This video and initiative was shared with me yesterday. I had already seen it a few months back, and I thought it was a nice perspective, but left it soon after again because it seemed a little too emotional for me. Normally I like the idea that there are many people who see society as miscalculated and counter-productive, but the way people conduct themselves these days I have a hard time believing that.
What I do like about this perspective though, is that it shines some hope on a spot that needs it. The pocket of society that was later occupied by outraged protesters. They called themselves the 99% and while that is merely a symbol, it does reflect some very interesting ideas, among those the perspective that you can actually fight for rights people do not know or understand.
Very Matrix indeed. If you recall the movie, you will probably think about special effects, corny dialogue and slow-motion fight scenes. But if you understood the plot, if you saw what the Wachowski brothers probably could have meant. Then you will see the metaphor in this video. You will recognise that the plot is what carried this movie. The masses swallowed the movie for what it did visually, but philosophically this movie is relevant to discuss because of how it analyses layers of society.
That it would be possible for the masses to live sheepish lives against their own natural interests because they have been cultivated to accept such norms. Is that not interesting? Is it not brilliant to conceptualise such massive deciet and societal manipulation? They managed to make that movie one of the most remarked action movies of all time.
Like the main character in the movie, and a Wayseer such as the song talks about, you probably have also experienced the time stop scene at some point in your life. You suddenly felt different and alienated from everyone else, because the truth was apparent to you and you alone. It can be as tiny as seeing someone eat something commonly regarded as healthy, when you know that it really is not, that sparks this thought that you have begun to see more truth that other. Or at least percieve the world differently. You have started to think unlike a grain of sand in the desert. Unlike a fish in the sea. Perhaps you are swimming against the current already. But the fact is that this is a new world for you. And new can be scary.
So this is why I like this video, for even through all its cheerful ignorance towards the harsher reality of actual activism and social therapy, it does light a torch and attempts to lead on anyway.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Conformity
Last year I took a psychology course and while most of it was relatively uninteresting and 101, near the end of the course we were introduced to some of the larger concepts in social psychology. There are some very interesting theories out there about what makes the human mind work the way it does.
Just to get you up to speed, you may have heard of the Asch experiments seeking to some extent to prove social dependance in humans. A sort of built in mechanism to ensure conformity and group normalisation. Strategically it makes sense for us to work this way, but it also marks up some very realistical borders to our potential.
In this following 10 minute presentation you are introduced to the basics in the studies of conformity.
It should be obvious that this is the natural part of our ways that ensures survival of the fittest, because in a social context the fittest might just be the leader. We see this in all pockets of nature.
What is interesting is how this should touch on your feeling of self-sufficiancy. Would it upset you to know that 37% of all people would stay in a room filling with smoke past their choking point, if at least 14 other people (actors) were sitting still in that room without reacting? Is this culture or biology?
What the goal is for me, is to upset the idea that people can trust their own decisions, because more often then not we choose to do something that is not in our best interest, simply because of some series of implications leading us to judge a course of action as the best suited one. This can be spurred on by group norms and pressure, but it does not dilute our responsibility for our own integrity on a theoretical level.
If we choose to part take in political, economical and sociological debates, we should be prepared to consider what part of our argumentation comes from others and what part comes from ourselves.
Just to get you up to speed, you may have heard of the Asch experiments seeking to some extent to prove social dependance in humans. A sort of built in mechanism to ensure conformity and group normalisation. Strategically it makes sense for us to work this way, but it also marks up some very realistical borders to our potential.
In this following 10 minute presentation you are introduced to the basics in the studies of conformity.
It should be obvious that this is the natural part of our ways that ensures survival of the fittest, because in a social context the fittest might just be the leader. We see this in all pockets of nature.
What is interesting is how this should touch on your feeling of self-sufficiancy. Would it upset you to know that 37% of all people would stay in a room filling with smoke past their choking point, if at least 14 other people (actors) were sitting still in that room without reacting? Is this culture or biology?
What the goal is for me, is to upset the idea that people can trust their own decisions, because more often then not we choose to do something that is not in our best interest, simply because of some series of implications leading us to judge a course of action as the best suited one. This can be spurred on by group norms and pressure, but it does not dilute our responsibility for our own integrity on a theoretical level.
If we choose to part take in political, economical and sociological debates, we should be prepared to consider what part of our argumentation comes from others and what part comes from ourselves.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Economic Hitmen
Today I wish to familiarise my readers with the person John Perkins. Mr. Perkins has wide experience with the private sector in the states associated with facilitating international industrial expansion. What does this mean you ask? Well I will so gentle as to let a short animation tell the story for you.
