It is well known in photography that so-called artists prefer to shoot in black and white or monochrome for the simple reason that there is no colour to distract the focus of the viewer and that the focus of the subject can be brought out much better and quicker.
While we talk of black and white, there is no such a thing - there is black and white and all the shades of black and white in between. Black and white is also called monochrome to suggest that there is one colour and all the shades of it. Is that colour black or is it white? Of course, from science class we know that black is no colour and white is all colours mixed. Would monochrome then be the result of different intensity of light or whiteness? If there is different shades of whiteness, then white (which is a combination of all colours) is a truly integrated colour where there is no separation out into any of the components (primary) colours even when the whiteness is being diluted out in various shades.
It would then appear that monochrome is a truly integrated colour and that while there are shades of it, it does not discompose into its constituent colours.
In the realm of the human race, while the human race - apparently descended from a man and a woman (Daoists would generalise it into yin and yang) or from a family or from a small group of survivors of the last earthly environmental catastrophe thousands or millions of years ago - have evolved to the many shades that we now see in the faces of humanity on earth today, how then do we begin to see humanity as being the same.
I suppose that in monochrome, we would distinguish humans from non-humans. It is quite easy to say that the mountains and the rivers, the trees and the birds and the animals are non-humans - the conclusion of which unfortunately leads humans to the mindless destruction of non-human nature and the environment in the name of saving the human race.
The difficulty, even at this stage, leads us into the realm where humans are not so clever - that of ghosts and spirits and souls: are they humans or non-humans? Most mere mortals choose not to dwell on this, and it is quite clear that the only difference is the availability of a physical body - and if this is the case, then a human is being defined merely by the features of the physical body - which are most likely to be features that are most like our very own.
Hence, there is this great emotional affinity to people who look most like us or those whom we know. As features become different merely by the different sizes in relation to the rest of the body, even in monochrome, one group begin to distinguish itself from others. Layer by layer, each group finds the reasons to exclude others from their clique - so long as that group is trying to protect its environment for its own economic survival. Of course, if there are common interests to be shared or exploited, there will be an attempt to look for the commonalities from the same features that have been used to try to make distinctions before.
While we bring in colours to the pictures, while the whole picture brightens up, there will also be more distractions and more differences seen. The red begins to make itself different from the yellow and the blue, and the white tries to think it is a superior colour to the black. The common heritage of the human race or even of the living nature is easily all lost as more points of differences can be identified.
Through the eyes of a monochrome expert (Henri Cartier-Bresson or Ansel Adams), the colours are there but the black and white allow emphasis of the subject. Through the eyes of a colour expert (da Vinci, John Constable, Picasso), the colours are used to brighten up the frame but the subject still stays in focus.
In the hands of amateurs, we usually see a mixed up of the subject with the colours or lack of. There is a tendency to over-dramatise or the failure to provide a theme. In the end, we see a confused state, and everybody talking at cross-purposes.
Especially in a multi-racial society, I think is very possible to paint in monochrome and create a great theme, as well as to paint in colour to emphasis the vibrancy along the same theme.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Creativity: How New Can The New Year Be?
I am feeling a bit guilty for having stayed away from the computer for so long during my year-end holidays, so the title to this post does look to be a bit challenging and probably involved.
As you may have noticed, I seldom - well, never - acknowledge any holidays or festivities as they all seem to be so the same as the last one - or, the one yesterday except probably for a bit more devotion to food and drink - or drinks and a bit of food.
My friends had, I suppose, great fun in sending me stuff like 1.1.11 as the last 10.10.10 - and my mind just does not compute - cute, yes, but what is the diff.
Since I am not a farming kind of person, the yearly cycle doesn't really matter. Whether it rains or shines - or neither - my concrete laden urban life where everything I dare to touch or do threatens to destroy the world makes me live my life guilty as hell. I now feel like the ancient ascetics who dared not walk for fear of crushing the poor insects that are invariably caught under their feet. (They probably should have dare not breathe for fear of sucking the invisibles through their nostrils - or they should have allowed their wounds to open and not heal so that some worms may thrive and life a long and healthy life.
Somehow, the new year always opens with thoughts of self-improvement - which often leads one to self denial and apply self restraint so that everything that one consumes is reduced by 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% or even 70% if things are severe enough. As in the retail line, a 70% discount is a recovery of cost of item but not of overheads which can only be covered with at best a 50% discount. Any discount less than that is still profitable.
Would such discounts then apply to the budget deficits of individuals and nations, although I have in my mind all the time thoughts about losing weight, doing exercises, improving diet and quitting the infusion of things considered by the health industry to be poison.
A slim down year across the board, however, is no good for aggregate consumption and countries round the world continue to press harder on the accelerator to send more money quantitatively through the system even though the arteries may all be clogged up with plague and other life threatening stuff such as corruption and ruptures from terrorism.
After decades of rapid growth and near full employment, a really new year should, economically, be one when a bit of magnesium sulphate would have done a marvelous job in purging the intestines but no! the grandma would still like the little helpless but plump and chubby and instead insist on force feeding the hapless balloon. A really new year should be a year of a slimming economy.
By slimming, one is really talking about bringing into more realistic propositions sectors that have already been overfed with liquidity - personal credit, personal consumption, real estate, private transportation, as well as public consumption and public mega infrastructure works.
To really break out of the box, one must push one's head through the wall and come out into a new paradigm and its new frontier.
