Revision of SRH (2024) - fuller definition

Now:

∀x ∣ P(x) ∨ ¬P(x)

is true because whatever P(x) decides ¬P(x) complements it.

Meanwhile:

∀x ∣ P(x) ∧ ¬P(x)

is false because if P(x) is true then by definition ¬P(x) is not true, and vice-versa.

And we would say that

∀x ∣ x ∈ U

Which is to say that every x belongs to a special set called the Universe of Discourse (U) which covers the boundaries, and context of what we are talking about.

If someone says : "what do you think about Harry?", you would need to get from them the U. "What are we talking about?" is Harry a dog, a celebrity, a member of the British Royal family, a train, a comet etc. Without establishing U nothing makes sense.

A bit more precise we could also point out that there is nothing outside U.

∀x ¬∃y ∣ x ∈ U ∧ y ∉ U 

Which is to say that while everything x is in U there is making sure that there are no x outside U.

But this is the subtle issue. In the conversation above once we define U as "royal family members" then we can say that there is no one in the current conversation who is not a Royal. Often what happens in a real conversation is a quick change of U when someone talks about someone else like Meghan Markle who was not Royal, became royal by marriage, but has become unpopular with Royals; or more complex when someone points out that David Beckham is no longer a friend of Prince Harry. Now U has expanded to include non Royals, but is still about Prince Harry. The moving of U is essential to meaning, and is the basis of a huge proportion of humour:

"What is brown a sticky?" The listener is scanning for U and given the usual meaning of "sticky" has limited the conversation to "sticky" things. How many brown sticky things are there? Not many: chocolate? poo? ready to find it funny. The answer (if anyone says anything else) is "a stick" completely changing the listeners U because in English adding a "y" to a noun makes an adjective. This change of "U" to something unexpected is a pleasant surprise, technically in information theory has "surprisal", and the delight in that is a huge chunk of humour especially when it is referring to things that are naughty and we are not supposed to talk about. We are all well familiar with U.

Indeed much of literature would be the same, using words from one U in another U. When John Steinbeck in "Of Mice and Men" describes Curly's wife as having hair "like sausages" our normative U of hair which includes things like "locks, curls, ringlets" gets unexpectedly swapped for greasy meaty food. At a stretch we can see a parallel and our prior U (to borrow from Baysian Inference) has a small overlap where we could see a bunch of hanging sausages like this:

But the beauty of language is how effortlessly we can overlap and switch contexts (U's).

So the point of this is to show how central the unseen U is to discourse. It is always hidden, requires intelligence, and mental activity to create and maintain a working U during a conversation and is the great marvel of modern AI that it can curate the U so successfully.

So there is a really important issue here looking at the trivial logic statements at the start. What are we quantifying over? Or to put another way how big is our U?

Now SRH is about the size of the Universe of Discourse, and specifically (following Godel) when self-reference is possible, there is no "complete" U. And since all systems of any power have self-reference you cannot have a fundamental Universe of Discourse, a definitive U. To put another way: we cannot know or conceive of Everything, or have a single conversation with Total scope. In more sociological terms there is no Ultimate Narrative. That is the death knell of naïve Right-Wing thinking that likes to posit a single Truth. It is the end of Judaism which is regularly criticised in this Blog for trying to maintain a single truth, race/ethnicity, relevance and God (with the caveat that the Jews at least recognise at some level that G-d is non doctrinal). It is the end of the European Enlightenment, in particular, which set out in the 17th century to finish the work of the Renaissance and establish a single model and understanding of the Universe, but after continual assaults during the 20th lies in tatters due to increasing moves to uncertainty (Boltzmann, Bohr, Godel especially) and the ultimate impact on Western Civilisation of Post-Modernism which has evolved into a present malaise and nihilism (not least because it suits current powers to "End History" and maintain themselves in power as the holders of Liberal Democratic Capitalism).

Now SRH proposes that because U cannot be defined by its own elements then the existence and definition of U can only be constructed within a greater U (call it U1) and so on. This is exactly what Cantor found when he tried to define the size of infinite sets and it is the essence of Diagonalisation. This very same feature is then the basis of all the paradoxes and Proofs by Contradiction from Self-Referential from Russel's Paradox to Godel's Paradox, to Tarski's Paradox, to Turing Halting Paradox. I'm adding the word "Paradox" where it is not usually applied because I want:

"Paradox" here to be identical with any argument which shows that the application of the rule to itself is a contradiction. And specifically because the Domain of Discourse (U) is insufficient.

Specifically:
(1) Russel: "Set of all sets that do not include themselves". This set does not belong within any U.
(2) Godel: "This statement is unprovable". Actual statement in U that it does not belong in any U.
(3) Tarski: "This statement is false". Truth/False cannot exist within any U.
(4) Turing: "the program P will loop if it halts, and halt if it loops." Halting cannot be decided within any U.

