Become Aware Of It, Pay Attention To It. Read About It, Learn About It, Write About It, Talk About It. Teach It.
Reflections upon anything under the sun and beyond. It may not be easy to be a Global Citizen, but it's not hard to engage the Globe.
The Tools of State Repression
CHRIS HEDGES
Some of us believe that incremental progress is natural and good. We think we can always do better and that if something is not right we can improve it, reinvent it, reengineer it, fix it or get rid of it.
Other's may be so dedicated to the way things are that they will risk everything to preserve it.
The world's cultures are always involved in a struggle between these values and everything in between.
What is unforgivable is when we put blinders on and refuse to understand these conflicts because we are just too lazy.
I believe we can learn from everyone, especially our enemies. If we listen to thinkers who spend most of their time sincerely investigating complex issues it's almost our duty to listen to them and to try to understand their perspectives. If we don't we are willfully ignoring someone who is dedicated to making humanity better. This we do at our peril.
Think of all the mythical heroes and real heroes who were murdered by fanatics or the State. Isn't it even more tragic that many people have never even heard of them? Think of three such figures now. Wouldn't you like to share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings with other people?
Share the genius and argue to discover, not to injure.
This is a talk worth listening to. We are indeed fortunate to have such easy access to intelligent people who care about humanity and life on earth.
Thus Saith The Lord
1. Stop thinking of me as anything less than the voice of undeniable and inescapable reality.
2. Stop thinking of ‘revelation’ or ‘divine instruction’ without including evidence.
3. Stop thinking of Genesis, or your creation story, apart from the history of the universe.
4. Stop thinking of theology apart from ecology: the interdisciplinary study of my nature.
5. Stop defining and measuring ‘progress’ in short-term, human-centered ways.
6. Stop allowing the free or subsidized polluting of the commons.
7. Stop using renewable resources faster than they can be replenished.
8. Stop using non-renewable resources in ways that harm or rob future generations.
9. Stop exploring for coal, oil, and natural gas—keep most of it in the ground.
10. Stop prioritizing the wants of the wealthy over the needs of the poor.
***Click on the link below and meet the reality preacher. And remember, when you argue with reality, you lose.
Standing for the Future
Three Live, Multimedia Presentations for Individual Study and/or Group Discussion Grounded in: "Reality's Rules: Ten Commandments to Avoid Extinction and Redeem Humanity"
What's Inevitable? ♦ What's Inspiring? ♦ What's Most Important?
Michael Dowd Essay
Evidential Medicine for Our Collective Soul What’s Inevitable? What’s Redemptive?
Bamboozled Again
OK, sorry folks, it's my turn, let's put this puppy to bed once and for all.
I have thought since the turn of the century that for things to evolve positively for people we'll have to radically reform the global socio-economic system. To do this we need active, highly educated polities and constituencies in countries right across the world.
It would be nice if we didn’t have any pressing, existential threats to worry about.
Let’s say all nuclear weapons had been dismantled and it was really easy to ensure that no country would build any ever again. Let’s imagine that the world had wonderful technologies that ensured we never had to worry about climate change and that the climate would continue in perfect, life-enhancing stasis for another twelve thousand years. And let’s imagine that inequality wasn’t a problem at all and value was trickling up and down to everyone; everyone had food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and an absolutely, astounding quality education from preschool through graduate school. What does this sound like? A post-scarcity utopia perhaps? Well, lots of futurists, technologists and engineers believe this is inevitable. If we have enough time we can solve all of our problems, together as a benevolent and intelligent species in the universe. It sounds like I’m a Trekkie right? I do like Star Trek more than Star Wars that's for sure. I love the idea that we wouldn’t interfere with alien civilizations unless they really threaten us. Wouldn’t it be nice if all countries around the world had that as their prime directive?
For a long time, candidates have been “change candidates”. If you run on a platform of change it seems to grab a lot of people’s interest. Fear is also a potent message to put out there when you are a change candidate, it ups the ante and creates a higher sense of urgency. “If you don’t elect me there will be hell to pay people!” President-Elect Trump was a master of that during his campaign. And many people across the United States seemed compelled to vote for him for just those reasons.
But from my point of view, especially in 2016, it’s clear to me that nothing has changed since the 1970s when Neoliberalism triumphed over progress and global corporatism took over. And then came the financialization of the Global Economy... As an old propagandist, I understand that when you have the resources you can sell, pardon my language, shit to the sewer. You can coerce, manipulate, and control masses of people so easily that it’s practically a joke. Go and listen to recordings of ENRON employees. When you realize how easy people are conned it’s easy to get giddy with megalomania. “Man, we played those people like a fiddle! Whoopee, aren’t we smart!”
When Marshall McLuhan wrote, “The Medium is the Message” he had no idea we’d all be carrying supercomputers in our pockets and in charge of our own media empires curating content for our bubbled-in-social-networks twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Our new President-Elect talks about getting his information from Facebook. How can we have valid common priors when we get most of our info from social networks? With so much bad information sloshing around in our heads how can we ever be good at predicting outcomes?
I know a lot of people are mad at Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight because his interpretation of the polls was wrong. But if I may, please go and read the section in his book, “The Signal and The Noise” about poker players and bone up on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Basically, a vast majority of us way overestimate how good we are at things. We think we’re great poker players until we're broke and addicted to painkillers.
I know, I sound like a broken record and believe me, it’s not fun anymore.
Below I'd like to share perspectives on the presidential election from a few intellectuals who I admire. These people are not best friends by any stretch of the imagination, they have intensely differing views and they focus on different things. It would be boring if we all agreed. I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from all kinds of people, especially people who have put a lot of time and hard work into forming their sincere and highly considered views. Sometimes we call these kinds of people experts and I like experts.
(I don't need to worry too much about epistemic humility - I'm too simple minded.)
If you’ll allow me before I turn you over to the really smart influencers, here’s my take on President-Elect Donald J. Trump.
He’s an attention grubbing egomaniac who’s primarily concerned with himself. He’s happy when he’s in the limelight and people are showing him the respect and admiration he thinks is his birthright. He’s a spoiled, childish, senior citizen with a lot of money. He doesn’t really want to govern; governing is complex and really hard work and it’s much more fun playing a big shot when you don’t have to work very hard. To put it another way, he's used to being a real estate developer and a reality T.V. star, he's comfortable in those roles, but how will he feel doing things he really doesn't like doing? Will he just go AWOL? "Sorry people, I'm not politically correct, I do things my way, just try to keep up."
If he's lazy, like perhaps, George W. Bush most probably was, he's going to have to find people who will do most of the work for him. What really worries me is who are those people going to be?
Most of the things he said during his campaign he probably didn’t mean. He played on our fear and hatred. He told his audience what they were desperate to hear. No one has any idea what he’s going to do as President of the most powerful Empire the world has ever known. He’s a psychological black box.
I can’t help but wonder what his fans are going to do when they realize that nothing is going to change much at all. I wonder what his Alt-Right fans do when they realize that he's not going to bring about a new White European utopia. What will the really violent, extremist maniacs do when they are betrayed? It scares me to contemplate it.
Trump is a player and he wants to be a player president and if you voted for him he’s played you.