Where can we find it?
It is right here in our brains, when we have our ideas and think that we can pursue them in order to break new grounds.
I shall now take a few minutes to lampoon the biggest culprits of the current economic mess - incompetent bankers. There is no talent in lending to those who have physical assets as collateral, preferably real estate and false hopes as in stocks and shares. Recent history has shown us there is such a thing as asset bubbles across the asset portfolio, and banks have proven themselves not to be immune to the wholesale destruction of their balance sheets by some incompetent bankers at the top drawing big salaries and huge bonuses based on imputed profits - imputed because the loans that they have disbursed have not been fully repaid. It is the great potential for a bank to become a pyramid schemes that banks have traditionally been managed prudently like Shylock the moneylender. Instead, we have Santa Clauses throwing away the public's savings to politicians, thus undermining the greatest illusion in modern society called the money system.
My view is that the only way out is for small banks to lend to small businesses and hand hold them so that they can grow big in new businesses where big businesses do not know how to go.
I have no fondness for big brands - those in similarly modern shopping malls are probably the most mind deadening design and concepts that one can possibly imagine in this hi-tech world - fueled no doubt by mass marketing so that the only thrill got from wearing something that the average consumer can recognise to be the same fake sameness - like that which also happens in the world's oldest profession.
Our banks are dull, including those who are supposed to look after them.
So what is new for the new year with a new paradigm - let a thousand ideas bloom, and let they be financed - on the basis of their ideas.
I will also spend a few minutes paying attention to cheats. I do not mind clever people and I do not mind not so clever people - they are all part of the distribution curve that nature so wisely choose to endow mankind with. However, I do mind cunning people who sell adulterated stuff in order that they could climb on top of the masses whom they lie to. To say a thing is good when it is bad; to say a thing is bad when it is good. Such adulteration is called the corruption of the nature of things and such people be weeded out from the system. Once the weeds are killed, the beautiful ones will bloom.
As you may have noticed, I seldom - well, never - acknowledge any holidays or festivities as they all seem to be so the same as the last one - or, the one yesterday except probably for a bit more devotion to food and drink - or drinks and a bit of food.
My friends had, I suppose, great fun in sending me stuff like 1.1.11 as the last 10.10.10 - and my mind just does not compute - cute, yes, but what is the diff.
Since I am not a farming kind of person, the yearly cycle doesn't really matter. Whether it rains or shines - or neither - my concrete laden urban life where everything I dare to touch or do threatens to destroy the world makes me live my life guilty as hell. I now feel like the ancient ascetics who dared not walk for fear of crushing the poor insects that are invariably caught under their feet. (They probably should have dare not breathe for fear of sucking the invisibles through their nostrils - or they should have allowed their wounds to open and not heal so that some worms may thrive and life a long and healthy life.
Somehow, the new year always opens with thoughts of self-improvement - which often leads one to self denial and apply self restraint so that everything that one consumes is reduced by 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% or even 70% if things are severe enough. As in the retail line, a 70% discount is a recovery of cost of item but not of overheads which can only be covered with at best a 50% discount. Any discount less than that is still profitable.
Would such discounts then apply to the budget deficits of individuals and nations, although I have in my mind all the time thoughts about losing weight, doing exercises, improving diet and quitting the infusion of things considered by the health industry to be poison.
A slim down year across the board, however, is no good for aggregate consumption and countries round the world continue to press harder on the accelerator to send more money quantitatively through the system even though the arteries may all be clogged up with plague and other life threatening stuff such as corruption and ruptures from terrorism.
After decades of rapid growth and near full employment, a really new year should, economically, be one when a bit of magnesium sulphate would have done a marvelous job in purging the intestines but no! the grandma would still like the little helpless but plump and chubby and instead insist on force feeding the hapless balloon. A really new year should be a year of a slimming economy.
By slimming, one is really talking about bringing into more realistic propositions sectors that have already been overfed with liquidity - personal credit, personal consumption, real estate, private transportation, as well as public consumption and public mega infrastructure works.
To really break out of the box, one must push one's head through the wall and come out into a new paradigm and its new frontier.
Where can we find it?
It is right here in our brains, when we have our ideas and think that we can pursue them in order to break new grounds.
I shall now take a few minutes to lampoon the biggest culprits of the current economic mess - incompetent bankers. There is no talent in lending to those who have physical assets as collateral, preferably real estate and false hopes as in stocks and shares. Recent history has shown us there is such a thing as asset bubbles across the asset portfolio, and banks have proven themselves not to be immune to the wholesale destruction of their balance sheets by some incompetent bankers at the top drawing big salaries and huge bonuses based on imputed profits - imputed because the loans that they have disbursed have not been fully repaid. It is the great potential for a bank to become a pyramid schemes that banks have traditionally been managed prudently like Shylock the moneylender. Instead, we have Santa Clauses throwing away the public's savings to politicians, thus undermining the greatest illusion in modern society called the money system.
My view is that the only way out is for small banks to lend to small businesses and hand hold them so that they can grow big in new businesses where big businesses do not know how to go.
I have no fondness for big brands - those in similarly modern shopping malls are probably the most mind deadening design and concepts that one can possibly imagine in this hi-tech world - fueled no doubt by mass marketing so that the only thrill got from wearing something that the average consumer can recognise to be the same fake sameness - like that which also happens in the world's oldest profession.
