Place for Dummies to Hang

[Jbonez]

And existential crisis in the 3......2.........1.......****exhales**** nvrmnd...

 

[unspoken]

Sure, but I feel like you are not smelling what I'm stepping in. In my last post I talked about that guy, Floyd Dominy. He was an interesting guy. Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, and he basically took it upon himself to manage the water of the colorado river. He built a lot of dams which made a lot of reservoirs in his career. Now, some people might argue that these dams hurt the natural environment, and they might be right. The natural environment has been altered to what extent in the long run? We don't really know I guess; they were mostly built about 70 years ago. Now what utility did they provide? Electricity, drinking water, agriculture...civilization where it would not have been possible before. Great! Wonderful! Now after Floyd et al got the dam bandwagon rolling, all of the sudden dams were the coolest. A whole industry had popped up around building dams, and it needed to be fed. Politicians were lubricated and the machine started building more and more dams..."financial profligacy." This has turned out to be a pretty bad thing. The impact to the environment became worse as silt built up in more and more dams, ecosystems were destroyed downriver and in the reservoirs. Did corrupt politics lead to us building too many dams and making a mess for ourselves? Yep. Were some of those dams immensely useful if not necessary to sustain life in regions of our country? Yes. You will never hear me once say that our political system is not flawed. Have we printed too much money? Probably yes, more than we've needed to. Will you catch me buying bonds right now? Hellll no. But this isn't due to "neo keynesians" whatever that means. I can only assume that refers to Krugman, which is another conversation for another day.

As far as what a stateless, lawless, anarchist world would look like, I guess we are already the product of that, and we can see that there is utility in forming groups and having a hierarchy in said groups. Will have to think on that one for a bit.

I could easily give the classical economist's answer: "We will do what increases TU." Now what that is depends entirely on a place and time. "Good" is relative. This seems like a good topic for a game.

 

[SeaMaiden]

roman catholicism has done more damage to the human race than anything i cant think of,,apart from maybe the TV.. truly the hierophant is the lord of the flies, spreading misery, ignorance and fear.. burning books and truth seekers for over 2500 years..

it turns natural loving people into self deprecating sado masochistic aliens.. perverted scum of the earth..

But, that's only 2,500 years out of how many as Homo sapien? I personally feel it's myopic to just blame religion for what ails us as creatures. Much of what ails us was present long before Catholicism, or even Christianity, and religion sought to relieve it. It can't. Why? Human nature.

This is again reminding me of when folks talk about the good times, the good old days. I think, "Ah yes! I would love to go back to the times of Plague! Or, how about the good old days when you had Ghenghis the Khan knocking down your fortress gate, and flinging the carcasses of dead animals over the walls with a trebuchet. Do we blame Catholicism for that?

What do you think the State of Nature as described by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau would look like? A stateless, government less, lawless society.

Doesn't that already exist on the plains of Africa, in the oldest human lineage on earth? They have rules, they have their own form of governance, it seems, at least to me, that all animals do (or they couldn't reproduce at the very least).

 

[Jbonez]

I believe the earliest evidence of cro-magnons is around 28,000 years ago, I could be wrong.

Its funny to see where we come from... What we presume to "know" now these days...

Soooo intelligent... arent we...

 

[SeaMaiden]

I believe the earliest evidence of cro-magnons is around 28,000 years ago, I could be wrong.

Its funny to see where we come from... What we presume to "know" now these days...

Soooo intelligent... arent we...

Homo erectus (aka Cro Magnon), IIRC became extinct about 100,000 years ago. I'll have to look that up, but I could have sworn H. sapiens has existed for about 100,000yrs.

Did you know it's Mary Leakey's 100th birthday today?

***EDIT*** Ah, no, I'm off by about 200,000 years! Odd... I could have sworn I'd read something in my Archaeology magazine about H. erectus and H. sapiens crossing paths. It must have been H. sapiens and Neandertal crossing paths, we know they did now.

 

[Jbonez]

lol, I got an alert on my phone from one of the e-mags on my iphone, funny you say that..

I cant imagine 100, Im surprised to see 31... lol..


