theloobrush

[theloobrush]

Tao and the art of lavatory maintenance

I have found myself leaning toward atheism again. And by atheism, I mean not believing in 'God', and by 'God' I mean a supreme being with a mind and will that ultimately controls what happens in the universe. There are many people who claim to believe in 'God' who deny that their supreme being has a mind, will or any form of self conscious personhood. I think if you deny all personal qualities to God, then you don't believe in 'God'. Which is why Spinoza is surely an atheist because his God has no personal qualities or intentional states of mind.

Now, I have also long struggled with the idea of God, because on the one hand I want to believe in an eternal something from which the universe has evolved or developed in some way, but if God is a personality, then this creates far too many intellectual problems. We have gone through them before: the problem of why God is silent and also why God does not intervene to stop evil. I have also done a deep dive into the question of how a non physical, disembodied, spatially infinite being could even have a functioning mind or the ability to act or experience. And I have come up with some speculative ideas about the 'psychology' of God. Is anyone convinced? I find I can't sustain such a belief. Indeed I don't have any of the kind of confidence in the truth of these ideas that warrants the term 'belief'.

It is I think true that the only 'God' worth worshipping is one who ultimately loves and cares for me and will 'save' me and my loved ones from death. However I am not at all convinced such a person God exists. I no longer think such a reality is even probable given what we know about the world. I'm not sure the idea is even coherent if a 'personal' God must also do certain philosophical heavy lifting and be eternal, unchanging, not affected by time, perfectly good, omnipotent and omnipresent while lacking any physical form or parts. My loss of faith in religion has forced me to come to terms with, amongst other things, with my own mortality.

I suppose my default spiritual position remains a love of nature in its myriad variety of manifestations. I continue to intuit the 'unity' of nature and believe in an underlying 'essence' or 'force' that can give rise to both physical and mental qualities - reducible to spatial extension and self aware thought. The only concept from an actual religion that comes close to this object of veneration is 'The Tao', known as the 'The Way', a chinese philosophical and mystical concept that sees the cosmos subject to underlying rhythms that we need to live in tune with. The Neo Platonist 'One' or absolute unity informs my idea of the essential and eternal essence of being. I do not however deny the 'reality' of the physical world and I do not see it as an 'illusion' or 'evil' or something we must strive to escape from.

I think there have been mystics and saints down the ages who have a 'cosmic consciousness' of the unity of all creation and of all humanity that leads them to strive for mankind's release from bondage to ego and illusion, and to promote love and justice.

The last remaining shred of my former 'religiosity' is that I somehow still believe there is a transcendental state of consciousness where we can mind-merge with the eternal essence of things. Does that mean the eternal essence of all things is itself 'conscious' in some sense? This follows, but not as a disembodied ego-centred personality. It has occurred to me that my view could be labelled 'panpsychic pantheism'.

And what about religious practice? I find meditation and practising mindfulness is beneficial. Also getting up close and personal with wild nature I find very relaxing and inspiring. Occasionally I admit I find myself wanting to 'worship' , to 'give thanks' and to make an offering to the ultimate source of 'All'. But am I being drawn to a real cosmic person or am I just connecting to an archetype of my 'Higher Self' imagined as a 'divine Father or 'Mother'?

[theloobrush]

The last 50 years...Part 1

Next week, I will turn 50 years old. I have lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s, naughties and the 2010s. I hope to live through the 2020s just started, but who knows what vagaries of fate and happenstance shall befall me. I write during a pandemic that has killed tens of thousands in the UK and to which I may yet succumb. Happy days.

Before it is too late, I must examine the whole of my life and consider whether it has been a life well spent or not? My conclusion is 'not'. At best I'm a chronic underacheiver who has wasted much of his life's energies on countless frivilous projects and interests which came to nothing. And yet, I cannot remember any obvious cross roads in my life where I could have chosen a different course - knowing what I knew at the time. Knowing what I know now, of course I would have done some things differently, but I must insist, against my critics, that no grand alternatives ever appeared to me. Indeed thinking about it, I still can't pinpoint where exactly I went wrong. You may be suprised that I lack regret, because to be regretful assumes another option was available. One benefit of being 50 is that I really know myself and my limitations. Only a thorough personality overhall could have set me on a different course.

I have not lived by noble goals. All my life I have desired comfort, security and a special kind of success which has ever eluded me. I craved 'public recognition' and 'fame'. Most of all I wanted to be on the telly. I especially wanted to be one of those talking head 'experts' regularly consulted in some matter of great national importance. I wanted a name for myself that would ring down the ages, long after I am dead and gone. My greatest dread was to live as a numpty nobody. And yet, that is what I am.

I didn't want to be rich, but I expected to be at least as well off as my parents at the same stage in life. I expected a middle class life. That has not happenned. My income is well below the national average, for health reasons my wife works very limited hours part time. There is no obvious route to significantly more income from the place I have come to. And just now, our whole economy falls apart. The only positive is I have relative job security.

