Notes: Some from years ago, some newer
The following is taken from notes of mine that are all at least some months to a year, and in some cases
several years, old. Where i wished, i added or changed things while typing them here. I cannot stress enough
that many, perhaps most of these notes are, as far as i can remember, at least a few years old as ofthe
time of this posting:
---------------------------------------------------------
1. 11/22/04
If you care about people, please allow them to rule themselves. If you do not believe people are capable of
ruling themselves well, please do not care enough about them to keep them from ruling themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------
2. (date unknown --probably about same year as "level where the spirit" poem):
[dealing with "political thermodynamics"]
1. Power abhors a vaccuum. If rulers are forced out of power, new rulers will take their place.
2. An institution will tend to remain as it is unless acted upon -- change started will keep going unless
stopped.
3. Power has entropy -- powerful because less
4. Political actions have reactions.
5. Democracy is equilibrium of power among individuals -- state power tries to get to
6. Better to yield to natural flow than to fight.
Force = mass X acceleration --> what are political equivalents?
Thermodynamics: 0. There is no "power-over" between two people with the same amount of power.
1. Political power cannot be created or destroyed -- any power one loses, another may take and vice versa.
2. Power will not go by itself from a less-powerful person to a more-powerful person.
3. Absolute zero? -273.16 degrees C (-459.67 degrees F)
mass maybe = entrenched power
acceleration = change
force = political movement
Powerful and powerless do NOT equal hot and cold, but rather giving and taking power (?) This is where
natural "should be" is contradicted. Those taking power may have more power than those giving, UNlike in
physics. This is because of free will. Political dynamics work with himan free will. In order for the powerful
not to "leak" power, he/she has to keep taking more power from others --> imperialism, expansion, "active"
tyranny, as opposed to decaying "passive" reactionaries. This is why capitalism works as a status quo,
because it changes. How easy it is to change a system depends on how entrenched the system is.
Marc 17 on the Internet [ http://www.painandgreed.com/marc17/pages/marxthermo.html] writes that the
powerful keep power by "insulating" themselves with laws, etc, or by taking energy from outside as in
imperialism, etc.
Addition 6/12/07: See also
http://www.punkerslut.com/articles/physicsofanarchy.html
God created what is (1) and what should be (2). (1) constantly changes, but (2) stays the same for any given
moment of (1).
Andrew Galambos, who invented "Volitional Science", said that all creatures need to make "profit" by taking
more energy than they give in order to counter entropy -- called life "primordial property". He defined
morality as the absence of coercion, and defined coercion as taking another's property, since one can only
take more energy from a system by increasing entropy.
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" --> like Tao, each has opposite. One person, (A), forces
another, (B), to do what B does not want to do by giving B pain. this pain is physical force applied the the
"system" of B's body in order to disorganize it (creak the skull, etc). This causes the psychological reaction of
pain in B. Pain tells B to avoid the force that's trying to disrupt his/her body's order (this order is what B's
body "wants" its form to be according to God's Will). Violation of another person's gift of free will equals
coercion, which equals force, which equals pain for the coerced person.
In our universe, time is one-dimensional, that is, it moves in a line, so God's Purpose is revealed as a process
to us even though it really is already complete, fully revealed in universes where time is three-dimensional.
[In my notes, i draw a diagram of a Jewish-style Star of David, with one triangle labeled "time" and the other
labeled "space". I meant the three points of each triangle to stand for the three dimensions of space and the
hypothetical three dimensions of time.]
Is pain a signal that the Tao is being violated, or is pain only one side of the yin-yang? Maybe the unfolding
plan of God is to eliminate pain by smothering from avoidance.
In a free market, profit = zero, like the law of thermodynamics says that heat cannot flow between two bodies
of the same temperature. Zero profit is "heat death." Therefore, a free market leads to economic/politcal heat
death, but does this heat death equal "anarchy/democracy"? Does it equal a uniting with God like in Vedanta?
Life forms need the "profit" of extra energy input to live, but is that necessarily coercive and/or immoral?
If love is attraction, then maybe it is like gravity -- but does any aspect of love let things stay separate by not attracting?
How does entropy fit with the tendency to complexity? Entropy happens when the heat in (A) equals the
heat in (B). This is what causes movement, and it is stopped when the heat in A equals the heat in B. The
tendency to complexity happens when a "vacuum" of cold exists near heat; entropy sets in when the
accessable vacuum is filled.
The heat moves into a vacuum; heat --> movement --> complexity --> consciousness?
The Big Bang singularity may have been the original hot place, and it expanded to fill the original cold
vacuum to start God's plan toward life. Was the singularity the same as heat death?
"Matter is nothing in pieces" -- heat death -- infinite singularity -- infintesimal--> same thing?
