Dorothy and Colin, you would have been proud of me. I am not sitting idle while I am on vacation. You are such wonderful role s for healthier living, being as you are so very fit at the age of 70 plus. Its because you are doing all the exercise and eating things that retired people should do, play tennis, golf, walk up and down hills, exercise and eat quality food.
I do not have your keen sense duty for doing all of what is healthy, but at least I recognize the need and have a willingness emerging from within my weak being. Staying healthy throughout one's entire life is quite a feat, but I suspect that most can achieve it with a little help and loads of common sense. Needless, to say, if you are healthy, you owe a lot to your parents. Indeed, parents, the greatest gift that you can give your children is a means of staying healthy, and it won't be by confabulating.
Common sense is all you need also to see that the volcanos of the Pacific Islands are telling us loud and clear that the earth is many billions of years old. I believe that the number is in the rocks of Greenland and South Africa that are over 3.4 billion years old. Humans have been around for a fraction of this time, if you think time exists as a flow of events and change resulting from processes. To say something is such and such an age is making all sorts of assumptions, but we are prepared to live within a range of error. To say that something did not exist when we have verification that it did, is, needless to say, potentially harmful and the grossest form of confabulation, people's imaginations running wild!
Its also very sensible to see forms of civilization as existing in full swing before the Egyptians decided to send Abraham's people on their way East. Putting a date on Biblical events is largely confabulation. How does all they all jive with the aging of the earth as put forward in the extreme interpretation of the Bible. Well anyone one with a little sense can see that they do not, if it is assume the time span of the earth is much shorted that it really is. Unfortunaely, much of the dating in the Bible does not really stand up to close scrutiny. What are we to make of that?
Well, nothing much. Its hardly surprising given that it is human nature to ability to confabulate. Confabulate? What's that? Well, put very simply, it is a revision of history by following our preferences and inclinations of what history actual was with what we think it should be or want it to be. It's very much like wishful day-dreaming about the past. We block out all the nasties, if we feel good about ourselves. Or, we can block out of the wonderful events, if we feel bad about ourselves. What we remember about history is thus very selective because of our wonderful abilities to confabulate. Everyone does it, without even realizing, we are doing it. Often the results are very harmful as they create barriers betwen people getting along rather than bridges.
In the short term, we can notice how children will confabulate about their parents, or parents about their children. Will the person who remembers the truth stand up. Oops, there is no one! No, there is no one who remembers the truth because the truth is confabulation. Thus, the Russian newspaper or the religions magazine that has as its mantra, the 'truth', don't really. They are confabulating the truth to suit their mood and the tone they want to set for their readers. Reality is that those that say they speak the truth probably confabulate the most. Hense, this is what you need to do.
If some one says they have or speeak the tructh, you need to verify that they have or speak the truth. Too many witnesses go before the juries of this world with confabulations of the truth which give very slanted views. To verify the truth seek it from as many sources as you can and take into consideration mood swings and that it is normal human behaviour to confabulating. Speak to your priest or minister and ask for the un-confabulted version of their doctrine and see or hear what you get as a response. Remember that monasteries will say one thing and the centralized priests will say another. For my money, I would go with those in the monasteries. They may be closer to earth!
Scratches to Sketches
Friday 18 January 2008
Thursday 17 January 2008
'What the Bl...p Do We Know' As a Mantra
Its become sort of common place these days to denigrate established ideas with the notion that there is something within easy reach that will replace them. That this is not the case comes as a surprise to those who were not aware of the traditional views in the first place. This usually means young people.
It is understandable for the new crowd to go high on expectations, but the problem arises that these expectations and euphoria may lead to very irrational result. In the initiate to new aspects of science and religion there are always going to be expectations of great truths and wonderful things to happen have been fed by elements of science and religion that are still very uncertain. The best approach would seem to be to learn something of current science and religion before jumping onto the Bleep wagon.
Irrational ideas emerge during periods of rapid change. In the current period of emerging extraordinary change resulting from already irrational approaches to science and religion from the leadership of the Bush administration, we may experience an enormous resurgence of the irrational. In the background, lurks the disaffection with reasoned solutions and experience because of the profligacy and solution vacuity of current US economic, science, health, and educational policies.
We can all hold our breath that we are not entering another round of flight from the dollar as gave such an impetus to the ruination of the middle class, the ordinary student coming out of college, as occured in the mid-1970s. It is just possible that the current decision makers are steering the world economy into a dangerous period of stagflation that no nation can afford and that will bring about an end to dreams of economic independence worldwide. By independence, I mean freedom from debt burdens that stifle innovation and invention.
While America has the world focused on oil, the main focus should be on water resources. Watch for the slight of hand that shifts towards stealing these resources through the use of existing economic and military advantages. One can see the potential results by searching for enormous lakes in Asia that no longer exist except as deserts and wastelands. There is an enomous potential for desertification in the decade ahead before the world is enlightened enough to see the excesses of destructive energy intensive technologies. Grow corn to create energy, but don't put something into the ground that is thirty times as dangerous to our precious atmosphere. Yes! What the bl..p do I know. Not much!
It is understandable for the new crowd to go high on expectations, but the problem arises that these expectations and euphoria may lead to very irrational result. In the initiate to new aspects of science and religion there are always going to be expectations of great truths and wonderful things to happen have been fed by elements of science and religion that are still very uncertain. The best approach would seem to be to learn something of current science and religion before jumping onto the Bleep wagon.
Irrational ideas emerge during periods of rapid change. In the current period of emerging extraordinary change resulting from already irrational approaches to science and religion from the leadership of the Bush administration, we may experience an enormous resurgence of the irrational. In the background, lurks the disaffection with reasoned solutions and experience because of the profligacy and solution vacuity of current US economic, science, health, and educational policies.
We can all hold our breath that we are not entering another round of flight from the dollar as gave such an impetus to the ruination of the middle class, the ordinary student coming out of college, as occured in the mid-1970s. It is just possible that the current decision makers are steering the world economy into a dangerous period of stagflation that no nation can afford and that will bring about an end to dreams of economic independence worldwide. By independence, I mean freedom from debt burdens that stifle innovation and invention.
While America has the world focused on oil, the main focus should be on water resources. Watch for the slight of hand that shifts towards stealing these resources through the use of existing economic and military advantages. One can see the potential results by searching for enormous lakes in Asia that no longer exist except as deserts and wastelands. There is an enomous potential for desertification in the decade ahead before the world is enlightened enough to see the excesses of destructive energy intensive technologies. Grow corn to create energy, but don't put something into the ground that is thirty times as dangerous to our precious atmosphere. Yes! What the bl..p do I know. Not much!
Tuesday 15 January 2008
Blogging from Turtle Bay In Hawaii and the Arnold Palmer Course
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my priorities are all a twist when it comes to golf. This morning, I walked along the coast of the North West of Hawaii's island of Oahu. Not far from where we are staying is the wonderful course designed, I understand, by Arnold Palmer. Was I attracted to the golf course first? Well no!
Following my flawed personality, I spent a wonderful two hours of early morning light walking along the beach, which is a wonderful light sand mixed with very sharp rocks which are either coral or what's left of volcanic rock. As the sand is so light in colour, it seems to be coral, which is born out a closer examination. Another, bit of information is that there are what appear to be clusters of many types of rock within hardened sandstone, or ash. A closer examination of the rocks reveals that they are a multitude of different types of sea organism and coral, probably thousands if not millions of years old.
Captain Cook Could not Run Away
For those that are not aware, the islands of Hawaii used to be called the Sandwich Islands after the English Lord that financed the Cook explorations. It is unfortunate that Captain Cook died on the beach of one of these isalnds, but hardly surprising because the sand is so soft underfoot that it is almost impossible to run away. Captain Cook would have no chance of escape by foot because he would have been so tired trying to get only a few feet along the coast. As it was, I found my morning walk was very tough going, and soon sought the grass inland from the beach. This is when, Ane and I found hole 14 of the Arnold Palmer designed golf course. I can only say, wow! What a magnificent course!
It reminded me very much of the old course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The green was enomous and in front of it and within it were more than a dozen sand traps. The grass was fast, very low cut, and beautifully manicured. Amazing!
As we walked along the green, there they were, the many lost golf balls of artful golfers. In all, I found seven. Anne found one. "Hurry," I said knowing my personality flaw. "We have got to escape this place!" My concern was, of course, that we would find so many balls that when returning home the plane would not be able to take off because of the wieght, or worse still that I might not be able to afford the weight surcharge.
Shortly afterwards, we found a tennis court and were able to play tennis for several hours. Boy, life is hard when you are on vacation!
Following my flawed personality, I spent a wonderful two hours of early morning light walking along the beach, which is a wonderful light sand mixed with very sharp rocks which are either coral or what's left of volcanic rock. As the sand is so light in colour, it seems to be coral, which is born out a closer examination. Another, bit of information is that there are what appear to be clusters of many types of rock within hardened sandstone, or ash. A closer examination of the rocks reveals that they are a multitude of different types of sea organism and coral, probably thousands if not millions of years old.
Captain Cook Could not Run Away
For those that are not aware, the islands of Hawaii used to be called the Sandwich Islands after the English Lord that financed the Cook explorations. It is unfortunate that Captain Cook died on the beach of one of these isalnds, but hardly surprising because the sand is so soft underfoot that it is almost impossible to run away. Captain Cook would have no chance of escape by foot because he would have been so tired trying to get only a few feet along the coast. As it was, I found my morning walk was very tough going, and soon sought the grass inland from the beach. This is when, Ane and I found hole 14 of the Arnold Palmer designed golf course. I can only say, wow! What a magnificent course!
It reminded me very much of the old course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The green was enomous and in front of it and within it were more than a dozen sand traps. The grass was fast, very low cut, and beautifully manicured. Amazing!
As we walked along the green, there they were, the many lost golf balls of artful golfers. In all, I found seven. Anne found one. "Hurry," I said knowing my personality flaw. "We have got to escape this place!" My concern was, of course, that we would find so many balls that when returning home the plane would not be able to take off because of the wieght, or worse still that I might not be able to afford the weight surcharge.
Shortly afterwards, we found a tennis court and were able to play tennis for several hours. Boy, life is hard when you are on vacation!
Monday 14 January 2008
Getting it Right
If you have ever speculated about anything, you will realize how difficult it is to get something right when you are working from very partial information. Recently, I engaged myself in the process of trying to understand why the Roman legion which was supposed to be in Dumnonia, the Second Augusta Legion at the time of Boudicca's rebellion, did not come to the rescue of the Romans attacked by Boudicca in the east of England near London or Colchester. In fact, what happened was that instead the forces that had just finished their slaughter of peoples on the Isle of Mona in North West Wales were redeployed in the rescue attempt of fellow Romans, but only too late. They were in fact out for revenge, and the locals were also out for revenge. The fact that the history of the period was either lost by the Romans or deliberately suppressed makes it very interesting historically, but no one, yet, really knows what actually happened. My attempt at reconstruction is a struggle.
I am concerned, however, by the huge drop in population that occurred at the time of the Roman incursions into Britain. We might assume, as do many historians that the population was only one million instead of four million. If I assume four million, I want to know where the three missing millions of people disappeared to. I am not happy that they may have been forgotten in history, nor do I doubt that they, in fact, existed. The estimates of local people living at the time of the Romans arriving are much higher than the numbers at the end of the Roman period, unless, we are all missing something. One explanation is that the locals vacated realizing that the Romans were bent on the slaughter of all religious peoples. The Romans were embarrassed by there prior losses on the Eastern front and it would be no stretch of the imagination to think that they scared the 'piss' out of the island people, devotees of druidism, who as a direct result decided to evacuate en mass.
We have some evidence that some of the people living in Britain came from the continent and were very afraid of subjugation by Roman forces. We must therefore consider that many of the people that ended up in Scotland were relatively well endowed technologically, as in the case of knowing how to live in a cold climate, build shelter, feed themselves, organize and cloth themselves.
It seems to me, that the traditional explanation for Boudicca's rebellion may be missing the fact that she may have been aware of the imminent attack by the restrengthened Romans at Mona, the druid island, and may have been motivated to divert attention back towards her and away from the druids. The Roman leadership had switched from a military to an economic and religious fanaticism that focused extremely harsh solution to the British problem! These Romans were absolutely wicked by modern standards of warfare by no little stretch of the imagination. As in the case of the later tactics by Henry II in the hundred years war, noone was left living to tell the story. The numbers of people killed were immaterial to those doing the . Possibly, the Romans stationed in Dumnonia were occupied and the whole of Britain was struggling to divert the Romans from slaughtering their Druidic leadership.
In the received versions of history, we get the Roman slant on things which suggests that the Druids were rather diabolical and Rome was doing everyone a favour. This is also the position of the Roman church as it evolved. We may, however, be missing the obvious fact that the druids were very nice thank you and did not deserve to be wiped off the face of the early world map by any stretch of the imagination. We must not make the mistake, however, of judging them the same way that we can now judge the acts of the Romans of that day.
What history omits is the many attempts at genocide by the Roman forces in Britain and the continent. It is my theory that the population of Britain fell propitiously as the Romans arrived because people feared a second Veneti type genocide. Where did all these nice people go. Its fairly obvious that they may have taken their coracles and made it fast for Cumberland!
The Romans seemed to be proud that they slaughtered over a million people in order to gain control of Gaul. Did they slaughter three million in Britain, or did many of these people escape and eventually put a certain end to the Roman Empire? If one looks at Hadrian's wall, one gets the firm impression that there were more people North of Roman Britain than is commonly defined. The wall is much more of an effort than the weak fencing that USA puts up between it and Mexico. The Romans were, indeed, frightened of the people in the North, to the extreme, if we take on board the idea that their numbers were small and that they were backward.
I am concerned, however, by the huge drop in population that occurred at the time of the Roman incursions into Britain. We might assume, as do many historians that the population was only one million instead of four million. If I assume four million, I want to know where the three missing millions of people disappeared to. I am not happy that they may have been forgotten in history, nor do I doubt that they, in fact, existed. The estimates of local people living at the time of the Romans arriving are much higher than the numbers at the end of the Roman period, unless, we are all missing something. One explanation is that the locals vacated realizing that the Romans were bent on the slaughter of all religious peoples. The Romans were embarrassed by there prior losses on the Eastern front and it would be no stretch of the imagination to think that they scared the 'piss' out of the island people, devotees of druidism, who as a direct result decided to evacuate en mass.
We have some evidence that some of the people living in Britain came from the continent and were very afraid of subjugation by Roman forces. We must therefore consider that many of the people that ended up in Scotland were relatively well endowed technologically, as in the case of knowing how to live in a cold climate, build shelter, feed themselves, organize and cloth themselves.
It seems to me, that the traditional explanation for Boudicca's rebellion may be missing the fact that she may have been aware of the imminent attack by the restrengthened Romans at Mona, the druid island, and may have been motivated to divert attention back towards her and away from the druids. The Roman leadership had switched from a military to an economic and religious fanaticism that focused extremely harsh solution to the British problem! These Romans were absolutely wicked by modern standards of warfare by no little stretch of the imagination. As in the case of the later tactics by Henry II in the hundred years war, noone was left living to tell the story. The numbers of people killed were immaterial to those doing the . Possibly, the Romans stationed in Dumnonia were occupied and the whole of Britain was struggling to divert the Romans from slaughtering their Druidic leadership.
In the received versions of history, we get the Roman slant on things which suggests that the Druids were rather diabolical and Rome was doing everyone a favour. This is also the position of the Roman church as it evolved. We may, however, be missing the obvious fact that the druids were very nice thank you and did not deserve to be wiped off the face of the early world map by any stretch of the imagination. We must not make the mistake, however, of judging them the same way that we can now judge the acts of the Romans of that day.