There are others. But the thing to note is they are all the same.

Now Godel notes that where Self-Reference is present then Incompleteness (or inconsistency) follows. But this is a new statement and formulation of Truth (and one that is probably self-referential too)! SO SRH was to generalise this and say that:

For any U where self-reference can be constructed on its elements, then there is a P(x) which contradicts the definition of U.

To put that another way if we ever try to define a U over elements, in such a way that enables self-reference then there will be elements that do not belong in U.

That is why it was called the crudely call the "Self-Reference Hypothesis" because it flagged an issue with self-reference. A way around thus would be to ban self-reference. This was the original plan: there is no self.

NOTE: first noted SRH in the context of knowledge systems knowing themselves. AIME was a pattern recognition system that was designed to work on its own output. What emerges is that such "self-referential" systems have fixed points around which Bifurcation and Chaos often exists. This is directly analogous to contradiction in logical systems. But because a dynamic system exists in "time" the "contradiction" of a static system looking for a fixed result, transforms into oscillation and non-determinism. It is all the same issue caused by "self-reference" either statically or dynamically. 

But there is a glaring issue here. SRH (as many others have noted) declares that self-reference is a potentially breaking issue, and becomes more dangerous as a system becomes more complex.

How do you define "Self-Reference?" Is there a function R(x) which takes definitions and decides if they allow self-reference?

Well if R(x) exists does it itself allow self-reference? This is simple.

R(R) is a tautology because it can apply to itself so is definitely self-referential. And the SRH flags this as an issue and so R() is incomplete.

R(R) = false then it is a contradiction already.

And even if we mitigate and define U to not allow the expression R(R) we are admitting already that R is incomplete.

so R() is a problem. But if there is no complete definition of R() then SRH fails as it depends upon a definition of Self-Reference.

However we thought of one way out of this (see next blog for summary of the below):

Let us define:
F(x) decides if x is a rule.
T(x, y) decides if rule x is true for y.

So we can say:

∀x | S(x) → ∃y ¬T(x,y)

Which says that if x is a statement then there exists a y such that x(y) is false.

Or "for every rule there is an exception". That is you can always find something that contradicts a rule.

We can apply SRH to this because as a rule itself it is clearly self-referential.

But if we say it is false which gives us:

∃x | S(x) ∧ ∀y T(x,y)

Which states that:

There exists a rule x for which everything is true. That is: there is a tautology.

HOWEVER before we apply SRH consider the statement:

∃y ¬T(x,y)

There must exist a y such that T(x,y) is false.

So the statement is actually saying that it itself must contradict something.

well if it contradicts itself then  there must be a tautology.

So while it explicitly says that all rules are incomplete, this implies that there must be at least one tautology!

SRH says that all statements with self-reference are incomplete.

And the statement that makes SRH incomplete is a tautology.

This is the only way to construct a statement that generates true U free from paradox.

This is the plan. But it is informal at this stage, and also there is no language capable of expressing the U of all U's call the Q.

Cantor decided it was open ended and without an expression. There is no limit to the expressions of set size. That is not to say that sets have no size limit, the very ability to define a set has no limit. You can always define the power set of the previous set and that be by Diagonalisation a new order of size.

Even the English language that Structuralism would argue was the limit of expression--in that what cannot be said does not exist--is incomplete most famously and simply through "This is false." The more sophisticated and larger a language's expressiveness the easier it is to break and show it is incomplete, not the harder.

Like Cantor do we need to admit that there is indeed "no limit". And I don't mean a simple "no limit" which would be to seemingly make an expression. "No limit" as in inexpressible.

And this is why SRH also got the names Hamlet Hypothesis, Plus-One Hypothesis or God Hypothesis. What we are trying to formally say is that whatever you think of is incomplete and can be shown to be so, with the exception of this rule itself which becomes its own contradiction.

Buddhism would say grasp nothing (not even that statement). Or perhaps better grasp only within a given U, but never try and grasp at a U as this simply requires a new U. Everything has its day, and when that day is over, so is it. Whatever we grasp is only ever a tenancy. Time will come when we must move on. Things are all impermanent. And it is tempting to grasp at that and say well that is "one thing we got" (to quote "Deep Blue Something") but SRH is all about not grasping. If you wish to grasp anything grasp that there is nothing we can grasp in all circumstances and to map to reality forever. Buddha calls this Anatta - non-self/no lasting essence. Indeed the Three Marks of Existence are all linked to SRH:

1. Anicca (impermanence),
2. Dukkha (commonly translated as "suffering" or "cause of suffering", "unsatisfactory", "unease"),[note 1]
3. Anattā (without a lasting essence).
   

==

Another way to see this is to ask whether a statement has meaning without defining a Universe of Discourse (U).

Suppose we just made a statement that requires the listener to just include everything with no context.

But of course it has a context because I can just refer to it. Since college friends and me have always just called this Q.

