All Wealth is relative! 2023 addendum on Wealth, Value and Love

Only a revelation if previously u thought that some things were "essential".

In the shower I was thinking over recent discussions and posed myself this situation: you have been caught Apocalypse Now style and await execution. You have just witnessed 2 of your colleagues sawn in half so you are fearing the worse. You are told that you are next but it is an auspicious day so you will be painlessly poisoned. Suddenly you become wealthy, even in death!

Now it doesn't quite work because I'm thinking this standing in a warm shower, fed and slept and generally well off so all the guys in the scenario are in a pretty miserable state... but exactly relative to me they are. So it follows that whatever "wealth" we perceive ourselves to have we can only have this preception in relationship to another state of affairs... even unto death.

Previously I had held that there was "absolute" wealth in water, food, warmth, shelter, health and love (and only these). Or more flamboyantly the 10S's : shit, shower, shave, shag, scoff (food), sport, sounds (music), sleep, sesh(drinking) and shelter. I even had Buddha's middle path to prove that there was a dividing line between what we needed (without which we suffered) and what we didn't need (with which we indulge).

Yet now I see that the middle path is not this at all... even that middle path is relative. In a land of plenty the bar is raised higher than in a land of poverty... but plenty and poverty are only what they are relative to one another. The land of poverty will seem a land of plenty to the guys in the scenario above.

And, so on the way to the station that evening I saw a thin, weak looking woman at the wheel of her huge Toyota. The contrast between this vast, powerful, sleek, well designed car and the rather nervous looking, frail creature behind the wheel was suddenly overwhelming. I realised the absurd "wealth" that we surround ourselves with (I live in relative poverty to this which is why it looks like wealth to me) but which she necessarily takes for granted because relative to everyone else in my town that is normal. She on the other hand - like the alien at the wheel of her advanced tripod - is a vulnerable human just like anyone else - a person whose value transcends the arbitrary, relative attitudes of wealth and poverty.

What a mistake the world makes then in striving so hard for the future. The present will always seem like poverty, and the past a greater poverty, and the future a wealth because we insist on comparing but never just living with what we got. This supports an intuition that go back 10,000 or 100,000 years and people had exactly the same palette of wealth and poverty as today, and as they will have in 100,000 years time.

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Addendum 2023

So this argument is developed here into a refutation of the idea of Absolute Progress. Mankind can struggle all the days of its life to improve things and actually while things have improved compared with yesterday they are still worse when compared with tomorrow. What you have depends 100% on what you compare it with. Indeed to feel rich we need do nothing else than think about people poorer than us. How much simpler is this than slaving the best years of our life seeking income and pay rises!

Now the Hippie will say "Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out" but we need be careful. This argument here is not really changing anything, it is just taking the wind out of the sails.

The key issue here is that obsessed with wealth creation, and not understanding that it is an illusion, we waste time and resources.

If the planet is facing crisis it is simply because of this insane race for resource consumption in the name of "getting wealthy."

This Scotsman Adam Smith is the writer of the most famous work on wealth creation "The Wealth of Nations" (1776) which is an analysis of the Industrial Revolution in the UK and published the year before US Independence I suspect (without evidence) as part of the Ideological foundations of the US. The influential English philosopher John Locke was certainly central to this Ideological movement and Adam Smith was certainly writing in support of it.

So what does Smith say about wealth itself:

"the annual produce of the land and labor of the society". This "produce" is, at its simplest, a good or service which satisfies human needs, and wants of utility.

So it's desire based. And on desire Smith says:

"the natural desire of every individual is to improve his own condition"

So we have immediate flaws in his theory. He is referring to a "natural" component of mankind, by which he means an axiom or founding truth. So "improvement" is a founding axiom of Adam Smith. This means he does not supply a reason for "improvement", it is assumed at the outset.

