Is there anything is the world that doesn't have "way round"?

I'm doing a lot of graphics coding at moment and the most difficult thing is making sure that things are the same way round.

So with symmetrical objects we can be talking of one side or the other. Or we can be talking of forward/back. Is largest value in a dimension the front or the back of the object. But with angles we can be talking clockwise/anticlockwise. For everything that has a +ve value it also has a meaningful -ve value, and confusing the direction is a disaster.

Obviously this carries on in more abstract worlds. In the UK parliament is split between the incumbent party and the opposition, they are Right and Left of the speaker in the Commons. The origin in fact of Right and Left wing and in UK politics the opposition is still rarely in power and the ruling establishment still holds power on the Right even after all these years of supposed democracy and liberalism.

And this carries on to even more abstract levels where ideas themselves collect together in coherent worlds or thesis, which are countered by opposing ideas and all the things which don't fit into the model.

The only way to escape this is to have a Totality which has no opposition or room outside itself. In this way there is no other way for things to be, there is just one way around.

But this blog is very much based on the observation that such a thing would present its own opposition. Why for instance, whatever form that Totality takes, is it like this? Such a question is a "meta question" (from Hofstadter) and already lies outside the Totality. And so begins his Strange Loops etc. Even these have a up and a down as we move through "levels." It seems there is always a way to escape the stationary and have a "way around."

So by SRH we focus immediately on the one obvious candidate: "way around" itself. Does "way around" have a way around? That is to say taking an object for example when we ask of it which is the front and which is the back, can we apply that same question of orientation to the process of orientation itself. Can the orientation of an object have an "orientation" itself? Obviously by metaphor or "isomorphism" as ideas don't have a physical shape. When we orient something is that process oriented?

Well we run into SRH problems. You see if we need an Orientation() function that decides which orientation something is in, we are in big trouble if that function itself needs Orientation? We just already know what orientation the orientation function is in, in order to use it on something else. Standard SRH. If we don't even know which "way around" are way around is then the results of using it are useless.

Consider Hegel's famous Kantian telescope. That has an orientation. You look one way things are bigger, look the other things are smaller. When we "turn it around" we just turn it around, there is no orientation to negotiate before we start orienting it. If we needed to orient our orienting function then we have no way to know which orienting function we are using.

This is a complex way of saying the "Normative" as argued by G. E. Moore (1925) , "A Defence of Common Sense." You have to start somewhere, and that is the shared and assumed world and culture from which you come.

So "way around" does not itself have a way around. And that means as usual, and as SRH suggest, that "way around" is not a universal truth.

But that does leave that one problem of SRH. By its own theory it cannot be a total theory. SRH cannot apply to SRH. Which is to say that because SRH is a theory which is broad enough to apply to itself, it cannot be total. Analogous to Godel's inconsistency. But SRH is not total, it confirms SRH over itself making it total. Russel's Paradox. But SRH is not just Russel's Paradox its the hypothesised reason why Russel's Paradox occurs. Its the very applying of something to itself which creates the very limit from which paradoxes are constructed. That is SRH. okay work to do must leave... keep pushing on this cos it will become clear...

Yahweh vs Tat Tvam Asi

How interesting that the 2 root religions agree on the core.

In the Bible Exodus 3:14

14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.[a] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%203%3A13%2D15&version=NIV]

Isn't that interesting. The name of the core principle of the Universe is "I AM." Yet for the fallen who have turned away from G-d the core principle of their lives is "I AM."

Isn't this the WHOLE problem. When Satan has a grasp over you he tricks you into thinking you exist as a separate entity from which wishes, desires, will, opinions and actions all originate. You are tricked into missing the obvious fact that all these originates from the world from which obviously you came. Honour your Mother and Father not because of some oppression but because you, and all that which is you come from them. There is nothing in you which has not come from your parents, and nothing in them which has not come from the world and God.

