Random Scribbles In Progress
Meditations on Evil
1.
Evils within Evil
Gods within God
Evils within God
Gods within Evil
2.
Evil Current, Evil earlier
God Current, God earlier
Evil Current, God earlier
God Current, Evil earlier
3.
All that is manifest can be sensed as some form of activity.
Some activities lend to consistencies/sense of stability (eg: color of something remains the same over time), some to inconsistencies (eg: color of something fades quite quickly ...a cut apple turns reddish-brownish in matter of minutes).
Some activities facilities some other activities and constrain some other activities.
Some consistent-sensed activities facilitate some other consistent-sensed activities, and constrain some other consistent-sensed activities.
Some inconsistent-sensed activities facilitate/constrain some other consistent-sensed activities and inconsistent-sensed activities.
Example: when written with a particular permanent marker on a whiteboard, the consistent adhesiveness of the written matter constrains some other writing, while facilitates its presence for some other writing.
Activity up, below, adjacent all inter-meshed to produce one's sense-making and experience and expectations and connections with deeper belief systems/cosmology.
4. The "isness" of something is different from the "description" of it and also the value-ladenness with which we describe it.
Some "isness" facilitate some "isness"
Some "isness" constrain some "isness".
When some "isness 2" is constrained by some "isness 1", and if we had desired isness 2, then we might explain isness 2 with something....sometimes call it as evil.
This brings us to also see the scarcities and abundance which are nature made, and scarcities and abundance which are man-made. And how they inter-influence or inter-facilitiate or inter-constrain.
Hence, when i cannot get somethings that i desire or believe that i deserve, or that the other's having of it is non-deserving, i may resort to describing such in manner of evilishness too.
…to be continued
Freedom
Freedom for
Freedom from
Freedom of
Riff on Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek and connecting it to Joseph Tainter
One of the ways of looking at “what’s happening” in the world could be from the lens of what was earlier and what it its version now. There is a frame/filter around “that which was aggregated is now distributed, and that which was distributed is now aggregated”.
Adam Smith in his famous work (The Wealth of Nation) gives an account of pin factory. A place where there is deliberate atomization of the various tasks performed to make a pin, and then allocating different tasks to different persons…thereby disaggregating/distributing the erstwhile way of one or few persons performing more tasks/processes.
Friedrich Hayek in his famous 1945 scholarly article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” makes the case for an emergent spontaneous order created by various agents (humans) in a system, by processing information and creating their own exchanges with various other individuals. Hayek’s point that no single person or institution at any level could have all the information in a concentrated and integrated manner. And if there is a move for ordering behavior with the assumption that the person or it (institution) has such information or even a derivative of it, then it could lead to constraining agent co-ordination in the system. The core idea being that the information is distributed in the system, and individuals perform the task of aggregating a part of it in their own manner (in case of Hayek it was “price” used as a proxy or derivative or indicative), and use it dynamically to adjust their behavior.
One way to interpret the above could be to see them as Adam Smith’s “disaggregation” and Hayek’s “aggregation”. Both of these are compatible with Joseph Tainter’s work (The Collapse of Complex Societies 1988). Joseph Tainter highlights the fact that the growth of civilization is both mediated and manifested by growing number of differentiated parts and the ability to integrate them in some useful manner. Thus, the “disaggregation” and “aggregation” cited in Smith and Hayek come together in Tainter.
Competition & Conflict
What is it to mean “to compete”?
As we begin, there is the aspect of the one that is “competing” through the mode of “competition” over something that could be gained as a result of the competition. Questions are embedded in questions and answers in answer. Few questions that come up:
What are various arena of competition? (in ways of fight or games, etc). The competition can have aspect of “choosing your battles” or “choosing your competitions” …meaning to not compete for every thing at all times with every competitor or the same competitor.
What are various possible outcomes of competition? …[ located in survival: death, severe injuries, minor injuries, major or minor exhaustion; or located in emotions across spectrum of venting anger, more anger, pride, sense of achievement, jealousy, “wish i could have done so”, etc; located in social as belonging or pariah or status shifts or reciprocities; or located in other aspects.