Maybe that is what restarts the cycle --> but entropy spreads out while complexity draws together in
love/gravity. Love/gravity => new singularity --> entropy => heat death; opposites but the same in the
Tao? If so, what are we counteracting by fighting entropy? Schrodiger's cat is NOT both alive and dead at
once.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. (date unknown -- year of class on presidential management styles)
(M) monotheism ethics - because of God's love for persons
(P) pantheism ethics - because everything is part of God - is this sort of self-interest?
maybe P is from the right side of the brain (loving, emotional) and M is from the left side of the brain
(rational) -- but P is for self-interest and M is for love. Is love because we're all connected a type of big self-
interest?
individual community
--------------------------------
left right
reason emotion
soul no-soul
change stay same
personal God "impersonal" Ultimate Reality
transcendent God immanent God
"Thou" "Thou and I"
note: I do not know whether any of the particular terms in the "individual" and "community" columns actually belong in the columns they are in and not the opposite column.
We can never be God because we can never get rid of our egos.
Love is pleasurable -- one wants to act good toward those whom one loves.
love -> God - pleasure
pleasure/pain -> heaven/hell
[arrows pointing from "heaven" to "God" and from "pleasure" in "pleasure/pain" to "pleasure" next to "God"]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
4. (date unknown -- probably about same year as "be the new you" poem)
Other's rights should be worth more to one that one's own rights
Life [greater than ( >)] liberty greater than > property - BUT third party's rights are worth the same as other "others'" rights:
A = oneself, "me"
B = one other person
C = a third person, a "third party", second other than oneself
life of B = life of C
life of B > liberty of C
life of B > life of A
but is the liberty of B > the life of A?
land/capital: "ownership of something without working to produce the value from it -- illegitimate
capital/labor: workers who get provisional rights to part of the common store by working to mix their labor with things and thus bring value -- legimitate -- workers
How to make free-market system that gives benefit of production to the workers instead of to the "employers" and "owners"?
The bad thing is NOT the market - free society would have to allow trade - but rather the bad thing is rule by the "capitalists" who "own" without Lockean right to own - or any other elite.
1. market socialism 2. workplace democracy 3. syndicalism 4. consumer and producer co-ops 5. microlending 6. labor unions 7. mutualism
land/ source of capital -- environment exploited by rulers, belongs to God, to be used by everyone equally with Locke's labor thing [Locke's idea of property and "mixing labor" with things] for private ownership.
Workers are also exploited -- environment and workers are on the same side
Indigenous people --> enslaved: peasants, proles -- workers descend from "natives" with environmental spirituality
--------------------------------------------------------------------
5. (date unknown -- same year as Contemporary Poltical Ideologies class)
(taken from studying Hegel and Marx and dialectical view of history, with thesis, antithesis, synthesis)
Attempts to put an end to history mean squashing the antithesis that challenges the status quo. This is bad, so attempts to end history in order to make perfect the historical progress means that rebellion against the status quo is squashed. This rebellion is what would actually make things better (although not perfect). Real progress needs the antithesis and so real progress must not EVER assume it has reached perfection.
-----
6. (following notes taken on date unknown from a book written by someone else):
Eberly, Don and Ryan Streeter. 2002. The Soul of Civil Society: Voluntary Association s and the Public Value of Moral Habits. Lexington Books [city of publication unrecorded]. Page 110
Properly reactive Properly proactive
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
equality - justice benevolence
liberty - restraint entrepeneurship*
[*my note: the authors, Eberly and Streeter, define "entrepeneurship" as duty, courage, hard work, and I quote, "the ability to agressively pursue opportunities in the face of uncertainties" (quoted page 105)
---------------------------------------------------------------
(date unknown - maybe same year as "new you" and "obj/subj, guest/host" poems; 1 of the years i had Kille in class?)
From another book by someone else
Ward, Keith. (publication date unknown). God: A Guide to the Perplexed. Page 76. (publisher & city unknown). Chapter 3 (pp. 67-100) "The Love that Moves the Sun":
"the most basic meaning of sacrifice: that you freely give to the gods part--perhaps the best part--of what they have given to you, but which you have increased by your own effort, to show what you have done (that you have 'worked well') and to express gratitude for the gods' basic provision of the necessities of life, and for their protection and help."
* * * *
my own personal comments on this passage below this in my notes:
\/ \/
like Lockean proviso sacri-fice = make sacred
subject of God
citizen of the universe
The antichrist is anyone at all you'd call the Christ
the following is also from yet another book, but i didn't record which (it was on Judaism). My bad. Interspered with the stuff from that book is my own comments - the author's and mine are mixed together. The comments that i'm almost totally sure are mine are in blue below. Also, on a separate paper i have this same chart without the Hindu gods' names or the Christian Trinity, and the words "NOT a model of God, but of his Acts"):
Yodh - starting Heh - Creation Vav - revalation Heh - return
Creator Sustainer Redeemer/ Destroyer
<--------------- Brahma Vishnu Shiva
Father? Holy Spirit? or Son? Son? or Holy Spirit?
------------------------
3/2004
from Layard, Richard. 2005 (sic; it seems to be emphasized that this was 2004). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. New York: Penguin Press. Page 21.
[note: I could not copy the actual diagram in this format, so I have just paraphrased what the diagram said. The diagram was in the shape of a square with a cross in the middle; a horizontal and vertical axis. The vertical axis had "aroused" at the top and "unaroused" at the bottom. The horizontal axis had "happy" on the left and "uhappy" on the right]
aroused and happy: joy
aroused and unhappy: agitation
unaroused and happy: contentment
unaroused and unhappy: depression
Personal note from myself paraphrased from information in the book: It is only possible to be in one of these dimensions at a time. It is not possible to be happy and unhappy at the same time, only one or the other.