So the "I AM" which we all feel is not ours, but it belongs to God. This is why the truthful realise not to purse their own wishes, but instead pursue what they see as the wishes of God.

Now there is an obvious pitfall here. Often times you hear religious people confusing their own wishes with those of God. When they do selfish and ungodly things the believe it is God's desire for them. Clearly there is no difference between doing what you want to do and attributing this to God and just doing what you want to do. Understanding that "I AM" comes from God implies that we no longer listen to the lies of the "I AM" which originates in me. Those who obey the Godly "I AM" are first and foremost servants to other people. No servitude then no understanding of "I AM." And the resistance we have to giving up our own wishes is exactly the power Satan has over us and which leads us away from God.

Now in Tat Tvam Asi we have a very similar thing. This is when we realise that the Atman (the inside I AM which centres our individual lives) is the same I AM of the Universe, the Brahman. Normally when unenlightened we see the world as standing between us and what we want. When things go well and we get what we want we Love the world, and when things go badly we hate the world. In both cases the World stands between what we want and what we get. But there comes a point where we realise they are the same. The pushes of the inner self are the same as the resistance of the outer world. After all a coin has two sides and it just depends which way you are looking. A person can only succeed or fail on a path that they have themselves originated at the start - why blame the world! Equally no world in which to create success or failure and what is there to push against, why blame the self. They are the same. There is only one I AM here too.

But like in Judaism to get to this point since we start so close to the Atman, we need become a servant to Brahman and the world first before we can hope to ever be close to Brahman.

Abstain from desires in private.

Giving to the Needy

6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

What Jesus says here is true of pleasure too. When we perform an activity that leads to pleasure that is our reward. And really what a petty reward. No sooner have we eaten the ice cream the pleasure is fading and soon all memory of it is gone. Perhaps this is good because we can embark on a new activity to bring pleasure. And so we live a busy life.

But at the end of it all, when all our pleasures have faded what is left? Nothing. All our rewards have been delivered.

But if we do not leap into activity to fulfil that desire and get the payment we want. What happens then? We can get angry with whatever is stopping us and throw a childish tantrum. Indeed the brain is very likely to do this. And we will have many thoughts that try to argue in favour of the pleasure. But eventually all these tricks and the lashing of the shape-shifting hydra will slow down and we will be able to see what is going on.

Now we can always gain the pleasure that is never denied us, we can always cash that cheque. But what lies in private if we don't cache the cheque? Ignoring petty pleasures like ice creams leads to a state of mind that is observant and freed from the niggling whims of desires. It is freed. This is not a reward we can demonstrate or buy, it is purely between ourselves and God. Indeed God will reward us handsomely for this because freedom is the highest reward. Indeed this is the reward of the same kind as Heaven. It does not diminish or tarnish like worldly rewards, it keeps us close to God.

I can only wonder that this is the motivation for the ascetic and monastic ways of life. They look austere on the outside but on the inside they are closer to heaven than anything the world can reward us with.

Its a shame that monasteries and priesthoods have been rocked by scandals over the years most recently the Catholic Church and the huge amount of child sex crimes that appear to have been covered up by the church. Such weakness occurs everywhere not just the Catholic church and especially in communities of celibate individuals whose needs are never met. Indeed I've heard Catholics speaking of the dangers of putting young men in celibate life styles without full understanding of what this entails. They grow up extremely confused and probably victims of abuse themselves. It is a terrible and unfortunate state of affairs and one doubly tragic because it obscures even more the difficult path of Godliness. Just as Jesus sat with sinners, you can be sure the Devil wants nothing more than to sit with the holy! Such irony of the most respected and devout turning out to be the lowest sinners is no accident.

But we should remember that the bankrupt Henry VIII played on this stereotype of the debauched, licentious monk to part justify his entirely criminal abolition and theft of the monasteries. Its not a new stereotype. And I hear in India the Muslim run Bollywood casts every Hindu priest as a rapist. There is definite political leverage being gained in all this.