I have no idea, and still have no idea, what alternative career would have suited me to provide the prosperous life style I had imagined I deserved as my birth right. You see my parents and primary school teachers drummed into me the notion that I was 'clever'. My life's course shows I am far from clever. In my 20s I drifted from one poorly paid temporary job to another, eventually returning to college. In my late 30s and early 40s I had apparently reached a career pinnacle when I qualified as a solicitor. But I managed years of study without any clear conviction as to what I wanted to do as a solicitor. I only ever wanted the social kudos and the status of qualifiying, to prove my intellectual mettle to all and sundry. Once I qualified, I found I hated being at the behest of unreasonable clients and barely coped with the mountains of paperwork. Moreover I felt a complete 'imposter' in the role, always at the very edge of my competence, faking and suppressing my true feelings and my more eccentric nature. I soon felt caged and oppressed by the demands of professional life, especially the reasonable insistence upon emotional detachment and impartiality. I especially disliked showing false empathy to those I cared nothing about.

Yet, I never deliberately gave up lawyering. What idiot would give up a good salary when you have a family to support? Instead the job gave me up. Years of being a round peg in a square hole brought me such mental stress and distress. Eventually this manifested as ill health and I became a liability to my employer. I'd come to the end of my rope and was duly hung out to dry. It was horrible but logical for my employer to seek to terminate me on ground of incapacity, while being ever so friendly about it. Today I still feel alternately bitter and also liberated by my career 'crash'.

[theloobrush]

Death and Ego

I recently watched an online video by american Neuro Scientist and ‘public atheist’ Sam Harris. He was addressing an audience about the atheist’s response to death, and one of the issues he addressed was whether atheism could offer any consolation. He argued of course that there was no rational basis to believe in our continued mental life after physical death, and every reason to believe that our self conscious existence ends for ever when our body dies. As to the problem of how we can psychologically come to terms with this reality, Harris offered a form of modern stoicism and the cultivation of a sense of living in the present, in the ‘now’. He even led his audience in a very short ‘mindfulness’ meditation using breathing techniques. He freely admitted that atheism could not compete with the (fake) consolations offered by religion. Religion he said was all about the denial of death. Every religion postulates an afterlife, indeed this is the main attraction for its followers. I think I agree.

The prospect that death was the end used to terrify and depress me and drove me years ago to seek out  more personal spiritual and mystical experiences instead of the inherited propositional faith of my childhood. For decades I certainly needed religion  because of my fear of death. Religion was for me, as it is for many (most?) people the ultimate form of insurance. 

Today, I still have no confidence there is an afterlife. I think that rationally it is very unlikely, despite our deeply intuitive sense of our own immortality, which intuitive sense Harris  would suggest is an illusion accidentally produced by our mental processes. I know that our minds are so obviously integrated with our bodies that disembodied existence seems impossible to conceive of once we have examined the logic of what disembodiment would involve.  While some believe that our consciousness is eternal, the mere fact we become unconscious every night during deep sleep confirms to my satisfaction that mind is subordinate to and generated by bodily and brain processes. 

While watching that Sam Harris talk,  I already knew all the atheist/humanist arguments, and rationally agreed with them,  but his lucid and systematic presentation of the conclusions I had myself come to, reached much deeper than my mental assent, and now left me feeling very frightened and ‘shaken’. I guess deep inside my head I held out a strong afterlife hope after all, and Harris was knocking the last of these props away by addressing my fear directly. 

After initially recoiling from what Sam Harris said, I knew that to retreat from the reality of death into clinging to more spiritual mumbo jumbo was choosing to prefer delusion and to still live in the ‘matrix’ of collective falsehood.  Then when I really contemplated the prospect of my ego and my awareness becoming extinct, it dawned on me that there was feeling of liberation in being ego-less. I  had feared loss of my ego-self. But it is possible to not  invest importance in this self at all. The Ego is very much tied up with our own self evaluation and I had always thought that a strong feeling of selfhood and individuality was the key to confidence and worldly success. Now it occurred to me that it was my psychological achilles’ heel, the source not of my confidence but of my weakness, vulnerability and continual anxiety. Certainly death is at the apex of all other fears, and all other fears can be said to be forms of fear of death. 

But has accepting that death will be the end of my self conscious existence allowed me to be ‘free’ of religion?. I have certainly junked the ‘insurance policy’ and put no store by the onerous policy terms and exclusions.  However the moment I accepted the cosmic insignificance and finite nature of my ego-self, I had a new epiphany of ‘The All’. My mental focus changed from introspection because it was pointless, to extrospection instead. I saw the universe anew and it was luminous again with its own significance and meaning.  Yes I am but  one brief fluctuation of matter-energy in the universe that is soon to dissipate and a fleeting ripple or eddy in the river of time. I am also simultaneously one link in a chain of cause and effect connecting all the past with all the future. I am nothing, yet, I’m part of everything.  And in so far that religion is not just a retreat into comforting delusions, but an awareness of our relationship to the absolute, no, my spiritual life has not disappeared.

