Author: White Whale

Math represents a static order. Nothing is in motion. No spontaneous evolution is possible.

Complexity represents order in motion. It is inherently robust and resilient as an order.

Imposed orders are inherently unresilient and weak. That is why on going coercion is necessary.

Many intellectuals–this is indeed perhaps the defining attribute of their cognitive depravities–want to use the mathematical model, the static model, in order to understand systems in motion. Such is the Marxian Dialectic Materialism. Such is the concept of “structural” white privilege. No such thing “exists”. It is posited as a static trait of moving objects.

I would assert that any system you can understand fully is not complex.

Given that the vanity of these emotion driven talking heads is that THEY can understand the world, the tendency is virtually irresistible to want to hack the world into simpler pieces, to satisfy weak egos driven by anxiety ridden minds and in general weak and clumsy bodies.

I value strength. Very little good comes from weakness, whereas much good comes with disciplined strength.

It occurs to me that the fundamental project of all authoritarians–and variants of the Leftist pathology are recorded early on in Chinese history, where they had de facto Communo-fascists ( to be clear, the rulers are never equal to the people in any authoritarian system by definition, so a devout dictatorship is equal to the results Communists always achieve in reality, if not in rhetoric, which is to say propaganda)–is to decrease systemic complexity.  Reducing the number of people empowered as individual agents inherently makes the system less complex, less robust, less interesting.

Early on, all aspiring tyrants learn they have to pander to the people until they get the weapons of the government under their control, and directed at a disarmed populace (guns, it occurs, to me, add complexity as well: to the extent they are distributed evenly they equate in some respects to distributed physical power).

Socialists of course appeal directly to greed: everybody wants more of everything, with less work.  They appeal latently to people’s sense of envy and resentment.  But of course this always fails.  Other peoples money runs out.  The promises can’t be kept, even if an echo chamber can be created between the government, community “leaders”, and the media, saying “everything is great, everything is wonderful.”

But what can be enlisted in their service, which has no practical limit?  Self pity.  Grievance.  The sense that the world owes you something, and that this is a moral claim, and that you can and should feel righteous anger at everyone who is not like you.  This justifies failure. It justifies lack of effort.  It nurtures the latent narcissism in weak people, and grants them a sense of self esteem which feels like the real thing, but which hasn’t been earned in any way.  It mobilizes anger, and makes it politically useful.  Because after all, the people proclaiming your victimhood MUST have your best interests at heart, right?  Right?

Of course not, jackasses.  Don’t be so fucking stupid.

It seems as well to me that a primary spiritual goal in most religions is inner peace; finding tranquility in an unfair, often hostile, unreliable and difficult world.  We read most these days about “fulfillment” and “meaning”, since these are needs, too, which seemingly are more important than peace, since for most of us life is, if anything, too easy, certainly in comparison with the lives of most of those 100 years ago and on back into prehistory.

But as far as peace, in what does it consist?  Systematically reducing the number of things which “trigger” you.  If someone offers you anger, offer them peace.  If someone wrongs you, deal with it without resentment.  Much of Christianity is about not being triggered, and using that as a path to deep, soul level relaxation.

So logically, if building inner peace consists in reducing your triggers, then the opposite would both be increasing the number of things that trigger you, and systematically seeking not to learn how to deal with it, but to change the outer world to reflect your inner disharmony and weakness.

Virtue, as I see it, is nothing but a reflection of psychological laws which exist at the level of instinct, body, and spiritual awareness.  It is not a set of rules for what you “must” do–I have in mind here both old notions of an ontologically rooted morality, and the more modern “angels on the head of a needle” versions of streetcars and quests for “perfect” moral decisions in complex perceptual environments–so much as rules of the game if you want to win at life.

Have a simple code.  Live by it.  Understand some failures are likely if not inevitable.

My own:

Reject self pity

Persevere

Be Curious.

It seems to me that the answer to nearly all political and social questions is “more complexity”.  “More freedom” is implied, but complexity is the point of freedom.

I had a relevant experience today, but without sharing it, I will ask: would you want to live in a world completely, utterly, systematically, deprived of apparent randomness?  Do you want to live in a world where nothing unexpected ever happens?

Me: fuck, fuck no.  Whatever happened to me–and in a nutshell something unexpected happened and I reacted as an asshole, because that is my default–I interrogated, and asked: what was that about?  And I got an interesting and unexpected answer.  This could not have happened, if something unexpected had not happened.

Most of Taoism can be summarized as a plea from the 6th century BC for complexity, and Hayekian Extended Orders.  Perfect morality is inherently flawed.  We have prisms through which this makes complete sense.  Fuck: observation will do.

Would it not make more sense to speak of Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Islam, than “radical” Islam?  All the so-called radicals do is read the Koran and take it literally.

The Ultra-Orthodox would be those who carry out killings in the name of Islam, and the Orthodox those who cannot find it within themselves to say it is wrong.

Nobody can complete you.  But they can give you permission to complete yourself, and many people wait all their lives for that permission, which they mistakenly think they need.

I used to spend a lot of time in bars.  I still do sometimes.  A bar is a place where you can go to numb your pain with alcohol, and usually be surrounded by people who feel the same need, who you can frequently talk to.  I took a while off from bars–I did give up drinking for a while, but it does still seem to have some role to play in my life–but went to two yesterday.

This morning I woke up feeling something was different yesterday, and it hit me: I was more emotionally present than I used to be.  Most people, everywhere, in all circumstances, approach other people with some sort of need.  They might need to feel understood, or validated, or sexually desirable.  They might want to use someone for something–for short term companionship, for sex, for money, for a favor of some sort.  Many people are simply in the habit of being around people and being with nearly anyone makes the feeling of solitude–the one that calls up a host of unwanted and “exiled” emotions–go away.

