From valuecosm to maximal eutopia

A social media portal centered on making wishes, collecting wishes, "grooming" wishes, "engineering" them, solving them, sublimating them and trading wishfulfilment services. Finding other people with similar aims.
From defining what we want to solving them in reference to others' wishes and our capabilities and their value. Then moving on to include everyone and provide some or all wishes to all.

Timelines of wishes - a line per objective with links on how others have achieved that others who still want it or how they have resorted to something else instead or sublimated this wish to something else.


Nozick on the complexity of utopia. 
Minimal Utopia Norman Geras
Buddhist concepts of removing the suffering of everyone.

Social oblivion

When I see "The general population does not know what is happening and it does not even know that it does not know."by Noam Chomsky I see the parallel with the Matrix film. People are oblivious to their condition of working as robots in the system. I do not just mean the work condition or the economy as run by the establishment, it is the whole with the home life and family included in the picture. It is the mechanism of chronic low level stress that disorders the creative and analytical mind and shuts the consciousness to seeing how most other people are conditioned and cognitively blind. After seeing this social oblivion it might be possible to see those who are seeing the world differently and cannot be shutdown by an economy of stress into monotonous routines and mindless jobs that could and should be completed by robots.

However it is difficult to find others among the many who are in the mundane drudgery of the routines when the difference is in the mind. But novophilia is a tell-tale behavioural trait that should make the person shine out.

Paramotivation

I found out something curious about myself, namely that I always have something to do and yet the focus of my motivation is for a side-agenda. When at school I concentrated quite a large part of my time playing PC games and writing programs in BASIC.

When I went to college I concentrated on Pure Mathematics and my Physics and Chemistry studies lagged behind. I found it hard to balance them.

When at a university I would play again with programs in Mathematica investigating the properties of prime numbers and number theory in general. Most of the other studies lagged behind.

At the moment I play around with tracker music, personal programming studies and again my studies are suffering. I wonder whether knowing of this problem there is something that I could do about it and actually get done what benefits me most while acting to myself that I really need to focus on something that is really a side issue. Such an agenda might motivate me to get the real agenda moving.

Centre of the world

There is a super-supermassive blackhole, in the centre of our Galaxy that is probably bigger than any other galaxy's black hole. A hundred times more massive than the average central black holes in the galaxy. This is strange, why should we inhabit this exact one AND be the only known intelligent sentient lifeform.
We are in the metaphorical sense at the very "centre of the world" in this aspect, this is odd concerning the Copernican Principle that has held true in so many branches of science. Here are a few examples. We are not inhabiting a planet that has a star circling it. Copernicus enlightened us on this. We (as humans) are not a special creation in the nature, we are just one among many forms that have evolved. Darwin enlightened us on this.  We do not inhabit the only continent. Columbus enlightened us on this. We do not have to read the Bible in an obscure and mostly unused language. Martin Luther enlightened us on this. We are not a species that last forever. It is easy to go as far as remembering that Buddha told that our ego is just one among the many things. We are not a genetic culmination point of nature. A transhumanist might argue that evolution is just beginning about to begin again in a new groove and indeed humans have just been a stepping stone. We are not privileged persons in command of their will by a matching reason. Freud enlightened us on that. As there are libidinal and aggressive drives running us in our subconscious mind. We are not at the apex of the form of historico-social structure (in opposition to Francis Fukuyama theory of the end of history and Marx's scant visions of communism) - there are likely to be many others. We humans do not have the only self-conscious minds on the planet. We do not have monopoly on god there are many gods. Human rights are universal not singular, from then on royalties are obsolete as forms of government. Rousseau enlightened us on this. Human rights are not based on the conditions of any specific nations but happened as the spirit of the times. Jellinek argued that. The list is long.

What, How, Why - The social changes around the world

What: Arab Spring
How: a TED talk by Clay Shirkey in 2009 and Derek Sivers in 2010, The Matrix film also heralds the SYSTEM FAILURE as the end scene and is in many ways a parallel to the upheavals.
Why:

• Authoritarian states
• Demographic structural factors
• Government corruption
• Human rights violations
• Inflation
• Kleptocracy
• Sectarianism
• Unemployment
• Pan-Arabism

Why:

• Democracy
• Free and fair elections
• Human rights
• Regime change

One little note is that 60000 may be dead by now and that Obama might get a second Nobel for changing the US policy of supporting stability(read: dictators) to supporting democratic efforts in 2010.(The paradox being that this change cost lives. Who knows maybe it was the minimal possible, but in my heart there is doubt.)
As it happens this blog did earlier raise that pungent issue, of supporting dictators and evil regimes.