[theloobrush]

Communitarianism is not some simple 'middle way' created by triangulating ones social policies between those of the left and right and finding some happy compromise. Communitarianism is distinct from the philosophy of political liberalism accepted by the majority of people on both the left and right of politics. Communitarianism rejects both the cult of individual freedom without responsibility and individual money making without regard to the consequences for the rest of society. The communitarian sees social interaction as best understood in terms of reciprocity and mutuality of obligation. Freedom for the communitarian is not an alloyed good or goal in itself and not mere freedom from control, but a freedom to live a good life. The communitarian seeks to identify the good life and is happy to argue for a hierarchy of values that any close inspection reveals we all share. Like the socialist the communitarian believes in the need for social co-operation. LIke the traditional conservative the communitarian believes that society evolves organically and that our most enduring insitutions serve important social functions. My kind of communitarian argues that strong communities where people care for each other are built around not just shared values, but shared language, traditions, and history. A functioning community requires a high levels of mutual trust. It is necessarily defined by who is a member and who is not, there must be sense of group purpose and group loyalty, yet the community must be permeable to outside influence and able to change, and adapt. The communitarian does not like Empires or continent wide political unions. Communitarinism is best embodied in small populations, municipalities and the Polis and always seeks to de-centralise power and influence away from elites to the smallest competent political unit.

#Youtube

[theloobrush]

The Immortality project. Part 1.

In the famous final scene of Monty Python's Life of Brian, the eponymous Brian is being crucified with a bunch of others. While hanging from his own cross, Eric Idle's character tells Brian to cheer up, before singing 'Always look on the Bright Side of Life', with all the crucified ensemble whistling the tune. After lyrically pointing out life is, a 'piece of shit', 'absurd' and  something that has to be laughed at, Idle consoles the audience "You know, you come from nothing, you're going back to nothing, so what do you lose? Nothing!"

This is an appropriate response to our existence if there is no God or hereafter. Even the most faith driven person secretly suspects and fears there is no hope. On any empirical assessment, life does seem meaningless in the final analysis. There's no ultimate point in good or the bad. Random crap happens to all. No obvious plan, no purpose, no proof of a happy destination. Whether we spend our lives on self gratification or self improvement, when we're dead there is no more self. So why bother?

I was in my mid twenties when I first deeply reflected on my mortality. I had already de facto abandoned my childhood religious faith by that time. The further context was that I had left university a year or two before, had only been able to find poorly paid employment, and felt 'lost' and  uncertain about the future. On top of this a number of friends of the family and relatives had died recently. In the space of about six months I'd been a coffin bearer at three funerals. Each time, I remember feeling and hearing the (literal) dead weight of the body shift in the coffin as I helped carry it to the graveside. I also noted that however polished and ornate the top and sides of the coffin were, close up the bottom was thin and cheap looking solid cardboard or ply wood, presumably to aid decomposition. I couldn't help realising that one day the lifeless body in the coffin would belong to 'me' except there would be no 'me' just a corpse. Ruminating about this, I imagined the subjective experience of death being like falling into dreamless sleep and never waking. Imagine that. And I did. Never having any thoughts about myself or anything else. Every previous thought, memory, feeling, love, desire, and a  life time’s collected experience extinguished. I suddenly grasped absolute annihilation of self awareness and identity. And it terrified me.

In the months following I fell into a deep reactive depression, much of which was preoccupied with the dread of non existence and its inescapability. Then one day I was sitting alone in my parent's living room, feeling particularly low, when I suddenly paid attention, for no particular reason, to a pretty potted house plant on top of the telly (someone's gift to my parents) I can't remember the type of plant, only that my eyes were drawn to the intricate beauty of the leaves and petals which suddenly developed a kind of soft focus luminosity until I stared at the plant very keenly, closely examining every single detail. I now recognise this was an accidental form of 'mindfulness meditation' but for the first time in my life I had something like a 'mystical experience'. Afterwards I felt a peace and truly, for a time, ‘at one’, with the universe.

That experience, and others that I have sought and encountered eventually involved me in alternative and  heterodox spiritual paths.

I have long since analysed and refined my understanding of what the original experience was. Yes it was result of my circumstances, and perhaps an imbalance of neurochemicals. It may be simply the self-defensive artefact of a despairing mind in full flight from the Life of Brian's nihilism. It may be a psychological con trick  played by my unconscious intended to be self soothing. I know all the arguments. Yet today, even as I logically and dispassionately conclude  it is an unavoidable intellectual fact that we're simply 'nothing going back to nothing', in the deepest part of me I simultaneously know -  and not rationally - this is not the end of the story. There is an  ultimate reality, the Eternal and the Good.

Tat Tvam Asi.

[theloobrush]

The clash of democracy, liberty and social goals.

 I want to live in a democracy because bad governments can be replaced through a peaceful process. I  also want to live in a democracy as decision makers are required to consult the public and hopefully they make better decisions as a result, and which suit the needs of the whole community not just some section of it.

On reflection these two principle arguments for democracy seem naive when reflecting upon how politics actually works.

Sometimes life and liberty needs to be protected from the majority.

What if people vote purely selfishly or only according to interest groups, class, even religion and ethnicity? And the biggest argument against democracy as we know it -  decision making by majority vote -  is this: the majority may be simply wrong. A large proportion of the population may be swayed by a demagogue or foolish ideology. Logically truth and righteousness might be on the side of the few.

Of course democracy is better than tyranny, and moderns usually assume democracy prevents tyranny arising (Plato argued in  his Republic that it leads to tyranny)  

Perhaps liberty should be more valued than a democracy that relies on majority decision making rather than consensus. An absolutist view of liberty is to live exactly as I choose. Yet this liberty will come at the expense of the liberty of others unless I  harm no one directly and indirectly, and make no demands on my neighbour whatsoever. This is impossible in practice.

