Short election cycles (alluded to) has meant that (following Blair's imposition of Cabinet Government and the hollowing out of the officer cadre force) long term planning has been decimated in publkic services.
The introduction of IT systems and 'automated responses' has actually insulated officers from dealing with complaints and thereby the pressure on organisations to resolve them.
I used to deal with complaints many years ago and always told my staff that there is NO substitute for experiencing bad temper from complainants when things go wrong and they - as ambassadors for the organisation I worked for - had to learn how to cope with it. Within reason, the bad temper of 'the public' educated staff about their own importance and motivated them in the job they did. Insulating people through 3rd party machines from complaints actually means that there is no ownership of problems and less urgency in their resolution.
It may be that an AI system will produce a better response. I await with interest.
"It may be that an AI system will produce a better response'
Only for the easily pleased. There is of course evidence (Eliza - Joseph Weizenbaum) that people will willingly interact with computer programs, but recent experiences with the misnamed 'AI' indicate that an algorithm is no substitute for empathy - and algorithms don't do empathy - only a very poor imitation.
"Terrible massacres of Christians in 1850 in Mount Lebanon and in Damascus are reckoned by some historians to mark the beginning of the modern Middle East."
In fact the events Aurelien refers to happened in 1860, not 1850. There were precursor conflicts and massacres between the Maronite Christians and the Druze (backed by the Ottomans) in 1842 and 1845, but the big war, with ethnic cleansing and massacres from Mount Lebanon to Damascus, was in 1860.
It was a rather big affair as it ended only with European intervention, the French coming to prevent Maronites from being exterminated to the last, the British to pursue their intrigues with the Druze and impede the French from gaining too much influence, and the Austrians and Prussians not to be left entirely out of the game. Italy and Russia followed later. It was the main military - diplomatic question in Europe and the Near East in the early 1860's, from which the seeds of the future State of Lebanon resulted. Mount Lebanon became a European protectorate and, as Aurelien righty says, this was "the beginning of the modern Middle East" (or Proche Orient).
Now in the West whether it happened in 1850 or 1860 might appear as point of detail. Who cares, even among history buffs such as us readers of this blog? But in Lebanon and Syria, grandmothers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, manual workers and everybody else still has detailed opinions about the exact sequence of events in 1860. (Well, I don't know about the tik tok generation, but everybody above 30 for sure).
One immediately reduces his credibility by mentioning 1850 as the date of the big massacres. It's like saying that the London Blitz started in 1930 instead of 1940 and then expecting that your opinions about World War II will still be heard.
Fabulous post as always. I particularly love the comment about LLM’s, I too refuse to call them AI.
Interesting that entropy is the topic today. Some background: I live in the upper Midwest of the United States. I run a small business, and we clean up snow in the winter. Salt is an incredibly abundant resource on this planet.
Imagine my shock when I went to my local supplier to buy some salt in preparation for an upcoming storm only to find it was sold out “due to supply chain issues” related to the “harsher than expected winter season thus far”. We are not having anything other than a normal winter, if anything the temps are much milder than usual with an abnormal number of days above freezing temps.
I am certain this is about “just in time delivery”, where nobody carries inventory any longer and instead depends on items arriving just as they are needed. Is this not the stupidest idea one has ever heard? It is if you don’t possess an MBA in finance.
Isn’t capitalism great! It’s just the bestest system ever created, I mean, what’s not to like? /s
My question for Aurelien is this:
Is the greed inherent in human nature, and encouraged in a capitalist system, a leading cause of the entropy of our financial system? OR
Is the inherent entropy of the capitalist system creating the greed because it’s a situation of grab what you can cause this ships going down?
See Kropotkin. Capitalism, based upon individualism and competition, is the best system when we're awash with energy, resources and land : in a rich rainforest, many species compete for innumerable ecological niches. But when the resources become constrained and the environment harsher, cooperation is more important : in cold and food-lacking Siberia, few species exist, and many of them have some sort of complementary if not symbiotic relationship.
So Capitalism emerged naturally with the conquest of the New World; now that the planet is becoming small again, capitalism reaches its end in parasitic self-destruction.
Thanks for responding, but I'm going to have to disagree. Never does individualism and competition provide the best outcomes for the greatest amount of people. They provide astounding outcomes for a very few, good outcomes for some, modest outcomes for a large portion, and absolutely brutal outcomes for a significant portion of people.
I believe some type of socialism will provide the best outcomes for the greatest amount of people.
Personally, I have always wondered at the animosity displayed toward Russia, particularly by the US. I think it largely has to do with their ideas concerning communism that very large amounts of people agreed with.
Capitalism couldn't allow an alternative form of economics that set a good example, hence the constant interference and undermining of socialist/communist governments and ideas; and the absolute fire hose level of propaganda stating that socialism doesn't work and capitalism is great.
Ironically, the propaganda that stands out the most is that socialism/communism are corrupt, and can't be otherwise because of human nature, NEVER once publicly recognizing the rampant corruption involved in capitalism.
I think corruption exists in any form of government or organization, but it can be dealt with properly and largely eliminated if there is a sincere desire to do so. As an example, look at China's government. I believe there have been executions for corruption in china. In the US, you get pardoned by corrupt presidents and governors. This has been going on for hundreds of years.
I don't want to derail the thread, as I feel this is possibly veering off topic. I will read any responses to this post, but will unlikely respond to them.
Actually I simply stated "the best" for simplicity and stay closer to ordinary understanding. I'm myself an anarchist-communist, but I also think that there isn't "one size fit all" in economic and political systems (a political system relying upon the population ideological, religious, social, even anthropological background).
Competition was always a part of human nature and there was no unhinged individualism up until mid-1960s. The problem is not capitalism, it's liberalism.
It's in human nature to be almost infinitely adaptable. Competition and cooperation are in a constant dialectical contest. As I said, the most important are material conditions. A set of values, mores, social and economic arrangements can work beautifully under a set of conditions and not at all under a different one.
I mostly agree but I don't think that material conditions define everything. You can have huge difference of cultures and lifestyles within similar levels of economic development.
And (western) societies changed from 1900 to 1970 less than from 1970 onwards despite technological progress was much faster in 1900-1970 than in 1970-2025.
There is of course a dialectical back-and-forth influence between the material infrastructure and the ideological superstructure. It's difficult to sort the effects for instance of waning religion, ageing population (an important and often forgotten material effect), large scale immigration of people with different family system and religion, etc.
Material conditions define everything within 'closed' systems. Poverty is relative, but even if you are only poor in comparative terms, this is still inequality, and only leads to further inequalities. Inequality is the great sticking point in human affairs, not poverty as such.
Liberalism = freedom to exploit everyone, especially in pursuit of capitalism.
Capitalism is built on exploitation - the advantage of those with capital against those without, who have to work as required or die.
Liberalism is just an extension of this principle, giving the freedom to exploit to the rich, and the freedom to starve under a bridge (if you can find one which isn't imminently about to fall down) to the poor. Abit more research needed on your partial part.
in Buddhism greed is part of the Three Poisons (or Fires) that inflict our mind, namely: greed, hate and delusion. These are the root cause of human suffering
Yes, I agree. However, in the context of these essays, contemporary politics are not compatible with Buddhism. You can have one but not the other. If you are concerned with political events then you are not adhering to traditional Buddhist ideals. If you are a committed Buddhist then such events are an irrelevance and a snare. Being a politically concerned Buddhist is a modern western-inspired development, and I am not sure what to think about its validity.
Greed was identified by the East (Buddhism, Hinduism) as something fundamental to human mind, along with the other two. Any society built from greedy individuals will be greedy in its nature. That's been the case, without exceptions, throughout recorded human history. Capitalism comes along glorifies the greed, elevates it as something desirable and worthy, and builds society around it.
