its just a justification for bloodshed.

Given an "enemy" people try various devices to escape this obvious conclusion that really they should listen to the enemy rather than silence and destroy them. A common one is that the army they face is brainwashed and fighting under duress. And that given the option they would rather defect.

Many people given the choice between defecting or dying have chosen to defect. That decision is in fact made under duress so doesn't count. The idea that the enemy is brainwashed is a two edged weapon, because how do soldiers know that it is not them who have been brainwashed? Indeed I would argue that all soldiers by definition are brainwashed. Brainwashed to hear their leaders and not the leaders of their "enemy." I put enemy in quotes because it is a universal experience for soldiers to realise that they do not actually have a quarrel with the people they fight, it is just their ruling elites who do.

So there is actually no ground for "just war." And if there is no ground for "just war" there is no ground for war. And this is the inevitable result of all discussions on war. Why should the strongest win for any other reason than they are the strongest?

So you could argue that the "truthful" are the strongest cos they band together more successfully. "There is no honour amongst thieves" goes to saying and this is why thieves don't rule the world. If they did they would just have their stolen earning stolen in return. The Good are always stronger than the Bad because the Good are Good to themselves while the Bad are Bad to themselves. Indeed you can argue that War is pointless cos the Bad will destroy themselves through their own Badness. But the problem with the stronger are better argument is that the winners of conflicts write the history and define themselves as "good". No winner of a conflict has ever declared that they were not the deserved winner and they are "bad". So by definition the winner of any conflict is "good" so its meaningless to attribute anything to this "goodness." The US for example is a genocidal, enslaving, mass murdering nation exactly like the Nazis in every way. Yet the US won the war so is good and the Nazis lost the war and so are bad. For the Jewish Holocaust the US has the Indian Genocide. For concentration camps the US has slavery. And for mass murder and global supremacy the US has Vietnam to name one of many. There is literally no difference between the two regimes: except that the Nazis were stopped while the US hasn't been (yet).

So how do you defeat Evil if not by War? Its simple you learn to be good. Its a long struggle that takes each of us a lifetime, and we can inspire and teach others. This is how it is done. The battle with the Devil is quiet, earnest and indefinite. You never give up, and you don't expect to have it finished soon.

Inside/Outside

 The Truth is known but people struggle to put a name to it. Recently found value in the ideas of inside/outside again.

In spirituality people often say things like "go inside" and "find yourself." The answer and the truth is "within" you. What does this mean? Where is the inside that you can go to?

Chances are the "inside" people identify initially is wrong, which rather makes such statements useless.

This issue is handled amazingly in the Shurangama Sutra Volume 1. While the Sutra does not come directly from Buddha it is still excellent. In Chapter 5 when asked the location of the Mind, Ananda answers what many still believe today at least 1500 years later: 

Ananda said to the Buddha, “World Honored One, all the ten kinds of living beings in the world alike maintain that the conscious mind dwells within the body; ..." [p172]

Then Buddha shows Ananda problems with this view:

“Your mind is capable of understanding everything thoroughly. Now if your present mind, which thoroughly understands everything, were in your body, then you should be aware first of what is inside your body. Can there be living beings who first see inside their bodies before they observe things outside? [p177]

So Ananda is forced to say the Mind is outside the body in order to account for seeing the world but not the inner organs of the body. But he only makes it worse and is ultimately left realising that the Mind is without location. It is the same issue that the characters in a painting might have if asked where the canvas is. In if mind has location where is the "inside" that spirituality speaks of.

It is linked to Relativity and Measurement.

To measure something we take a "standard" and we compare with the unknown in a defined way. For length we put the ruler end to end, for weight we add to scales etc. We then get a count of how many times the standard fits into the unknown. Note that we are talking about standards fitting into an unknown. This is the sense of inside used in spirituality. A 10kg weight can be thought about has having 10x 1Kg weights "inside" it.

Now consider a much more poignant measure: how many years does someone's life have in it? So recently Prince Philip died. Everyone did the measurement and said he had 99 years inside his life. Soon afterwards actress Helen McCrory died and she only had 52 years inside. When we compare these measurement we say that the inside of Helen's life was smaller than the inside of Prince Philip's life.

But this only works from the outside. Lets go inside a year itself? How big is a year? Interesting isn't it: no answer. The inside has no size. we must go outside the year and find something else like the number of days. we answer 365 days. Now a year has an inside. But then how big is a day? we must answer with another outside. By itself a day has no size, or for that matter any measurement or quantity.