What history omits is the many attempts at genocide by the Roman forces in Britain and the continent. It is my theory that the population of Britain fell propitiously as the Romans arrived because people feared a second Veneti type genocide. Where did all these nice people go. Its fairly obvious that they may have taken their coracles and made it fast for Cumberland!
The Romans seemed to be proud that they slaughtered over a million people in order to gain control of Gaul. Did they slaughter three million in Britain, or did many of these people escape and eventually put a certain end to the Roman Empire? If one looks at Hadrian's wall, one gets the firm impression that there were more people North of Roman Britain than is commonly defined. The wall is much more of an effort than the weak fencing that USA puts up between it and Mexico. The Romans were, indeed, frightened of the people in the North, to the extreme, if we take on board the idea that their numbers were small and that they were backward.
Friday 11 January 2008
Who was King Arthur? The Scoop
For many years, I have been reading about the British legendary King Arthur. I am even, at this very time, writing a book as part of my Wuh Lax novel series that will present the idea that King Arthur actually existed, but was lost in history. The name of my novel is Wuh Lax and the Lost King.
Where my story differs from many others is in the conclusion that historians were hiding something. By that I mean, Roman, Ecclesiastical, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Norman historians and writers were hiding something important. The Celtic writers were shouting and shouting who they thought Arthur was, where he lived, what he did, and why he was important to them. But, they did not write much down and got confused. This is where I step in to end the hiding and the confusion, or a least, suggest something rather interesting.
Its not totally my idea, but the others before me won't quite express the story in the way I do. This is because my story pulls the carpet from underneath the DaVinci code, Holy Blood, Charlemagne people, and all that rubbish about the son of Jesus Christ starting an European royal blood line.
That continental story is too far fetched and really does not hold water under close examination. DaVinci may have been clever, but he was not that clever. His paintings may have hidden some secrets, but they were more misinterpretations and prone to misrepresentation than some people would have you believe. No! I think I have the real scoop, and its not such a stretch of the imagination as the other stories you have been reading lately. My story is based on Vespasian and has a fantastic ending. Stay posted!
Where my story differs from many others is in the conclusion that historians were hiding something. By that I mean, Roman, Ecclesiastical, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Norman historians and writers were hiding something important. The Celtic writers were shouting and shouting who they thought Arthur was, where he lived, what he did, and why he was important to them. But, they did not write much down and got confused. This is where I step in to end the hiding and the confusion, or a least, suggest something rather interesting.
Its not totally my idea, but the others before me won't quite express the story in the way I do. This is because my story pulls the carpet from underneath the DaVinci code, Holy Blood, Charlemagne people, and all that rubbish about the son of Jesus Christ starting an European royal blood line.
That continental story is too far fetched and really does not hold water under close examination. DaVinci may have been clever, but he was not that clever. His paintings may have hidden some secrets, but they were more misinterpretations and prone to misrepresentation than some people would have you believe. No! I think I have the real scoop, and its not such a stretch of the imagination as the other stories you have been reading lately. My story is based on Vespasian and has a fantastic ending. Stay posted!
The Death Portion of the Microsoft Based Software Industrial Cycle
One of the most difficult tasks in economics is the forecasting of destructive cycles in new technology. The economics scientist and historian Joseph Schumpeter frequently wrote about the underlying cycles within industrial society that bring about irreversible technical change. He used the term creative destruction and he saw it as a process in which capitalism contained within the very strands of motion which forced radical departures from previous industrial structures.
Industrial Innovation Cycles of Creative Destruction and Opportunity
We saw such change and the industrial revisions that were wrought upon languages and hardware in the computer industry of the 1970's, which was dominated by computer companies that are now only residues of their former selves. It has been more than twenty five years since the commercial computer industry was hit by the introduction of the software of Microsoft and the microcomputer of IBM. Neither of these innovations were new or superior technologies, but they pushed forward a massive sociological and sweeping industrial cycle of innovation of proportions that the world had never seen before.
The World of Bill Gates as Viewed by an Macro Economic Historian
The company of Bill Gates, who I met at the time, being in the business of picking industrial winners, was shrewd enough to realize that its business was that of publishing and enabling. Bill therefore chose to maximize market size by means of a broad approach to industrial reform that was staggering at the time and strongly resisted at every level and within almost every industry, especially those that had vested in the use of very large processors running very awkward software.
A scientific analysis of economic industrial history, as I found out at the University of Cambridge in England was resisted by mainstream economics professors that could not cope with the idea that technology was a fundamental component of economic management even at the macro level. This notion is still resisted at the peril of those industrial nations who focus on theories of money economics and inflation failing to deal adequately with issues of employment and industrial change. The science of economics as it now stands is glaringly inadequate as an integrative field to merge the processes of a changing knowledge base, innovation of technology, industrial restructuring and money.
The results are examined as one would examine migration. Oops, industry just migrated from our former industrial base. Wonder what caused that. As the ill grounded economist would say, "Gee, I am not sure whether my economic ideas can tell you what to do about this. Guess you should inflate the housing market and then steel oil and blow something up. That should create more jobs, especially as we clean up the mess afterwards."
The economics theoreticians are still plying their medicine without comprehending the real technical forces at play and how to incorporate these into economic science. Thus, when there is a structural crisis, the real problems of enabling balanced industrial change are slipped behind a curtain of silence and politics determines the outcome, not science. Such an approach will produce a desert in the former industrial economies and an enormous underachievement of potentials. The real success of Bill Clinton was to appoint an advisor that also knew something about industrial change, look what happened, when the advisor left!
At the time of the introduction of the IBM PC, there was both software in the form of the MP/M system and hardware in the form of Techtronix systems, but these were never innovated in the way that could initiate a whole industrial cycle of creative destruction. Bill Gates at the time in 1981/2 talked to me several times as I presented myself as an Excel Developer. We had long discussions about the future of the BASIC language, which he claimed could be adapted to do almost anything and I argued that it should be, encouraging him to engage in the project of making BASIC available everywhere as a tool that everyone associated with computer processing could use.
As an economist, I could see that BASIC was a wonderful language tool that if published properly could revolutionize software development and bring about enormous change, at the time unthinkable. In the same discussion, which went on so long that his assistant had to pull him away, Bill and I talked about languages for a new era of microprocessors that I claimed would replace the single INTEL processor, rather a clugger, but aimed in the right direction. Bill claimed the processor was up to the task, but I was defiant and said that he needed to introduce language that would enable several processors to talk to each other and do specialized tasks.
This was an easy step for me to make logically, as an economist, because of Adam Smith, but technically Gates was reliant on INTEL's offering and his ownership of a single processor language tool. Getting multiple processors to talk between chips and within chips was very primitive, if you remember how the PCs and INTEL chips were configured in 1981. In fact, no company, not even the military suppliers had developed the appropriate language tools. The Motorola 68000 chip was technically superior to the INTEL chip, but the INTEL chip had attempted to integrate graphics in a way that was novel and interesting at the time albeit insufficient when compared to what Tektronix was doing. But, Tektronix was not innovating and Miscrosoft was. Both had the BASIC language and potential technology, but one was feeding from miltiary contracts. Oops!
Why Is the Language of Computing Changing and Where is It Going
The enormous revolution of the present day microcomputer industry arises from the use of a common language by device users and hosting providers. Google and Linux are the tip of an iceberg floating towards the Microsoft Titanic. Watch out for rips in strategy.
Industrial Innovation Cycles of Creative Destruction and Opportunity
We saw such change and the industrial revisions that were wrought upon languages and hardware in the computer industry of the 1970's, which was dominated by computer companies that are now only residues of their former selves. It has been more than twenty five years since the commercial computer industry was hit by the introduction of the software of Microsoft and the microcomputer of IBM. Neither of these innovations were new or superior technologies, but they pushed forward a massive sociological and sweeping industrial cycle of innovation of proportions that the world had never seen before.
The World of Bill Gates as Viewed by an Macro Economic Historian
The company of Bill Gates, who I met at the time, being in the business of picking industrial winners, was shrewd enough to realize that its business was that of publishing and enabling. Bill therefore chose to maximize market size by means of a broad approach to industrial reform that was staggering at the time and strongly resisted at every level and within almost every industry, especially those that had vested in the use of very large processors running very awkward software.
A scientific analysis of economic industrial history, as I found out at the University of Cambridge in England was resisted by mainstream economics professors that could not cope with the idea that technology was a fundamental component of economic management even at the macro level. This notion is still resisted at the peril of those industrial nations who focus on theories of money economics and inflation failing to deal adequately with issues of employment and industrial change. The science of economics as it now stands is glaringly inadequate as an integrative field to merge the processes of a changing knowledge base, innovation of technology, industrial restructuring and money.
The results are examined as one would examine migration. Oops, industry just migrated from our former industrial base. Wonder what caused that. As the ill grounded economist would say, "Gee, I am not sure whether my economic ideas can tell you what to do about this. Guess you should inflate the housing market and then steel oil and blow something up. That should create more jobs, especially as we clean up the mess afterwards."
The economics theoreticians are still plying their medicine without comprehending the real technical forces at play and how to incorporate these into economic science. Thus, when there is a structural crisis, the real problems of enabling balanced industrial change are slipped behind a curtain of silence and politics determines the outcome, not science. Such an approach will produce a desert in the former industrial economies and an enormous underachievement of potentials. The real success of Bill Clinton was to appoint an advisor that also knew something about industrial change, look what happened, when the advisor left!
At the time of the introduction of the IBM PC, there was both software in the form of the MP/M system and hardware in the form of Techtronix systems, but these were never innovated in the way that could initiate a whole industrial cycle of creative destruction. Bill Gates at the time in 1981/2 talked to me several times as I presented myself as an Excel Developer. We had long discussions about the future of the BASIC language, which he claimed could be adapted to do almost anything and I argued that it should be, encouraging him to engage in the project of making BASIC available everywhere as a tool that everyone associated with computer processing could use.
As an economist, I could see that BASIC was a wonderful language tool that if published properly could revolutionize software development and bring about enormous change, at the time unthinkable. In the same discussion, which went on so long that his assistant had to pull him away, Bill and I talked about languages for a new era of microprocessors that I claimed would replace the single INTEL processor, rather a clugger, but aimed in the right direction. Bill claimed the processor was up to the task, but I was defiant and said that he needed to introduce language that would enable several processors to talk to each other and do specialized tasks.
This was an easy step for me to make logically, as an economist, because of Adam Smith, but technically Gates was reliant on INTEL's offering and his ownership of a single processor language tool. Getting multiple processors to talk between chips and within chips was very primitive, if you remember how the PCs and INTEL chips were configured in 1981. In fact, no company, not even the military suppliers had developed the appropriate language tools. The Motorola 68000 chip was technically superior to the INTEL chip, but the INTEL chip had attempted to integrate graphics in a way that was novel and interesting at the time albeit insufficient when compared to what Tektronix was doing. But, Tektronix was not innovating and Miscrosoft was. Both had the BASIC language and potential technology, but one was feeding from miltiary contracts. Oops!
Why Is the Language of Computing Changing and Where is It Going
The enormous revolution of the present day microcomputer industry arises from the use of a common language by device users and hosting providers. Google and Linux are the tip of an iceberg floating towards the Microsoft Titanic. Watch out for rips in strategy.
Thursday 10 January 2008
Gratitude and the Open Book Laws of Association and Relativity
In an earlier blog, I presented the notion that 'the secret' was crass commercialization and little else. It behooves me to present the open and free alternative to 'the' secret.
My alternative to 'the secret' and the alleged 'laws of attraction', which incidentally do not work other than by random processes disguising advantageous associations, are the immutable laws of association and relativity. You have probably already learned of the laws of relativity from scientists of physics and cosmology and possibly from my earlier blogs.
Albert Einstein proposed the physical laws of specific and general relativity, which we have been able to refute. These same laws operate to give advantages to individuals through energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics, which says that chaos is ever on the increase.
It is my position, that recourse to quantum physics to explain a working layer of 'laws of attraction' will not suffice to explain more than my 'laws of association', and will miserably fail in comparison. The forces described in quantum physics do not invoke the 'laws of attraction' any more than I am attracted to bright colours. In the laws of association, we have the law that all sentient things are attracted to light.
Things and people, may not reach the light, some being made of stone, but if they can make decisions, they will seek the light. Witness in the winter season, the many people who flock to the beach for sunlight, or the Russians and Canadians who have a goal in life of gaining more sun light to the point of obsession. I should know, I am one of the above. As for the entities that cannot make decisions, we will need to ask whether they are governed by the laws of relativity, and the answer is yes! Now, if we have a spirit world that makes decisions, we will find that this world is also governed by the law of association.
Success in life and living is always associated with 'the light' and light. There is no living and decision making entity that is not governed by the laws of association with light. Remove light and you remove the effective law of attraction. The other law of attraction is imaginary nonsense and the result of a lack of understanding of basic mathematics. Associate with and seek light and you will be successful. The real problem is that poor and downtrodden people cannot associate with the light.
They either do not have the time, nor the means, nor the energy. It is a responsibility of those more fortunate people, who have the ying or yang to provide it, to be the big brother, the good Samaritan, the givers of life and energy. The impoverished people are not going to suddenly develop an understanding of some silly 'law of attraction' that will be a solution to their problems and challenges. The very idea is repugnant to common sense. Read Taleb's book and see how randomness turns many thinking people into arrogant fools.
What are the Laws of Association?
I wish I knew what all the laws of association were, but I can only give examples. Life and the enhancement of life is associated with languages and the free association of moving and living entities with each other. Poverty and death by starvation are associated with the absence of languages and restrictions on association as imposed by the natural environment or by people imposing their will on other people.
People who get sick are most often associated with genetic and environmental disease and bacterial or viral infection. These bacterial and viral infections are spread by means of vectors of association, such as family, social grouping, heredity, and so on. Good health of people and all living entities is associated with eating healthy foods and being within a healthy and positive sustainable environment. This is a no-brainer! Wake-up! This is for real. Associations determine outcomes.
If you are rich and healthy it is by your being associated with a pool of genes and resources that promote wealth and good health. No matter what you wish, you may not escape the challenges of cancer arising from your association with specific genes that begin to operate, or cease to operate, at certain times in your life. Thank about it. There are no ethereal laws of attraction to resolve your associations with being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to the wrong people.
Avoid Joining The Rise of the Irrational Solution : Think and Verify Before You Believe
Desperate times give impetus to desperate measures. It is not surprising that 'the secret' is so popular in the United States at a time when people are desperate for love and assurance and most specifically a sense of security. Dah, and then some dah!
Don't go in for the irrational panaceas, but concentrate on the proven laws of association and the physics of relativity. They have been established by serious and pain staking research and can be obtained in your university courses. Study psychology and learn how much we have discovered about how your mind really works.
If you really want love, wealth, health, security, and friends then work with the laws of association. Read the writings of enabling people such as Gittomer. You will see that your potential for success arises from who and what you associate yourself with. Associate with those who pull you down and you will go down. Associate with the positive in this world and you will become more positive. It is the laws of association that really count, not some silly notion of the laws of attraction occuring because of some misunderstood principles of quantum physics.
Associate with the rich and famous and you have at least chance of becoming rich and famous, especially if you try to develop a long term association with them. You want to become rich, you associate with service to the rich. Its that easy and the information is free. People who become rich and famous do things in association with service to the community. They increase your positive associations and they correspondingly increase your positive enhancements.
My alternative to 'the secret' and the alleged 'laws of attraction', which incidentally do not work other than by random processes disguising advantageous associations, are the immutable laws of association and relativity. You have probably already learned of the laws of relativity from scientists of physics and cosmology and possibly from my earlier blogs.
Albert Einstein proposed the physical laws of specific and general relativity, which we have been able to refute. These same laws operate to give advantages to individuals through energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics, which says that chaos is ever on the increase.