Just in time delivery and lean inventories were invented in Japan. In East Asia, with different culture and work ethic it works just fine. Introducing it to the West was a mistake though.
The organisation of any large (1,000+) number of humans in a 'society' is only as good as its information sharing system. As you point out in a roundabout way, the complexity involved with having a large brain requires it.
'Religion' had a stranglehold over the 'information' system for millennia, following the advent of large settlements & agriculture. Whose basis in fantasy & nonsense effectively held back development of much any kind for all those years. (Though some did rather better than others, notably Islam, whose leaders placed great value on learning about our world & the universe with a 'science' process.)
Eventually, the information system (& eg. printing) became a more secular occupation, leading to the mass media multi-nationals we see today.
But as we see today, diversity in control & ownership of mass media channels has all but disappeared & the entire system is owned & delivered (in the West of my purview) by barely a roomful of (very wealthy) people - an elite. Especially in the public information & politics, which 'informs' (sic) the votes we place in our (fake) 'democracies'.
It should also be noted that all these elites & all the lower ranks in their organisations are also subject to the same self-reinforcing feedback loops being used to rationalise, normalise & justify increasingly sociopathic & psychopathic government of society. (In fact, if you look at history, you see this loop repeating in cycles, which is why the 1930s of Europe is looking very familiar again across the West.)
Of course, now we're in the age of Nuclear industrial warfare, as well as global scale destruction of climate & natural life support systems heading off the charts, complete destruction of our species is inevitable within the next few generations unless we radically change course.
Which means that the information system requires radical reform to create diversity away from being controlled by an ever more sociopathic & remote from reality by their wealth elite.
It's actually quite simple to do this by giving a comparably sized (by GDP/turnover) sector of mass media to citizens to control directly in a Commons type Common Ownership based structure. Like this -
There should only be two options for the structure of mass media businesses - either as a private/commercial (shareholder) controlled entity, or as a member controlled Co-operative type entity in a (new) Commons 'public' sector, under direct citizens' 'votes' control.
(Eg., the 'public' sector BBC Depts. could choose one or the other - no more corrupt Gov appointee run fake 'public' media.).
Mass media in Western societies is near all owned & delivered by a small group of wealthy elites, & significantly funded via advertising by a handful of large Corporations. That can have its place in providing public discourse & entertainment non-critical to 'democracy', but it should not be the only model for media with power (& reach).
We can easily create a system where citizens control a similar size sector of the media directly, through non-profit media Commons/Common Ownership structured publishers/providers, which exclude all private capital & revenue income. (Instead, they are controlled by members with equal voting rights, like Worker Co-ops or Community Businesses.)
In this sector, their only permitted income comes from our currency issuer Govs (at zero cost), but not directly. Instead of Gov directing which Commons Media enterprises get grant funding, citizens, equally, disburse the funds via an annual voucher system, whereby they sponsor their preferred Commons media provider(s).
This simple system ensures full democratic participation in a sector of mass media, & thus the political discourse which elevates politics to power.
And we need it now, as our *first* priority, before humanity's path to its own self-destruction becomes irreversible.
(By the way, I know all this because besides being an engineer, I studied for an MBA & afterwards co-founded & assisted many worker co-ops & other member controlled 'Common Ownership' enterprises & organisations. Later using the Financial Accounting I learnt to correctly understand how our Gov issue fiat currency monetary economies actually work, as opposed to the 'money constrained' & 'fiscal rules' drivel of mainstream 'economics' court astrologer bull*.)
Thank you for your interesting comment. It seems to me that decisions can only be as good as the information used to reach them, so media ownership (control of what we are allowed to know) should be recognised as critical to any democracy. The problem being a bit chicken and egg in that politicians are reliant on the opinions of MSM to convince people to vote for them and such changes could only be introduced by an elected government. This is why there has never been a Leveson 2 inquiry into collusion between the media the police and politicians, one of the main recommendations of Leveson 1. Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas, so how can this be brought about?
I also entirely agree with you about governments dishonest analogy of balancing the books, which has only been used as a smokescreen for further impoverishment of the nation and more wealth and power being handed to global elites.
Of course, my proposal faces the same problem as any other policies the ruling elites don't like.
I think the only way it could be implemented in this present catch22 situation is by citizens conducting a general strike until the legislation is agreed.
But where my proposal has merit in such effort over all other issues left unresolved or ignored by the PTB, is in its simplicity, perfect 1st order logic & ease of implementation, plus that it provides the path for all other issues to be resolved via genuinely inclusive public debate in due course.
Hi Mike, your post is refreshing! I love that you are in stage 3 of "kaizen" and using your mind to CREATE solutions to the entropy. I agree that this is a matter of utmost importance. I have a plan for building a mass media network that can efficiently serve as a critical tool in disrupting many strongholds and broken systems while simultaneously creating the infrastructure to rebuild stronger systems that support humanity's wellbeing. Are you open to having an indepth discussion about this topic? This is my first time on substack and my very first comment. So I am not sure how we would connect, but I think it's worth doing.
Long term organizational success requires a culture that seeks and rewards people who care more about the ongoing success of the organization than they do about their individual rewards. Absent such a culture, cohesion breaks down and the organization loses effectiveness. Entropy never sleeps. For organizations, it is the application of energy to culture that is necessary to fight the effects of entropy. However, organizations exist within a wider culture and if that culture is at odds with a culture of cohesion, of the greater good, then the amount of energy required to maintain culture within the organization increases exponentially and eventually becomes impossible to overcome.
Think about a drink inside a computer filled with ice. The "culture" of the cooler is cold. Of the cooler sits outside in the come winter, all is well. If it sits outside in the hot summer, eventually the conditions inside the cooler change and it can no longer keep the drink cold.
In much of the West, organizations are now sitting in an external culture that is working against (sometimes passively and sometimes actively) the cohesion and shared commitment necessary for organizational success.
The rot well and truly set in with the mindless acceptance of Thatcher’s assertion “There are individual men and women, and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.” She followed this with the line, “There is no such thing as society”.
Under circumstances of such radical atomization, there is no public; and where there is no public, there can be no public goods.
"No, I have a feeling that the vacuum our nihilistic ruling class is busy creating will be filled by people we aren’t going to like at all. "
Nope. Nobody of influence and authority cares.
Anyway, it won't matter. If the standard of living for, say, 50% of europeans were to fall to African levels, but the top 10% and especially the top 1% were to maintain their current living standards, then europe would continue to stumble along, the oligarchs and their minions dreaming up ever ludicrous narratives to keep the peons disunited, distracted and under control.
Of course, maintaining control requires an effective military/police/security apparatus, but these are the last things that the oligarchy will allow to lapse.
@aurelien2022 : I generally agree with your thesis. However, there are times when having well-trained armed forces is not enough to defeat irregular groups. The well-trained British military could not defeat the Irish Republican Army. Ultimately, the UK government had to negotiate a peaceful end to the Northern Ireland Conflict. The United States military had to abandon Afghanistan with Taliban irregular fighters still standing undefeated.
I generally agree with you as well Chima, but not here. For a brief period in the early 1970s, the IRA tried to fight a conventional war against the British and "drive them out." This failed, and the IRA adopted an insurgent model, where, as you know, insurgents have a natural advantage. Afghanistan was similar.The British never tried to fight a military campaign in Northern Ireland: their strategy was political, to outlast the enemy. This worked in the sense that the IRA began to realise from the mid-1980s that the military strategy was not working, and began to focus much more on politics. By the early 90s they were putting out peace feelers, and eventually agreed to end the conflict without achieving any of their major objectives. If you're interested, there's an excellent book "The Secret History of the IRA" by Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist with very good Republican contacts.
