Published on 12, July, 2020
Causality has always been a fascinating subject to me. A fun thought exercise I like to do is trace back events that needed to happen for things in my life to exist as they do now, and see what's the most obscure thing that was vital to that series. That and the understanding of the probability of any given individual's existence has made me appreciate how intricate every single life is. We're all products of a specific series of events, consisting of a near incalculable number of nuances and distinctions that we might never hope to fully understand and appreciate.
I learned in recent years the concept of Laplace's Demon. A hypothetical being capable of observing every particle of the universe and its current momentum, if I recall it right. That such a being, with a sufficient intellect, could accurately predict the future if it could calculate where every particle has come from and in what it's present momentum is.
Thinking about these things has given me the opinion that chaos is just our inability to fully calculate the momentum of all of the contents of the universe. That every single thing that happens, could not have possibly happened any other way, because the series of events that lead to every moment were put in motion from the instant the universe was created.
I'm not an individual. I don't have free will. I don't make choices. Everything I do, I was always going to do exactly as it pans out. And any element of it that goes unpredictably is simply my lack of awareness of all the elements contributing to whatever comes out of it. But that even then, those elements were always guaranteed to come into play at that moment.
It might sound like I'm trying to absolve myself of responsibility for my decisions. But if I'm right, then I was always going to come to these conclusions, so who's to say what's right and wrong?
But in all things I try to keep an open mind. What do you all think?
Why the gnomic hints? Unless you are espousing a conspiracy theory that deep down you think is nonsense, or feel you might be ridiculed over. It is also possible that you fear that 'they' might get you.
Left and right in essence only cover economic viewpoints, between extremes of 'command economy with equalised wealth distribution' and 'untrammelled capitalism and every man for himself'. The other major political axis is social, and is between authoritarian and libertarian extremes. For example, Hitler was off-scale authoritarian, but economically he was relatively centrist in his views.
I Sperg said:I have provided you with an argument but I am not required to provide you with the education required to assess it.
You have actually provided me with nothing.
I Sperg said:I've had well over a half century of watching left/right politics and as some wit said elsewhere "If voting made any difference, they would not allow us to do it".
Me too and no!
Just no to this nonsense.
I have provided you with an argument but I am not required to provide you with the education required to assess it.
The information, backed up by copious evidence is there for you to discover, if you choose to invest the work.
Allow yourself at least five years (I needed 20, but I'm dim and slow and sometimes over methodical) to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of "fake news".
Everybody who does this, seems to come to the same outrageous conclusions, which is what gives me the "heebie jeebies".
To quote the late Gonzalo Lira, "understand what's going on".
Who are these people?
Who are the masters?
Excellent questions! You'll be so surprised if you go and find out the answer for yourself. Then you'll also know why no one in their right mind (or even semi right, occasionally, like myself) who knows would answer that question.
Shouting "Wake Up!!" was rude and impatient of me, and I should not do that, but I've had well over a half century of watching left/right politics and as some wit said elsewhere "If voting made any difference, they would not allow us to do it".
Oh. . .if only it were that simple and explicit and transparent Baked! It is not, based on overwhelming evidence.
I Sperg said: Advertising, being a perfect example of the phenomenon. Where is our free will there?
It's called AdBlock. You have the free will to install it on Chrome and remove the ads. Comes in handy, give it a whirl.
Total nonsense. You're taking the usual "they're all the same" rote stance and it's that vacuous mindset that's led to the catastrophes over the last 13 years. That is a very lazy mindset you've got and it's, frankly, quite embarrassing you're prophesying yourself to be adroit.
"The left / right paradigm is clearly an illusion, if you watch it long enough as a dispassionate observer."
This is a very obtuse stance I see rolled out by centrists, usually.
If you want to view the political spectrum as an "illusion", fine, but the ideologies have real world implications. And you can see the results of ultra-conservative rule vs left rule.
I didn't even like Tony Blair, but under his government we had affordable rents and no mass poverty crisis. The Tories have been catastrophic, which you're waving off in caustic fashion as it seems to just annoy your sense of intellectual ego.
As you so revealingly put it... FFS WAKE UP.
