The four stages of freedom

The four stages of freedom

Ignorance, Knowledge, Control, Release. Ignorance, because you don't know what freedom is. Knowledge, because you can change what your have pinpointed to be binding you. Control, because you have learnt how to make the rules work for you. Release, because the captivity doesn't matter anymore.

The four stages of freedom

Ignorance, Knowledge, Control, Release. Ignorance, because you don't know what freedom is. Knowledge, because you can change what your have pinpointed to be binding you. Control, because you have learnt how to make the rules work for you. Release, because the captivity doesn't matter anymore.

CVEH1001

Human Vulnerability Advisory CVEH1001 memory injection displacing pointers to statistically significant events.

Learning

Learning unleashes your potential. Public schooling constraints it into a certain mould that fits the society that funds it.

Inclusion

Can you be inclusive without being exclusive, and still run on the same resources? Where's the line between prioritization, privilege, and discrimination? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - what if you're a worm trying to deal with the bird in the hand?

One World

One World

Even if the people stand together, countries as single entities will always stand divided, not because of religion or beliefs or political thought, but because of conflict of interests, which they disguise under various skins. The idea of the world standing together as one can only happen when all nations manage to perceive a common and serious threat. I'm not saying that this threat is china.

The problem with science

The problem with science is that whatever it has no tools to formulate a hypothesis that it can attempt to prove or disprove, it labels it "unscientific". Can we all that anything other than arrogance?

If you want discipline,
Keep record of only the wrongs
And folklore will follow.

If you want technique,
Keep record of both rights and wrongs
And knowledge will follow.

If you want courage,
Keep record of only the rights
And hope will follow.

Subjects that should be taught in a global curriculum:

1 Arithmetic and statistics

2 Computer Programming and human resource Management

3 Physics and Geometry

4 Law and politics

5 sociology and religion

6 mother tongue

7 second language

8 standardized world history

There was a time when being able to speak and write flawless English, or Chinese, or Japanese, or whatever language, was the highest skill one needed to prove one's abilities to be ensured a high social standing and a comfortable income. In those days, it made sense for society to reinforce to value of language, and for the individual to invest much time an energy into memorizing the nitty gritty details of the rules of language as set out be the elites. But let's face it. Those days are over.

Perhaps the most dangerous idea that human beings invented, is that of opposites - that opposites are identical to negations.

Four there will always be: the governor, the architect, the merchant, and the citizen.

Aka the politician, the engineer, the businessman, and the voter. T

Aka the negotiators, the dreamers, the witty, and the innocent.

Aka the scheming, the fools, the liars, and the stupid.

If an infinite loop has already been running for an infinite amount of time, can we say that it doesn't have a beginning?

「人並み」を人生の平均値と思われるのは、バブルです。本当の平均値は0です。だから人生はどうにかなるものです！

Women are not inferior to men. They have simply outsourced the less important bits of life to men, and made them think it's all that matter.

人之初、性本irrational.

Boys use words to express
Girls use words to exclaim
Men use words to explain
Women use words to evoke

Who am I?

Who am I?
In usernames and passwords
Do we not answer ourselves every day?
Why do we pretend that philosophy is a discipline only for quiet personal contemplation?
Aren't we in an age where it is everywhere?
Don't give in to those in power.
Being human is just a protocol
To serve you to the beast
And crunch your bones in your sleep.

I believe in total free speech - that you're free to express any opinion. But I also believe in the value of the social etiquette that's been repeated since forever in geekdom : Don't feed the trolls.

Life is like a treadmill when the only way to get somewhere, is to make that same journey that gets you nowhere over and over again.

Life is the process of fighting death.
The young and the old, the newborn and the dying, we all live the last day of our lives over and over again, whether we realize it or not - just that all the time we manage to postpone death. Every single day is a bonus, every single day a second chance. Nothing is ever too late, and never too early. Why are we always so tempted to think that death is so far away and focus on the dying breath when it is constantly just one night away?

tradition. religion. ideology. nationality. language. science.
what is it that we gained in exchange for such a host of divisive paradigms that try to arrive at the same conclusion through conflicting nomenclatures that give people in power so many ways to play their political games?

Maybe the reason we think extremists are beyond reason, is that we are afraid their reasons may be compelling, and are not ready to allocate them our patience and resources to hear them out?

We quarrel not because we're so different, but because we're so alike.

The problem with the word tradition is that it is a word. By making it a word, we strip it of its fluidity. There are no dying traditions. Once you call it tradition, it's already dead.

Random thoughts on selling prices

The problem with capitalism is that it attempts to abstract all experiences and human conditions in terms of resource ownership. The problem with meritocracy is that it lends credibility to the idea that your deserve the resources that you own.

What if prices were all suggestions and you pay any price you think goods are worth, but you'll be taxed for whatever you underpay, measured according to your earning power?

That means a cup of coffee can be marked $1 no matter where it is sold, but you're free to pay $3 if you really enjoy it, and your taxes suggest that you pay $6 if you earn 6 times the average salary, or you can overpay someone else instead. Your quality of life cannot be improved by increasing consumption, but rather by the choices you make.

Would it work out?