So two people start talking.  Both have latent agendas, even if they don’t process it that way.  Both know that to talk you have to listen, but their listening becomes a hiatus in their talking.  They are secretly focusing on that one cool story or point that they just have to make in response.

Most people, when they are interacting, are doing so selfishly.  I don’t say this as an intrinsically bad thing.  It is inevitable in some respects.

In past posts I have spoken to our animal nature, our instinctual similarities to primates.  What I want to be clear is that we are not BOUND by our past, and our present biology.  What we need to recognize is what is THERE, so we can grow beyond it.  We are not chimpanzees.  They lack the ability to grow beyond their own nature, at least as a matter of conscious planning born in abstract thought.  We have this ability, especially over time.

Who are two people who approach a relationship of any length playfully, without an agenda?  They are cocreators of something new and interesting.  Rather than think of what you want, or even what the other person wants, you just see what happens.

It seems to me that both need and compassion–if compassion is a need, as I have argued it can be and often is, where people NEED to be needed–make us blind.  We do not SEE the person in front of this.  At a deep level, I have in mind Martin Bubers I and Thou, “Ich und du”.

It seems to me that many of us are habituated to approaching others with some sort of purpose in mind, with some sort of pulling or pushing in mind.  But what if you are two balloons who touch in the wind?

First off, those last two posts (which I just deleted) were me drinking. I still do that.  I make no apologies: it remains a needed tonic.

I have gotten through and reached the primal texture of my pain.  I am not depressed, or anxious. I am in pain.  It is the pain of a decisive disconnection from my mother and the possibility of nurturance that happened many years ago.

This is the sequence: intellectualism, then behind that numbness (which can and does lead periodically to depression), then behind that anxiety and anger (with the expression of anger an excellent way to disperse anxiety, with of course many negatives in train), then behind that the main show: pain.

Being able to confront and feel this pain is a major step.  It is the only way to dissolve it.

The point I wanted to make though is that I think the capacity for nuance is the most important marker of social and emotional health.  Either/or is driven by a primitive part of the brain.  Our social brains are capable of so much more.

And specifically I was contemplating a notion I will call “social distance”, which is the idea that your human relations, the people you know, should exist on a continuum for you, consciously.  Immediate family should be closest, followed by close friends, followed by long term acquaintances, followed by people who think and act like you, followed by your community,  followed by your fellow countrymen and women, followed by everyone else.

And within all these categories degrees of connection are possible.

The point I would make is that if all social connections must first be run through an abstract filter of political correctness, then the possibility of spontaneous and open intimacy is lost or greatly reduced.  It is affected, certainly.  And the original political correctness was Christianity itself, which classified everyone into saved and sinner.

The Germans kept Du and Sie.  The French, tu and vous.  The English did not.  They use the formal You for everyone.

To a great extent, I think human beings are wired for chimpanzee like social connections, with instinctual capacities for understanding relations on an extended basis: family, friends, rival clans, etc.

The singular contribution of the English (I am no student of philosophical history, nor do I want to be, but I have in mind the English Parliamentary system and Locke’s “life, liberty and property”)  was to make human beings abstractions, and to grant them all the same rights in principle.  This is logical, and I think salutary, but I think it also is a root of that academic condition they like to call modernity.

I look out my window and I see homes and apartments with TV’s, with nuclear families, with nothing like the connection to extended family that most humans have experiences for most of our history.  There are many exceptions of course, but most American families are very split up: husband and wife, and children and parents and grandparents.

I think abstraction has conquered the landscape.  The ostensible rallying cries are freedom and economic prosperity, but I wonder what we have lost.  I say this as someone who often feels lonely, but who carries the maddening burden of being unable to imagine connection the way other people do.  This is something I will figure out–AM figuring out–with my body, with my instincts, with what arises naturally and spontaneously, but I cannot resist the comfort of framing it intellectually.

Again, this is a sort of pendulation for me.  Now, time to go back into silence.

http://nypost.com/2016/09/14/hillary-collapse-coverage-reveals-absurdity-of-biased-media/

Best line: “Despite her unshakable reputation for being dishonest and untrustworthy. . .”

Ten thousand things come before I.

Remembering in my own way, I am going to relink the recent article published in the journal of the European Physical Society, which is the professional society for working physicists, which argues that there is no possible way that all three buildings were brought down in the manner claimed. One building collapsed at near free fall velocity despite not being hit by a plane at all.


Their concluding thoughts: 

“the evidence points overwhelmingly
to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed
by controlled demolition. Given the far-reaching implications,
it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be
the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation
by responsible authorities.”

http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016474p21.pdf

I will comment that over the years, many military professionals, architects, firefighters, pilots, and others have come forward and called bullshit on the dominant narrative.

Here, for example, is Pilots for 9/11 Truth: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/

Here is Military Officers for 9/11 Truth: http://mo911truth.org/

Comments from 34 year Air Force veteran who retired as a full Colonel:

“In my first position paper, titled The Precautionary Principle, [see below] written shortly after the attacks on NYC and the Pentagon, I cautioned readers against a rush to judgment, although the immediate evidence suggested the crime had been an inside job. As the years went by, a virtual mountain of physical evidence was collected by hundreds of highly qualified investigators — evidence sufficient to convince any dedicated Grand Jury that the horrendous events of 9/11 were clearly an inside job. The Precautionary Principle no longer applies. It is time to positively conclude that a well-orchestrated and obviously pre-planned cover-up of the worst mass murder in our country’s history began immediately following the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on September 11, 2001. Nearly nine years later [this was written in 2010] the criminal cover-up continues. Fortunately for our country, our judicial system provides no statute of limitations for treason, first degree murder, and terrorism.”