Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #2

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years along with a few from others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  Realize that nearly all of these sayings were written at different times.

These week's selection flow from progress to tradition to a wider look at American politics.  After that, there are a few odd ideas that will serve as an intermission when this these quotes are a section of my book.  The picture these quotes paint is pretty dark.  Look for some rays of hope the next two weeks.

==
The Cult of Progress and The Techno-Future
==

The trans-humanist plan: to transcend the meat-space.  What's their back-up plan?  To do it better.

If you met my 83 year-old Grandma you wouldn't be saying 100 is the new 80. Rather, the new selection bias is the old selection bias.

(Note/update: none of my grandparents lived past 85).

You probably need AI to enforce rules against AI.

I am disgusted with the 21st century. It puts the worst of humanity in your face at all times. I try to spend as little time as possible in it.

Detroit is already here; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

When our country puts kids in cages, it invokes images of the holocaust, a horrible past.  When we use killer robots in the sky to kill kids, it is part of the future, a disruptive future.  No wonder progressives can accept the latter.

Conjecture: if drone technology hits the point that the state and property are incontestable then the incentive for bullshit jobs will go away.  As dangerous as it is for the 99%, that might need to be the order it needs to happen.

Space travel isn't going to be colonization.  It is going to be white flight.

"Unable to achieve what it desires, 'progress' christens what it achieves desire."  -- Don Colacho.  This is great an explanation for neo-mania.

You are overhead for the technosphere.  Prepare to be more human or prepare to be liquidated. Actually, prepare for both.

AI will have a much easier time mastering clickbait headlines and tweets than long-form essays, to any level of human intelligence.  Perhaps it already has, and we're just not going to be told.

(Related). There won't ever be a need for AI to master the long-form essay.  The blood of the immature can always be stirred short-form (ergo keep it all short form AND keep them all immature!).  Furthermore, the retirement-center bots will be able to make do with small-talk.

"The only true and effective 'operator's manual for spaceship earth' is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures."  Wendell Berry.

My current understanding is that solar power is good tactically, but poor strategically.

Isn't that what Padmé said?:
"So this is how liberty dies . . . with robots everywhere."  *Glares at a droid.*

The real curse of living in interesting times is watching people try to win iteration after iteration of a negative sum game.

==
American "Tradition"
==

"Even our age may seem great when the worst of us are forgotten" Will Durant

I would consider defending the American Way of Life after World War II, but there isn't one.

Why has virtually all conservatism become a project in personal vanity?  It's the logic of profit that surrounds our culture.  It's impossible for nearly anyone to imagine investing in something that might cost them more than they receive.  And the conservatives feel their best return on investment is to set back and proclaim.

Only artificial things can get as clean as most conservatives want.

. .  Corollary: this is especially true of histories.

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."  Gustav Mahler

You know what?  Let's forget about the abstraction of "America."  Let's make the conversation at family meals great again.

When the American project is over, those with a conservative temperament (low openness, high disgust at disorder) will simply find another story for why the then-dominate groups deserve more.

"It's so much easier to blame the grownups than to be one." Ursula LeGuin

"Fear is seldom wise and never kind." Ibid.

Most of the developed world has worked to make the lives of families better.  In the U.S. we marketed "family values" and then called it a day.

Traditionalism in America has nothing to do with tradition.

==
American Politics
==

My fellow Americans love a good story, love a good image, but will neglect the supporting realities . . . till the end.

You are not asked daily to participate in democracy. You choose to freak out about things you can't control. This is not the same thing, and you need to learn the difference.  However, you do make daily decisions about consumption and production.  We should think about those more.

The argument that it was better to build a school than a prison might have been true once.  But now, in order to pay for the care of the richest generation in human history, we will soon have money for neither.

"The apparency: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The actuality: If you even think there's a solution, you're part of the problem." Steve Solomon

While a Matrix metaphor might work for the masses, it is better to think of the elites in the U.S. as lotus eaters.  They are too doped up on greed to make any moves.  Alas, they've also locked the doors to the cockpit and are the only ones who can steer.

These Americans trading liberty for convenience don't realize that if they keep it up they'll soon have neither.  (Thanks to Benny Franklin for this).

The real cruelty of America to its young is not that it is denying them the American Dream.  It is denying them the Human Dream of starting a family that they can keep healthy and free from deprivation.  This is unsustainable.  If it is the first unsustainable thing to pop, then that will be for the good.  If it is toward the last, there will be no American society.