The nominal value of money would lose its current meaning, but isn't it how it should be?

Anxiety is the state of being perpetually distracted by the future.

The value of history isn't in learning from mistakes but informing us no society is an absolute truth, that we're free to make new mistakes.

Replace censorship with Equal Voice Opportunity, where you can make your case against any motion. Censorship is simply coward denial.

perseverance is mostly consistent self deception. the hard part is outdoing yourself in being increasingly crafty and naive at the same time

Perseverance is choosing to presume that something is impossible, and then believing otherwise.

The root of all evil

I think one way I am able to accommodate the idea of race and culture is the idea of indoctrination. Indoctrination into a specific paradigm constructed by the characteristics of the language the culture feeds you.

Some people swallow it whole, others improvise. But I think it's not possible to truly be unaffected by the languages you speak, no matter how little you may know your second or third languages. I think races and cultures change as they merge. Nobody can really so called preserve one's culture, The very thought of wanting to preserve ones culture I think is a sign that one has had some kind of global influence.

Race and culture are therefore approximations, not prescriptions. But when the approximation is too far off, why do people still want to try to fit in?

I think the answer lies in power. I think the acceleration of the development of language is driven by the greed for power. Through language , you can make people think in a certain way, use them to your advantage, and make them desire to be thus used.

Culture is the root of all evil!

India

That soft orange glow
Quite readily made me forget
That heat and madness
That was Delhi, my first taste of India.
For long days
Was a very short time; not enough
To get accustomed to how meals are served, much less
To understand how food tasted to the locals.
I still have no idea how this great country works, it is as if
Chaos were its expression of order.
However things seem to fail randomly,
Thehy seem to get their act together -
More or less.

I remember the driver's nonchalant replies,
Softly insisting on his own recommendations;
The way how a small door along a dusty avenue
Can open up to a chic cafe;
The way homeless children came by to sell you goods
While your car is stuck in the jam.

I recall how nobody seems to stop to notice
When the lights go out abruptly halfway through dinner;
And I remember the taste of that desert served to me:
Almost sweet, almost warm -
That in-between, unsettling to  me,
Seemed to be a soft-spot I couldn't detect.

Looking out from my window seat,
I see an India expanding under me -
Its network of household lights
Glowing in a soft orange
Like Earth's own magma.

Culture

Culture, to me, is simply a way of life, testified by those for whom it worked, to be effective ways of surviving through specific situations in their times. These situations may be external, such as earthquakes or the ice age, or internal, or "cultural", arising out of simply subscribing to the very paradigm the culture presents.

This way of life is typically accumulated through trial and error, similar in spirit to scientific methods - except that those who failed either died from their failure, or were rendered unable to testify by mechanisms built into the system to protect itself.

As such, it is difficult to gauge the value of subscribing to a culture. Situations in which prescribed solutions are effective may or may not happen again, or in cases may not happen often enough to justify the inconveniences of situations internal to the culture. Mechanisms built into cultures to preserve the culture may work positively or negatively when encountering situations not addressed by the culture. Maybe in done cases, the culture may "cause" more problems than it addresses. More often than not, internal issues form most of the experience of subscribing to the culture, thus you need to be "inside" to really "understand".

Whichever the case, while science gives verifiable explanations for its ways and religion gives explicit internal explanations, cultures don't offer any. Probably strategic I think - in that it's targeted to become your basic assumptions with which you explain everything else. In that way, it'd take you a long time before you figure out that you can question culture, just like you can question any philosophy, science or religion.

A different kind of money

Is it possible to trade privacy for freedom from corruption? I don't know much about economics, but let's just imagine this - a world where moral high ground is the dirtiest taboo, and everything is transparent.

Imagine a world where all currency is digital, secured via quantum cryptography, and processed on a global cloud that makes all transactions searchable. A world where it is not banks are the ones issuing legal tender notes based on complex mathematical models - currencies are personal credits, issued by individuals, each credit being a promise to fulfill a unit time of work. Credits rise and fall in buying power, based on the value put on the individual's work. You can't issue more credits than the hours you have in your predicted lifespan. When you're down and out, agriculture is your fallback plan - at the bottom line, one credit is an hour on a farmer's hand, harvesting the crop from the earth.

Since there is no universal currency, companies cannot simply pay you, but have to secure the credits of individual service providers. Goods have no inherent value, tangible goods are just a means of securing somebody's services.

What would such a world be like?

Is heaven an idea to which we try to match reality, or a reality to which we try to match the idea? Do we assume we understand it perfectly, or is five sigma good enough?

Before trusting logic, ask the intuition.

Before trusting intuition, ask the heart.

Before trusting the heart, ask the body.

Before asking the body, first check if the logic is valid in the first place.

Running

Thought this up when I ran my 20 minutes today.