10/27/04
I feel hope. I just prayed the Lord's Prayer with my mind wandering for a long time in the middle of it. When my mind wandered, i thought about my friends and what i'd like to tell them. Earlier i had felt a bit of hope and happiness, and i had thought i should write about it, but figured it was fleeting (it was during prayer, so i also thought i should continue praying as i had been). Not only did i think i was fleeting, but also that happy feelings might for me be filled with back-of-my-mind dread that things may go wrong after all and that i'll feel bad when they do go wrong. But now i do NOT think i feel that way -- hard to say. I prayed that God would not let me be tempted or let me be in bad luck/pain/poverty/disability, etc, but that instead God would help me do the right thing even if God did let me be tempted or have hardship in Wisdom (paraphrase of Lord's Prayer). Because it is NOT because of good luck that we do should do good, but rather because it is the right thing to do. The feeling that God would help me through any possible bad times was comforting and gave me hope and cheered me up.
11/1/04
I think maybe the "kernal of truth" in the ancient Israelites' insistance that their God was the only real god and that their neighbors' gods were idols, was that they vaguely perceived that God is more than just someone who gives you stuff if you do the magic spells. God is the source of all existence and the force behind the moral law of all Creation. This, perhaps, can be likened to Gautama Buddha when he dismissed the idea of the Hindu gods being immortal or all-powerful. Instead, Gautama turned toward a less anthropomorphic conception, a conception of the Dharma and of the ultimate ground of being, the truth of reality, being describable by metaphors of Nirvana.
11/4/04
Desire to rule is linked to desire for one's own freedom (libertarian militias and union fundamentalists [sic]; pre-1917 libertine leftists and Soviet dictators; economic laissez-faire tied to respect for law and order and state and strong military; communists and anarchists). One wants one's own will done => so one wants to be free, but also wants to have others do what one wants too.
11/7/04
Democracy is a kind of social organizational technology for achieving the purposes of freedom, equality, and so on. The freedom etc are the ends-- the democracy is very good to have, but it is only a technology, like a sewer system for the purpose of sewage disposal. It is thus NO more tied to Western culture than are modern sewer systems or electricity. It is used because it works. Freedom and equality MAY also be means to achieving the purpose of the pursuit of happiness (ethically).
11/20/04
The Haves are too weak (physically and character-wise) to oppress the Have Notes, so they get the Have Nots, who are strong (physically and character-wise), to either oppress each other and/or oppress themselves.
---> [note says (thought of before)]:
If you would not give someone food, why would you care about his or her freedom? (i seem to remember writing this in regards to libertarian opposition to the welfare state)
2/8/(probably 2005 [same page as 4/17/05 below], but maybe 2004)
modernism/liberalism => says that society is the aggregate of individual persons
post-modernism => says that individual persons are "constructed" by social forces
BOTH are right
2/13/(05?)
Believing that video games, etc, make kids violent is similar to believing that capitalism makes us greedy. Greed and violence are innate, going back before these things in culture that we're attracted to (violent entertainment and capitalist "getting-rich"). In fact, we are attracted to violent media and capitalism precisely because of these innate drives to violence and greed.
HOWEVER, it is true that capitalism gives us the incentive to be greedy (incentive other than the drive itself; incentive that could be redirected). Is it the case, then, that violent movies, video games, etc, give incentive for violence? I think probably not, because one has no more incentive to be violent in the real world due to violent media than one would have without such media.
Of course, there is obviously an incentive when one is playing a violent video game to be violent in the game, and both games and movies may show characters being given incentives to act violent. Does this mean (and i don't know) whether this teaches kids falsely that they have an incentive to violence in the real world that they don't actually have?
4/17/05
The Iron Law of Oligarchy means that there cannot be any "tyranny of the majority" and that all supposed examples of such majority tyranny are instead examples of demagoguery. This means that "tyranny of the majority" is NOT a possible danger of democracy. However, would majority tyranny be a possible danger of democracy if we were able to overcome the Iron Law of Oligarchy (which is what i think we should do for democracy's sake)? If such majority tyranny would not be a problem in democracy without the Iron Law, then that would mean that democracy would be the least tyrannical form of government -- but is itpossible to overcome the Iron Law of Oligarchy?
-------------
(date unknown: on page with another copy of Yodh-Heh-Vav-Heh diagram)
It should be noted that i had not necessarily meant for the following speculation to describe what i thought happened in the actual history of the world Jesus (or Buddha) were born into. This is less because of me having any particular trouble seeing Jesus or Buddha having divine inspiration as it does me having trouble thinking that any historically existing society would have had ALL of its members doing nothing but immoral and antisocial "defections" against one another all the time. Furthermore, i'm not sure it's even definitely known if the spread of Christianity or Buddhism even brought about a larger amount of altruistic behavior in general in their societies.