Our banks are dull, including those who are supposed to look after them.
So what is new for the new year with a new paradigm - let a thousand ideas bloom, and let they be financed - on the basis of their ideas.
I will also spend a few minutes paying attention to cheats. I do not mind clever people and I do not mind not so clever people - they are all part of the distribution curve that nature so wisely choose to endow mankind with. However, I do mind cunning people who sell adulterated stuff in order that they could climb on top of the masses whom they lie to. To say a thing is good when it is bad; to say a thing is bad when it is good. Such adulteration is called the corruption of the nature of things and such people be weeded out from the system. Once the weeds are killed, the beautiful ones will bloom.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Creativity: Individual vs Group
I have tried to show in the last post how the behaviour of a group of individuals can be very different from the behaviour of an individual.
The simple search for food becomes a problem when the group has grown so big that there is starvation at the margin, which then gives the core individuals greater fear of an impending resource scarcity that they begin to accumulate for future consumption which, in a monetised economy, becomes a folly as, instead of accumulation food sources, they accumulate tokens (otherwise called money). Of course, that folly is the result of the evolution of society - the matrix that smart people create for themselves by making use of the trusting ordinary public and in the end get caught in it themselves - where happiness has become from the consumption of food to the consumption of other unnecessaries. The growth of society then becomes dependent on the production of the unnecessaries whose depend is based not on real needs (if I don't it I will die, literally) but on bank credit and what the neighbours have. The layers of the delusion multiply. The limit to that expansion of unnecessaries is the limit of credit expansion, defined when loans default at a rate that the interest margin can cover which is very little especially in a period of near-zero interest rate. The matrix gets into a ponzi-type scheme when more new money is printed to fund old money at a rate which is in excess of the rate of expansion in activities related even to the production of the unnecessaries which may be at a rate of expansion which is unable to absorb new entrants into the labour force.
In a more equitable world, the objective is to create a society where every individual is remunerated at roughly the same rate of pay, and this is found to be a society made up of professionals - where everybody comes up with their own schedules of fees. That schedule is the rate of exchange of different services. For a more egalitarian society, there probably should be an abolition of the discrimination certain types of professions such as toilet cleaning or housekeeping or blog posting. In which case, if everybody is equally good and equally demanded, then with everybody getting the same income, it is unlikely that anybody will be able to afford to pay any other person to do a part of his or her chores without being severely handicapped financially - but then, in that world, there will be no need for that service provider to offer his or her services to his or her neigbour because he or she is not in financial want. In a truly egalitarian world where everybody gets the same income, earned or otherwise, there is no incentive to do anything for others, each will do his or her own chore, and each will eat his or her food in silence alone.
The great interaction in society, and why society evolves in the first place, is inequality - which in economics is called disequilibrium - which in physics is called the potential difference or polarity - where the attempt to achieve an impossible equilibrium (of silence and non-activity) results in incessant activity. In economics, that restless activity is called the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In modern society, the objective of politicians is to try to increase the rate of incessant activity among the people in order to keep them occupied (for if they are idle, they will march down the streets for change which is always possible), and this is done by creating a greater disequilibrium. The tradition method of creating economic disturbances is to get the minds of individuals to come out of the tranquility of the meditation and god-aligned frame into one of great dissatisfaction so that the intensive activity of the mind leads one to come up with all sorts of weird ideas and this din is the mind is celebrated in modern society as the way to prosperity.
As in nature where the group exists to protect the individuals in the group, in human society the social fabrication through its customs and culture seek to protect the individuals by seeking their conformity. In successful societies, conformity to the social convention is paramount but that success may not be growth of happiness but the continued existence of the old group. In newer societies formed from the dishevel of modern times, usually because of war but sometimes because of famine, the coming together of peoples from different cultures sets a renaissance in the creativity of human existence where the multiple disequilibrium points allow for a great multitude of cross traffic of ideas of how to live and what to do in life, if that traffic is not stopped by bigots who police the thought process of the people. Inevitably, the first and second generations may be still want to cling to their old comfort but we can expect, if left to their own, the young will think anew their taught way of life, and forge new identities with their school friends and neighbours. With it, new levels of existence - which may be away from mechanisation and the modern sciences of despoiling the environment, but the sharing of new understanding of their heritages.
The simple search for food becomes a problem when the group has grown so big that there is starvation at the margin, which then gives the core individuals greater fear of an impending resource scarcity that they begin to accumulate for future consumption which, in a monetised economy, becomes a folly as, instead of accumulation food sources, they accumulate tokens (otherwise called money). Of course, that folly is the result of the evolution of society - the matrix that smart people create for themselves by making use of the trusting ordinary public and in the end get caught in it themselves - where happiness has become from the consumption of food to the consumption of other unnecessaries. The growth of society then becomes dependent on the production of the unnecessaries whose depend is based not on real needs (if I don't it I will die, literally) but on bank credit and what the neighbours have. The layers of the delusion multiply. The limit to that expansion of unnecessaries is the limit of credit expansion, defined when loans default at a rate that the interest margin can cover which is very little especially in a period of near-zero interest rate. The matrix gets into a ponzi-type scheme when more new money is printed to fund old money at a rate which is in excess of the rate of expansion in activities related even to the production of the unnecessaries which may be at a rate of expansion which is unable to absorb new entrants into the labour force.