So we know he got this idea from Christianity with its emphasis on improvement to cast aside Sin and restore our relationship with God. Although Jesus offers us immediately redemption and forgiveness, rather than slaving to "earn" redemption. However the idea of Good Works and paying off the debt of Sin is inherited by Christianity from much older systems. In the East the idea of "practice" and gradual purification goes back before history.

So the West's Ideology begins with this idea of improvement, growth or Progress.

And yes as shown here it is a myth. Progress with no goal is aimless. Compared with tomorrow we will always be poor, and compared with yesterday we will always be rich.

Progress does not actually create any wealth at all!

Or at least it only does if we can posit an End Point. Now if Smith refers is right about Natural Desires then we can list the Natural Desires and then set about meeting them. And after we have done this then the job of improvement and progress is finished.

But Natural Desires are without end!  Written into the ideology is that they are just "improvement", a relative measure.

And obviously this is false. No human want to look back on a life of endless and pointless toil. What s life wasted!

Yet for some reason the West has been fascinated by this open ended struggle to find a non existing holy grail. We are going no-where and the path there is pointless.

It has been about 300 years we have been doing this and every so often people become disaffected with Capitalism (as it is now called). The Ideologues spend billions pushing the key ideas around the world, whether through Hollywood films, or through NEWS, or through Busy-ness Colleges or in the final resort sanctions against countries that do not accept these ideas and eventually bombing until they do.

But its all a myth! Amazing to think!

What is the real Natural Desire is the desire for Peace and Satisfaction. And this can only be gained by being at ease WHERE YOU ARE. Valuing WHERE YOU ARE and not wanting to be anyone or anywhere else. This is the actual NATURAL DESIRE. And that means seeing the Value in what Capitalists call poverty.

If we stop for even 1 second and look at the sky. The Sun by itself is already more than we could ever dream of. A daily bringer of light and warmth. A miraculous entity that comes to us every day. What more could we ever want!

Adam Smith is not a completely cold pusher of Industrial Machines. He has much to say about emotions and Love too.

"Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. He naturally dreads, not only to be hated, but to be hateful; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of hatred. He desires, not only praise, but praiseworthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise. He dreads, not only blame, but blameworthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be blamed by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of blame.

"What so great happiness as to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery as to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?

And yet at the heart of this lies an appreciation of the value of what we have and what we are. This rather flies in the face of his belief in "improvement." How can we be loved if we have yet to be Improved!

Like so much of Adam Smith it is all misunderstood and the West has for whatever reasons sailed off in completely the wrong direction.

As the planet faced irreparable damage under the crazy unlovable belief system of Capitalism it is worth reflecting on the fact that we have it all wrong, and it is time to go back to the start of the Industrial Age and rethink what we originally had in mind cos it is not what we have now.

Also worth nothing that Adam Smith clearly didn't read his Christianity properly because being Loved is what God offers us already before we even get our boots on to go to work. And being forgiven is a part of that infinite Love. If the "Natural Desire" is for Love then we already always had that!

Boundaries are NULL

If every post gets facebooked I'll remove the feed ... it's supposed to filter! This is a bit esoteric; of personal interest.

Old argument - new conceptualisation.

A table has an surface. But where is that surface? Does it belong to the table or to the air above the table? In Materialism all substance is made of atoms. All things that exist are substance. So if the surface exists it must be made of atoms. So we say that the surface is the last row of atoms of the table.

But then there is a new boundary between the last row of atoms and the air. On one side of this boundary lies the electron cloud of atoms in the last row of the table and on the other the disparate electron cloud of air. Even if we succeed in defining this boundary we just create a new boundary ad infinitum.

So we might say that boundaries do not exist. What a mess we have just created since all objects must now flow freely into one another without limits. (The atomic arguments of Democritus transform into the holistic arguments of Parmenides.) If all things are the same why this talk of table and air in the first place? This is nonsense also. (This is an ancient argument I've seen it in the Shurangama Sutra for example).

So materialism is useless here (as it always proves to be on examination).