It might have been the case that Jesus and/or Buddha were divinely inspired in some way, and perhaps it was even the case that "defecting" was so widespread in either or both of their societies that the introduction of Christ and Buddha's altruistic teachings made a difference by appealing to people's compassionate side (ie, a sort of little everyday-type miracle). But i think the important thing is that that's how it might have worked in an ongoing series of Prisoner's Dilemma games played out in a society. And it has nothing to do, as far as i can see, with any actual blood-for-sin or evangelical "justification by faith."
The Prisoner's Dilemma games i'm talking about (with ALLD and other strategies) was run by some scientists on computer simulations described in a book called The Evolution of Cooperation that i found in the Wayne County Public Library, but i did not record the author of.
Pain in the Tao is unable to be ended because compromise in democracy leads to people not getting exactly what they want. God's Will is not coercive because we all want what God wants when (if?) our illegitimate, imaginary wants (the wants that hurt others) are stripped away. However, we can be happy without our bad wants being fulfilled. This is true because of the "mystical connectedness" that eliminates those bad wants (ie, cravings in Buddhism). The connectedness that eliminates bad desires may lead to a form of "pleasure" beyond what we think of as the pleasure-pain dichotomy.
That is why the Buddha and Christ were revolutionary. Christ introduced a form of altruism that permitted/called for self-sacrifice in order to "invade" a society populated by people living according to a strategy of ALLD (all defect) in the Prisoner's Dilemma. This "invasion" of ALLD society in turn introduced cooperation that eventually would come to be reciprocated so that cooperative strategy could replace ALLD.
The eventual reciprocation of cooperation in ALLD socierty was a miracle, because it was a transformation of consciousness that went beyond preprogrammed response --> love --> God intervened in the "game" of society to break the ALLD program mold in individual consciousness. This makes the person in question "born again." Such a consciousness change in society needed self-sacrifice to jump-start the cooperation. God had to intervene in the ALLD society to start this. He needed to be the original self-sacrifice to start the cooperation. Could this be the kernal of truth in the Christians' "salvation" story?
What we humans think is bad is pain for us, but what is good and bad to God goes beyond that --> that's why you can say God is neither foolish nor wise, but you would say He is wise if you had to pick. This is because the positive value (wise or good) means good according to God's judgment, NOT ours. God does have a standard of good and bad, right and wrong, but this is beyond our small conception -- rather a higher good.
Elitism is wrong for a country because an elitist leader cares more about his or her own power than about the people.
--------
(date unknown - probably year of presidential classes)
i got the following information from some Wooster College library book, i'm not sure which:
Jesus supported the oral Torah, which upheld saving life over purity laws (ie, the parable of the Good Samaritan). He supported this position against the position in the written Torah of the religious elites.
my comments, perhaps with other stuff from the book: The Torah that can be named is not the Eternal Torah, like the Tao.
-- elites tried to "name" Torah by writing down ritualistic laws that devalued life and real ethics, putting these things under the (bureaucratic?) legalism of purity laws
-- NOT that purity laws to be ignored - Jesus said the Law would never change - but life takes precedence
Parable of the talents says God rewards people's faithfulness in doing His Will. He is NOT said to reward people so much according to the amount of things they do in doing His Will --> goes back to rabbi teachings.
(arrows point from above to following:) like the Taoist denegration of speech -- nature being silent, the sage teaches by silence -- action of words?
"Is it not because he is selfless (wu szu) that he can fulfill himself (ch'eng ch'i szu)." (no question mark in notes)
-- Tao Te Ching 7.2
Alternative Translation:
"Isn't it simply because they are unselfish that they can satisfy their own needs?"
-- Daodejing 7.2 (Ames and Hall)
Ch'eng ch'i szu = wu szu --> everlasting ch'i power -- self is non-self -- first will be last, last shall be first -- the meek shall inherit the earth -- no-self in Mahayana Buddhism
Ch'i -- power of the Holy Spirit
Ch'i = Sanskrit prana = Hebrew ruach = Greek pneuma = the last two of these (ruach, pneuma) mean wind, breath, and/or spirit . This is all hypothetical: The terms may not actually equal each other.
Second commentary:
"Therefore in the being (yu-chih) of a thing, There is the benefit (li). In the non-being (wu-chih) of a thing, there lies its use (yung).
-- Tao Te Ching 11.2 (Chen)
In the coming into being of things is the benefit. In the non-being of things is use (service). Creation, coming into being, is good, but we serve each other by "non-action"; that is, by altruism, self-denial, self-sacrifice to make room for each other.
"The highest efficacy is like water.
It is because water benefits everything (wanwu)
Yet vies to dwell in places loathed by the crowd
That it comes nearest to proper way-making.
-- Daodejing 8.1 (Ames and Hall)
Paraphrase of and commentary on Tao Te Ching 8.1 (Chen): Water flows to the lowest point geographically, the place that others reject, because water forgets itself. The place the water flows to might be like the stone that the builders threw away that becomes the cornerstone, according to the Gospels. We serve the "lowest" among us--"the least of these"--through self-denial
Bibliography for this section:
Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall. Daodejing - "Making This Life Significant": A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003 [first trade paperback edition 2004).