Does Q include itself? And now we are into Russel Paradox immediately and trivially.

Feminism really is Junk (Park 2)

So how do we properly think about that fact that 95% of UK murder suspects are Male.

Obviously we can't just reverse that and say that Men are dangerous because the vast, vast, vast majority are not dangerous. If you pick a man at random he is basically not dangerous.

But never the less compared to "women" the facts are that "men" are more dangerous.

Perhaps this is still difficult to think about clearly. Consider Horses and very rare Unicorns.

Take Horses. Some Horses are Unicorns (just go with it for this example). If we speak to everyone who has seen a Unicorn they can say that there are 2 types: Long tails and Short tails. For every Short tail Unicorn there are 9 Long tails. Correct then to say that 90% of Unicorns Are Long tails. And suppose that Horses in general are equally either Long tail or Short tail we can correctly say that Long tails are more likely to be Unicorns. But does this really mean that Long tailed horses are more magical than Short tailed horses? Unicorns are so rare that when we speak of Long or Short tailed horses we can pretty much ignore anything about Unicorns.

Now rewrite that with 3 substitutions..

Take People. Some People are Murderers. If we speak to everyone who has seen a Murderer they can say that there are 2 types. Males and Females. For every Female Murderer there 9 Males. Correct then to say that 90% of Murderers Are Males. And suppose that People in general are equally either Male or Female we can correctly say that Males are more likely to be Murderers. But does this really mean that Male People are more harmful than Female People? Murderers are so rare that when we speak of Male or Female People we can pretty much ignore anything about Murderers.

So we need be careful how we use this genderised data. And, when you have Feminists who are completely indoctrinated to see everything through the lens of sex then they are more than likely to twist everything to that prejudice.

It is a complex issue, one that Feminism treats with the subtly of a hammer.

However there are existing prejudices we can still explore. Men are traditionally on average stronger than women. Boys play with soldiers and guns (following US influence and the genocide of Indians!) while girls play with dolls and toy tea sets. Boys are indoctrinated into a role of conflict (especially in Imperial nations where they will be expected to go overseas to support the Empire), while girls are indoctrinated into a role of domesticity to maintain childcare and--as argued elsewhere in the blog--locked away by their husband's family so they do not breed with other men.

Given the above it is no wonder that Males are more likely to murder. They are brought up to be aggressive and to resolve conflict with violence. Their national State actually needs this behaviour to further its own ambitions abroad! Murder rates should be even higher you would think!

Yet it turns out surprisingly that socialisation is not a factor. Armstrong T.A. et al (2022) concludes that "Associations between hormones and criminal behaviour are not moderated by sex." so that hormone levels alone can explain violence (I am reading "criminality" to include and positively correlate with "violence") without any reference to sex. Knockout blow to Feminism in one simple paper. And I did not search the literature until I found something that supported the import of this blog, that is the first paper I saw and looked at. Future meta studies will be needed to corroborate that.

Feminism really is straight from the mediaeval dark ages and yet it influences 21st Century policy in Britain! I absolutely bet under the ignorant influence of Washington. UK really has no choice but to distance itself from the Red-Necks totally and without delay. It is actually quote frightening that our society should be engineered by such pathological idiots. Having Capital-ism and Imperial-ism is bad enough, but now we are having other complete unsupported -isms added like Feminism.

Cultural Marxism?

There is this quite well thought out "Conspiracy Theory" called "Cultural Marxism."

Marxism and Hegel say that social/spiritual progress occurs through conflict between opposing conceptions. It resolves what Kant called Antimonies. A more abstract one is "Freedom vs Determinism" and more practical one is "Workers vs Owners." These are incompatible and cause argument and conflict; ultimately struggle and war in Marxism. And so History progresses to resolve these headaches.

"Cultural Marxism" argues that this has been hijacked to deliberately and pre-emptively introduce conflict into society by creating -isms and competing factions. The battle between Men and Feminists being one such engineered conflict.

This then becomes text book "Divide & Conquer" where the elite maintain control by getting the oppressed to fight amongst themselves and blame all their oppression on each other. Thus Feminists express their discontent through hatred of men, rather than focus on Elite oppression that both they and men share.

Last thing the elite want is the mass closing ranks against them. (More sophisticated analysis would see that even this Elite vs People is just another Antimony, but lets ignore that). SO "Feminism" actually serves a very useful function for the establishment either by accident or design!

Feminism really is junk

This kind of illustrates the madness that is pervading the West at the moment (beyond probably from Washington). 95% of murder suspects are men. QED say feminists.

Er hum If we split humans into men and women those male murder suspects are that dot below. You need to be extremely short sighted not to see the 52,495 other harmless men standing around each murder suspect. What might be more useful is to take the whole of feminism and just put it in the bin (no exaggeration).

Other characteristics like being a psychopath would be much more useful and men are 6x more likely to be a psychopath but sex is irrelevant. If you pick a psychopath (with no reference to their sex) then you are much more likely to pick a killer than picking a male. So with no reference to feminism we have a better answer already.