So what to do? Well forcing abstinence is the worst thing to do. It is Hypocritical exactly as Jesus says above. It is a sin in fact! It is dishonest. Just acting out abstinence achieves nothing. If you do not understand the reasons for abstinence then DO NOT DO IT. Freud is not entirely wrong. If you can't get your kicks one way, then your body will learn to get them another way. And that can easily lead to perversions. Abstinence is not just a physical show of not doing stuff. If that is true your reward is in the world.

The goal here is to not just to abstain from particular public outward shows of things like chocolate for Lent, but to understand the nature of abstinence itself. If your mind cannot gain a perspective on pleasure and desire that enables you to privately and honestly appreciate abstinence then you will walk into trouble. Abstinence is a purely private state of mind, something you do before God. When you can observe desires from a higher perspective then you will naturally start to abstain. It is not forced. Altho encouraging yourself in unlimited hedonism is not going to help either.

It is said of alcoholics that they do not give us alcohol, it is the alcohol that gives them up. Ultimately while breaking a horse will require some force at the start, eventually the horse does not fight and accepts the harness and rider. After that it is no longer force. Perhaps not the best example, cos the goal here is more than harnessing desires, it is finding that higher mind that can look at desires as "over there" or "not mine" as things of interest rather than needed treats.

I'm sure critics would say this is not the meaning of the Greek and Jesus there. But I definitely see a parallel here between the private world of the righteous and the praying and the state of mind that seeks abstinence from the messy complexity of the world.

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There is another element here. Abstinence is used as punishment also. Just as dogs are trained with biscuits so children are punished by not getting what they want. Indeed abstinence I realise may cause feelings of guilt as it is associated with wrong doing. Even Hell may be associated with abstinence. How ironic! But this highlights the two types of abstinence.

(1) being deprived of what you want (even self deprived)
(2) remaining aloof to what you want.

(2) is a position of power over desire. (2) is a position of freedom. (2) is a position of peace. From the perspective of (2) satisfying desires actually looks like the prison. This is why Hell is actually the world full of people with strong desires. Heaven is a light and free place where people are simple and without burning ambitions or wishes. Yet they are not lethargic they are bright and alert. In the East the Hungry Ghosts are the people who failed to get satisfied in this world and cannot die properly because those desires won't let them depart. Heaven looks boring to those captured by desire. People committed to endless satisfaction, and driven by fear of restlessness and negativity that arises when they are not satisfied, these people find Heaven intolerable. To paraphrase Hui Neng from Zen Buddhism: Heaven won't have such people anyway, so nothing to worry about. The desires must give you up before Heaven will show up. The desires are keeping you bound and imprisoned! Despite this people struggling to get happy through meeting their needs, like to feel they are the ones in control. But ask our self who chose those needs!

Ok as usual wrote too much...

Matthew Parris the fascist!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9583091/Liberal-commentator-Matthew-Parris-calls-blanket-ban-Travellers.html

You can see his argument the media is controlled and the law courts dominated by Capitalism. It is the idea of the establishment in the UK. But Matthew Parris has become a dangerous ideologue more in league with Hitler and Satan than with anything good or correct. We don't need to remind Mr Parris that the Romany Gypsies suffered 85% extermination at the hands of the Nazis because they did not "fit in" to the ideology. He is treading on extremely dangerous ground. Next step the Jews do not fit in for not accepting the King as the head of state.

But firstly by Capitalism we mean the owning of things, and ultimately for profit. But how did this come about?

The UK is not really dominated by the ideas espoused by Parris.

We have "Public Rights of Way" which force the owners to allow passage of regular humans without property rights. And we have "Commons" important relics of the Past that remind us where we came from and about the truth of humanity. They embody the central ideas of equality and freedom that we inherit from the Past, but which are always under threat from political powers wishing to cement their control.