We made God

So claims C. Hitchens. No, surely he does not mean that we have created the eternal, absolute, creative power that caused the Universe...
Yes! From the point of view that we have made an image of God and the belief that there is only a representation. This does not, however refute that such an image represents something real, or something that is to be. Nor that this image could be a connection or a channel to the idea of the absolute.
Indeed it is that for many people. Those who believe have some advantage in their lives. Recourse to solace, serenity and trust, reminder to connect with fellows as brothers and sisters. This pragmatic argument however could be , anything useful for a believer could be useful for another and in another's hand - a source of abuse.
Without an actual god we could still have a sense of wonder at the spectacular world, but do we need to the euphoria if it is just us at the top of the heap?

Adam Smith and sources of profit

Profit
Rent

Wages

Ways to increase profit:

Increasing income
Reducing costs
Protecting profits

Embedded education

If it is possible to gamify work with programming and interface design and engineering it seems that it is plausible to do an upgrade of gamification -  turning games into education software and improving the mind in ways similar to Lumosity. It is possible to employ IT in placing knowledge and ideas in games where these would factor a part in gaming success.

Boredom, vice and need

Voltaire thought these three evils would  haunt the unemployed. Taking a look at most of the work that followed from that time when work was reduced to simple tasks by rampant deskilling that accompanied division of labour and the introduction of machines to workplaces. Work caused boredom.
Boredom being a major factor in thrill-seeking and the resort to hedonistic pursuits and idleness, work has increased vice rather than decreased it. Is there anyone complaining? This trend is increasing the more robots that are employed.
The amount of work done altogether has however increased and poverty has been lowered across the world.
However with the gamification of work it is possible to see an end to both boredom and possibly a concurrent end to poverty altogether. The ever increasing development of the complexity of what brings on boredom needs a concurrent development in gamification. Another factor to consider is the calssification of causes of boredom. One could be bored when the tasks ahead seem unachievable or impossible to understand in terms of the knowledge base accessible among the community. Equally one might be bored at doing the same repetitive tasks that require unchallenging mental faculties for performance.

The Absurd: Inquisitive and Imperative escape routes

When learning about forms of statement I noticed there being two different forms of judgment statements that are not absurd and then the absurd form of judgment statements. I draw a parallel and show that the existentialism of Camus is itself now at the border of meaning, carrying on to the possibility that there is meaning therefore in science(the inquisitive statements) and both ethical(imperative -how to follow rules(of life)) and political (imperative - how to make rules for living) spheres. Recall Descartes pondering on a similar theme. Therefore there is a meaning of life since all off these tracks may be meaningless by being absurd. Meaning cannot be reduced to absurdity, that once it is there it continues as part of human knowledge and be a fruit of the mind to be consumed by countless sets of generations to come.

Knowledge gap and stress

By reducing the amount of knowledge that generates income for the state in certain countries a gap is formed between the know-how-haves and know-how-have-nots and is likely to grow exponentially.  This is likely to keep the populations in such countries locked in chains of tedious drudgery resulting from stress - the principal tool of knowledge reduction.
 Eastern Europe in its vain grasps for economic development have for 20 years been on these tramlines where overwork and poor working conditions (ie union work subdued by the nations needs to be competitive) have caused a constant supply of increased stress for the majorities to the point where it has reflected in stagnant figures for national health and mortality reduction.

A vicious circle of the wider the knowledge gap, the more stress and the more stress the less there is of innovation and economic competitiveness and more need to be competitive by lower costs of labour, therefore more stress.

God and the becoming of God

Some inspiration and thoughts that have floated around and their crystallisation after reading of an article on Quentin Meillassoux
Firstly some of the features of God.

1. creator of the World or the becoming formlessness in the World
2. executive task - the Telos
3. managerial task - running of the Creation
4. animator of all things  - Logos
5. unity of the World

There are others but I can let it go, to  continue with a few musings. Becoming God is one that comes to the Universe when it has sufficiently evolved.
In the becoming God what could possibly become the features of creatures who develop themselves by steady improvement.

1. Terraforming
2. managing aims
3. managing the world
4. infusing everything with the creature's Selfness - ubiconsciousness
5. Internet of the world

Cycle of transcendences and absolute transcendence

 From this particular transcendence I could deduce an absolute transcendence -- first a constant journey of trauma - transcendence from the environment - trauma and the next environment and so on eludes the person with it's viscous circle from the absolute transcendence but when one is awakening or awakened to this condition experiences a frustration from this routine one could escape it all unless he comes to enjoy the succession of transcendences. 