I’m not going to regurgitate what you already know from all the news outlets. We will all be captive witnesses to the Trump Whitehouse shenanigans for at least the next four years and I think I can confidently predict that nothing will change for the better. We will still have nukes, climate change will continue unabated, terrorism isn’t going anywhere, inequality will widen, multi-national corporations will rule the world, we will all talk about the commercials that play during the Super Bowl and fight like hell to signal our status to our communities through our amazing taste in consumer goods.
Get ready for the darker side of the status quo. The Status Quo is dead, long live the Status Quo.
Now we’re watching how fast the media and big business falls in line with this new, odd coalition of narrow-minded science deniers. Obama fell in line with big biz and now big biz will fall in line with Trump and his people.
Faith and hope are qualities of being that most of us find very hard to give up. Most of us are going to be reaching out for that silver lining. We're all hoping he's really just a nice guy who threw shit at us for eighteen months just to see if it would get him elected. He didn't really mean it. Now we get to see the real President Donald J. Trump - Angel Trump - our charming savior, the fun and entertaining guy that inspires us with his wealth and success.
We must all hope that the art of the flimflam won’t do too much damage.
It's amazing how easy it is for us to almost feel sorry for the con man. Trump is a cynical huckster, an old player who isn’t going to change, there will be no sudden rebirth. He’s our tough guy feeding our insatiable desire for revenge, feeding on our greed, feeding on our conservative sense of absolute justice.
The sad fact is that we are all going to have to learn to live with this shallow playboy as our president for at least the next four years, and that’s the best case scenario. Will the Trump presidency be a disaster? We all just have to wait and see.
But never mind, we know how to suck it up and get through the next period of same-same. We’ve all lived through two terms of Bush (a good old boy) and two terms of Obama (an uppity smart-ass lawyer and social activist). Life goes on. It's business as usual. We are so accustomed to going along that it’s hardly a surprise that an outlier like Trump could become President of the United States of America. Trump is the black swan that we all should have seen coming.
Americans in today's culture are exceptionally good at idolizing wealthy people. We no longer look up to intellectual plumbers who provide for their family and do good works through their civic organizations. You've got to have bling baby, you need to signal you've got bank. It's almost impossible to find a person who has the courage to piss off money these days. Money is free speech now, money is the highest form of personhood. I swear if Jesus is a poor man in American today we'll never know he walks among us. God wants you to be rich, don't you know. The second coming is going to be a super rich man who shares our values and engenders biblical levels of fear, hatred, and revenge, and offers us our only way out. And he’s going to do this with the charm of a reality T.V. star because he alone can fix it.
Things will never change for people who have already given up. And for those of you for whom Donald is your savior, that familiar feeling of helplessness will return once it sinks in that Donald is just another rich guy. Perhaps the only consolation is that at least he's a simple minded rich guy, not a smart ass like so many elite wealthy people seem to be. He's not politically correct. He tells it like it is. At least Donald doesn't tell us what to do. He's a deft fear monger and simplistic storyteller. He's the original K.I.S.S. practitioner.
And he’s tough too. He’s the kind of bully who punches you in the stomach after lunch and the very next day tells you that he really respects your taste in leather jackets. You blush and feel special because the mean bastard seems to care about you a little for a moment. He's both a good cop and a bad cop. How amazing is that? What talent!
He's the perfect bait and switch man. And what might be a good distraction for us moving forward, something for us to focus on besides the fact that our system doesn’t work in the Twenty-First Century? What, a war you say? We’re already primed for it. The establishment, Trump's establishment, your establishment knows this all too well. The make-work military industrial economy must be fed with endless conflict; that’s just good for shareholders. (I’m not being cheeky.) The intelligentsia can just sit back and dictate the writing on the wall and state their claim to common sense via the saddest sentence I know, "I told you so.”
The climate deniers have won a great victory in America which means life on earth loses. We will enjoy our entertainments and allow inequality to widen, we'll watch the sixth extinction on National Geographic channel, nuclear proliferation will begin again, more people will become addicted to opioids and our veterans will continue to kill themselves. Our new leaders care only for themselves, just like the old ones did.
Of course, there are lots of people in our world who care about important issues that affect all of us, it just doesn’t matter. Money rules the world, and if you don’t have it, you don't matter.
As for myself, I’ll work on developing an epicurean, stoical way of developing a more profound sense of apathy. This alone will make me more popular, this I can tell you, folks. Social critics are no fun at all. Let’s laugh, drink, eat and play while the empire burns. I’m a baby boomer so I’ve had it easy. I’ve lived roughly 30 years without the internet and 30 years with the internet. We all live happily in our echo chambers. I don’t think an evidence-based government is possible anymore. The hustlers are in control, perhaps they always have been and always will be.
OK, that was painful, let's start our journey with the fabled, brilliant comedy icon, John Oliver. And remember, "THIS IS NOT NORMAL" and "FUCK 2016"!
Hehehe, hahaha - that was funny.
Now let's pivot to Sam Harris. I'm interested in his views on Islamist extremists and his take on the psychology of our President-Elect and the people who surround him.
If that didn't make you concerned enough about our future let's move on to our favorite revolutionary, Chris Hedges. I know, I know it's from RT and that's Russian, but you know, Russia isn't a communist country anymore, it's a White Nationalist country with a powerful, charismatic dictator in charge. Now you feel more at home, right?
Let's look at things from an economic POV with Professor Richard D. Wolff. Oh no, he writes about Marx! Have you read Adam Smith or Max Weber? No you say? Then don't worry about Marx.
For those of you would prefer a more controversial, libertarian point-of-view I give you Charles Murray. This is less about Trump and more about politics today and why we are like we are.
And let's not forget my old standby, Noam Chomsky. He tells it like it is and he criticizes the government but he lacks the ability to say those few, most important words, "America right or wrong."
Love or hate their progressive asses, this post wouldn't be complete without a take from The Young Turks.
Let's also hear what the ever-so-popular (in progressive circles) David Pakman thinks about moving to Canada. Although, really man, no one's going to move to a swing-state just to vote. They want jobs and security. But he's right; don't bail folks.
Let's go back to some fun stuff and watch Bernie Sanders on The Late Show with that ever charming and sensitive comedian, Stephen Colbert.
Now, smirk, let's get snarky and rub it in your faces with one of my favorite barbed wits, Lee Camp. I'm feel'in campy.
These are just a small smattering of perspectives on the potential disaster we know as President-Elect Donald J. Trump. He will surround himself with the usual suspects and we will continue on, as we have since the 1970s. The winners will, as ever, be multi-national corporations and their cronies.
There are those who wish that little Steven Cleghorn could be just a little more optimistic and have a bit of faith in The Donald and his lovely, talented family. I'm sorry friends, I just don't have faith in them, none at all. I still feel we are headed in the wrong direction. I can't explain to you the complexities of the kind of world I'd like to see and I wouldn't ask you to bother to spend one calorie of intellectual energy trying to understand my position. I only have faith in you, in my friends who do care and are making an effort; and, I have faith in my friends that are just getting on with it, taking care of themselves and other people while sharing the love.
And this I will never do, I will NEVER apologize for Trump and the way he behaved during his campaign. He is a jerk and a fool and I just don't like him. I never will. He's put us through a lot and unleashed a torrent of hatred; and, he's made it fashionable to be stupid and heroic to be anti-intellectual. I will never forgive him for that. I can only feel sorry for us and for life on earth.
The only thing I can say to my "right" leaning friends is that I feel you too, believe me, this I can tell ya with a straight face.
BBC Documentary Podcast, HOW TO WIN A U.S. ELECTION.