It is my position, that recourse to quantum physics to explain a working layer of 'laws of attraction' will not suffice to explain more than my 'laws of association', and will miserably fail in comparison. The forces described in quantum physics do not invoke the 'laws of attraction' any more than I am attracted to bright colours. In the laws of association, we have the law that all sentient things are attracted to light.
Things and people, may not reach the light, some being made of stone, but if they can make decisions, they will seek the light. Witness in the winter season, the many people who flock to the beach for sunlight, or the Russians and Canadians who have a goal in life of gaining more sun light to the point of obsession. I should know, I am one of the above. As for the entities that cannot make decisions, we will need to ask whether they are governed by the laws of relativity, and the answer is yes! Now, if we have a spirit world that makes decisions, we will find that this world is also governed by the law of association.
Success in life and living is always associated with 'the light' and light. There is no living and decision making entity that is not governed by the laws of association with light. Remove light and you remove the effective law of attraction. The other law of attraction is imaginary nonsense and the result of a lack of understanding of basic mathematics. Associate with and seek light and you will be successful. The real problem is that poor and downtrodden people cannot associate with the light.
They either do not have the time, nor the means, nor the energy. It is a responsibility of those more fortunate people, who have the ying or yang to provide it, to be the big brother, the good Samaritan, the givers of life and energy. The impoverished people are not going to suddenly develop an understanding of some silly 'law of attraction' that will be a solution to their problems and challenges. The very idea is repugnant to common sense. Read Taleb's book and see how randomness turns many thinking people into arrogant fools.
What are the Laws of Association?
I wish I knew what all the laws of association were, but I can only give examples. Life and the enhancement of life is associated with languages and the free association of moving and living entities with each other. Poverty and death by starvation are associated with the absence of languages and restrictions on association as imposed by the natural environment or by people imposing their will on other people.
People who get sick are most often associated with genetic and environmental disease and bacterial or viral infection. These bacterial and viral infections are spread by means of vectors of association, such as family, social grouping, heredity, and so on. Good health of people and all living entities is associated with eating healthy foods and being within a healthy and positive sustainable environment. This is a no-brainer! Wake-up! This is for real. Associations determine outcomes.
If you are rich and healthy it is by your being associated with a pool of genes and resources that promote wealth and good health. No matter what you wish, you may not escape the challenges of cancer arising from your association with specific genes that begin to operate, or cease to operate, at certain times in your life. Thank about it. There are no ethereal laws of attraction to resolve your associations with being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to the wrong people.
Avoid Joining The Rise of the Irrational Solution : Think and Verify Before You Believe
Desperate times give impetus to desperate measures. It is not surprising that 'the secret' is so popular in the United States at a time when people are desperate for love and assurance and most specifically a sense of security. Dah, and then some dah!
Don't go in for the irrational panaceas, but concentrate on the proven laws of association and the physics of relativity. They have been established by serious and pain staking research and can be obtained in your university courses. Study psychology and learn how much we have discovered about how your mind really works.
If you really want love, wealth, health, security, and friends then work with the laws of association. Read the writings of enabling people such as Gittomer. You will see that your potential for success arises from who and what you associate yourself with. Associate with those who pull you down and you will go down. Associate with the positive in this world and you will become more positive. It is the laws of association that really count, not some silly notion of the laws of attraction occuring because of some misunderstood principles of quantum physics.
Associate with the rich and famous and you have at least chance of becoming rich and famous, especially if you try to develop a long term association with them. You want to become rich, you associate with service to the rich. Its that easy and the information is free. People who become rich and famous do things in association with service to the community. They increase your positive associations and they correspondingly increase your positive enhancements.
A Cosmos in Which Light Stands Still
You have to admit light and gyroscopes both exhibit some very strange properties. Gyroscopes seem to spin and move in ways that don't seem connected to normal laws of physics. Light seems to move in ways that don't seem initially, at least, to conform to normal laws of physics. Both light and gyroscopes are subject to processes in ways that do not easily conform to what we regard as normal reality. In fact, gyroscopes do conform to the laws of physics, but we see that we need to have a clearer idea of the nature of gravity. Light obeys physical laws, but we may be misinterpreting how. I just throw out my reservation, not because I know how, but because it is an interesting proposition, i.e. that science may have its explanation all wrong. What we experience in our reality is torque, which conveys directed energy. When we do not experience torque of any shape or form, we may not detect it. If our senses and reality are geared only to torque, we may miss the entire show around us.
If I throw a rock at something, such as a fan, that is spinning very fast, it will be defected and bounce off the spinning object. If the spin is very fast then the deflection is at a different angle than if it is very slow. If I hit the spinning object at an angle, it will probably deflect differently that if I hit it at another angle.
What determines the deflection is a collection of several process and configurations: the speed that I throw the rock, the strength of the rock, the speed the fan is spinning, the shape of the blades of the fan, the direction the fan's blades are pointing, the existence even of the fan in my story, the twist that I put into my throw of the rock. The list of possibilities grows with imagination.
What if the fan as a whole is moving? It could be moving toward my rock or away from it. It could be moving away faster than I can throw my rock. What if the fan is spiraling? What if the fan is spinning clockwise or counterclockwise, what if the direction of spin is random or not easily understood? Too many questions. I am getting a head ache thinking about my fan.
What if I do not understand the configuration of the spinning fan at all. What if it is a collection of waggling points, the ends of long strings stretching endlessly into the distance. What if the spinning fan is the side of these strings rather than the end points. Now I am confused.
I have a really difficult time understanding time! Time, light, matter, gyroscopic movement, location and spin are all very mysterious concepts. How should I put them together to make sense of my cosmos? Do I give up, or do I think about it, persevere until I have some answers? What would you do?
What I am trying to convey is that we don't really know that much about the properties light and its environment matter. We begin our analysis by making assumptions. We see ourselves as still and enveloped in light. We don't sense our own movement as a collection of material entities akin, but not the same as light. We think of ourselves as complete objects and not collections of very tiny objects that we know very little about. We have little idea about the associations between the material we are made of, which incidently is not dust, but dust it seems like sometimes.
As I am throwing my rock, I may experience a breeze coming from my spinning fan. The breeze gives me something to work against so that I may need to expend energy other than that needed just to throw my rock, otherwise my rock will not hit its target.
Our existence is intricately linked to light and water, heat and motion. These properties are complexly interwoven in the fabric of our cosmos in ways that we are just beginning to understand, or are we? How many false trails will it now take to get us on the pathes of real discovery. I do not know, but that is the risky world of science in which we now must engage or risk wasting our existence in ignorance no more elevated than our ancestral predecessors.
Our science tells us that light is photons, particle and wave forms of energy, but also organized by fields, which we don't see and time which we cannot really measure and which seems to bend back on itself.
If you can imagine that time does not exist and light is standing still, you are capable of imagining my Wuh Lax of 50 AD. Not all people can, but those that can experience a trip and adventures that are amazing in their dimensions.
If I throw a rock at something, such as a fan, that is spinning very fast, it will be defected and bounce off the spinning object. If the spin is very fast then the deflection is at a different angle than if it is very slow. If I hit the spinning object at an angle, it will probably deflect differently that if I hit it at another angle.
What determines the deflection is a collection of several process and configurations: the speed that I throw the rock, the strength of the rock, the speed the fan is spinning, the shape of the blades of the fan, the direction the fan's blades are pointing, the existence even of the fan in my story, the twist that I put into my throw of the rock. The list of possibilities grows with imagination.
What if the fan as a whole is moving? It could be moving toward my rock or away from it. It could be moving away faster than I can throw my rock. What if the fan is spiraling? What if the fan is spinning clockwise or counterclockwise, what if the direction of spin is random or not easily understood? Too many questions. I am getting a head ache thinking about my fan.
What if I do not understand the configuration of the spinning fan at all. What if it is a collection of waggling points, the ends of long strings stretching endlessly into the distance. What if the spinning fan is the side of these strings rather than the end points. Now I am confused.
I have a really difficult time understanding time! Time, light, matter, gyroscopic movement, location and spin are all very mysterious concepts. How should I put them together to make sense of my cosmos? Do I give up, or do I think about it, persevere until I have some answers? What would you do?
What I am trying to convey is that we don't really know that much about the properties light and its environment matter. We begin our analysis by making assumptions. We see ourselves as still and enveloped in light. We don't sense our own movement as a collection of material entities akin, but not the same as light. We think of ourselves as complete objects and not collections of very tiny objects that we know very little about. We have little idea about the associations between the material we are made of, which incidently is not dust, but dust it seems like sometimes.
As I am throwing my rock, I may experience a breeze coming from my spinning fan. The breeze gives me something to work against so that I may need to expend energy other than that needed just to throw my rock, otherwise my rock will not hit its target.
Our existence is intricately linked to light and water, heat and motion. These properties are complexly interwoven in the fabric of our cosmos in ways that we are just beginning to understand, or are we? How many false trails will it now take to get us on the pathes of real discovery. I do not know, but that is the risky world of science in which we now must engage or risk wasting our existence in ignorance no more elevated than our ancestral predecessors.
Our science tells us that light is photons, particle and wave forms of energy, but also organized by fields, which we don't see and time which we cannot really measure and which seems to bend back on itself.
If you can imagine that time does not exist and light is standing still, you are capable of imagining my Wuh Lax of 50 AD. Not all people can, but those that can experience a trip and adventures that are amazing in their dimensions.
Faster than the Speed of Light
If Jay Leno is right, scientists have discovered that light is so fast that it can travel backwards in time.
Oh my! Oh my!
Can that be true?
Is light deciding where to go before it decides where to go. That's like saying human beings make decisions before they make decisions. Can that be true? Do we decide something before we decide something? If we do, then we need to think hard and deep about the process of deciding.
Can it be that both light and our own thought are not governed by what we think of as time, energy and causality? If that is the case, what is the cosmos really like?
Light is Still
Is light moving, or has part of the universe changed direction. Possibly, just possibly, light travelling backward in time shows us something fundamental about our cosmos that we have misunderstood. I think, we have a real problem with the notion that our cosmos is something other than what everyone is telling us. It may be that time is not what we think it to be, nor light, nor matter. What should we think about time, matter, and light? How should we think of them?
If I knew all the answers, I would not be where I am, which is sitting at my desk writing this blog, which you may very well think is not worth the effort of reading. However, I am not deterred by that possibility. It may be that I am on to something when I say that light has no motion. Think about it and the consequences, if I am correct, for science and religion.
Oh my! Oh my!
Can that be true?
Is light deciding where to go before it decides where to go. That's like saying human beings make decisions before they make decisions. Can that be true? Do we decide something before we decide something? If we do, then we need to think hard and deep about the process of deciding.
Can it be that both light and our own thought are not governed by what we think of as time, energy and causality? If that is the case, what is the cosmos really like?
Light is Still
Is light moving, or has part of the universe changed direction. Possibly, just possibly, light travelling backward in time shows us something fundamental about our cosmos that we have misunderstood. I think, we have a real problem with the notion that our cosmos is something other than what everyone is telling us. It may be that time is not what we think it to be, nor light, nor matter. What should we think about time, matter, and light? How should we think of them?
If I knew all the answers, I would not be where I am, which is sitting at my desk writing this blog, which you may very well think is not worth the effort of reading. However, I am not deterred by that possibility. It may be that I am on to something when I say that light has no motion. Think about it and the consequences, if I am correct, for science and religion.
A Most Deadly Secret
The no-brainer in the notion of "The Secret" is the corollary observation that if you know a secret, or even 'the' secret, then you will most certainly attract something, or someone, to you, and it won't be pleasant. This is because there are real secrets out there and there are people who will do anything to ensure that these secrets are kept. The promise of death is what ensures the 'law of attraction'. Learn the real secrets and you will almost certainly come under the influence of the various laws of attraction. The real issue is whether you can reveal real secrets without attracting those who would destroy you.
Secrets are secrets because they relate to life and death issues, or issues that translate eventually into life and death issues because of expectations of changes that the secrets will set in motion. To say that there are laws of attraction associated with secrets is obvious. The question is why anyone would say that they know a secret and are willing to tell us about that secret. Such behaviour is not very rational unless the secret is that they are using the real 'laws of attraction' in order to set themselves up. Saying that you have a secret is an obvious way of attracting people to you, if they think that you will tell them the secret. It is small wonder then that 'The Secret' was up there in the best seller list.
What About the Real Secret
The last thing that I would want to do is tell you real secrets, so don't expect real secrets from my blog. The reason is obvious to me. If I were to reveal secrets then you would be attracted to my blog for that reason rather than the reasons that I would prefer, such as that you wish to be able to think for yourself rather than have everyone reveal their secrets to you. The difference between someone who thinks for themselves is that they have at least a chance of being original and creative.
If you don't think for yourself then you will be a copy cat, and remain part of an adaption diffusion world, the 's' world, the world of the snake, the slithering, sliding, slippery world of down, down, down. However, if you begin to think, you will create another world, you will make use of ladders to climb higher and higher. You will eventually get above the clouds of ignorance and you will be shone upon by the sun and the stars. That is no secret. You will shine when you seek the real secrets of this cosmos.
The Intelligences Behind the Laws of Attraction
When I first really read Norman Vincent Peale, it was after I had read the book 'The Secret'. What amazed me was that Norman knew the so-called laws of attraction. If you read his book on the power of positive thinking, you will see what I mean. His writing is, of course, very pertinent in today's world. What we often fail to see is the very real secret that Norman was speaking of, and it is not what is described in current book on the laws of attraction. To learn the real secrets of life and living, you need to read Norman Vincent Peale's book from cover to cover.
Much of what is written in "The Secret" which claims an understanding of hidden laws is basically utter unforgivable commercial crap, or to be more specific, it is unscientific, and irreligious crap. It is worse than junk food for the mind. You would be better off reading and absorbing the writing of Norman Vincent Peale who was an individual who was, at least, grounded in science and religion. Now, don't pout, but I am serious about this. "The Secret" is not 'the' secret, it is 'junk food for the mind and mindless' or 'crap' written by people who know that people are attracted to secrets.
The idea that if you want something badly enough it will come to you is utter hogwash and any student of poverty and sickness in the third world, a real world by the way, should tell you that, no shout it or scream it to you. The very idea of the 'laws of attraction' is an insult to the intelligence of a thinking individual and is probably unforgivable in thinking and reasoning individuals. You are better off reading Norman's writing, which will help you see the world as it is, not climb on board some new 's' curve of marketing and manipulation!
The Real Secrets
The real world and the spiritual world do not obey the laws of attraction, they obey the laws of association and relativity. The real secrets are the secrets of association that scientific exploration and religious pilgrimage is all about.
If I unveiled a real secret, I would be doing you a favour, so here goes. The main and real secret of life is that you need to think for yourself. If you can't do that you will most likely fail in your life. It is your independence that gives you hope, and the freedom to express that independence in a meaningful way that gives you power. If you wish to figure out the secrets of our cosmos look to the spiritual laws of association and physical laws of relativity.
Secrets can Get you Killed and Lead a Country into Stupid Wars
In the cosmos, it is the real secrets that can get you killed. The real secrets are ignorance produced by not researching your problems or challenges sufficiently. You are unaware of many things. As Robert McNamara states in his film of his years as US Secretary of Defense, he and America did not research Viet Nam's history sufficiently before 1964 when they intervened in a civil war that they thought was part of the international cold war. Jack Kennedy had been assassinated by people, we don't know whom and America lost its reason in Johnson, who was very very second relative to Kennedy.
In the present world, George Bush and his advisers did not research sufficiently the position of Iraq on weapons of mass destruction before they took their nation and the UK into a conflict that has a civil war and oil production at its roots. You must ask yourself whether this was the result of opportunism by those who would benefit, and who died that could have revealed the nature of that opportunism. The damage of 911 and of anthrax are due to a lack of sufficient research into who and what is responsible for attitudes of greed and mistrust that lead to conflict. Yes, most wars are stupid because they are almost always come from people acting and doing based on ignorance or opportunism, the producers of weapons who benefit commercially from the creation of wars, and who conduct their business in secret. They are the people who have real secrets and you are alive because you don't know them!