Is it really that difficult to understand that a tax cut when the budget isn't balanced is simply free money for rich people?

Liberals prefer to be liberal with other people's money, and conservatives prefer to be conservative with other people's morals. . .  Oh, I'm now an old man, fighting last generation's war. Now right-wingers also prefer to be right-wing with other people's money and leftists prefer to signal leftism about other people's morals.

When neither side engages in good faith, any instance of being correct is purely coincidental.

When the political class has shown a complete, stark, sociopathic disregard for 80 percent of the population -- what is another 19 (or 19.9) percent?

"Liberty is not the fruit of order alone; it is the fruit of mutual concessions between order and disorder." Don Colacho.  I despair of this ever being widely (enough) understood.

Sorry, friends, the Left is a Granfallon.  My real Karass is those who get to the root of things (radical, I know).  Prep and survive, but not like a Prepper or Survivalist.

It's sad to see how many Americans think they have nothing to lose.  What is more sad is how wrong they are. 

Rank and file Republican voters think everything is a conspiracy, and then vote in such a way as to conspiracies happen.  As of recently, Democrats do it too, but with different conspiracies.

I have not lost the ability to dream; I have lost the ability to pretend that other people will follow any of my dreams.

" . . . the real difficulty of democracy is not that voters are unworthy, but that their vote is generally the least worthy thing about them."  C.K. Chesterton

==
Miscellaneous Ideas -- an Intermission
==

Self driving cars could be called auto-automobiles.  I'd also accept them being called "autobots."

I propose that we have 73 Five-Day Weeks (73*5 = 365).  We could call the leap year day "Leap Day" and then all of our days of the week would line up every year.

Probably the best idea, as measured by possible utility to the human race, I've had in months.  But, alas, oh alack! -- such it is the nature of ideas that they need fertile ground to grow.  I will never get this idea out the general public to adopt:  Get rid of the free throws in basketball; instead, every second foul place the player in a penalty box for 1 minute of game play.

You fail to get warmth from 100% of fires you don’t start.

Aphorisms, Filtered and Organized #1

I have gathered my best aphorisms I have written over the years-- and some by others.  Fitting them into themes has revealed some patterns in my thought that I wouldn't have seen if they weren't put together.  

 The three themes for this week are "On Interest," "On the Internet" and "Humility/ Model Recalibration."  I was not aware just how much I had thought about the internet, but see the first two sections as statements of the problem and the third section as working toward solutions.

==
On Interest
==

Interesting is easier to hack than beautiful.  Hence, prioritize the beautiful over the interesting . . . especially in interesting times.

More important than being interested is working on good projects.  With a project in focus interesting things come to you and find a more harmonious, joyful place in your life.

"Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?" David Foster Wallace.

Interesting: you have to watch for the danger of anti-social media most when it is truly interesting.

==
On the Internet
==

The old internet was the greatest tool for life's conventional warfare.  Internet 2.0 -- or whatever marketing label you want to give it -- is guerrilla warfare against the human psyche.

How sad it must be to live on such a poor information diet, and with so little self control, that you think it is the job of other people to prevent you from seeing spoilers.

Life is so much more interesting when you are learning new things.  Contrast this with Silicon Valley's internet, where you are told that what you are going to like is exactly like something you have enjoyed before.  

(Note.  I am to understand the titans of the Valley don't fall for this trap, and don't let their children use their products, but that is deeply instructive. . . in more ways than one).

I'm bringing "web surfing" back.  Most people don't surf anymore; they are herded.

I know modernity's whole shtick is efficiency.  But always ask "efficient at what?."  Anti-social media does not efficiently give you information; rather, it efficiently kills time.

Why less anti-social media? Simple: more living, less arguing.

It is odd how the incentives of anti-social media have turned the pragmatists into absolutists about their pragmatism. If really pragmatists, then time to start building a coalition. If instead you are just signaling for likes, then by all means, continue. . .

We just accept at the level of truism that the internet contains "the sum total of all information," but if this is true why do most of the best blogs consistently import knowledge from books into the internet?

Anti-social media platforms which allow only upvotes are the ultimate fool's paradise.

"We used to have to talk to other humans if we wanted to join a cult." comment on a Reddit thread by user named 77096.

Complaining on the internet for an hour is easier than spending that same hour working on a problem. The benefits of the complaining are immediate and almost guaranteed. This reinforces complaining over doing. Now, repeat that across our species over billions, if not trillions, of total hours . . .