In a more equitable world, the objective is to create a society where every individual is remunerated at roughly the same rate of pay, and this is found to be a society made up of professionals - where everybody comes up with their own schedules of fees. That schedule is the rate of exchange of different services. For a more egalitarian society, there probably should be an abolition of the discrimination certain types of professions such as toilet cleaning or housekeeping or blog posting. In which case, if everybody is equally good and equally demanded, then with everybody getting the same income, it is unlikely that anybody will be able to afford to pay any other person to do a part of his or her chores without being severely handicapped financially - but then, in that world, there will be no need for that service provider to offer his or her services to his or her neigbour because he or she is not in financial want. In a truly egalitarian world where everybody gets the same income, earned or otherwise, there is no incentive to do anything for others, each will do his or her own chore, and each will eat his or her food in silence alone.
The great interaction in society, and why society evolves in the first place, is inequality - which in economics is called disequilibrium - which in physics is called the potential difference or polarity - where the attempt to achieve an impossible equilibrium (of silence and non-activity) results in incessant activity. In economics, that restless activity is called the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In modern society, the objective of politicians is to try to increase the rate of incessant activity among the people in order to keep them occupied (for if they are idle, they will march down the streets for change which is always possible), and this is done by creating a greater disequilibrium. The tradition method of creating economic disturbances is to get the minds of individuals to come out of the tranquility of the meditation and god-aligned frame into one of great dissatisfaction so that the intensive activity of the mind leads one to come up with all sorts of weird ideas and this din is the mind is celebrated in modern society as the way to prosperity.
As in nature where the group exists to protect the individuals in the group, in human society the social fabrication through its customs and culture seek to protect the individuals by seeking their conformity. In successful societies, conformity to the social convention is paramount but that success may not be growth of happiness but the continued existence of the old group. In newer societies formed from the dishevel of modern times, usually because of war but sometimes because of famine, the coming together of peoples from different cultures sets a renaissance in the creativity of human existence where the multiple disequilibrium points allow for a great multitude of cross traffic of ideas of how to live and what to do in life, if that traffic is not stopped by bigots who police the thought process of the people. Inevitably, the first and second generations may be still want to cling to their old comfort but we can expect, if left to their own, the young will think anew their taught way of life, and forge new identities with their school friends and neighbours. With it, new levels of existence - which may be away from mechanisation and the modern sciences of despoiling the environment, but the sharing of new understanding of their heritages.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Humans, Environment & Investment
I have taken several minute steps in the last few posts to put humans in proper context, and to show how the many invisible layers have been built up over the millennia as the human specie struggle for survival in this world.
I must say what a woeful lot we humans are! It is the madness of crowds, the whole colossal folk dashing here and there migrating and spread like cancer in search of its own preservation but only find itself painted in the corner. That paint is the deforested environment which becomes uninhabitable to all but sand and a few lizards.
The race out of the garden of eden into the big wide and wild world has set the rate of growth of the human population against (a) the rate of growth of agricultural output and (b) the rate of decline of the forest and wild life. Thomas Malthus was right. The size of human population on earth will be limited by agricultural output ultimately. That limit may be a long stretch away. In the meantime, there is a dynamic interaction between the two: population surge following new discovery of food production which encourages the population to overshoot food supply, adjusted by hunger and disease and famine.
Probably with such a history embedded in our genes, we find ourselves unwittingly living in perpetual fear of inadequate food. This great search for certainty in an uncertain world creates the world and society as we know it to be today. The incessant urge to save and investment in the future that is already here.
In the world of goods, to save is to set aside some portion of the current output for future consumption such as by salting or sugaring or fermentation. That preserved food can actually be eaten tomorrow when it become rainy. There is no waste. When there is overproduction in the current period, and when the preserved food is in huge surplus, the most logical response is to take a break from work, do some maintenance work, and spend the leisure drinking and dancing and telling stories - activities which are collectively called "culture." There is a constant adjustment between output and consumption and saving and investment.
If food is taken out of the forest, the most logical step is to protect and preserve the forest so that it can continue to sustain the community. But we know that a finite forest can only support a finite community because hunger and war break out. At this limit, Malthus is spot on. This means that, at the limit, there is so much preservation of the forest can do for humans. In the meantime, any limit that is felt is determined by technology and human knowledge of how to extract more from less. This can be seen as a fact, and we simply just have to accept it. But even so, the community must protect the food source from selfish greedy individuals who may have no qualms about destroy the food source thinking that he or she can stored it off somewhere purely for his or her own consumption. In nature, any other method of storage apart from leaving nature alone is foolhardy.
This problem of the short-seeing long-sighted selfish person is compounded in a world of tokens (paper or commodity money) where its special quality of not decaying physically (because it's a computer number or a piece of metal) may create the illusion that accumulation of pile of metal or paper or a larger number on a computer is the way to go into the future for generations. All things lie in the present, this accumulation of uneatable assets is being balanced against the liability of persistent destruction of the environment (by chopping down trees or digging up stuff or polluting). This is being gleefully done today by warlords with the collusion of multinational firms and global finance.
At the same time, the overproduction of goods (unsold inventory) or services (unemployed workers) is being happily ignored and misinterpreted - with the later overproduction (unemployment) probably from good agriculture or bad education is being used as a basis for further overproduction (of goods) which floods the world both in terms of huge quantity, low price and bad quality. And central banks continue to churn out the tokens.