Anyone know the earliest recorded religious practice or ceremonies?

 

[SeaMaiden]

Well, if we count Lascaux and other Stone Age sites, we can easily say it's been around for at least 40,000 years. Those dates are not only being pushed back, the exhibition of art and possibly religion is being pushed back beyond H. sapiens. We now have firm evidence of Neandertal (a side branch of the human family tree) using art and burying their dead with grave goods--a sign of religion.

 

[dddaver]

I got tripped up by that 2500 years number. How in the year 2013 can Catholicism or any christian religion be 500 years older than that? Maybe I'm just being a dummie. Very likely.

 

[TheArchitect]

Somalia offers a glimpse of it on an individual actor level.

somalia and all the rest of africa, has been under colonial and western backed dictator rule for over a hundred years.

the violence and "anarchy" we see is a direct result of what Dr. Ron Paul would call "blowback"

all very natural.

All states naturally exist in the global system in a state of anarchy with each other and the way they act in relation to each other is all the evidence that one needs to prove the "constrained" school of thought IMO.

not if the globalists have their way. i would tend to agree with the constrained view.

an unfortunate conundrum, as all of what is happening is the natural progression of what has happened over and over throughout history. empires rise through militarism, fueled by financialism, and crumble under their own weight.

You will never hear me once say that our political system is not flawed. Have we printed too much money? Probably yes, more than we've needed to. Will you catch me buying bonds right now? Hellll no. But this isn't due to "neo keynesians" whatever that means. I can only assume that refers to Krugman, which is another conversation for another day.


As far as what a stateless, lawless, anarchist world would look like, I guess we are already the product of that, and we can see that there is utility in forming groups and having a hierarchy in said groups. Will have to think on that one for a bit.

I could easily give the classical economist's answer: "We will do what increases TU." Now what that is depends entirely on a place and time. "Good" is relative. This seems like a good topic for a game.

we havent printed any money per se. what we have done and continue to do is pass of massive private sector banking(casino like betting) losses to the public sector. exponential debt expansion baby!

for a good read try here.

http://www.dunwalke.com/contents.htm

I made the decision to write “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” in the middle of a vegetable garden in Montana during the summer of 2005. I had come to Montana to develop a venture capital model to support a healthier, fresher local food supply. If we want clean water, fresh food, sustainable infrastructure, and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. We cannot invest in the stocks and bonds of large corporations, banks and governments that are harming our food, water, environment and all living things and then expect these resources to be available when we need them.
Surviving and thriving as a free people depends on creating and transacting with currencies and investments other than those printed and manipulated by Wall Street and Washington to the eventual end of our rights and assets.

What I found in Montana, however, was what I have found in communities all across America. We are so financially entangled in the federal government and large corporations and banks that we cannot see our complicity in everything we say we abhor. Our social networks are so interwoven with the institutional leadership — government officials, bankers, lawyers, professors, foundation heads, corporate executives, investors, fellow alumni — that we dare not hold our own families, friends, colleagues and neighbors accountable for our very real financial and operational complicity. While we hate "the system," we keep honoring and supporting the people and institutions that are implementing the system when we interact and transact with them in our day-to-day lives. Enjoying the financial benefits and other perks that come from that intimate support ensures our continued complicity and contribution to fueling that which we say we hate.

Standing among the beautiful vegetables and flowers that Montana summer day, I was facing the futility of trying to craft investment solutions without some basic consensus about the economic tapeworm that is killing us and all living things — while we blindly feed the worm. In a world of economic warfare, we have to see the strategy behind each play in the game. We have to see the economic tapeworm and how it works parasitically in our lives. A tapeworm injects chemicals into a host that causes the host to crave what is good for the tapeworm. In America, we despair over our deterioration, but we crave the next injection of chemicals from the tapeworm.

With this in mind, I decided to write “Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” as a case study designed to help illuminate the deeper system. It details the story of two teams with two competing visions for America.