Running is a state of being. You can be running for something, or running from something. Or you could always be feeling like you're running late. Or running out of time for that matter. Or you could be running into something or somebody, or running a race that will never be finished, or running on borrowed time. I guess we all do a little of each of these at one time or another. But what I'd like us to remember today, is that feeling of being totally free. That feeling that you can never be stopped - nor will you even want to slow yourself down. That feeling you feel when you decide to forget everything, and pour yourself into the moment. That moment you are not running for, or running from, or running on, or running into anything, but simply, just running. That for all the moments that must pass us by, there could be one in which staying on the moment where nothing matters, is all that matters.

the fundamental difference in the attitude of science and that of art - if i might attempt to make a distinction, is that the mind of science lets go of the present to take hold of the eternal, knowing that the present is in the eternal, while art, is letting go of the eternal to take hold of the present, knowing that the eternal is in the present.

if life is about the experience - then hey, there's nothing to lose!

dignity is invented by humans for the living. decay is the shizentai of nature.

i think religion is an idea on which we weigh all our sensory perceptions in order to transform them into a congruous system of experiences, in order to derive a method of thinking about things, a system of thinking that can be made to stay constant in a world of chaos.

based on this definition, let me speculate:

1. this method of thinking is what human beings have chosen through natural selection, to deal with the ever-changing world. perhaps, in the past, there was some kind of evolutionary pressure for human beings to come to rely on this systematic method of thinking, and subsequently develop a huge brain. or is it the discovery of the bone marrow that gave human beings a big brain, and that propelled them to use the big brain to their advantage?

2. yes, this systematic method of thinking has taken many names - logic, reason, religion, science, hope, faith, philosophy, superstition, maths.... but let me propose that it is all the same thing. it is not the only way for a
species to survive, but it is what our species has chosen.

3. maybe, just maybe, religion in its most primitive incarnation, was what made the human species different from all the other species on earth today. we define "success" in our own terms and think that we're the most successful species on the planet.

4. but for all our progress and technology, perhaps we're not really any "better" than all the other species. just "different". until we are able to simulate all evolution and work ahead to wipe out species that don't work well for us, the same rules of the game still apply to us.

5. The environment can also change drastically - it has happened before. Environment change, perhaps, is not so much about the health of the earth, as much it is about how incapable human beings are, to live in a climate that is dramatically different.

spiral 4

spiral 3

spiral 2

spiral 1

A.

1. The brain is whatever we make it practice to be.
   It takes in input as stimulus and the survival demands we put 
   on it make it what it needs to be.

2. I think we have 5 senses because the brain is an error-prone 
   device. having more input signals to the same reality 
   balances out the errors. this changes the brain from being 
   error-prone to being error-resistant, but it also adds new 
   dimensions to the brain. 

B.

see in your brain, and it's imagination.
touch in your brain, and it's empathy.
taste in your brain, and it's memory.
smell in your brain, and it's nostalgia.
hear in your brain, and it's conviction.

※肯定的に自分を評価して変化＝REVOLVE、否定的に自分を評価して変化＝EVOLVE

words. make them count.

there are words in silences, as there is music in silences. words start to count when you start to really hear what's in the silences, because silence is not the absence of sound, but the breath that we breathe into every word we write, every song we sing. making someone speak before his breath, is not communication. only when you let him breathe his breath into his words, are his words connected to him.

life is not about winning the fight or rising above the fight:
life is the fight, and the fight is life.

being alive is about being in a constant war against decay.

dying is the unseen part of living. my guess why the earth is not one single life-form but divided into individual creatures is so that each creature is the growth endpoint for its own cancers.

nature is neither kind nor unkind.
nature is the so far the only proven way how things can sustainably work.
and in this proven way, you are to fight - or be the endpoint of your own decay.

we find comfort in numbers because nothing distracts us from life like counting.

2 million years into the future.
i hope human beings and all our civilizations can be gone by then.
and i hope whoever takes over, is better at giving way.

are human beings obsessed with being human, or is that what all species do?

how i see it is that human beings can't quite come to terms with their desire to own the earth and all that is in it - yes, they split the earth amongst themselves, but they're struggling to find a basis, for why they are not the same as "mere" animals, and why they rule above them.

it's an eternal struggle, trying to forget that we were once part of the food web - that being attacked and eaten by an animal, is a natural occurrence - more so than dying in a traffic accident. it's a struggle, trying not to imagine that another species can take over the planet in a way were are unable to prepare for. we think viruses as bad things, that they are not forms of life - and do not want to consider that they may one day become a life on their own right.

but let us consider this.

we human beings have chosen to have longer lifespans, so that individually we get to live through more. we focus our progress on our intellectual and technological dimensions. but do we not remember, that species that evolve, do so by dying, and giving way to the next generation? something tells me that we're resting on our laurels, and all other species are evolving ahead of us. we find other ways to deal with evolutionary pressure so our bodies do not change. is "technology" really where we should place our bets? but then again, we don't think of "us" as a species - we think of us in terms of individuals, families, countries. there's always a "them" every time we think of ourselves as "us".

let us consider this.

that each species is simply an expression of life. that in every situation, there are more than one way to walk through it.

i hate the saying "let us agree to disagree". i think it's more like every expression of life has its own grammar that makes it exceedingly difficult for one to really understand another in a deep way.

i think we should instead say, "let us admit that we cannot understand how things work out for you". and i think that applies to other all other species we share this planet with. that we cannot begin to understand how they live through all the recent changes we humans think of as "progress".

let us consider this.

homosexuality and euthanasia receiving mainstream attention is a manifestation of evolutionary pressure - that we human beings are getting over-populated. and i think it will only be intensified when medical science goes on to its next step, when we can fix problems at genetic level, and when people are able to live so long - they refuse to die.

let us consider this.

that the very fact we need to even think about pollution issues, is an evidence that we are overpopulated.

if we were suddenly one-tenth of our population on earth, we could still be living the same way, and we would have cut 90% of our emissions.

let us consider this.

that life is as much about the dying, as it is about the living.
gods do not die, but they do not live either.
the only thing that lives and does not know how to die, is cancer.
and yes, we're the most cancerous species on earth.