I can't help it, life is just so funny.
Now Read This - Human Society is a Constant Battle
Wax Off
2016: A Liberal Odyssey
Please stop thinking about tomorrow
MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ October 31, 2016
I am now simply an Epicurean Stoic working on becoming apathetic.
Good luck people.
Meet Alasdair MacIntyre
My friend Charles Badoian posted a quote on FaceBook that reminded me of one of my favorite political and moral philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre. I stumbled upon “After Virtue” in the mid-1980s at The Tattered Cover, one of my favorite bookstores in Denver. In 2001, when the Twin Towers were coming down I was in Tokyo reading, “Dependent Rational Animals”.
I was more mystical when I was younger. In the 70’s and 80’s I was perusing typical contemporary spiritualist works (even reading Rajneesh and Crowley) hovering between the remnants of Beatnik intellectual adventurism, hippiedom, Renaissance fairs, psychedelic experimentation, a sense of abandonment and alienation, the Maoist bookstore in San Francisco, existentialism, Situationist urban walks, my Irish Catholic background and my inevitable journey towards secular humanism via skepticism and a new appreciation for science brought about by a lucky run in with the Exploratorium while at film school. (Oh God, after having read that last sentence I feel so damn fortunate.)
One can never have his own philosophy without thoroughly understanding the philosophy of others. All sides must be absorbed in order to navigate towards some better outcome. Life extension would surely help. It is not the books on the shelf that you've read that matter, but rather, all the books absent from your shelves. And, of course, all the time required to read them that’s absent from your future. (I believe I got the paraphrased line about absent books from Taleb. Even the most pompous intellectual can still be of some use.)
Philosophical dialogues throughout history have always been one of my favorite communities. Philosophical dialogues as a community? Can I say that? Perhaps only in the absence of a community where such dialogues exist.
Nurturing positive inquiry in the context of great minds, past or present, is a noble pastime. I wish humanity valued philosophy as much as we value entertainment, money, power and recognition.
Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre
On Being a Theistic Philosopher in a Secularized Culture
Alasdair MacIntyre - Catholic Instead of What?
He has written extensively on the history of philosophy as well. His works on Aristotle are profound.
Enjoy!
Truer Words
“The Demagogues who seek power by exploiting the ire and frustration of the population and making appealing but “terribly simplified” and, ultimately, deceitful promises" - are all around us now. We mistake them for leaders. They are not. They are disgusting and dangerous egoists.
But the truly terrible aspect of the current spectacle we are choking on is the sad fact that most of us can’t see through this idiotic bombast. We have become simpleton victims of the flimflam. We are more concerned with false identity than with truth.
“Collective efforts such as maintaining peace, deterring terrorism, coordinating economic policies to stimulate global growth, fighting disease, stopping climate change, allocating scarce resources, fighting money laundering and fraud, and protecting endangered species are global public goods.” Moises Naim
The collective action problem is a serious issue. It will take a mammoth effort by all players to find and implement solutions to the pressing issues of our time. If humanity gets it right we will evolve toward a post-scarcity world where everyone benefits. If we fail we will lose more than any of us can imagine or calculate.
REAL RISKS
- Disorder
- De-skilling and Loss of Knowledge
- The Banalization of Social Movements
- Boosting Impatiens and Shortening Attention Spans
- Alienation
We know this and we are paralysed and ineffectual.
The Philosophy of Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee's Notebooks
His thoughts are profound and worth our deepest consideration. They reflect common and timeless human wisdom.
Wisdom requires discipline: he certainly embodied willpower and discipline.
REASON: —
Recognizing that both my positive & negative emotions may be dangerous if they are not controlled and guided to desirable ends, I will submit all my desires, aims and purposes to my faculties of reason, and I will be guided by it in giving expression to these.
Click this link: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/08/01/bruce-lee-notebook/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
A Plea For Progress
Inspired by my friend Lori Isner's plea.
I watched the Republican Convention. I found it boring and shockingly simple. (We get Katy Perry and who sang at the RNC?)
I’m dumbfounded.
I have a question for all of you: Do you really believe the “End Times” are here and a con man can fix it? An Islamist con man or a billionaire con man, a con man is still a con man, and he doesn’t give a damn about you.
I have listened to Obama haters and Hillary haters for years. I still don’t know why they hate them so much. I have tried to understand. I don’t know if they know exactly why they hate them so much. Are certain people attracted to a more hateful culture, or perhaps it’s merely banal preferences and nothing more? What’s your reasons for hating? I want to hear your reasons. I want you to try to convince me because I want to defeat hatred. I’d like to live in a world where hatred is rare and fleeting.
Politically correct, say what?
All Americans should know that talk radio is full of inflammatory speech. There is hate speech across the political, ideological spectrum. There is obviously a big market for hate in the world. Hate and fear are human emotions. I can’t imagine a tiger hating a leopard. Only our species, I suspect, know how to hate. Imagine the days when we found it entertaining to watch a heretic burned at the stake. We didn’t have TV shows to represent it, we went to see the real thing. Did we hate the plague way back when or did we just fear it and marvel at the mysteries of God’s punishments?
From my perspective, certain types of people seem to thrive on hate speech a tad bit more than others; certain people seem a bit more sensitive to any slight coming their way. Certain types of people also seem to love fire and brimstone and divisive rhetoric leading to biblical conflict, bloodletting, and death. I don’t like those kinds of people. But there are good reasons to go to war and we should all demand to know them and understand them before we start weighing the costs of collateral damage and personal sacrifice. We should also demand to know if winning such a conflict may have a real chance of improving things.
I can't tell you how many conservative Americans in Hong Kong told me they would return to the USA, grab their guns and join the new civil war if Obama got elected. They seemed to be convinced that a black, Kenyan, Muslim in the Whitehouse would be the end of the great "American Way". They all stayed in Asia of course. Is their current horrific and panic infused narrative an extension of their disappointment in having to endure eight years of Obama? Why do so many seem to gloat and revel in the destruction of Syria, screaming from their armchairs, “I told you so, I told you so!” The new breed of lone wolf terror we're seeing every day is confirmation of what? “It’s their fault!” “It’s their fault.” “Kill them!” Are we really still so interested in manufacturing reasons to go to war that we’ll ignore the hard work required to defend ourselves from the buggy software of bad ideas? Are dead soldiers and suffering troops the only things that represent righteousness? Is that it? Does God require our suffering and vengeance in the name of the Lord, in the name of Mohamed? How many YouTube channels are devoted to survivalism and tactical gear? Religiously inspired war, is that all we can hope for? In the name of this or that God or ideology must we really destroy our kind hearts and our natural will to live? Must we find our love for our children snuffed out by anger and grief? Is a journey back to the middle ages, or ancient barbarism all we can hope for? Can't we do better than that? Are there not more noble projects to consider?
The first human mission to...?
Even the very brightest and best of us can be vulnerable to fear-based narratives. A negativity bias does exist. But I want to know your true aspirations. What are you willing to do for your average man or woman obeying the rules and struggling to survive. I’m talking to those of you who think of yourselves as leaders. There is evidence that ideological propensities have some basis in our genetics and how our genes express themselves due to environmental circumstances, and we are all, to a certain extent, determined in our beliefs by our communities. None of us are as free as we think we are to choose our beliefs and behaviors. Social norms get the better of all of us to various degrees. But when you think of yourself as a leader in your domain you had better have a very detailed description of your beliefs and ideas ready for any audience. If you want us to follow you we need to know what you want for us, why you want it and how you’re planning to get us there. The devil, my faithful friend, is always in the details.