The real secrets are held by the conspirators to peace. They are held by people who engage in the games of conflict and opportunism. They arise by design of human beings in associations that drive people to hide, obfuscate, cloud, fog, misrepresent in ways to deceive, lie, cheat and win by stealth, force and deception. Yes, the world can be and is ugly, and as McNamara says, it gets out of hand very quickly. He says that war is so complex that the human mind cannot grasp all the many destructive variables that need to be understood. He is almost certainly right when he says that in war, your own ignorance is your greatest enemy, not the other side.
Secrets are secrets because they relate to life and death issues, or issues that translate eventually into life and death issues because of expectations of changes that the secrets will set in motion. To say that there are laws of attraction associated with secrets is obvious. The question is why anyone would say that they know a secret and are willing to tell us about that secret. Such behaviour is not very rational unless the secret is that they are using the real 'laws of attraction' in order to set themselves up. Saying that you have a secret is an obvious way of attracting people to you, if they think that you will tell them the secret. It is small wonder then that 'The Secret' was up there in the best seller list.
What About the Real Secret
The last thing that I would want to do is tell you real secrets, so don't expect real secrets from my blog. The reason is obvious to me. If I were to reveal secrets then you would be attracted to my blog for that reason rather than the reasons that I would prefer, such as that you wish to be able to think for yourself rather than have everyone reveal their secrets to you. The difference between someone who thinks for themselves is that they have at least a chance of being original and creative.
If you don't think for yourself then you will be a copy cat, and remain part of an adaption diffusion world, the 's' world, the world of the snake, the slithering, sliding, slippery world of down, down, down. However, if you begin to think, you will create another world, you will make use of ladders to climb higher and higher. You will eventually get above the clouds of ignorance and you will be shone upon by the sun and the stars. That is no secret. You will shine when you seek the real secrets of this cosmos.
The Intelligences Behind the Laws of Attraction
When I first really read Norman Vincent Peale, it was after I had read the book 'The Secret'. What amazed me was that Norman knew the so-called laws of attraction. If you read his book on the power of positive thinking, you will see what I mean. His writing is, of course, very pertinent in today's world. What we often fail to see is the very real secret that Norman was speaking of, and it is not what is described in current book on the laws of attraction. To learn the real secrets of life and living, you need to read Norman Vincent Peale's book from cover to cover.
Much of what is written in "The Secret" which claims an understanding of hidden laws is basically utter unforgivable commercial crap, or to be more specific, it is unscientific, and irreligious crap. It is worse than junk food for the mind. You would be better off reading and absorbing the writing of Norman Vincent Peale who was an individual who was, at least, grounded in science and religion. Now, don't pout, but I am serious about this. "The Secret" is not 'the' secret, it is 'junk food for the mind and mindless' or 'crap' written by people who know that people are attracted to secrets.
The idea that if you want something badly enough it will come to you is utter hogwash and any student of poverty and sickness in the third world, a real world by the way, should tell you that, no shout it or scream it to you. The very idea of the 'laws of attraction' is an insult to the intelligence of a thinking individual and is probably unforgivable in thinking and reasoning individuals. You are better off reading Norman's writing, which will help you see the world as it is, not climb on board some new 's' curve of marketing and manipulation!
The Real Secrets
The real world and the spiritual world do not obey the laws of attraction, they obey the laws of association and relativity. The real secrets are the secrets of association that scientific exploration and religious pilgrimage is all about.
If I unveiled a real secret, I would be doing you a favour, so here goes. The main and real secret of life is that you need to think for yourself. If you can't do that you will most likely fail in your life. It is your independence that gives you hope, and the freedom to express that independence in a meaningful way that gives you power. If you wish to figure out the secrets of our cosmos look to the spiritual laws of association and physical laws of relativity.
Secrets can Get you Killed and Lead a Country into Stupid Wars
In the cosmos, it is the real secrets that can get you killed. The real secrets are ignorance produced by not researching your problems or challenges sufficiently. You are unaware of many things. As Robert McNamara states in his film of his years as US Secretary of Defense, he and America did not research Viet Nam's history sufficiently before 1964 when they intervened in a civil war that they thought was part of the international cold war. Jack Kennedy had been assassinated by people, we don't know whom and America lost its reason in Johnson, who was very very second relative to Kennedy.
In the present world, George Bush and his advisers did not research sufficiently the position of Iraq on weapons of mass destruction before they took their nation and the UK into a conflict that has a civil war and oil production at its roots. You must ask yourself whether this was the result of opportunism by those who would benefit, and who died that could have revealed the nature of that opportunism. The damage of 911 and of anthrax are due to a lack of sufficient research into who and what is responsible for attitudes of greed and mistrust that lead to conflict. Yes, most wars are stupid because they are almost always come from people acting and doing based on ignorance or opportunism, the producers of weapons who benefit commercially from the creation of wars, and who conduct their business in secret. They are the people who have real secrets and you are alive because you don't know them!
The real secrets are held by the conspirators to peace. They are held by people who engage in the games of conflict and opportunism. They arise by design of human beings in associations that drive people to hide, obfuscate, cloud, fog, misrepresent in ways to deceive, lie, cheat and win by stealth, force and deception. Yes, the world can be and is ugly, and as McNamara says, it gets out of hand very quickly. He says that war is so complex that the human mind cannot grasp all the many destructive variables that need to be understood. He is almost certainly right when he says that in war, your own ignorance is your greatest enemy, not the other side.
Wednesday 9 January 2008
Researching the Ancient Past
One of my favourite activities is researching the past. It is through an attempt to reach back in time that one gains a footing that allows one to move forward in time. What one realizes is how much the realm of time is akin to an enormous tree whose roots stretch down into the rotted past and whose branches reach upward into the light of the sun and speculations as to where one's future lies. In both cases the process is an active process in which time does not have an existence other than as a marker of the present moment in a very tiny space that one thinks of as one's present awareness.
A Forest of Life
The forest analogy applies and seems to fit very very well. The past is very much like the bedding and soil of a large forest in which the trees have a foundation and suffocate all but the longest living in a canopy of position and action. The taller the tree the greater the advantages conferred from its ability to drive roots deeper and deeper into the ground until they reach a well spring of water that feeds the present and future continuously lubricating and enabling the present and affording branches the liquid they need to stretch ever higher and higher into their future.
Being able to see both the forest and the trees is a challenge to an author that seeks to recreate elements of the past that form the mighty branches of the trees that form the present. In a world of human beings the past is literally the remains of ancestral trees that oft times live deep in the soil, unrecognizable in the present, the dust or soil of human remains has given life to a host of creatures that have been born of seeds, nurtured by sunlight, lived and acted within their relative spheres of action, died, possibly to be preserved or to become the food of subsequent generations. Hosted in libraries or eaten by life, the relics of the past become the food of the future.
Light is the Source of Life and Our Being
And, so the cycle of life, birth and death is repeated over and over again in its myriad of forms. Its manifestations ever being reborn, transformed and inspired by creations of light. Who can not revere the many ancient peoples for studying and worshipping light. It is the agent of all life and is the preserver of all things. For, within light there is information that is retained forever.
Talk about the infinite! Light is the great storage place of information about the past and future of all living things, animal, plant, mineral, gas, molecular, astronomic, cosmic. Yes, of everything that ever was and will be.
In the Time of Wim and Wuh
We are the transformation of light energy into action, literally. We move and have our being because of light. Light pervades everything we know. This is why the School of Light was created and why light is the focus of the lives of Wimbledum and Wuh Lax in my novels of ancient times.
The Importance of Finding What's down There in the Root Area
Obviously, our past is mostly something that is trodden on and has our least respect. The past is rotten in a literal sense. It represents a horrific dark stage in what otherwise would be a golden world of sunshine. From the past, emerge the demons and the unknown or esoteric challenges to present conventions. Best to keep the past hidden, eh! Something might reach up from the past to challenge our reality present and uncertain future. All our future, emerges from our shared and collective pasts. What do these pasts hide that might intervene in the present?
When we examine the past we see that a lot of human blood was spilt, a lot of trees were felled and innumerable entities were sacrificed towards goals that we may presently regard as meaningless. The past is, however, anything but meaningless. Within the past is all the meaning that drives the present forward and gives credence to the goals of the future. As our children are born, we do not burden them with all the information of the 'sins' of the past, but we do water down relevant facts that we, as custodians of information about the past, regard as protective of their future.
Historical Secrets that Harm by Creating Ignorance
In the process of guarding information about the past, we deny our children the pain of experiencing the many strands of experience that have shaped the present. Cleansed and cleared of debris, we convey the impression that nothing was achieved and that the past is something that is not relevant.
We denigrate the past by say that it is history. It is valueless. It is gone. Why think about the past? Move on and deal with your future. In presenting and hiding our case for the past, we deny the soil that is relevant for building a taller structure in the future. We wonder why our kids are shallow, why they make so many mistakes, why they do not have respect, and why we see wars and conflict after so much was done to create the peace, that we and our ancestors fought for, our trees were cut done for, and which provide the shaky foundations of our many presents.
Our offspring are denied the information that they need to deal with issues that come from the past and impact our present in ways that we cannot imagine without a thorough understanding of our past. We tend to put the blinkers on our children thinking that this will protect them. Instead, we create the ditches that will lead them to their slaughter in wars and conflicts, errors and mistakes that we have created for them. We must tell them about the slaughters committed by Caesar to repay debt. We all need to be mindful of the atrocities of Hitler and his gangs to repay the debt of humiliation. We need to be aware of the future potential for crimes of Russia by inspired Putins who would reach into the past to avenge our arrogance and deceit.
We give our children a living hell, proclaim it to be paradise and wonder why they and those that emerge from our uneven past would destroy the foundations we have created for them as they realize that we are misleading them into their futures. We cannot succeed without building the bridges to understanding the past and coming to terms with its implications in our futures.
Our Biggest Mistakes are Our Lack of Understanding Historical Forces and Debt
The biggest mistake that we make is to believe in time when time does not really exist. We see time as our excuse to ignore our past. We say to ourselves that the past is not the present and that the future is not the past. In so doing, we lie to ourselves and we deny that which is our very salvation, which is that the past, present, and future are one and the same process.
When we should have our children understand the past, we make it unattractive and relegate it to the rubbish heap like so much that will pollute our futures. We hide our caustic dump sites in the landscape hoping that they will not poison our presents and our futures, but this is our biggest mistake. Pollution and debt coming from the past is something that we need to address on a continuing basis.
By revealing the past and opening it up, we can learn how to deal with it more effectively and our understanding will enable a stronger base on which to build the future. Our system of debt based capitalism needs to be understood in its historical sense and the models of Marx updated to show whether and how the processes of so-called free economic activity can hurt and destroy people.
We all need to work towards continuously healing and revising our systems before they create situations where the only change will be catastrophic. If we do not create a capitalist system that can deal effectively with the challenges of financial debt, we will see it destroy the futures of our children. Our governments are bankrupted in their neglect of the issues that bring about violence and conflict. They do not understand the perfidious nature of debt and how it provides the basis of war as in the past and into the future.
We need to continuously chip away at our failing systems so that they do not provide a landslide or tsunami of uncontrollable forces. Our denials of the past can and will be destructive if they are not dealt with in the most thorough way using our greatest intelligence and ingenuity. Without chipping away at our problems, we create the Middle East and East European crises that prevent a healing our relationships. Without a grounding of understanding that comes with an understanding of our histories, we move blindly to destroy our friends around the world and they us.
Russia, Cambodia, China need to understand what the idealism of communism did to hurt people. Germany needs to understand what the killing of innocents did to hurt people. America needs to understand what the killing of native peoples did to hurt people. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China and Italy, need to understand what the killing people in their colonies did to hurt people.
We need to heal our presents by having our children come to terms with the many atrocities of the past despite the pain and discomfort that this temporarily creates as we clear up the rubbish tips we would otherwise hide and which would fester under our feet. We need to teach history in ways that our children can see for themselves how to resolve difficult issues and heal the many wounds emerging from our pasts.
A Forest of Life
The forest analogy applies and seems to fit very very well. The past is very much like the bedding and soil of a large forest in which the trees have a foundation and suffocate all but the longest living in a canopy of position and action. The taller the tree the greater the advantages conferred from its ability to drive roots deeper and deeper into the ground until they reach a well spring of water that feeds the present and future continuously lubricating and enabling the present and affording branches the liquid they need to stretch ever higher and higher into their future.
Being able to see both the forest and the trees is a challenge to an author that seeks to recreate elements of the past that form the mighty branches of the trees that form the present. In a world of human beings the past is literally the remains of ancestral trees that oft times live deep in the soil, unrecognizable in the present, the dust or soil of human remains has given life to a host of creatures that have been born of seeds, nurtured by sunlight, lived and acted within their relative spheres of action, died, possibly to be preserved or to become the food of subsequent generations. Hosted in libraries or eaten by life, the relics of the past become the food of the future.
Light is the Source of Life and Our Being
And, so the cycle of life, birth and death is repeated over and over again in its myriad of forms. Its manifestations ever being reborn, transformed and inspired by creations of light. Who can not revere the many ancient peoples for studying and worshipping light. It is the agent of all life and is the preserver of all things. For, within light there is information that is retained forever.
Talk about the infinite! Light is the great storage place of information about the past and future of all living things, animal, plant, mineral, gas, molecular, astronomic, cosmic. Yes, of everything that ever was and will be.
In the Time of Wim and Wuh
We are the transformation of light energy into action, literally. We move and have our being because of light. Light pervades everything we know. This is why the School of Light was created and why light is the focus of the lives of Wimbledum and Wuh Lax in my novels of ancient times.
The Importance of Finding What's down There in the Root Area
Obviously, our past is mostly something that is trodden on and has our least respect. The past is rotten in a literal sense. It represents a horrific dark stage in what otherwise would be a golden world of sunshine. From the past, emerge the demons and the unknown or esoteric challenges to present conventions. Best to keep the past hidden, eh! Something might reach up from the past to challenge our reality present and uncertain future. All our future, emerges from our shared and collective pasts. What do these pasts hide that might intervene in the present?
When we examine the past we see that a lot of human blood was spilt, a lot of trees were felled and innumerable entities were sacrificed towards goals that we may presently regard as meaningless. The past is, however, anything but meaningless. Within the past is all the meaning that drives the present forward and gives credence to the goals of the future. As our children are born, we do not burden them with all the information of the 'sins' of the past, but we do water down relevant facts that we, as custodians of information about the past, regard as protective of their future.
Historical Secrets that Harm by Creating Ignorance
In the process of guarding information about the past, we deny our children the pain of experiencing the many strands of experience that have shaped the present. Cleansed and cleared of debris, we convey the impression that nothing was achieved and that the past is something that is not relevant.
We denigrate the past by say that it is history. It is valueless. It is gone. Why think about the past? Move on and deal with your future. In presenting and hiding our case for the past, we deny the soil that is relevant for building a taller structure in the future. We wonder why our kids are shallow, why they make so many mistakes, why they do not have respect, and why we see wars and conflict after so much was done to create the peace, that we and our ancestors fought for, our trees were cut done for, and which provide the shaky foundations of our many presents.
Our offspring are denied the information that they need to deal with issues that come from the past and impact our present in ways that we cannot imagine without a thorough understanding of our past. We tend to put the blinkers on our children thinking that this will protect them. Instead, we create the ditches that will lead them to their slaughter in wars and conflicts, errors and mistakes that we have created for them. We must tell them about the slaughters committed by Caesar to repay debt. We all need to be mindful of the atrocities of Hitler and his gangs to repay the debt of humiliation. We need to be aware of the future potential for crimes of Russia by inspired Putins who would reach into the past to avenge our arrogance and deceit.
