AYN RAND AND CRONY CAPITALISM

RAND AND CRONY CAPITALISM:  Yes, Rand illustrated the problem of crony capitalism. She wanted workers and producers alike to compete to sell what they had to offer. She did not want government getting involved in warping the marketplace. She illustrated the dire effects when so called elitists are humored to act as if they know best how to redistribute wealth through government in order to do good for society. Many of Rand's characters meant well, but, when it came to the best way to allocate resources and rewards, they could not be more competent than the marketplace. Indeed, something of hubris in rendered many of them pitifully incompetent. The main point I took was: Citizens --- don't vote to allow government to be used merely as some kind of forcing charity for the redistribution of wealth.

However, there is another side to that coin:  Find something more effective than the ballot box to cure crony elites from insinuating themselves in order to exploit government, as some kind of slush bank for crony capitalists to hold up (not for pretending to do good, but simply to steal more than their produce would be worth in any fair market).

So, I get Rand's point to the electorate:  That we ought not vote to force government to function as a redistributer of charity. What I don't get is how Rand is thought to have prescribed any effective means to stop robber cronies. Mere voting does not much impress legislators to forgo earmarks, or executives and czars to forgo rewarding the institutions and industries they pretend to regulate. That requires something more than mere general voting. It necessitates a Combined Attack, from (1) aroused and inspired citizens, (2) regulatory watchdogs, and (3) punitive taxes or fines.

Thus far, I have not been enough of a Rand devotee to have seen such a combined attack in her philosophy (no doubt, there are many devotees who should know).  Regardless, if her philosophy were effective, Ought We Not By Now To Have Seen Results Against Crony Capitalism?  Instead, I see international crony capitalism growing stronger every day, growing the gap in political influence and allowing cronies ever more to weaken the general economy and the middle class.  In short:  The middle class is not being churched, assimilated, or inspired to cherish or defend its freedom; cronies are given little reason to fear; and the wealth they apply to politics, i.e., the political marketplace, is rewarded rather than reduced.

HAS RAND'S INFLUENCE DONE ANYTHING TO SLOW CRONY CAPITALISM:  So, have you seen any evidence that crony capitalism is being reduced --- either by lawmakers or by Objectivists?  If not, what have Objectivists taken from Rand, to empower us to be any more effective against crony capitalists than Eddie Willers? To my lights, George Soros is a crony capitalist par excellence. Do Objectivists worry at all about his ilk, or do they see Soros as some new kind of John Galt, paving our road to serfdom under the NWO?

ENDING CORRUPTION BY REPLACING RELIGION WITH LAW:  Yes, Rand saw that organized religion, when it confused public welfare with charity, tends to abet corruption and decline. But did she ever credit how religion has often furthered respect for the value of each life and for individual dignity, to include individual freedom of expression and enterprise? Did she apprehend that no mountain of legalism can preserve the glue of family and social decency as well as an assimilated respect for a common religious tradition? Did she apprehend that the kind of freedom that burgeoned in America may never have occurred, but for an assimilating, religious heritage? Given America's beginning, who believes we can preserve industry against crony capitalists, merely with cold, bloodless law? Can mere law and regulation tame crony capitalism, to turn it into Randian ideal capitalism? Well, what sort of regulation does crony capitalism support? Hint: The kind that its staff of lawyers and accountants can survive, but that its small competitors cannot. Crony capitalists tend to own the law!  They eat it for breakfast.

OBVIOUS RANDIAN FALLACIES:  To say, in the light of experience, that man is primarily a rational creature is silly.  To say that man should be primarily a rational creature is ridiculous.  (How much of wine, dance, sex, or fun is rational?  Should man aspire to the existence of a programmed computer?)  To say that the morality of free markets is interchangeable with rational self interest is wrong.  As everyone sees, we do not get free markets when the wealthy engage their self-interest; rather, we get crony capitalism.  To say that one ought not apply different rules to others than to oneself may have a short and nice ring, but it is adverse to reality.  Who does not apply different rules to others, depending not only on abilities, but also depending on whether it can be gotten away with, and whether there abides a fleeting advantage of the moment?  To implicate that one's present ego is one's supreme guide contradicts Rand's own life.  Did not Rand work hard to ensure that her philosophy would continue to be taught, long after the demise of her mortal ego?  Was it consistent with ego and reason when Ellis Wyatt blew up his oilfield, rather than surrender to government control ---  or was it an emotional release?

FALLACY OF EITHER/OR, WHOLE OR PART:  Socialist societies try to fashion moral precepts primarily in respect of the collective; individualist societies primarily in respect of individuals.  Somewhat analogously, science often tries to explicate phenomena either in respect of fields or in respect of particles, while morality often relates to a melding of the qualitative with the quantitative.  Likewise, a society, to cohere, must attend both to the self interests of its members and to the collective interests of their group.  The balance will unfold with feedback ---  not very closely following any preplanned decree by elites who claim to know best.  The competitive interaction of individual members and their associations will play back and forth, and the society will survive only if it can keep its balance.

 CAPSTONE:  Mere secular law --- as by regulation and penalties --- will not save a decent civilization that respects competing expressions of freedom within a marketplace.  People who would be free must assimilate a spirit of intolerance and shared sacrifice, at a religious level, inculcated in civic clubs and churches across the land, to forgo the sort of corrupting earmarks and crony capitalism that are sickening to decent society.

HIGHER VALUES OF EGOISTS:  Ironically, atheist Rand's quest for an objectivist society is itself in the vein of a religious quest. Certainly, it is a quest that extends well beyond her ego. What Randian would deny that Rand intended for her ideas to continue to contribute to our society long after her death?  The missing half in Rand's philosophy consists in her failure to recognize that there do abide values worthy of religious inculcation, and that religion in itself is not necessarily good or bad, but depends on the qualities and thoughts that are brought to it.  Until then, crony oligarchs will continue to burn down the house of freedom, while we remain distracted by dirty water in the fishbowl.