How do we begin to have conversations about “adaptive or maladaptive competitions”?
Story of Graphite, Lumber & Rubber
The story of how graphite, lumber and rubber are found in different geographies. How they are produced or extracted by different people who do not know each other? How they co-ordinate the various forms or variations for finally reaching a point of becoming a pencil? How a single person can not create the pencil, but the co-ordination of hundreds of people across different geographies, finally ensures a pencil being produced?
The story is interesting. And is true. But is that it? That the only truth?
What were the conducive factors for this to come about?
What were the constraining factors?
How did people learn from their own or others failures?
Example: There are aspects of who owns the resources (how the acquisition to the rights to resources) were decided now or in distant past? The fairness of those are important to consider.
The question is that what are the things that we rule out or are not aware of when we attribute the co-ordination and buying-selling to simply the market mechanisms.
Commodification of Opinions
The word commodity also means an undifferentiated-ness. Also comes at less cost (effort). In some sense, there has been a long history of “commodification of opinion”…the acquiring-peddling-using of opinions without much effort/reflection. And it helps get through the day (interaction/use). It would have varied, from whom we take these commodified opinions,… it could be tradition, religion, person, books, etc.
Freedom and Inequality Vs Non-Freedom and Equality: Is it really set up this way?
One of the ways in which some describe “affirmative action” is: if we want people to accept general laws now, in some sense, it is a sanction of the past discriminations. And in order to correct for them, an affirmative action needs to be moved by public/private sector. However, this could be interpreted as using discrimination to get to non-discrimination.
However, it assumes that discriminations of the past and the discriminations of the current are the same. That there are no differences. Really???!!!
Would this then also assume that the discriminators (individual or group or institutions) of the past are the same as discriminators (individual or group or institutions) of today???!!!
Would this then also mean that the affected (those discriminated against plus those in favor of) are the same? ??!!! What could be their similarities and differences?
And it would also assume that the #PoliticalEconomicSocial infrastructure (i.e. rules norms incentives) are also the same???!!! In what ways are they similar or different???
A careful examination of these have to be further made.
In addition to these, one has to examine the benefits and costs (explicit or implicit) that accrue to the discrimination-decision-makers.
One of the other question that may come up is that if we leave people to their own devices through market system, and assume a spontaneous order, are we to believe that people shall use their differences and discriminations in a certain manner so as to keep arriving at the dynamic equilibrium or some form of order? Could there be maladaptive forms to such pursuits? Could short term maladaptations, going unchecked, lead to long term maladaptations?
Yes there is an argument to be made in context of “variation-selection” as an evolutionary process. Can we look at where could its application be adaptive and maladaptive? Where could its checks and control or abolition be adaptive or maladaptive?
Hunter-Gatherer 2.0
There are myriad ways to attempt to describe the hunter-gatherer living. One of them could have been this “need to keep moving” from one to the other. These “need to keep moving” would have been for various reasons: avoiding climate fury, local predators, depleting resources (food, etc), folklore (of movement as life or survival or better pastures), exploration, variety, etc. In the last few decades, we have witnessed a neverbefore plethora of number of consumption options, experience options, job options, migrating to different places options, etc. However, there has been a “not being able to savor” and “halt and question what do we really want and why”…and this has resulted in moving from one product to another, one brand to another, one meal to another, one recipe to another, one fashion to another, one book to another, one video to another, one interaction to another, … we are hunter-gatherer still… Of course, these have their merits in forms of competition, innovation and alleviating of various suffering. However, we are yet to come to terms with the ability to see the bane and boon and thereby balance our journeys.
There is Stillness -Poem
There is the stillness.
A state of one-ness or completeness or settledness or integratedness.
Then there are modifications.
Of various kinds of experiences and expectations and explanations.
These myriad experiences-expectations-explanations stitch together at many scales/spans.
And we keep zooming in and out ...gestalting sometimes or granularizing sometimes.