Another characteristic other than sex which is useful is skin colour. If you pick a Black rather than a White then you are 6x more likely to pick a murderer. But if the people started blaming Blacks for murder then they would very quickly arrested for Racism. Why then when people start blaming Men for murder are they not immediately arrested for Sexism. 0.0019% of men in any year commit murder it is a beyond ridiculous claim that they are dangerous and just illustrates the pure prejudice that motivates Feminism.

Feminists really do need to be rounded up and sent to re-education centres - no joke! It is all pure sexism and is illegal. When you hear the word "Feminism" (whether you are male or female) reach for your gun!

Here's a way to see how Feminism is junk.

95% of murders in UK are committed by men.

23% of victims are female. That value should be 50% if men killed indiscriminately.

This means that men are already less likely to murder women and are already considerably protecting women! How much more do women want?

There is currently a drive to push down violence against women and girls even further. The government is basically asking men not to kill women: so I guess kill a man instead!

Or are we asking for a reduction in total murder and violence (the actual sensible non-feminist way).

Since men and women pay taxes, and since we value equality then sex and gender should not be a feature of policy at all. Why should I pay taxes to protect women? I'm a man I want to be protected (especially when I'm more than 2ce as likely to be murdered as a woman)!

UK governments needs to rid itself of backward Feminist nonsense.

#Endfeminism

How much has the Jewish practice of Interest damaged the Jews, and did the Edomites have a different Law?

With reference to previous post on "letting go." Is this blog entry about letting go? Ideally yes. Jews in particular in this view need to let go of the division they have created between themselves and other people namely Jew and Gentile. This hard division is what ultimately manifests as the isolation, marginalisation, paranoia and fear the Jews have of "persecution". All Jewish persecution can be argued is just a projection of the division that they themselves have created. And the harder Jews hold to "being Jewish" the more their perceived separation and rejection by the world is complete. But that works in reverse too. The more people obsess about so called "Jews" and the role they play in the world the more likely the Jews are going to become scape-goats (deliberate irony) of all the world's problems. NAZI Germany the most famous (but by no means the only time) that the isolated separated communities of Jews have become the focus of blame and hatred. So this is a two sided letting go. People outside this division need to treat Jews as living breathing humans of intrinsic and equal worth, and Jews need to see non-Jews as living breathing humans of intrinsic and equal worth. Ideally we just remove the division all together, but this would be very harmful as it would remove the 1000s of years of history, culture and identity. What we need is to "let go" of the division as discussed before. But identity and division aside, the point in this blog is the practice of usury that Jewish people do not practice amongst themselves, but do practice outside their community. Now that is racism from the start. But this blog is looking not at who practices usury but whether usury itself is an evil that has brought trouble to the Jews (or anyone who practices it). The fact that Jews do not practice it amongst themselves suggests that it is deemed harmful. And the intrinsic belief amongst Jews that it is okay to harm Non-Jews is an obvious point here.

I am absolutely no scholar of any of this. I have just a superficial access to the English Bible and an opinion of Capitalism and the obvious harm it has brought the world, its people and life in general. But everyone has to start somewhere, and it seems few even bother to start which is leaving Capitalism and Jews uncriticised.

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

So the Bible is pretty unequivocal about the extreme evil of usury: 

"He lends at interest and takes a profit. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head." [Ezekiel 18:13]

This is what we call Capitalism today. That is capital that is invested with a view to either rent, interest or a dividend payment. In other words to lending to those in need, but expecting a return. Obviously those in need are not the right people to be expecting a return from.

Now the economist would argue that there are two types of usury. Lending to those in need, which should really be charity. And then the lending to business which does not "need", but it offers them the "choice" for investment and growth from which they can further profit even after paying back the interest. This would be deemed a win/win situation where the lender gains and the business gains. But is this distinction really borne out in reality. Especially in housing, which everyone "needs", it is normalised for private landlords to charge rent. This is Capitalism at its worst and most nakedly sinful.

Plus there is false economy here. Money lending increases the amount of money available which drives up prices so people end up "needing" to borrow to stay ahead and the "choice" is gone.

There is a genuine, and I believe pretty obviously engineered, exploitation of the poor under Capitalism to generate easy income for the rich. Basically the same as it has always been.