"Public Rights of Way" are ancient and hark back to times long before Capitalism or the Norman Conquest and the Doomsday Book when the country was occupied by tribes. Our beloved London, heart of the world's finance, in those days was a swamp in the corner of Cantiaci (Kent) and Regnenses (Surrey/Sussex) territory in the South and Catuvellauni tribes to the North of the Thames.

And before the Iron Age and Bronze Ages before when land became a commodity, back in the Palaeolithic, tribes would have had a much looser, freer tie to the land. Yet these Ways along which people walked would have existed even then, especially the Downs which would have been dry and clear routes through the landscape.

Mankind's relationship with the land of Britain is as ancient as us humans ourselves and that remains with us, and is the most important thing about us, and it is tied into the very concepts we have about what humans and life are about. In Modern speak we have "rights" and we all have a right to a relationship with the land, just as we have a right to a relationship with the sky, even if that is all just to walk the dog in the morning. 

Overlaid over this natural understanding is the political rise to power of certain individuals. And they have cemented that power through ownership. We see that gradual expansion of power through the closure of Commons and the "enclosure acts" where tribes are pushed off the land they have lived on since the dawn of time to make room for owners to set up industry and reap profit. India is currently in this battle over the freedom of people to live on their land, and Capitalists to buy up that land and turn it over to exploitation for profit. Indians are much freer than Brits, and the Indians are winning this battle at the moment and resisting the invasion of international investment and exploitation.

It is a long history. We have seen invasions endlessly as overseas powers seek to take over the land and enslave the people into working for them. The British have been mostly successful, expelling the Dane Law under Alfred the Great, expelling the Nazis under Churchill (altho we only went on to fall under US control instead). But most famously we failed to keep the Romans and later Norman Kings out. In the later case Britain was subjected to complete slavery and the land was taken over by oppressive Castles and Feudal Lords which set up the system that we still struggle under today. 1066 was a very dark day indeed for Britain. But 1688 was equally dark because under William of Orange the UK once again under slavery this time to investors and the rise of Central Banks in the start of Georgian Capitalism.

Throughout all this time Britain the land has remained, the stage upon which power battles are played out. And the Brits regardless what political system understand this. You cannot defeat us, for whatever system of slavery or government is enforced by the rich, we are always ultimately unified by the land and the history. This is the soil from which equality and freedom come. Once we are uprooted from any fundamental right to be on this planet then we are as good as dead and become true slaves.

This unfortunately seems to be the corner that Matthew Parris has ended up arguing himself. He wants to divorce humans of any rightful place on this planet and leave them renting and working to earn the right to stand where they are and even exist.

At the wandering monks in India said to Alexander the Great: a man can only truly own the land on which he stands. This is the true ownership which transcends anything that Matthew Parris may be conjuring up.

In Matthew Parris' England you cannot even stand on the soil without paying the land owner. You cannot even breath without recompense for the owner of that air. You cannot even look at the sun without paying back the owner of that light. You have no right to exist beyond what you have paid for. But as everyone has always known God owns everything because He made it. Only under Capitalism has mankind slipped into the greatest sin of thinking, hoping, that we might really own what we do. An obvious lie in a universe we had no hand in making. We cannot make ourselves, we were given ourselves and everything we are and do. How can we ever pay some one else for something given wholy by God?

One wonders how Matthew Parris has even earned the right to think! Isn't that controlled by the establishment itself? And in fact this might well be why Mr Parris has been allowed to speak, for serving the interests of his masters.

But he dressed it up in Ethnic and Cultural terms to talk about Gypsies and Traveller communities a common, but petty, point of hatred amongst the land owning bigotry of the UK.

No one who has worked hard to buy some property, or who has worked hard to keep their area clean, wants a bunch of unwashed ill educated savages turning up and trashing the area, stealing and exploiting us before moving on to punish someone else and leaving us to clean up.

This is a fact! Parris is correct to address these concerns.

But the idea that we are limited to thinking about the UK in terms of property plots and our freedom limited to the law courts is profoundly trivial, pedestrian, small minded and mercenary. It is a solution in the same way as shooting someone you disagree with is a solution. Rubbing it out, removing it means we all lose.