In the process, sometimes finding new ways of experiencing-expecting-explaining,
and feeling more integrated (more flow-meaning-peace).
After long, we reach corridors.
Where we halt.
Reached either from integrating more and more and yet so much more to integrate.
And thus feeling amused or frustrated or surrendering.
There is the stillness.
That we achieve while we are alive through will or eventually will.
Span of Ethics-Morality-Values
Actions arise in context. Context of past-present-future. Of one's own and others. Others as living, dead and the yet-to-come. Others as ingroups and outgroups. Actions from reflectiveness-reflexiveness, conscious-subconscious, explicable-inexplicable, conceptualized-non conceptualized, and more. Different ideas of ethics and morality use varied mix of these spans.
London Taxi Driver & PsychoSocialSavanna
Mental real Estate...PsychoSocial Savanna...allocating or conquering through concept coinage or research
Atomization or breaking down of erstwhile concepts or tasks into newer and finer or granular concepts and tasks.
Different Competencies to understand the fine-ness and granularity on one hand, and then integrating them/co-ordinating them or adjudicating or NAVIGATING them on another hand.
One's freedom of operation getting narrower and narrower mentally...
Trying to understand Dunbar
H mentions that “our instincts were formed in the smaller face to face society”. This is an interesting place to nuance.
There is something that is “instinctual” and something “non-instinctual” or “post-instinctual” or “embedding instinctual”…
There is the aspect of “that which developed in smaller fact to face”, what are the scaleable features and what are the non-scaleable features. What are those dependent on? And in the current context, what do we see as conducive factors and constraining factors for those scaleable and non-scaleable features (sort of two by two matrix of scaleable non-scaleable features on x-axis, and conducive and constraining factors on y-axis).
We also have live feeds or first person experiences of us being part of various kinds of groups. Family, friends, neighborhood, school/college, workplaces, associations, etc. We could contemplate on their structural-functional aspects. What worked and how and why, and similarly what did not? Amongst themselves, what could have been cross-pollinated as ideas for structure-functions and the possibilities/conditions for it. ..
Demands of 21st Century VUCA
continuous learning
continuous complexification
reimagining #PoliticalEconomicSocialSelf spectrum
Observing
confusions and or conflicts for individualism and various forms of collectivisms
instant gratification
craving convenience, easy, simple
reflexive rather than reflective
pace acceleration (expected action …oneself from oneself, oneself from other, other from oneself, other from other)
missing or being impatient to nuance
knowledge explosion
knowledge illusion
integration problem (of various parts… information, roles, rules, norms, incentives)
#ThinkFeelSayDo misalignment
Cognitive Dissonance, Emotional Dissonance, Contradiction, Action Dissonance, Values Dissonance…and either not aware, and or aware but no time or skill or will-see-later
baggage growth (past hurt or unfairnesses or failures or rejections)
Affordances: Natural and Constructed
One the one hand the idea of freedom, liberty, individual choice and action,
And if they are predictable if they are these or they are more predictable if controlled by rules.
What we see in our day-to-day life: a particular sport game predicts to start on a certain time and it does more or less, someone determined to send a proposal/email and it comes at a certain time, waking up to the alarm, taking bath everyday , brushing teeth before going to sleep, voters turning out to vote. Note that in each of the instances cited, there are also experiences of slip-ups or hiccups. Where it doesn’t happen at all, or everyone (expected) do not do the thing, or they do it in a manner differently, or early/delayed, etc.
Would a life-and-death incentive-penalty structure make these actions or choices more “predictable”. Would an extremely painful penalty make these choices and actions more predictable. What if a great number of actions are controlled in these manners?
What if those with power (majority or majority constructed by stitching together groups of many minorities, or minorities) end up demanding or commanding their versions of choices and actions to be performed by many.
While these selective arguments may herd one’s scared imagination in direction of “individuals doing their own things” with their “preferences” under some commonly accepted (dynamically reviewed) rules and incentives…
Individual and Collective
If ever we discuss the aspect of imagining a better society, it would have an important component of locating the “individual” and the interactions of various individuals that form the collective. However, the individual here could not be thought of as a homogenous whole and nor we can think of collective as one kind of grouping of the individuals across time and situations.