For a full personal account on Mr. Perkins' personal experiences and knowlegde from the inside of this business check this interview.
So what have we here then? The initial response you are suppose to extract from this is obviously that this is how guerilla fighters and “terrorists” are made. That is the main point. And it makes reasonable sense. I do not know your personal standpoint on whether terrorism goes before empire expansion or whether you think it is the other way around, but those two elements certainly seem linked together.
What else can we extract? We can look at how a country is flooded with debt and cheap industrial pollution to make it another production chamber to keep our ever growing consumption rates rising. Turn that around again and you will note that most of the things on your desk you are sitting at right now were probably produced in some poor country that was exploited in this fashion. The IMF and the World Bank accepts this as collateral damage, and this should solidify the argument that they most certainly are western banks for the west – not the world.
This growth economy has to stop before the last tree is cut down and the last lake is polluted with oil waste.
For a full personal account on Mr. Perkins' personal experiences and knowlegde from the inside of this business check this interview.
So what have we here then? The initial response you are suppose to extract from this is obviously that this is how guerilla fighters and “terrorists” are made. That is the main point. And it makes reasonable sense. I do not know your personal standpoint on whether terrorism goes before empire expansion or whether you think it is the other way around, but those two elements certainly seem linked together.
What else can we extract? We can look at how a country is flooded with debt and cheap industrial pollution to make it another production chamber to keep our ever growing consumption rates rising. Turn that around again and you will note that most of the things on your desk you are sitting at right now were probably produced in some poor country that was exploited in this fashion. The IMF and the World Bank accepts this as collateral damage, and this should solidify the argument that they most certainly are western banks for the west – not the world.
This growth economy has to stop before the last tree is cut down and the last lake is polluted with oil waste.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
3D printing
Today I saw something remarkable. You probably already know about 3D printing and the prospects of such an addition to society in terms of production. But with this following example you should be able to take it a step further and visualise just how absolutely gigantic a step this could be socially. To enable costumisation on a completely new level along with reducing imports and exports.
Consider the opportunities.
Consider the opportunities.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Experiments
Today I learned of an experimental dietary treatment for a chronic disease I happen to suffer from, and among other things it made me consider just why exactly there are so few dietary treatments going on. Obviously everything is experimental at first. One can have a scientifically backed expectation towards the outcome, and in medical science one probably should, but it will be experimental none the less. So the wording is not my issue. What I take an issue with is that treatment such as this is natural. Now I for one am not the one to label tradition as something positive in and of itself, however, I do entertain the following philosophy.
The body appears to be a bio-mechanical machine hard wired to sort out internal problems. This is scientifically proven, so there is not a lot of philosophy contained in this. But then the general belief goes on to denote that the mind is what we have for external problem solving. What I would propose, however, is that the mind is very much involved in both. How we think and feel will change patterns in how our body works. You can tell by the countless studies in psychology that proves rises and drops in various types of body-functions based on the mood swings of the test subjects. Stress is the big subject now, and it is very related to our physical well-being. For instance placebo pills in some cases work to rid the patient of self-inflicted symptoms. The mind is a powerful tool.
So returning to the subject of diet again, I would venture the guess that the fuel for the body should be very much a factor in how well the inner machinery works to keep itself healthy. Most people already know this, so instead I will try to be a little more abstract.
As a society we hold a common responsibility to work to further the understanding of everyone of what their diet should and should not contain. It is quite possible to poison the body into a state of weakness exposing it to a wide variety of diseases, both the ones commonly known to be related to unhealthy life-styles like diabetes and the more complicated diseases. Now I am not attempting to preach that a healthy diet can keep you disease-free. But I could certainly preach that it would help. I will refrain from that at this point though.
About the responsibility, one could hope that society would realise it as a duty to keep its inhabitants as healthy as possible. This is why the free market model is counter-productive when it comes to collective health. In the book The Spirit Level the first basic graph introduced is one that shows how the GDP of nations only work proportionally with standards of living below a certain threshold. It bends off at a point where people start being able to take care of themselves, and this means that some of the poorest countries out of the richest ones (western ones, generally) are very equal to the much richer ones.. The point to make here is that the idea of rapid expansion and consumption only gets us to a certain point. This cannot be stressed enough, because it is the principle argument that the neo-capitalistic machinery we have installed to run our world for us, serves us no longer and today it is in fact an inhibitor to our true potential.
