Thoughts 14 Feb. 2022

 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Would a panel of the wise—Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and Socrates—conceivably approve of our current way of life?

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

[W]e have a wide latitude of choice within the limits set by the flow of solar energy. It is possible in principle to create an agricultural civilization founded on yeoman farmers instead of exploited peasants or slaves—that is, the kind of small-hold, egalitarian, salt-of-the-earth farming society that Thomas Jefferson envisioned for the United States. I have imagined such an agrarian civilization, which I call “Bali with electronics.” In short, we can have benign and culturally rich societies without energy slavery. True, these societies may not offer the kinds of permissive freedoms that many enjoy today; individuals will have to find their freedom within the prevailing moral framework, not apart from it. But in return they will get back the autonomy, agency, and integrity that were lost in societies given over to distraction and consumption.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

‘But aren’t you dichotomising?’ I have not invented that hateful thing, a dichotomy. Some people are just against what they call ‘dichotomising’, feeling it is ‘simplistic’. But such a view is itself simplistic. There are, after all, different types of dichotomies. Some are inevitable, such as between plants and animals – even though there exist microscopic life forms that defy such categorisation. Some are entirely spurious. Elsewhere I have quoted whoever it was who said that ‘there are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t’. Dichotomising has its problems.

Shutdown

Adam Tooze

Given the scale of the fiscal interventions in 2020, if the political will had been there, it would not have been unreasonable to talk about a new or at least a renewed social contract. There were elements in the giant flow of money that were undoubtedly novel.

Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality

Pope Francis

For “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”

The Wedge

Scott Carney

The three main building blocks of human experience are time, emotion and sensation. The brain must account for all three factors in order to encode information from the outside world.

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WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

The muscles, bones, ligaments, feet, hands and nerves, etc., are agents for carrying out the mandates of the mind.

Powerful Hypnosis - Revealing Confessions of a  Rogue Hypnotist

The Rogue Hypnotist

If someone firmly believes ‘I am a smoker,’ they will not be able to stop smoking. If they lack self-belief that they can stop smoking, they may or may not succeed in the long term.

Thoughts 16 Jan. 2022

 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

A two-hundred and fifty year-old industrial civilization is also entering its terminal phase. It is mostly failing to come to grips with the problems occasioned by its success, and it exhibits all of the major contradictions that have driven past civilizations toward decline and fall—ecological stress, overpopulation, resource exhaustion, excessive complexity, loosened morals, burgeoning indebtedness, social strife, blatant corruption, and political dysfunction.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Human beings are herd animals who find it hard to keep their heads when everyone around them is losing theirs. Indeed, to depart too far from what is “normal” risks being judged “crazy.”

And, as I've said before, the human herd (now worldwide) is spooked. Why? Like all worthwhile questions, there is no simple answer; there is no single cause.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

The relationship comes before the relata – the ‘things’ that are supposed to be related. What we mean by the word ‘and’ is not just additive, but creative.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

There is no one absolute truth about the world that results from this process, but there are certainly truths: some things we believe will be truer than others. A maximally open, patient, and attentive response to whatever-it-is is better at disclosing or discerning reality than a response that is peremptory, insensitive, or – above all – shrouded in dogma.

(Location 299)

An Autobiography

R. G. Collingwood

By about 1920 this was my first principle of a philosophy of history: that the past which an historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present.

Indeed, "the present" is the culmination of "the past," the entirety of the past; the present is a continuous breaker on the neverending wave of the past.

The Complete Works of William Walker Atkinson

William Walker Atkinson

When the mind is mastered by the will, then may new territory be conquered.

This sounds easy & it isn't. For every will, per St. Augustine, there's a will-not; for Nietzsche will involves a command within the mind that may be ignored or disobeyed. Note WWA's use of the terms "mastery" & "conquered." Isn't will mastering the mind an indication of Nietzsche's will-to-power in its worst possible manifestation? Should we encourage the will to take precedence over thinking and judging? (See Arendt, The Life of the Mind, quoted below.)

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow-men, are together with no one but ourselves?

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

Pyrrhon, according to Timon, held happiness to be the goal of philosophy, and recommended that a person who would be happy should consider the following three questions: What is the nature of things? What is our position in relation to them? What, under the circumstances, should we do? The answers appear as a formulaic series of negations in the tradition of Democritean athambia and Cynic apatheia. Questions one and two are answered by three negative adjectives: Things are adiaphora, “nondifferent,” or “without distinguishing marks”; astathme-ta, “nonstable,” or “without fixed essence”; and anepikrita, “nonjudgeable,” or “unable to be reached by concepts.” As a result, Timon quotes, “Neither our perceptions nor our opinions are either true or false.”