In my opinion, rationalism breeds hope while faith in anecdotes often sends one toward hatred and fear. If humans continue to survive and thrive we may evolve into more rational and loving creatures. But if we are to survive and thrive we must deal with real existential threats, threats that are real deal breakers, threats that could end the human race. There are also true enemies to a more enlightened way of life and they must also be defeated. We have to hold all communities accountable for their ideas and beliefs. We have to pick the right battles and win them. And we have to tame the beast within us, and to do so we’ll all need some loving support.
Things are so good now it's hard to imagine we might not make it. And yet, many people have become so negative that the "End Times” is the most exciting and relevant motivating force in their lives. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate the definition of modernity. Perhaps the black box of technology is the only thing evolving. How terrifying is that?
Why would she give a fuck about humanity, her creator?
We’re still simple, superstitious animals unable to contemplate the fruits of intellect and wisdom. We are, perhaps, too well entertained to invest the time and energy required to entertain good ideas, to contemplate the complex, to finesse our understanding of the facts and invent simple solutions that would bring a stronger and deeper peace and prosperity to us all. We are still too vulnerable to con men who take advantage of our fight or flight instincts in order to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
I know Hillary haters will always hate Hillary; to change one’s mind about hate admits a certain betrayal of oneself. I understand that but don't let him in people. Be patient, a better Republican will come along in four years. But only if Republicans commit to making themselves better Republicans. Your party is going through a bad patch perhaps, but things can turn around. Just say no to the scam, please. Our system is less than perfect but it's still worth fighting for. We only have to work together to improve things. Look around you and be thankful you’re an American. You don’t need a faker’s help. A savior is not coming to fix things. We have to fix things.
I hate labels. I am tipping right and left hoping to strike the right balance. I suspect, like most of you, I just want to be proud to be human. I want the human race to live up to its potential. Now that’s a project worth suffering through a marathon of baby steps.
Rave!
Not a Zombie.
The only philosophical question that matters is whether or not to jump.
We can always
quibble
about what
“jump”
means.
It's a long way down.
“On the grounds of all my experience, which has lasted for several years now, I can say with full confidence that in their form, angels are completely human. They have faces, eyes, ears, chests, arms, hands, and feet. They see each other, hear each other, and talk to each other. In short, they lack nothing that belongs to humans except that they are not clothed with a material body. (Heaven and Hell #75)” Swedenborg
Vanity is power, power is vanity.
Do you hear the trumpets in the clouds?
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
Is it Übermensch?
Trump’s people,
simple people running on pure emotion.
They thrive on dogma and crave the mad ramblings of despots.
Violence and death give their lives meaning - open any flavor of "Good Book" to see what I mean,
or simply turn on the TV.
Does she know?
There are zip codes in NYC (reference Sam Harris) with people who have done more to improve the lives of all creatures great and small than any mass of sheepish, genuflecting, fear worshippers have accomplished in 200 thousand years of humanities
stumbling,
gross,
and horrifically painful struggle for survival.
Is that living?
Brutish and short, brutish and short, human life was brutish and short…
(Do ants suffer? Does asphalt burn? What Host has suffered for my cheeseburger? Ethics, what a bore.)
It must be mundane. It must be random.
Knowing which mushroom can kill you is knowledge worth having.
You're yellow! You're yellow! Ya yella! Ya yella!
Trump embodies our sickly need for dictators who appeal to our childish fantasies of
honor,
glory
and triumph.
(And yes, lines must be drawn and if crossed by the other, the other must meet dire consequences!)
Are we not surviving well now?
Survival is enough for the species but insufficient for the mind.
Does she know where she's going? Do they know what they're waiting for?
"If you see Buddha on the road, kill him."
If we can't kill the thoughts and ideas that drive us toward solipsism, we will inevitably succumb to our
slow,
imperceptible,
instincts
and continue to revel in our self-righteous struggle with pain.
We will continue walking zombie-like in a faceless crowd of heroes, giants, and demigods while the real dangers swell without our knowing
and wipe us out of the universe.
Why wait for the radiating portends of a supernova when our imagination can ignite
the fires of hell on earth.
Lest we forget Oppenheimer's prescient words as he quoted the good book Bhagavad Gita,
"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."
Oh, proud words.
Proud indeed.
So proud.
Death and destruction are
what our species invented with our amazing self-consciousness.
So if it's rapture we want
we will have it,
perhaps sooner than later.
Forget life,
God's speed -
to heaven!
What is time?
What is the end?
I said nothing, I only followed her and enjoyed the colorful surroundings.
(Our king is our concept of freedom. What concept of freedom is that?)
And by the way, I do a great James Corden.
I do existential happiness,
I smile and giggle while pushing the stone up the hill
and laugh madly when I watch it rolling back down into the ravine.
It’s what I do.
It’s the artful deal I made.
Mine will be a Happy Death.
Happy life,
happy death,
humorous and long enough,
humorous and long enough.
Shall we do joie de vivre?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Mundane images, mundane women - it must be mundane.
The Better Angels -
Black First Lady,
Rapper Gal,
and
Comedian from a foreign country.
Bliss -
if only for fourteen minutes and forty one seconds.
Consumed - a blissful cigarette.
A Collection of My Favorite Sam Harris Conversations from “Waking Up Sam Harris Podcast”
Sam Harris
if you are familiar with Sam Harris then you know he’s a controversial intellectual, but I think that if you make the slightest effort to listen to him honestly you’ll be able to understand that his highly considered, nuanced and thoughtful views are not as scary as some people would like to make out.
When I listen to some of these podcasts I get brain orgasms and that’s one of the reasons I want to share them with you. If you're not already a fan I’d recommend you take a look at his work and listen to his podcast; his guests are truly fascinating, prolific and extremely relevant individuals.
I’ve been familiar with the people below for many years now and I find the style of dialogue on Sam Harris’s show adds value to my understanding of these surprisingly insightful intellectuals.
Do yourself a favor, Google these people and become familiar with their thought and work. For me, learning from people like this is the definition of a good time.
Max Tegmark
Paul Bloom
The Dark Side A Conversation with Paul Bloom
https://www.ted.com/speakers/paul_bloom
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/474588/why-empathy-is-a-bad-thing/
Daniel Dennett
Joshua Oppenheimer
FILMMAKER - Joshua Oppenheimer
The Moral Gaze, A Conversation with Joshua Oppenheimer
Dan Carlin
Douglas Murray
David Deutsch
Jocko Willink
Jonathan Haidt
Michael Weiss
Sam Harris “The End of Faith” One and Two
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-1
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2
Don’t shy away, listen to these podcasts whether you're a fan of Sam Harris or not. You won’t regret it and you might even find Sam defanged a little bit.
You might also enjoy The Rationally Speaking Podcast.
Stay curious and keep communicating.
A Few More Thoughts on Brexit
My thoughts below were inspired by a piece I just read on Medium entitled, "A Few Quick Thoughts on Brexit". I have heard a number of decent people voice similar concerns and I'm sympathetic.
In particular, I understand what this writer is getting at here:
"Simply saying they are not valid, or lesser, or they are stupid. Or they are idiots. That is racism’s ugly cousin elitism, so don’t turn it into a fight of the ugly. You think that is going to help people feel included?