We give our children a living hell, proclaim it to be paradise and wonder why they and those that emerge from our uneven past would destroy the foundations we have created for them as they realize that we are misleading them into their futures. We cannot succeed without building the bridges to understanding the past and coming to terms with its implications in our futures.
Our Biggest Mistakes are Our Lack of Understanding Historical Forces and Debt
The biggest mistake that we make is to believe in time when time does not really exist. We see time as our excuse to ignore our past. We say to ourselves that the past is not the present and that the future is not the past. In so doing, we lie to ourselves and we deny that which is our very salvation, which is that the past, present, and future are one and the same process.
When we should have our children understand the past, we make it unattractive and relegate it to the rubbish heap like so much that will pollute our futures. We hide our caustic dump sites in the landscape hoping that they will not poison our presents and our futures, but this is our biggest mistake. Pollution and debt coming from the past is something that we need to address on a continuing basis.
By revealing the past and opening it up, we can learn how to deal with it more effectively and our understanding will enable a stronger base on which to build the future. Our system of debt based capitalism needs to be understood in its historical sense and the models of Marx updated to show whether and how the processes of so-called free economic activity can hurt and destroy people.
We all need to work towards continuously healing and revising our systems before they create situations where the only change will be catastrophic. If we do not create a capitalist system that can deal effectively with the challenges of financial debt, we will see it destroy the futures of our children. Our governments are bankrupted in their neglect of the issues that bring about violence and conflict. They do not understand the perfidious nature of debt and how it provides the basis of war as in the past and into the future.
We need to continuously chip away at our failing systems so that they do not provide a landslide or tsunami of uncontrollable forces. Our denials of the past can and will be destructive if they are not dealt with in the most thorough way using our greatest intelligence and ingenuity. Without chipping away at our problems, we create the Middle East and East European crises that prevent a healing our relationships. Without a grounding of understanding that comes with an understanding of our histories, we move blindly to destroy our friends around the world and they us.
Russia, Cambodia, China need to understand what the idealism of communism did to hurt people. Germany needs to understand what the killing of innocents did to hurt people. America needs to understand what the killing of native peoples did to hurt people. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China and Italy, need to understand what the killing people in their colonies did to hurt people.
We need to heal our presents by having our children come to terms with the many atrocities of the past despite the pain and discomfort that this temporarily creates as we clear up the rubbish tips we would otherwise hide and which would fester under our feet. We need to teach history in ways that our children can see for themselves how to resolve difficult issues and heal the many wounds emerging from our pasts.
Tuesday 8 January 2008
Living to be One Thousand a Myth, Dream or Possibility
When I first read Genesis in the Bible, I was curious about the giants and the people who lived to be a long age. Someone explained to me that the people who lived beyond five hundred years were not individual people but families. Still, the notion of living to a very old age was inspiring. We see around us trees that survive human beings and live to be well over two thousand years old. How?
Recently, the odds have improved that a few people may live to an age that staggers the imagination. Again, one needs to ask the questions how and what is the evidence. Most people I talk to about the issue say that living so long is not attractive. They site the loss of friends and immediate family as their biggest concern.
Who says that people can live much longer? We know that Ponce de Leon searched Florida for something that would allow long life and he appears to have failed. What sent him on the mission and have the odds now improved because companies and research groups are beginning to understand how the body actually works rather than what works on the body?
The Washington Post recently ran with a story about Aubrey de Grey, a 'young' man in California, who has just published a book on ending aging. They report on a competition amongst biologists to assess whether the idea is completely implausible or whether there is a possibility. The odds are stacked up against a person, even one in the future, living beyond one hundred years, but what are the real determinants of the possibilities? If you have one thousand dollars to give each year for 25 years, you can join a group that seeks the science of curing aging.
The Determinants of the Aging Process
The determinants can be organized into many groups of determinants:
1. what you eat, drink, and consume that strengthens or weakens your body's healthy normal functioning
2. what you breath and how well,
3. how often you exercise your whole body,
4. how well you tend to all your senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch,
5. whether you have a mate and regular exchanges of a meaningful and intimate nature,
6. how well all your body systems function, especially respiration, digestion, immune, neurological, physical, and cognitive systems,
7. how well you function within your support groups,
8. where you live and engage with other people,
9. how well endowed you are with the right genes,
10. how well financed you are,
11. whether you are under stress,
12. whether you are happy and feel in control,
13. how easy it is for you to be motivated to create and engage in activity that is pychologically enhancing,
14. what systems can be put in place to help strengthen those systems in your body that fight disease, that resist aging, that heal and promote a sense of well being,
15. how well you fit into your community,
16. how quickly the sciences needed to support your anti-aging programs are put into place,
17. How well you can sustain a positive attitude and initiative to continue with life and life strengthening activity,
18. whether your community and you can protect itself against those forces of nature that would increase the risk of dying abd contamination,
19. whether there is international peace and shared prosperity for you and your neighbours,
20. whether the intractible issues of poverty, disease, hunger, lack of shelter and clean water can be resolved,
21. whether you and your neighbours can develop spiritually,
22. whether nature's systems survive along with you and strengthen,
23. whether there is sustainability and balance in your environment for the widest variety of people, animals, plants, and the earth ecology,
24. whether the supportive natural, physical and social sciences supporting longetivity are developing at a sufficient pace,
25. whether the depressing problem of debt can be eliminated.
What is the Score?
Whether you achieve a high score or not, you will begin to realize how interconnected we are to other people and the many natural and geophysical support systems of our planet. We house an extremely complicated world, and it is not getting any simpler. If we are to increase the odds of living longer, it needs to be a community effort and we cannot leave out the plants and other systems that sustain life support. If any key system fails, such as the ability to share clean fresh water with plants and people, then the goals of longetivity also fail.
In my model Wuh Lax world, it is working 'cum alliis, pro alliis', 'with others, for others' that will ratchet up our survival possibilities.
Science of Not-Aging
In 1975, I interviewed many heads of research in pharmaceutical companies in the UK. Some of them related their interest in the financing of basic research into the aging process and what it would take to slow it down. That was thirty years ago and some of this basic / fundamental research is just beginning to show favourable results. The science of understanding the aging process is still very much in its infancy, but the results are amazing.
Recently, the odds have improved that a few people may live to an age that staggers the imagination. Again, one needs to ask the questions how and what is the evidence. Most people I talk to about the issue say that living so long is not attractive. They site the loss of friends and immediate family as their biggest concern.
Who says that people can live much longer? We know that Ponce de Leon searched Florida for something that would allow long life and he appears to have failed. What sent him on the mission and have the odds now improved because companies and research groups are beginning to understand how the body actually works rather than what works on the body?
The Washington Post recently ran with a story about Aubrey de Grey, a 'young' man in California, who has just published a book on ending aging. They report on a competition amongst biologists to assess whether the idea is completely implausible or whether there is a possibility. The odds are stacked up against a person, even one in the future, living beyond one hundred years, but what are the real determinants of the possibilities? If you have one thousand dollars to give each year for 25 years, you can join a group that seeks the science of curing aging.
The Determinants of the Aging Process
The determinants can be organized into many groups of determinants:
1. what you eat, drink, and consume that strengthens or weakens your body's healthy normal functioning
2. what you breath and how well,
3. how often you exercise your whole body,
4. how well you tend to all your senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch,
5. whether you have a mate and regular exchanges of a meaningful and intimate nature,
6. how well all your body systems function, especially respiration, digestion, immune, neurological, physical, and cognitive systems,
7. how well you function within your support groups,
8. where you live and engage with other people,
9. how well endowed you are with the right genes,
10. how well financed you are,
11. whether you are under stress,
12. whether you are happy and feel in control,
13. how easy it is for you to be motivated to create and engage in activity that is pychologically enhancing,
14. what systems can be put in place to help strengthen those systems in your body that fight disease, that resist aging, that heal and promote a sense of well being,
15. how well you fit into your community,
16. how quickly the sciences needed to support your anti-aging programs are put into place,
17. How well you can sustain a positive attitude and initiative to continue with life and life strengthening activity,
18. whether your community and you can protect itself against those forces of nature that would increase the risk of dying abd contamination,
19. whether there is international peace and shared prosperity for you and your neighbours,
20. whether the intractible issues of poverty, disease, hunger, lack of shelter and clean water can be resolved,
21. whether you and your neighbours can develop spiritually,
22. whether nature's systems survive along with you and strengthen,
23. whether there is sustainability and balance in your environment for the widest variety of people, animals, plants, and the earth ecology,
24. whether the supportive natural, physical and social sciences supporting longetivity are developing at a sufficient pace,
25. whether the depressing problem of debt can be eliminated.
What is the Score?
Whether you achieve a high score or not, you will begin to realize how interconnected we are to other people and the many natural and geophysical support systems of our planet. We house an extremely complicated world, and it is not getting any simpler. If we are to increase the odds of living longer, it needs to be a community effort and we cannot leave out the plants and other systems that sustain life support. If any key system fails, such as the ability to share clean fresh water with plants and people, then the goals of longetivity also fail.
In my model Wuh Lax world, it is working 'cum alliis, pro alliis', 'with others, for others' that will ratchet up our survival possibilities.
Science of Not-Aging
In 1975, I interviewed many heads of research in pharmaceutical companies in the UK. Some of them related their interest in the financing of basic research into the aging process and what it would take to slow it down. That was thirty years ago and some of this basic / fundamental research is just beginning to show favourable results. The science of understanding the aging process is still very much in its infancy, but the results are amazing.
Why Didn't Some One Tell Me?
When might you ask or exclaim, "Why didn't someone tell me?" Perhaps, just perhaps, someone did tell you, but you were not listening, or you could not interpret what they were saying.
In our world of advertising, we are constantly bombarded with information, or messages, in forms that are intended to distract us from thinking broadly about things. We are being loudly guided in our thoughts towards relatively narrow solutions. That is the role of advertising and most forms of paid communication. If the messages are too loud or the solutions favouring some particular group, we think of them as propaganda.
Nevertheless, we are constantly being bombarded by messages that we may not be equipped very well to receive. These are the messages that require the knowledge provided by a form of Rosetta stone experience or science. The facts are that you may need to get off your backside and search for the Rosetta stones yourself and then for the messages that you will be able to interpret. This is partly what continuing education is all about.
Once you have learned enough to make a living, you may find it advantageous to go back to school to learn enough to make life meaningful. Earning a living and meaningful existence may not be the same activity, so you probably need to determine whether they are.
In our world of advertising, we are constantly bombarded with information, or messages, in forms that are intended to distract us from thinking broadly about things. We are being loudly guided in our thoughts towards relatively narrow solutions. That is the role of advertising and most forms of paid communication. If the messages are too loud or the solutions favouring some particular group, we think of them as propaganda.
Nevertheless, we are constantly being bombarded by messages that we may not be equipped very well to receive. These are the messages that require the knowledge provided by a form of Rosetta stone experience or science. The facts are that you may need to get off your backside and search for the Rosetta stones yourself and then for the messages that you will be able to interpret. This is partly what continuing education is all about.
Once you have learned enough to make a living, you may find it advantageous to go back to school to learn enough to make life meaningful. Earning a living and meaningful existence may not be the same activity, so you probably need to determine whether they are.
Religion as Models of What Should Be and of Fairness
The purpose of a religion would seem to be that of giving people an ideal towards which they can direct their energies. We can search for the source of the inspiration of the 'messages' that enable a religion to form, or an individual to become receptive to an ideal or pattern within oneself or between oneself and the cosmos. It is this search process that forms the basis of the notion of pilgrimage.
What happens is that some one tells some one else that they should go somewhere and if they do, they will be inspired by either the journey to that place or by the place itself. Often, it is the very act of trying that makes the search meaningful.
Its like trying to experience sex for the first time. One tells you that you get a wonderful thing happen to you if you have sex. They prescribe the ideal conditions in which sex is to be performed. Until you actually try to have sex or someone intervenes and shows you what sex is all about, you are ignorant as to what sex is all about. The fact is that within each person there is a potential for having sex.
There is also a potential within each person for having inspiration. This potential for inspiration is strongest when one is not yet ready for sex being immature to the normal bodily functions that make sex a normal function. There seems to be a progress of development in the human being that moves in stages and being inspired occurs before being sexually active.
In a very real way, it is probably possible for people to move in the direction of seeking inspiration and away from seeking the sexual experience, just as there may be a way to avoid eating as a pleasure for the sake of exercising one's other faculties.
Development of Our Senses
We have the sense of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. From these senses, we derive sensations that inspire, awe, please, disgust, attract, repel, and so on. There is a normal pattern to the development of our senses, but we may or may not be in control of this pattern.
Religions tend to try to control the pattern in order to create meaning out of experience. In this they may or may not be successful, the potential differences between development situations being enormous or gargantuan.
Religions Interpret the Cosmos in Ways That Define Order
To the religious mind, there is an order within the cosmos that can be tapped by the individual following rules that the religion presents to its followers. The big issue is whether the rules of a religion are fair to 'newcomers' to the religion.
Fairness to Newcomers as a Measure of Grading the Value of a Religion
A religion is unfair if newcomers to that religion are not treated in an even handed way. There is no room in the cosmos for disparity of treatment within a religion. Biased treatment of newcomers to a religion predisposes the religion towards a destructive exclusiveness that is harmful to an intelligent community.
For example, if a religion were to say that every fifth child joining the religion were to be killed and the blood drunk by a select group of the other members, we would say that the religion was unfair to the child who was killed. We would say that almost irregardless of whether the drinking of the blood allowed the other members of the religion to have eternal life.
Or, for example, if a religion were condone the practice of killing non-members, we should grade the religion as being unfair whether or not the religion gave eternal life to members of the religion. Taking of the life of 'infidels or outsiders, or potential newcomers to a religion is unfair.
Many Unfair Religions Go Unrecognized As Unfair
We often hear that the world is unfair. "Get used to it," some people say. "Be Real," others say.
No!
We Need to Deal With Unfairness Within the Scope of Religion
When we see, hear, smell, taste, touch a process that is unfair, we should all as human beings sense repugnance with that process. If a religion is to have any value whatsoever, it needs to be constantly on the watch that it promotes fairness to potential newcomers, the so-called infidels and outsiders. A religion that is fair, is also one that is inclusive, and is seen to be inclusive by potential newcomers, or the sponsors of potential newcomers to the religion.
When a religion is fair, it is open to newcomers and to new ideas that define it as a religion. If a religion remains a constant in its refusal to provide an even path of entry for newcomers, it is unfair and should be rejected by present participants of the religion. Inclusiveness is the standard by which religions should and need to be judged.
Ineffective or Temporary Religions
A religion might be regarded as being ineffective if it has only a temporary message or if its message requires that the world stand still for the religion to survive. Potential newcomers to a religion need to be aware of whether the religion is capable of coping with the challenges of many new people joining it. An effective religion is one that develops the capacity within its membership of inspiration, good living, or good works.
What happens is that some one tells some one else that they should go somewhere and if they do, they will be inspired by either the journey to that place or by the place itself. Often, it is the very act of trying that makes the search meaningful.
Its like trying to experience sex for the first time. One tells you that you get a wonderful thing happen to you if you have sex. They prescribe the ideal conditions in which sex is to be performed. Until you actually try to have sex or someone intervenes and shows you what sex is all about, you are ignorant as to what sex is all about. The fact is that within each person there is a potential for having sex.
There is also a potential within each person for having inspiration. This potential for inspiration is strongest when one is not yet ready for sex being immature to the normal bodily functions that make sex a normal function. There seems to be a progress of development in the human being that moves in stages and being inspired occurs before being sexually active.
In a very real way, it is probably possible for people to move in the direction of seeking inspiration and away from seeking the sexual experience, just as there may be a way to avoid eating as a pleasure for the sake of exercising one's other faculties.