In this world of mindless pursuit of economic growth, we are drowned in a sea of useless constructs. The rich becomes very rich and the poor becomes very poor, all within the economic system that we have immersed ourselves. We have to get out.
I must say what a woeful lot we humans are! It is the madness of crowds, the whole colossal folk dashing here and there migrating and spread like cancer in search of its own preservation but only find itself painted in the corner. That paint is the deforested environment which becomes uninhabitable to all but sand and a few lizards.
The race out of the garden of eden into the big wide and wild world has set the rate of growth of the human population against (a) the rate of growth of agricultural output and (b) the rate of decline of the forest and wild life. Thomas Malthus was right. The size of human population on earth will be limited by agricultural output ultimately. That limit may be a long stretch away. In the meantime, there is a dynamic interaction between the two: population surge following new discovery of food production which encourages the population to overshoot food supply, adjusted by hunger and disease and famine.
Probably with such a history embedded in our genes, we find ourselves unwittingly living in perpetual fear of inadequate food. This great search for certainty in an uncertain world creates the world and society as we know it to be today. The incessant urge to save and investment in the future that is already here.
In the world of goods, to save is to set aside some portion of the current output for future consumption such as by salting or sugaring or fermentation. That preserved food can actually be eaten tomorrow when it become rainy. There is no waste. When there is overproduction in the current period, and when the preserved food is in huge surplus, the most logical response is to take a break from work, do some maintenance work, and spend the leisure drinking and dancing and telling stories - activities which are collectively called "culture." There is a constant adjustment between output and consumption and saving and investment.
If food is taken out of the forest, the most logical step is to protect and preserve the forest so that it can continue to sustain the community. But we know that a finite forest can only support a finite community because hunger and war break out. At this limit, Malthus is spot on. This means that, at the limit, there is so much preservation of the forest can do for humans. In the meantime, any limit that is felt is determined by technology and human knowledge of how to extract more from less. This can be seen as a fact, and we simply just have to accept it. But even so, the community must protect the food source from selfish greedy individuals who may have no qualms about destroy the food source thinking that he or she can stored it off somewhere purely for his or her own consumption. In nature, any other method of storage apart from leaving nature alone is foolhardy.
This problem of the short-seeing long-sighted selfish person is compounded in a world of tokens (paper or commodity money) where its special quality of not decaying physically (because it's a computer number or a piece of metal) may create the illusion that accumulation of pile of metal or paper or a larger number on a computer is the way to go into the future for generations. All things lie in the present, this accumulation of uneatable assets is being balanced against the liability of persistent destruction of the environment (by chopping down trees or digging up stuff or polluting). This is being gleefully done today by warlords with the collusion of multinational firms and global finance.
At the same time, the overproduction of goods (unsold inventory) or services (unemployed workers) is being happily ignored and misinterpreted - with the later overproduction (unemployment) probably from good agriculture or bad education is being used as a basis for further overproduction (of goods) which floods the world both in terms of huge quantity, low price and bad quality. And central banks continue to churn out the tokens.
In this world of mindless pursuit of economic growth, we are drowned in a sea of useless constructs. The rich becomes very rich and the poor becomes very poor, all within the economic system that we have immersed ourselves. We have to get out.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Creating The Economy & Money
I think we have now come to a stage where things may be a bit more familiar to the reader - in that we shall be dealing with issues that are a bit more mundane.
We have now gotten out of ether and universal consciousness and into the world of form, of individual physical entities. As an individual born with a stomach and a sexual reproductive organ, our true calling is to each and to procreate. The sex part is quite intuitive and I shall not be dealing too with that because it has been very well treated by the arts. I shall instead delve into the eating part.
Stage 1. Humans and Environment
In my version of the art of war - of war between humans and non-humans - a person stands alone in this world and ask: What is my next step?
In my little garden of eden, the next human step is to stretch out the hand and it shall be provided by the fruit of the nearest tree for sustenance. But even in paradise, there is need for knowledge, for some have eaten the fruit and lived, and some have eaten the fruit and died. Distinction comes into being - between the fruit that gives life (edible fruit) and the fruit that takes away life (poison). Which this distinction, one can be creative in the identification of food. The community that succeeds in finding the best way to classify food and poison becomes the most thriving one.
At this stage, it is still possible for humans to stay put in the original state and stand naked with outstretched arms and be provided.
Stage 2. Population Growth and Food
Stage 2 is when the population grows and there is pressure on the supply of food. There will come a time when what nature provides in the vicinity is insufficient for the growing population, and the only concern of the human race is food. This is as if the human race has been cast out of the garden of eden. Food is no more a sure thing for the existing population. The option is to fight for the existing supply of food (those who fail die), or to migrate out of the community into the big wide world and hope for the best, or to be find ways of increasing the food supply from the same existing immediate environment. By the way, all these three options call for some degree of creativity - to think out of the box, meaning to think differently from the traditional way of looking at things, as well as doing things and handling things.
Creativity in fighting for food requires the acquisition of power, the art of war and the organisation of slave labour.
Creativity in out migration requires the construction of the means of transportation, communication, organisation of autonomous societies, the saving of scarce resources, the investment in useful knowledge and contraption, the art of living with different cultures.
Creativity in the production of food in existing environment involves conservation of the productivity of the environment, the consumption at necessary levels, the preservation of surplus food for the uncertain future supply or increase in members of the community.