"The Torah and Talmud encourage lending money without interest. But the halakha (Jewish law) that prescribes interest-free loans applies to loans made to other Jews, however not exclusively" [ibid]

So non-interest loans are a recommendation to everyone, but under the halakha this becomes necessary for Jews. Also in lending it is key to ensure the welfare of the lender, you could  not for instance secure the loan against goods considered critical for well being. There is no racism here. Liberal, humane and correct. Here are the 3 given quotes:

24 If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest. [Exodus 22]

36 Take thou no interest of him or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. [Leviticus 25]

21 Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; [Deuteronomy 23]

Interesting aside. 2 different types of interest mentioned in the wiki page:

neshekh (Hebrew: נשך), interest deducted in advance. marbit or tarbit (מרבית‎/תרבית), interest added to the amount that the borrower must repay both becoming modern ribit (ריבית) 

Summary of the next bit states that usury was the norm on the basis that the borrower could use the loan to increase the loan so it made sense to charge interest. You lend someone two rabbits, they will soon have many rabbits. The rate was often fixed by the state, 20% pa. is quoted for the Sumerians.

Fantastic resource here: Jewish Encyclopedia [usury]

In modern times the money might be invested, and the husband would draw the interest or dividends; but in all such cases the Mishnah says: "Let ground be bought and the husband receive the income!"

On as aside: interesting use of "Laborious." This concept is very much the import of "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914)" where the low pay and arduousness of manual labour is seen as an injustice. In Capitalism there is no such concept a markets decide all value by exchange. The Capitalist argument would be if you think the job does not pay enough for the effort then reskill. But naturally manual labour is always needed and always over subscribed. Given the uncertainty of reskilling and the need to get food today this is not an simple option.

"The Mishnah goes even so far as to forbid an exchange of work between neighbouring farmers, where the later work is more laborious than the earlier."

Skipping a bit but even into the 1500s the debate within the Jewish community is not settled:

The Shulchan Aruch, a 16th-century text that was published after the writings of Maimonides, and which is viewed by the majority of Orthodox Judaism as being authoritative, expresses a different view on interest, stating that it is now allowable (when it was written) to lend on interest to non-Jews.[ibid]

So where this idea that I began with that the Jewish community in West Asia were the money lenders? It seems that most Jews disagreed with usury just like the Christians and the Muslims?

===

This is certainly complex now.

(1) How did Capitalism start when literally everyone seems opposed to Usury?

(2) How did the Jews become blamed for Usury?

(3) Economically how do you deal with the situation where someone borrows something from you and then gets rich by it. Can you not reasonably claim something back as the owner? You could argue that you forfeited that profit yourself and that you are now the victim. A clear solution is to never lend. Sell at the price you think it is worth. Then if the buyer makes a huge profit you cannot then claim charity as the buyer would argue well why didn't you raise the selling price if you expected profit. Lending -- that is maintaining ownership while someone else possess and uses -- itself is the complex thing. 

So do we have an answer to the opening question yet? No answer at all yet. It cannot even be said yet that the Jews are the main offenders.

To be continued... 

===

The other non-explicit branch of this is investigating the Edomites who I believe may have been the true descendants of Abraham and whose laws may be more truthful than Jacob's descendant Moses. Edomites are the descendants of Isaac's eldest son, Esau. Now the relationship between Esau and Jacob is a bit complex:

Genesis 25 says that Esau was forced to give up his birthright in return for life saving food. That is some brotherly love in Jacob!

²⁸ And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.

²⁹ And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:

³⁰ And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

³¹ And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

³² And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

³³ And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

But later on in Genesis 27 the issue of the birthright seems not settled because:

¹⁰ And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death.

¹¹ And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man:

¹² My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.

¹³ And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them.

¹⁴ And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved.

¹⁵ And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son:

¹⁶ And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck:

¹⁷ And she gave the savoury meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.

¹⁸ And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son?

¹⁹ And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me.

²⁰ And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the LORD thy God brought it to me.

²¹ And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.

²² And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

²³ And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau's hands: so he blessed him.

²⁴ And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am.

²⁵ And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine, and he drank.

²⁶ And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son.

²⁷ And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed:

²⁸ Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

²⁹ Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

³⁰ And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

³¹ And he also had made savoury meat, and brought it unto his father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son's venison, that thy soul may bless me.

³² And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau.

³³ And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.

³⁴ And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.

³⁵ And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.

So Jacob is a dishonest, untrustworthy and deceitful man indeed to blackmail and cheat his own brother and father. It seems to me that Esau is clearly the rightful heir to Abraham and the Jews are descended from a shameful individual who goes on to other equally convincing things.

Who are the Edomites and what do they think of Usury?

Well not surprisingly apparently I'm not the first to flag this issue with Jacob and there seems to have been a rift between the Jews and Edomites ever since.

This website suggests that the Ishmaelites descended from the Egyptian Hagar and the Edomites united against the Jews. But I thought that the Edomites eventually assimilated into the Jews, and the history of Islam is its own tangled web.

But what did the Edomite laws say of usury. This would represent another branch of Abrahamic thought separate from Moses?

To be also continued...

Collecting Merit Badges

I find sitting to meditate that at the start I am always in the same state of mind: I am trying to gain something.

It is like I am always in primary school trying to get a merit badge.

Perhaps the star for getting to 10 breaths without mind wandering. Perhaps a best feeling of peace. Perhaps the best posture. Perhaps the best insight...