If you hate racism, then you really really really should hate any economic and social system that creates and rewards massive inequality. Because when you get that. You get racism."
I often find myself frustrated and adopting a highbrow tone with people when discussing emotionally charged and complex issues that constantly confront us in the media. I could spend page after page on ad hominem attacks on Donald Trump for example. In my opinion, he is a fool and not qualified to be president. But I don't believe that my friendly neighborhood Trump supporter is equally a fool or an idiot for supporting him. I can have conversations, sometimes very productive ones with Trump supporters and gain insight into their concerns.
I am nostalgic for the days when people liked arguing with people face-to-face in cafes. "We argue to discover, knowing we can't injure ourselves." I'm paraphrasing a quote by French Situationist, Guy Dubord from his book, "Society of the Spectacle".
I understand Chris Arnade's point that inequality may be a cause of racism. At the moment' though, I don't want to get into that. The subject of what causes racism today causes many conversations to shut down. My intuition is that pernicious identity politics have infected our use of language to a point of semantic stress that is rather unusual historically speaking.
I do know this however, we need to make an effort to communicate more carefully with people who are simply concerned about their future and tired of being disrespected.
Many people find it difficult to keep up with the rapid changes in culture, technology, science, global business, trade and all the many complex aspects of our world today. We live in tender times, even calling attention to this can be seen as insulting or high-minded.
If we take a moment to think about our unprecedented global circumstances it’s not hard to understand why so many people are frustrated with the status quo. It seems that fewer and fewer of us know what's going on inside the black boxes that we've all come to depend on. It can easily feel like we're losing control. (I can't fix my carburetor, but my car always starts.)
When have humans lived connected to a global, digital network? It seems like it all started for most of us just a couple of decades ago. The technology has evolved and so must our institutions, governments, businesses and ourselves. But how best to inspire this evolutionary process is one of the most complex and irksome questions of all? We are facing coming to grips with processes that lead us towards solutions rather than dogmatic solutions that have existed all along and merely been ignored by the elites, or the intelligentsia, or the technocrats, or the atheists, or our enemies, or _______. Just fill in the blank.
In some ways we are all spoiled consumers who have lost the plot and stopped participating in community building in favor of witnessing the entertaining spectacle of progress with its proliferation of cool stuff and labor saving devices.
Many of us can travel the world and yet we don't, or if we do we do so aimlessly and superficially. This is sad. We live in a world where we have access to many cultures and many of us still prefer to hunker down with the familiar and enjoy commiserating about our trepidations.
I know, you can tell, I'm urbane. But I am not an elitist, far from it, I simply miss the intellectualism of simple workers. Cities and towns used to be full of them; these thoughtful, down to earth, extremely intelligent people who wove the fabric of society and defended families and their communities.
Some of the best, and I do mean best, intellectuals I have known were red necks, farmers, workers, taxi drivers, plumbers, waiters, cowboys, teachers, etc. There was a time when it was fashionable to read a book after work and play pool with friends at the local pub while talking about things that were a challenge to understand. This was, of course, before we could easily live in the comfort our digital silos. This was way back when little Republican children went to the same school with little Democrat children in Washington D.C., and people of different ideological stripes felt a responsibility to collaborate with each other for the greater good, for their children’s future in other words.
The fact remains that there is no turning back without throwing away the tremendous progress we have made, without turning our backs on our human potential, and the better angels of our nature. Our world is not going to get any easier to understand. We’re all going to have to work hard to keep ahead of issues that convey true existential risks.
Think of what kind of economy you want and what the tradeoffs are. We all need the time, patience and self discipline to educate ourselves. We have the resources if we choose to activate them, if we chose to invest in them. Then we need to talk with each other and figure out how to get things done. Many of us do this, but far too many of us just sit back and watch. (Was Chauncey the Gardener really wise, or just simple.)
Beating up Polish workers in the U.K. isn’t going to help you get back to mining coal, weaving cloth or tending land on huge estates. Things are always changing so we must learn how to think ahead and prepare for the future that’s coming, not just the future we are nostalgic for. Only tomorrow is coming and what tomorrow will be like is much harder to predict than it used to be.
No one is going to listen to a sanctimonious jerk drone on about his or her concerns. We need to start by listening to each other and really making an effort to understand each other. We can’t afford to talk over each other anymore. The changes are coming hard and fast and we need the force multipliers born of intelligent and careful collaboration across cultures and ideologies.
And yes, we need to tell it like it is and call it as we see it. Dishonestly has no place in the discussion.
We all need to participate in whatever ways we can to make positive connections and contribute to improvements in our institutions and communities, no matter what silo we live in. If we all open up a little, we might be able to find solutions to our problems, and relieve some of this social and cultural pressure that’s been building up recently.
It all starts with honest and careful communication.
Good Self Defense, Good Platform, Good Shooting
The right tools for the job...
This post was inspired by:
Why I “Need” an AR-15
Enjoy it.
Well done, I enjoyed your article. You did a great job explaining why millions of people love their AR-15. Your points seem indisputable to me. I'll read the other pieces you mentioned.
I have nightmares though and I’ll tell you about that after saddling you with a little background about me. (I'm not assuming you give a shit, but just in case.)
I was born in Colorado, I started traveling when I was still in my mother’s womb and was fortunate enough to go around the world every decade of my life and I’m pushing sixty. I feel at home in our world.
I was given my first shotgun and rifle when I was 10 years old. My family hunted. My dad was a veteran of WWII and he was also assaulted in a home invasion, probably a botched robbery, he was home alone at the time; the bad guys used a knife and got away — my dad nearly died. After that, there were more guns around the house instead of locked up in the utility house where we had a workshop and stored tools and other things.
I won’t bother to list the various types of guns I own and have owned. I will say that I sincerely loved my AR-15 and my Glock 19 for all the reasons you’ve made clear in your article. I sold them fro reasons that will become obvious should you continue reading.
I’ve lived in seven countries. I’ve never been banged up abroad. I’ve never been locked up abroad. I’ve never been mugged, and I’ve never even been pickpocketed. I must be the luckiest man alive. There should be a Guinness record for this kind of stuff.
All of the countries I’ve lived in have very strict gun control laws, no I wouldn't call them gun owner control laws. If I shoot I have to go to the shooting club. Most have to leave their firearms at the club locked up and secure. Unfortunately, or perhaps not, my weapons won’t do me a bit of good if the proverbial excrement hits the fan in Hong Kong. If the culture suddenly becomes rife with roving thugs and gangs I’ll be stuck defending myself with my three-inch blade Spyderco folding knife. I’m doomed!
Thankfully all of the countries I’ve lived in have been extremely safe places. To explain why would be a complex equation that I don’t have time to bore you with here. If you’re curious, have a look at Hong Kong Police Force crime statistics website to get an idea why I probably don’t need to worry too much about having to defend myself. Then just google any police website in any large city in America and weep.
http://www.police.gov.hk/ppp_en/09_statistics/csc.html
You write on the subject so all this stuff will be trite old news to you perhaps.
What’s the deal? LA Crime rose in 2015? I mean, why is that? If people didn’t have any AR-15 rifles would the crime rate rise even more? What do you think?
http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-crime-stats-20151230-story.html
In 2013 HK had a population of 7.188 million. It’s a crowded city. I never feel threatened here unless I’m out drinking with my British buddies. I’m just teasing.