So where and what are bounbaries then? The answer I realise is that they are NULL. The boundary between a table and the air is neither table nor air but lies outside the conceptual framework of both. Since all things have boundaries, or limits, it lies outside this framework of "things" also. In other words it is not a third new "thing" (i.e. rescued from the third man fallacy). (And Derrida this is much easier than Differance). When one considers a "boundary" taken by itself, taken outside its context, then we must fill in the mental space with NULL because it can't be answered.

This links with the idea of depedent-origination from Buddhism which points to the impossibility of things existing outside context, i.e. without cause and supporting conditions. Nothing exists alone, in isolation, an island unto itself. (Or for word play, NULL exists alone, in isolation, an island unto itself.)

Usually people ignore NULL as boring and ungraspable. But it is the most interesting. It is against NULL that all things exist. If NULL was not a feature of the mind, and everything existed plain and simple (as Materialism postulates) then "The Universe" would stand alone as a self existing thing without context - without boundary. The mind shudders more at this extraordinary thought than even NULL. G-d created the world because outside the knowable we know a priori lies the unknowable - indeed they depend upon one another - that symmetry and balance goes deep - and accepting that liberates us from the boundary and obsession with what is known and not known which characterises Science and the fallible mortal mind... worlds like faith etc open up...

This also links with my personal holy grain the SRH - (self-reference-hypothesis) which hypothesises that true self-reference is impossible. So for example to call myself Alva is to use and empty term since what is Alva cannot at the same time meaningfully relate to Alva... there is an infinite regression it seems, a staring into opposing mirrors as we try to resolve what is refering to what. What is Alva doing? Alva is refering to Alva. etc etc. This is unresolvable it is NULL and demands the construction of a bigger framework than is presented by Alva alone (essentially Hegel dialectics). This problem surfaces everywhere that tries to make an absolute and self-complete statement in its own terms (without accepting NULL, Absolute or G-d or similar). Actual Self-consciousness is impossible! Ourself is only a paper thin fiction of our true selves which are unknowable - so don't even exist! Russell and Whitehead invented the idea of "Types" to avoid the paradoxes that arise from self-reference. It possibly challenges Godel's Theorems which use self-reference albeit weakly. "This sentence is false" is a NULL statement rather than a contradiction because it can't be resolved... better undertanding pending...

Dog Whisperer n Status

My attention was drawn to the Dog Whisperer at the w/e. Situation of a angry, badly behaved mut. The trainer, grabbing the dog behind the neck, pushes it to the ground and holds it down. While looking cruel the dog handler explains that being forced into submission gives the animal a clear understanding of its place in the pack. Upon release the dog is well behaved.

And so it seems for "social" animals (and I mean "social" in the sense of living in groups as opposed to being "sociable" - which is quite different in the common consciousness) it is a psychological requirement to know one's place in the pecking order. "Class" system runs deep then!

Yet - me for one - fails to see things like this. Clearly I'm profoundly protestant liberal democrat (a la Martin Luther) in which all people are alike in the eyes of "God" or the Absolute (or Null as I'm now calling "it"). What nonsense this "pecking order" - that is for animals, politics and game theory. As I've argued before what Humans take most pride in seems no different from animal (we have the same problems to solve as the worms - we just have a more complex strategy; besides we are all part of the same Life whichever form it takes); where we are human is our ability to transcend the attitude of "individual survival" (as Buddha proclaimed on enlightenment)... yet seeking a place in a heirachy is only individual survival.

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Forgot to add that this was inspired by seeing this method working with badly behaved kids. Kids challenge authority because they want to be put in their place. If authority fails then they get confused and lose all boundaries and control. But for me it seems I'm not like this. I only rebel when I see authority otherwise I'm peaceful. So maybe its only the agressive people who ironically need to feel the comfort of being part of the system. Quiet kids probably respond better to equality than status sparring.