And that last one is the most revealing, because this insight here is key: we are supposed to be letting go. How silly a merit badge saying:

It is well acknowledged that all the other stars are perfectly valid, but ultimately we are seeking to let go and that means just opening our grasp and letting all this just go.

Now I resist saying "drop to the floor" because we are not going to smash the cup of tea we are drinking by dropping it on the floor. And we are not going to go homeless and live in a ditch (although we could) we are not dropping anything. We are just releasing our habitual fixed grip and becoming aware of how we are needing to grasp completely unnecessarily. Perhaps we can force that by living in a ditch or cave which may serve some purpose at a stage, by trying to force our hand open, but it just closes on new things so its only ever temporary. Can I have a badge for living in a cave for a year!

The most important badge we will get is the badge for letting go, but we won't even turn up to receive this badge as it is no longer seems relevant to us! It is a strange irony this.

To be exactly accurate if we are invited to an award ceremony we will turn up and accept the badge, why wouldn't we. But as they pin it on us, it is just being pinned on us like it was a carrot.

Another classic badge is:

Its my current opinion is that when you hear of people walking off the path this is the main cause. Alan Watts had a lot to say that is extremely learned and very interesting and thought provoking. In his own words he was a "disrupter" causing his listeners to let go of habitual thinking. All good you would think. But he himself grabbed hold of the whiskey bottle in later life and harmed his body so much he died from the effects of alcohol. So his body was like anyone body and it can get addicted to alcohol. Even a Buddha can get addicted to alcohol: they have a body after all. But the difference is that when we meet an alcoholic who is harming their body we probably wish to help them. So why would Alan Watts not wish to help his own body and avoid alcohol? He was still grasping too strongly, clearly not a demonstration liberated. So given all his work to liberate why did he not liberate? I suspect its that he thought he was a "Star Liberator" and confused this with actual liberation. Charles Manson the most notorious alternative guru of the 1960s I heard dabbled in yoga and meditation. Yet the collapse of it all in murder and crazy ideas of destructive revolution in many ways ended the 60s Hippie dream in the US. The path to liberation was not going to be very easy after all. More than anything I suspect he came to believe and wear a badge saying "star [something]" and this masked him from seeing the truth which is that he was one of the furthest and most in need of liberation. It is a shame however that when people fall they can taint "liberation" itself in the minds of others. But not respecting the path to liberation, and all the demons who conspire to cloud our view and mistake things is all part of the path itself!

===

Writing blogs!

So is there a risk of grasping in writing, thinking and recording progress?

Absolutely. For myself its multifaceted.

(1) After my Jhana? as a child I made a vow to never take a step that I could not lead other people over. It seemed wrong to attain wisdoms just for myself*.

(2) There is a fear of regression, that I want a record that I can always return to if I ever lose the way, and to record things I have tried that might be fruitless. "My Muse" would be great example of something fruitless. In a future life fancifully perhaps the internet will still exist and I could stumble on this blog or similar to warn myself.

(2.1)There is always that thought in my mind that someone may stumble across this and find it interesting or useful, and my greater wish is that someone reads it and points out the direction. I have very good teachers in fact I can ask for help, but somehow I no longer know what to ask them and have always liked feeling in the dark. But perhaps there is ego to this that I wish to liberate myself and own that liberation: uh ho if true how relevant this blog! They say Ehipassiko (come and see) and Buddha says check all dharma until you are sure it is true for yourself, but this must be extremely close to a particular dharma becoming "yours" which we can then grasp as we do anything perceived as "mine". How lame is modern propaganda that to try and get the populace on side the establishment just relabels thing as "yours".. "Your Election" etc. How manipulative and superficial.
(3) Happily I don't think there is any desire to wrap myself in this blog and own it or gain anything from it. But I can never be so sure as this is all very subtle and the things we are most sure of with deeper awareness we turn out to be fooling ourselves.

(4) In the same spirit as "The Monk and the Philosopher" by Jean-François Revel, Matthieu Ricard there is also great interest to try and unify Eastern and Western philosophy into a coherent whole. There are many issues in the West that after centuries are still unresolved like the relationship between Body/Mind and Self/Other and Freedom/Determinism. Kant referred to them as Antimonies, but later Dialectical thinking sort to resolve them in Aufheben. But these are fully attended to in Eastern philosophy and finding a link between Western approaches and Eastern would resolve them. There is considerable interest here to see if such a path exists. It is easy to think that Western Philosophy is just a wrong path set up by Plato. But many of the concerns of the West are mirrored by the East.