Suppose we have four currencies:

E$, for the amount of effort a person puts in,
V$, the value of effort delivered,
P$, the perceived value of a product,
M$, the amount of compensation one gets for the effort, and

And suppose it takes M$20 to make a decent living in this country, where

Andrew in an unskilled worker. He puts in E$20 every month to deliver V$20 of work a month and gets by with M$20 every month. To his boss, Andrew's work in worth P$20.

Benjamin is a semi-skilled worker. He puts in E$10 every month to deliver V$20 of work a month. To his boss, his work is worth P$20.

Charles is a skilled worker. He puts in E$20 every month to deliver V$60 of work a month. To his boss, his work is worth V$60.

Andrew, Benjamin and Charles work for Daniel. Daniel is a management-level worker, and puts in E$10 every month to deliver V$5 of work to coordinate Andrew, Benjamin and Charles. Together they deliver a total of V$300 a month. To Daniel's boss, this work is worth P$300.

Edna is an investor. She puts in E$10 of work every month to deliver V$1 of work every month. Andrew, Benjamin, Charles, Daniel and Edna together deliver a total of $V301, but by strategically positioning Daniel's work, she can deliver a product to 10 people, to each of whom the product is worth a value of P$400.

How should society compensate Benjamin, Charles, Daniel and Edna for their contribution?

why do the days feel so long and yet the years so fleeting?

i think it is a flaw in the human memory, that it is selective, and selects at a level that is not directly accessible to what we can consciously process, such that we are able to recall only key events, and not the in-between periods that really run the hours by.

i think it is another flow that we tend to have a bias, to remember the good or the bad things. based on general or first impressions - conclusions jumped at without proof. and i think this memory helps people come to terms with life, and help them think that everything is worth the sweat, blood and tears.

Life is about finding all the wrong answers to all the right questions.

Sketch: The adventures of Noko Chan
G'day! I'm Chiku-nii! Ya havin' fun? Let's hold hands and play together!

Sketch: The adventures of Noko Chan
Hello, my name is Noko Chan. As you can see, i don't have a mouth. that is why I have to put into writing everything I want to say so badly.

happiness is a chemical reaction.
and i think it can be created when one dwells on the idea of being free.
but i think the same mechanism that causes one to dwell on the idea of being free, can be manipulated to cause one to feel otherwise.

therefore it would be good risk management
to be part of multiple models that potentially causes one to feel freedom.

that would mean that it could be advisable to form multiple sub-identities, each with its own history that explains its existence.

one example could be:
1) identity at work
2) identity when alone (eg religious/political affiliation, social cause)
3) identity at social settings (eg, family, friends, strangers, neighbors, overseas)

i do not believe there is any system that merits our total trust that it is complete good-willed in making us free - all systems need a self-preservation mechanism that works for itself. each system tries to be complete within itself, so that it denies the existence of other systems. yes, they try to be in harmony, but is that really the case? and let us not forget the human ability to "empathize", forming pre-conceived ideas that are derived from a vicarious experience, potentially creating among participants a reality that didn't initially exist.

wait, there is one other system that is less prone to such weakness.

it is one's basic perception.
to be in the present, hearing the sounds, smelling the scents, feeling the physical heat or pain or pleasure - and resisting trying to interpret any of them. this leads one to a model of explanation of reality that "it just is" - and experiencing the freedom would be dwelling in this state of "just is"-ness. Because this is based on your own perception, you can tweak it to your own advantage.

but the difficult part is resisting the temptation of interpretation.
human beings as a species have chose cognition and reason as its means of coping with change. this choice i think, is an effect of the mechanisms that works out for the self-preservation of the life of the human species - which of course, never promised to be kind to the individual.

happiness is a chemical reaction.
and i think it can be created when one experiences freedom.
and i think this experience of freedom can be created
with a memory that causes one to dwell on the idea of being free.

when one takes the reality around him for granted, there is no reference point as to how freedom can be measured, except with a further release, or a new captivity. but when one learns a version of history that explains what took them where they are, one now has a mental model to measure out just how free they are.

this memory could be one's personal history, one's inherited "traditions", history of the region or country or the world. or this memory could be a myth, a legend, a religion, a story that explains how the world got to be. whether or not such a story is real impacts only how believable the story is. once one is able to subscribe to the story, how much truth it has is practically irrelevant.

is this then simply a lie?
well, yes, because happiness is just a chemical reaction.

at this point, all the obsession
our current civilization has with "truth",
seems somewhat laughable.

happiness is a chemical reaction.
and i think it can be created when one experiences freedom.
which means that it must be

1. experienced, not just owned
2. a release from something

following which we might also say that it

3. does not imply that the release must be permanent
4. lasts as long as the experience of it

marriages could be a model for continuous release and return to restriction, with the couple reinforcing each other about their experiences of release.