Do some research on your own. Next time you go grocery shopping check out how expensive it would be for you to buy only organic food highly based on fibres and less based on meats and dairy. You will note that it gets a lot cheaper for you if you buy unhealthy, non-organic products because this is what industry can produce cheaply. It is a lot cheaper to produce long-lasting (genetically modified, filled with additives) food products than it is to produce short-lasting (natural) food products that would benefit the consumer much more.
Considering the value of money today, you could say we are actually making it a rewarding game to try and spot the better deals and shake up a good price. The exact opposite of what people should be doing. And then we ask ourselves why sickness, depression and cancer rates all are off the chart now.
A doctor I spoke with today concerning this experimental diet actually told me that he had patients who had gone to Thailand on vacation, and while there they experienced almost complete remission in their symptoms. His thoughts on the matter were that the patients had been staying outside of general tourist areas and therefore been eating locally produced, natural meals loaded with vegetables and without a lot of meat. It should come as no surprise that this is much better for the body, but what should come as a surprise is that these conditions are regarded as unsuccessful in normal terms, because that rural area was probably highly impoverished and this is the reason for their inability to import fizzy drinks and mass-produced meat.
This is especially relevant to consider during this period of global economic unrest, because now is when we simply should not and cannot accept, for the sake of the future heirs to this planet, a continual lowering of quality in our food. It is unacceptable, and just like it was an economic bubble that burst, so too will the health bubble burst when we not only have the demographic issue of too few working people versus too many retired people against us, but also the issue of too many sick people versus too few healthy people.
As a future project I would like to blog for a week about a healthy, easy diet. Be sure to check back as February will most likely feature such adventures.
The body appears to be a bio-mechanical machine hard wired to sort out internal problems. This is scientifically proven, so there is not a lot of philosophy contained in this. But then the general belief goes on to denote that the mind is what we have for external problem solving. What I would propose, however, is that the mind is very much involved in both. How we think and feel will change patterns in how our body works. You can tell by the countless studies in psychology that proves rises and drops in various types of body-functions based on the mood swings of the test subjects. Stress is the big subject now, and it is very related to our physical well-being. For instance placebo pills in some cases work to rid the patient of self-inflicted symptoms. The mind is a powerful tool.
So returning to the subject of diet again, I would venture the guess that the fuel for the body should be very much a factor in how well the inner machinery works to keep itself healthy. Most people already know this, so instead I will try to be a little more abstract.
As a society we hold a common responsibility to work to further the understanding of everyone of what their diet should and should not contain. It is quite possible to poison the body into a state of weakness exposing it to a wide variety of diseases, both the ones commonly known to be related to unhealthy life-styles like diabetes and the more complicated diseases. Now I am not attempting to preach that a healthy diet can keep you disease-free. But I could certainly preach that it would help. I will refrain from that at this point though.
About the responsibility, one could hope that society would realise it as a duty to keep its inhabitants as healthy as possible. This is why the free market model is counter-productive when it comes to collective health. In the book The Spirit Level the first basic graph introduced is one that shows how the GDP of nations only work proportionally with standards of living below a certain threshold. It bends off at a point where people start being able to take care of themselves, and this means that some of the poorest countries out of the richest ones (western ones, generally) are very equal to the much richer ones.. The point to make here is that the idea of rapid expansion and consumption only gets us to a certain point. This cannot be stressed enough, because it is the principle argument that the neo-capitalistic machinery we have installed to run our world for us, serves us no longer and today it is in fact an inhibitor to our true potential.
Do some research on your own. Next time you go grocery shopping check out how expensive it would be for you to buy only organic food highly based on fibres and less based on meats and dairy. You will note that it gets a lot cheaper for you if you buy unhealthy, non-organic products because this is what industry can produce cheaply. It is a lot cheaper to produce long-lasting (genetically modified, filled with additives) food products than it is to produce short-lasting (natural) food products that would benefit the consumer much more.
Considering the value of money today, you could say we are actually making it a rewarding game to try and spot the better deals and shake up a good price. The exact opposite of what people should be doing. And then we ask ourselves why sickness, depression and cancer rates all are off the chart now.
A doctor I spoke with today concerning this experimental diet actually told me that he had patients who had gone to Thailand on vacation, and while there they experienced almost complete remission in their symptoms. His thoughts on the matter were that the patients had been staying outside of general tourist areas and therefore been eating locally produced, natural meals loaded with vegetables and without a lot of meat. It should come as no surprise that this is much better for the body, but what should come as a surprise is that these conditions are regarded as unsuccessful in normal terms, because that rural area was probably highly impoverished and this is the reason for their inability to import fizzy drinks and mass-produced meat.