At one point I arrived at a paradox - the secession of transcendances being the absolute transcendence it simultaneously becomes the source of all environments without trauma and to navigate such a place we need trauma again and therefore new transcendences. So in reality this goal is unattainable as long as there is progress but it may serve a function  as an useful ideal.

Trauma and Transcendence

Trauma has a relation to Transcendence(from the environment) for not fitting as the Self or the environment. Mindblowing! But I think its not possible to self-traumatise to achieve transcendence because the very act would be part of the scenery of the environment and the work on self, but transcendence is possible as a work on the Other and how does trauma now fit in? ...as a ground and i feel that analysis (that may appear as a mystery to those who do not engage in it ) is the work that releases from Trauma (but it is a necessary Trauma) to exit the landscape and enter another territory.

Demonisation of the Enemy

I see the Devil and I do not see a personifcation but rather a  real group seeking my demise in this very world. It is also the Id that in myself seeks joy to the compromisation of my life. The enemy does everything to destroy me and it is my choice to see it as a demon. The enemy is a totality of all aims, methods and scenes involved in this destruction.
Enemy in the title is in its other word Satan.

And this is a beachhead between myself and the enemy, in this i have an innate demon also within myself.

So I only see a way out of this process of demonisation by not making an opposition in any traditional way.
Because demonisation of the enemy has in such a framework also a demonisation of the Self.

Guided Mastery over red terror

Marx gives a scare of a communism as a sceptre to the bourgeoisie and I wonder that now we have a fairly fast method of overcoming phobias thanks to S. Lloyd Williams and Gwendolyn Zane

is it possible to use this for communism too? What would the results of such an experiment be?

Ten states of mind in Buddhism

1^st to 3^rd states: Pre-Buddhist stages: worldly “vehicles” of samsaric entrapment:

1^st state: “The mind of the goat foolishly transmigrating in the six destinies (or realms)” (ishô teiyô-shin): The state of desire driven by animal instincts without moral restraint; the stage to which belong common people, hell-beings, hungry-ghosts, beasts, asuras (“titans”), and various deities or celestial beings trapped in their samsaricdestinies.

2^nd state: “The mind of the child tempered but ignorantly obsessed with moral precepts” (gudô jisai-shin): The state of ethical actions and virtue that promote social order but without any “religious” goal; the stage to which belong Confucianism and the Buddhist precepts (ritsu) for the laity.

3^rd state: “The mind of the child composed and fearing nothing” (yodô mui-shin): The state of deity worship and extrinsic magico-religious practice for the sake of overcoming anxiety with the thought of attaining supernatural powers or immortality, or reaching an eternal and blissful heaven; the stage to which belong Taoism and various forms of Hinduism or Brahmanism.

4^th to 10^th states: Buddhist stages (the fourth to ninth being exoteric Buddhism and the tenth being esoteric Buddhism):

4^th to 5^th states: Hinâyâna stages: “vehicles” of those who aspire towards self-enlightenment without caring for the enlightenment of others.

4^th state: “The mind of one affirming only the elements and negating the self” (yuiun muga-shin): The state of the śrâvaka who analyzes phenomena into the psycho-physical “aggregates” (skandhas) and/or the elements (dharmas), to thus negate any belief in a permanent ego (atman); the stage to which belong the teachings of the historical Buddha and his direct disciples and of the Abhidharma scholastics. While the substantiality of reality is thus deconstructed into its elemental dharmas, thedharmas themselves however become fetters, thus taking from three lives to sixty aeons to achieve liberation.

5^th state: “The mind freed from karmic seeds” (batsu gôinju-shin): The state of the pratyeka-buddha, who, masterless on his own, attains insight into the chain of dependent origination to recognize the impermanence, self-less-ness, and non-substantiality of all, thus preventing new karma to arise. But in enjoying a certain level of “enlightenment,” he falls back into the “egoism” of self-complacency, compassionless apathy towards fellow beings, and the narrow vision of other-worldliness. Hence he has not yet reached complete enlightenment. The Sautrântika school belongs to this stage.

6^th to 9^th states: Mahâyâna stages: “vehicles” of the bodhisattvas, those who seek enlightenment both for self and for others, by overcoming self-other duality and recognizing the interdependency between self-enlightenment and other-enlightenment and between wisdom and compassion.

6^th state: “The mind of the Mahâyâna adherent who is concerned with others” (taen daijô-shin): The state of Yogâcâra with its Vijñapti-mâtratâ (Jpn: yuishiki) standpoint that everything is “mind-only,” reached by its analysis of thing-events as phenomena of consciousness originating from a deep un-conscious “storehouse” or “receptacle consciousness” (âlaya-vijñâna). Its point is to detach oneself from the discriminating objectification of phenomena in order to realize the tranquility of “mind-only” from a non-discriminating perspective, which would allow the practice of “great compassion.” And yet this still takes several aeons of practice to achieve and is not the final state.