"joy" as some religions like to differentiate from "happiness", could be a mental strategy that allows one to experience the freedom beyond the duration of a physical event. rituals and anniversaries help to keep experiences fresh. "hope" - could be a mental strategy that causes one to continuously experience a freedom by postponing its realization indefinitely into the future. In this case while the freedom itself may not be real, but the experience of it can be.

which means that religion could be a viable technology to create happiness without energy consumption. but religion, when institutionalized, is responsible for its own energy costs.

isn't there a way we can continuously experience freedom without all the tricks?

Q: does the lack of sufferring imply happiness? does dettachment mean being without a point of reference?

A: not happiness in terms of the fulfillment of desires, but an absolute peace from extinguishing desires - a happiness based on freedom from the burden of desires ... detachment means to be able to see the world without the illusions that we contruct for ourselves in our perceptions of reality - the point of reference is the fundamental natures of all things

Q: but does reality exist without perception? without language, without the idea of color, without the idea of taste? is it possible to be truly without attachment, or is the state of being without attachment a constructed reality that is based on the less volatile nature of things?

Does consciousness exist? Why is it different from gravity? Can consciousness not be the name we give to a phenomena which is in fact not something that originated from within us, but the sum total of all the chemicals and energies that are acting on us all the time, whether or not we can sense them?

If a ball rolls down a hill, it takes its path according to how gravity works on it. Why is the ball, which seems to have chosen its path, not conscious as we think we are?

Viruses mutate all the time in response to their surroundings. The are able to adapt without needing a neural network based brain. Why are viruses not conscious?

Can the "self" be an internal "gravity" no different from an external "gravity", that interact with each other such that we need to differentiate the inner gravity from the external gravity, thus resulting in the phenomena we call self-consciousness?

Can't we as a species consume less? Make goods last longer. Lower GDP. Limit mass production capabilities. Limit the use of mass media for marketing. Make it unfashionable to follow trends. Raise the personal cost of social actions that translate into high environmental costs in the short or long term.

One asks, and another answers.

But the answer never satisfies the asker
Not as much as the question satisfies the answerer.

The answer is not the goal, but the question is the beginning -
It is not how it ends that matters.

It is not what you think,
But the journey that I would take with you with the question I ask
Either with words, or without -
That sends you off to a journey of seeking.

I am tired of seeking answers; it is questions that now I seek.

The right question at the right time
Could be enough
To make all answers right.

The more industries develop, they figure out ways to satisfy the same desires and needs with minimal hard costs. I would like to see how sexual services can be virtualized to a point where the senses cannot tell the difference between real and simulated sex. Then sexual workers will not anymore need to prostitute their bodies - they will only need to prostitute their identities for money.

More than that, it would be interesting to see how patents would work in such a world!

Ah well, that being said, patents are exactly how thinkers prostitute their ideas...

Organizational Knowledge

i'm not a politics geek, but i think democracy has two major pitfalls:

- in democracies with a good mix of political parties - ideologies not being able to run their full course, because the population gets fickle about the ruling party because of how their policies affected them in the past few years;

- and in democracies where one single party runs the show - tweaking of policies that result in the party garnering too much power, weakening the power of the voter (who are, again, fickle), and turning against the original ideology it was built on.

why can't we have multiple ideologies coexisting, linked together via a minimal set of pre-agreed ("universal") protocols that allow them to interface with one another but beyond which they can run their own show? members of each group - or "tribe"? - are allowed to freely move between tribes - but tribes may require a minimum membership time-span of perhaps 10 years.

in doing so, those in power in each tribe will be forced to remain faithful to the ideology they represent because they are constantly serving a changing demography of voters.

and in doing so, ideologies can run their full course, towards disbandment, or towards a balance where its members grow at a stable rate, remain at a stable number, or maintain an effective balance between outgoing and incoming members.

wouldn't this be a more accurate articulation of our claim to this planet we share and right to be different?

i think that i am. but chances are i am not who i think i am.

Science is leaning that no matter how different we are, we're all basically the same animal. Culture is pretending that we aren't.

「和」と「無」は、共存できるものかな？

like the rain like the sand
like the mud like the wind
you are a natural phenomenon.
like the life like the death
like the deafness like the storm
you are a natural phenomenon.
like the rising tides like the new moon
like the earthquakes and cosmic radiation
you are a natural phenomenon.
like the ox-bow lakes like the fossilized amber
like the air making way for a falling leaf
you are a natural phenomenon.
like making friends like being lonely
like feeling nothing when your mind is busy
you are a natural phenomenon.
like war like recovery
like rising powers and dying species
you are a natural phenomenon.
like the changing generations that evolve to survive
plants, animals, bacteria or virus,
you are a natural phenomenon.
like gravity like sound
like weight like music
you are a natural phenomenon.
like greed like poverty
like joy like frustration
you are a natural phenomenon.
like the moving air like the still water
like the food web that balances itself
you are a natural phenomenon.

