Horsemen of The Apocalypse

Leaf in Nest

      In discussion with the various entities I share the world with, many of who fail the test for sentience, I find myself losing faith in the accuracy of large language models. Let's put it this way, I know it's not that easy to cool things in outer space and I know that in space electricity is precious. And yet, apparently, there is nowhere more suitable than outer space for the construction of these future Lords of Destiny currently referred to as Data Centers. Apparently space is cold, so cooling's not a problem, as well, up above the clouds there's an unlimited amount of renewable electricity, and if you add to this the life span of a GPU that's been protected from radiation, then Bingo, invest your life savings in a company that sends stuff to space.

     Don't get me wrong I still believe Copy and Paste was the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, and don't give me any of that new age crap about the Book of Revelations not being about the future, and don't even begin to suggest that the Turin Test has anything to do with the first horseman of the Apocalypse, or try to tell me the Turin Test has anything to do with intelligence. No! The First Horseman was a cult leader called Pythagoras who died when he was seventy five around 500 BC.

    "OK! So who was the second horseman."

    Adam Smith's assertion that self interest in a free market unintentionally promotes the broader welfare of society. 

    "I thought there were four horsemen?"

    We'll know tomorrow.

     

In Opposition to Dualism

Marigolds

     My route through the many shapes and sizes of dualism does away with the many shapes and sizes of soul. Today I begin with Hindu Gitas one of which was written by a man called Ashtavakra, who offered a dialogue between a king and a sage, that suggests we should not try to be free, we are already free, it's an equivalent to the ego that wants to be something else and this something else causes misery, so why not ignore it.

    In another way, the king had an ambitious scared little shit inside him and that little shit needed to be bound and gagged and locked in a cupboard, rather than given an IPod, paraded around the Grocery Store, the Bookshop, the Grand Parade of adoring crowds.

     Ashtavakra's song wasn't about a stiff upper lip, grin and bear it, be brave you drip, it was about awareness and the illusion of separation. Truth was to be aware of the real which wasn't the body, or anything senses of mind could produce, it was an infinite, formless, awareness.

    This dive over the cliff for the sage was a claim that evidence from the senses were illusions, our reaction to the illusions would always be ill-informed, they'd always result in storm and stress, always result in the emptiness of misconception. 

    Between the sage and the king was the debate like the debate Tagore had with Einstein about the possibility of Objective Knowledge existing outside of our minds. Well worth the effort to point out that Ashtavakra had his being on earth something like four and half or five thousand years ago, and not a hundred years ago. 

    My own grasp of this objective/subjective thingy was first comfortably addressed in my mind by Bishop Berkeley. It was in a short book called Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. The Anglican Bishop Berkeley explored his esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived - physical matter does not exist independently from the mind. Berkeley died in 1753. For a religious man he was the enlightenment personified, he was blessed by God, adored by the American Episcopalians and admired by Kant.

   In my view knowledge is useful, vital, essential for a state of mind if that state of mind is to manage a moment, find food and shelter, see a way to make it through yet another winter - as the Buddhist might have it, it's a raft to carry me across a river and once on the other side I should leave the raft on the river bank, not carry it with me. And, you better have your sums right if your ego demands you do something absurd like go to the moon. Good luck to you finding solace up there, because answerlessness is the reality. 

The Mobility Routine.

Blanket Flower

       "In the post meal window." This is a direct quote from a man who looks like an Aardvark advising me through a computer screen that long walks are better than short walks. And here I think my point is this : who needs faux professionalism from the set defined as first world self appointed witch doctors who call themselves influencers. Go ahead just call it dog do-do. No wonder we're doomed.

   Anyway, the post meal window is not the time to sit there wondering how many fungicides and pesticides the banana and grape jelly sandwich you've just swallowed has been subjected to. The Post Meal window is a moment of time when some sort of walking about in fresh air is essential for the health of your soul, to your socio economic sense of belonging, and as I understand it, defines where you stand on the swirl in a Double Caffè Latte and Craft Cheese Slices. 

    Now, take it from me, a person who once a year visits a big box bookshop to marvel at the prices of new books, it's a two hour drive from here, it has an egg-stained woolly sweater and runny nose feel to it, it has a busy espresso and sticky bun shop attached to it, and you do not denigrate the wonderfully ill-tempered, in the classically Italian tradition, barista or barman, by asking for a cup of coffee. They will look at you as though you might have crawled out from under a cowpat, and the world begins to feel like the civilization you know and love, so you smile warmly and sparkle.

     Then if you ask what their head office expects a lowly customer to understand by 'Protein' and whether "Caramel Protein Latte" has any coffee in it, the "have a nice day" of corporate barbarism returns, as if from a dentist a detailed explanation emerges, your toes curl and you slowly begin to understand that your "mobility routine" is to just stay home and wait to die. 

The Running Dogs

Moonflower, a white morning glory

   The Past is an invention of the present and so is the future. Oh sure we have an oral and written history, some of it documented, and there are dreams and a lot of plotting around our future.

    But what was the actual experience of something like Feudalism. It wasn't a hierarchical triangle with a king at the top, better to think of it as a constantly flowing movement of agreement and disagreement around a series of mental constructs or definitions which can be illustrated by a triangle with a king at the top and a host of peasants along the bottom.

    Same today as it was in the time of King John, or Charlemagne.  But there is a difference between now and then. Back then, outside the drama, the system was based on personal relationships, regional custom and practice, long held local traditions in one location, go ten miles north and things were done differently. These personal relationships in Europe were increasingly informed by the Christian Church, which was more like a single institution with a shared belief system that was both taught and written down. 

    Overtime, as the size of a society increased, personal relationships as a basis for unity were increasingly thought of as unreliable. You get a sociopathic war lord becoming a megalomaniac who makes a habit of ignoring tried and true custom and practice, you just don't wear sandals with white socks, rather than persuasion a tyrant reverts to force, which is both risky and expensive. The more successful stable systems, particularly with respect to wealth creation developed institutions that encouraged individual initiative in free and equal associations, along with a rule by law, not by passion or wealth or who you knew and/or could bribe. The successful stable system has agreed upon and enforced standards of behavior that apply to all, not a random collection of dos and don'ts, depending upon who your uncle might be.

    The dream of course is one thing, the reality another. An agile mind can detect unfairness, and into the fore comes some such thing as Critical Race Theory to set so many hearts to furious blistering, and those blisters go back in time and place to the power of personal relationship, that moment of like that sees an unshared entitlement being taken away from the souls of the self chosen ones and freely given to the unworthy other.

    Here in the USA we are currently in danger of losing our myth of free and equal association to a coterie of retarded wolves the Chinese Revolutionaries once referred to as the Running Dogs of Imperialism. Of interest too is the origin of the Chinese reference to Running Dogs. The dogs were used to hunt, their fate was certain, an old saying Mao enjoyed went this way: "When the rabbits are killed, the running dogs are boiled."