Have you considered the work of archaeologist Joseph Tainter with respect to this perspective? His thesis is basically that sociopolitical simplification/collapse/decline arises as a result of the Law of Diminishing Returns. He applies it to societal institutions to help explain how and why they cannot sustain themselves.
We could view this excellent overview of entropic forces as the inevitable outcome of people subsumed in unconscious fear due to ignorance of Source, purpose and potential. In effect, unconscious entrapment in fear of the unknown, represented by death, driving evermore desperate measures.
Surely, the ''message'' is to dismiss the values of the external illusion, increasingly manipulated by the most deluded ''elite'' mindset, to refocus on our Reality within; to discover our causality rather than its effect.
Thus, we require Real Education to fulfil its true purpose ''to bring out from within'' founded on True Divine Science; to understand the One Conscious Presence experienced by all lifeforms; to accept and feel our Oneness as characters in the space-time framework of Divine Mind; to accept this point in time as the opportunity to overcome the experience of separation and live in awe and gratitude for the endless possibilities that appear as ''infinity'' to Consciousness-in-a-Body.
In other words, those who know must begin ''The Conversation Never Had''
"True Divine Science". What is that? The interpretation of 'god' that you find attractive? My advice to you is to keep it to yourself. We all have our 'personal interpretations' and each one is as good as another, as far as each individual is concerned. Elevating your own above everyone else's is a symptom of arrogance, and nothing to do with 'god'.
Forest. Nature's been helpful to me in shifting over to the consciousness that's not ego consciousness. Sometimes I wonder how people today so removed from nature will be able to do it. The Desert in the City? Carlo Carreto wrote that you could find one there. I agree on your Education position, Peter. I went to a school that I think was one of a kind. In the morning for example middle school had to keep some negentropy going in three barns housing milking Guernseys. A lot going in, and a lot coming out. Every day.
"The only policy of the Notional Left in Europe is to 'defeat fascism,' which means..."
Interesting. It must be that the real deal rightists have manifested in Europe long enough prior such that folks are more cognizant of them than here in the US. Am I correct to think our Notional Left here is like many Democrats who can't agree to a Ukraine pull-out? Even now "MAGA" comes to my ears more than "fascist." Those that put out the call to demonstrate that I hear are for sure more savvy than I am on how to demonstrate. But of course they are NOT the plants.
To change the subject and for what it's worth (I wanted not to forget to include something about the following) I wonder if anyone here has listened to this interview.
"Rene Girard: Today I think we have two totalitarian groups – one which may have exhausted its possibilities, which is anti-Christian – Nazism. I think the violence of Nazism is: how are we going to get rid of Christianity? Nietzsche talked about doing it through philosophy, genealogy, showing that the Christians are for victims only for the most vulgar and sinister reasons...because they are part of the lower class. The Nazis say, we are more powerful than a poor philosopher that was half mad, and we’re going to drown the Christian desire to vindicate victims [with] such injustice, such destruction that we will prove that the destiny of the world that has been Christian is not the Christian one. You have to regard the open explicit nature of Nazi violence. They didn’t talk about concentration camps during the war because it would have been very bad from a strategic viewpoint, but if they had won the war they would have publicized it and said – our world has nothing to do with Christianity, we have proved that Christianity cannot do anything in this world. This was an explicit anti-Christian view. I think there is another totalitarianism which is opposite [that says]: don’t believe that Christianity is defending victims, it just pretends to; it’s nothing but inquisition, terrorism, etc. We’re going to show you how to defend victims...which is what we see today. An imitation of Christ which is at the same time a total betrayal of Christianity...we have to read much of contemporary history in this light. It’s so controversial and potentially explosive it’s very difficult to articulate, but I think the signs are converging in that direction.
"David C: Today what we call the political correctness is super-Christianity. This super-Christianity that Rene Girard associates with political correctness reduces the world to nothing but victimization, oppression, and the machinations of power. It takes up the Christian concern with victim but abandons Christianity and in particular Christian morality."
The answer unfolds once we understand and accept every thing manifests within 0.000001% of the energy wherein we appear (as now discovered by quantum physicists). Moreover, what our 5 senses present as ''space'' is One Divine Mind; with all motion on all dimensions of That Space, Its Thinking.
In other words, IT is the producer, director, scenery and characters in Its own Play and ''infinity'' is like a ''Divine Euphemism'' for unlimited possibilities in action. Indeed, we'' are being played and each of us is one character in that Mind - we couldn't be more intimately connected.
Whilst ''reality'' is IT exploring its unlimited possibilities to experience-investigate-discover the Truth of Its unlimited Beauty and Go(o)dness. Of course, space-time is ITs essential structure (stage) of volume and duration.
Thus, our ''world'' manifests within the Consciousness of Divine Awareness as IT functions in endless bodies (galaxies, suns, planets projecting endless dimensions of ''nano life-form''). DNA (''MilkyWay'') is the transceiver for ITs Knowingness; Suns are ITs Divine Holographic Projectors.
The ''missing link'' is clarity that we-the-people have all power of supply and demand; in other words, we produce and consume all goods and services. We must break our ''bad habits'' and begin new conversations focused on our endless opportunities to share skills, time, knowledge, goods and services; beginning locally with ''those with eyes to see...''. Common sense says simply that we can match our needs with the offers of other folk.
Essentially, we can found new systems driven on love and protection for our children and families. We have all the resources available to collaborate and develop projects for ourselves; rather than ''working like automatons'' for the same-old delusional narcissists who believe they're ''smart'' because ''we dummies'' obey their orders.
The inbuilt global tyranny is founded on ''The 3 Big Frauds - banking as debt, legalities as law and indoctrination as education. Meanwhile fraud vitiates everything so we can instigate ''The Great Reclaim'' for common good.
All said, we run the current system that controls and re-presents our Divine LifeForce and Natural Resources using ''bits'' - whether paper or digits. We must learn to stand up as living wo/men, create our own credit (where it's due) and dismiss the current fraudulent corporate ''govern-ment'' systems.
As we realign with Natural Law, we will re-structure our lives based on common sense and real values. Quite simply, when we re-cognise the Truth, Beauty and Goodness reflected everywhere around our wonderful planet in awe and gratitude, we learn to dismiss the imposed stress and fear we accept as ''normal''.
Meanwhile, a ''Bank'' is merely a digital ledger in a database that enables credits and debits. Easily created by any community who are wise enough to stand together using hands-on Real Education to exchange skills, time and knowledge.
Without doubt people would accept and recycle the currency of a ''Bank'' that they owned collectively as a public trust to be administered locally through private member associations. Moreover when that currency is generated debt-free into the accounts of members as they exchange their goods, services, time, skills, knowledge.
We can learn to barter as we match our offers and needs; we can develop projects that produce assets and public services; our communities can become worthy of investment; traditional debt-based funds can be recycled to support the generation of debt-free; hands-on creativity can enable ''true money-laundering'' as crowd-funding becomes crowd-owning.
Crucially, most folk still retain Love in their hearts (notably and most powerfully for their children). So, we have retained our unbroken connection to the Divine despite millennia of torment by this demonic mindset (''the name of the game?'').
Now is our time to dismiss the engineered delusions of ''science-philosophy-religion'' in order to re-connect with the Truth of Our Oneness within That Wonderful Mind - living in Awe and Gratitude for That Truth is the Cure.
Check out Walter Russell ''The Secret of Light'' (and much else), Lao Russell ''God Will Work With You, Not For You'' and Nisargadatta Maharaj ''I Am That'' (and much else); also Ramana Maharshi ''Who Am I?''