RELIGION:  Religion advances by inspiring new believers.  Subjugation minded control freaks and fear mongers, such as Crony Capitalists and Islamists, advance by making people fear for their fortunes or their lives.  To allow one's beliefs to be dictated out of fear, not belief, is not in respect of religion.  To allow mind control freaks to infest and overrun a country is not to tolerate freedom of religion, but its opposite.

CONSCIOUSNESS:  Strictly speaking, one does not find that which one never lost.  Yes, consciousness does identify from time to time with variously fluxing, transitory, and recurrent forms of expression of bodies, which do pass on.  The general field of consciousness, however, neither lives nor dies, but simply abides.  It has no need of any permanent El Dorado in the Sky.

TAXING WEALTH:  When we begin to explore why so many billionaires prefer progressive taxes on income to taxes on wealth, then we may begin to apprehend how a transition to a progressive consumption tax could help, by deterring the grossly disproportionate buying and selling of political influence, and by helping to preserve "genuine" capitalism --- so that the middle class is not wiped out and so we are not returned to the feudal control of corporate oligarchs, in lieu of land titled aristocrats.  The billionaires advocating for higher income taxes tend to be crony capitalists, par excellence, fortifying their undemocratic control behind what they hope to establish as their unreachable wealth.

Enlightened Selfishness

In death, all particular perspectives of consciousness must eventually become collateral damage from the unfolding purposes of the field of consciousness. Our material world is not the best of all possible; we are only its gardeners, always pursuing communion, and perhaps eventual merger, with a happier state of being.


In a moral sense, can "enlightened selfishness" reasonably subsume or substitute for altrusim?  In what sense can it be meaningful or fulfilling to prescribe or relate that one's highest moral duty is only to will or pursue that which one happens to intuit, believe, emote, or identify to be consistent with one's selfish interests?  To have capacity to make consistent sense, would not one need some secure fulcrum against which to test and define one's terms?  What does or should one mean, by:  reason, indifference, caring, meaning, fulfill, relate, one, self, moral, duty, will, identify, interest, unselfish, charity, humane?  How does one rationalize or make sense of any consideraton of the dependency of the reality of fields and particles (holisms, relationships, and things) upon the perspective of the viewer?

WFB recalled how Rand's work was devoid of respect for charity. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/78291.html.  However, is it even possible to be charitable, without serving one's self interest?  Perhaps even more startling, is it possible to serve one's self interest without being charitable?

Unless some genius devises a way, here and now, notwithstanding the relativity of space and time, to measure the breadth of our universe in its number of ultimate particles (anyone found a Higgs boson lately?), there does not appear to abide to quantitative measure any such a thing as an independent thing-in-itself, much less any such a thing as a definable personal "self."  Rather, our "selfness" seems necessarily bound up with feedback and relationships (as with other selves).

If there is no ultimate, quantitative, material particle, perhaps there abides an ultimate qualitative aspect (holon?), i.e. --- consciousness.  (Voltaire considered, "It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.")  Perhaps, the ultimate reconciler abides in a way that is beyond reconciliation, that allows IT to imagine stepping outside ITself, to avail fleeting illusions of wholes, parts, selves, relationships, perspectives, and unfolding interests.  In whatever way IT imbues or attaches ITself to any unfolding, measurable interest, that interest becomes ITs then and there moral pursuit.  In whatever way IT communicates and inspires other perspectives of ITself to join in such interest, that interest becomes a common pursuit of ITs thus joining perspectives.

At some meta level, such various perspectives of consciousness may intuit or empathize that they are each derivative of one and the same aspect, i.e., a quality of consciousness.  That meta capacity for empathetic appreciation (that we are each a perspective for pursuing the guiding, synchronizing, unfolding, changing interests of a common reconciler) would seem a basis for apprehending an innate and common purposefulness or morality, i.e.: --- "Be Empathetic."  If so, we have no choice but to make choices, just as we have no choice but to serve, in some capacity, a reconciling moral pursuit.

That said, there becomes availed to many of us a path for bringing such pursuit into a more consistent and coherent plane of conscious awareness.  For that, perhaps we are not more innately moral, but only more consciously participatory and aware of our moral path.  Thus, we sense more that is to be sought, and more that is to be avoided (or what we may deem "evil").  Those who arrive at such a plane, to give rein to their capacity to participate in moral decisions, intuit or feel a need to be availed with such degree of freedom and respect for reconciling purposefulness as to make such decisions their own voluntary, unforced, not artificially or governmentally required decisions.  Otherwise, the quality of human morality becomes reduced to the "morality" of a pre-programmed robot or zombie.

Bottom line:  Human morality necessitates (1) a degree of freedom, and (2) regard for a reconciling purposefulness.  It is in the second aspect that I consider Rand to have been deficient in appreciation.

Compare http://www.fsmitha.com/index.html.

Candide

BEST OF POSSIBLE WORLDS:  To my intuition, there is no "best consciousness," nor any best material world. As to that which consciousness may experience, if there abides a "best," it seems to abide as illusion, beyond our grasp in mere materialism. To while our time, we pursue fulfillment, such pursuit being signified in our material arts, with which we identify our interests, even to the point of imbuing our perspectives of consciousness, our very identities of selfhood. In our pursuits, our sense of satisfaction often depends more on orientation or attitude in respect of consciousness, than on mastery of materialism.