The first was a vision shared by my old firm on Wall Street — Dillon Read — and the Clinton Administration with the full support of a bipartisan Congress. In this vision, America's aristocracy makes money and finances the building of a global empire one neighborhood at a time by ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons. Middle class support for these policies is created through a steady and growing stream of government funding and contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels. This consensus is made all the more powerful by the gush of growing debt and derivatives used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets, manipulate the stock and precious metals markets and finance trillions missing from the US government in the largest pump and dump in history — the pump and dump of the entire American economy. This is more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide — a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.

This case study provides a detailed example of the financial kickback machinery that makes the process go. It works something like this. A group of executives and investors start a company. Rather than build a business the old fashioned way, company profits are pumped up with government legislation, contracts, regulation, financing, subsidies and/or enforcement. This dramatically increases the value of the company's financial equity. The company and its initial investors then sell their stock at a profit. Such profits replenish contributions made to the kind of politicians who can arrange such government benefits. Such profits also fund philanthropy to foundations and universities that have large endowments that invest along side the investors. These tax-exempt organizations provide graduates to staff positions in the game, intellectual justification to attract popular support and photo opportunities which bestow legitimacy and social stature. Personnel cycle through the management and boards of business, government and academia, as the real economy declines — the environment deteriorates, productivity falls, income and infrastructure decline — and government deficits grow.

The second vision was shared by my investment bank in Washington — The Hamilton Securities Group — and a small group of excellent government civil servants and appointees who believed in the power of education, hard work and a new partnership between people, land and technology. This vision would allow us to pay down public and private debt and create new business, infrastructure and equity. We believed that new times and new technologies called for a revival that would permit decentralized efforts to go to work on the hard challenges upon us — population, environment, resource management and the rapidly growing cultural gap between the most technologically proficient and the majority of people. We believed that private and public capital should flow to that which was most economically productive rather than be mixed in a complex cocktail of insider deals designed to hollow out the American economy and culture.

My hope is that “Dillon, Read & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” will help you to see the game sufficiently to recognize the dividing line between two visions. One centralizes power and knowledge in a manner that tears down communities and infrastructure as it dominates wealth and shrinks freedom. The other diversifies power and knowledge to create new wealth through rebuilding infrastructure and communities and nourishing our natural resources in a way that reaffirms our ancient and deepest dream of freedom.

My hope is that as your powers grow to see the financial game and the true dividing lines, you will be better able to build networks of authentic people inventing authentic solutions to the real challenges we face. My hope is that you will no longer invite into your lives and work the people and organizations that sabotage real change. If enough of us come clean and hold true to the intention to transform the game, we invite in the magic that comes in dangerous times.

Yes, there is a better way and, yes, we can create it.

 

[SeaMaiden]

Homo erectus (aka Cro Magnon), IIRC became extinct about 100,000 years ago. I'll have to look that up, but I could have sworn H. sapiens has existed for about 100,000yrs.

Did you know it's Mary Leakey's 100th birthday today?

***EDIT*** Ah, no, I'm off by about 200,000 years! Odd... I could have sworn I'd read something in my Archaeology magazine about H. erectus and H. sapiens crossing paths. It must have been H. sapiens and Neandertal crossing paths, we know they did now.

Well, if we count Lascaux and other Stone Age sites, we can easily say it's been around for at least 40,000 years. Those dates are not only being pushed back, the exhibition of art and possibly religion is being pushed back beyond H. sapiens. We now have firm evidence of Neandertal (a side branch of the human family tree) using art and burying their dead with grave goods--a sign of religion.

Speaking of which, I would love to go see this display of modern and Ice Age art at the British Museum.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/ar...the-Ice-Age-on-show-4251912.php#photo-4140758

A friend has agreed to go to the deYoung with me to see the Dutch Masters exhibition. I must see Girl With A Pearl Earring. And more Vermeer if they have it!

 

[SpasticGramps]

As far as what a stateless, lawless, anarchist world would look like, I guess we are already the product of that, and we can see that there is utility in forming groups and having a hierarchy in said groups. Will have to think on that one for a bit.

Right, yes, but WHY do we have to form groups? The State of Nature is a philosophical starting point to social contract theory. How you answer WHY determines if you are a realist or idealist. It's an important, if not THE, question in ensuring logical consistency in your political philosophy IMO.