Anyone who thinks their best thinking happens on Twitter, misunderstands both the medium of Twitter, as well as thought.

In the age of the printing press,  anonymity was a way to avoid the hectoring of the outside world and achieve authenticity.  In the internet age, anonymity is a way to join in the hectoring and with it the pan-societal effort to make sure no can be authentic anywhere.

Netflix: because you watched a documentary based on research and facts, you'd probably love to watch ten documentaries of nothing but conspiracy theory.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Twitter.

What I really mean:
I have seen the worst souls of my generation destroyed by Twitter.  . . Well, damaged further.

==
Humility/ Model Recalibration
==

I'm only interested in listening to people who listen to other people.

We live in a society that thinks it has no time for politeness markers, but then wonders why everyone is angry at each other.

I'm not sure of much, but someone as sure as you is probably wrong.

They say they have no Faith, but then talk like True Believers about every opinion they state.  I know what they really worship.

As productive as it can be to ask "why are things bad," it is often more worthwhile to ponder "why aren't things much, much worse already?"

Be very suspicious of any take-down that assumes each and every thing someone else states is always wrong.  You are not witnessing truth-finding, but rather branding.

Contempt brain is stupid brain.

Of all the lessons to teach a Harvard or Oxford grad, the hardest seems to be a non sequitur.  Particularly about where one went to college.

To be on record saying there is nothing worthwhile in world literature is to admit to being too ignorant or too stupid to pattern-match whole classes of human knowledge.

I can be convinced that gambling for amusement is immoral, but the ability to make a bet needs to be on the table as a tool to deal with blowhards.

The only thing we have to fear is confidence itself.

Back up of my father's obiturary

 I'm surprised I haven't made a copy of it before.  Maybe it just hurt too much before now. 

===

Max Alan Huddleston was born July 11, 1957 to Virginia and Max Leroy Huddleston in Norman, Oklahoma. To avoid confusion with his father, he went by Alan or "Al."

Alan was dedicated to his family and his neighborhood, with a special gift for making children laugh. He worked a wide variety of jobs, including running several small businesses, managing restaurants, working in apartments, and working briefly as a professional magician. Though often shy in crowds, he was always a character at work who found ways to make jokes and brighten people's day.

He is survived by his wife Alison, his mother, his brother Ray and wife Connie, as well as his son Keith and wife Beth. He was preceded in death last year by his father.

Memorial services are scheduled for 2:00 p.m., Friday, August 28, 2015, at the Primrose Funeral Home Chapel, with Chaplain Harry Smith officiating.

If desired, memorial donations may be made to the Cancer Research Institute.

Round Up #32

Aphorisms/Shorts
===

If you can see through G.K. Chesterton's work to know where he is engaging in sophistry, and where he is being brilliant, then you are well on your way to fruitful explorations of the world.

"To know solves only subordinate problems, but learning protects against tedium." Don Colacho.  Now that's a manifesto, right there.

 "Hemmed in by language and horizons of time and space, reading is always a stylising of past reality."  John Keane

Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter:  "I have peasant blood flowing in my veins, and I’m not the one to be impressed with peasant virtues . . . Tolstoy’s moral philosophy has ceased to move me . . . Prudence and justice tell me there is more love for mankind in electricity and steam than in chastity and abstention from meat.”

If glass were invented today, it would be hailed as this amazing technology that could be 3D printed using . . . sand itself!  What a disruptive technology!  Let's get some start ups going, and bid up their price to earnings somewhere between 800 and infinity (which would be the case if they had no earnings -- because who needs earnings when you are dIsRupTIve !?!) 

Links/research
===

I've been getting into mechanical toys again.  This has lead me to the marvelous Paul Spooner -- one, and two videos.  How is this for an artistic statement? 

As well as all the cars, clocks and other machines that make our lives efficient and comfortable, there are quite a lot of machines that have no practical use at all. Machines that are the antithesis of practicality, made by artists who have no interest in efficiency or comfort. They often make machines that express their anger about the dehumanising mechanisation of war, policing, bureaucracy or about the increasing distance between people who seem always to be on the phone but seldom talking to those next to them.

My machines are even more useless than those because I’m not even angry, having led an easy life in a beautiful country doing pretty much as I please all day. I make machines about things I find funny or absurd, hoping that others will feel the same. Even if I am a little annoyed when I start making something, the feeling has usually worn off by the time I’ve finished.