CONSCIOUNESS ABIDES:  To my sense, morality abides in the vein of a wish or a pursuit, advanced subject to a meta and innate empathy among perspectives of a unifying consciousness, not necessarily based in love, but based in some level of intuition that the consciousness of each of us is partaken of by one and the same holistic reconciler.  At some level, consciousness itself is not moral, but simply abides, not particular, but unifying, not in itself determining, but not predetermined.

DECENTLY CIVILIZING MORALITY:  Here, I am not concerned with morality in the sense of sins that darken souls (whatever souls may be). Rather, I am concerned with morality in the sense of how meaningfulnes may be guided to unfold to the expression and communication of innate empathies of decent or better civilization. To my sense, the reality of morality abides derivative of consciousness, and not as an objective or empirical materiality. Materialism only avails means for constructing and signing conventions, which come to be associated with our expressions of morality. It is as misdirected to think that morality abides only in the grace of saving Gaia as it is to think that God has ever been made limited solely to flesh, or, as Voltaire pierced, that this material world should be the best of all possible.

TOWARDS A BEST SYSTEM OF LAW:  Thus, ask:  If God has not shown able to avail a best possible world, why should we conceit to have potential to avail a best possible civilization?  While in law school, I became distracted from what the law is, towards a mirage of what I thought the law should be. Since, I have reconciled that the land of what the law should best be simply does not exist --- not even in potentiality.  One may pursue one's garden of good, but shall not, of one's own devices, image, much less achieve, the perfection of heaven.

HAPPINESS IS ONLY PURSUED:  Because humanity evolves, likewise, that which is fulfilling evolves. One may pursue happiness, and pursue decent, sustainable, surpassable civilization, and pursue meaningfulness and fulfillment for humanity. One's consciousness cannot very far know or foresee, beyond the unfolding dance of feedback with the present, that which would best fulfill it. I suspect: That which would best fulfill consciousness simply cannot be known to exist.  I suspect that "the best" one's consciousness can do is to avail intuition and insight enough to appreciate and facilitate unfolding opportunities for the experiencing of empathy. I suspect that "the best" does not consist in knowable or empirically material confabulations, but in a quality of empathetic apprehension of unfolding relationships among perspectives of consciousness.

BRIDGING MORALITY TO CIVILIZATION:  Apart from general deference in respect of an innate reconciler of consciousness, any meaningfulness --- in particular, material respects --- may not abide in a concept of "morality."  Instead, that which passes for "moral" may be bridged, in matters of social inculcation and assimilation, to conventional purposes (perhaps even instructed by agents of states, churches, and special interests as being identified with the unfolding wishes of God), such as the sustenance of that which facilitates a particular vision of decent civilization for the general self expression of its denizens.  A sociopath who deems himself the essence of his state, world, or club, to seek his special fulfillment, may incline to that which monopolizes his selfish interests, including, when necessary, skill to beguile associates.  One who seeks neither to beguile nor to be beguiled will leave the perfect moral reconciliation of the logic, interests, and materials of others -- if such reconciliation there be --- to God.

UTOPIANS AND ANARCHISTS:  Thus, I tire of communitarian, socialistic, utopian, fantasy, beguiling worlds of the admirers of Cloward, Piven, and Alinsky.  I deem it not bloody likely that El Dorado should arise from the ashes of anarchists.  I loathe Islamists and Anarchists, who always auger despair and hardship.  Absent a state of war, I see little point in trying to destroy (or "fundamentally change") an assimilated culture.  Rather, I prefer that each culture's propensities be guided towards the empathetically fulfilling.  My cautions are:  Enjoy the feedback dance;  make recommendations that are relevant to present unfolding context; don't fail to appreciate the present while searching for a non-existent particle or perfection of materialism; find qualities of meaning in unfolding communications of mutual empathies and interests; accept that the fluxing signposts for communicating our interests and empathies proceed in part via the cannibalization of organically organized materialism; respect a holistic reconciler of variously synchronizing, unfolding perspectives of consciousness; be humble enough to seek fulfillment without expecting that you must obtain it, and be wise enough to not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

CONDONING IDIOCY OF UTOPIANS, ISLAMISTS, AND ANARCHISTS: In effect, the illiberal NYT condones idiocy by blaming idiocy's expression of savagery on those who confront it. Apparently, the way to educate the idiotic, per the NYT, is to humor idiocy. A more rational person may think that the way to perpetuate, even embolden, idiocy is to humor it. Ask an historian: Has the tolerant humoring of idiocy by the Left given us a safer or better world? Does the sold out Left even know idiocy when it is on parade before it? When in the land of idiots, are we best advised to keep our heads down and our minds blank, to do as idiots do? Perhaps that depends on whether you intend the garden you cultivate to extend only to your illiberal self preservation versus a better state of being for your progeny. The NYT has become Cunegund, grown ugly from too much time in the Sun.

PRACTICAL PURSUITS:  That said, what do I sense, regarding those changes that should be pursued in respect of the general good?  I sense that decent society needs a guiding re-assimilation, whereby gangsterism is discredited --- both the confidence-gaming gangsterism of unionizing thugs and the gangsterism of oligarchic, crony, socially disloyal capitalists.  Decent society needs to assimilate respect regarding an urgent need for reasonably shared sacrifice.  Mores fundamental to decent society and the family unit need to be reestablished, so that less enforcement will be needed or allowed by those who control or most benefit from big government.

PRESENTLY AND URGENTLY NEEDED SHARED SACRIFICE:  To rein in crony capitalists and reduce their temptation and influence regarding the body politic, there needs to be a general redistribution of crony derived wealth.  In main, this could be accomplished with a progressive consumption tax.  To rein in the corrupt and ignorant panderers to crony capitalists, there needs to be a severe and proportionate reduction of government and social security pensions --- subject to means-test limits.