Development of Our Senses
We have the sense of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. From these senses, we derive sensations that inspire, awe, please, disgust, attract, repel, and so on. There is a normal pattern to the development of our senses, but we may or may not be in control of this pattern.
Religions tend to try to control the pattern in order to create meaning out of experience. In this they may or may not be successful, the potential differences between development situations being enormous or gargantuan.
Religions Interpret the Cosmos in Ways That Define Order
To the religious mind, there is an order within the cosmos that can be tapped by the individual following rules that the religion presents to its followers. The big issue is whether the rules of a religion are fair to 'newcomers' to the religion.
Fairness to Newcomers as a Measure of Grading the Value of a Religion
A religion is unfair if newcomers to that religion are not treated in an even handed way. There is no room in the cosmos for disparity of treatment within a religion. Biased treatment of newcomers to a religion predisposes the religion towards a destructive exclusiveness that is harmful to an intelligent community.
For example, if a religion were to say that every fifth child joining the religion were to be killed and the blood drunk by a select group of the other members, we would say that the religion was unfair to the child who was killed. We would say that almost irregardless of whether the drinking of the blood allowed the other members of the religion to have eternal life.
Or, for example, if a religion were condone the practice of killing non-members, we should grade the religion as being unfair whether or not the religion gave eternal life to members of the religion. Taking of the life of 'infidels or outsiders, or potential newcomers to a religion is unfair.
Many Unfair Religions Go Unrecognized As Unfair
We often hear that the world is unfair. "Get used to it," some people say. "Be Real," others say.
No!
We Need to Deal With Unfairness Within the Scope of Religion
When we see, hear, smell, taste, touch a process that is unfair, we should all as human beings sense repugnance with that process. If a religion is to have any value whatsoever, it needs to be constantly on the watch that it promotes fairness to potential newcomers, the so-called infidels and outsiders. A religion that is fair, is also one that is inclusive, and is seen to be inclusive by potential newcomers, or the sponsors of potential newcomers to the religion.
When a religion is fair, it is open to newcomers and to new ideas that define it as a religion. If a religion remains a constant in its refusal to provide an even path of entry for newcomers, it is unfair and should be rejected by present participants of the religion. Inclusiveness is the standard by which religions should and need to be judged.
Ineffective or Temporary Religions
A religion might be regarded as being ineffective if it has only a temporary message or if its message requires that the world stand still for the religion to survive. Potential newcomers to a religion need to be aware of whether the religion is capable of coping with the challenges of many new people joining it. An effective religion is one that develops the capacity within its membership of inspiration, good living, or good works.
Do Random Events Happen?
One way to consider random events is by seeing them as events arising where there is no intervention. In the world of mathematical statistics, we have the possibility of a mathematical equation or system of equations that seemingly creates a series or wave forms that one could consider random. People even patent such generators. In the real world, and especially if the cosmos could be considered as a ginormous calculator, we have 'something or somethings' that seemingly generate what appear to be random events. Such random distributions are even said to be normal.
When Being Abnormal is Normal
The science of statistics makes extensive use of the concept of the 'normal' distribution of events that exhibit randomness against which other distributions can be compared. If such a distribution is normal then why or how do we exist? We find that in the normal world, it is perfectly fine to discover events that are not normal. Individually, our very existence is 'not on the chart of cosmic normality." But, then we all realize this.
The Relativity of Normality
What we find is that normality is relative. Within the world of human beings that have lived on earth over the past two thousand years, we may think that we are relatively normal, but is that true?
Randomness
To get a random distribution in statistics we collect numbers from some source and we then classify the numbers as somehow meaningful or alternatively is random and without a specific meaning if the pattern or scatter of the numbers against a vector to measure differences produces or does not produce a recognizable 'bell shaped' distribution. When we say something is random, what we usually mean is that we cannot say that there is some relationship between two entities that produced the numbers. This is because we tend to work with associations. We say that there is no relationship between the two entities that is statistically significant. The relationship appears to have no discernible meaning in a statistical sense.
A is associate with B. There appears to be no relationship between A and B as far as a particular characteristic is concerned because we find that the distribution of measures of this characteristic on our frequency number chart is entirely random. We know what random is because we have in mind a statistical formula that produces frequencies that we would consider random.
Fooled by Randomness
The fact is that two things or events might appear to be entirely disassociated and random relative to each other, yet be connected in a meaningful way. We use the world meaningful to describe a relationship of a causal nature whether directly causal or indirectly causal.
The problem is that a relationship can exist between two entities that we have not captured because we are not really looking at the true relationship at all. We are blind to the relationship that exists, just as certainly as a blind and deaf person may be unaware of someone sitting on a wooden stool at a bar near them.
To pick up relationships, one needs a lens or something that can detect the waves or relationships between entities.
In our world of sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling, intuition we have an array of tools that measure some but not all of the waves. Our lenses may not detect relationships because we do not see the fields that exist between things or link them. We may not be aware that the relationships come in and out of existence into or within our cosmos following a pattern.
Meaning
We say something has meaning because we know of a relationship. Our next door neighbours may not know of this relationship and would have to admit that the same something has no meaning for them. This is not the same as coincidence, but in coincident events an interpreter or observer might say that several events provide the basis of meaning. Another interpreter may say that the same events have no meaning.
Language of People and the Language of the Universe
For a long while the language of the Egyptians had no meaning to scholars. They tried to understand the hieroglyphs, but could not make sense of them. Suddenly, someone discovered that by using another language found on the Rosetta Stone, it would be possible to gain a meaning of what would otherwise appear to be random scratchings. Well, we knew that the scratchings were not random, but we had no way of interpreting them without the help of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone Puts Meaning into Nonsense or Randomness
In order for one to attain meaning, one needs a Rosetta Stone situation that allows for a translation of seemingly random or nonsense events into patterns that can be read and understood.
Very little is Random
In the Wuh Lax cosmos, there is nothing that is random. What is needed to understand the cosmos are lenses that interpret the waves that exist between things.
When Being Abnormal is Normal
The science of statistics makes extensive use of the concept of the 'normal' distribution of events that exhibit randomness against which other distributions can be compared. If such a distribution is normal then why or how do we exist? We find that in the normal world, it is perfectly fine to discover events that are not normal. Individually, our very existence is 'not on the chart of cosmic normality." But, then we all realize this.
The Relativity of Normality
What we find is that normality is relative. Within the world of human beings that have lived on earth over the past two thousand years, we may think that we are relatively normal, but is that true?
Randomness
To get a random distribution in statistics we collect numbers from some source and we then classify the numbers as somehow meaningful or alternatively is random and without a specific meaning if the pattern or scatter of the numbers against a vector to measure differences produces or does not produce a recognizable 'bell shaped' distribution. When we say something is random, what we usually mean is that we cannot say that there is some relationship between two entities that produced the numbers. This is because we tend to work with associations. We say that there is no relationship between the two entities that is statistically significant. The relationship appears to have no discernible meaning in a statistical sense.
A is associate with B. There appears to be no relationship between A and B as far as a particular characteristic is concerned because we find that the distribution of measures of this characteristic on our frequency number chart is entirely random. We know what random is because we have in mind a statistical formula that produces frequencies that we would consider random.
Fooled by Randomness
The fact is that two things or events might appear to be entirely disassociated and random relative to each other, yet be connected in a meaningful way. We use the world meaningful to describe a relationship of a causal nature whether directly causal or indirectly causal.
The problem is that a relationship can exist between two entities that we have not captured because we are not really looking at the true relationship at all. We are blind to the relationship that exists, just as certainly as a blind and deaf person may be unaware of someone sitting on a wooden stool at a bar near them.
To pick up relationships, one needs a lens or something that can detect the waves or relationships between entities.
In our world of sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling, intuition we have an array of tools that measure some but not all of the waves. Our lenses may not detect relationships because we do not see the fields that exist between things or link them. We may not be aware that the relationships come in and out of existence into or within our cosmos following a pattern.
Meaning
We say something has meaning because we know of a relationship. Our next door neighbours may not know of this relationship and would have to admit that the same something has no meaning for them. This is not the same as coincidence, but in coincident events an interpreter or observer might say that several events provide the basis of meaning. Another interpreter may say that the same events have no meaning.
Language of People and the Language of the Universe
For a long while the language of the Egyptians had no meaning to scholars. They tried to understand the hieroglyphs, but could not make sense of them. Suddenly, someone discovered that by using another language found on the Rosetta Stone, it would be possible to gain a meaning of what would otherwise appear to be random scratchings. Well, we knew that the scratchings were not random, but we had no way of interpreting them without the help of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone Puts Meaning into Nonsense or Randomness
In order for one to attain meaning, one needs a Rosetta Stone situation that allows for a translation of seemingly random or nonsense events into patterns that can be read and understood.
Very little is Random
In the Wuh Lax cosmos, there is nothing that is random. What is needed to understand the cosmos are lenses that interpret the waves that exist between things.
Monday 7 January 2008
The Wuh Lax Diet: Groping Along in a World of Food Confusion
Right now, I am saying how fortunate I feel to be able to ditch wheat and flour from my list of preferred foods. Gone are the donuts, the cakes, the breads, the sandwiches, the gravies, the junk food of fast food houses. I can't eat in restaurants any more without searching deep into the menu for safe foods that do not contain the products of wheat flour that in foods is almost everywhere.
My challenge of eliminating wheat from my diet arises so that I can clear up my complexion. For years and years, I have suffered from something in wheat and wheat flour products without being aware that I had an allergy weakness or something about these foods was hurting me. The symptoms of my food issue went well beyond complexion, but I am no food scientist and if I had to list them, I would produce a note several chapters long, believe me!
How many other people have the same or similar issues with wheat, I wonder? The effects are not so noticeable that you would immediately spring into action. In fact, I used to work in the world's largest food processing center in North America under one roof. I never had issues with wheat then!
Now, I get a deeps sense of awareness of my own stupidity. Why in hell did I not realize that wheat was not good for me? It took an event to bring about this awareness.
My soul mate, Anne, prepared a huge quantity of home made bread. Ah, was the bread ever delicious! Something to die for! Yes, and seriously, I think I was dieing from it without being aware. Eating wheat products to me now is akin to smoking cigarettes.
You may have an issue with wheat and if you do, you may do it at pain of death. But, no one tells you that unless you have a serious condition called celiac disease!? My friend was the one who enlightened me. She realized that my health was being impacted by something she lovingly prepared.
You may also have a wheat issue without being aware. If you are over your healthy weight, you should certainly research the possibility.
In my own way, I try to come to terms with the DNA factors that may have predisposed me to my wheat issues and come up with the idea that perhaps wheat was not common where my ancestors lived which was in the north and in forests. I have no issues with oats and would have no problem telling people that oats are less likely to cause a food issue. I am no expert, but switching to oats away from wheat seems a sensible idea. In the time of Wim and Wuh, oats would have been the food to eat.
My challenge of eliminating wheat from my diet arises so that I can clear up my complexion. For years and years, I have suffered from something in wheat and wheat flour products without being aware that I had an allergy weakness or something about these foods was hurting me. The symptoms of my food issue went well beyond complexion, but I am no food scientist and if I had to list them, I would produce a note several chapters long, believe me!
How many other people have the same or similar issues with wheat, I wonder? The effects are not so noticeable that you would immediately spring into action. In fact, I used to work in the world's largest food processing center in North America under one roof. I never had issues with wheat then!
Now, I get a deeps sense of awareness of my own stupidity. Why in hell did I not realize that wheat was not good for me? It took an event to bring about this awareness.
My soul mate, Anne, prepared a huge quantity of home made bread. Ah, was the bread ever delicious! Something to die for! Yes, and seriously, I think I was dieing from it without being aware. Eating wheat products to me now is akin to smoking cigarettes.
You may have an issue with wheat and if you do, you may do it at pain of death. But, no one tells you that unless you have a serious condition called celiac disease!? My friend was the one who enlightened me. She realized that my health was being impacted by something she lovingly prepared.
You may also have a wheat issue without being aware. If you are over your healthy weight, you should certainly research the possibility.
In my own way, I try to come to terms with the DNA factors that may have predisposed me to my wheat issues and come up with the idea that perhaps wheat was not common where my ancestors lived which was in the north and in forests. I have no issues with oats and would have no problem telling people that oats are less likely to cause a food issue. I am no expert, but switching to oats away from wheat seems a sensible idea. In the time of Wim and Wuh, oats would have been the food to eat.
Saturday 5 January 2008
Evolution? A Cause or an Effect of Environmental Change?
In my opinion, anyone who does not think evolution is relevant both religious and non-religious contexts needs to have their head examined. There, I said it without using the forbidden word!
Associated with the concept of evolution is the relevant notion of survival of the fittest. That's all very well as a model, but does the model itself fit. In many ways, it almost seems to beg the question. If a species survives, then it is the fittest. But, is this the case? How does one relate evolution to social change and the human species?
There are evolutionary models of society such as those of Herbert Spenser, Karl Marx, and Joseph Schumpeter that attempt the challenge. In our present day context, we need to encorporate ideas that promote the survival of the planet within the context of its evolution, and hopefully, its survival, which is now up to mankind.
Obviously, some species survive and others don't. Is there any criteria that is relevant other than survival in the now and through space-time as by means of the arrow of time?
There are strange things that emerge from studies of actual human DNA, such that we find community where we thought that there was division.
Evolution of Life, Mortals or Matter?
In a universe in which we observe more than the now, perhaps survival is something other than it seems. Maybe survival needs to be looked at in a wider context. For example, if there were a heaven and eternal life and one was confined a mortal existence, then survival would not mean survival as a mortal being, but survival as an immortal being. Is that all? No!
In Search of the Miraculous
Another example would be in a case if everything survives in its own space-time/space, as in a universe that is recurring, which is what we know many of the stoics believed. There are those such as Ouspenski who believed that that was what Jesus Christ was trying to communicate.
Another way of looking at evolution may be to examine it in the context of needs. If a species survives, it has all that it needs. If a species fails, it somehow has much less than it needs. How are the needs for survival determined? Are these needs, things that come from within the species as an expression of its nature or are the needs imposed by the environment in which the species is surviving?
Does the species have any say in what it needs to survive? Is survival of a species even necessary to assess that it sees itself as having met its purpose or role within the context of the environment in which it finds itself?
Goals of Species as a Means to an Unknown End
One is tempted to assume that the goal of life is to survive until an end is achieved. However, we know that human nature has a way of specifying its needs through choice based on immediate goals and preferences for processes to achieve those goals.
In the Wuh Lax model of evolution, the world has many of the properties of light, which as we know from the exploratory scientific work of Feynman and others is capable of making choices.
If light explores all channels of existence prior to physical processing in any one dimension of existence, might not other entities based/feeding on light do something similar?
Goal Oriented Survival
Perhaps, survival contains more an element of choice than chance, but most probably both are determinants. The survival of a species is not entirely due to randomness, but to very specific decisions made by participants in the species. These specifications by members of a species may derive from internal rankings of preferences as much as from outside interventions, whether random or not, from the environment. Possibly, a very real question to be asked is whether there is freedom to choose. For example, we know that smokers have not survived as well as non-smokers. In our environment, those that prefer to smoke have the odds stacked against them.
If there is a genetic basis for preferring to smoke as compared with not preferring to smoke then the preference to smoke is determining the survival of a large group of people. If, however, there is a group that is deliberately poisoning cigarettes and targeting vulnerable groups of people, then the survival of those that prefer to smoke is being controlled by those that wish to do them harm. This is certainly not a random process.
Being Selfish as a Means of Survival
What we know about life is that species feed off each other in a highly competitive way creating more space for their own survival at the expense of others. Is this the way, the selfish gene comes to dominate, or is there something larger going on? Obviously, competition is one model and cooperation is another. Both are relevant to the story of evolution!