is shame an antifeminist invention created to distract people from men who cannot come to terms with their sexual desire?

time is everything
because one life is all that we have that
still matters to us
i am here and now
life is not a relay race
within my own lifetime i need to experience
the vast expanse of time
digitized into mere volumes that fit so easily into my attache
speed is crucial because
i need to make time in order to
fill it up with even more high-paced activities
i need the density to match up to my intensity
it's just that time,
as measured not in heartbeats
but in logarithmic man-seconds,
happens to be the flavor-of-the-day dimension
to measure up how full a life
i have lived till the end.

peace is not the opposite of war, no, never.
peace, is the equilibrium between destruction and rebirth, between war and rebuilding.
when there is widespread peace, it simply drives the war and the rebirth into smaller quarters, until it's totally contained within ourselves, until we have no words, no weapon, and no energy, to express the pain that is capsuled within us.

Even after they're gone
Their blogs continue sucking power into servers
To remain online. And they stay
On our list of friends on Facebook, always,
So near, they don't die;
Where in a different age,
They would not have been more than a weak glow in the abyss of our memories
Even as we strain to keep together
That distant warmth which is the ghost of their existence -
But now they're always with us. And we can always
Send them messages and happy birthdays,

Even after they're gone.
They're always there in the online world, but
Ever too shy to return
Messages, pokes, or accept
New friends; perhaps they are just too busy; perhaps,
In another world,
They have a life.

Even after they're gone,
We think only of those
We think of; We forget those we forget -
And we are distanced from
Our grief, which we no longer know how to contain
Within us; we are forced to learn to forget
What it meant to remember.
How do we light a candle for someone
Who is always present on our desks?

Even after they're gone,
We now have the technology
To keep them alive in our shared consciousness.
We can no longer feel the shape of the wall
That stands between Us and Them -
Or remember that we too will, in all likelihood, cross over,
To leave behind a people
Who will never learn
When to hold on,
And when to let go.

Life is a series of over-corrections, because you're always wrong.

S: That's an overly pessimistic thought.

Just thinking about how we are always so obsessed about "learning" from our experiences, and how society does not agree with people who "just do not learn".

S: care to explain who this nebulous 'society' is?

what i mean is that theres nothing inherently wrong with people who make the same mistakes break the same laws and cause the same distress on those around them all the time. i have a colleague who is not very lets say inspired at his job. my boss thinks that he needs to grow. i think if not learning anything can still earn him a salary its a fine strategy.

S: I am surprised this is coming from you - it departs from your typical idealism

atypical is where i'm trying to go. i've always embraced change, cos i think change is inevitable and for me coming to terms with change is the most appropriate response - but there's always been this line i wouldn't cross - a part of me i wouldn't let go and allow it to change. i'm realizing that in order to embrace change, i need to be able to let go of even that part of me that thinks exactly that.

isn't the dictionary in our age, a fucking fine democracy?
you do not elect people to choose the words to put in them -
it is not in the interest of those who rule the book to rule our lives.
instead, they simply document how we consistently use as words;
failing to do so would render the dictionary less useful.
yet, as open it is, at the same time, the dictionary has the authoritative say as to
what words we prefer children to or not to be taught.

i think it is exciting, because in the democracy of our time,
we look down on people who break the law - yet it is the very action
of these people that end up in landmark cases that change the law.

the dictionary, instead, rewards those who dare to challenge the times.
it recognizes them as trend setters.
it recognizes the fact that it is the times,
that must decide for itself what is right, and what is wrong.

but i have only one issue with it.

that the dictionary is necessarily biased towards the society that creates it - to those who do not write their own dictionaries, it is an authoritarian state.

yes, there is Wikitionary, but are we ready to teach our children the words we really use and who we really are?

The Artist responds to a world of infinite detail to create lofty ideas, while the Scientist responds to lofty ideas to create a world of infinite detail.

And as they say. the devil is in the details.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” (The Arts, Picasso Speaks, 1923)

It is the theory that decides what we can observe....(Albert Einstein)


The Consumer gets caught between both and sees nothing but the truth - even when it is a lie.

now i know why people who cook don't really eat all that much of what they cook - cos
eating starts from the cooking; cooking starts from the eating. cooking is like a process you get to know the ingredients, imagining their taste, and experimenting to understand the taste better, so by the time the cooking is done, putting it into the mouth is just part of the whole process of tasting the food.

the law isn't perfect. and the only time it is made a little nearer to being perfect, is when people break it. teaching people that breaking the law isn't an option will result in the law not representing the will of the people, which is really what makes the law, legitimate.

i like music. it helps me believe that somewhere deep inside, i have always known where i came from, why i am here, and where i am going. and the best part is every song i listen to makes me believe its a different place.

ぐちゃぐちゃだけどかがやきたい

Patriarchy exists because its perpetrators, being men who are highly logical, come to the correct conclusion that women are able to outperform them in ways that are not easily measurable; while at the same time being equally highly self-serving, come to the incorrect conclusion that women will edge men out of the picture when they are in control.

sitting in front of the computer looking at the world scroll by

No doubt climate change is being effected by our race as a whole - but I'm not sure if whatever change we bring can even put a dent into the earth's well-being as a whole, since climate change, IS a response to our actions. Whether or not that response will favor human beings, of course, is another story altogether.