A nuance could reveal that there are consistencies and inconsistencies in individuals speech and action (between speech and speech, between action and action, between speech and action). And furthermore, there are consistencies and inconsistencies in individual’s thinking and feeling (between one thought and another, between one feeling and another, between thought and feeling). And overall the complexity of consistency and inconsistency of individuals thought-feeling-speech-actions. Like we pulled up a “feature” of “consistency” and we located a reportable or traditional “constituent”/”part” called “thoughts or feelings or speech or action”, and in this sense the features are the relationship between the parts within an individual. If we excavate these more, then we can look at how do the parts come about or how do the relationship between parts come about. Sometimes experience plays a role, or the way the memory is reconstructed, or the disposition from the genes or heredity, or the current context or one’s goals. But these may not be fully independent. They may have context embedded in them.
Similarly there are parts and the relationship between parts in the society. Between individual and individual, between one group and another group, between individual and group, between the collective of groups and the group. Such relationships could take form of rules, norms, incentives, past versions of them, allocation of opportunity & resources in current-past-future context.
Division of Labor, Property, Exchange
Birthing and Nursing are biologically endowed to female (according to current understanding). And even before the sperm and egg, required for reproduction, are biologically divided in different gender.
If we go to the level of individual itself, then the various sensory organs, and the energy systems clearly have different roles to play. These are inherent examples of division of labor.
When we look at the aspect of division of labor, we can ask some questions.
Imagine thousands of years back, what could have given rise to division of labor. Lets take fetching food for example. What happens to a sick person in the small group. This sick person isn’t able to get the food. The sharing of food by others is the only way to ensure continuity. And such sharing would also be setting some reciprocities or expectations. Then again, some humans would be good at something due to their sensory acuity or experience or both. Such humans would get better at evading predators or finding food or hunting. Others would perhaps try and provide this person with support. And these could have been division of labor. Or another imaginary example could be when different humans have hunted or gathered or made different things. And they could exchange depending on tastes and or other needs. We can also imagine examples of a natural disaster or crisis and in the hurry-of-the-moment, different humans just self-organizing in different positions or roles. These are some ways to imagine division of labor and different persons “having or gaining” differential things and then bringing about “exchange”.
here and now
when i explain something
i have already made the distinction
between that which is being explained about
and the explanation
when i think about
what am i feeling
the thinking is distinct
from the feeling itself
there is something
that may be called
as accurate about the thinking
about the feeling
then there would be
not-accurate or inaccurate
what is the relation
between the accuracy/inaccuracy
and the feeling itself
does feeling remain the same
or it changes
do feelings have goals
hmmm?
interesting question
feelings have some directionality to it
they are a disposition
to approach something or somebody
or to avoid something or somebody
to do it fast and swift and
or slow and steady
these directionalities
have some goals or seem like
and then there are times
when there are contradictory feelings
towards and against at the same time
confusion or dilemma has a heavy breathing
and then sometimes one is able to or having to
override the other
and promote of dispose fervently one
even as the other revolts or saddens and lurks
truth or lie
suppose you ask
how am i doing
and i respond with i am fine
i can say the following then
i did not feel fine and its true
i said i am fine and that i said so was also true
but the saying wasn’t coherent with the feeling
one was not coherent or corresponding to the other
but if you say that i lied in that case
you are wanting to give higher or absolute weightage to
feelings and that i should report it as is
the question is
why is this weightage towards feelings
and if we stretch to our thinking, then
why this weightage to what we are thinking
as opposed to what we say we are thinking
is it because we
believe that
thinking and feeling matter to us more
or are better grounds of one’s being
versus the speech or the action
but the thing is that
we are also not skillful
to handle the reality of
what others think or feel
…or is it that we
want them to think or feel as we want
and when it doesn’t turn out to be the case
we have some dissonance
and makes us realize
that we were wrong
we couldn’t predict
we are not that influential