7^th state: “The mind of one who realizes non-origination” (kakushin fushô-shin): The state of Mâdhyamaka with its śûnyavâda (Jpn: kûgan) standpoint that everything is empty. Here reifying and substantializing conceptions — including both objects and mind — that act as fetters are eliminated through Nâgârjuna's eight-fold negations which via their dependent origination show their emptiness.

8^th state: “The mind of one who realizes harmony with the one path of truth” (nyojitsu ichidô-shin or ichidô muishin): The state of T’ien-t’ai with its standpoint of “oneness of all,” wherein one realizes that one moment contains eternity, a single thought contains all possible worlds, and a sesame seed contains a mountain, i.e. the non-duality between one and many; and between emptiness, dependent origination, and their “middle.”

9^th state: “The mind of one who realizes the absence of substance within ultimate truth” (goku mujishô-shin): The state of Hua-yen with its standpoint of the mutual non-obstruction and interpenetration between the patternment (Chn: li; Jpn: ri) of all and the concrete thing-events (Chn: shih; Jpn: ji) on the basis of their emptiness, whereby one and many are non-dualistic. This non-duality is extended to the level of the entire dharmadhâtu.

10^th state: Both Tendai and Kegon for Kûkai however lack the crucial element of direct experiential understanding to truly realize what they preach. One must thus proceed further by means of bodily ritual practice provided by the next and final state: Mantrayâna: “The mind of secret sublimity” (himitsu shôgon-shin). This is the state of Shingon, whose esoteric teachings and bodily experiential practice constitute the summit of the development of the mind. At this summit hosshin seppô is revealed and one attains sokushinjôbutsu through the micro-macro-cosmic correlativity of the three mysteries and through kaji.

-quote from a buddhist website

Four dreams

First a person can be part of the capitalist world and be living as someone else's dream. Secondly a person can live dreaming of riches.
Thirdly a person behind the Iron wall can live in a nightmare or fourthly as a defector to the capitalist world.

What a time to wake up !

Tanglement of dead ends

Dictatorship of the proletariat is a dead end in the sense that how on earth are the armed militias going to give up the arms to others the workers and the peasants and in modern times the service sector. Voluntarily they are as likely to engage in this as the capitalists give up their means of production!  It rather means that the society submits to the armed junta and their militarists flavour the communism.

Migration policies in the communist world are perverse and they stop people from being drawn to the system. The stops on emigration for example are just like surplus pleasure, the Western World became a forbidden fruit and therefore something to covet even more than their own march towards a socialist welfare state. On second hand it also harks back to the Old Feudal Europe were the subjects cannot leave because they need to keep working (in) the soils of the master.

Misapplication of the foreign scientists this dead end hurt the state and its prosperity. The same effect is also affected by the abandonment of some domains of science if they seem bourgeoisie.

Censorship on Marxist development, resulting in the ossification of the system. The conflict between revisionists and the orthodox.

The historical imperative lacks the otherness in reference to people who are engaged with it whether in struggle or cooperation. Therefore people cannot rely on it for change to happen to them without their initiative and energy.

Perpetual state of terror of social displacement keeps the fear of the state going and people in constant PTSD which reduces both scientific development and cultural achievements to ritual.

The propaganda workers were unqualified, often the managerial cadre too. Lack of knowhow dragged down development.

Cinnamon, the Pill, Viagra

cinnamon and coffee - the revolutions
the pill - cold war wars
viagra - Ahghanistan, Iraq

Of course the chemical causes are only one layer, they affect the economy and that affects the wars.

Financial and Manufacturing power

Here is my silent call to bring into a relationship the power of manufacturing profit with financial profit. so that financial profit does not become over-elevated in comparison to manufacturing profit and so over-boiling the economy. A mechanism for such a thing should be created. This would perhaps avoid some of the economic downturns and recessions and perhaps even a crisis. One possible problem that would refute the usefulness of this system is that it would provide no space if a manufacturing recession arrives and little chance to alleviate the problem with financial means. If financial system is tied to the manufacturing system it would come tumbling down with the setbacks in manufacturing.

Ritual as the mechanism to concentration

There are two ways of seeing religious rituals. At first sight there is a view of the mind being switched off and the people behaving in the robot-like programs. On second sight the rituals are psychological tools to develop concentration and attention. When concentration is developed and normal human emotional reaction is overcome a way to empathy and compassion develops. This is also a route to insights and when these ignite the soul - one can see that prior to this practice of ritual concentration ones mind was switched off.