If humans care for trees, love them, then they will survive better than if they cut them down and kill them. Trees are helpless against human beings. The reason trees will survive at all, if they will as a species, arises if man specifies that he prefers to have trees in his world. It is a choice of man to have trees that enables man to survive because man ultimately needs trees even though he may not realize why. It is the act of compassion by mankind for other species that allow man to survive. Is this always the case?
Obviously, man is on a planet that may not survive. How is man going to survive? Man is going to love the planet earth and care for it, otherwise the earth will die. It may even be in the hands of mankind to save earth for a life approximating eternity. We do not know. But, if man as a species has any purpose at all, it is to love the planet earth and to see that the planet earth survives.
Associated with the concept of evolution is the relevant notion of survival of the fittest. That's all very well as a model, but does the model itself fit. In many ways, it almost seems to beg the question. If a species survives, then it is the fittest. But, is this the case? How does one relate evolution to social change and the human species?
There are evolutionary models of society such as those of Herbert Spenser, Karl Marx, and Joseph Schumpeter that attempt the challenge. In our present day context, we need to encorporate ideas that promote the survival of the planet within the context of its evolution, and hopefully, its survival, which is now up to mankind.
Obviously, some species survive and others don't. Is there any criteria that is relevant other than survival in the now and through space-time as by means of the arrow of time?
There are strange things that emerge from studies of actual human DNA, such that we find community where we thought that there was division.
Evolution of Life, Mortals or Matter?
In a universe in which we observe more than the now, perhaps survival is something other than it seems. Maybe survival needs to be looked at in a wider context. For example, if there were a heaven and eternal life and one was confined a mortal existence, then survival would not mean survival as a mortal being, but survival as an immortal being. Is that all? No!
In Search of the Miraculous
Another example would be in a case if everything survives in its own space-time/space, as in a universe that is recurring, which is what we know many of the stoics believed. There are those such as Ouspenski who believed that that was what Jesus Christ was trying to communicate.
Another way of looking at evolution may be to examine it in the context of needs. If a species survives, it has all that it needs. If a species fails, it somehow has much less than it needs. How are the needs for survival determined? Are these needs, things that come from within the species as an expression of its nature or are the needs imposed by the environment in which the species is surviving?
Does the species have any say in what it needs to survive? Is survival of a species even necessary to assess that it sees itself as having met its purpose or role within the context of the environment in which it finds itself?
Goals of Species as a Means to an Unknown End
One is tempted to assume that the goal of life is to survive until an end is achieved. However, we know that human nature has a way of specifying its needs through choice based on immediate goals and preferences for processes to achieve those goals.
In the Wuh Lax model of evolution, the world has many of the properties of light, which as we know from the exploratory scientific work of Feynman and others is capable of making choices.
If light explores all channels of existence prior to physical processing in any one dimension of existence, might not other entities based/feeding on light do something similar?
Goal Oriented Survival
Perhaps, survival contains more an element of choice than chance, but most probably both are determinants. The survival of a species is not entirely due to randomness, but to very specific decisions made by participants in the species. These specifications by members of a species may derive from internal rankings of preferences as much as from outside interventions, whether random or not, from the environment. Possibly, a very real question to be asked is whether there is freedom to choose. For example, we know that smokers have not survived as well as non-smokers. In our environment, those that prefer to smoke have the odds stacked against them.
If there is a genetic basis for preferring to smoke as compared with not preferring to smoke then the preference to smoke is determining the survival of a large group of people. If, however, there is a group that is deliberately poisoning cigarettes and targeting vulnerable groups of people, then the survival of those that prefer to smoke is being controlled by those that wish to do them harm. This is certainly not a random process.
Being Selfish as a Means of Survival
What we know about life is that species feed off each other in a highly competitive way creating more space for their own survival at the expense of others. Is this the way, the selfish gene comes to dominate, or is there something larger going on? Obviously, competition is one model and cooperation is another. Both are relevant to the story of evolution!
If humans care for trees, love them, then they will survive better than if they cut them down and kill them. Trees are helpless against human beings. The reason trees will survive at all, if they will as a species, arises if man specifies that he prefers to have trees in his world. It is a choice of man to have trees that enables man to survive because man ultimately needs trees even though he may not realize why. It is the act of compassion by mankind for other species that allow man to survive. Is this always the case?
Obviously, man is on a planet that may not survive. How is man going to survive? Man is going to love the planet earth and care for it, otherwise the earth will die. It may even be in the hands of mankind to save earth for a life approximating eternity. We do not know. But, if man as a species has any purpose at all, it is to love the planet earth and to see that the planet earth survives.
Friday 4 January 2008
What is Freedom and Time?
An aspect of our present world is that we seem to be able to extend the present instance both forward and backward in time. The obvious derivative question is whether or not this trend can continue so that in the future we will have a significantly larger present.
For example, we now have the capability to record events and characteristics of events more accurately than ever before. We have access to huge amounts of storage capacity so that it is increasingly possible for more and more of aspects of the present moment to be retained for the future. Likewise, we now have a greatly increased capacity to compute and calculate what might happen, as say in elections. We can take a sample survey and within minutes project what an election result may be.
The reach of the present moment into the past and into the future seems to be growing with the development of science and technology. Our present moments are enlarging, or are they? If we move faster do we perceive more? If we are running, human beings are relatively slow compared to other animals. As we age, many of us lose mental speed and age ever more rapidly as a result. A year becomes a relative month. Would that we could alter our brains processing speed to lengthen the now, the present. This would take exercise?
What if we could get our brains to operate more quickly within each segment of our present moment?
The Dilution of Time and One's Vision
In my earlier blogs, I assume that the universe was like my construction of the Wuh Lax world of 50 AD in which the perception of time and the flow of events was very different. We some times forget that the mind has many capabilities and one capacity is that of being able to deal with stress. People under stress perceive time differently from people who are not under stress. I think!
We see an aspect of this when we use our peripheral vision and look sideways at a rotating fan. I, at least, perceive that the fan rotates slightly slower when I view it using my peripheral vision. What if all my vision were operating at the speed of my peripheral vision?
The big question is whether time would be significantly increased were I able to speed up the processing of all my vision to the speed of my peripheral vision. What is going on in my brain?
Now if I can speed up my vision, could it not be possible to speed up all sorts of other brain activity and would not my perception of time be significantly altered?
Gaining Time
A characteristic of the human mind is that some processing seems to be going on relatively slowly, such as seeing, while other processing is proceeding at such a fast rate that we have no awareness that it is happening at all. If we can perceive more rapidly, perhaps we can gain subjective time.
How Fast are We Capable of?
One has an idea of how quickly the human eye processes information because of development in digital camera technologies. There is probably a measurable normal speed of visual processing and probably a variance between individuals as to their normal speeds, as for example created by the relative distribution of rod and cones in the eye, rods being much faster, but processing motion more than colour. Suppose we only saw things in black and white. This raises all sorts of questions.
New Questions to Consider ... I am Getting a Head Ache Just Thinking about Them
Would or could we see things at a faster rate? If so, would the present now for that individual expand indefinitely? Is it possible to create a human being that sees things so fast that he perceives the world at a very different speed from everyone else? Could such a human creature have so much time within what we perceive as several seconds to be capable of understanding much more than normal human beings and then having the capacity to do the infinite? Or would such an individual be content with just perceiving, and forget about our world of motion and time?
What is Evolution in the Modern Context of Bio-engineering?
Are human beings evolving or going to evolve in a way very different from the theory of evolution as presently put forward by Dawkins and Darwin? The Intelligent Design theorists seem to think so, and claim that the DNA stories alone are inadequate to explain the myriad aspects of evolution. By raising the evolution issue in a heavy handed way Dawkins has manged to encamp two opposing groups of thought so that emotional bias is presented by both as reasonable bias.
The problem is that whatever you think was evolution in the past will be inapplicable for the future should future man take an active role in engineering evolution, as now seems very probable.
Obviously, as a human being, you are aware of the intelligent designs created by human beings. What if one of these designs were to speed up the rate at which the eye processes information? This new design for the human being would add a hitherto undeveloped capacity to the list of human capacities and obviously would be a major step in evolution. One may ask whether the list of alternative technologies to bring about this evolution would be confined to biology.
For example, we now have the capability to record events and characteristics of events more accurately than ever before. We have access to huge amounts of storage capacity so that it is increasingly possible for more and more of aspects of the present moment to be retained for the future. Likewise, we now have a greatly increased capacity to compute and calculate what might happen, as say in elections. We can take a sample survey and within minutes project what an election result may be.
The reach of the present moment into the past and into the future seems to be growing with the development of science and technology. Our present moments are enlarging, or are they? If we move faster do we perceive more? If we are running, human beings are relatively slow compared to other animals. As we age, many of us lose mental speed and age ever more rapidly as a result. A year becomes a relative month. Would that we could alter our brains processing speed to lengthen the now, the present. This would take exercise?
What if we could get our brains to operate more quickly within each segment of our present moment?
The Dilution of Time and One's Vision
In my earlier blogs, I assume that the universe was like my construction of the Wuh Lax world of 50 AD in which the perception of time and the flow of events was very different. We some times forget that the mind has many capabilities and one capacity is that of being able to deal with stress. People under stress perceive time differently from people who are not under stress. I think!
We see an aspect of this when we use our peripheral vision and look sideways at a rotating fan. I, at least, perceive that the fan rotates slightly slower when I view it using my peripheral vision. What if all my vision were operating at the speed of my peripheral vision?
The big question is whether time would be significantly increased were I able to speed up the processing of all my vision to the speed of my peripheral vision. What is going on in my brain?
Now if I can speed up my vision, could it not be possible to speed up all sorts of other brain activity and would not my perception of time be significantly altered?
Gaining Time
A characteristic of the human mind is that some processing seems to be going on relatively slowly, such as seeing, while other processing is proceeding at such a fast rate that we have no awareness that it is happening at all. If we can perceive more rapidly, perhaps we can gain subjective time.
How Fast are We Capable of?
One has an idea of how quickly the human eye processes information because of development in digital camera technologies. There is probably a measurable normal speed of visual processing and probably a variance between individuals as to their normal speeds, as for example created by the relative distribution of rod and cones in the eye, rods being much faster, but processing motion more than colour. Suppose we only saw things in black and white. This raises all sorts of questions.
New Questions to Consider ... I am Getting a Head Ache Just Thinking about Them
Would or could we see things at a faster rate? If so, would the present now for that individual expand indefinitely? Is it possible to create a human being that sees things so fast that he perceives the world at a very different speed from everyone else? Could such a human creature have so much time within what we perceive as several seconds to be capable of understanding much more than normal human beings and then having the capacity to do the infinite? Or would such an individual be content with just perceiving, and forget about our world of motion and time?
What is Evolution in the Modern Context of Bio-engineering?
Are human beings evolving or going to evolve in a way very different from the theory of evolution as presently put forward by Dawkins and Darwin? The Intelligent Design theorists seem to think so, and claim that the DNA stories alone are inadequate to explain the myriad aspects of evolution. By raising the evolution issue in a heavy handed way Dawkins has manged to encamp two opposing groups of thought so that emotional bias is presented by both as reasonable bias.
The problem is that whatever you think was evolution in the past will be inapplicable for the future should future man take an active role in engineering evolution, as now seems very probable.
Obviously, as a human being, you are aware of the intelligent designs created by human beings. What if one of these designs were to speed up the rate at which the eye processes information? This new design for the human being would add a hitherto undeveloped capacity to the list of human capacities and obviously would be a major step in evolution. One may ask whether the list of alternative technologies to bring about this evolution would be confined to biology.
Is Stupid a Word that Should Not be Used?
Logically, for me at least, the words smart and stupid are closely connected. What I have come to realize is how inexact the use of such words can be. I have a friend who advises me never to use the word stupid with reference to a person. The same friend constantly reminds me that whatever I say in any event is only my opinion.
What is Stupid?
Perhaps, nothing is stupid except in reference to something else. I can regard a statement by someone as stupid because I have heard a different statement from someone else that I would regard as smart. The distance between the two statements is in my mind great enough that one is so significantly different from the other that the statements belong to two recognizable groups, a smart group and a stupid group. My grouping of the statements is probably subjective, but may not be.
For example, if a person who has had three glasses of vodka decides to get into a car and drive, I might say that the person is stupid. I don't necessarily mean to say that the person is permanently stupid, but that the alcohol has affected his brain and the person does not reason correctly according to some social wisdom about drinking and driving. The same statement may, however, be construed differently in that I am merely commenting that the act of driving when having drunk three glasses of vodka is stupid.
What should bother me is that the stupid person, who is drunk and getting into a car to drive it, may actually be smart. Its just that an issue has arisen, a drunken state, in which his thinking and his actions are stupid, or so I assume.
Why Referring to Some one's Behaviour as Stupid Confuses People
When one looks for the word stupid in the English and American dictionaries one gets a very different impression of the social aspects of the term. The dictionaries give examples using other words that are, perhaps, as offensive as referring to someone as stupid.
For example, someone who is boring may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is foolish may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is senseless may be thought of a stupid. Someone who is unwise may be thought of as stupid.
In any event, use of the term stupid with reference to behaviour or characteristic is fraught with problems because it is something that repels people away from the individual in question. Politicians often think their rivals are stupid, but they rarely say so. The reason is perhaps that reference to one's fit within a context is a measure by which others will act.
Saying some one is stupid is a negative advertising for that individual, and is something that person may or may not know how to deal with. If the person is really inadequate, we don't often use the term stupid, and that is because the term is pejorative and demeaning.
The Unwelcome Rebound
Use of the word is likely to rebound back on the individual who uses it. Thus the very act of using the term stupid is stupid, at least for the present!
We use other words instead. We find the phrase 'shameful' an improvement on 'stupid'. One can say openly that a person's behaviour in driving while drunk is shameful, but we don't say the behaviour is stupid. Are we making a mistake? Is there such a thing as stupidity? What do you think?
What is Stupid?
Perhaps, nothing is stupid except in reference to something else. I can regard a statement by someone as stupid because I have heard a different statement from someone else that I would regard as smart. The distance between the two statements is in my mind great enough that one is so significantly different from the other that the statements belong to two recognizable groups, a smart group and a stupid group. My grouping of the statements is probably subjective, but may not be.
For example, if a person who has had three glasses of vodka decides to get into a car and drive, I might say that the person is stupid. I don't necessarily mean to say that the person is permanently stupid, but that the alcohol has affected his brain and the person does not reason correctly according to some social wisdom about drinking and driving. The same statement may, however, be construed differently in that I am merely commenting that the act of driving when having drunk three glasses of vodka is stupid.
What should bother me is that the stupid person, who is drunk and getting into a car to drive it, may actually be smart. Its just that an issue has arisen, a drunken state, in which his thinking and his actions are stupid, or so I assume.
Why Referring to Some one's Behaviour as Stupid Confuses People
When one looks for the word stupid in the English and American dictionaries one gets a very different impression of the social aspects of the term. The dictionaries give examples using other words that are, perhaps, as offensive as referring to someone as stupid.
For example, someone who is boring may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is foolish may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is senseless may be thought of a stupid. Someone who is unwise may be thought of as stupid.
In any event, use of the term stupid with reference to behaviour or characteristic is fraught with problems because it is something that repels people away from the individual in question. Politicians often think their rivals are stupid, but they rarely say so. The reason is perhaps that reference to one's fit within a context is a measure by which others will act.
Saying some one is stupid is a negative advertising for that individual, and is something that person may or may not know how to deal with. If the person is really inadequate, we don't often use the term stupid, and that is because the term is pejorative and demeaning.
The Unwelcome Rebound
Use of the word is likely to rebound back on the individual who uses it. Thus the very act of using the term stupid is stupid, at least for the present!
We use other words instead. We find the phrase 'shameful' an improvement on 'stupid'. One can say openly that a person's behaviour in driving while drunk is shameful, but we don't say the behaviour is stupid. Are we making a mistake? Is there such a thing as stupidity? What do you think?