DISCREDITING THE UNIONISM OF LOOTING, CRONY CAPITALISTS:  Oligarchs tend easily to position themselves to benefit disproportionately from:  community resources; influence over politicians; capacity to buy votes from the corrupt and the ignorant; capacity to pull strings to weaken and divide the body politic; capacity to benefit by undermining or obliging the body politic; capacity to push clean up costs onto the body politic; capacity to enlist fellow thugs; capacity to evade prosecution; capacity to deplete the ocean, despoil the water, pollute the air, disquiet the peace, and to charge admission to contrived spectacles and contested controversies; and capacity to sell power to unscrupulous foreigners, to the development of a NWO, disloyal to country, disloyal to humanity.

THINK:  To accumulate such capacities and advantages, then to say "we earned our wealth," as a common man plows his field or invents his devices, is laughable, as a wolf pirouetting in a pink tutu.  In such light, ask:  Who is attempting a "fundamental change" of America, and why?  To attack only the gangsterism of union thugs is to abandon the field to sociopathic crony capitalists of no special loyalty to God, moral philosophy, country, or fellow human being.  America urgently needs political representation for ordinary Americans who wish neither to rule nor be ruled.  Otherwise, the ideal of America will soon meet its practical end.

Of Ayn Rand and The Donald

Ayn Rand cared so passionately (religiously?) about her philosophy, it made me wonder: Why did she care so much whether I care mainly or only about myself? Did she ever give mature consideration to that, or to the limits of "self"? For what reason should one aspire either to establish a best life for oneself, or to help establish a decent, sustainable civilization? I don't think godless Libertarians or Objectivists hold the answer to America's future. Review Alexis de Tocqueville, to reconsider the key role for religiously based moral values in the formation of American secuilar independence, with less need for insufferably detailed legal regulation.

By now, one may have expected technology, robots, and enlightenment to have brought humanity to a life of balanced ease and satisfaction for all, sort of like Brave New World or the deck in Wally. That hasn't happened, and it appears not likely to happen. So what has happened? Was early America only a fluke, brought on because Europeans with power were only too happy to encourage those of independent classes to emigrate?

It seems that a fundamental propensity among Europeans and the rest of the world has caught up with America, to swamp American independents with masses of the sort that tend to want little more than (a) to want very much that no one else should have more than them, and (b) to reward the few among the class of "farmers of humans" who enjoy making that happen. History appears determined to pull humanity back into the muck of feudalism. That is the end to which most of our institutions are adapting. There are obvious ways to forestall the slide, but none are being adopted. Every independent minded person knows that a nation, to be a nation, must enforce its borders. To remain independent, a nation must adopt an immigration policy that favors independent minded people. It must adopt a trade policy that does not rot out its industrial base or its energy independence. It must guard against the crushing, snowballing accumulation of legalism and elitist regulation of the masses. It must preserve respect for many of the moral and cultural standards under which America assimilated. It must respect the kind of standards that are essential to decent, sustainable civilization. It must advance the kind of infrastructure and standards that facilitate competitiveness with the rest of humanity.

A decent, sustainable nation must advance beyond merely distracting its citizenry with inefficiencies that reward only sell outs and cannibals, such as:  Regulators who occupy us with needless restrictions and reports, that hardly anyone reads or understands; educators who perform mainly as babysitters, raising the next generation of codependent minded sloths; taxes that discourage industry, except to export it; and health care that no one understands, that is filled with lawless indulgences.

Instead, America is overburdening its citizenry in every possible way. Our independents are overburdened with those who aspire only to be sloths, taken care of by government, and by those who aspire by power or wealth to be the new elites, aristocrats, or oligarchs --- to reduce everyone else to serfs and sloths. This is the tsunami of immigrants America has been distracted to allow to swamp the land.

It appears unlikely that what needs to be done will be done: Enforce the borders. End the income tax and the corporation tax. (They are affronts to industry, enterprise, and capitalism.) Keep death taxes. (They are essential to protect us from a rising class of new aristocrats.) Deploy sane tariffs and tax out of country transfers of money. (They are essential to keep oligarchs who own politicians from cannibalizing and selling out the country.) Establish two kinds of consumption taxes: A national sales tax, and a national consumption tax that is based, progressively, on each citizens yearly consumption. Purpose: Fund government and redistribute consumptive wealth (not income). (Reason: Protect the nation against snowballing advantages and abuses of new aristocrats.)  Eventually amend Constitution to establish single payer national health care safety net. (Reason: Common standards and basic infrastructure are essential. The cost of the present multitude of scam artists and regulatory details is simply unsustainable.  Meantime, use regional agreements among States to establish feasible health care programs.)

How likley is any program for preserving America against the NWO tsunami? About as likely as Donald Trump being elected President. Or as likely as American independents waking up and realizing that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are representing America or doing anything other than greasing or apologizing for our slide back to a new feudalism --- which will not be run under national borders, but under corporate baronies --- operating under a corrupt and loose hierarchy of kick backs and back scratchers.

Something about the human genome seems to make paramount the need of some to be powerful over others, and the need for others to be ruled. This appears to be a fundamental biological alignment. It is not something Independents can change or defend against merely by attempting to engage in reason with genetically inclined Aristocrats and Sloths.  Thus far, America's leaders are subjugating independent minded Americans, to push us back under the thumbs of Aristocrats, with the rest of the Sloths in earth's bucket.