1. facts exist only in the languages they are expressed in.

2. for some, science is a collection of facts. but science is always updated, corrected, and overturned. nothing is totally correct; yet nothing is totally wrong. i would like to say that science is a collection of verifiable opinions - verifiable only if you speak the languages of logic and mathematics. if you do not, it would be simply another way people try to rationalize the seemingly chaotic world around us.

3. some people like to liken science to religion - but that is not quite accurate, because science is one of the few disciplines that allow you to verify its opinions, not through unconstrained experiences, but controlled experiments. any argument you want to put through will need to be accompanied by reproducible observations.

4. fortune telling may not be a science but it does not mean it is not a worthy art. just because it is not accurate does not mean it is not effective.

5. no man is an island. everyone is a universe in his own right.

6. the body is like a whole world on its own, closed from the outside, following its own path of evolution. it is in such a closed world that people are made. if we all came from such different worlds, why would we naturally speak the same language?

VIRTUAL REALITY

I don't really take photographs. You should have seen this in real life, cos it's like the room that is packed behind the window, looks like it is part of the real reflection on the glass. For a moment, the real looked totally virtual and one wonders what is really behind that glass.

Meaning, to me, is the word used to refer to the relationship between an entity and a framework that perceived to exist because of the way it can describe the tangible manifestation of an arbitrary phenomena.

This in no way implies that there is a causative relationship between the substance of the framework and the manifestation of the said phenomena, but the perception of such a framework is essentially what gives birth to meaning, which in turn validates the belief in the existence of the framework.

For example, words have meaning because we perceive the existence of language, which in turn is a description of how people string symbols/sounds together toward a certain end. In effect, words are not used because of the particular meanings they have; instead, words have their particular meanings because of the ways they are perceived to be used. That to me describes perfectly how the process of compiling a dictionary is basically a process of documenting how words are used in society.

If we do not perceive that there is a valid order in the way words are used, such as in the case of a community of learners new to a language - then there is no perceived language for the community to validate. But if the community is perceived to speak a particular creole of a language, then whatever original usage of words by the community, defines the creole.

So if the framework is virtual and exists only as an abstraction of a different reality, then the framework does not in a real sense exist - and cannot form a reference point from which entities can derive a relationship. Which means that there is no meaning.

Thus, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless!

I think Kanji is the perfect imperfection.

I was looking at the character "美", designed in a logo with all four horizontal strokes of equal length. Why do we not write them with equal lengths?

I know there will be many explanations, but maybe one of them would be that, to make for strokes of equal length look beautiful, they must be perfectly equal; otherwise, the closer you get to them being equal, the more obvious how unequal they are.

And as long as they are not perfectly equal, the effort to make them equal and the subsequent failure stands out. Making them not equal from the beginning results in a more acceptable result.

So Kanji were not designed for perfect strokes. In fact, I have been finding of late that print characters which strokes are very well weighed, lack character. After trying to write kanji characters that have - character, I came to a conclusion. That beautiful kanji handwriting is not getting all the strokes well weighed, but getting away with getting them decidedly off balance. Which means that within the inequality of the strokes, there has to be a certain visual justification for its imbalance. This visual justification causes they eyes to see the imbalance, yet forces the mind to interpret it as a balance, resulting in the "character".

That being said, in order to understand what strokes can justify imbalance, and what just makes the imbalance worse, one needs to first know what the character would have looked like if it were perfectly weighed.

And since every character is different in its spatial composition of strokes, every single character needs to be learnt one by one.

And that, is where the art lies.

Watched Albert Bartlett's video about exponential growth.

Here's what it is in simple terms:

Let's say you have 1 million dollars.
You put it into investment which earns you 7% extra every year.
How much money will you have after 10 years?

The answer is 1 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07 x 1.07, which is just a little under 2 million.
Yes, at 7% a year you can double your money in 10 years.
The same growth applies for resource consumption.

Since the video tells us to do the math and not take figures for granted, I went to try on my calculation on compound interest and this was the result:



Which allows me to conclude several things:

1. If we interpret the graph as resource depletion, it would be a representation of how long the human race to continue existing and stay in the game, given the rate of growth he is pursuing. Of course the only way to stay in the game forever with a constant growth would be a rate of 0 growth. Otherwise, we will need to match growth with recessions in order to have a net 0 growth.

2. If a stable civilization would require lifestyles to remain consistent over at least 1 lifespan (70 years) to ensure continuity, we're looking at something much smaller than 1% growth.

3. If it takes 1000 years for resources to be replenished, we can deplete up to half of all available resources at a growth rate of 0.069%, after which we will need to have another 1000 years of decline at the same rate.

4. Interest on savings is somewhere between 2% to 4%, which means it takes 17 to 35 years to double. If interest is nearer the 2% end and inflation is nearer the 4% end, prices would have overtaken you in the 17th year of your 35 year savings plan.