Here's a question I put to ChatGPT: Are any cosmologists (including astronomer Sten Odenwald) now saying that the light photons, tachyons, and virtual particles existing in or passing through "empty space," or any space save that occupied by matter, actually contributing to the nature of space as much as gravity and space-time?
Part of the answer yielded: "Yes — many modern cosmologists and theoretical physicists already think that the 'empty' space of the universe isn’t really empty, and that what passes through it (fields, photons, quantum fluctuations/virtual effects) does contribute to the physics of space-time in ways just as fundamental as gravity and curvature. However, there are important caveats and active debates about how to interpret these contributions."
What I meant to ask about was the make up of space, but how all these other factors influence space-time I'm thinking should be interesting (the rest is waiting for me to read). Other ideas about where time comes from [recently in Scientific American IIRC] strike me as too weird, but mainly too time consuming to attempt to understand.
Some excellent words I think were those spoken by Ralph Nader sometime before or on Saturday the 17th on the subject of impeaching Trump. Now I guess will be a time to put aside Green Party strategy owing to the threat we face [I was thinking a P.I.T.O. Party would be good--peace in Trump out; without both things won't improve].
Sorry, first I'll re-write my first paragraph up there (it was an involved question; it should read clearly!)...
1st para up there as it should be: Here's a question I put to ChatGPT: Are any cosmologists (including astronomer Sten Odenwald) now saying that the light photons, tachyons, and virtual particles existing in or passing through "empty space," or any space save that occupied by matter, actually do contribute to the nature of whatever space proper...as much as, say, gravity and the classic construct termed "space-time"?
Went through the first link you provided quickly. My view is that human bodies and matter we're familiar with travel WITH time's flow. Some sub atomic particles in cyclotrons can't travel with it ALONE for very long. I also look at mind like Rupert Sheldrake does to a degree. Mind actually touches what it observes...most of the time I figure. That idea may agree with some of your link's statements re fields. What Aurobindo called Supermind probably can work non locally sans measurable fields I think [don't ask me how something non-local connects with something local]. I think the Supermind thing might be what John Heider called the Higher Self and some call Self with capital "s."
I'm saying that all motion within space-time can be understood as Thinking - Image-I-Nation - in Divine Mind; with the ''expanding universe'' presenting the unlimited possibilities of content in cause-and-effect. As such there is only One ''Locality'' and ''dimensions'' are viewpoints related to levels of Awareness.
In effect, ''spiritual growth'' relates to learning Truth to re-connect into That Mind in awe and gratitude of That That Is. So, we can access true wisdom in true humility through experiential learning as love of life (God) enables evolving heart coherence.
The links to the conscious physics information provide rare insight from a ''professional scientist''.
It is intended as a simple analogy to express the appearance of our world within a single thinking Light. The thinking, or Imag-I-Nation, in Divine Mind whose rhythmic pulses of Light and Dark give rise to all form; matter itself emerging as the ordered expression of Mind in motion.
In other words, what physics describes as excitations of fields, can be understood as rhythmic manifestations of a unified Mind, with matter arising as ordered patterns within the universal flow of Light and Dark. In effect, matter is Mind made manifest.
You're correct in that %s are irrelevant. Quite simply all form arises from a single thinking Light; and matter is the patterned expression of Mind in motion.
Your problem is that you think you have a unique personal line to the 'truth' that no-one else has, and that you have to convert everyone else to. Well, there are many other, equal, or even better, and valid, options than yours, and we are, and should be, free to choose our own. Keep your revelations to yourself, as otherwise you will be classed with all the other fake 'prophets' who have littered history. with nonsense.
'...disciplined troops, with high levels of entropy can defeat large numbers of irregulars.' Did I misread this? Surely you meant that the disciplined troops have the lower entropy? Low entropy, inherent in organised, stable systems, is sometimes called 'negentropy'. Our current political structures are sorely lacking in negentropy and the energy inputs necessary to 'generate' it.
OK, the problems of analogy. What I was trying to say is that keeping a military force disciplined and ready to fight is a high energy-input activity. Your local cricket team may not be much affected by entropy when they gather after a months-long break, but a military unit could lose its cohesion in the same period because it is subject to entropy very quickly. What counts is not the state of the organisation today, but rather the speed with which it could decline.
Er yes indeed. We are similarly increasingly lacking of low entropy energy sources which can do actual 'work', replaced by high entropy inefficient sources.
Overall though I agree with most of this article, and particularly support the notion that LLMs are anything but 'intelligent' and are useless copy and paste dumbing down machines produced at enormous cost to economies.
Yes. I didn't mean to disrespect the Chinese experience. They certainly tried hard from time to time to keep the train on the rails. But entropy, time and human nature continually eat away at everything. Most recently the Kangxi Emperor fought against the tide, but his descendants succumbed to fate.
Speaking of Annalects, the most important act, as described by The Master is the rectification of names:
The Analects states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names. Confucius' solution to this was the "rectification of names". He gave an explanation to one of his disciples:
A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.
— Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4–7, Analect 13.3, translated by James Legge
Oh its so good to read this , i was a UK civil servant for decades and remember well the changes you describe , so many colleagues i met who when asked why they were promoted to and doing a particular job that they knew nothing about would answer , i am here to manage the people and not the work they do .I would respond by saying but how can you manage the people if you do not know what they are doing or how well they are doing it.Blank displeased looks ensued.
Change management that involved no management is what it was , continual improvement that involved no measure of what was beng done or had been done previously.
I have read about people from wealthy families being plonked straight into senior officer roles in H.M.Forces during WWI and WWII with zero experience of soldiering or management , the result was misserable failure , looks like we have turned the clock back and returned to that kind of practice , its failing misseably again, not just in soldiering and management but in politics and many other places in life too.
Where will it all end ? Disaster , undoubtedly , lets face it the last two USA presidents are not fit to be doing the job , too old , too out of touch with reality but guided like lumbering missiles causing damage in every direction.
This is our culture enduring Northrop Frye’s “Winter” phase, in literature associated with satire — a time of darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure.
If like everything else in biology human culture is cyclical, then what eventually follows is the “Spring” phase characterized by the rebirth of the hero, revival and resurrection — spring symbolizing the defeat of winter and darkness.
But nobody knows how long a cultural winter might last … 😑
‘The trouble is that, as I said at the beginning, human beings do not come in boxes with instructions for working together, and they do not spontaneously self-organise.’
Yet our ‘enlightenment’ forebearers who theorized man in a state of nature and subsequent social contracts as defining social order would have us believe this to be true. Yes indeed, we are very much in an embalming strength pickle.
Short election cycles (alluded to) has meant that (following Blair's imposition of Cabinet Government and the hollowing out of the officer cadre force) long term planning has been decimated in publkic services.
The introduction of IT systems and 'automated responses' has actually insulated officers from dealing with complaints and thereby the pressure on organisations to resolve them.
I used to deal with complaints many years ago and always told my staff that there is NO substitute for experiencing bad temper from complainants when things go wrong and they - as ambassadors for the organisation I worked for - had to learn how to cope with it. Within reason, the bad temper of 'the public' educated staff about their own importance and motivated them in the job they did. Insulating people through 3rd party machines from complaints actually means that there is no ownership of problems and less urgency in their resolution.
It may be that an AI system will produce a better response. I await with interest.
"It may be that an AI system will produce a better response'
Only for the easily pleased. There is of course evidence (Eliza - Joseph Weizenbaum) that people will willingly interact with computer programs, but recent experiences with the misnamed 'AI' indicate that an algorithm is no substitute for empathy - and algorithms don't do empathy - only a very poor imitation.
My comment was meant as irony.