OK, sorry for all the background info, I just wanted you to know that I don’t have anything against guns, just against drunk Brit football fans. ...teasing again.
Now I’ll get to the point and I’d love it if you would write something on this subject because I sincerely think you’d do a great job. Yes, I'm interested in your solution.
Google this: How many good guys killed a bad guys in the USA in 2015?
11 times a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy, saving lives
http://www.washingtontimes.com/multimedia/collection/good-guy-gun-stopped-bad-guy-gun/
Here’s Why A Good Guy With A Gun Always Gets Killed
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/12/11/Here-s-Why-Good-Guy-Gun-Always-Gets-Killed
Guns in America: For every criminal killed in self-defense, 34 innocent people die.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/19/guns-in-america-for-every-criminal-killed-in-self-defense-34-innocent-people-die/
I’m not going to drill any deeper here. If Americans want Glocks and AR-15s they should have them. If Donald J. Trump wants to buy every adult in America an AR-15 he’s free to do so if he can find the money. America is still a relatively free country and our constitution is still there working for us. If San Francisco makes it hard for you to carry your pistol you can move to Oakland. But here’s the image I can’t get out of my head. Let’s say a shooter with evil intentions wandered into a crowded shopping mall armed to the teeth with enough ammunition to kill hundreds of people and just a fraction of people in the space had pistols, maybe one person has an AR-15 out in the car in the parking lot. ( Oh God, this sounds like Kenya .) The shooting starts, and before the police or security guards arrive on the scene our good citizen “soldiers” pull their weapons but in the confusion aren’t sure who fired the first shot. What happens next? Chaos, more people dead, some by “friendly fire”? Find some data on it and then analyze the heck out of it. I'm interested to see what you come up with. I am not being facetious. We the people of the USA, millions of us as you have pointed out, feel we need to be a bit tactical to be good Americans. Or maybe we just love, love, love target shooting. Those of us with various and necessary resources educate ourselves, we take the time to train with our weapons, we secure them responsibly, we practice rigorous gun safety. A few of us are preparing for — name your conspiracy or catastrophe… We are a spectrum of types of people who own guns.
Sadly the statistics don’t lie, and yes they can be spun. In Africa and Central America, I was lucky and happy. I’ve traveled all my life armed with a camera. Yes, I have my pocket knife, I’d feel naked without it. I’m from Colorado, that’s my excuse. And, I am not a statistic, lucky me. And true, people suck at gauging probabilities.
So what happens when we all have guns? What’s next? Give everyone training and a deputy badge? I’ve said it many times, I feel blessed to have lived in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Europe and other places where I never felt I needed to worry about having a gun for self-defense. Knock wood, I’m a lucky fellow, and those cultures are profoundly good in my humble opinion.
Was I more worried for the month I spent in Italy this year because there were refugees in the country and ISIS had shot up Paris? I wasn't. Am I just stupid? I'll tell you the military people on the streets of Rome are a thing to behold. I'm glad they are there.
It scares me to think of walking around in a town with an armed population. I guess despite my good fortune I just don’t trust people that much, I drive defensively because I don't really trust the other drivers. l have a healthy respect for experts and professionals, though. I respect and count on our well-trained police force in Hong Kong. I feel secure here. It's a civilized place.
Anyway, enjoy your firearms, I mean this sincerely, and continue to educate and communicate around the subject. Until you roll out that solution of yours that you fear will be ridiculed we need to keep the conversation going. I reckon it will take a quiver of solutions to bring gun related deaths in America down to rates we can be proud of.
I know one thing for sure, wisdom is more important than bullets. I’m thankful for having had the chance to live in peaceful cultures around the world. I’m looking forward to the Star Trek culture where we humans don’t have to fear other humans. Yes, I know, I’m a bit of a dreamer.
As for my friends in the US who are preparing for the worst it helps to know this: an Army is better than a Corps, a Corps better than a Division, a Division better than a Brigade, a Brigade better than a Regiment, a Regiment better than a Battalion, a Battalion better than a Company, a Company better than a Platoon, a Platoon better than a Squad, a Squad better than a Section, a Section better than an individual no matter how well trained and armed.
Cooperation, discipline, and training are needed to effectively manage any institution, business, government or group. Values are important. I hope we all spend ample time learning what’s needed to live well together in peace. Read, “The Art of War”. It may be a cliche, but knowing where our values come from and learning from our wise predecessors is great self-defense. Reading books is good self-defense. Compassion and understanding are qualities needed for good self-defense. Mental and physical health are needed for self-defense. Respect and consideration are qualities needed for good self-defense. Love, well, love is really something special.
And yet, I know, it’s only a matter of time until the next mass shooting. I hope the next time some of the victims will bum rush the person with the gun and perhaps save a life or two through their courage and action. Maybe the next time people will get lucky because they’ll be a responsible gun holder in the crowd who’s trained well enough to stop the threat despite the chaos and confusion. Whatever happens, people are going to continue to die of gunshot wounds in the USA. I guess it’s the American way. As I get older it becomes harder for me to justify all the death and destruction caused by people with guns.
Oh God, now I’m thinking about that Biker shootout in Waco last year. Oh man!
Be safe.
Reflections on Different Orientations to Life
William James
How can we explain the difference between one person’s perception of Truth and another’s? Humanity seems like it’s constantly making progress and getting “smarter”, and yet, we also seem to be getting dumber at the same time. Our perception of what is dumb or smart seems to depend on our innate mental and emotional orientation in combination with our unique experiences.
Lately I've been revisiting William James and I'm finding his ideas still compelling and explanatory in this era of cultural Schizophrenia and fragmentation.
“A social organism of any sort is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs…. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.”
Today it feels like we all live in silos, safe places online and in communities where we surround ourselves with people similar to ourselves where argument and discovery become anathema to our way of life. We struggle to maintain our status while signaling desperate, almost religiously motivated beliefs in ideological anchors without which we would disintegrate or be reduced to vain solipsism.
Polarization is a phenomenon often observed in nature. It’s also an easy mental construct, hence the plethora of logical fallacies illustrating our tendencies to “exclude the middle”, or drastically simplify complex systems.
If we are so easily frustrated by attitudes differing from our own, what is the point of even trying to make ourselves understood or of advocating certain beliefs or positions?
(“People are idiots, I give up.”)
At the end of his article “Will to Believe,” James quotes Fitz James-Stephens:
"We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we may be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong, and of good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."
Conservative and Liberal, surely these concepts change over time. Are you optimistic or pessimistic or a little bit of both depending on the circumstances of any given moment?
ONCE BORN - James’ example of this is Walt Whitman, and he quotes R.M. Bucke’s description of him:
"He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history, or against any trades or occupations–not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."
On the other side we have the TWICE BORN and pessimism:
"There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes."
But are Twice Born types doomed to paralysis and unhappiness? Not necessarily.
The twice-born reach a new and higher plane:
"The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before."
James treatment of truths is particularly explanatory. Truths are convenient and practical ideas that move us forward for a time and ultimately change over time. Truth as an adjective, as a subjective value, a phenomenon that derives its value from our feelings and experiences.
One of the most interesting conceptual dualisms of James’ thought is his idea of there being two types of people, the Tender Minded and the Tough Minded.