More generally though can you really write Dharma? Buddha always created Dharma teachings on the spot. "Thus have I heard" start the sutras because he spoke them to an assembly in response to questions, in many ways like Socrates they were not spoken to be recorded forever but to enlighten those in the then present conditions. And like Socrates speaking of Logos, Buddha is pointing to a "truth" that is only ever be present. It cannot be accessed in the Past or the Future which are just fabrications built on the Present. All things come back to the Present at root. SO this really suggests that Blogging is a waste of time. I certainly see many approaching Dharma from this Zen angle:

[End of Blog]

-------------------------------------------------

SO is there any harm tho in blogging as long as it doesn't encourage us to grasp more? A Blog or Vlog proclaiming that it has the ultimate "life hack" or the "key to life" is obviously just click bait. You are not going to read the truth. But you might be encouraged to see if for yourself or enquire for it.

But isn't that more grasping?

Ok interesting: perhaps yes. I think Western Philosophy is often sold like Chess. They teach you a few moves and then let you play. How about a starting question like "Are you free?" You go "well yes". The philosophy replies "but were you free to say "no"?". Okay I'm using SRH here to generate a contradiction. But you just need something that gets the victim thinking in a path and then leave them to it. This is actually encouraging grasping so is not Dharma. My own history is like this. I used to take pleasure in finding out things: in particular hearing again and again that a Blue Whale could grow to 30 metres and finding that spell bindingly amazing. But as I grew up I asked a new self-aware question: "are there any questions that can't be answered?" I was told "yes, for example some philosophical questions." And it was seeking to answer those that began the path I am still on. I remember the day clearly. But this was obviously not Dharma as it leads to more grasping. "My Muse" fits into this because I used to say to girls that I wanted them to stop me thinking. I was aware that seeking to frame everything in thought was a binding. But I only ended up swapping one grasping for another!

It is very unintuitive this letting go. And because Ego is so ready to step up and "help" we usually seek to do something to get us closer to letting go. Not realising ironically that the very act of stepping up to do something is grasping itself. This is why the meditator sits down and avoids action, observing instead the arising and decay of all things especially those originating "within" or--as best as discernible at our level of awareness--in the vicinity of Ego.

So while SRH is still an interest perhaps I should separate that concern from the issue of liberation and the actual blog goal of Life itself. Liberation does not mean we cannot do stuff, but it does mean we do not present stuff that leads to grasping as any part of the path.

I am not qualified to lead people to liberation. I am still seeking that myself so not correct to start a blog called liberation and there are plenty of others doing exactly that. But as a personal path I should just keep doing this but be mindful of that which leads to grasping and that which leads to letting go.  

 

Growth: A Reckoning Hardcover – by Daniel Susskind

 

The Amazon introduction starts

"Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Reckoning-Daniel-Susskind/dp/0241542308

But is this even true?

Poverty is relative not absolute. If we break human history into slices, in each slice the amount of poverty is relative to the scale of the richest. If we go back 10,000 years then there was very little poverty. No one expected to have a mobile phone, and so no one was in "mobile phone poverty". There is much greater poverty today because the wealthy have much more wealth than the poor in any period of previous history. So economic growth has actually plunged billions into poverty.

Next up it says our lives are much healthier. It's important to remember that Capitalism split the world into the owners and the owned until slavery ended. Slavery then morphed into employment. Capitalism drove people off the land and created poverty. So people were thrown into unhealthiness in the 1700s by Capitalism. We need to go back before the 1700s. And in the UK we had Feudalism from 1066 where the population had 50% iof their produce stolen by the wealthy. But under Feudalism at least some ordinary people actually had rights to their land and prices and lives were protected unlike the price destruction and exploitation of Capitalism. So it's hard to argue that there has been an increase in healthiness. Certainly a look at mental health issues and anxiety along with sedentary lifestyles of in modern society points to a rapid decrease in healthiness.

Finally our lives are longer. Well that is true but as analysed in this blog it's because of a break-through in understanding of infectious disease that instantly started to help in particular mother and child after birth. This may or may not have led to economic growth, but what is certain is that growth did not lead to an increase in life span. Susskind is making a basic logical error there. A bit of analysis could even say the opposite is true. When Helicobacter pylori was identified as the main cause of stomach ulcers it actually threatened to create an economic contraction! The reason was that one of GSK's main products was used as a remedy for ulcers but they made money from not curing them. Anything that could cure ulcers would create a huge dent in profits. Lawyers from GSK tried very hard to close down the H. pylori research but it was so easily provable and conclusive that they failed. This is classic Capitalism putting growth and profits before patient health and wellbeing. Ideally a truly successful economy shrinks as people become satisfied more easily and for longer. Growth in fact is the enemy of human and planetary well being.

So its quite interesting how the issue here is that people start with a paradigm of Growth and then fit everything into it.

If "growth" is just a box into which people like Susskind try to force things, then there has been no growth! It is rather an approach to understanding the world, a culture, a dogma and one that can be seen to actually counter its supposed aims.