OK - It's sometimes difficult to tell - especially if you only know the person as a set of words on a page.
"Terrible massacres of Christians in 1850 in Mount Lebanon and in Damascus are reckoned by some historians to mark the beginning of the modern Middle East."
In fact the events Aurelien refers to happened in 1860, not 1850. There were precursor conflicts and massacres between the Maronite Christians and the Druze (backed by the Ottomans) in 1842 and 1845, but the big war, with ethnic cleansing and massacres from Mount Lebanon to Damascus, was in 1860.
It was a rather big affair as it ended only with European intervention, the French coming to prevent Maronites from being exterminated to the last, the British to pursue their intrigues with the Druze and impede the French from gaining too much influence, and the Austrians and Prussians not to be left entirely out of the game. Italy and Russia followed later. It was the main military - diplomatic question in Europe and the Near East in the early 1860's, from which the seeds of the future State of Lebanon resulted. Mount Lebanon became a European protectorate and, as Aurelien righty says, this was "the beginning of the modern Middle East" (or Proche Orient).
Now in the West whether it happened in 1850 or 1860 might appear as point of detail. Who cares, even among history buffs such as us readers of this blog? But in Lebanon and Syria, grandmothers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, manual workers and everybody else still has detailed opinions about the exact sequence of events in 1860. (Well, I don't know about the tik tok generation, but everybody above 30 for sure).
One immediately reduces his credibility by mentioning 1850 as the date of the big massacres. It's like saying that the London Blitz started in 1930 instead of 1940 and then expecting that your opinions about World War II will still be heard.
Oh dear. Stupid error, considering that I had a book on the subject on a shelf above my head. Thank you for spotting it.
Fabulous post as always. I particularly love the comment about LLM’s, I too refuse to call them AI.
Interesting that entropy is the topic today. Some background: I live in the upper Midwest of the United States. I run a small business, and we clean up snow in the winter. Salt is an incredibly abundant resource on this planet.
Imagine my shock when I went to my local supplier to buy some salt in preparation for an upcoming storm only to find it was sold out “due to supply chain issues” related to the “harsher than expected winter season thus far”. We are not having anything other than a normal winter, if anything the temps are much milder than usual with an abnormal number of days above freezing temps.
I am certain this is about “just in time delivery”, where nobody carries inventory any longer and instead depends on items arriving just as they are needed. Is this not the stupidest idea one has ever heard? It is if you don’t possess an MBA in finance.
Isn’t capitalism great! It’s just the bestest system ever created, I mean, what’s not to like? /s
My question for Aurelien is this:
Is the greed inherent in human nature, and encouraged in a capitalist system, a leading cause of the entropy of our financial system? OR
Is the inherent entropy of the capitalist system creating the greed because it’s a situation of grab what you can cause this ships going down?
See Kropotkin. Capitalism, based upon individualism and competition, is the best system when we're awash with energy, resources and land : in a rich rainforest, many species compete for innumerable ecological niches. But when the resources become constrained and the environment harsher, cooperation is more important : in cold and food-lacking Siberia, few species exist, and many of them have some sort of complementary if not symbiotic relationship.
So Capitalism emerged naturally with the conquest of the New World; now that the planet is becoming small again, capitalism reaches its end in parasitic self-destruction.
Thanks for responding, but I'm going to have to disagree. Never does individualism and competition provide the best outcomes for the greatest amount of people. They provide astounding outcomes for a very few, good outcomes for some, modest outcomes for a large portion, and absolutely brutal outcomes for a significant portion of people.
I believe some type of socialism will provide the best outcomes for the greatest amount of people.
Personally, I have always wondered at the animosity displayed toward Russia, particularly by the US. I think it largely has to do with their ideas concerning communism that very large amounts of people agreed with.
Capitalism couldn't allow an alternative form of economics that set a good example, hence the constant interference and undermining of socialist/communist governments and ideas; and the absolute fire hose level of propaganda stating that socialism doesn't work and capitalism is great.
Ironically, the propaganda that stands out the most is that socialism/communism are corrupt, and can't be otherwise because of human nature, NEVER once publicly recognizing the rampant corruption involved in capitalism.
I think corruption exists in any form of government or organization, but it can be dealt with properly and largely eliminated if there is a sincere desire to do so. As an example, look at China's government. I believe there have been executions for corruption in china. In the US, you get pardoned by corrupt presidents and governors. This has been going on for hundreds of years.
I don't want to derail the thread, as I feel this is possibly veering off topic. I will read any responses to this post, but will unlikely respond to them.
Cheers!
Actually I simply stated "the best" for simplicity and stay closer to ordinary understanding. I'm myself an anarchist-communist, but I also think that there isn't "one size fit all" in economic and political systems (a political system relying upon the population ideological, religious, social, even anthropological background).
Competition was always a part of human nature and there was no unhinged individualism up until mid-1960s. The problem is not capitalism, it's liberalism.
It's in human nature to be almost infinitely adaptable. Competition and cooperation are in a constant dialectical contest. As I said, the most important are material conditions. A set of values, mores, social and economic arrangements can work beautifully under a set of conditions and not at all under a different one.
I mostly agree but I don't think that material conditions define everything. You can have huge difference of cultures and lifestyles within similar levels of economic development.
And (western) societies changed from 1900 to 1970 less than from 1970 onwards despite technological progress was much faster in 1900-1970 than in 1970-2025.
There is of course a dialectical back-and-forth influence between the material infrastructure and the ideological superstructure. It's difficult to sort the effects for instance of waning religion, ageing population (an important and often forgotten material effect), large scale immigration of people with different family system and religion, etc.
Material conditions define everything within 'closed' systems. Poverty is relative, but even if you are only poor in comparative terms, this is still inequality, and only leads to further inequalities. Inequality is the great sticking point in human affairs, not poverty as such.
Capitalism = freedom to exploit the poor.
Liberalism = freedom to exploit everyone, especially in pursuit of capitalism.
Capitalism is built on exploitation - the advantage of those with capital against those without, who have to work as required or die.
Liberalism is just an extension of this principle, giving the freedom to exploit to the rich, and the freedom to starve under a bridge (if you can find one which isn't imminently about to fall down) to the poor. Abit more research needed on your partial part.
in Buddhism greed is part of the Three Poisons (or Fires) that inflict our mind, namely: greed, hate and delusion. These are the root cause of human suffering
Yes, I agree. However, in the context of these essays, contemporary politics are not compatible with Buddhism. You can have one but not the other. If you are concerned with political events then you are not adhering to traditional Buddhist ideals. If you are a committed Buddhist then such events are an irrelevance and a snare. Being a politically concerned Buddhist is a modern western-inspired development, and I am not sure what to think about its validity.
Greed was identified by the East (Buddhism, Hinduism) as something fundamental to human mind, along with the other two. Any society built from greedy individuals will be greedy in its nature. That's been the case, without exceptions, throughout recorded human history. Capitalism comes along glorifies the greed, elevates it as something desirable and worthy, and builds society around it.
Just so.
Just in time delivery and lean inventories were invented in Japan. In East Asia, with different culture and work ethic it works just fine. Introducing it to the West was a mistake though.
The organisation of any large (1,000+) number of humans in a 'society' is only as good as its information sharing system. As you point out in a roundabout way, the complexity involved with having a large brain requires it.
'Religion' had a stranglehold over the 'information' system for millennia, following the advent of large settlements & agriculture. Whose basis in fantasy & nonsense effectively held back development of much any kind for all those years. (Though some did rather better than others, notably Islam, whose leaders placed great value on learning about our world & the universe with a 'science' process.)
Eventually, the information system (& eg. printing) became a more secular occupation, leading to the mass media multi-nationals we see today.
