One person believing makes an idea a dream.
Two people believing makes the idea a promise.
A community believing makes the idea reality.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Taxes
The rich are rich because they are connected to people who give to them.
But the purpose of community is not to create rich people. It's a direct result of us being social animals.
But being social animals is no explanation for community.
We are social animals because we have collectively decided that it is a better strategy to specialize in what we can manage, and allow others to give us what we cannot.
Our communities are strong because we have abstracted and virtualized our ability to collect and transmit our strengths and weaknesses. We are strong because we have things that help us do redistribute our strengths: the internet, logistics, social protocol, language, money.
In that sense, we could attribute part of our strength to taxes - it literally redistributes resources from those who are good at collecting it to those who aren't.
In that sense, taxation is the whole purpose of a certain class of modern communities.
In that sense, the rich are made rich because they are expected to give to the poor.
Unless - unless the rich do not live in communities. Unless the rich do not live in protection of the community: without the protection of law, the trust conferred by money, the mechanisms of efficacy afforded by infrastructure. Unless the rich had nobody to give to them. Unless the rich - were not rich.
That is why I think it's fair to levy extremely high taxes on the ultra rich.
But the purpose of community is not to create rich people. It's a direct result of us being social animals.
But being social animals is no explanation for community.
We are social animals because we have collectively decided that it is a better strategy to specialize in what we can manage, and allow others to give us what we cannot.
Our communities are strong because we have abstracted and virtualized our ability to collect and transmit our strengths and weaknesses. We are strong because we have things that help us do redistribute our strengths: the internet, logistics, social protocol, language, money.
In that sense, we could attribute part of our strength to taxes - it literally redistributes resources from those who are good at collecting it to those who aren't.
In that sense, taxation is the whole purpose of a certain class of modern communities.
In that sense, the rich are made rich because they are expected to give to the poor.
Unless - unless the rich do not live in communities. Unless the rich do not live in protection of the community: without the protection of law, the trust conferred by money, the mechanisms of efficacy afforded by infrastructure. Unless the rich had nobody to give to them. Unless the rich - were not rich.
That is why I think it's fair to levy extremely high taxes on the ultra rich.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Love on Cloud Seven
Life is like the internet. It doesn't start or end anywhere. You are part of it but you are neither it nor do you own it in any way, but by your very ability to be part of it, you are owned by it.
Your connection and disconnection may look like the birth and death of your life to you, but these alter it in no significant way. That's because life is not something that was birthed into you; you were birthed into life. Birth and death are not complementary to, or opposites of life: they are a strategy of life as much as unreliable connections a strategy of the internet.
Life is self seeking beyond reason. It is an unemotional, fierce, and self-centered force that neither forgives nor forgets but keeps record of all wrongs in its evolving DNA with the sole objective of preserving itself. Life is not about you. To life, you are just another statistic, like how a cell in your body or a bacteria in your guts - nothing more than a sophisticated "naturally" intelligent risk-aware machinery that preserves it.
Love, and love, is everything that you throw at life to make your experience of being conscious a narrative about you.
It is everything that life isn't. It is destructive but gentle, emotional but forgiving, it is personal but able to reach outside the skin, able to acknowledge and embrace other living things that are not physically part of us, and treat them as an integral part of us and call them community, body, enemy, or family.
Love is the cloud on the 7th layer of the internet, the application of life through which we gain faces and create meaning in the hardware that is us. Love is the stories we tell ourselves to makes sense of the world around us. Love is incapable of truth nor falsehood, because love is the stories in which we carve out our reality. It is the ground we stand on and the stars above.
Above all, we need love because it is the one force we have against life's harshness. It is the only thing that keeps is together, and the only real defense in the face of our completely irrational choice of staying alive.
Your connection and disconnection may look like the birth and death of your life to you, but these alter it in no significant way. That's because life is not something that was birthed into you; you were birthed into life. Birth and death are not complementary to, or opposites of life: they are a strategy of life as much as unreliable connections a strategy of the internet.
Life is self seeking beyond reason. It is an unemotional, fierce, and self-centered force that neither forgives nor forgets but keeps record of all wrongs in its evolving DNA with the sole objective of preserving itself. Life is not about you. To life, you are just another statistic, like how a cell in your body or a bacteria in your guts - nothing more than a sophisticated "naturally" intelligent risk-aware machinery that preserves it.
Love, and love, is everything that you throw at life to make your experience of being conscious a narrative about you.
It is everything that life isn't. It is destructive but gentle, emotional but forgiving, it is personal but able to reach outside the skin, able to acknowledge and embrace other living things that are not physically part of us, and treat them as an integral part of us and call them community, body, enemy, or family.
Love is the cloud on the 7th layer of the internet, the application of life through which we gain faces and create meaning in the hardware that is us. Love is the stories we tell ourselves to makes sense of the world around us. Love is incapable of truth nor falsehood, because love is the stories in which we carve out our reality. It is the ground we stand on and the stars above.
Above all, we need love because it is the one force we have against life's harshness. It is the only thing that keeps is together, and the only real defense in the face of our completely irrational choice of staying alive.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
If mobile phones survived the way human beings continue to go on living despite discrimination, disability, attack, abuse, hunger, unpopularity, unconnectedness and isolation, inherited imperfections, disease, hurt and self harm, chronic pain and relapse, we would still be using Nokia 8310s, repaired and upgraded beyond all recognition like a patchwork Frankenstein.
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