While there is no inherent quantity inside our lives there is Quality. Robert Pirsig has a lot to say about this. The key point is that quality without measurement has no boundaries. This is very very hard to see clearly. Wittgenstein notes in 'Philosophical Investigations' how odd it is to consider the word "Red" while looking at a red thing and try to understand how these two things have any connection at all. The perceived colour is a quality that if we don't measure and name, is just what it is, infinite and present. It exists as it is quite apart from the rest of the world. In meditation we can just sit with it as it is. However when we name it, it gets a package and that package distinguishes it from its surrounding and other colours. Perhaps it is a red apple on a brown table. When we let our brains go all the way and process it with a name the red then exists in relation to other colours especially the brown of the table. This named red is solid, graspable and gives us a mental satisfaction. But we lose the quality when we bottle it like this. It is a very delicate mental process that is easily missed until we spend time in meditation looking closely at it. The distinction is also called Nama and Rupa in the Indian literature. Rupa is just the form or phenomenon as it is and Nama is the mental process of giving it a measured box with a name on it. They are quite separate just as Wittgenstein noted looking at a red thing (rupa) and thinking that it is red (nama). 

So we see that for things to have a "measure" we must compare them with something "outside". The "inside" actually has no measure by itself. This leads to a fundamental spiritual discovery: things depends upon other things to be what they are! Inside things are just themselves.

This means that we can change what the inside looks like just by comparing with something else. Helen McCrory only looks young compared with Prince Philip. James Dean had only 24 years inside him making Helen now look quite big. The other thing is what we make of big and small. Its assumed that a big life is good. But if we measure illness then we want small. Going into the outside world in order to get a measure on things is a messy thing. But inside things just are and that makes all things the same. Helen McCrory lived a life and from the inside it looked exactly the same as Prince Philip's. When we go inside there is Equanimity and there is no Suffering. This quality of the inside of being without measure is called Emptiness in Buddhism (originally Sunyata).

So how do we get inside? Its about not measuring things. The tool of measurement is the discerning mind and the key method to getting this distinction is to meditate. That means to get the discerning mind to focus on something. Commonly its the breath. We can discern and measure just in breath and out breath to start with. We go inside when that discernment falls away and there is just breathing.

=, equals, contradiction, dynamic, society

 = symbol has 3 meanings in computers. Often languages express these with 3 syntax: =,==,:=

(a) 1+2=3 is the Mathematical "scales". This originated from market place scales and it says the left and right balance. Algebra works on the basis that if you do the same thing to both sides of a scale you know the scale will still balance. If you have 1Kg of rice and 1Kg or gold and you do the same material action to the rice and the gold the mass will remain the same on each side. The scale will balance. This is the origin of all mathematics. Indeed Greeks could only think in terms of ratios like this, the idea of abstract numbers by themselves began later with the Arabs after the Roman Empire.

(b) 1+2 == 3 is the Logical equality. We accept the statement 1+2 == 3 because indeed 2 and 1 on the left of the scales is the same weight as 3 on the right. Unlike with mathematics symbol there is the super powerful negation logical operator so we can produce statements like 1+2 != 4 (that is 1+2 == not(4) ). Indeed "1+2 is not the same size as 4" is a true statement.

(c) X := 1+2 this simply gives a new name to 1+2. In this case X. Its says that X can now be replaced with 1+2. Using (a) above to equate 1+2 = 3, and expressing in the logical form of (b) we can say X==3

Now in Logic the obsession is with contradictions. Using the above 3 distinctions. If we define X := 4 then 1+2 == X is false. If however we now define '4' to mean 4 := 1+2 then 1+2 == 4 is true. But this now means 2 + 2 == 4 is false because we've redefined what '4' means.

So in fact a "contradiction" is impossible if we just accept the contradiction as a definition.

We are talking to a witness of a murder. The witness says they heard a scream and then a tall man ran out of the building and got into the red car. Then they say a short man got out of the car. Now this means either its the same man how was tall but is now short or there was another man in the car. We ask the witness was there another man in the car. They say no. So lets define the tall man as "John". So John is tall. John got into the car. John now gets out of the car. But John is short. John cannot be tall and short so we have a contradiction. However what if the witness' has bad eye sight. So we can quite happily say that John appeared tall and then John appeared short and no contradiction. But lets get crazy. There is no explanation. The story starts with Tall John and end with Short John. Don't we then just make 2 separate witness statements. They must be separate because they contradict, but within their own world's they are fine.

Now this is the actual problem with contradiction. Every time we contradict we fracture reality. I forget the Analytic Philosophers involved but every text defines (3 above) an "ontology." And if it starts redefining this like John is now defined as short we have a different ontology and a different narrative.

In the end it may turn out that the witness' first statement about a Tall man leaving the building fits in with other statements. Perhaps another witness says they say a Tall Man running around the corner. The story of a Tall man getting into a car, and a short man getting out may never be useful or explained and never fits in with anything else from the investigation. A different world that the investigation can just discard.