Stage 3. Social Organisation
In moving out of the garden of eden, there is a need for organisation - which in the primary stage will involve sacrifice by members of the cooperative to do committee work and in the secondary stage a group of professional organisers who are paid out of the communual output for them to tell the community what is the best way to organise themselves.
This organisation leads into the problems of how to get that portion of the output to be paid to the non-production team. One method is to fixed the portion in quantity terms, another is to pay according to tokens the quantity of which may be fixed or not, and the number of tokens may or may not match the quantity of output available for exchange. All these issues lead to the problem of the economy concerning production, distribution, consumption and the supply of the money stock and the demand for money, as well as price of output and the interest on money should lending and borrowing be allowed. The very simple problem of organisation of human society in as non-violent way as possible leads to arms-length and informal dealing that are signaled by price (or the number of tokens).
It can be seen that the economic system can be corrupted by the pursuit of the acquisition of tokens as an end in itself (thinking that these are valuable) and if not realising that valuable necessarily means hard-to-get, some token control authority may try to ingratiate himself or herself to the political masters in the guise of trying to smooth the production of output without being blamed for any hardship that must arise with any attempt at adjustment (i.e., getting some people to work or work hard or work harder) and end up printing more tokens and distributing them to the political masters (quantitative easing) so that the political masters may suffer no inconveniences while the general public may have their consumption curtailed as a result of inflation.
We have now gotten out of ether and universal consciousness and into the world of form, of individual physical entities. As an individual born with a stomach and a sexual reproductive organ, our true calling is to each and to procreate. The sex part is quite intuitive and I shall not be dealing too with that because it has been very well treated by the arts. I shall instead delve into the eating part.
Stage 1. Humans and Environment
In my version of the art of war - of war between humans and non-humans - a person stands alone in this world and ask: What is my next step?
In my little garden of eden, the next human step is to stretch out the hand and it shall be provided by the fruit of the nearest tree for sustenance. But even in paradise, there is need for knowledge, for some have eaten the fruit and lived, and some have eaten the fruit and died. Distinction comes into being - between the fruit that gives life (edible fruit) and the fruit that takes away life (poison). Which this distinction, one can be creative in the identification of food. The community that succeeds in finding the best way to classify food and poison becomes the most thriving one.
At this stage, it is still possible for humans to stay put in the original state and stand naked with outstretched arms and be provided.
Stage 2. Population Growth and Food
Stage 2 is when the population grows and there is pressure on the supply of food. There will come a time when what nature provides in the vicinity is insufficient for the growing population, and the only concern of the human race is food. This is as if the human race has been cast out of the garden of eden. Food is no more a sure thing for the existing population. The option is to fight for the existing supply of food (those who fail die), or to migrate out of the community into the big wide world and hope for the best, or to be find ways of increasing the food supply from the same existing immediate environment. By the way, all these three options call for some degree of creativity - to think out of the box, meaning to think differently from the traditional way of looking at things, as well as doing things and handling things.
Creativity in fighting for food requires the acquisition of power, the art of war and the organisation of slave labour.
Creativity in out migration requires the construction of the means of transportation, communication, organisation of autonomous societies, the saving of scarce resources, the investment in useful knowledge and contraption, the art of living with different cultures.
Creativity in the production of food in existing environment involves conservation of the productivity of the environment, the consumption at necessary levels, the preservation of surplus food for the uncertain future supply or increase in members of the community.
Stage 3. Social Organisation
In moving out of the garden of eden, there is a need for organisation - which in the primary stage will involve sacrifice by members of the cooperative to do committee work and in the secondary stage a group of professional organisers who are paid out of the communual output for them to tell the community what is the best way to organise themselves.
This organisation leads into the problems of how to get that portion of the output to be paid to the non-production team. One method is to fixed the portion in quantity terms, another is to pay according to tokens the quantity of which may be fixed or not, and the number of tokens may or may not match the quantity of output available for exchange. All these issues lead to the problem of the economy concerning production, distribution, consumption and the supply of the money stock and the demand for money, as well as price of output and the interest on money should lending and borrowing be allowed. The very simple problem of organisation of human society in as non-violent way as possible leads to arms-length and informal dealing that are signaled by price (or the number of tokens).
It can be seen that the economic system can be corrupted by the pursuit of the acquisition of tokens as an end in itself (thinking that these are valuable) and if not realising that valuable necessarily means hard-to-get, some token control authority may try to ingratiate himself or herself to the political masters in the guise of trying to smooth the production of output without being blamed for any hardship that must arise with any attempt at adjustment (i.e., getting some people to work or work hard or work harder) and end up printing more tokens and distributing them to the political masters (quantitative easing) so that the political masters may suffer no inconveniences while the general public may have their consumption curtailed as a result of inflation.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Coming Into Being: Reinventing The Self & The World
Reality is immense. Reality exists with or without us.
This is the utter truth which wise men through the ages have been trying to say to human beings of all ages. This reality is the perennial background of the story of mankind.
Against this ultimate reality is the narrow perception of the world according to individual human beings.
We come into being the moment we gain consciousness.
This is regardless of the view of other people of us. They may have seen us toddling around at infancy but we may remember nothing. We remember from a certain age and it is that certain age that we have our consciousness - and memory.
As we grow older, wisdom comes as layers and layers of consciousness - our realisation of the different aspects and degree of the perennial reality.