This is especially relevant to consider during this period of global economic unrest, because now is when we simply should not and cannot accept, for the sake of the future heirs to this planet, a continual lowering of quality in our food. It is unacceptable, and just like it was an economic bubble that burst, so too will the health bubble burst when we not only have the demographic issue of too few working people versus too many retired people against us, but also the issue of too many sick people versus too few healthy people.
As a future project I would like to blog for a week about a healthy, easy diet. Be sure to check back as February will most likely feature such adventures.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Spirit of the Age
Life is busy at the moment. Family stuff is going on and I have exams coming up, so I had to skip writing yesterday and today will almost be a skip as well.
Just a reminder to everyone that independant film director Peter Joseph will be releasing his fourth documentary in late 2012 or early 2013. The title is "Zeitgeist: Beyond the Pale", and he says it will be an artistic expression on the spirit of the age (the latter being the direct translation of the german word Zeitgeist).
As a supporter of the movement associated with these films, I felt it was in my best interest to share with you the news of this very relevant upcoming movie. If you have not yet, you should treat yourself to a nice evening with the third film in the series. Even if you are not convinced about the concept of a resource based economy, you would most likely appreciate the amount of social research that is highlighted. Many of the experts I link to in my other posts are people I have learned about through the Zeitgeist Movement.
Give it a watch if you feel like it. Even if you disagree with every single piece of research within it, you should see it as a challenge and a way to understand yourself better.
Just a reminder to everyone that independant film director Peter Joseph will be releasing his fourth documentary in late 2012 or early 2013. The title is "Zeitgeist: Beyond the Pale", and he says it will be an artistic expression on the spirit of the age (the latter being the direct translation of the german word Zeitgeist).
As a supporter of the movement associated with these films, I felt it was in my best interest to share with you the news of this very relevant upcoming movie. If you have not yet, you should treat yourself to a nice evening with the third film in the series. Even if you are not convinced about the concept of a resource based economy, you would most likely appreciate the amount of social research that is highlighted. Many of the experts I link to in my other posts are people I have learned about through the Zeitgeist Movement.
Give it a watch if you feel like it. Even if you disagree with every single piece of research within it, you should see it as a challenge and a way to understand yourself better.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
My fractal theory
This will be a purely metaphorical piece attempting to project an idea of similarity.
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric object that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced size copy of the whole", a property called self-similarity.
If that does not make any sense to you, perhaps Ben McLeish explains it better than I can in this part of this lecture on science.
And let me tell you why this concept is relevant to know about. Because other than the fact that fractals clearly do exist in nature, which is profound when you first think of it, you will recognise that fractals exist not only in snow flakes but in many intangible areas as well. Such as science, technology, philosophy, engineering, economics and so forth.
This becomes interesting when you start to see how nature is being intelligent in its design.
Any chemist will tell you that the universe consists of atoms (and smaller parts that I do not understand well enough to bring into the equation), and these atoms all try to achieve a specific binding with other atoms to attain sustainability. All the cells in your body work towards the common goal of sustaining your existance as the host. Its a family effort you could say. Now if you scale out, you could see how each of your organs do the same thing. None of them work with the intention of harvesting all the nutrients for themselves. They share because that is how they would optimally get by. It would be sustainable only for a temporary period to exhibit different behaviour for the body. You would certainly start to break down, even if it did boost your performance in certain areas initially, had your body been in a capitalist system of self-maximisation. You will have guessed by now where I am going with this.
But instead of preaching about some higher community construct of society, where everyone shares everything and work to reduce understood infections, delivering the community or host body from "diseases" like crime and greed, I will try something different and leave this part of my fractal theory incomplete.
Instead we take a few steps outwards and look at how the larger order of things fit into this picture. In the animal kingdom you might think you have a counter-argument to this in the fact that other species also exhibit the asocial behaviour of over-acquisition. This is true, but if you saw the post from yesterday featuring a link to a lecture by Robert Sopalski, you will recall what he said that the groups of animals that end up working together are those with stronger communities. Without having seen all of it, I believe he debates the same issues in this lecture.
Furthermore the earth is a closed system. The resources that we are using at ever-accelerating rates now took millions of years to develop into what we see today, and if you look at fossil fuels like oil it is quite evident that in less than 300 years we will have completely drained out this resource.
The stardust we know as planets also work in a looping and self-similar way. Most people know that all planets and moons follow paths around the sun and each other. I am not sure how this works, but I would venture the guess that a planet has to stay in its course. The ultimate self-correcting system perhaps.