Our mere existing impacts others, and moreover we need co-operation with our neighbours in order to thrive. So are there circumstances in which people need to be compelled not only to behave well, but also to co-operate to achieve collectively what individuals cannot achieve alone? Yes, to put into place that which wouldn't exist otherwise and is deemed 'good' for the whole community. We wouldn’t have roads, train lines, water and electricity supplies and anything other than barter commerce, if no one had been compelled to accept some common rules, and common authority acting on behalf of the community.

Democracy legitimates the restrictions on liberty to achieve positive social goals because we all get an equal say over what they are.  Goals are identified by political participation and voting e.g. if a tax funded national health service has the support of a majority, a minority who dissent are required to go along with this, or at least pay the higher taxes that result. Here though they can at least benefit from the health service like everyone else. 

Tax is the most common form of community compulsion. It could be seen as a form of charge to individuals for their benefit of the community acquired goods and services. This argument only justifies a poll tax and becomes problematic if the intention of tax policy is more equalizing or is for redistribution of wealth. More reasonably, it could be argued that no one makes wealth without the help of their community. So perhaps tax is justified as a return, refund or social rent giving back to the community a proportionate dividend for enabling the wealth creation in the first place.

Positive community goals are increasingly contested because our legislators long ago harvested the low hanging fruit of community goals and goods. Consensus was possible when the community just wanted a justice system, roads or schools. Everyone could see the benefit and enjoy this improvement to society. But tax is now raised to fund particular sectional needs. Redistributive policies can seem punitive and driven by envy, well in excess of a reasonable payment for community support and resources. The liberty to employ the fruit of our labour suffers, quite a serious blow to personal freedom.  Today  parts of the community and sectional interests present endless ‘wish lists’ via political factions seeking pork barrel tax bribes for their votes or  perhaps a party has some utopian goal of equality of outcome. Philosophically it seems attempts at consensus building are being abandoned, in favour of thin majorities and bipartisan 'power grabs'. This means there is less and less moral justification for compelling the individual to comply with social goals. One reaction is libertarianism;  in any event cynicism toward society and social goals grows perniciously.

[theloobrush]

Citizenship: accident or choice?

Should Citizenship be automatic for people born in this country, i.e. within the territorial borders? Or should it be something we freely choose?

I'm going to propose that merely being born in the country is not enough, and that instead everyone should go through a naturalisation process from the age of majority. I'd argue that participation in nationhood should be an act of will and by deliberate consent.

This would mean that at age 18 or later, a young person of sound mind and able to consent would attend a public ceremony ( in, say, a public registry office or town hall) to swear an oath of loyalty to the constitution, to defend the country from internal and external enemies and to seek the common good (the latter  deliberately left undefined).

Other conditions could be attached: participation in the ceremony could require the candidate first pass a qualification confirming basic literacy and numeracy, and perhaps complete a period of national/community service. Maybe the process should also require the individual's sponsorship by two existing citizens of good repute (e.g. a parent or other relatives)

Now you may just like the idea of a ceremony. So, yes, a formal ceremony might be designed to mark the otherwise automatic progression of children to citizenship at the age of majority. But I'm going rather further....I’m saying the ceremony becomes the means by which citizenship is confirmed. Rather like being 'baptised' (a traditional sacrament) or baptised then later 'confirmed' is a prerequisite to be a member of some churches.

This proposal opens up a can of worms of course. What rights are to be acquired by becoming a citizen in this way and the corollary, what rights are to denied if a person does not go through with the ceremony?

Should political rights - the right to vote, or maybe only the right to stand as a candidate - be denied to non-citizens? Should the right to certain community benefits also depend on citizenship?

What I'm not suggesting: I've always believed non-citizen residents should have the full protection of the law for their person and their personal property (with the exception of foreign born individuals convicted of serious crimes who should be routinely deported )

It is possible that some individuals would refuse to take part in the citizen making process for personal or even ideological reasons. They could also delay participation indefinitely until they were ready. But shouldn't they be allowed to opt out completely? I think so. People are allowed to not vote, or not register to vote, so I see no problem with them being allowed to opt out of a process - the citizenship ceremony - which determines whether they have a right to vote in the first place.

[theloobrush]

Below the surface

What if our mind can contain every kind of consciousness and we continually fluctuate between these states of mind?

I suggest we alternate between our regular waking consciousness, dream states, the personal and collective human unconsciousness, while still deeper within our psyche lurks our animal and vegative awareness.

At the other end of the scale we may seek to attain 'cosmic consciousness'.

[theloobrush]

The road to assimilation

In my last post I characterised 'Britishness', largely in terms of a cluster of strong attachments. I defined a patriot as someone who's love of their country and its traditional culture exceeds their love of any other country or culture.

I want a country of such patriots. I don't think there is any desirable alternative if we wish to maintain social peace and all work together for the common good. I desire that citizens of this country reflexively feel a strong attachment to our nation and its heritage. It should be obvious that this degree of attachment is not mere intellectual assent and that it also cannot be forced. It is also plain that anyone harbouring great resentment against this country and its culture cannot be a patriot.