But there is a difference between the moment of consciousness/memory and the moment of our realisation of the different aspects and layers of reality.
From birth, we are conditioned by our caretakers to survive as a member of a social unit and as a specie. It is only when we come into realisation that we are each an individual that we come into our own individual being. Instead of being a pre-programmed robot, we try to re-programme individual ourselves. It is that tweaking of our in-built programme that we come into our own being, in the way of imagine ourselves to be.
As a result, we also reinvent our own world. The larger reality exist by itself irrespective of us, but the way we see the world and the way we interact with the world is defined hopefully by ourselves, but most of time by the society in which we find ourselves in.
If we disagree with our pre-conditioning, then we have know how we want to re-condition ourselves by the principles by which we want to live and by the habits which we want to cultivate. This is where all the talk about the examined life and the cultivated or cultured man/woman comes in.
In redefining our individual selves, we are in fact putting our selves together to make ourselves an individual whole. This recreation of self is necessarily ego-centric. But the existence of self does imply that one will be selfish although one is likely to be. The existence of the ego does not mean that one has to be egotistical. The sharing of self with other selves is not selfish, although it may be seen as egotistical but it is really up to the individual to know and deal with it personally and privately.
Once the self is sorted out, the rest of the job of living is simply to survive bodily with the least psychological stress. This is contentment and happiness. The self is settled and one can sit quietly and permanently like a stone, without a care in the world and most likely without a thought of any kind.
But the moment a thought enters the mind, mental activity takes place - which is likely to be concerned with the external physical world, and with the inconveniences and aesthetics of the body and with the problems of the cohesion of societies. This is where the inventions of the mundane world come in.
This is the utter truth which wise men through the ages have been trying to say to human beings of all ages. This reality is the perennial background of the story of mankind.
Against this ultimate reality is the narrow perception of the world according to individual human beings.
We come into being the moment we gain consciousness.
This is regardless of the view of other people of us. They may have seen us toddling around at infancy but we may remember nothing. We remember from a certain age and it is that certain age that we have our consciousness - and memory.
As we grow older, wisdom comes as layers and layers of consciousness - our realisation of the different aspects and degree of the perennial reality.
But there is a difference between the moment of consciousness/memory and the moment of our realisation of the different aspects and layers of reality.
From birth, we are conditioned by our caretakers to survive as a member of a social unit and as a specie. It is only when we come into realisation that we are each an individual that we come into our own individual being. Instead of being a pre-programmed robot, we try to re-programme individual ourselves. It is that tweaking of our in-built programme that we come into our own being, in the way of imagine ourselves to be.
As a result, we also reinvent our own world. The larger reality exist by itself irrespective of us, but the way we see the world and the way we interact with the world is defined hopefully by ourselves, but most of time by the society in which we find ourselves in.
If we disagree with our pre-conditioning, then we have know how we want to re-condition ourselves by the principles by which we want to live and by the habits which we want to cultivate. This is where all the talk about the examined life and the cultivated or cultured man/woman comes in.
In redefining our individual selves, we are in fact putting our selves together to make ourselves an individual whole. This recreation of self is necessarily ego-centric. But the existence of self does imply that one will be selfish although one is likely to be. The existence of the ego does not mean that one has to be egotistical. The sharing of self with other selves is not selfish, although it may be seen as egotistical but it is really up to the individual to know and deal with it personally and privately.
Once the self is sorted out, the rest of the job of living is simply to survive bodily with the least psychological stress. This is contentment and happiness. The self is settled and one can sit quietly and permanently like a stone, without a care in the world and most likely without a thought of any kind.
But the moment a thought enters the mind, mental activity takes place - which is likely to be concerned with the external physical world, and with the inconveniences and aesthetics of the body and with the problems of the cohesion of societies. This is where the inventions of the mundane world come in.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Being Creative, Being There
It has taken me quite a bit of time to put my thoughts on this one together, because it is an extremely difficult area to treat. What do we mean to be creative?
I hold reality to be infinite, and hence incomprehensible to mankind - man or women of any kind - given the finiteness of our senses. We have difficulty already with what we can see - this is why the early Europeans made such a big deal about their "discovery" of the "new" world. The world is always there, but their discovery belated (and some would wish never). We have already made some discovery peering into the dark skies or deep into inner spaces. Some may even have claimed perception of another world, in another mind or mind-frame. So, in this sense, creating is nothing but the "discovery" of that which is already there in the first place but which our senses have not been able to reach before (to paraphrase an old beer advertisement). So, in this sense, being creative is to be there first, and return to tell the tale. (Unable to return and tell a good story sends one to the madhouse.)
Being creative, therefore, means to have seen another world or another aspect of the world and to be able to describe the "new" world in such a way that human beings can find applications to remove yet another level of uncertainty of life on earth.
For creativity, therefore, I give high marks for the "creation of the world" stories which are probably reflective of the height of human imagination, reflecting the most intense of human anguish. The myths, the religious as well as the so-called scientific, the latter being extremely hard to provide the evidence as well, or to prove or to show concrete results. All "creation" stories and theories are based on faith, religious or scientific.
The importance of stories or theories is that they provide a tentative basis for explaining why certain things happen in a certain way or not in a certain way. They help us to understand ourselves and the world around us, and life as we know it to be.