As well analysed in this blog the reason for this is simple. Greed. The wealthy do very well from growth because it makes them money from investing in growing companies. Armed with an insatiable desire for easy money and theft from the poor they instinctively promote any economics that promotes this. Growth and Capitalism have come to the fore as the easiest way for the rich to get even richer. Control of the press in the West then makes it impossible for people to contradict the rich, and control of public opinions and money makes it easy to attack and bomb other countries that try to oppose Western Capitalists taking over and buying up their nations, resources and economies.

Given that Daniel Susskind is a rather dangerous ideologue pedalling and looking post-hoc for justification for an economic system that has destroyed the lives of billions, killed billions and destroyed the planet. I have not read the book but unless he ends up arguing that Growth is the problem he fails to overcome the dogmatic problem at the heart of the problem.

Another angle to this is quite interesting. Daniel Susskind is Jewish. Now the Jews have a long, long history with Usury. Usury is the basis of Capitalism, in that normal people earn money to buy what they need. Capitalists however buy what they don't need to rent it out to those in need thus generating an income stream. The Bible both identifies that the Jews did this, but also identifies that it is harmful because the Jews are not allowed under Jewish law to lend at interest to other Jews. Why should this be banned if it was deemed a helpful and constructive activity? So the Bible tells us at the very start pretty much that usury is harmful. Now the history of Jews is pretty much the history of the harm that they have caused through this Capitalism, and the resentment that Gentiles have for them as a result. Altho it has been whitewashed over by post war propaganda when the Germans blamed the Jews for the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1930s, we cannot know for sure that is true without considerable research, but it fits into a long history of Jews and makes them certainly likely suspects.

A bit of further history illustrates here how the Jews became so marginalised. I forget the details of which city in Spain and the problems began because Christians and Arabs expand the Bible Law to mean no usury amongst Gentiles also. This meant that the Jews were the only money lenders at interest, and it meant that they lived under different laws from the rest of Europe that meant that they were gradually excluded into their own separate communities. They were given the choice to join the usury laws of the Gentiles and they rejected that preferring their own communities. And so money became the object that dragged the Jews into isolation and ultimately led to all the problems they have faced. In Jewish mythology there is this idea that the cause of all the hardship lies in persecution and that most famously illustrated by captivity in Egypt. But this never happened. Even in the Bible the Jews refer to life in Egypt as good where they lived in their own houses and traded freely. Moses little adventure into the desert in search of the Promised Land is just a Jewish fanciful folly. Now in the West we have this ridiculous concept of "Anti-Semitism" which is really under the hood just basic racism. But in order for the Jews to continue this myth that they are particular hard done by they have a particular type of racism that only happens to them (if that is not racially discriminatory itself - I mean I think the Blacks, American Indians and Gypsies have much more of a case for persecution that the Jews!). SO it really is time we just rid our selves of Jewish propaganda and just saw things how they are. Jews are particular self-serving and have a deep mythology that justifies and protects this, part of which is the whole division of Jews/Gentiles itself. There is no such thing in reality. The Jewish prophet Jesus most famously ran into problems with this division realising that all people were God's children and while the Jews may be foremost that guarantees no place or favour by itself with Heaven. Jews would seriously benefit from lifting the lid on all this nonsense and looking at the harm they have done. And "Growth" comes straight from Jewish thinking. Hearing Susskind realising that things are not good in Jewish thinking is great. But reading the start of the Amazon summary you realise he has literally no idea how deep the problems go. In many ways a Jew will be the last person on Earth to fix these problems because of  the almost ontological way they are welded to them. Susskind should deal with his Jewishness first before dealing with problems that affect everyone Jewish or not.

===

On the question of Usury itself:

I wonder why other money lenders did not emerge in the Mediaeval period that just lent in the normal way of simply expecting the money back, perhaps with collateral if it was stolen. I mean if you have too much money then why not lend it? It does you no harm and its very useful to someone else. I mean you could just give it away in charity, that is an even better option. What mentality leads to you to charge the needy interest? You don't need more money yourself because you can get it the same place you got the other money. There is a very good reason that the Bible bans Usury, because it is ungodly. Now why it allows it between Jews and Gentiles is really something for the Jews to puzzle over and ask God.

"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury." [Exodus 22: 25]

It is that "my people" which is the whole problem for Jews. I will investigate this further. But it is simply ignorant to suggest that the Jews have not heaped all their problems upon themselves.

Playfully I wonder as suggested in this blog before that the Jews really ended up following the Devil. Jacob is a shady character. Firstly with his mother's help he tricks Isaac into inheriting the family line, and then basis his calling on a suspicious dream he has at a place between Beersheba, and Haran. I think anyone of the time would be most suspicious of dreams and spirits met in the desert. I wonder that Jacob was not driven by the Devil to lead the Jews astray. His elder brother Esau was the true inheritor of the bloodline to Abraham. And that means that Moses was not of the main bloodline of Abraham and the Usury laws in Exodus are potentially corrupted. Much research to do but unfortunately no Jew will be able to do this research because it to too fundamental to them.