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Economists might challenge the view because of the "hand of the markets" where fighting for individual survival is also the best way to improve the survival of the group. I don't believe this ... do I lack faith in this maybe?

interesting news

Skulls found in Georgia (1.8myo) are 2ce as old as oldest outside Africa suggesting early evolution in Eurasia happened.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-skull-that-rewrites-the-history-of-man-1783861.html

Discovery of new species in the Mt Bosavi crater.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea

Faith, happiness & the mind

What is the mind? Not easy to answer but its main feature is concentration (not consciousness! **). Concentration is the heart of the mind (literally and figuratively). The more we can concentrate the more healthy our mind is. The more healthy our mind is the happier we are. The more healthy the more subtle our consciousness becomes and the wiser we become. [This understanding I imagine appeals more to those who take sides with what is called the 'secular'. The more restricted 'secular material' understanding takes a lot more work because of limitations in the ideas of 'matter' and what counts as 'material truth' - being worked on]

What stops us from being concentrated? Easy because it has been well documented in Buddhist writing. There are 5: hatred, fear, doubt, laziness and lust. All these I'll term distraction.

What is Faith?
Faith is not belief - that is belief! Faith is more unusual than belief because by definition it must be without Reason! If it had Reason then why do we need faith? (Kierkegaard analyses this well.) Faith is not rare however - it is essential to the mind. We have faith in many things: ourselves, our partners, our families, other people, our governments, our teachers, The Institutions, The Law, scientific method and truth, our senses, Reason itself! Yet if we try to justify any of these we only find ourselves picking other articles of faith because what stands by itself? Faith.

The problem with the "lower" items of faith is that we easily find reason to doubt them. How can we have Faith in the Law for example that so often lets the bad guy off? How can we have Faith in Other People who so often have hurt us? How can we have Faith in our sense that are so eaily confused? Most importantly how can we have Faith in ourselves when we will die? So we enter the next level of absurdities and Faith in more permanent entities like G-d and Buddha. Its all absurd however - that is the nature of Faith!

Faith & The Mind
Putting those together and the reason for the post is this suggestion that they do go together: A strong faith in something is healthy for the mind. I listed a few Reasons why our faith gets distracted above - yet when did Faith have anything to do with Reason? Faith is distracted by doubt and as Buddhism notices doubt is the enemy of concentration, the heart of the mind. When we can devote our Mind 110% to an object of faith we have concentration and that is a healthy mind. That object can be anything from science to our children to God.

What is maybe less clear to people of other Faiths is the other distractions to Faith: hatred, fear, laziness and lust. Certainly they are told to deal with these but it is never made clear how or why. With Faith however these disappear.

In a nutshell then the suggestion here is that Faith and Concentration are the same thing.

This implies that practices that aid faith achieve the same purpose as those that aid concentration. "Being Good" which curbs hatred, laziness and lust is linked to reduced fear and doubt by strengthening Faith and Concentration. Meditation and Prayer likewise achieve identical goals.

What distracts a huge amount of Faith and which has been solved in the Indian subcontinent is the issue of how faiths interact. When we meet someone of a different faith we almost by definition cannot accept their object of faith - to do so amounts to a loss of faith in our own Faith. How can I have faith in two Gods? Your God cannot be the True God. The teachers teach exactly this because we cannot have 110% faith in anything and also harbour faith in something else - that is the definition of distraction. That is the reason for the teaching. Faith is ironic then because in the same way it unifies our mind it divides people. This is only one level of Faith however. A True faith isn't even distracted by accepting other peoples' faiths.

OK gotta dash... distracted toward food...

== Update 5/9/09 ===
** there are states of concentration which are not-conscious e.g. the Jhana but to my knowledge there are no states of consciousness without concentration.

I realise that the world "faith" in the above text can be replaced with the word "love" without changing the meaning. This is quite revealing! Faithfulness takes on a particular meaning in sexual relationships - I hadn't realised before how central Faith was in partnerships (maybe should have listened to George Michael). Interesting how "lust" in thus a hindrance to Love if you follow the logic. Marriage, Faith and Love are all connected. But of course in this analysis they are just small versions of a feature of mind which covers all scales from the personal to the cosmic - namely concentration.