Chen, Ellen M. The Tao Te Ching. A New Translation with Commentary. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
several years, old. Where i wished, i added or changed things while typing them here. I cannot stress enough
that many, perhaps most of these notes are, as far as i can remember, at least a few years old as ofthe
time of this posting:
---------------------------------------------------------
1. 11/22/04
If you care about people, please allow them to rule themselves. If you do not believe people are capable of
ruling themselves well, please do not care enough about them to keep them from ruling themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------
2. (date unknown --probably about same year as "level where the spirit" poem):
[dealing with "political thermodynamics"]
1. Power abhors a vaccuum. If rulers are forced out of power, new rulers will take their place.
2. An institution will tend to remain as it is unless acted upon -- change started will keep going unless
stopped.
3. Power has entropy -- powerful because less
4. Political actions have reactions.
5. Democracy is equilibrium of power among individuals -- state power tries to get to
6. Better to yield to natural flow than to fight.
Force = mass X acceleration --> what are political equivalents?
Thermodynamics: 0. There is no "power-over" between two people with the same amount of power.
1. Political power cannot be created or destroyed -- any power one loses, another may take and vice versa.
2. Power will not go by itself from a less-powerful person to a more-powerful person.
3. Absolute zero? -273.16 degrees C (-459.67 degrees F)
mass maybe = entrenched power
acceleration = change
force = political movement
Powerful and powerless do NOT equal hot and cold, but rather giving and taking power (?) This is where
natural "should be" is contradicted. Those taking power may have more power than those giving, UNlike in
physics. This is because of free will. Political dynamics work with himan free will. In order for the powerful
not to "leak" power, he/she has to keep taking more power from others --> imperialism, expansion, "active"
tyranny, as opposed to decaying "passive" reactionaries. This is why capitalism works as a status quo,
because it changes. How easy it is to change a system depends on how entrenched the system is.
Marc 17 on the Internet [ http://www.painandgreed.com/marc17/pages/marxthermo.html] writes that the
powerful keep power by "insulating" themselves with laws, etc, or by taking energy from outside as in
imperialism, etc.
Addition 6/12/07: See also
http://www.punkerslut.com/articles/physicsofanarchy.html
God created what is (1) and what should be (2). (1) constantly changes, but (2) stays the same for any given
moment of (1).
Andrew Galambos, who invented "Volitional Science", said that all creatures need to make "profit" by taking
more energy than they give in order to counter entropy -- called life "primordial property". He defined
morality as the absence of coercion, and defined coercion as taking another's property, since one can only
take more energy from a system by increasing entropy.
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" --> like Tao, each has opposite. One person, (A), forces
another, (B), to do what B does not want to do by giving B pain. this pain is physical force applied the the
"system" of B's body in order to disorganize it (creak the skull, etc). This causes the psychological reaction of
pain in B. Pain tells B to avoid the force that's trying to disrupt his/her body's order (this order is what B's
body "wants" its form to be according to God's Will). Violation of another person's gift of free will equals
coercion, which equals force, which equals pain for the coerced person.
In our universe, time is one-dimensional, that is, it moves in a line, so God's Purpose is revealed as a process
to us even though it really is already complete, fully revealed in universes where time is three-dimensional.
[In my notes, i draw a diagram of a Jewish-style Star of David, with one triangle labeled "time" and the other
labeled "space". I meant the three points of each triangle to stand for the three dimensions of space and the
hypothetical three dimensions of time.]
Is pain a signal that the Tao is being violated, or is pain only one side of the yin-yang? Maybe the unfolding
plan of God is to eliminate pain by smothering from avoidance.
In a free market, profit = zero, like the law of thermodynamics says that heat cannot flow between two bodies
of the same temperature. Zero profit is "heat death." Therefore, a free market leads to economic/politcal heat
death, but does this heat death equal "anarchy/democracy"? Does it equal a uniting with God like in Vedanta?
Life forms need the "profit" of extra energy input to live, but is that necessarily coercive and/or immoral?
If love is attraction, then maybe it is like gravity -- but does any aspect of love let things stay separate by not attracting?
How does entropy fit with the tendency to complexity? Entropy happens when the heat in (A) equals the
heat in (B). This is what causes movement, and it is stopped when the heat in A equals the heat in B. The
tendency to complexity happens when a "vacuum" of cold exists near heat; entropy sets in when the
accessable vacuum is filled.
The heat moves into a vacuum; heat --> movement --> complexity --> consciousness?
The Big Bang singularity may have been the original hot place, and it expanded to fill the original cold
vacuum to start God's plan toward life. Was the singularity the same as heat death?
"Matter is nothing in pieces" -- heat death -- infinite singularity -- infintesimal--> same thing?