Video compiling David Lynch arguing that habits and routines free him to be creative. 

From the book Range by David Epstein

The main conclusion of work that took years of studying scientists and engineers, all of whom were regarded by peers as true technical experts, was that those who did not make a creative contribution to their field lacked aesthetic interests outside their narrow area (33)

I found the Intelligence Squared YouTube channel.  Seems good to give content to listen to while I do chores.

I don't know if this is a rabbit hole I want to go down, but there are claims to co-ops handled the last global financial crisis better than traditional for-profit companies.

. . . Lead to list of worker cooperatives, which lead to this line, which I found amusing "Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse is a radical infoshop . . ."  (It's worth saying that when it comes to anarchist stuff I am such a MOP.  It's not my thing, but I find it interesting to look at).

Discussion on Discussion on Dualism

 An astute reader emailed in response to Discussion on Non-Dualism and wrote 

My general impression is that "non-dualism" can tend to make a fetish of dualism, rather than leaving it behind. 

This was my reply: 

==

Dualism certainly should be left behind rather than rebelled against.  It's not even a great term for what it is describing.  I just use it sometimes because it is the best index to other thinkers who have written on the subject.  (So, as much as I knock labels, I have to admit they are useful -- necessary -- for finding more of what you are looking for). 

Instead of dualism and its Two, I like to think of the spots where separations of all types break down (seep into one another?).  My favorite piece where I show the dance of not being separated is Van Gogh Flow, although I don't mind my little diddy about my cat either.   If the formulation didn't get bogged down in political overtones that I don't want, I would adopt the label "non-separatism."  But that's really not going to work.  

Keep in mind it was "filthy jeeper" who was the monist.  If I am a monist, I am certainly not the fun type with woo-woo rays -- just materiality all the way down, with emergent properties playing the role of making it appear something else is going on.  

But to me, every time I look at what works in the art of living, it seems clear that you have to live in the emergent and let the substrate be what it is.  Maybe poke at the substrate every now and then for amusement, but it is not really Truer (other than holding in more cases globally speaking), and it is certainly not more useful.

A Theology of Compassion

This started its life here on Reddit.  Lightly edited.  The beginning of the thread is backed-up here.

===

I'm monist, in a sense - it's the cosmic background radiation of my practice, but while I'm here in this flesh bundle, there's really no reason to think much about it. I can thoroughly explore that kind of oneness after I'm dead.

Oh, I really like that. I think that a defense of compassion follows from that as a premise.

I) From the Mountaintop

==

Up at the tip-top of the great tall mountain of spirit it is cold, icy. There is an austere beauty of pure pattern, harmony, purest flow. As you said, we can contemplate that forever when we are dead, if that death means a transport to that place. Hinduism and Buddhism posits there are many more impediments to breaking the cycle of rebirth, while mainline Christianity and Islam are more committed to selves that stay separate forever and get their final, total judgement from Sky God.

To switch conceptualizations. Alan Watts expressed the pantheist concept in The Book by talking about two types of games: 1) hide-and-go-seek and 2) cards. As to hide-and-go-seek, basically, the One consciousness shattered itself into pieces to make for games. And once you fully realize (I mean fully realize) you the One. . . you win!  But card games are another matter. If you think about it, virtually every card game is about putting the cards back in order. To make it a game worth playing, however, the cards have to be first disordered. And for the sake of variety, they have to re-disordered each round of play. Ergo, no disorder, no game.

In a sense that would make our lives unreal, and from the very top of the mountain nothing would matter -- even nuclear blasts, the Holocaust, eco-cide).  It was all just a game.

But while you are in the middle of a game, why wouldn't you play?

II) A Western Detour

==

I rather like Watt's explanation, but the West approaches it all completely differently. Imperfection, rather than the heart of a game, is either the source of sin or a sin in itself. This is seen in the Platonic ideal of forms and the garbling of them that is our world. The implication is that our plane is filth. Further down the line, Gnosticism holds that evil forces created this plane.

I hereby present another heterodox idea (I'm not claiming I'm the first person to come up with it, just that I don't know of having ever heard it before): perhaps the forces of creation and consciousness aren't even the same. It's only when sufficiently complex enough brains come along processing sufficiently complex patterns that consciousness comes to possess the being.

But the mainline Western faith is that this life is a test for a prize. And as we moved through modernity, the more the test questions narrowed to in-group signaling and virtually nothing else. Absent that very last turn, the Western detour is not a bad way to defend compassion -- the Authoritarian God said have compassion, and that's that.