But as we see today, diversity in control & ownership of mass media channels has all but disappeared & the entire system is owned & delivered (in the West of my purview) by barely a roomful of (very wealthy) people - an elite. Especially in the public information & politics, which 'informs' (sic) the votes we place in our (fake) 'democracies'.
It should also be noted that all these elites & all the lower ranks in their organisations are also subject to the same self-reinforcing feedback loops being used to rationalise, normalise & justify increasingly sociopathic & psychopathic government of society. (In fact, if you look at history, you see this loop repeating in cycles, which is why the 1930s of Europe is looking very familiar again across the West.)
Of course, now we're in the age of Nuclear industrial warfare, as well as global scale destruction of climate & natural life support systems heading off the charts, complete destruction of our species is inevitable within the next few generations unless we radically change course.
Which means that the information system requires radical reform to create diversity away from being controlled by an ever more sociopathic & remote from reality by their wealth elite.
It's actually quite simple to do this by giving a comparably sized (by GDP/turnover) sector of mass media to citizens to control directly in a Commons type Common Ownership based structure. Like this -
There should only be two options for the structure of mass media businesses - either as a private/commercial (shareholder) controlled entity, or as a member controlled Co-operative type entity in a (new) Commons 'public' sector, under direct citizens' 'votes' control.
(Eg., the 'public' sector BBC Depts. could choose one or the other - no more corrupt Gov appointee run fake 'public' media.).
Mass media in Western societies is near all owned & delivered by a small group of wealthy elites, & significantly funded via advertising by a handful of large Corporations. That can have its place in providing public discourse & entertainment non-critical to 'democracy', but it should not be the only model for media with power (& reach).
We can easily create a system where citizens control a similar size sector of the media directly, through non-profit media Commons/Common Ownership structured publishers/providers, which exclude all private capital & revenue income. (Instead, they are controlled by members with equal voting rights, like Worker Co-ops or Community Businesses.)
In this sector, their only permitted income comes from our currency issuer Govs (at zero cost), but not directly. Instead of Gov directing which Commons Media enterprises get grant funding, citizens, equally, disburse the funds via an annual voucher system, whereby they sponsor their preferred Commons media provider(s).
This simple system ensures full democratic participation in a sector of mass media, & thus the political discourse which elevates politics to power.
And we need it now, as our *first* priority, before humanity's path to its own self-destruction becomes irreversible.
(By the way, I know all this because besides being an engineer, I studied for an MBA & afterwards co-founded & assisted many worker co-ops & other member controlled 'Common Ownership' enterprises & organisations. Later using the Financial Accounting I learnt to correctly understand how our Gov issue fiat currency monetary economies actually work, as opposed to the 'money constrained' & 'fiscal rules' drivel of mainstream 'economics' court astrologer bull*.)
Thank you for your interesting comment. It seems to me that decisions can only be as good as the information used to reach them, so media ownership (control of what we are allowed to know) should be recognised as critical to any democracy. The problem being a bit chicken and egg in that politicians are reliant on the opinions of MSM to convince people to vote for them and such changes could only be introduced by an elected government. This is why there has never been a Leveson 2 inquiry into collusion between the media the police and politicians, one of the main recommendations of Leveson 1. Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas, so how can this be brought about?
I also entirely agree with you about governments dishonest analogy of balancing the books, which has only been used as a smokescreen for further impoverishment of the nation and more wealth and power being handed to global elites.
Thanks Steve, appreciated.
Of course, my proposal faces the same problem as any other policies the ruling elites don't like.
I think the only way it could be implemented in this present catch22 situation is by citizens conducting a general strike until the legislation is agreed.
But where my proposal has merit in such effort over all other issues left unresolved or ignored by the PTB, is in its simplicity, perfect 1st order logic & ease of implementation, plus that it provides the path for all other issues to be resolved via genuinely inclusive public debate in due course.
Hi Mike, your post is refreshing! I love that you are in stage 3 of "kaizen" and using your mind to CREATE solutions to the entropy. I agree that this is a matter of utmost importance. I have a plan for building a mass media network that can efficiently serve as a critical tool in disrupting many strongholds and broken systems while simultaneously creating the infrastructure to rebuild stronger systems that support humanity's wellbeing. Are you open to having an indepth discussion about this topic? This is my first time on substack and my very first comment. So I am not sure how we would connect, but I think it's worth doing.
I'm open to further discussion, sure. Not sure either how to connect though?
Wow, another anarchist fantasy which never worked and will never work.
An evidence free post, and as such, completely ignorable.
Long term organizational success requires a culture that seeks and rewards people who care more about the ongoing success of the organization than they do about their individual rewards. Absent such a culture, cohesion breaks down and the organization loses effectiveness. Entropy never sleeps. For organizations, it is the application of energy to culture that is necessary to fight the effects of entropy. However, organizations exist within a wider culture and if that culture is at odds with a culture of cohesion, of the greater good, then the amount of energy required to maintain culture within the organization increases exponentially and eventually becomes impossible to overcome.
Think about a drink inside a computer filled with ice. The "culture" of the cooler is cold. Of the cooler sits outside in the come winter, all is well. If it sits outside in the hot summer, eventually the conditions inside the cooler change and it can no longer keep the drink cold.
In much of the West, organizations are now sitting in an external culture that is working against (sometimes passively and sometimes actively) the cohesion and shared commitment necessary for organizational success.
The rot well and truly set in with the mindless acceptance of Thatcher’s assertion “There are individual men and women, and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.” She followed this with the line, “There is no such thing as society”.
Under circumstances of such radical atomization, there is no public; and where there is no public, there can be no public goods.
Reap the whirlwind …
"No, I have a feeling that the vacuum our nihilistic ruling class is busy creating will be filled by people we aren’t going to like at all. "
Nope. Nobody of influence and authority cares.
Anyway, it won't matter. If the standard of living for, say, 50% of europeans were to fall to African levels, but the top 10% and especially the top 1% were to maintain their current living standards, then europe would continue to stumble along, the oligarchs and their minions dreaming up ever ludicrous narratives to keep the peons disunited, distracted and under control.
Of course, maintaining control requires an effective military/police/security apparatus, but these are the last things that the oligarchy will allow to lapse.
Indeed. Past is a good place to look to to realize that this is true and that it happened before...
@aurelien2022 : I generally agree with your thesis. However, there are times when having well-trained armed forces is not enough to defeat irregular groups. The well-trained British military could not defeat the Irish Republican Army. Ultimately, the UK government had to negotiate a peaceful end to the Northern Ireland Conflict. The United States military had to abandon Afghanistan with Taliban irregular fighters still standing undefeated.
I generally agree with you as well Chima, but not here. For a brief period in the early 1970s, the IRA tried to fight a conventional war against the British and "drive them out." This failed, and the IRA adopted an insurgent model, where, as you know, insurgents have a natural advantage. Afghanistan was similar.The British never tried to fight a military campaign in Northern Ireland: their strategy was political, to outlast the enemy. This worked in the sense that the IRA began to realise from the mid-1980s that the military strategy was not working, and began to focus much more on politics. By the early 90s they were putting out peace feelers, and eventually agreed to end the conflict without achieving any of their major objectives. If you're interested, there's an excellent book "The Secret History of the IRA" by Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist with very good Republican contacts.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will check it out.
Have you considered the work of archaeologist Joseph Tainter with respect to this perspective? His thesis is basically that sociopolitical simplification/collapse/decline arises as a result of the Law of Diminishing Returns. He applies it to societal institutions to help explain how and why they cannot sustain themselves.
We could view this excellent overview of entropic forces as the inevitable outcome of people subsumed in unconscious fear due to ignorance of Source, purpose and potential. In effect, unconscious entrapment in fear of the unknown, represented by death, driving evermore desperate measures.