Maybe that is what restarts the cycle --> but entropy spreads out while complexity draws together in
love/gravity. Love/gravity => new singularity --> entropy => heat death; opposites but the same in the
Tao? If so, what are we counteracting by fighting entropy? Schrodiger's cat is NOT both alive and dead at
once.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. (date unknown -- year of class on presidential management styles)
(M) monotheism ethics - because of God's love for persons
(P) pantheism ethics - because everything is part of God - is this sort of self-interest?
maybe P is from the right side of the brain (loving, emotional) and M is from the left side of the brain
(rational) -- but P is for self-interest and M is for love. Is love because we're all connected a type of big self-
interest?
individual community
--------------------------------
left right
reason emotion
soul no-soul
change stay same
personal God "impersonal" Ultimate Reality
transcendent God immanent God
"Thou" "Thou and I"
note: I do not know whether any of the particular terms in the "individual" and "community" columns actually belong in the columns they are in and not the opposite column.
We can never be God because we can never get rid of our egos.
Love is pleasurable -- one wants to act good toward those whom one loves.
love -> God - pleasure
pleasure/pain -> heaven/hell
[arrows pointing from "heaven" to "God" and from "pleasure" in "pleasure/pain" to "pleasure" next to "God"]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
4. (date unknown -- probably about same year as "be the new you" poem)
Other's rights should be worth more to one that one's own rights
Life [greater than ( >)] liberty greater than > property - BUT third party's rights are worth the same as other "others'" rights:
A = oneself, "me"
B = one other person
C = a third person, a "third party", second other than oneself
life of B = life of C
life of B > liberty of C
life of B > life of A
but is the liberty of B > the life of A?
land/capital: "ownership of something without working to produce the value from it -- illegitimate
capital/labor: workers who get provisional rights to part of the common store by working to mix their labor with things and thus bring value -- legimitate -- workers
How to make free-market system that gives benefit of production to the workers instead of to the "employers" and "owners"?
The bad thing is NOT the market - free society would have to allow trade - but rather the bad thing is rule by the "capitalists" who "own" without Lockean right to own - or any other elite.
1. market socialism 2. workplace democracy 3. syndicalism 4. consumer and producer co-ops 5. microlending 6. labor unions 7. mutualism
land/ source of capital -- environment exploited by rulers, belongs to God, to be used by everyone equally with Locke's labor thing [Locke's idea of property and "mixing labor" with things] for private ownership.
Workers are also exploited -- environment and workers are on the same side
Indigenous people --> enslaved: peasants, proles -- workers descend from "natives" with environmental spirituality
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5. (date unknown -- same year as Contemporary Poltical Ideologies class)
(taken from studying Hegel and Marx and dialectical view of history, with thesis, antithesis, synthesis)
Attempts to put an end to history mean squashing the antithesis that challenges the status quo. This is bad, so attempts to end history in order to make perfect the historical progress means that rebellion against the status quo is squashed. This rebellion is what would actually make things better (although not perfect). Real progress needs the antithesis and so real progress must not EVER assume it has reached perfection.
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6. (following notes taken on date unknown from a book written by someone else):
Eberly, Don and Ryan Streeter. 2002. The Soul of Civil Society: Voluntary Association s and the Public Value of Moral Habits. Lexington Books [city of publication unrecorded]. Page 110
Properly reactive Properly proactive
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equality - justice benevolence
liberty - restraint entrepeneurship*
[*my note: the authors, Eberly and Streeter, define "entrepeneurship" as duty, courage, hard work, and I quote, "the ability to agressively pursue opportunities in the face of uncertainties" (quoted page 105)
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(date unknown - maybe same year as "new you" and "obj/subj, guest/host" poems; 1 of the years i had Kille in class?)
From another book by someone else
Ward, Keith. (publication date unknown). God: A Guide to the Perplexed. Page 76. (publisher & city unknown). Chapter 3 (pp. 67-100) "The Love that Moves the Sun":
"the most basic meaning of sacrifice: that you freely give to the gods part--perhaps the best part--of what they have given to you, but which you have increased by your own effort, to show what you have done (that you have 'worked well') and to express gratitude for the gods' basic provision of the necessities of life, and for their protection and help."
* * * *
my own personal comments on this passage below this in my notes:
\/ \/
like Lockean proviso sacri-fice = make sacred
subject of God
citizen of the universe
The antichrist is anyone at all you'd call the Christ
the following is also from yet another book, but i didn't record which (it was on Judaism). My bad. Interspered with the stuff from that book is my own comments - the author's and mine are mixed together. The comments that i'm almost totally sure are mine are in blue below. Also, on a separate paper i have this same chart without the Hindu gods' names or the Christian Trinity, and the words "NOT a model of God, but of his Acts"):
Yodh - starting Heh - Creation Vav - revalation Heh - return
Creator Sustainer Redeemer/ Destroyer
<--------------- Brahma Vishnu Shiva
Father? Holy Spirit? or Son? Son? or Holy Spirit?
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3/2004
from Layard, Richard. 2005 (sic; it seems to be emphasized that this was 2004). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. New York: Penguin Press. Page 21.
[note: I could not copy the actual diagram in this format, so I have just paraphrased what the diagram said. The diagram was in the shape of a square with a cross in the middle; a horizontal and vertical axis. The vertical axis had "aroused" at the top and "unaroused" at the bottom. The horizontal axis had "happy" on the left and "uhappy" on the right]
aroused and happy: joy
aroused and unhappy: agitation
unaroused and happy: contentment
unaroused and unhappy: depression
Personal note from myself paraphrased from information in the book: It is only possible to be in one of these dimensions at a time. It is not possible to be happy and unhappy at the same time, only one or the other.