RULES, INFORMATION, CAUSATION, IDENTITY, INTERACTING PARALLEL UNIVERSES, AND EVIDENCE

OF RULES, TRIVALENCY, MODELS, INFORMATION, CAUSATION, FIRST CAUSE, IDENTITY, GOD ABIDES, GOD CARES, PARALLEL UNIVERSES, META SYNCHRONICITY VS. MORTAL RELATIVITY, EVIDENCE

THE RULES: Why do reason and logic seem so powerful, even powerful enough to adduce that our material universe arose out of a singularity, if our universe is just a random, improbable bubble out of a void? May we adduce what is the character or nature of the void, or of the field that bubbled out of it? Is it worthwhile, meaningful, or usefully inspirational to refer to that holistic field as being partially, completely, or indeterminably material, immaterial, spiritual, conscious, or metaphysical? Is the essence of that field one of randomness, predetermination, or unfolding appreciation of consciousness (will?), as measured by a meta holism against a derivative and imaged sum of its parts? Must every worthwhile or meaningful concept regarding the essence of such field depend upon a conceptualizer’s purpose, point of view, and/or frame of reference?

Well, the logic, indeed, the very thoughts, that we share consist in whatever is prescribed and synchronized for being presented or expressed through us, in participation with a universe or field that we happen to share. From a quantitative point of view, the field is what it is. From a qualitative point of view, it tends to become what it quantitatively apprehends and qualitatively appreciates.

Regardless, why do so many of our relationships seem to unfold in such respect for logic, math, and reason? May it be that our situation seems coordinate with reason only because our situation is what the field that we happen to share is continuing to participate in prescribing for us?

To our reason, the field is easily considered to be "great." To the field itself, aside from its relationship with us and with its other particular points of reference, the field may simply abide as a beingness — while in its relationship with us, it ‘fields” — sort of like a noun-verb (or gerund). That is, as a noun changer, it apprehends its changing purposes in how it fields us. In that respect, its potential as “changeless changer” is what avails our meaningfulness, which is derivative of the relationship of feedback that is directly apprehended between the field as a holism and the field as it fluxes, forms, imbues, and identifies with its various and particular foci of reference (i.e., its qualitative points of consciousness and its quantitative particles of physical expression).

Given the imbuement of perspectives of consciousness, how else could they interrelate, communicate, or apprehend a common situation --- were they not synchronized in respect of the same adducible rules?

INHERENT TRIVALENCY OF CONCEPUALIZATIONS ABOUT THE RULES: Given a trivalence that is implicated in many of our explanatory models, how much of our bivalent (true-untrue) reasoning is based on vanity? Every attempt to explicate one's existential situation seems to be irreducible, except to various uncertain, inherently trinitarian relationships or analyses, such as relationships of: Wholes, parts, rules; Existence, representation, identity; Fields, particles, observers; Space, time, substance; Lines, points, grid leaps; Substance, representation, observer; Stored information, interactive information, radiating information; Reality, void, appearance; Reality, imagination, receding synthesis; Substance, immateriality, interface; Discrete, continuous, transcendent; Measurable, experienceable, metaphysical; Quantitative, qualitative, conscious; Determined, random, appreciated (chosen); Mortal consciousness, logic, experience; Rationality, rationalization, inexplicability; Incompleteness, inconsistency, incoherence; Exhaustive, mutually exclusive, fuzzy; Axiom, logic, entropic expansions of orbiting reasoning; East, west, going east by sailing west; Synchronous cause, sequential cause, associated artifact; Objective, subjective, emotive; Indifferent, caring, insane; Possible, manifest, unfolding; True, untrue, indeterminable; Known, unknown, unknowable; Believable, doubtful, trivial; Evidenced, intuitive, wishful; Purpose, perspective, context; Manifestation, conceptualization, interrelation; Essence, catalyst, transmission; Sensed, sensor, buffering medium; Focus, frame of reference, the beyond; Illusion, delusion, allusion; Information: Qualitative, quantitative, axiomatic; Information: holistic, particular, mediating; Space, time, information (whether stored as substance or as consciousness); Stored energy, stored information, consciousness; Disorganizing energy, organizing information, consensus of consciousness; Plausibility, practicality, perplexity; The trivial, the teasing, the transcendent; The here, the now, and the Twilight Zone, Etc.

We may seek meaning and fulfillment, but to expect to find them in mere conceptualizations, apart from the pursuit, seems vain.

TRIVALENCY, THE THREE BODY PROBLEM, AND HEISENBERG LIKE UNCERTAINTY: Our very space, time, and substance are trivalent in their relationships, each being defined, circularly, only in relative and relational respect of, and in terms of, the others, rather than as any fundament in itself. This poses something perhaps analogous to a three body problem: Insofar as our relations are trivalent, how -- in any complete, consistent, and coherent way -- can any merely bivalent-reasoning or equation-testing pierce the limits of the relationship of any two, while ignoring the relatively unwatched role of the other? How will a quantity or quality of precision of focus with respect to one not entail a loss of care of precision with respect to the other?  While any observer focuses on one point of view within a frame of reference, how can such observer simultaneously analyze or focus on the limits or role of any other, or on his effect on such other by choosing instead to focus on its leprechaun counterpart?  Given the cracked symmetry of a trivalent universe, without practical faith, to what extent should we trust bivalent logic?

INFORMATION: Information seems not to exist as a thing that can be discovered in itself, but rather as a potential that is subject to being associated with conscious experience, under rules, which depend for their determination upon a range of parameters, which depend for their determination upon how a perspective of consciousness happens to identify with and come within such information's relative field of influence. Information may even be converted to a perspective of consciousness, if it happens to become organized in a way that allows it to become identitied with an experience of a quality of apprehension in how other information that happens to come within its field of influence is unfolded to its experience. Thus, information may be experienced, processed, or stored in aspects of the quantitative, the qualitative, or the becoming.