Surely, the ''message'' is to dismiss the values of the external illusion, increasingly manipulated by the most deluded ''elite'' mindset, to refocus on our Reality within; to discover our causality rather than its effect.
Thus, we require Real Education to fulfil its true purpose ''to bring out from within'' founded on True Divine Science; to understand the One Conscious Presence experienced by all lifeforms; to accept and feel our Oneness as characters in the space-time framework of Divine Mind; to accept this point in time as the opportunity to overcome the experience of separation and live in awe and gratitude for the endless possibilities that appear as ''infinity'' to Consciousness-in-a-Body.
In other words, those who know must begin ''The Conversation Never Had''
"True Divine Science". What is that? The interpretation of 'god' that you find attractive? My advice to you is to keep it to yourself. We all have our 'personal interpretations' and each one is as good as another, as far as each individual is concerned. Elevating your own above everyone else's is a symptom of arrogance, and nothing to do with 'god'.
Forest. Nature's been helpful to me in shifting over to the consciousness that's not ego consciousness. Sometimes I wonder how people today so removed from nature will be able to do it. The Desert in the City? Carlo Carreto wrote that you could find one there. I agree on your Education position, Peter. I went to a school that I think was one of a kind. In the morning for example middle school had to keep some negentropy going in three barns housing milking Guernseys. A lot going in, and a lot coming out. Every day.
"The only policy of the Notional Left in Europe is to 'defeat fascism,' which means..."
Interesting. It must be that the real deal rightists have manifested in Europe long enough prior such that folks are more cognizant of them than here in the US. Am I correct to think our Notional Left here is like many Democrats who can't agree to a Ukraine pull-out? Even now "MAGA" comes to my ears more than "fascist." Those that put out the call to demonstrate that I hear are for sure more savvy than I am on how to demonstrate. But of course they are NOT the plants.
To change the subject and for what it's worth (I wanted not to forget to include something about the following) I wonder if anyone here has listened to this interview.
"Rene Girard: Today I think we have two totalitarian groups – one which may have exhausted its possibilities, which is anti-Christian – Nazism. I think the violence of Nazism is: how are we going to get rid of Christianity? Nietzsche talked about doing it through philosophy, genealogy, showing that the Christians are for victims only for the most vulgar and sinister reasons...because they are part of the lower class. The Nazis say, we are more powerful than a poor philosopher that was half mad, and we’re going to drown the Christian desire to vindicate victims [with] such injustice, such destruction that we will prove that the destiny of the world that has been Christian is not the Christian one. You have to regard the open explicit nature of Nazi violence. They didn’t talk about concentration camps during the war because it would have been very bad from a strategic viewpoint, but if they had won the war they would have publicized it and said – our world has nothing to do with Christianity, we have proved that Christianity cannot do anything in this world. This was an explicit anti-Christian view. I think there is another totalitarianism which is opposite [that says]: don’t believe that Christianity is defending victims, it just pretends to; it’s nothing but inquisition, terrorism, etc. We’re going to show you how to defend victims...which is what we see today. An imitation of Christ which is at the same time a total betrayal of Christianity...we have to read much of contemporary history in this light. It’s so controversial and potentially explosive it’s very difficult to articulate, but I think the signs are converging in that direction.
"David C: Today what we call the political correctness is super-Christianity. This super-Christianity that Rene Girard associates with political correctness reduces the world to nothing but victimization, oppression, and the machinations of power. It takes up the Christian concern with victim but abandons Christianity and in particular Christian morality."
written version, bottom p. 46 to p. 47
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/542c2af8e4b00b7cfca08972/t/58ff87e0d2b8579e77e80882/1493141508746/Scapegoat.PDF
I have a note that says...(I think) the above is at around 35:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wimFvlhKQcU
Thanks David it's good to hear from you!
The answer unfolds once we understand and accept every thing manifests within 0.000001% of the energy wherein we appear (as now discovered by quantum physicists). Moreover, what our 5 senses present as ''space'' is One Divine Mind; with all motion on all dimensions of That Space, Its Thinking.
In other words, IT is the producer, director, scenery and characters in Its own Play and ''infinity'' is like a ''Divine Euphemism'' for unlimited possibilities in action. Indeed, we'' are being played and each of us is one character in that Mind - we couldn't be more intimately connected.
Whilst ''reality'' is IT exploring its unlimited possibilities to experience-investigate-discover the Truth of Its unlimited Beauty and Go(o)dness. Of course, space-time is ITs essential structure (stage) of volume and duration.
Thus, our ''world'' manifests within the Consciousness of Divine Awareness as IT functions in endless bodies (galaxies, suns, planets projecting endless dimensions of ''nano life-form''). DNA (''MilkyWay'') is the transceiver for ITs Knowingness; Suns are ITs Divine Holographic Projectors.
The ''missing link'' is clarity that we-the-people have all power of supply and demand; in other words, we produce and consume all goods and services. We must break our ''bad habits'' and begin new conversations focused on our endless opportunities to share skills, time, knowledge, goods and services; beginning locally with ''those with eyes to see...''. Common sense says simply that we can match our needs with the offers of other folk.
Essentially, we can found new systems driven on love and protection for our children and families. We have all the resources available to collaborate and develop projects for ourselves; rather than ''working like automatons'' for the same-old delusional narcissists who believe they're ''smart'' because ''we dummies'' obey their orders.
The inbuilt global tyranny is founded on ''The 3 Big Frauds - banking as debt, legalities as law and indoctrination as education. Meanwhile fraud vitiates everything so we can instigate ''The Great Reclaim'' for common good.
All said, we run the current system that controls and re-presents our Divine LifeForce and Natural Resources using ''bits'' - whether paper or digits. We must learn to stand up as living wo/men, create our own credit (where it's due) and dismiss the current fraudulent corporate ''govern-ment'' systems.
As we realign with Natural Law, we will re-structure our lives based on common sense and real values. Quite simply, when we re-cognise the Truth, Beauty and Goodness reflected everywhere around our wonderful planet in awe and gratitude, we learn to dismiss the imposed stress and fear we accept as ''normal''.
Meanwhile, a ''Bank'' is merely a digital ledger in a database that enables credits and debits. Easily created by any community who are wise enough to stand together using hands-on Real Education to exchange skills, time and knowledge.
Without doubt people would accept and recycle the currency of a ''Bank'' that they owned collectively as a public trust to be administered locally through private member associations. Moreover when that currency is generated debt-free into the accounts of members as they exchange their goods, services, time, skills, knowledge.
We can learn to barter as we match our offers and needs; we can develop projects that produce assets and public services; our communities can become worthy of investment; traditional debt-based funds can be recycled to support the generation of debt-free; hands-on creativity can enable ''true money-laundering'' as crowd-funding becomes crowd-owning.
Crucially, most folk still retain Love in their hearts (notably and most powerfully for their children). So, we have retained our unbroken connection to the Divine despite millennia of torment by this demonic mindset (''the name of the game?'').
Now is our time to dismiss the engineered delusions of ''science-philosophy-religion'' in order to re-connect with the Truth of Our Oneness within That Wonderful Mind - living in Awe and Gratitude for That Truth is the Cure.
Check out Walter Russell ''The Secret of Light'' (and much else), Lao Russell ''God Will Work With You, Not For You'' and Nisargadatta Maharaj ''I Am That'' (and much else); also Ramana Maharshi ''Who Am I?''
Here's a question I put to ChatGPT: Are any cosmologists (including astronomer Sten Odenwald) now saying that the light photons, tachyons, and virtual particles existing in or passing through "empty space," or any space save that occupied by matter, actually contributing to the nature of space as much as gravity and space-time?