No man is an Island Mr Parris. Words written on this very Island to remind us that the fate of one person is the fate of all.

Lets just make travellers bow down to the Hegemony. To which they have every right to stand up and say why don't you sell everything and follow us (to quote Jesus and there is very much in this statement).

If Mr Parris is successful at eradicating the "nomadic lifestyle" from Britain he will only serve to build higher the fake façade of  order that is manufactured in the UK. When Death comes for Mr Parris let him wonder then how his ideas have any relevance! No amount of land ownership, property rights, or wealth will stop his death. All these ideas are as rules in the game of chess. And this was very much the preoccupation of the earlier parts of this blog.

So it is one thing to force travellers to get educated, get jobs and settle down, but it is quite another to suggest that their way of life is irrelevant. The first is just a trivial and practical matter and one they can decide on. The second is a profound statement about the nature of life!

So most definitely Mr Parris has strayed unwittingly into territory (nice irony) where he himself does not belong. If he is really committed to this idea of excluding ways of thinking and defining territory he should exclude himself. He is referring to things that he has absolutely no idea about and his ignorance in these matters is only too apparent. It will be up to readership to decide, but let us hope his small matter of social order does not obscure the profound attack on the founding principles of British people and human life in general that he has made.

==

Its a big topic in fact. The largest genocide in human history was the near eradication of all Americans by European Invaders to America in the 18th and 19th centuries because they did not accept property rights. This eclipses the famous eradication of Eastern European tribes by the Nazis in the 1940s. But they are identical : removal of unwanted people to make way for wanted people. If even the United States is built upon this genocidal idea it is clearly very prevalent. But it is not something the UK has ever entertained... not yet anyway. I don't think Matthew Parris realises the heritage of his current brain state!

Perhaps it rather suits him?

But all this said it does not solve the problem. What happens when more recent property-rights following cultures meet non-property rights cultures. Certainly the properties people have invariably chosen eradication in the West and Parris is not new to this. This perhaps is the danger of the ideology of property. It inevitably ends in genocide?

But if we look at India we can see happy co-existence between wandering ascetics and landed people. Indeed Buddhism is based upon these two classes of people. The homeless monastics that make the Sangha and the lay devotees who live landed family lives. In North Africa Bedouin and other wandering tribes still exist and in the frozen North Inuit still hunt in unclaimed lands. In Australia there are growing rights for the aboriginals to continue their ancient relationship with the land. And in South America every picture you see contains indigenous people carrying on as they have for 1000s of years. As Niall Fergusson points out the South never enforced property rules (which he claims is why the USA has done so well economically - but it's also why there was a genocide in the North and you never see American Indians any more - take your pick Niall). It is just America that stands out as continuing a genocidal attitude to humans who do not accept the ruling elites. This is extremely ironic given that America thinks itself the land of the free.

But you don't need some ethnic or genetic link to these peoples to inherit their way of life any more than you need to be born into property rights to live that way of life. The idea of homelessness and the propertylessness reminds us where we come from, our true state, and remind us the limits of this fabricated existence that we live in the West.  When we die we return to the homelessness and propertylessness that we have with us every day of our lives and which underpins our freedom.

How can we move home if we are truly propertied people? We can pick up property, we can put property down. We can buy this house, we can move to that house. We can only do this because we are actually propertyless. There is no freedom in property as many have found out. It is a hollow temporary victory to achieve property and land! The only gain is antisocially forcing other people to go away, and when mortgages are paid no longer paying rent to Capitalists (which is a circular reason as property was the reason we were paying rent anyway). 

I can write on indefinitely, the depth and profound ignorance of Matthew Parris is extraordinary and the shallowness of his soon to end life (74 this year) is pitiful. I pray only that other people do not follow him down into the dark and dank tomb of ownership into which he has fallen.