Drive

Daniel H. Pink

The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work. A key reason: Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, nonroutine work generally cannot. The implications for motivation are vast. Researchers such as Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile have found that external rewards and punishments—both carrots and sticks—can work nicely for algorithmic tasks. But they can be devastating for heuristic ones.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

But what they didn’t study was what a warrior he was in preparation. To exclude everything that was not the fight from consciousness was where the real fight was won.

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 14 September 2021

 

From the above book (reviewed here)

[T]o use Marxist language to make a point contrary to Marx, the state, not the private capitalist, was the true expropriator, and increased national and state power was both the end and the means of this expropriation.This is one powerful reason, among many others, why the Marxist solution to the problems of Hobbesian political economy has failed so badly: by appealing to the original agent of expropriation for salvation, it puts the fox in charge of the chickens. Seizure of the means production by the state does not alter the fact of expropriation; rather, it  replaces one class of exploiters, the monopoly capitalis ts and their political lackeys, with a "new class"of appartchiks and commissars, such as the corrupt nomenclatura that ran the former Soviet Union. 111

The free market is therefore an ideological fiction. Not only did the market system have to be created by the government in the first place, but it can continue only to operate with continuous government intervention and support thereafter. However, because of the disproportionate power of corporations, the economic tail wags the political dog. The upshot is the worst of both worlds: a top-heavy and heavy-handed state bureaucracy layered over a distorted and somewhat corrupt market economy. 118

An especially pertinent point:

Ironically, the supposed "conservatives" of American politics, that complain the loudest about many of these changes, especially moral decay, are the most laissez-faire with respect to the economic enterprise and technological innovation that produce them. In return for higher levels of production, we have to pay the price in lost social cohesion and political autonomy, as the values of "efficiency" and "exchange" implicit in achieving greater productivity have invaded the sociopolitical realm. (The supposed "liberals" of American politics are just as deluded as the "conservatives": equally addicted to material progress, they also want to conquer nature with technology; but they foolishly believe that economic production as possible without economic power, that ordinary citizens can call the political and social tune when, in fact, it is economic and technological enterprise that pays the piper. In short, with the collaboration of all parties, the technological servant has become the political master.) 171

 

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” [Madison] famously wrote in Federalist No. 51, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

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WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

The word “suggestion” is derived from the Latin word “suggestus,” which has for its base the word “suggero,” meaning: “To carry under.” Its original use was in the sense of a “placing under” or deft insinuation of a thought, idea, or impression, under the observant and watchful care of the attention, and into the “inner consciousness” of the individual.

On Revolution

Hannah Arendt

The social question began to play a revolutionary role only when, in the modern age and not before, men began to doubt that poverty is inherent in the human condition, to doubt that the distinction between the few, who through circumstances or strength or fraud had succeeded in liberating themselves from the shackles of poverty, and the labouring poverty-stricken multitude was inevitable and eternal.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

[Homer-Dixon details a] grim list of economic, social, and environmental challenges. But our societies [some argue], especially the rich ones, will generate and deliver enough ingenuity to solve many of them. As for the problems that can’t be solved easily, we will often learn to live with the consequences. Usually this won’t be too difficult, because human beings are very good at adjusting to new conditions. Wealthy countries will build more secure frontiers to keep out poor migrants. Strict quarantine procedures will isolate patients who don’t respond to drugs. We will wear hats to protect us from the sun, modify our crops to survive in eroded soils, and grow fish in huge aquaculture ponds. Some problems, like the loss of biodiversity, won’t have much immediate effect on our quality of life: we will easily and comfortably adjust to a world without jaguars, frogs, gorillas, and many of the species alive today.

To me [Homer-Dixon], though, there is little cause for optimism in these remedies. Nor do I think we have to accept such a future.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

And its relentlessly optimistic temperament (what the anthropologist Lionel Tiger has called our “biology of hope”) shortens our time horizons and instills in us a potentially fatal imprudence.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

After sketching his ideas about probability, he [Keynes] moved on to suggest that it is more rational for people—and society itself—to pursue small goods with a high probability of attainment than it is to strive for grand utopias with minute probabilities of attainment.

The Landscape of History

John Lewis Gaddis

It’s part of historical consciousness to learn the same thing: that there is no “correct” interpretation of the past, but that the act of interpreting is itself a vicarious enlargement of experience from which you can benefit.

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 15 August 2021

 

[Naomi Oreskes from the Introduction]  What is a surprise—and a serious challenge to our global political and business leadership—is his attention to the set of mentalities that he variously calls the myths of modernity, the myth of progress, and the technocratic paradigm. 

Perhaps the most radical part of the letter (and the part that has already proved disturbing to some readers) is its powerful critique of our “models of production and consumption.” The pope addresses head-on our prevailing economic practices and the modes of thought that insist—despite considerable evidence to the contrary—that we just need to let markets do their “magic.” 