Failing that, the argument could be that we are so low compared to the divine that we are equal -- only Grace can give us any relief from our unworthiness.

This equality under God concept is highly underrated, and without it Liberalism has a very difficult time defending itself.

III) to the Daodejing, book 1

==

While the daodejing famously starts by starts by showing how labels don't work (thus Good is perceived pre-verbally, if not pre-cognitively ), I think the next passage profound enough to change a life:

Truly, "rid of desire, one can perceive the Wondrous." With desire, one can perceive only outcomes.

I don't find the Daodejing prescriptive as much as descriptive. But what it is describing here is of the utmost importance. The human body/brain apparatus is very prone to cogitate on social standing. When this happens, it crowds out all other virtues. Only by silencing that monkey brain, even if for a bit, do you get to wonder.

Why the hell is wonder important? Well, for one thing it is the source of every creation that is not hyper-specialized and derivative. That's not to say you can't make some really good weapons that way, but even if all you care about is weapons, the better ones will eventually be made as a by-product of someone's wonder. Wonder is the golden goose.

Wonder has another attribute -- it is inexhaustible, self-generating. There is always enough to go around. Every artist and creator, both through the text of their work and through their life gives extra texture to reality that can be explored while doing virtually no harm to rest of the world. To a greater extent, each segment of land is itself layered through with beauty on level after level. (And even the ugly spots are worth a gander -- they teach us to perceive time). Fractal. Reflective. Patterns ever widening, deepening. . .  Whoa.

In "outcome world" this very inexhaustibly is a weakness -- if you have unlimited supply, you can't be paid by any level of demand, you see -- but once you let a crack of wonder in to the eye of the beholder, the argument in its favor is apparent. Which makes it sad that there are people who intuit this weakness in hierarchy and thus do whatever they can to thwart the forces of dao.

I recently saw an old post where Ran Prieur quoted Cynthia Ozick:

Heaven is for those who have already been there.

I cannot teach the pre-cognitive bliss of the dao. I can only connect to experiences of people who have experienced it, and explain why it is worth defending. I would also go here to this understanding to try to make the case for all lives having worth.

Hilariously, I am told that Ayn Rand made an argument like this: one of her super-men wanted to kill someone because, you know, a lesser being was in the way, but then he noticed this lesser being had a clean shirt. This showed that the lesser being at least had ability to value something. So no, no right to kill. (Probably Atlas Shrugged -- but I'm not tracking it down).

This is a Kantian, weak sauce version of the argument; rather, the compassionate mode of being does tend to stick better when it comes from a spiritual experience.

IV) to the Gita

==

The Gita is really easy to mis-read. I think it is second to Nietzsche in terms of the most dangerously mis-read work of all time  [Update: I have no idea how the Bible didn't come to mind when I wrote that sentence.  I leave the sentence as an exercise in humility].  In The Gita, a warrior has realized the truth of hide-and-go-seek and that none . . . of this . . . matters. An avatar of God (actually, I think it's an avatar of an avatar -- but even this gets interpreted in a lot of ways) comes to our warrior with the gist of "Oh, so you think that by doing nothing, you're going to be blameless?" And proceeds to build arguments against non-action and to argue that action which, if performed without attachment and desire, is just as holy. Wikipedia says of this theology

right work done well is a form of prayer

This forms basically all of my understanding of dharma. (It should be pointed out that I am more of a breadth than depth person, so I could be missing a lot).

It is because we are still in the middle of a game that values appear to us. I do believe there is some connection here to your "right relationship" concept. Pulling a quote for the OP blog post

Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships.

Enemies/scapegoats are for the "results only" crowd. When things are going well, they will worship the winners under the current paradigm. When things are going badly, their instinct is to find a comfort ritual grounded in that very hierarchy they love. I find it to be an ugly way to play the existence game and one that does little to maximize the high score for everyone.  But, then, I'm not an asshole.

V) I guess that's an essay.

==

I would also be very interested to read your thoughts in essay form, for what it's worth!

Oh, I think this is it. I spent all morning on this and will count it as a one of my long pieces for the week. With your permission, I would like to reprint your side of the discussion on my blog as well, and eventually in the custom-print book I one day plan on paying to have made so I can give out as presents. I have a few friends that will enjoy it. To family I see giving the gift going like this: "Oh, you wanted something store bought. . . Too bad! I made it myself!" as it then sits on their shelf, unread forever.