See:
Temperament
The Tender-Minded
- Rationalistic (informed by principles)
- Intellectualistic
- Idealistic
- Optimistic
- Religious
- Free-Will-Oriented
- Monistic
- Dogmatical
The Tough-Minded
- Empiricist (fact based, “reality” based, evidence based
- Sensationalistic
- Materialistic
- Pessimistic
- Irreligious
- Fatalistic
- Pluralistic
- Skeptical
If one feels that one’s experience leads one to believe that something is true, and this belief is beneficial, and one can act on this truth, and if one’s behavior continually validates this truth over a sustained period of time, then one is secure in his belief.
Criteria needed to believe something to be true:
1. there is enough good evidence to make the idea seem true within the current context...
2. the idea can stand up to counter arguments...
3. the idea has to keep consistently predicting future results...
This works for both types of people in any context throughout history. The Earth was flat and now it’s a sphere. Our explanations of how things work changes over time. Our tools of observation have evolved (technology). Our knowledge base has grown (science). Our narratives have evolved according to our human experience (culture).
Some people believed in angels in the 19th century, while today we have people who believe in ancient aliens. Many put their “faith” in science, reason, evidence based principles, and technology, while others are of a more absolutist orientation maintaining certain attitudes with a kind of religious fervor.
Ideas must continue to predict future outcomes to remain useful and prescient. The utility of beliefs is ultimately important. If your beliefs don’t hold up to scrutiny they are no longer useful, living truths.
William James saw almost all “truths” as akin to religious beliefs. His understanding of “the divine” was broad and inclusive. Religious belief could include things like one’s fervent reverence for The Constitution, Prince, David Duke, Sexism, Nationalism, Racism, Writing on a Scroll, or even one’s fanatic support of one’s local sports club.
In this sense the Russian hooligans in France are engaging in a kind of religious crusade by traveling across Europe to attack opposing teams fans. This behavior has the same emotional quality as a religious belief. When people in the USA join militia groups to defend THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA they are displaying a kind of religious zeal. When people engage in tirades about the intentions of THE FOUNDING FATHERS they are defending their SAINTS.
This kind of religious fundamentalism extends to the Donald J. Trump phenomenon. In a broad sense, Donald Trump’s brand of “benign” racism, sexism and nationalism is a form of religious fundamentalism. (“Gays love me... Mexicans love me... My black man loves me... I’m the best to women... I’m building a wall, he’s Mexican, he can’t be objective...”)
When I shake my head in disbelief at how any intelligent person could support a man like Donald J. Trump I find satisfying explanations in the works of William James, and I’m sure it works both ways. If you’re a Trump fan and you want to know the difference between you and me William James will have something for you too.
In the end it’s down to a “...man’s total reaction upon life”. What’s Godlike for you may seem like the devil to me. And so it goes in 2016 as it was in 1907. We get better and better at certain things but we all remain simply human.
Revisit him here:
BRODO (Meat Bone Soup) Anytime
Well, this really does sound good. I love soup and a good broth is simply satisfying. Creating a rich broth is a labor of love and must be a stress reducer. Perhaps we all need to get back to spending more time in the kitchen hacking our own BRODO recipes.
I tend to think this is more than just a transient food fad. The earliest restaurants were soup kitchens. I first heard about the history of the Suppenküche (soup kitchen in German) from Fabrizio Wiest who started a restaurant of the same name in San Franciso. It opened in 1993 and it's still there although under new ownership. Hearty food never goes out of style.
http://www.suppenkuche.com/dinner.html It's still there... I've got lots of memories of that place.
The Princely Value of Free Thought and Tolerance
Prince is gone but he will continue to inspire generations. He left us infinite possibilities— that’s part of his magic. Without his indisputably inspiring body of work, he would have been just another highly evolved genius that few people knew of. I’ll leave it to his friends and family talk about his life and who he was. I was just an enthusiastic fan. I saw him perform six times and regret not having seen him seven or eight times. I have never seen anyone perform like Prince. He was truly unique. Every once in a while, God gives us human treasure. (In deference to his faith I speak of God.)
Prince, SLAVERY
How improbable it seems to stumble upon the circumstances that would allow a person to develop just the right combination of skills, in loving relationships with other talented people, that would lead to honest creative expression and productivity. I wonder, isn’t that what any healthy human being wants, simply to be able to be her true self and express herself fully.
What kind of legacy can one leave if one is stressed, starved and abandoned?
Our quirky, volatile, emotional, rational human mind, that emergent faculty many of us feel is so worth defending and nurturing, that Godly creative energy nested in nature, those brainy, embodied systems, that essence that sets us apart from other life forms on earth are the qualities that make humans precious. Is humanity destined to become an evolutionary force of life, of good, healthy, balanced expressions of the joy of living? Or are we more akin to a disease, a living nemesis of life, a horrifically imperfect, organic, credulous computing device destined to be a flash in the universe, a temporary anomaly in space-time? When will we arrive at the pinnacle of cultural expression? Perhaps culture is better imagined as a graph revealing ups, downs, and plateaus with only one certain outcome, an eventual end point.
Steven King might write a book about a world full of City States separated by ideological and religious values. Each City State would be pure: A Nazi State; A Catholic State; A Sunni State; An Atheist State; A Mormon State; A Hindu State; An Epicurean State; A Stoic State; An Ayn Rand State; A Goth State; A Paleo State... Imagine a world without Identity politics; a world without politics. It would be a fun read.
In such a world which City State is the best? Where freedom of thought is nonexistent and everyone is literally born into someone’s Utopia/Dystopia can we be fully human? How can we know for certain that North Koreans aren’t living a good life? Objective criteria for making such a judgement could never exist in such a world. Where there is no freedom, and no differences to explore and learn from, the potential for evolution dissolves and the whole miraculous system shuts down.
Everything derives from other things. Any creative person understands this. We are all influenced by many things. Living with an open heart and mind allows us to experience life as a creative journey in which we have a semblance of control. Unpredictability, volatility, mistakes, questions, confusion are all a part of the process of discovery.
Think of the multiverse, in each universe you exist in a matrix of infinite options, let’s think of them as choices for now. At some point in childhood you start making choices, later you grow up to make decisions and each time you make one your subsequent actions create another branch in the evolution of your life experiences. If you overlay all the parallel universes you see the evolutionary tree of “yourself” moving in all sorts of directions with good, bad and mediocre outcomes. In one universe you are someone like Prince, in other’s you are a drug addict living on the streets. Everyone’s multiverse tree is unimaginably large and complex. A Syrian child killed by a drone strike or a barrel bomb at the age of five only made it so far in one particular universe, he hardly made it to the point where he could choose much less make decisions. But this same boy, in another universe had a long and productive life full of love and creativity leaving an amazing legacy to his world.
The tree of possibilities is immense, but I hesitate to call it infinite. I lack the faith and the math skills to go that far. But each of our trees, within that layered, multi-dimensional model of reality, are good and bad outcomes and we are hardly in control of any of them.
Each force in the universe is doing its work, each influencing everything to a certain degree according to the laws of nature, of God. We are part of an ever-changing milieu, the most any of us can do if we are healthy is to learn how to make good choices and decisions. The best thing any of us can do is be compassionate towards ourselves and each other.
I have discovered a new rule for my life. I shall not be the cause of my own pain and suffering. When bad things happen to me I’ll face them stoically and continue to do my best, but I will no longer abuse myself. This I no longer give myself the right to do. I will need a lot of love to find the strength for that. Learning to love oneself for the right reasons, what a corny cliche, and yet, it’s those of us who can reconfigure cliches in profound ways that create the best art. And what is living if not an art?