So what of those who have moved to the UK from other lands to settle here permanently? They are no blank slate. The foreigner who settles here represents an injection of a foreign culture. The migrant has come to the country steeped in their own ethnic ways and values with understandable loyalties to interests outside the UK. Yet it is entirely reasonable to expect them to gradually assimilate to the super-majority culture. Does anyone really believe it is good for Britain to become balkanized into a  patchwork of different cultures with very different values? How does social cohesion survive in these circumstances?

The assimilation of foreigners is obstructed by any strong encouragement to the migrant to largely define themselves by their non-native culture. It is also obstructed by any attempt to ban harmless elements of the non native culture and to impose our culture. Assimilation is obstructed by a fundamentalist attachment to a religion not of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Assimilation is encouraged by open interfaith dialogue and by inter-marriage with the indigenous population; assimilation is encouraged by access to educational success, offering equal opportunities and treating every migrant well, but not by singling minorities out for positive discrimination. Assimilation is obstructed by shunning, and mistreatment, and any drift toward spatial segregation and ghettoization. Assimilation is encouraged by awareness of the disadvantages faced by new comers; it is also encouraged by being 'colour blind'. Assimilation is encouraged by a transparent, formal and public process whereby the foreigner chooses to become a citizen and swears appropriate oaths of loyalty to their country - but only when they are ready.

There will be foreign residents who do not wish to settle permanently or have yet to make up their mind. For citizenship to mean something, they cannot initially be accorded all the rights of citizens.

Foreign residents should not be expected to serve in the armed services in the UK, serve as a juror, a police officer or a senior civil servant. They should not have the right to vote in our democratic processes but they should have the full protection of the law and access to lawyers and the courts; in business they should not be sole company directors. They should be able to own personal property but not hold extensive freehold land in excess of their personal needs; they should not receive the full range of non-contributory benefits available to citizens; those who came to the country since the age of criminal responsibility should face deportation if they commit significant offences or are otherwise deemed a security risk. 

Citizenship by naturalisation should be available to any foreign resident of good standing, once they have lived almost continuously in the country for a substantial period, of at least 10 years. It is essential the person seeking citizenship is trustworthy and not a risk to the public. They must have a clean criminal record, no unsatisfied court judgements and not be dependent on public welfare.

We welcome the foreign immigrant who is willing and able to substantially contribute to our economy and to integrate, but naturalisation should involve a further and much deeper voluntary commitment with significant consequences.

[theloobrush]

#gloom

[theloobrush]

Respect Culture

I have worked with many socially excluded and marginalized groups. I have also seen the dark and unpleasant underbelly of a nation encountering the reality of homelessness, addiction, crime and prostitution.. I am not a professional social scientist but these are my ‘layman’s’ conclusions about the culture at the bottom of society.

1. The majority of the chronically street homeless (i.e. those who are homeless for more than a few weeks or months) suffer from severe mental health and/or addictions. In all the cases I have encountered there was some degree of mental ill health and addictive behaviour prior to homelessness though rough sleeping usually worsens these afflictions. A very substantial number of the chronically homeless have had social housing (in some cases multiple tenancies as well as private lets) but these have not be sustainable due to the tenant’s behaviour. Frequently the accommodation is lost due to persistent non payment of rent, anti-social activities or  prolonged periods in custody. Family and spousal estrangement is also a significant factor.

2. Drug addiction (in contrast with alcohol addiction) is social. No one is a drug addict on their own without a network of people who encourage and feed the habit. Drug addicts form almost exclusive social groups with other addicts, or addiction is mutually supported within couples.  They are often bound together only by the rituals of obtaining and using drugs, exchanging drugs and drug information, and especially the lending of money to each other. It is very difficult for individuals to break free from the social aspect of drug taking.  The rehabilitated person often begins with loss,  friendless and either treated with suspicion by their former associates or constantly badgered to re-start their habit. Chronic addiction results in alienation from all normative family relationships, very low engagement with social institutions including those designed for leisure and education, and  little to no interest in current affairs.

3. Most addicts are also petty occasional dealers within their small circles.. To sustain their habits and due to debt obligations accrued to their own drug suppliers, individuals will become runners to supply drugs for friends; some will seek to earn future ‘credit’ or make a profit on these deals. 

4. Where voluntary organisations provide  regular food or other useful donations with no strings attached, the addicts will tend to cease to purchase essential items and spend more money on their addictions. Street homelessness is sustained by organisations that claim to want to remove people from the street. Established charities have a very different approach and help is almost never entirely unconditional..

5.. Marginalised groups are most likely to emphasise their wish and need for  ‘respect’. These individuals have no job or only occasional casual work. They are often under educated; in many case they failed or were excluded from school; their addictions consumed their early adulthood. They may have no developed skills or work experience, there is substantial emotional retardation as drug habits and the escape from reality they provide disrupts the maturing process of gaining greater responsibility for one’s own life. 

In  any event prolific offending behaviour to feed their habit has also made it very difficult for them to find employment. They have next to no financial resources except those obtained through welfare benefits, begging and criminal activity. Relative to most of society they lack any well regarded social status or significance, and they know their degradation either consciously or unconsciously.

Many of the men, and some women in this seemingly hopeless position, will take offence at the slightest perceived insult or criticism and the mildest obstruction to their immediate wishes. Any hint of disdain or dislike toward them is often met with exaggerated hostility. An expression of fear or nervousness in response to this hostility is in turn met with behaviour that is designed to denigrate or shame the other person, to ‘bring them down’.