Part of the answer yielded: "Yes — many modern cosmologists and theoretical physicists already think that the 'empty' space of the universe isn’t really empty, and that what passes through it (fields, photons, quantum fluctuations/virtual effects) does contribute to the physics of space-time in ways just as fundamental as gravity and curvature. However, there are important caveats and active debates about how to interpret these contributions."
What I meant to ask about was the make up of space, but how all these other factors influence space-time I'm thinking should be interesting (the rest is waiting for me to read). Other ideas about where time comes from [recently in Scientific American IIRC] strike me as too weird, but mainly too time consuming to attempt to understand.
Some excellent words I think were those spoken by Ralph Nader sometime before or on Saturday the 17th on the subject of impeaching Trump. Now I guess will be a time to put aside Green Party strategy owing to the threat we face [I was thinking a P.I.T.O. Party would be good--peace in Trump out; without both things won't improve].
https://open.substack.com/pub/ralphnader/p/impeachment-nowfifty-species-that
The Quantum Human Body - PhD Physics
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184890466?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=5354619&post_id=184890466&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=pq1ry&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A truly brilliant exposition of real science unfolding Reality
Similarly:
Human Toroidal Energetic Flow - PhD Physics
https://consciousphysics.substack.com/p/human-toroidal-energetic-flow-pdd?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=post
Sorry, first I'll re-write my first paragraph up there (it was an involved question; it should read clearly!)...
1st para up there as it should be: Here's a question I put to ChatGPT: Are any cosmologists (including astronomer Sten Odenwald) now saying that the light photons, tachyons, and virtual particles existing in or passing through "empty space," or any space save that occupied by matter, actually do contribute to the nature of whatever space proper...as much as, say, gravity and the classic construct termed "space-time"?
Went through the first link you provided quickly. My view is that human bodies and matter we're familiar with travel WITH time's flow. Some sub atomic particles in cyclotrons can't travel with it ALONE for very long. I also look at mind like Rupert Sheldrake does to a degree. Mind actually touches what it observes...most of the time I figure. That idea may agree with some of your link's statements re fields. What Aurobindo called Supermind probably can work non locally sans measurable fields I think [don't ask me how something non-local connects with something local]. I think the Supermind thing might be what John Heider called the Higher Self and some call Self with capital "s."
I'm saying that all motion within space-time can be understood as Thinking - Image-I-Nation - in Divine Mind; with the ''expanding universe'' presenting the unlimited possibilities of content in cause-and-effect. As such there is only One ''Locality'' and ''dimensions'' are viewpoints related to levels of Awareness.
In effect, ''spiritual growth'' relates to learning Truth to re-connect into That Mind in awe and gratitude of That That Is. So, we can access true wisdom in true humility through experiential learning as love of life (God) enables evolving heart coherence.
The links to the conscious physics information provide rare insight from a ''professional scientist''.
"every thing manifests within 0.000001% of the energy wherein we appear"
Gibberish. Get an actual Physicist to endorse that statement.
It is intended as a simple analogy to express the appearance of our world within a single thinking Light. The thinking, or Imag-I-Nation, in Divine Mind whose rhythmic pulses of Light and Dark give rise to all form; matter itself emerging as the ordered expression of Mind in motion.
In other words, what physics describes as excitations of fields, can be understood as rhythmic manifestations of a unified Mind, with matter arising as ordered patterns within the universal flow of Light and Dark. In effect, matter is Mind made manifest.
You're correct in that %s are irrelevant. Quite simply all form arises from a single thinking Light; and matter is the patterned expression of Mind in motion.
Your problem is that you think you have a unique personal line to the 'truth' that no-one else has, and that you have to convert everyone else to. Well, there are many other, equal, or even better, and valid, options than yours, and we are, and should be, free to choose our own. Keep your revelations to yourself, as otherwise you will be classed with all the other fake 'prophets' who have littered history. with nonsense.
If you study the revelations of Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi and Walter Russell you may begin to realise the error of your presumptions
Cows had to stay in during the cold.
'...disciplined troops, with high levels of entropy can defeat large numbers of irregulars.' Did I misread this? Surely you meant that the disciplined troops have the lower entropy? Low entropy, inherent in organised, stable systems, is sometimes called 'negentropy'. Our current political structures are sorely lacking in negentropy and the energy inputs necessary to 'generate' it.
OK, the problems of analogy. What I was trying to say is that keeping a military force disciplined and ready to fight is a high energy-input activity. Your local cricket team may not be much affected by entropy when they gather after a months-long break, but a military unit could lose its cohesion in the same period because it is subject to entropy very quickly. What counts is not the state of the organisation today, but rather the speed with which it could decline.
Er yes indeed. We are similarly increasingly lacking of low entropy energy sources which can do actual 'work', replaced by high entropy inefficient sources.
Overall though I agree with most of this article, and particularly support the notion that LLMs are anything but 'intelligent' and are useless copy and paste dumbing down machines produced at enormous cost to economies.
The Chinese have had merit-based government ministries for thousands of years.
In theory, anyway.
Of course!
Yes. I didn't mean to disrespect the Chinese experience. They certainly tried hard from time to time to keep the train on the rails. But entropy, time and human nature continually eat away at everything. Most recently the Kangxi Emperor fought against the tide, but his descendants succumbed to fate.
Every one of their empires failed. Just like every other empire in the World.
The Chinese are not unique in that stuff.
But they, very early, were greatly successful in testing and recognizing the best and the brightest of their people.
Eventually they just were testing on impractical matters that did not concern the modern world.
It appears they have fixed that, once again.
Thanks for this essay A.
Speaking of Annalects, the most important act, as described by The Master is the rectification of names:
The Analects states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names. Confucius' solution to this was the "rectification of names". He gave an explanation to one of his disciples:
A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.
— Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4–7, Analect 13.3, translated by James Legge
Yes, I did wonder about including that, but you have to stop somewhere.
Oh its so good to read this , i was a UK civil servant for decades and remember well the changes you describe , so many colleagues i met who when asked why they were promoted to and doing a particular job that they knew nothing about would answer , i am here to manage the people and not the work they do .I would respond by saying but how can you manage the people if you do not know what they are doing or how well they are doing it.Blank displeased looks ensued.
Change management that involved no management is what it was , continual improvement that involved no measure of what was beng done or had been done previously.
I have read about people from wealthy families being plonked straight into senior officer roles in H.M.Forces during WWI and WWII with zero experience of soldiering or management , the result was misserable failure , looks like we have turned the clock back and returned to that kind of practice , its failing misseably again, not just in soldiering and management but in politics and many other places in life too.
Where will it all end ? Disaster , undoubtedly , lets face it the last two USA presidents are not fit to be doing the job , too old , too out of touch with reality but guided like lumbering missiles causing damage in every direction.
This is our culture enduring Northrop Frye’s “Winter” phase, in literature associated with satire — a time of darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure.
If like everything else in biology human culture is cyclical, then what eventually follows is the “Spring” phase characterized by the rebirth of the hero, revival and resurrection — spring symbolizing the defeat of winter and darkness.
But nobody knows how long a cultural winter might last … 😑
Decades since I read Frye, but yes, the question is whether history will behave like literature.
It is hard to overlook the fact that the author here appears to believe that high levels of entropy are characteristic of order.
The opposite is the case.
‘The trouble is that, as I said at the beginning, human beings do not come in boxes with instructions for working together, and they do not spontaneously self-organise.’
Yet our ‘enlightenment’ forebearers who theorized man in a state of nature and subsequent social contracts as defining social order would have us believe this to be true. Yes indeed, we are very much in an embalming strength pickle.