I could easily give the classical economist's answer: "We will do what increases TU." Now what that is depends entirely on a place and time. "Good" is relative. This seems like a good topic for a game.

I'm oversimplifying when I'm using the words "good" or "bad". Yes they are relative terms. Net positive or net negative while still relative would be more accurate.

 

[Galactic]

Re: Place for Dummies to Hang

All things and beings come from, seek to be or seek to return into a system of integrity.

Like homeostasis on a macro scale (socially, economically, politically)

 

[Jbonez]

All things and beings come from, seek to be or seek to return into a system of integrity.

Like homeostasis on a macro scale (socially, economically, politically)

Profound...

I just want to slow down my thoughts.. Clearly balance is important, so Im positive I spend too much time traversing my imagination..

I like the use of "integrity" vs perfection..

 

[Galactic]

Re: Place for Dummies to Hang

"Integrity" vs "perfection"

"Entropy" vs "karma"

Words...Simply semantics and a way for beings to communicate (as our foundational understandings vary) but "ideas/concepts" themselves are entities which exist without definition.

Like a tree, you can stumble on it and call it a bonding of carbon atoms, or call it a plant. It was there before we tried to define it. When we come up with words (for communication, from one perspective, relative to another), that is the source of all our "misunderstanding" in the world. But the tree is as it always was... That really fucks with me.

The threads of truth lying therein and behind the words, we do ALL truly agree with.

Just the Ego is in the way "judging"

 

[Jbonez]

Ah... Interesting.. Ive been learning more and more about the ego and its primitive, albeit necessary function..

When you examine fear, you realize it has no weight.. Studying how I perceive it has helped immensely.. Still, I confuse cognizance with manifestation sometimes and I catch myself trying not to do that, perhaps attacking fear from the source is the only way..

Its almost as if the ego is nothing more than our manifestation, but Im finding peace for the first time in my life the further I remove myself from its grips..

Also, you are clearly ntp...

 

[unspoken]

Right, yes, but WHY do we have to form groups? The State of Nature is a philosophical starting point to social contract theory. How you answer WHY determines if you are a realist or idealist. It's an important, if not THE, question in ensuring logical consistency in your political philosophy IMO.

I'm oversimplifying when I'm using the words "good" or "bad". Yes they are relative terms. Net positive or net negative while still relative would be more accurate.

If I have to choose a social contract theory I like best it would be Rousseau. I'm guessing you are a Locke guy?

I also think that you are an extremely linear thinker, whereas my thought process is a mix of linear and non linear.

 

[johnipedestran]

We form groups to "get shit done"....sometimes to kill an animal, sometimes to kill one another.

State of nature is where we live. We are insulated as we age by our economic standing, but in many cases that insulation is an illusion. Others better insulated or more clever or simply more ruthless can take it all away. Not to mention illness and death.

Great example of "state of nature" lord of the flies, spend some time observing 2-3 year olds in day care. Even though the activity is moderated by the teachers, favorites within the group emerge, some are bullied, some are not singled out by the bully and some are just watchers. Same thing as we get older, same thing on state level.

peace
jip

 

[Galactic]

Re: Place for Dummies to Hang

If we live in a "state of nature", what role does human life play?

Look at all of nature. It flows so well, we call it the "circle of life". If you insert human interaction/thought, we actually "fuck up the rotation"

We are the single entity which makes "nature" chaotic and counterflowing

 

[SeaMaiden]

I don't think I could disagree with that premise more than I do just sitting here right now. Humans are part and parcel of the natural world, not something separate. Many life forms cause imbalances, and death balances things back out. That doesn't make them unnatural, just unbalanced. Same with us monkeys.

 

[SpasticGramps]

If I have to choose a social contract theory I like best it would be Rousseau. I'm guessing you are a Locke guy?

I also think that you are an extremely linear thinker, whereas my thought process is a mix of linear and non linear.

Locke with a sprinkle of Hobbs.

Your last sentence reads like this to me.

"I also think that you are an extremely logical thinker, whereas my thought process is a mix of logical and non logical." Sorry couldn't help it.