I am sure all of us are brought up on one set of stories, and by the time we die, we would probably have created our own little stories or amendments to the traditional stories for retelling to our grandchildren (by then, our children would have their own competing stories to tell). Traditions (folk, religious or historical) can have a significant influence on creativity by weighing it down, but for the imaginative, it may provide a fallback for some ways to take flights of fancy.
There are but three ways of trying to be creative. The first is to see a table with an optimal number of four legs, figure whether it can stand on three (which we know it can) or two (which we do not know). The second is to see a table and a chair and try to figure out whether there is a furniture that lies between a table and a chair (you figure it out). The third way is to "dream of things that are not and ask why not?" as per George Bernard Shaw. The third way of course is open-ended, as varied and as far as the mind can go.
If mind is the constraint, then how do we think when we want to get creative? (I believe we are back to square one as far as this post is concerned.)
There is an infinite number of layers of existence right before our eyes, our noses, our ears, our fingers, our being.
I am sure many of us have experienced all kinds of weird stuff in our dreams, and are unable to explain, recall or use, so we simply dismiss them.
It is unfortunate that the stuff which we all acknowledge to be creative are only those stuff which strikes a cord in the heart of every person (and hence comes down as stories or myths) or which could be made into useful products (and hence comes down as stories or urban legends). The genius is the person whom we salute as whom we are not.
If therefore we were to put aside the commercial aspect of life, then I would there to venture that most of us are creative in our way of living, venturing into all avenues which we are not able or unwilling to disclose to the rest of the world, our own secretive world of great intimate knowledge and great intimate feelings and emotions as we explore our own little world to our own little self. This must have been how all the great religious ones felt when they felt inspired by the divine and expressed those emotions in terms which the ordinary people even today tend to hold to ridicule.
The way to be creative therefore is to unrestrained which means also not to seek public approval which means also to be an introvert. So, by definition, the creative world is understated. The only lament that economic and industrial leaders have over creativity is over commercialisable creativity - this lament is more a reflection of greed rather than of conceit.
Be there, and there will be creativity.
I hold reality to be infinite, and hence incomprehensible to mankind - man or women of any kind - given the finiteness of our senses. We have difficulty already with what we can see - this is why the early Europeans made such a big deal about their "discovery" of the "new" world. The world is always there, but their discovery belated (and some would wish never). We have already made some discovery peering into the dark skies or deep into inner spaces. Some may even have claimed perception of another world, in another mind or mind-frame. So, in this sense, creating is nothing but the "discovery" of that which is already there in the first place but which our senses have not been able to reach before (to paraphrase an old beer advertisement). So, in this sense, being creative is to be there first, and return to tell the tale. (Unable to return and tell a good story sends one to the madhouse.)
Being creative, therefore, means to have seen another world or another aspect of the world and to be able to describe the "new" world in such a way that human beings can find applications to remove yet another level of uncertainty of life on earth.
For creativity, therefore, I give high marks for the "creation of the world" stories which are probably reflective of the height of human imagination, reflecting the most intense of human anguish. The myths, the religious as well as the so-called scientific, the latter being extremely hard to provide the evidence as well, or to prove or to show concrete results. All "creation" stories and theories are based on faith, religious or scientific.
The importance of stories or theories is that they provide a tentative basis for explaining why certain things happen in a certain way or not in a certain way. They help us to understand ourselves and the world around us, and life as we know it to be.
I am sure all of us are brought up on one set of stories, and by the time we die, we would probably have created our own little stories or amendments to the traditional stories for retelling to our grandchildren (by then, our children would have their own competing stories to tell). Traditions (folk, religious or historical) can have a significant influence on creativity by weighing it down, but for the imaginative, it may provide a fallback for some ways to take flights of fancy.
There are but three ways of trying to be creative. The first is to see a table with an optimal number of four legs, figure whether it can stand on three (which we know it can) or two (which we do not know). The second is to see a table and a chair and try to figure out whether there is a furniture that lies between a table and a chair (you figure it out). The third way is to "dream of things that are not and ask why not?" as per George Bernard Shaw. The third way of course is open-ended, as varied and as far as the mind can go.
If mind is the constraint, then how do we think when we want to get creative? (I believe we are back to square one as far as this post is concerned.)
There is an infinite number of layers of existence right before our eyes, our noses, our ears, our fingers, our being.
I am sure many of us have experienced all kinds of weird stuff in our dreams, and are unable to explain, recall or use, so we simply dismiss them.
It is unfortunate that the stuff which we all acknowledge to be creative are only those stuff which strikes a cord in the heart of every person (and hence comes down as stories or myths) or which could be made into useful products (and hence comes down as stories or urban legends). The genius is the person whom we salute as whom we are not.
If therefore we were to put aside the commercial aspect of life, then I would there to venture that most of us are creative in our way of living, venturing into all avenues which we are not able or unwilling to disclose to the rest of the world, our own secretive world of great intimate knowledge and great intimate feelings and emotions as we explore our own little world to our own little self. This must have been how all the great religious ones felt when they felt inspired by the divine and expressed those emotions in terms which the ordinary people even today tend to hold to ridicule.
The way to be creative therefore is to unrestrained which means also not to seek public approval which means also to be an introvert. So, by definition, the creative world is understated. The only lament that economic and industrial leaders have over creativity is over commercialisable creativity - this lament is more a reflection of greed rather than of conceit.
Be there, and there will be creativity.
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