CAUSATION: When considered deeply enough, Indifferent Gravity and Caring Appreciation (Will?), both, will seem commensurate with unpredictable apprehensions of perspectives of consciousness, unfolding along paths of the eternal present, tending to incline towards appreciations. Although appreciations may not be well considered as being entirely willed, neither are they predictable, and they do seem generally to affect how and where particles come to find expression within fields. Certainly, appreciations are important to meaningful consciousness. Indeed, if nothing that we can isolate, measure, or control is really causal, in itself, then both Gravity and Will --- depending upon one's purpose, perspective, and context --- may be as reasonably conceptualized as being causal (rather than merely artefactual) as anything else --- including the conscious apprehensions of participating, appreciative, and emotionally invested perspectives of appreciation.

FIRST CAUSE: Among meta notions, a notion of a first cause seems generally not helpful. Little of meaning, if any meaning at all, is accomplished by positing a first cause that created itself and everything else. However, other meta concepts may be helpful, inspirational, perhaps even, in part, fairly or rationally said to be evidenced.

There may be meaning and value in conceptualizing or modeling about an unpredictable (guiding?) dance of qualitatively appreciative feedback between a meta, parallel universe of a holism and our universe (being comprised of a sum of apparent particulars). So conceptualized, neither the holistic universe nor the universe of fluxing particulars would be the ultmate cause of the other, but would be a not-completely-predictable intuitor or appreciator of the other. The emotive quality of their relationship would be intuitive, rather than measurably predictable. Whatever the upshot, in our universe, we would rationalize the empirically measurable results as abiding consistent with whatever Rules we may discover that support their measuring. Yet, we would have no way to predictably control whatever the meta rules may prescribe or synchronize as the rules that we translate in practice.

We may recognize, in practice, that sequences of events synchronize, follow, and associate with various rules, however incomplete. We may recognize that our experiences of consciously synchronized interpretations lag a short time behind whatever combination of factors may have associated to avail each unfolding experience of mortal consciousness. That is, our conscious interpretations of our decisions, choices, and will are artifactual of decisions already made a split sequence before our brains have caught up to interpret them. Our brains are not the causes of our decisions, but the interpretors of them. So, how far back must we go, to get to "the cause" of each event that we interpret as unfolding before us?

Insofar as substance (matter and energy) is not its own cause, every standard model that tries to explain our conscious existence restricted only to terms of physically measurable substance is doomed to incompleteness, incoherence, and fluxing ambiguity. Each such model will necessarily resort to a catch all for ambiguities --- such as dark matter, dark energy, dark physicalism, meta branes, cosmological constants, etc.

Should we come to consider empirical or substantive "causation" to be only a practical concept, serviceable to particular purposes and contexts, but not serviceable to provide a unifying explication or standard model for how our universe functions?

IDENTITY: The only experience by which "I" receive information, in order to interpret a quality of consciousness, even self awareness, is feedback from information that is conveyed to me, apart from my self, which is organized into organic representations for the interpretation by or of my self. Similarly, perhaps the only experience by which God receives information, in order to interpret a quality of holistic awareness, is feedback from information that is conveyed to the holism, somehow apart from the holism, which is organized into synchronous representations for the interpretation of the holism. In that way, perhaps the holism is more than merely the sum of its parts, as in the special case of a meta class unto itself, that is not defined simply by adding its parts. In any case, it seems that consciousness --- whether particular or holistic --- may not be defined in respect of itself, but only in respect of the quality of its representational experience of events somehow interpreted as being apart from itself.

As particular perspectives, we do not deal directly with the field as a holism, but only through a veil of interpretations of representations of qualities and quantities. Regardless, the field (God?) requires that we experience ourselves as attempting to interpret a quality of sense about our situation, and, in feedback, the field is qualitatively affected by the quality of sense we make, however imperfect --- regardless of whether we interpret the field as being caring, despotic, or indifferent.

GOD ABIDES: In meta-parallel space-time, God abides, in quantitative power, a meta-split-sequence before the parallel universe that avails the quality of our local observation and interpretation. The "eternal present" is a flux that bridges parallel universes:  field and particle; whole and parts; quantitative and qualitative; holistic consciousness and perspectives of consciousness.

Our consciousness has no causal effect, directly upon material. Rather, the effect of our consciousness is qualitative, upon God, as the Changeless Changer, somehow appreciating a quality in our apprehensions, and then factoring to guide our further unfolding.

Our direct effect on God is not measurable, because it is qualitative, not quantitative. Our prayers, apprehensions, and appreciations only affect the quantitative in an indirect way, and not in any way by which we can in complete accuracy measure any non-trivial interface.

While we may take pride in our technology and its increasing complexity and accuracy, there is no humunculus or little man of will who is driving our brains and bodies and making all our decisions. Rather, our brains avail a quality of conscious interpretation to decisions that have already been made a split sequence previous.

And this does not apply only to complex brains, but to every sort of organized, electrical, magnetic, chemical, nuclear, energetic, nerve center. For example, a mass of plutonium does not by itself interpret, decide, or know when it will next emit a radioactive particle. Yet, somehow, at some level, rules prescribe each emission, and it is only a practical "answer" to "explain" the "cause" as "randomness" --- as if there abides a separate, independent, synchronizing, indifferent, immaterial, metaphysical random-effect-generator.

Rather, if a random effect generator does abide, it abides not as an independently causal entity, but rather in a trinitarian causal relationship, consisting of a relationship with two other aspects of our unified existence. Such Trinity consists of The Rules, the Holistic Field, and its variously expressed Particles. The upshot is Consciousness (or consciousness stored as information) --- unpredictable in its unfolding appreciations, both at holistic level and at a parallel level of particular perspectives.