I once called this idea "harmonic structuralism." A narrative could be judged simply by its size and usefulness. There was no "truth" but rather usefulness. Most people can see and most people on a rotating globe can see the sun at some point in their lives. There must be unfortunate Eskimo babies who are born and die within a few months during the Arctic winter who never see the Sun. But for most people the story of the Sun fits in well with their lives without contradicting too much. So its a popular "truth".

Now "dynamic systems." A dynamic system is not like X:= 1+2 because it is recursive. A very famous example is X:= k X (1-X) studied by Prof Robert May in relation to population growth constrained by resources.

Unless X is the "fixed point" it is a contradiction. So if k := 2 then X:= 0.5 means that X == k X (1-X) is true. Indeed with X := 0.5 the equation gives the result 0.5.

However for X := 0.75 then the equation gives the result 3/8. Now if we ignore the contradiction like above and redefine X:=3/8 we can do the calculation again and keep going.

Perhaps we need a 4th definition of equal to mean "keep redefining"

X =: k X (1-X) means ignore any contradiction and keep redefining.

Now for X =: 2 X (1-X) where X := 0.75 after 5 interations X == 0.5 is true. The result is the fixed point. Indeed in stable dynamic systems the result of either the fixed point or infinity. Mandelbrot Set most famously plotted the stability of the dynamic system X =: X^2 + C in the complex domain to get this picture.

the speed of convergence should be a second result of such statements. So the full statement for dynamic systems should be:

X =: 2 X (1-X) == (0.5,5) where X := 0.75 and

X =: X^2 + C == (inf,inf) where X := 0, C := 3+4i

But what of:

X =: 3X (1-X) where X := 0.75

This ends up cycling between two values of X := {0.673..,0.659..}

And

X =: 3.6 X (1-X) where X := 0.75

This definition never settles down. It keeps changing forever. It is what is called Chaotic.

This constant motion or "struggling" of some dynamic systems to find a stable equilibrium is analogous to the struggling in other systems to deal with contradictions. X =: f(X) is not happy constantly changing in the hope of  finding a value which solves the equality and balances the scales. But sometimes like a Greek Tragedy the trajectory conspires against the system to ensure it never gets to that value (even if that value is finite).

Can we define Infinity as the solution to some dynamic systems.

X =: 1 + X only has a solution at X := infinity. That famous conundrum of the infinite hotel with infinite guests staying there. Nevertheless if everyone moved to the next room then Room 1 would become available. In fact isn't this analogous to what Cantor did with his Diagonalisation argument?

Dynamic systems however are constrained and you can't split the ontology in order to relieve the problem of contradiction. It is this problem that provides them their "energy." I wonder if we could define some quantity E for dynamic systems to measure the "movement" in values as they seek resolution.

On the subject of resolving contradictions Hegelian dialectics utilises exactly this "energy" to trigger Aufhebung and context changes that provide new perspectives that resolve apparent contradictions. It is this energy that motivates History itself. The resulting perspective is one where the contradictions between individual and group are satisfied, captured in the maxim "the I that is we, and the We that is I". Marx famously took up this idea to argue that the resolution to the contradictions in society was the state of Communism where individuals and society becomes stable. Its a sad reflection on Post Modernity that rather than solve these contradictions it seems the energy has just been bled out.

 

Speculations on Göbekli Tepe through to Buddhism

So while most of the country was complaining about HRH Prince Philip's RIP effect on the schedules I chanced upon an amazing CH5 offering "Ancient Mysteries: Eden Revealed." It steals a chapter out of a book I want to write, but nice to know someone thinking along the same lines... and added considerably more... so established wisdom is these Megalithic monuments (like above) were erected at the START of farming. They represent the first work done by human beings that had become settled and had the spare calories and local investment to do such things. But an 11k yo megalithic site at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is pre-farming!!!! Hunter-gatherers built this. So it was not built to set-in-stone productive farm land, but to mark something more ancient. So why does it coincide so close with farming (the original barley genes come from this area)? Researchers interviewed for this program suggest that it was a ritual site, and farming developed to meet the food requirements of the pilgrims/revellers. Quite reasonably given how grain was used ever since, it was added to water to sterilise it and make beer. So essentially you would have had something akin to a modern music festival with feasting. 11k yo the people were identical to us, so would they be any different. This is likely pre-class too (so no warriors/priests imposing fascist control either.. after all if you piss of hunter-gatherers they just leave and hunter-gather somewhere else - no concept of investment or capitalism). It is pretty apparent to me Garden of Eden is a record of the start of human work and what a difficult life it was when hunter-gathering stopped. You can find interviews with Amazonian and African hunter-gatherers post-contact trying out Capitalisms and just not-understanding why anyone would live like this: why do I need money or work when I can just go into the forest and find everything I need they universally complain. The switch to work and capitalism was hard, and led to laborious days harvesting and grinding of seeds, nutrient deficiency, arthritis, and crowded living conditions. But calories were higher and populations grew and slowly expanded to displace the hunter-gatherers (as happened with mass slaughter in the New World and is still happening in Amazon). The CH5 program added Capitalism as another reason we never returned to hunter-gathering. Once investments had been made in the lifestyle they acted to weigh us down.. which is the traditional understanding of Megaliths also... more a fascist control mechanism like Castles of a rising elite. And that is pretty much the modern Western world already in place. So I've speculated why in middle ironage C5th BC people around the world were saying the same thing Logos(pre-Socratics), Dao(Lao-Tze) or Dharma(Buddha) which are all anathema to Capitalism and being weighed down by worldly attachments*. Was this a final memory of the wisdom of hunter-gathering before mankind got sucked into the swamp of material attachment? There's a lot to consider in Megaliths anyway.