While the word “capitalism” does not appear in the letter, the word “market” (or its variants) appears nineteen times, usually in a critical context.

. . . . 

He [Pope Francis] is asking us to reexamine the creed of “individualism, unlimited progress, competition, consumerism, the unregulated market.”

. . . . 

[Quoting directly from the encyclical] "The basic problem … is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object … Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us … This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed.”" (Quoted from the encyclical.)

Pope Francis. Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality . Melville House. Kindle Edition. 

And now for a bit of variety: 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

A two-hundred and fifty year-old industrial civilization is also entering its terminal phase. It is mostly failing to come to grips with the problems occasioned by its success, and it exhibits all of the major contradictions that have driven past civilizations toward decline and fall—ecological stress, overpopulation, resource exhaustion, excessive complexity, loosened morals, burgeoning indebtedness, social strife, blatant corruption, and political dysfunction.

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WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

Desire is the motivating power behind all actions – it is a natural law of life. Everything from the atom to the monad; from the monad to the insect; from the insect to man; from man to Nature, acts and does things by reason of the power and force of Desire, the Animating Motive. "

The Principles of Art

R. G. Collingwood

To a person who knows his business as scientist, historian, philosopher, or any kind of inquirer, the refutation of a false theory constitutes a positive advance in his inquiry. It leaves him confronted, not by the same old question over again, but by a new question, more precise in its terms and therefore easier to answer.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

Success doesn’t happen if you only act when you are sure of a positive outcome. Real success means risking failure. We succeed only after we accept that we might fail and plan for the worst.

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 8 August 2021

 

The Caretakers of the Cosmos

Gary Lachman

If I smashed my skull in I would certainly upset my consciousness, just as if I smashed my television set I would be unable to watch what was on – something, I must admit, I am often tempted to do. But while my TV would be broken, the program I was watching would be unaffected, and would still be running on millions of other TVs. I believe that my brain acts in some way as a radio or television receiver. It doesn’t ‘cause’ the consciousness I have any more than my TV or radio ‘causes’ what is broadcast on them.

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Fear is doing much of the dirty work here. It’s a useful emotion— as when it motivates us to escape from danger or fix the underlying problems that are its causes. After all, higher organisms evolved the biological capacity for fear because it helped them survive, which allowed them to pass their genes to future generations. Yet while a certain degree of fear can help us stay resilient in an ever-changing and often hazardous world, if fear is too great, and if we see no avenue for relief, it becomes horribly toxic. Most importantly, persistently high levels of fear tend to divide people into shortsighted, rigidly exclusive, and antagonistic groups.

N.B. My encapsulation: fear is a warning device, not a navigating device.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

What sets Thucydides apart from the rest is the importance he attaches to honor, which can encompass shame, vengeance, ambition, and other correlates of ego. For the most part, honor is not taken very seriously today, unlike past epochs when it was something paramount to be defended at all costs, even at the cost of one’s life. The exceptions that prove the rule today are revealing: prisons and ghettos, places close to a state of nature, where to violate the code or lose respect can mean death; and the military, whose members serve a higher cause and offer up their lives in exchange for the king’s shilling. However, political actors—like the warriors in Homer’s Iliad, albeit in a less flamboyant manner—are also vitally concerned with reputation. It is a rare politician who will admit error, or even that he has changed his position on an issue.

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

[D]igital media turned out to be an even better tool for display, which, as the psychologist Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, is very different from communication. “We are obsessed with our reputations,” Haidt told me. “Social media has such profound effects on so many social systems because it creates a form of community in which we’re ostensibly talking to each other, but we’re really signaling virtue to people we care about.”

The Foundations of Buddhism

Rupert Gethin

The list of ten fetters includes four items that are not prima-facie aspects of craving or attachment: doubt, aversion, agitation, and ignorance.

Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic

B. Alan Wallace

Nothing inherently exists, with its own parts and attributes, independently of our conceptual designation.

The Lost Art of Scripture

Karen Armstrong

The rapidity of these developments [associated with the growth of cities] had made city-dwellers acutely aware of the pace of change. In the countryside, where life was ruled by the seasons, everybody did the same things year in and year out. But in the towns, where life was being dramatically transformed, people could see for themselves that their “actions” (karma) could have long-term consequences.

The Yoga of Breath

Richard Rosen

Efficient breathing activates the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and the relaxation response. In all, the efficient breather is much calmer and more clearheaded, and probably healthier and happier, than her inefficient friend [fast, hard breathing promoted by the sympathetic nervous system].

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WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

Courage is the backbone of man. The man with courage has persistence. He states what he believes and puts it into execution. The courageous man has confidence. He draws to himself all the moral qualities and mental forces which go to make up a strong man.