Thursday 3 January 2008
The Richard Dawkins' Viewpoint of God as Delusion as a Phenomena
Some people like to be at the center of controversy. Posit one absurdity and someone will refute it with another absurdity. Take the extreme of an argument and the response against that argument will probably be extreme. Develop an extreme science that posits an extreme view of reality and others will posit alternative extremes.
Going to the Edge
It is a very human pattern of behaviour that we tend to want to see an ultimate manifestation of something or other. If there is a volcano, it is very human to want to see into the heart of the volcano. This is a very human activity and we call it exploration. Take a concept and one wants to go as far as that concept will lead even to the edge of reason.
What may happen is that the science or reality that creates an invitation for exploration may be a trap, a total waste of time, a place that has nothing of real interest. The journey to that place, nevertheless, takes its toll on those that would journey to it and those that observe the exploration taking place and make judgements.
What is the Direction of your Science or Technology
My experience is that few people understand the notion of direction when it comes to something as complex as the abstraction we call science. If science is a field, there are areas of that field that we can explore. What science is not connected to is technology.
Technology has fields like science has, but technology is not the same as science. We can have lots and lots of science, but very little technology, or vice verse. It is a mistake to confuse technology with science.
Creation of Science and Technology have Different Agendas
Some people, like Richard Hawkins may be exploring technologies and confusing such explorations with science. Rather than being judgemental, I would just throw that out as a proposition. Its a lovely abstraction that can distinguish between different stages of a cycle of activity.
For example, Darwin's discovery was new science, but Dawkins' discovery was new technology. The difference arises because of the motivation behind the exploration. Science that is technology invention has a direction which is orchestrated in ways that science as science is not. We think of science as being basic or developmental. Basic science is one thing. Fundamental science is another.
I realize that English limits my selection of words to describe the processes, but I think my message is clear. It is quite one thing to receive a prize for new science that is basic to promoting the interests of all mankind, but quite another to receive a prize to promoting a development or technology that biases the value towards a specific interest group promoting an agenda.
Exploration may, however, bring about a major explosion of activity and interest. Richard Dawkins may discover something that is valuable to those promoting religion, or he may stimulate a response from the religious community quite unlike anything he expects. What his explorations of dangerous ideas do, however, is produce a notion that such exploration is safe for society rather than destructive.
The North West Passage
Being in Canada, I am awed by the explorations that sought the North West passage, but I am also aware of the injunctions by the then managers of the Hudson Bay Company not to invite people to undertake the exploration into the North West. There are risks for society of exploration, especially in the world of competitive ideas. The North West of Canada and the United States, Denmark, France, Russia and the Netherlands, is now being opened up in ways that environmentalists really do find scary.
The rewards of exploring the North West passage today are so enormous that we could end up in a war situation. Man has had a history of secret competitive alliances and agreements that produce absolute destruction in their wake. Is this what we want from science or is it science at all?
Its not hard to see how the technological or informational results of science are potentially more socially divisive in many more ways than religion.
Activities of exploring, such as science and invention, that create new knowledge or technology may be socially destabilizing, and in science as in economics, as any central banker knows, one should maintain 'economic' stability above all else otherwise you are like to get instability, social upheaval, irrationality and war. Change and new science is wonderful stuff if the organism that seeks it and the society that must sustain it are sufficiently mature to cope with the results.
This is of course where uncertainty begins, but again to use the central banker analogy, it is not good economic or scientific management to create instability to quickly otherwise one just gets a big confrontation and destructive change, the Hegelian process of explosive change rather than the more gradual process of evolutionary change.
So, Richard Hawkins' exploration of the frontiers of dangerous ideas promotes rationalization, we must become aware that the results are not so predictable as to lead to gradual improvement in religion or science. They might just result in explosive confrontation and a badly managed exchange of respectable opinions and well worn positions.
At the Edge
One has to wonder what being at the frontier of religion or science actually means. To some there is the idea that creationism is an activity that seeks to provide a mythology for religion, a vehicle for completing with the strengths they see in science.
As an alternative to the notion of religion as being evolutionary, it might better be described that religion is at the edge of risk taking. That seems strange, but possibly religion is a group response to being burned by exploration in technology that goes bad and the change brought about by such exploration.
Hawkins dangerous ideas really do destroy valuable and important aspects of our beautiful world until the science and technology and religious fervour are redirected towards stabilizing solutions. It's as though, the first attempts at coping with new social problems are catastrophic and society as a whole has to learn from its really bad mistakes, its monstrous errors of judgment that destroy people and the beauty in the world.
Much, but not all religion, may arise as a result of the mass trauma produced by war and the individual trauma at the realization of death and destruction. The rational exploration for solutions arises as a method of coping with overwhelming change. What emerges as a social solution in the form often of religious fervour and commitment is not rational in the long term, even though at the time it seems rational.
Religion as a Means for Groups Coping with Massive Irrationality in the Living Environment
Seen in this way, religion is a method of groups coping with trauma and the inevitability of uncontrollable destructive change, such as the slaughter of innocents whether as a consequence of destructive forces of nature or the acts of competing warlike peoples. Judaism arose in a period of extreme trauma. Christianity arose in a period of extreme trauma.
For example, consider the rise of religious fervour during the New Deal period of the 1930's in which the socially destructive forces of bad economics and lack of stability resulted in a search for comfort and solutions in the immediate. For some groups, there was no time for considered solutions. In the USA, while Harvard academics went crazy for the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, they ignored the more relevant but long term science of their own local professor Joseph Schumpeter in favour of short term technology to find an immediate solution.
The Economics of Religion and Science Stimulated in Periods of Trauma
Both Keynes and Schumpeter realized that an ineffective banking system was at the heart of the economic dilemmas that faced all societies at the time. Peace required a new technology. The problem was that the new technology was not put in place soon enough and the world sank into war and the Jews were trapped within a monstrous period of irrational so called 'problem' solving.
In Canada, Major Douglas, a deeply religious engineer in Alberta, came up with a new religious economics and the idea of the A plus B theorem. Douglas's science was flawed but the direction of his technology was correct. Why should there be poverty in the midst of plenty. His society grappled with the destructive forces of starvation in a time when it was obviously unnecessary.
Keynes technology for the short term was better than that of Major Douglas, but both were going in the same direction, and if Alberta had been a country, Douglas's ideas might have worked better and longer. Schumpeter's science explained what the real underlying problem was while Keynes methods provided a means to grapple with the dynamics in a meaningful way.
In the end, Schumpeter provided the real long term science, but Keynes provided the immediate and necessary technology. Economists lost sight of the Schumpeterian vision of the creative destructive forces built into capitalism because of new technology and went for the religion of absolute truth as presented by John Maynard Keynes, the rationalist speculator.
Alternatively, consider the strength of the rise of Nazism after the great inflation in Germany. The religious fervour of Nazism is easily explained as a consequence of trauma as people sought irrational solutions to what seemed an irrational situation. Nazism as a religious response is not so easily digested unless one considers that religion is often a result of traumatic experience. It was not that Jewish people were the source of the trauma, but that people incorrectly thought that they were.
The real problem was the bad economics of the peace settlement of the first World War. Had France, at the end of World War one, not demanded that Germany pay for the war destruction and had the world reconstructed Germany and France into thriving economies, then the second war may not have happened nor would the Jewish people have suffered as much as they did. Isreal would probably never have been created and the mess in the middle east that we see now would probably not have been initiated. What is the Arab-Isreali war but a flawed solution to an old problem that was the result of a flawed solution to an earlier older problem? The science of peace has been terribly exploratory and the technology employed by France to create peace at the end of World War One was seriously flawed, so flawed that it destroyed much of the world as a result. Its both the science, the technology and the religion that are flawed. When and where will this madness end!
What Context for Religion and Science
Placing religion and science within a social context is not easy, but it is necessary for understanding. Religion is not so much an evolutionary process as a reasoned and rational response to trauma. Reason and religion have common social and natural roots and are not all that different in consequence.
Going to the Edge
It is a very human pattern of behaviour that we tend to want to see an ultimate manifestation of something or other. If there is a volcano, it is very human to want to see into the heart of the volcano. This is a very human activity and we call it exploration. Take a concept and one wants to go as far as that concept will lead even to the edge of reason.
What may happen is that the science or reality that creates an invitation for exploration may be a trap, a total waste of time, a place that has nothing of real interest. The journey to that place, nevertheless, takes its toll on those that would journey to it and those that observe the exploration taking place and make judgements.
What is the Direction of your Science or Technology
My experience is that few people understand the notion of direction when it comes to something as complex as the abstraction we call science. If science is a field, there are areas of that field that we can explore. What science is not connected to is technology.
Technology has fields like science has, but technology is not the same as science. We can have lots and lots of science, but very little technology, or vice verse. It is a mistake to confuse technology with science.
Creation of Science and Technology have Different Agendas
Some people, like Richard Hawkins may be exploring technologies and confusing such explorations with science. Rather than being judgemental, I would just throw that out as a proposition. Its a lovely abstraction that can distinguish between different stages of a cycle of activity.
For example, Darwin's discovery was new science, but Dawkins' discovery was new technology. The difference arises because of the motivation behind the exploration. Science that is technology invention has a direction which is orchestrated in ways that science as science is not. We think of science as being basic or developmental. Basic science is one thing. Fundamental science is another.
I realize that English limits my selection of words to describe the processes, but I think my message is clear. It is quite one thing to receive a prize for new science that is basic to promoting the interests of all mankind, but quite another to receive a prize to promoting a development or technology that biases the value towards a specific interest group promoting an agenda.
Exploration may, however, bring about a major explosion of activity and interest. Richard Dawkins may discover something that is valuable to those promoting religion, or he may stimulate a response from the religious community quite unlike anything he expects. What his explorations of dangerous ideas do, however, is produce a notion that such exploration is safe for society rather than destructive.
The North West Passage
Being in Canada, I am awed by the explorations that sought the North West passage, but I am also aware of the injunctions by the then managers of the Hudson Bay Company not to invite people to undertake the exploration into the North West. There are risks for society of exploration, especially in the world of competitive ideas. The North West of Canada and the United States, Denmark, France, Russia and the Netherlands, is now being opened up in ways that environmentalists really do find scary.
The rewards of exploring the North West passage today are so enormous that we could end up in a war situation. Man has had a history of secret competitive alliances and agreements that produce absolute destruction in their wake. Is this what we want from science or is it science at all?
Its not hard to see how the technological or informational results of science are potentially more socially divisive in many more ways than religion.
Activities of exploring, such as science and invention, that create new knowledge or technology may be socially destabilizing, and in science as in economics, as any central banker knows, one should maintain 'economic' stability above all else otherwise you are like to get instability, social upheaval, irrationality and war. Change and new science is wonderful stuff if the organism that seeks it and the society that must sustain it are sufficiently mature to cope with the results.
This is of course where uncertainty begins, but again to use the central banker analogy, it is not good economic or scientific management to create instability to quickly otherwise one just gets a big confrontation and destructive change, the Hegelian process of explosive change rather than the more gradual process of evolutionary change.
So, Richard Hawkins' exploration of the frontiers of dangerous ideas promotes rationalization, we must become aware that the results are not so predictable as to lead to gradual improvement in religion or science. They might just result in explosive confrontation and a badly managed exchange of respectable opinions and well worn positions.
At the Edge
One has to wonder what being at the frontier of religion or science actually means. To some there is the idea that creationism is an activity that seeks to provide a mythology for religion, a vehicle for completing with the strengths they see in science.
As an alternative to the notion of religion as being evolutionary, it might better be described that religion is at the edge of risk taking. That seems strange, but possibly religion is a group response to being burned by exploration in technology that goes bad and the change brought about by such exploration.
Hawkins dangerous ideas really do destroy valuable and important aspects of our beautiful world until the science and technology and religious fervour are redirected towards stabilizing solutions. It's as though, the first attempts at coping with new social problems are catastrophic and society as a whole has to learn from its really bad mistakes, its monstrous errors of judgment that destroy people and the beauty in the world.
Much, but not all religion, may arise as a result of the mass trauma produced by war and the individual trauma at the realization of death and destruction. The rational exploration for solutions arises as a method of coping with overwhelming change. What emerges as a social solution in the form often of religious fervour and commitment is not rational in the long term, even though at the time it seems rational.
Religion as a Means for Groups Coping with Massive Irrationality in the Living Environment
Seen in this way, religion is a method of groups coping with trauma and the inevitability of uncontrollable destructive change, such as the slaughter of innocents whether as a consequence of destructive forces of nature or the acts of competing warlike peoples. Judaism arose in a period of extreme trauma. Christianity arose in a period of extreme trauma.
For example, consider the rise of religious fervour during the New Deal period of the 1930's in which the socially destructive forces of bad economics and lack of stability resulted in a search for comfort and solutions in the immediate. For some groups, there was no time for considered solutions. In the USA, while Harvard academics went crazy for the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, they ignored the more relevant but long term science of their own local professor Joseph Schumpeter in favour of short term technology to find an immediate solution.
The Economics of Religion and Science Stimulated in Periods of Trauma
Both Keynes and Schumpeter realized that an ineffective banking system was at the heart of the economic dilemmas that faced all societies at the time. Peace required a new technology. The problem was that the new technology was not put in place soon enough and the world sank into war and the Jews were trapped within a monstrous period of irrational so called 'problem' solving.
In Canada, Major Douglas, a deeply religious engineer in Alberta, came up with a new religious economics and the idea of the A plus B theorem. Douglas's science was flawed but the direction of his technology was correct. Why should there be poverty in the midst of plenty. His society grappled with the destructive forces of starvation in a time when it was obviously unnecessary.
Keynes technology for the short term was better than that of Major Douglas, but both were going in the same direction, and if Alberta had been a country, Douglas's ideas might have worked better and longer. Schumpeter's science explained what the real underlying problem was while Keynes methods provided a means to grapple with the dynamics in a meaningful way.
In the end, Schumpeter provided the real long term science, but Keynes provided the immediate and necessary technology. Economists lost sight of the Schumpeterian vision of the creative destructive forces built into capitalism because of new technology and went for the religion of absolute truth as presented by John Maynard Keynes, the rationalist speculator.
Alternatively, consider the strength of the rise of Nazism after the great inflation in Germany. The religious fervour of Nazism is easily explained as a consequence of trauma as people sought irrational solutions to what seemed an irrational situation. Nazism as a religious response is not so easily digested unless one considers that religion is often a result of traumatic experience. It was not that Jewish people were the source of the trauma, but that people incorrectly thought that they were.
The real problem was the bad economics of the peace settlement of the first World War. Had France, at the end of World War one, not demanded that Germany pay for the war destruction and had the world reconstructed Germany and France into thriving economies, then the second war may not have happened nor would the Jewish people have suffered as much as they did. Isreal would probably never have been created and the mess in the middle east that we see now would probably not have been initiated. What is the Arab-Isreali war but a flawed solution to an old problem that was the result of a flawed solution to an earlier older problem? The science of peace has been terribly exploratory and the technology employed by France to create peace at the end of World War One was seriously flawed, so flawed that it destroyed much of the world as a result. Its both the science, the technology and the religion that are flawed. When and where will this madness end!
What Context for Religion and Science
Placing religion and science within a social context is not easy, but it is necessary for understanding. Religion is not so much an evolutionary process as a reasoned and rational response to trauma. Reason and religion have common social and natural roots and are not all that different in consequence.
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Sketches from scratches is a provocative blogspot that has grown out of the Wuh Lax experience. It is eclectic, which means that it might consider just about anything from the simple to the extremely difficult. A scratch can be something that is troubling me or a short line on paper. From a scratch comes a verbal sketch or image sketch of the issue or subject. Other sites have other stuff that should really be of interest to the broad reader. I try to develop themes, but variety often comes before depth.
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