*subtle point: non-attachment is not rejecting worldly things (they are here whether we like it or not) but its remaining hunter-gatherer amongst them.

Just as a bee in a flower

harming neither hue nor scent

gathers nectar, flies away,

so in towns a Wise One fares.

[Dhammapada, vs 49]

Tragedy of Commons?

In reality Tragedy of Commons only happens in capitalist countries. Which points to the problem.

There's a story told in many versions about how traditional economics works. It was told to me by some Nepalese in the form of some fishermen who always caught 2 fish every day. Sometime they would catch them quickly but sometimes it would take a whole day to catch them. The fishermen are questioned. On the day when the fish are common why don't you catch as many as you can and then sell them for profit. The fisherman simply says he doesn't need them.

That story perfectly illustrates why Tragedy of Commons has only emerged as a problem in Capitalist countries. The idea of working not for what you need but rather for its own sake to accumulate capital has switched human behaviour towards unlimited exploitation. Human life has ceased to have any meaning, it is just production and consumption for its own sake. For the fisherman fishing, the way of life and the actual quality of the fish they catch all having central meaning to their lives. They are after all fishermen: that identity is central to their lives. What is the Capitalist other than a machine for accumulating more capital.

So security is probably the most important issue here. The Capitalist is secretly anxious and insecure. They accumulate capital in a vain attempt to fend off the day they have nothing. But it is a self generating anxiety. In a country where everyone is desperately trying to accumulate infinite capital for themselves there is huge competition, and resources are fought over. If you don't fight you lose. This causes the very anxiety that drives desperate resource accumulation. So Tragedy of Commons is actually self generating. The moment you don't trust other people and think they will start exploiting a resource is the moment you start thinking how to exploit it. The very idea of Capitalism is itself the tragedy.

Does Population Matter?

Population Matters is a charity that addresses concerns about population growth. When I was 13 I awoke to these concerns when I divided the Earth land by the population. At time of writing it is 1/16km2 (255m2).

This 1/16 of a km must supply all our food and resources we will need in our life and any children we produce (else we steal from someone else).

So we have the population concern whose illustrious worriers include Sir David Attenborough. 

https://populationmatters.org/news/2018/10/05/sir-david-attenborough-we-must-act-population

But the world is unequal. A person in the US uses twice the resources of someone in the UK. If everyone on the earth lived like people in the UK then all the world's resources would be used. Not everyone can like like an American. But if everyone lived like a Nepali then only 1/50 of the Earth resources would be used.

If we all lived like Nepalis then we could expand the human population 50 times! Population is not the problem. The problem is that Nepalis want to live like Americans, and Americans don't want to live like Nepalis.

I've explored this throughout this blog so won't go into detail here but the Americans are wrong not to want to live like Nepalis and the Nepalis are wrong to want to live like Americans. It is especially ironic for Nepalis because a true Nepalis shouldn't even be listening to US propaganda. They have their own guru Siddhartha Gautama of the Shakya tribe. I don;t remember anywhere Siddhartha extolling the virtues of expensive living. Indeed he said that such behaviour leads to suffering!

Death sweeps away
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
As a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.
...

As a bee gathers nectar
And moves on without harming
The flower, its color, or its fragrance,
Just so should a sage walk through a village.

[Dharmapada: Flowers]

As Buddha says the world is there to be enjoyed, but we do that enjoyment lightly without collecting, storing or being drawn to the objects of pleasure. The Capitalist or the person desiring what they do not have has only death awaiting for them. All this in reality are empty, they have a coat of perceptions added to them by the mind from which they are almost imperceptibly different. Anyone very skilled in meditation who can develop a suitably subtle mind will be able to see the difference between Nama and Rupa that is Name and Form, and see the process of the mind upon the void of emptiness. Those who pursue these illusions are like dogs chasing their tails, wrapped up in a world of fruitless activity. Such is the world of Capitalism that consumes the world's resources.

So to those with an ear close to the ground the problem is not population. It turns out to be a fundamental error in how the West thinks that leads to Capitalism and all the associate problems. There are reasons that these problems have arising in the age of Capitalism and not before!