10/27/04
I feel hope. I just prayed the Lord's Prayer with my mind wandering for a long time in the middle of it. When my mind wandered, i thought about my friends and what i'd like to tell them. Earlier i had felt a bit of hope and happiness, and i had thought i should write about it, but figured it was fleeting (it was during prayer, so i also thought i should continue praying as i had been). Not only did i think i was fleeting, but also that happy feelings might for me be filled with back-of-my-mind dread that things may go wrong after all and that i'll feel bad when they do go wrong. But now i do NOT think i feel that way -- hard to say. I prayed that God would not let me be tempted or let me be in bad luck/pain/poverty/disability, etc, but that instead God would help me do the right thing even if God did let me be tempted or have hardship in Wisdom (paraphrase of Lord's Prayer). Because it is NOT because of good luck that we do should do good, but rather because it is the right thing to do. The feeling that God would help me through any possible bad times was comforting and gave me hope and cheered me up.
11/1/04
I think maybe the "kernal of truth" in the ancient Israelites' insistance that their God was the only real god and that their neighbors' gods were idols, was that they vaguely perceived that God is more than just someone who gives you stuff if you do the magic spells. God is the source of all existence and the force behind the moral law of all Creation. This, perhaps, can be likened to Gautama Buddha when he dismissed the idea of the Hindu gods being immortal or all-powerful. Instead, Gautama turned toward a less anthropomorphic conception, a conception of the Dharma and of the ultimate ground of being, the truth of reality, being describable by metaphors of Nirvana.
11/4/04
Desire to rule is linked to desire for one's own freedom (libertarian militias and union fundamentalists [sic]; pre-1917 libertine leftists and Soviet dictators; economic laissez-faire tied to respect for law and order and state and strong military; communists and anarchists). One wants one's own will done => so one wants to be free, but also wants to have others do what one wants too.
11/7/04
Democracy is a kind of social organizational technology for achieving the purposes of freedom, equality, and so on. The freedom etc are the ends-- the democracy is very good to have, but it is only a technology, like a sewer system for the purpose of sewage disposal. It is thus NO more tied to Western culture than are modern sewer systems or electricity. It is used because it works. Freedom and equality MAY also be means to achieving the purpose of the pursuit of happiness (ethically).
11/20/04
The Haves are too weak (physically and character-wise) to oppress the Have Notes, so they get the Have Nots, who are strong (physically and character-wise), to either oppress each other and/or oppress themselves.
---> [note says (thought of before)]:
If you would not give someone food, why would you care about his or her freedom? (i seem to remember writing this in regards to libertarian opposition to the welfare state)
2/8/(probably 2005 [same page as 4/17/05 below], but maybe 2004)
modernism/liberalism => says that society is the aggregate of individual persons
post-modernism => says that individual persons are "constructed" by social forces
BOTH are right
2/13/(05?)
Believing that video games, etc, make kids violent is similar to believing that capitalism makes us greedy. Greed and violence are innate, going back before these things in culture that we're attracted to (violent entertainment and capitalist "getting-rich"). In fact, we are attracted to violent media and capitalism precisely because of these innate drives to violence and greed.
HOWEVER, it is true that capitalism gives us the incentive to be greedy (incentive other than the drive itself; incentive that could be redirected). Is it the case, then, that violent movies, video games, etc, give incentive for violence? I think probably not, because one has no more incentive to be violent in the real world due to violent media than one would have without such media.
Of course, there is obviously an incentive when one is playing a violent video game to be violent in the game, and both games and movies may show characters being given incentives to act violent. Does this mean (and i don't know) whether this teaches kids falsely that they have an incentive to violence in the real world that they don't actually have?
4/17/05
The Iron Law of Oligarchy means that there cannot be any "tyranny of the majority" and that all supposed examples of such majority tyranny are instead examples of demagoguery. This means that "tyranny of the majority" is NOT a possible danger of democracy. However, would majority tyranny be a possible danger of democracy if we were able to overcome the Iron Law of Oligarchy (which is what i think we should do for democracy's sake)? If such majority tyranny would not be a problem in democracy without the Iron Law, then that would mean that democracy would be the least tyrannical form of government -- but is itpossible to overcome the Iron Law of Oligarchy?
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(date unknown: on page with another copy of Yodh-Heh-Vav-Heh diagram)
It should be noted that i had not necessarily meant for the following speculation to describe what i thought happened in the actual history of the world Jesus (or Buddha) were born into. This is less because of me having any particular trouble seeing Jesus or Buddha having divine inspiration as it does me having trouble thinking that any historically existing society would have had ALL of its members doing nothing but immoral and antisocial "defections" against one another all the time. Furthermore, i'm not sure it's even definitely known if the spread of Christianity or Buddhism even brought about a larger amount of altruistic behavior in general in their societies.