5. If we have growth rates over 2.3%, resource consumption doubles twice in each generation, which would probably make tradition unnecessary since situations would have changed beyond recognition. Every generation would have to invent its own lifestyle, since what took the father one lifetime (70 years) to master, would take the grandson just his first 17.5 years to master - which is by current standards, high-school.

perhaps the greatest evolutionary advantage of society is not so much logistical but emotional, not in that it feels good, but that collectively the awakened mind can be taught that death is not an option; that the desire to survive is not something to be questioned. perhaps it is this advantage that allowed this race to so take over the earth?

perhaps world peace is only possible when it co-exists with an invisible world war, operating at a nano scale through information and technologies that are potentially able to disable peoples and countries to the extent where a conventional warhead is no less destructive than a nuclear warhead.

The 3 R's are said to be Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

But I think it's more lip service than anything. Cos to really think about ecology, one would need to consider all the factors involved in the reduction, the reusing, and the recycling. No one formula can fit it all.

I believe that the true answer to ecology lies in another set of 3 R's:

Reduce, Reduce, and Reduce.

Reduce Consumption
Once food is bought and cooked, it doesn't matter if you actually finish eating it or you throw it away. Once you have bought it, you are already responsible for having created the demand for that item. And it is demands that drive industries, and industries that really suck up resources. Yes, granted it will drive down the GDP. But GDP is by no means a measure of what makes living worth the while. If we want to really think about ecology, we need to re-access what we think will make our lives worth the living.

Reduce Advertisement
There will always be those with opinions and those who just follow. Advertisements are what make the latter follow, creating market demands where there is none, fulfilling desires that do not really exist. It creates profit by making people pay for what they do not really need, justifying resource usage through an artificially created demand. it's called "market trends", but if it were not advertisement, trends would have been very different. Digital electronics, luxury goods, branded goods, foreign goods - if the demand for these can slow down, "market trends" could possibly better reflect what people actually need to have, than what industries need to sell.

Reduce Population
I think the key factor to our collective environment footprint is simply our population. If we could cut population by 50%, we would cut emissions by 50%. Yes, it would cause a lot of social distress in the short term - but that is the same pain, we are currently inflicting on the environment! A larger population makes it necessary for structure in society, and therefore makes it more possible for people to exploit both the work force and the environment more systematically. If we simply had less people, the environment would probably be more forgiving. A smaller population does mean that we can specialize less, and our sciences would not be able to advance as quickly - but i think we've reached a level of specialization that has removed us too far from what is real - that isn't a problem in itself, but the fact that real-world limitations exist, is. If we had a smaller population and our current society can continue into such a world, we can put more of our energies into agricultural and medical sciences instead of military technology and consumer electronics, into solving social and existential problems than twittering and stock exchange.

And yes, it would mean that I should reduce my blogging too.
But for me, writing is part of the bare minimum that i need to stay alive.

The downside to any system is vulnerability to exploitation.

That would apply to computer systems, systems of reasoning, judicial systems, political systems, philosophies and religions, sciences and arts. In short, everything. Systems necessarily require that we take a certain approach to categorize and rationalize phenomena so that at various levels of detail, it becomes possible for one single person to grasp - or rather, to think that he can grasp - the whole picture. This would necessarily imply that the way we look at the whole picture, may or may not be in line with the "certain approach" used to form it. When it does, we become heroes of the system, allowing us to make it better by searching out inconsistencies. When it doesn't, we become the inconsistencies - we reveal how the system is incomplete, but the system is unable to come to terms with us, because it is unwilling to acknowledge that someone abused the system to create such systematic discrimination, or that the inconsistency does not lie in us, but in the system itself.

We have thought that a system of checks and balances would help to steer systems, but after half a century of democracy, corruption hasn't gone away.

There are two forms of exploitations - internal and external. Internal from those who are in line with the system, and external from those that the system works against. Both ways require an intimate understanding of the system. And both ways need to play the "game" as set by the system to come into conversation.

What about those of us who don't want to play the game?

Is there a way to opt out of the system?

Leaving a religion at some point in history must have been unthinkable.

As must be leaving a country.

Is it possible for a society to offer alternative societies for people to live in, if they decide that the main machinery cannot understand them? What are the sub-societies that are present in the big machinery of society?

Perhaps it is in this lack of alternatives that organized crimes and underground societies exist. In this light, the underground society is but a mirror-image of the high society, which too, uses the society for its selfish gain.

What if we established a world order where society and non-society exist side by side? In between countries, we have a stretch of territory that is no man's land, where every man lives for himself.

but even if we were to separate order from anarchy, those who live in the wild, will find ways to organize, so that he can too, exploit a new system. order and chaos are two sides of the same coin. remember that the outlaw knows the system as well as the governors. of course, if there were a limitless supply of territories, people can keep on moving out and refuse to be part of such systems. but we live in a closed world.

What we need then, is not a system, but a framework where different systems can exist together, allowing people to move from system to system. War and peace and everything in between, would exist at the same time within such a framework.

While such a framework too, will suffer the same problems, but I would like to think that such a system could possibly give people enough systems to work with, that it never becomes necessary for anyone to want to opt out of the whole framework altogether.