This is where we would start a lot of guess work, and while this work is by no means scientific, I did think it was an interesting train of thought, so I wanted to share it with you. It could be that the answer to a lot of the social problems this blog, and a growing part of the world, is concerned with lie within many of the systems that our most intelligent minds already understand. Maybe the self-similarity is too obvious to consider applicable to society as a whole.
Am I proposing that crime be viewed by society in the same way disease is viewed by the immune system? I could be.
A very well-written and interesting book comparing a societal state to a physical disease is, and the name is the brilliant part, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism by John McMurtry.
The introduction in the preface really describes well how the writer came to the conclusion that there might be something to this similarity across the various categories of systems. Physically and conceptually.
The title of this book is not a provocative metaphor. It is the conceptual outcome of long personal experience and deep-structural social investigation over 30 years of research across disciplinary boundaries. During this period, I have been involved with my brother, a medical researcher, in ongoing co-investigation of pathogenic patterns at the highest level of abstraction. I have also been the husband of the mother of my four children who was overwhelmed by deadly anaplastic cancer, and a serious student of a non-lethal carcinogenic invasion of my own body. These prolonged events of learning life and death sequences of disease and immune responses have led to the deepening recognition of common principles of growth and disease between social and cellular life-organization.
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric object that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced size copy of the whole", a property called self-similarity.
If that does not make any sense to you, perhaps Ben McLeish explains it better than I can in this part of this lecture on science.
And let me tell you why this concept is relevant to know about. Because other than the fact that fractals clearly do exist in nature, which is profound when you first think of it, you will recognise that fractals exist not only in snow flakes but in many intangible areas as well. Such as science, technology, philosophy, engineering, economics and so forth.
This becomes interesting when you start to see how nature is being intelligent in its design.
Any chemist will tell you that the universe consists of atoms (and smaller parts that I do not understand well enough to bring into the equation), and these atoms all try to achieve a specific binding with other atoms to attain sustainability. All the cells in your body work towards the common goal of sustaining your existance as the host. Its a family effort you could say. Now if you scale out, you could see how each of your organs do the same thing. None of them work with the intention of harvesting all the nutrients for themselves. They share because that is how they would optimally get by. It would be sustainable only for a temporary period to exhibit different behaviour for the body. You would certainly start to break down, even if it did boost your performance in certain areas initially, had your body been in a capitalist system of self-maximisation. You will have guessed by now where I am going with this.
But instead of preaching about some higher community construct of society, where everyone shares everything and work to reduce understood infections, delivering the community or host body from "diseases" like crime and greed, I will try something different and leave this part of my fractal theory incomplete.
Instead we take a few steps outwards and look at how the larger order of things fit into this picture. In the animal kingdom you might think you have a counter-argument to this in the fact that other species also exhibit the asocial behaviour of over-acquisition. This is true, but if you saw the post from yesterday featuring a link to a lecture by Robert Sopalski, you will recall what he said that the groups of animals that end up working together are those with stronger communities. Without having seen all of it, I believe he debates the same issues in this lecture.
Furthermore the earth is a closed system. The resources that we are using at ever-accelerating rates now took millions of years to develop into what we see today, and if you look at fossil fuels like oil it is quite evident that in less than 300 years we will have completely drained out this resource.
The stardust we know as planets also work in a looping and self-similar way. Most people know that all planets and moons follow paths around the sun and each other. I am not sure how this works, but I would venture the guess that a planet has to stay in its course. The ultimate self-correcting system perhaps.
This is where we would start a lot of guess work, and while this work is by no means scientific, I did think it was an interesting train of thought, so I wanted to share it with you. It could be that the answer to a lot of the social problems this blog, and a growing part of the world, is concerned with lie within many of the systems that our most intelligent minds already understand. Maybe the self-similarity is too obvious to consider applicable to society as a whole.
Am I proposing that crime be viewed by society in the same way disease is viewed by the immune system? I could be.
A very well-written and interesting book comparing a societal state to a physical disease is, and the name is the brilliant part, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism by John McMurtry.
The introduction in the preface really describes well how the writer came to the conclusion that there might be something to this similarity across the various categories of systems. Physically and conceptually.
The title of this book is not a provocative metaphor. It is the conceptual outcome of long personal experience and deep-structural social investigation over 30 years of research across disciplinary boundaries. During this period, I have been involved with my brother, a medical researcher, in ongoing co-investigation of pathogenic patterns at the highest level of abstraction. I have also been the husband of the mother of my four children who was overwhelmed by deadly anaplastic cancer, and a serious student of a non-lethal carcinogenic invasion of my own body. These prolonged events of learning life and death sequences of disease and immune responses have led to the deepening recognition of common principles of growth and disease between social and cellular life-organization.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)