There is an expectation that they will be treated like everyone else even if their behaviour is unreasonable. They do not like any reference being made to  any wrong doing, mental health, addiction problems or general situation unless this is volunteered; welfare benefits are described as ‘pay’ and discussed as if they are a right they have ‘earned’. Much of the time, outside of private discussions with those they trust, they reject any personal responsibility for their failures and they are extremely sensitive to anyone ‘judging them’. Most have a deeply ingrained sense of victimhood and corresponding sense of entitlement despite or because of their extreme dependence on the largesse of the state.

They do not accept that respect is something to be ‘earned’. Outwardly they express behaviour that is suggestive of substantial personal pride and even excessive, almost narcissistic self regard. Though they have next to no other belongings and poor diets, the majority will ensure they have clean faces, well cut hair and wear some fashionable clothes and trainers. At first glance many do not appear ‘poor’ by their dress, and not all are shabby.  Another expression of pride is through exaggerated claims about their great love for their extended families - often quite at odds with their actual negative and strained relations. Family connections are emphasised, whether or not any strong interpersonal relationship exists. 

The negative aspect of this respect culture is they  may also go out of their way to cultivate fear in others by verbal and sometimes physical violence and intimidation. This culture also leads to bullying of individuals who are perceived as  'weaker' personalities and especially those who are less physically strong. Many are openly hostile and loudly abusive toward individuals from other ethnic and sexual minorities. There is a very strong tendency to scapegoat minorities for their own problems 

Most readily understand their legal rights. They readily expect the police services to come to their aid when they have been faulted though they are involved in considerable criminal activity and will tell you how much they hate the police and how corrupt they are. They are strong believers in contractual obligations. 

6. Individuals in their immediate circle who are interested in learning, in study or in bettering themselves in anyway are routinely subjected to derision and rejection, intimidation and bullying. 

7. Some will use crude graffiti employing their own  names, nicknames and 'tags'. This mabe be a way for these individuals to feel they can psychologically dominate their environment, assert their 'territory' and so artificially give themselves social significance.

Discussion

What is happening here?  Here is a group that actively opposes society's standards of 'respect'  and the various value hierarchies against which they would ordinarily be judged. Young males from this background are often intensely anti-education, as well as anti-authority in all its forms. They often seem inexplicably and unnecessarily aggressive to anyone with enhanced power or status including 'helping' professionals (at other times they will appear excessively craven to service providers as long as they have an expectation that their immediate needs may be met.)

From  occasional but revealing private conversations, I know that marginalised, and badly educated men in particular tend to have rock bottom feelings of self worth, lacking as they do social capital and  any prospect of economic standing. They have internalised their poor social status but this has not motivated them to improve themselves. This behaviour  is not limited to those with a poor upbringing, if their successful progress into full adult life has been thwarted (most often as a consequence of their own behaviour) 

What we are seeing are habitual  behaviours  with the only instrumental means of expression open to them being employed: their emotions, speech, general physicality and personal presentation. I believe marginalised individuals develop a social mask or persona projecting strength  with the appearance of dominance, courage and fortitude in stark contrast to their social reality. This seems to be a psychological survival tactic in the more self aware individuals to avoid torpor and permanent depression. These individuals can seem  hostile to anyone or anything that reminds them of their personal failure. . They will frequently engage in forms of posturing and social intimidation.  

It is more than probable that their addictions to certain substances meet  deep personal needs by obliterating feeling of low self worth and internalised inferiority. The chosen drugs do one of two things: they either relax and soothe or boost feelings of strength and confidence. 

Conclusion.

Respect Culture is the pervasive phenomena among marginalised groups, especially young men, where in  response to an internalized sense of inferiority, and  social rejection, the individual projects a protective facade of social dominance. This in turn is experienced by the rest of the society as hostility and aggression resulting in further marginalisation in a vicious downward spiral. 

#respect culture

[theloobrush]

God: not a mind but a state of awareness

My belief is that Mind and Matter arise from one eternal 'stuff'' that is itself neither mind or matter. Mind is a permutation of the eternal stuff, so is Matter. In Spinoza's schema, Mind itself is deconstructed and stripped back purely to the phenomenon of thought. While Matter is reducible to simple 'extension'. So it is not Mind and Matter as conventionally understood, but the even more basic thought and extension which are the modes of the eternal substance giving rise to Mind and Matter respectively; while the eternal and necessarily 'neutral' (being neither matter or mind) substance is, for Spinoza, synonymous with 'God'. So far my beliefs line up with Spinoza's monist cosmology.

But Spinoza denied that his God had personality and intentions. I have, on the other hand, stayed closer to theism and speculated that the eternal neutral stuff that I refer to as 'ultimate reality' could be 'self aware'.

I am convinced that 'mind' cannot itself be the eternal substance. To recapitulate: every period of deep sleep, and any other interval of unconsciousness, demonstrates that mind 'comes and goes'. The neutral monist is not challenged by the ephemeral nature of mind in the way the idealist is. And, as an aside, the 'unconsciousness' problem for consciousness theory does not demand we accept a materialist monism; materialism still does not explain how mind arises at the times we are conscious.