This seems a far cry from the expression of Buddhism for which it is famous in the West namely a rational philosophy. This was my entry into Buddhism. Yet pursuing this path has been fruitless by itself. The analysis and reasonable dissection of the mind by itself can only fill catalogues. What is secretly happening is the disassembling of the distractions of mental phenomena and the resulting strengthening of concentration - the same move as faith. The analysis of Logos and NULL preceding these posts on Faith is exactly this - the freeing of the rational discursive mind from the prison of dualisms which state that events are either one way or the other. In dialectics each depends upon the other so nothing actually happens. The mind is free from distractios - its concentration can become pure.

I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves.

I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves. Yet we are told the unemployment rate is rising. These jobs that were lost aren't important.

The employment rate for people of working age (16-65) was 72.7 per cent for the three months to June 2009

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=12

16% over 65yrs and 19% under 16yrs = 35% not working age
So 65% working age of which 72.7% are working = 47.26% of total population working

52.75% of the UK population do not work.

A figure which is rising.

So if half of people are supported by the other half in recesssion what exactly do all the extra jobs achieve out of recession?

The answer I suspect is nothing! It is simply a feature of an out of date economic paradigm.

Animals support themselves with whatever adaptations they inherit. Humans can rely upon ever improving adaptations, economies of scale and most importantly the input of fossil fuel.

(Sources available for what follows).

Hunter gatherers achieve a return on energy invested of 2.5 times. That means for every calory spent in gathering food they get 2.5 back. This decreases until modern intensive agriculture (which is land efficient but not eneregy efficient) where 4 times more energy is invested than gained from the land.

The point is the amount of energy that we utilise and replace human efforts with. Given the vast input of energy in systems that are more efficient than animal systems why do we all need to work?

Survival has always been solved. Since the Neolithic actually work has been the problem that has been solved... but it raises a question, what to do when all the work is done?

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York notes for "Of Mice & Men" p9

"In 1938, the year that oM&M was published, half of America's grain was harvested by mechanical combines. These machines required 5 men to do the work. Only a few years earlier, the same work had needed 350 men."

Since the start of the industrial revolution there is no doubt that the vast majority of workers have been replaced my machines and "freed" from their labour on the land. What is odd is that new jobs have been created out of thin air ... and seem to continually be created indefinitely. We either have an infinite capacity to consume things (i.e. and infinite market) or our machines are not very good (neither of which is true - limited resources, time and bellies). So we would expect "unemployment" to naturally increase somewhere down the road... or rather we would expect to be "freed" from labour somewhere down the road... or is economics just a rug to pull over the eyes of the working "class"?

Finding our Faults

I have a problem with pride. My sister first identified it last week. It makes sense I've been told this before and I've been aware of it subliminally. So why does it take so long to find?

The problem is that a fault tends to show only when we are faced with someone who has that problem worse, so we justify our actions in terms of them. If someone gets angry with us then then we feel justified in getting angry with the. If someone actacks us we feel justified in being aggressive with them. In my case if someone acts superior to me then I feel justified in challenging their superiority. If someone lies about us then we feel justifed in lying about them. If someone is rude to us we feel justified in being rude to them. If someone is unfaithful to us then we feel justified in being unfaithful to them. If someone hates us we feel justified in hating them... and so on.

There are a variety of explanations for this which don't matter but for completeness. It could be because we project our view onto the world around us. It could be because we actually create the world around us through our actions in the past. It could be because this is actually what happens.

It doesn't matter however. The point is that other people's faults have nothing to do with our own faults. What we chose to do in a situation is up to us and we alone will be judged for it. So even if everyone else is losing their heads and blaming it on us that is not a factor we need to worry about. Thus if we join in then we have that problem to.... etc etc