I like to refer to the 32nd hexagram of the iching, second line moving, on this question.
From the Thomas Cleary translation:
32nd hexagram, Constancy“When strength is balanced and one deeply understands the firing process, masters the ability to adjust to changes, is constant in timing rather than by minding, constant in the Path rather than in things, constancy being without form or trace. This is constancy in which regret disappears.•hexagram 32 then changes, with the 2nd line moving, to hexagram 62 “Predominance of the small” which says“The call of a flying bird should not rise but descend. This is very auspicious.
We'll be ruled by bumbling and compromised fools which ever of your "parties" gets in.
I'm already used to that thank you, I've seen a lot of it.
Number said: I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. I believe that a person once said that!?
George Benson: The Greatest Love of All.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw26pG7u5ak
I Sperg said: NAZI is a NATIONAL SOCIALIST there is still Stalin and Pol Pot and other shining beacons of socialist leadership & sucess to cause plenty of cognitive dissonance with the left/right paradigm.
That the Nazi Party were socialists in any meaningful way is a canard of the extreme right wing. I believe that Krupp, Messerschmidt, Porsche etc. were all capitalist companies operating throughout the years of Nazi power, making money from supplying the German military.
Stalin and Pol Pot were deranged megalomaniac mass murderers, their professed political ideology is as incidental as Tojo's Buddhism or Vlad Dracula's professed Christianity.
I Sperg said:The left / right paradigm is clearly an illusion, if you watch it long enough as a dispassionate observer. It bears repeating, both sides work for the same masters.
The left / right paradigm is clearly an illusion, if you watch it long enough as a dispassionate observer.
It bears repeating, both sides work for the same masters.
I Sperg said:It sure isn't any of the clowns that you "vote" into power, those are just carefully compromised puppets who do exactly as they are told by the people who selected and groomed them for their positions.
I Sperg said:FFS, WAKE UP!!!
I promise to wake up if you explain yourself and stop talking in riddles.
The right-wing stance is zero accountability at this point. The left is to blame (and immigrants). It's not the most convincing argument, I'm afraid, in the face of 13 years of extreme incompetence under Tory rule. We will be waving goodbye to the Tories at the next general election, so get used to the idea.
What exactly has happened under this hard-right Tory rule? I'll break it down into a succinct, fact-based reality check (and I'm leaving a lot off this list to be polite):
- 13 years of austerity- A mass poverty crisis (the UN toured the country in 2019 for two weeks to determine the extent of the extreme poverty)- The near destruction of the NHS- Food bank use sky rocketing- Hate crimes sky rocketing- Crime rates sky rocketing (Theresa May removed 21,000 police officers off the streets as part of yet more Tory budget cuts)- 800+ libraries have shut- Local councils are on the brink of bankruptcy- Schools are collapsing on students- PM after PM in a totally undemocratic process- Truss almost collapsing the entire economy with her ultra-Conservative economic plan
And throughout all of the above? The right-wing stance is zero accountability. The left is to blame (and immigrants). It's not the most convincing argument, I'm afraid.
I tend to agree, we only have free will within severly constrained limits. We see and hear in limited frequency ranges and our minds construct realities from it, which we only revise when forced to. We have choices lilmited by our knowledge and experience, we cannot choose something we are not aware of. Our brain chemistry can change or we can suffer injuies which completely change our perceptions.
However, we cannot function unless we act as if we do have free will.
People have free will but most people are stupid and ill informed. Therefore it's an uphill battle to achieve anything good in this life. The good people like Jesus tend to die young and the people who follow the herd live long. But one has to believe there is something beyond this life, that people like Jesus are the right ones.
The Reformed Churches talk about 'The Book of Names' in Revelation.
However, taken to extremes the Augustinian view on the lack of free will means that salvation is preordained, you will either be saved or not. This results in the idea that doing good or evil deeds during your life has no effect, which is quite a dangerous concept.
Free will is fallible.
That's why Christians require salvation.
You are in good company, St. Augustine of Hippo believed much the same. Personally, I prefer the heretical viewpoint espoused by Pelagius, a Romano-British monk, who rejected 'original sin' and supported 'free will'.