Reviewing my earlier idea that ultimate reality could become self aware, on reflection this looks like a considerable 'leap' of logic and unsupported. We, in our physical embodiment are self aware but we have never seen 'disembodied' mind. If it is difficult to imagine how 'matter' could exist before the creation of space and time; it is hard to see how thinking could exist before there was a universe allowing mental 'process'. If ultimate reality became self aware it does not follow that it must proceed to have an evolving sequence of thoughts and to 'reason'. Instead ultimate reality's self awareness would be a single state of consciousness without change (so no tensed 'becoming' anything at all). This denies the possibility of further 'thinking' or planning or sequential experiences. Gratifyingly this observation seems to accord with descriptions of the most extreme mystical and meditative states as utterly devoid and 'empty' of ego, concepts and distinct qualia; it is even described as a blissful shining 'nothingness' that is yet not absolute void.

To recap, self awareness of ultimate reality a.k.a. cosmic consciousness isn't mental activity in any conventional sense, but one eternal single non-conceptual, unchanging state of experience, where subject and object are fused.  From the accounts of meditative states, I believe Cosmic Consciousness can still involve a subjective all knowing, loving and desiring even without ego, concepts or reasoning.

I suggest that maybe only embodied entities in space and time can 'think' in our conventional sense, by a separation of subject and object and the sequential presentation of sensory data and memories into the subjective field of pure awareness. Perhap it is the nervous system or brain that facilitates this sequencing of ‘thoughts’ and mental ‘calculation’.

So if God is the 'selfwareness' of ultimate reality, then we also deny God in eternity is a thinking being who reasons, assesses, plans, and interacts with creation as a self-actor and agent. This provides an answer to the problem of why the divine mind does not seem to 'communicate'. We also reject the divine as a bodiless craftsman-designer who thinks how the world should be and then makes it so. In any event, we don't need a demiurge because science has accounted for the apparent 'design' of the natural world. Only the abstract 'ideal' (mathematical) forms, certain irreducible 'laws of nature' and 'pure' consciousness remain unexplained by naturalism.

[theloobrush]

The National Question

What makes a nation?

A nation is not simply lines drawn, apparently arbitrarily, on a map. It is not a random assortment of humans who happen to occupy a certain space. It is not even the place we were born by accident and the whim of our father and mother.

It matters greatly that  our parents, grandparents, and our further ancestors also occupied this space from cradle to grave The people of the present stand on their shoulders; their blood, sweat and tears made what is familiar, they made us who we are.

For a nation is a creation not just of space but also of time, of centuries and millennia. A nation is a shared and evolving story, each generation adding their chapter in an unbroken chain of transmission. The nation’s story contains the good and the bad, and that is how we learn.

A nation shares a common language and its associated accoutrements: literature, poetry and drama. It is the custom and traditions practiced and that are still developing from time immemorial.

A nation is uniquely related to a particular landscape and a particular natural heritage, with a certain climate and fauna and flora. It is inseparable from the land that provides most of the food we eat, the water we drink, that is in our bones and flesh. This particular place we have cultivated, built our homes, raised our families and enjoyed.

National Roots

You may be good, skilled and hard working but have no deep roots in a place. Colonists and Migrants are not blank slates, they represent another nation. Over generations they can and will assimilate to the indigenous people. But the new comer and even the second generation are rarely truly settled. They look to a foreign land as another home. They remain attached to their ancestral ways. This is natural, as natural as the patriotism of families that in living memory and from their elders have known only one nation.

National Ethics

No part of humanity, no race, is inherently or inevitably  morally superior. No cultures and customs are equally good or right. By fate each nation occupies its own niche and special corner. All nations have their cycles of prosperity, and their big moments on the world stage. No nation should take up war against another unless there is a clear and present danger to their people

All nations are bound by obligations of peace keeping and a common humanity, and to living sustainably on this fragile planet. But our care for the global situation must no more eclipse our nationhood than our care for any collective be allowed to blot out the individual. The individual is the building block of a community, local communities the building blocks of a nation, and a free, prosperous world is built on the co-operation of free, sovereign, independent nations. The levers of power and authority must stay closest to the smallest competent unit; reserving most freedom of action to the individual with their family; then the community they know; then the nation. Only with extraordinary justification should power be passed ever upward and handed to some transnational or global entity whether political or business

#Nation roots ancestors

[theloobrush]

My idea of a dipolar deity, with a transcendent 'primordial' divine nature and a manifest-in-space-and-time immanent nature is not original. Process theology suggests a similar model. The distinction is possible because we can distinguish, formally at least, between essence or ousia and what the ancients called the energies or powers. Also because we can see a distinction between substance and modes of that substance. What is true of all reality is true of the divine, though there is not, following Spinoza, a pluarlity of substances.

The primordial divine nature is the impersonal divine 'essence' synonymous with ultimate reality, a pure changeless, unity and absolute being.

I have further postulated that continually arising within this One Essence is a coming to self awareness that we call the Divine Mind or Nous. I've sketched this along neo-platonic lines as the repository of those realities that approximate to Plato's 'ideal forms', now understood as purely logical and mathematical mental concepts and operations.

