If You’re Lying You’re Dying.

Maybe, ‘God, the father, son and Holy Ghost’ equates to “the experiment, its outcomes and the underlying ‘direction that is’.” Put simply the experiment plays about, things happen that are possible. Nothing impossible ever happens. That maybe obvious but it’s important to realise we are restrained in the domain of the possible, which is quite small compared with all the things that are impossible. The ‘direction that is’ also defines what, within the possible, will survive. Things either flourish or fall back into the body of substance that fuels the ongoing experiment. So the ‘direction that is’ holds two levels of truth, 1/ what’s possible, and 2/ what follows this ‘direction that is.’ If it’s impossible it’s obviously not true, and if it isn’t in the ‘direction that is’ it won’t survive long enough to become true either. These two levels of truth are way above our daily debates on truth. In fact it’s likely we humans are unique in our capacity to conceive of untruths and that we might gain some long-term advantage from them. Not just conscious lies but beliefs, theories, manipulations and assertions that constitute the majority of our thinking even the hypothesis of self. So in this ‘post-truth’ age we’re supposedly entering what if anything will survive? When the natural world that has stood the test of time and proved itself to be ‘true’ we are imposing our untruths in chemicals and pollution, spin, politics, wars and now fake news believing them to be our successes. Only when we begin to perceive, think, act and speak with true honesty and see no advantage in living otherwise will we avoid oblivion. This isn’t religion, it’s survival. 

Laugh, He’s Offended.

Lesney drawing office was a wondrously enjoyable learning experience for me. Fifteen or so guys making often caustic fun of each other. One thing you couldn’t get was offended. Getting someone offended was deemed a success and that person would rue the day he snapped back. He had shown weakness that would be ruthlessly exploited until he got over it. Short, black, fat, thick, short sighted, buck toothed, if you couldn’t see the funny side, well you had to in the end, it was a right of passage. So I’m amused by so many people being offended these days. In fact just ‘offended’ isn’t enough, they have to be ‘grossly offended.’ In the Lesney drawing office they would be like Christmas stomping around in high dudgeon being wound up to spring-breaking point till something snapped, usually the personal pretension that formed their castle ramparts. Why do people take being offended so seriously? Are they attempting to weaponise it? “You’re being grossly offensive, take that! And now I have the moral high ground take that and that too. I am indignantly insulted and affronted.” I’m wondering why on Earth these people actually decide to lay themselves open to so much ridicule? OK a softly muttered; “Twat”, “Wanker” or worse doesn’t constitute a viable counter argument but it’s not about argument it’s about being what you’re being. These weapons of sanctimosity constitute the armoury of Divisionists, those too weak to come forth from their own handmade castle, who see the world in fiefdoms. That’s such a pity. I’ve been searching for a pithy closing sentence but I don’t have one. 

One Day Everyone will Live in Manhattan.

Feedback loops typically take a bit of the output signal and feed it back into the input. They have their uses so long as they’re under control. In a broader context you could say Darwin’s theories of evolution are based on feedback loops and even the old adage, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.’ As wealth accumulates power the wealthy use it to skew the system to their advantage. It’s a feedback loop we’re all aware of, but like the microphone howl at a concert it can destroy the performance not to mention the sound system itself. So the question arises, when does the wealth/power feedback loop go critical and begin to destroy our whole economic system? Recently Facebook lost $120 billion in one day’s trading. That’s 3.5 million years of average UK pay. We are nearing that point. A man, they’re usually men, with a yearly income of say £15 million might spend, i.e. put back into the economy, £1 million. The rest he must spend in the completely separate economy of world finance. With the top 1% owning say 80% of wealth it’s likely 60% to 70% is being siphoned off real economies into global finance. That leaves our working economy surviving on half of what it generates. This constitutes a ‘negative’ feedback loop where the output is used to suppress the input. It’s like giving a horse 50% of the food it needs to do the work required of it. It won’t immediately starve to death but year on year it will become weaker and weaker until it finally collapses. This is where we’re at. Venezuela is a basket case only because world finance won’t go there and there are other countries on the brink. It’s a kind of economic climate change where life-giving rain is being directed only to the safest places for a return. With no money for basic services, health, education, policing etc and no sign of the horse getting more food anytime soon Venezuela is dieing. Unimaginable amounts of currency are blowing around the globe boosting stock markets under the direction of one seemingly rational, almost laudable imperative, a return on investment. And in their wake economic wastelands. But people don’t die they walk. Immigrants are forming human winds of their own under this economic jet stream moving to wherever it rains. There are two human wills in contradiction, the will to live and the will to become even more wealthy. The latter would do well to recognise, and quickly, which will is the stronger.