The theory of quantum mechanics, which reigns over the tiny world of subatomic particles, suggests another way multiple universes might arise. Quantum mechanics describes the world in terms of probabilities, rather than definite outcomes. And the mathematics of this theory might suggest that all possible outcomes of a situation do occur — in their own separate universes. For example, if you reach a crossroads where you can go right or left, the present universe gives rise to two daughter universes: one in which you go right, and one in which you go left.
"And in each universe, there's a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking — incorrectly — that your reality is the only reality," Greene wrote in "The Hidden Reality."
Look Mom, No Americans
I doubt Donald Trump’s wealth managers used Mossack Fonseca. Mossak Fonseca is just one of hundreds of law firms around the world that setup offshore companies and manage wealth. A gold spooner like Trump will have the best wealth managers money can buy. (Oh, but wouldn’t it be fun if we could follow Trumps money?)
There is a lot of old money behind the well organize and well-planned dissemination of the Panama Papers. I can’t wait to see the conspiracy theories that are going to flow from this particular leak.
Recent ICIJ funders include: Adessium Foundation, Open Society Foundations, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Fritt Ord Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Ford Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and Waterloo Foundation.
For now, no Americans.
The United States has trade agreements with offshore banking jurisdictions. International trade agreements are unique and complex. If you are a billionaire who’s been around a while you’ll have lawyers who will make sure that you’re working with law firms and banks that are friendly to your purposes in jurisdictions friendly to your purposes.
The Panama US Tax Information Exchange Agreement includes a clause, Article 5, that specifies the terms of information sharing between the two countries on tax related matters:
The competent authority of the requested Party shall provide upon request by the competent authority of the requesting Party information for the purposes referred to in Article 1 of this Agreement. Such information shall be exchanged without regard to whether the requested Party needs such information for its own tax purposes or the conduct being investigated would constitute a crime under the laws of the requested Party if it had occurred in the territory of the requested Party.
The Article goes on to make clear that Mossack Fonseca’s type of services would certainly be included in the information request.
At present, there are no Americans or American firms named but that will change. Have a look at shotgun data created by Brian Kilmartin at CARTODB, a BIG DATA MAPPING PLATFORM
Shotgun Data Map relating to Mossack Fonseca clients: 441 clients, 3,072 companies, 211 beneficiaries and 3,467 U.S.-based shareholders of the Panamanian law firm.
Now take a look at data activity nodes gathered by FUSION INTERACTIVE UNIVERSE.
We will know soon enough who’s been doing business down in Panama. Porn stars, pro-wrestlers and other unfortunates who thought that all they were doing was protecting their wealth from the tax man. The Uber Rich with their sophisticated wealth managers, law firms, and banks will skate free.
You see, there are just no incentives to stop them. The theory goes that huge multi-national corporations and individual billionaires have the resources to know how to spend their money in better ways than government bureaucracies. You see, they’re creating added value and jobs, or robots, or labor saving machines, or labor saving algorithms or some such thing. They understand labor arbitrage, an integral component to the availability of cheap stuff at Walmart. And let’s not forget the luxury goods industry that needs the fraction of one percent to keep going. In other words, where would the world be without the Uber Rich? In fact, could there be anything of beauty in our world without corruption and oligarchs? The paleo world isn’t that attractive to me anyway. And I must admit that I got uber excited by the spectacle of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome this year.
When you look at hardline Trump supporters with their wide hopeful eyes and their firm belief that an entitled billionaire idiot savant can fix everything, you understand the power of elites and the mysterious force of money. When you remember the wide eyed enthusiasm for the first African American president and his simple slogan, “Yes we can”, along with his performance over the past seven and a half years, it’s not hard to comprehend the power of our current system and the passion with which oligarchs will fight to protect it.
When you create the game you make sure the rules are in your favor.
It may seem ironic but it’s probably time to show some compassion towards the Nouveau Riche in America who are petrified right now. They can’t help it that they are not Uber Rich. They never had the pedigree to be Uber Rich.
The lucky few who dropped out of college and became Uber Rich, and then started philanthropic empires are outliers. They came out of the system and truly innovated. They really did create added value, jobs, cool products and labor saving algorithms. We need these people, but do you think their most important incentive was to become Uber Rich? Perhaps for some of them. But I think the motivating factors in their lives were much more complex and of much higher value. They paid their taxes according to what their lawyers and wealth managers stipulated that they could get away with under the law, and sheltered their wealth. Now they are giving their money away and doing it smartly I might add.
We need to strike the right balance between all the great socio-economic theories and the law. We have to struggle forever trying to maintain that balance, for there are many forces that can erode it.
It’s not hard to imagine why poor and middle class people might feel that it’s unfair that they can’t shelter the little they have from irresponsible and venal politicians, greedy business people, poorly run institutions and badly managed bureaucracies that cause harm. When it’s the poor and the middle class who die in wars to make the system friendly for wealthy tax dodgers; when it’s the poor and the middle class who bail out the banks; when it’s the poor and the middle class who are losing their jobs to machines, robots, and labor saving algorithms it’s not hard to understand why people would feel angry, and frustrated. When life is this absurd it’s not hard to understand why simple people would vote for an entitled, idiot savant billionaire.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Austrian-born American economist and political scientist.
According to Christopher Freeman (2009), a scholar who devoted much time researching Schumpeter's work: "the central point of his whole life work [is]: that capitalism can only be understood as an evolutionary process of continuous innovation and 'creative destruction'". Wikipedia
Perhaps it’s time to let the destruction begin. Either that or strike a better balance.
Now Read This:
Branko milanovic, serbian born economist - click the image for more information
I'm Spiritual But Not Religeous
I'm spiritual but not religious
Sometimes people share things with you through social media that really make a difference; that have, dare I say, the power to change your worldview and give you a direct line to happiness or make you a better person.
Take this wonderfully inspiring video as a case in point. Very popular I might add, very popular.
Perfect. The truth was never so funny and so profound. The truth will set you free from bull shit. Really it will. Really! Trust me. This I can tell you. The truth is tremendous. Excuse me. Excuse me. The truth is really great.
Meet Ted Cruz - a new patch on an old garment.
What qualifies a person to lead a nation? Perhaps it's just having the gumption to want to lead, and perhaps a little faith, and maybe a bit of talent for showmanship, and let's not forget ambition and a desire for power.
Does anyone really need background knowledge across complex domains to be able to know what decisions need to be made to serve and protect a nation? Do they need to be wise? Do they even really need to honestly care about common people? The game of politics often seems to take precedence over such academic sounding ideals.
I'm sure we can all list, at least, six leaders from history who's megalomania was the primary driver and reason each came to power eventually leading their nation or the world to disaster.
The people never seem to notice that their beloved leader is only in it for himself. It always seems to take hindsight to bring evil to light.
Go ahead, take a minute, and make that list. Mine would take me, at least, two hours to compile. A day if I wished to make a complete list, and I'm no historian.
Are we left with a choice between dumb and dumber, between inept and idiot savant, between bad and evil?
A man can be good at real estate deals and still be a fool. He can be a pious pentecostal and still lead the planet to armageddon.
Perhaps I'll stop right here by accusing myself of hyperbole.
I hope you will enjoy this BBC Documentary, Ted Cruz - Republican.