It might have been the case that Jesus and/or Buddha were divinely inspired in some way, and perhaps it was even the case that "defecting" was so widespread in either or both of their societies that the introduction of Christ and Buddha's altruistic teachings made a difference by appealing to people's compassionate side (ie, a sort of little everyday-type miracle). But i think the important thing is that that's how it might have worked in an ongoing series of Prisoner's Dilemma games played out in a society. And it has nothing to do, as far as i can see, with any actual blood-for-sin or evangelical "justification by faith."
The Prisoner's Dilemma games i'm talking about (with ALLD and other strategies) was run by some scientists on computer simulations described in a book called The Evolution of Cooperation that i found in the Wayne County Public Library, but i did not record the author of.
Pain in the Tao is unable to be ended because compromise in democracy leads to people not getting exactly what they want. God's Will is not coercive because we all want what God wants when (if?) our illegitimate, imaginary wants (the wants that hurt others) are stripped away. However, we can be happy without our bad wants being fulfilled. This is true because of the "mystical connectedness" that eliminates those bad wants (ie, cravings in Buddhism). The connectedness that eliminates bad desires may lead to a form of "pleasure" beyond what we think of as the pleasure-pain dichotomy.
That is why the Buddha and Christ were revolutionary. Christ introduced a form of altruism that permitted/called for self-sacrifice in order to "invade" a society populated by people living according to a strategy of ALLD (all defect) in the Prisoner's Dilemma. This "invasion" of ALLD society in turn introduced cooperation that eventually would come to be reciprocated so that cooperative strategy could replace ALLD.
The eventual reciprocation of cooperation in ALLD socierty was a miracle, because it was a transformation of consciousness that went beyond preprogrammed response --> love --> God intervened in the "game" of society to break the ALLD program mold in individual consciousness. This makes the person in question "born again." Such a consciousness change in society needed self-sacrifice to jump-start the cooperation. God had to intervene in the ALLD society to start this. He needed to be the original self-sacrifice to start the cooperation. Could this be the kernal of truth in the Christians' "salvation" story?
What we humans think is bad is pain for us, but what is good and bad to God goes beyond that --> that's why you can say God is neither foolish nor wise, but you would say He is wise if you had to pick. This is because the positive value (wise or good) means good according to God's judgment, NOT ours. God does have a standard of good and bad, right and wrong, but this is beyond our small conception -- rather a higher good.
Elitism is wrong for a country because an elitist leader cares more about his or her own power than about the people.
--------
(date unknown - probably year of presidential classes)
i got the following information from some Wooster College library book, i'm not sure which:
Jesus supported the oral Torah, which upheld saving life over purity laws (ie, the parable of the Good Samaritan). He supported this position against the position in the written Torah of the religious elites.
my comments, perhaps with other stuff from the book: The Torah that can be named is not the Eternal Torah, like the Tao.
-- elites tried to "name" Torah by writing down ritualistic laws that devalued life and real ethics, putting these things under the (bureaucratic?) legalism of purity laws
-- NOT that purity laws to be ignored - Jesus said the Law would never change - but life takes precedence
Parable of the talents says God rewards people's faithfulness in doing His Will. He is NOT said to reward people so much according to the amount of things they do in doing His Will --> goes back to rabbi teachings.
(arrows point from above to following:) like the Taoist denegration of speech -- nature being silent, the sage teaches by silence -- action of words?
"Is it not because he is selfless (wu szu) that he can fulfill himself (ch'eng ch'i szu)." (no question mark in notes)
-- Tao Te Ching 7.2
Alternative Translation:
"Isn't it simply because they are unselfish that they can satisfy their own needs?"
-- Daodejing 7.2 (Ames and Hall)
Ch'eng ch'i szu = wu szu --> everlasting ch'i power -- self is non-self -- first will be last, last shall be first -- the meek shall inherit the earth -- no-self in Mahayana Buddhism
Ch'i -- power of the Holy Spirit
Ch'i = Sanskrit prana = Hebrew ruach = Greek pneuma = the last two of these (ruach, pneuma) mean wind, breath, and/or spirit . This is all hypothetical: The terms may not actually equal each other.
Second commentary:
"Therefore in the being (yu-chih) of a thing, There is the benefit (li). In the non-being (wu-chih) of a thing, there lies its use (yung).
-- Tao Te Ching 11.2 (Chen)
In the coming into being of things is the benefit. In the non-being of things is use (service). Creation, coming into being, is good, but we serve each other by "non-action"; that is, by altruism, self-denial, self-sacrifice to make room for each other.
"The highest efficacy is like water.
It is because water benefits everything (wanwu)
Yet vies to dwell in places loathed by the crowd
That it comes nearest to proper way-making.
-- Daodejing 8.1 (Ames and Hall)
Paraphrase of and commentary on Tao Te Ching 8.1 (Chen): Water flows to the lowest point geographically, the place that others reject, because water forgets itself. The place the water flows to might be like the stone that the builders threw away that becomes the cornerstone, according to the Gospels. We serve the "lowest" among us--"the least of these"--through self-denial
Bibliography for this section:
Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall. Daodejing - "Making This Life Significant": A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003 [first trade paperback edition 2004).
Chen, Ellen M. The Tao Te Ching. A New Translation with Commentary. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
posted by jlhart7 at 5:01 PM
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