FREE WILL:  To be concerned whether such consciousness enjoys a quality of "free will" is to distract oneself from what is meaningful. Whether or not consciousness enjoys free will, it has no means of knowing, it has no choice but to function as if it does have morally responsible will, and there is no way to know or to certainly predict that it does not. In any case, feedback from the apprehensions and moral appreciatons of consciousness has moral effect for our unfolding pursuits of meaningfulness.

As to the unfolding of that which is measurably quantitative (stored consciousness), it will always follow rules. No matter that our consciousness may apprehend, or that holistic consciousness may deign to guide changes or redirections:  Each redirection will not be sensed by us as a violation of any physical parameter of The Rules, because each such redirection will always conform to the degrees of freedom that are availed by the parameters and rules that govern the unfolding interacton of all that is interpreted as quantitative substance.

GOD CARES: Quantitatively, I cannot show that any appreciation of my consciousness associates with, or participates to effect any redirection of, the unfolding of matter, because my consciousness always occurs a split sequence after each quantitative, substantive directive has already issued. Insofar as my particular perspectives are identified with locally interpreted quantizations, I can never be privy to the quanticizing decisions of the Decider of our localisms. At most, I only intuit that the quality of my consciousness has a causal effect, through God, i.e., through the feedback of my apprehensions in respect of that which does interfunction to guide the unfolding. (For example, I notice that many fields do not collapse to effect particular expressions, absent feedback with a participating observer.)

Why may God tend, in an immeasurably, yet qualitative fashion, to favor appreciations, prayers, and sacrifices? Perhaps, to lead us to a higher quality of feedback? Would God then favor those who are dumbest, yet most passionate and brutal in their religious inclinations, or those most intuitive and receptive to a general feeling of empathy (Golden Rule)?

Intuitively, God wants us to evolve and progress, to intuit a field of holistic caring, and to inculcate that sense of caring among ourselves, as particular perspectives of that holistic consciousness. This may take beingness and cultures through a progression of forms, until enlightened culture is eventually brought forth.

The culture we experience as progressing on earth may have a counterpart, in respect of God's rules for holistic reconciliation. That is, the quality of our apprehensions may play a role in how heaven unfolds. Intuitively, the quality of cross that we bear is made meaningful or comprehensible in that it is also borne by God.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Each of our particular perspectives of consciousness is inferior to a synchronizing holism; each apprehends changing manifestations a split sequence after each change has already been decided, determined, and synchronized. The experience and quality of moral consciousness that identifies with, and melds with, our local substance (bodies and context) lags a split sequence behind the holism that may be conceptualized as participating in the synchronization of all that is locally measurable with respect to our bodies.

Rationally, God may be conceptualized as participating in the deciding of each quantitative synchronization a split sequence before our local consciousness apprehends. Thereafter, God would respond to the feedback that is the emotional quality of our subsequent apprehensions. For moral precepts, it may be worthwhile to consider the Holism as if it were the Decider of our Localisms, while we Localisms are perhaps an accumulative factor for such decisions. (Insofar as the Holism does not entirely predict the Localisms, and the Localisms cannot predict the Holism, may each attribute a synchronizing effect or will to the other?  Does God listen to us?)

To better appreciate meaning in the unfolding, eternally fluxing present of our universe, ought we to conceptualize or apprehend an ambiguous, unpredictable, qualitative interface between two parallel universes --- a universe of the whole (God?) and a universe of the sum of particulars (mortals?)? Intuitively, may a parallel universe of meta time synchronize with an unfoldment of information and decisions, in synchronously discrete units, each of which precedes our locally interpretive apprehensions? Perhaps, all information we receive is buffered, so that we can experience local interpretations that are varying, yet remain consistent with it.

META SYNCHRONICITY VS. MORTAL RELATIVITY: While sequences in changes in Information are preserved in synchronous and instantaneous quantum leaps, the EMR by which Information (stored or radiating forms of dormant consciousness?) is often represented and conveyed to each active observer or perspective of consciousness is interpreted by each perspective as riding EMR that is delayed, by curvature in space-tme context, to a speed that is kept to a standard relation, relative to each observer's locus.

Particles are not real in themselves, but are placeholders, condensed relative to perspectives of consciousness, for facilitating the storeage, transmission, and communication of information in a way that is synchronized throughout the universe we share. Each perspective of consciousness receives only such placeholding representations and particles of information as are consistent with the Rules that govern the transmission of information. No perspective of consciousness receives all information that is stored in the fields. However, each perspective interprets meaning out of such sequences of information as it receives and as it assesses that others are receiving.

At holistic level, Informational changes operate in meta sequences that are directly synchronized and instantaneous. However, in how such changes are received by local perspectives of consciousness, they are synchronously buffered, so that each perspective will apprehend a consistent and local interpretation.

THERE IS EVIDENCE: It is measurable, intuitive, and logical that decisions are first made at a meta synchronizing level, and are only thereafter adopted by local bodies (brains), with which consciousness is identitifed.  We become conscious of such decisions only after such decisions have already been made.  Thereafter, such decisions are manifested, marked, and stored in such objective, placeholding physicalisms as our brains. In that way, we experience and sense the placeholding of each new beginning of each new event, contemporaneously with each new perception of each new physical unfoldment.  (When I say "we" and "perception," I am referring to every level of perception at every locus within the space-time of our shared universe.) Every placeholding change in physicalism is associated with every change regarding the experience, potential experience, or unfoldment of information to a perspective of consciousenss at some level.  In that way, each discrete tic in the synchronization of space-time is its own "big bang" or miraculous singularity --- AND OUR EXPERIENCE AND PROOF OF SUCH META SYNCHRONIZATION IS UBIQUITOUS.