== 

And I realise I have not solved the problem of what differing cultures, ideas and people do when they meet. But extermination cannot be the way. Or maybe it is and the Nazis and Americans are forgiven?

Experience and what is experienced are not the same. So we can't both be the experience and what is experienced.

It is not pleasurable to experience pleasure. Just as it is not painful to experience pain.

That is to say when we experience pain that pain is in our experience, but the experience is not painful.

How absurd would it be to burn our finger and then being aware of that is a new burn. There is just one burn. Being aware of that burn will make it more vivid, but the awareness is not itself a burn, the burn is the subject of the experience.

This means if we are burned, then we are the burning but we are not the experience of the burning.

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Watching adverts you see they almost all exploit "good feelings." It seems that people are particularly susceptible to feeling good, and the desire to feel good draws people in. But all these feelings are just the subjects of experience. They are not linked to experience is anyway.

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This can create some confusion. Normally we just do what we want, and that is usually to generate some positive experience. Realising that this is only a default state of existence and its not really anything to do with us leaves us rather disinterested in this mode of existence. Eckhart Tolle ended up sleeping on park benches once he saw through the self. All this pursuits are no longer relevant.

Now I understand the key switch is not to inactivity.

As Master Hsing Yun of  the Fo Guang Shan says "Bodhi mind is not a rocking chair." What emerges after the "self-centre" is seen as uninteresting and irrelevant is compassion. The loss of "self-centre" evolves action into it free form which is kindness and sincere interest in the welfare of others (including oneself). Previously it was anchored to an absolute fixed place, roughly believed to be located somewhere loosely associated with the body or thoughts, but while firmly believed no actual evidence ever existed. However with no evidence to prove it, no evidence existed not to prove it. We don't actually know Father Christmas does not exist! Sure most kids are not good enough to get  real visit from Father Christmas so their parents have to stand in. But if you are really good you will get an actual visit (this is what I used to genuinely argue with people who said their parents were Father Christmas). But just cos he never visited me we don't actually know for sure he does not exist. And the self if like this, can't put my finger on it - is self in my body or in my mind? - but just cos its not clear does not mean I need to ignore it. That is how it seems.

Being "about" x stops it being x.

So far so good. But we can apply SRH here to see a problem. If we universalise and expand the scope to include itself, we can presume that Cicero the writer gained some pleasure from writing it, and we some pleasure from reading it, else why would we do it under the theory. And that suggests that all there is to this text is pleasure. It serves the same purpose as a nonsense poem, or a work of fiction where we follow the hero through perilous quests. All just for pleasure. Yet Cicero is not doing this for pleasure, he is talking "about" pleasure and that means the text cannot be applied to itself without running into SRH.

Generally:

Take some theory t about x.

If x can expanded to include t then it is a theory about itself.

Now suppose the theory states that "we do things for pleasure." Then we must do t for pleasure."

But why self reference then?

Why would you say that we do t for pleasure, if we do t for pleasure.

Is it pleasurable to refer to itself?

(just replace pleasure with any property p)

I'm suggesting that applying a theory broad enough to include itself is a meta theory, and that must be about things. And being about things is not an accident.

To be about things is truth?

So can you can say its p, when it truth about p?

==

this is unclear so far...

But broadly when it becomes about p rather than just p it stops being p.

If x is pleasurable that is fine. But if x expands to include p then it can't be pleasurable anymore.

That is there is pleasure in the pleasure of x. So having pleasure is one thing, but apparently having more pleasure because of the pleasure is now in trouble. This seems a necessity, it is SRH, but why?

Unclear exactly why but this is SRH in action.

Consciousness of oneself does not work backwards: it can't be the consciousness of that self!

This is the classic mistake that I have made all along.

When we have consciousness of oneself, we think that consciousness is oneself! You have an SRH loop if you do this.

The consciousness must be separate from the thing it is conscious of. That means that the consciousness cannot belong or be linked to the self!

Self consciousness is proof we are not self!