This Nous requires some more explanation. It is a pure consciousness and awareness, the self contemplating nature of ultimate reality, but ego-less, it is not a personality. I've called it a state of being that is metapersonal or transpersonal but it is also logically prior to any personhood. The Nous represents the first multiplicity i.e. the first distinction within ultimate reality, proceeding with the binary distinction between being in itself and (self) awareness of being in itself.

Being in itself is essentially indiscernable from non-being, a 'zero' or 'ground state' except upon mental reflection it becomes conceptualized - collapsed as it were from potentiality to actuality - as an 'is-ness', as a monad, the mathematical 'one'. The further self reflection of this self reflection is the beginning of mental process. I've also wondered whether mental existence begins with the distinction between strict being and non-being, but I suggest that any logical binary will do. I think semantically there is a distinction between 'I' and 'Am' in the self awareness 'I AM'. Here the movement is 'awareness' and the 'I' is the content or reference of that awareness. This is also the distinction between the knower and the known, but the 'known' is also the 'knower'. However is this awareness explained? So far only partially. My take is that in infinite time, the potential for consciousness which is contained with the neutral monist 'stuff' of ultimate reality must become self awareness. In infinity all that can be, will be.

So far we have discussed the primordial divine nature that precedes the universe of space and time. The relationship need not be of the one as efficient cause of the other, it may be purely a logical begetting. Space and Time would then be dependently founded on the primordial divine nature but the latter cannot be said to be prior in time; the primordial is ever creating, but what we call our universe's 'beginning' is simply the 'edge' of space time. Space and Time could be our universe or it could be infinite multi-verses (the latter explaining the apparent 'fine tuning'). Still the primordial divine nature stands as the unmoved mover and first cause.

Our universe is 'pervaded' by the divine spirit or better 'energies' or 'power(s)' Many philosophies claim this, but hardly ever is it explained in what way the divine spirit is present in space and time. I say the divine spirit is divinity manifesting as space-time. The cosmos is not embedded in the primordial (there is a sense in which space-time nests within ultimate reality, the spatial relations implied tend to confuse) Rather the world is a mode of the divine, the singular substance, in and unchanged in itself by the near infinite number of forms the universe can manifest.

Or theres' the metaphor of seed becoming the flower. The primordial divine nature blossoms into cosmos, evolving from pure potentiality toward perfection.

[theloobrush]

There is one ultimate reality, but individual minds 'colour' that ultimate reality differently. Much of the time we see what we expect, not what is.

#metaphysics #monism #mental filters

[theloobrush]

There is a thread from which all existence is woven. This is the thread we call ultimate reality, and it has the attributes of 'Thought' and 'Extension'. Each distinct mental and physical entity is like a 'knot' in the thread; but whether ravelled or unravelled, the nature of the thread itself remains unchanged.

#metaphyics #monism

[theloobrush]

The God Inside, part 2

Now I don’t intellectually believe that anyone can claim to be God or have ‘God’ inside them. Yet that is exactly what I  seem to be saying in my mystical and metaphysical ramblings. Indeed I’m starting to see God as co-extensive with the universe and realising the true significance of terms like ‘ground of being’.  My conception of God is literally dissolving, not into nothingness, but it is no longer a distinct entity, even one that ‘abides’ (whatever that means) in higher dimensions. God is rather a higher dimensional aspect  of matter, energy and space, time. The universe becomes the actual manifestation of the divine from the impersonal oneness, and the divine is radically immanent. Yet radically transcendent too in that this aspect of reality exists ‘eternally’ and of which our contingent universe is just one mode, phase or further unfolding of the divine.Whatever modal form the neutral monist substance of reality takes, substance remains unchanged and unsullied. Just as, according to physics, energy is neither created or destroyed, just transformed losing nothing of its nature. 

So maybe even God’s personhood  is identical to my higher/deeper self. My ego-self is the product of my life experience and memories, but the will to be, to create, and to know, and the ‘pure ideas’ of Plato which exist in my mind are deeper and in a sense distinct from my me-ness’. My ego is bolted on to the divine substrate or is simply a knot in the one gold thread of existence.

My head is also, thanks to my ancestors and their collective unconscious, the repository of archetypes by which my ‘God Image’ appears as something other than my ego-self and therefore distinct from it. 

This does seems to mean that God’s physical and mental activity is limited to what the physical universe and I and you, with our mind, can do. This provides God with omnipotency not omnipotence. This means that we do not have to formulate a God ‘mind-body’ complex that somehow ‘hovers’ over reality directing ‘the show’ to a greater or lesser degree. God can also only know what it is possible for beings in the natural world to know. Thus God cannot know the future (but then the ‘future’ does not actually exist so is innately unknowable except as a potentiality existing today).

This is a radical kind of pantheism that is at odds with naturalistic pantheism, by proposing fundamental consciousness as the dual property of the neutral monist substance from which matter arises co-extensively, along with the creative impulse, our feelings of love and desire for communion and conscience that then must exist within all beings. The latter we called ‘God’.

This is a God without an Ego-Centre. God is not ‘somewhere’ but distributed throughout all of creation as the raw material of consciousness, mind and goodness. 

It is still possible to argue the contrary model that the divine is a higher dimensional mind quite distinct from the created world but which has ‘programmed’ the world to progress along some preordained plan while not intervening. That programme would include the sense of a ‘higher self’ and ‘conscience’. 

These ideas need further development and refining.