NOTE THAT A QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION IN ADVANCE OF A QUALITY OF LOCAL APPRECIATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT REGRESSIVE:  To note that the decisions of a brain are made in advance of the brain's own consciousness is to beg a question:  Is the brain's appreciation of its own consciousness made in advance?  Intuitively and perhaps definitionally, no.  Actual experience of a quality of consciousness would, by definition, be contemporaneously simultaneous with its actual experience.  While the quality of consciousness lags behind the quantitative sequence that avails it, it does not lag behind the quality of its own quality.  As to one's appraisal of the quality of one's consciousness, that is a different issue.  One's consciousness of such an appraisal would lag behind whatever the quantitative sequence that avails it.  Thus, if God somehow apprehends the quality of a mortal's consciousness, such apprehension by God either lags behind the mortal's experience, or is contemporaneous with it, but is not previous to it.  IMHO.

Regarding Thinking

Regarding Thinking:  Am “I” the active agent in the thinking process? Or is my body and perspective of consciousness so inextricably melded, organized, and leveraged as to constitute a receptacle or placeholder for storing impressions and feedback in such a way that my sensations, ideas, and choices are formulated, stored, and synchronized consistent with the context and focus of my general locus? Does my brain make thoughts, or does it function as a receptor (oracle?) for translating thoughts and wills that are beyond my merely local self, to bring them into apprehension in the general vicinity of my material locus? Does my brain receive thoughts and choices, which it is organized to translate as feedback, a split sequence after such thoughts and choices have already been accorded their direction? Does my I-ness (my consciousness of self identity) encompass much more than my materially measurable body and brain?


Among concepts about beingness, consider interrelating a concept of a smallest ultimate particle of physicalism with a concept of a most independent essence of consciousness: Intuitively, at a most fundamental and shared level, every Qualitative, interrelating perspective of consciousness that has capacity to be organized for leveraging higher levels of feedback, sensation, and awareness must directly sense a most fundamental aspect of that with which it has capacity for apprehending in Quantitative interrelations.

Some Changeless Changer (holistic conscious will?), in its Changeless capacity for experiencing qualitative aspects, must therewith relate directly to its capacity to express Changing, quantitative aspects. At some meta, reverential, and most fundamental level, quantitative aspects of substance must be sequentially and qualitatively experienced by immaterial consciousness — without need of a homunculus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus) or physical brain for representational mediation.

At the interface of such a level of experience, consciousness may experience itself as being qualitatively different from that of which it is quantitatively conscious, but the experience of such a difference would abide only by virtue of a meta capacity of the Changeless Changer. In whatever meta way that Changeless Changer may experience or guide its beingness — to experience aspects of itself as being qualitatively conscious versus quantitatively physical — that way is not amenable of being entirely reduced to the modeling or representation of any particular perspective or mortal. Nor is that way amenable of being swept aside by science as being superfluous among perspectives of shared consciousness — either as to morality or as to empathy. Scientists only delude themselves of their holy grail (Higgs boson?): an empirical or physical way for replacing or eliminating the apprehension of a shared field of immaterial consciousness (i.e., “God”).

I suspect the smallest ultimate particle of physicalism and the most independent essence of consciousness are but unfolding models or modes for storing or experiencing two sides of a single metaphysical coin, i.e., the Changeless Changer. Both models have their important uses, but, to alter a formulation by Einstein, physicalism without consciousness is lame, while consciousness without physicalism is blind. Without an identifiable changer, change makes no innate sense; without change, an identifiable changer conveys no meaning. A meta essence abides, at a level beyond empirical reduction or bivalent proof. Whether one may prefer to conceptualize or imagine that it does not abide has no effect, except within a world of epiphenomenal delusion. Innate and intuitive to consciousness, however one may rationalize or attempt to believe the Changeless Changer should either be ignored or celebrated, it will — always and everywhere — reconcile, abide, and avail perspectives for the expression of consciousness.

Lakos Hoax

The Sokal Hoax brought home how absurd it can be to suggest an approach to solving an assumed quantitative problem by resorting to mathematical analyses of concepts whose non-quantitative aspects are not first recast. That would be akin to trying to quantify how righteous is the sky. However, the Hoax could just as easily be inverted (a Lakos Hoax?), by suggesting that a given qualitative concern should be resolved by resorting strictly to non-qualitative apprehensions. This would be akin to deciding the extent to which a person (or witch?) was good or evil by counting the bubbles in any given quantity of her spit.

The more important concerns that we encounter will generally carry aspects both of the quantitative and the qualitative. We cannot resolve such concerns by resorting only to an appreciation of one or the other, the quantitative or the qualitative. We cannot scientifically prove a best ethics for how to advance science in every situation. We tend to presume our quantitative, math based science is rational, while our qualitative, moral based preferences are emotional. A moment's thought, however, tends to show the interface is much fuzzier than that. The quantitative is mixed with the qualitative because we tend to choose to measure that which draws our interest, and vice versa. An uneasy problem remains: How should we occupy ourselves in our given time, space and resources? Should we apply poetic license to whip ourselves into various states of caring, or should we (care so much about rational accuracy as to) remain indifferent? Is there some way to measure scales of "caring indifference?" It appears that emotional apprehensions will (and should?) always fuzz the paths of our technological unfoldments. Perhaps the last laugh will be on Sokal (or Lakos).

Unexpected feedback will always surprise a role for intuition, immateriality, poetry, inspiration, awe, and the source of each common beginning. In that, we share a moral connection with a unifying sponsor. To my lights, it tends to be love of semantics more than of truth, often born of frustration, that incites so many to prefer to say (for they cannot prove) that the Unifiying Sponsor is Some Thing not worthy of unifying reverence.