Hi John,

I think you identified a big problem going forward as getting everybody to recognize and act according to our "collective self interest". Re-using plastic bags, for example, is something I see in the city (and now do myself) that is an indication that people have a recognition of this principle although it might seem like (and probably is) a token gesture in the big picture.

Your essay was a bit of a ramble, but a good read that resonates quite a bit with my thoughts.

Best to you

Colin

    Colin,

    Thanks. It's a matter of perspective. Life can seem to be a token gesture, if we box it up too much. In order to make sense of the little things, we need to keep them in the context of emblematic of bigger things, not just lost in the shuffle of bigger things. Holographic, as well as digital.

    I tried to stuff a lot in there, so it's nice to know it plays well.

    Regards,

    John M

    Very good, John. I love your concept of the "elemental self pushing out like a sprouting seed." I also like the way you summarize life as like a sentence, in which we must deal with the way we put things together between what came before and the punctuation at the end, and then go on to address the substance of the topic -- the nervous system of governance and circulatory system of economics that drive our daily lives and shape the future. I wonder, though, if you place too much stock in a "coronary" attack breaking down the system in which the rich and powerful become ever more so. You may be right, but that's not what happened five or six years ago and next time thrombosis strikes it might be too late for the masses.

      Walter,

      Thank you.

      You might say the response the last time amounted to a massive dose of adrenaline to get the system flowing again, but nothing was learned and it is doubtful enormous doses of credit will work as well another time. What is safe to say is that there will be significant questions raised as to whether we are on the right track and even Rupert Murdoch won't be able to control the editorializing. That is when the conversation will open up somewhat and new ideas will have at least a chance of being heard. The two economic observations I'm making, public banking and the fundamental nature of money, are being raised, with community and public banking initiatives growing at the grass roots and Ellen Brown's Public Banking Institute as a sort of clearing house and idea center for them. Also Modern Monetary Theory delves quite deeply into the roots and evolution of money and gives a somewhat different version than conventional economics, which naturally argues there is no other way than as it is treated in capitalism. Which is essentially as a replacement commodity, rather than the social contract which validates its function.

      While I conclude with the comments on economics, I also feel some of the other, more conceptual issues need to be addressed, as well. One point I didn't raise in this entry, but have in other contests and further up this thread, Apr. 13, 2014 @ 18:02 GMT, is the nature of time. That it is not the point of the present moving from past to future, but the changing configuration of what exists which turns future into past. While this might seem a bit abstract, given that human civilization is based on its various versions of history and thus the linear perception of time, understanding the underlaying physical dynamic might help us to somewhat unwind all these conflicting versions and arrive at that more agreeable place.

      Regards,

      John M

      Hi John.

      Not what I was expecting from the title but very interesting to read your point of view on the monetary system and religion. I fear the World's problems are too large for a change in banking to make that much difference. Though I have read and seen TV programmes about the success of micro-loans in India and elsewhere. Allowing small businesses to be started, that give employment and service to the community, improving the quality of life of more than just the recipient.

      The whole premise of the worlds economies is unsustainable. In my essay, yet to appear on the list, I include the idea that in the future rather than success being measured by economic growth it should be measured by the contentment, health, altruism, high culture and creativity of its people; as growth is ultimately unsustainable. Can societies be made future proof or do they have to fall so that new societies with different founding principles can arise? I don't know. We were requested to give an optimistic outlook, so I have. There are still guns, and walls, but no zombie apocalypse.

        Dear John!

        Thank you for your answer.

        I feel, you are right in that, my essay cannot so clear way convey information (as your essay is truly transparent), which logically drives one's attention on a thread. It can suggest certainly thinking on many threads in the meantime. However, my essay was specially focused, and organized. Covering topics arisen here at Fqxi's previous contests, and long run behind involving truly vast amount of background information compressed into the possible here given 9 pages. It was 'edited' by my interpretation, as far as I can understand and absolve those information - dealing with questions which are not necessarily thoughts of mine!!! Those are complex thoughts yes, however those are also present in our reality in one's or ones' minds, even at many levels of every one of us, and those thoughts have been running on many threads. And you are also right, those information may be very confusing, noisy, distracting, and probably open ended, with 'no ground floor', or eventually cancelled, as you pointed out.

        You are focusing on more concretely formed problems what urgent their resolution and stand near for the everyday thoughts. However, I felt writing my essay, quite because, I think those many threads of more complex thoughts I mentioned running yet parallel. May be focused, edited, 'hacked' or cancelled by one or ones (not necessarily personally by me).

        I exerted my best effort and capacity to attract and catalyse ones' attention who are disposing of the possibility to bring those threads on a harmonics what a normal original human body can endure, and digest. (involving myself too) Supposing we want to remain - human - as naturally and unconditionally given! (This latter is my thoughts, truly! And I think, it is a very clear message, I also focused on this conclusion in my essay and some of my comments put here.

        Thank you again for reading my essay.

        Valeria

        Georgina,

        Good to hear from you. They haven't been posting contest comments on the blog sidebar, so the two conversations haven't been entwined as in past years. Nor is there an overall contest comment thread, so it's harder to keep these contest conversations easily in view. Oh well.

        An interesting article on MMT is in this month's New Inquiry. In some ways, microfinance is just turning into a way to further drain value out of ever poorer people. Like many things, it's a two edged sword. There really should be a broad conversation over the physics of finance and money, but obviously the best financed schools of thought are those supporting the money as personal property side of the coin and not as broad social contract, but the success of this view appears to be leading to its undoing, along with a large chunk of society.

        Well, I have to go to work and I'm sure we will both be having some fun with these debates.

        Regards,

        John

        John,

        Your essay seems to have generated a lot of interest and discussion, too many for me to read them all. Seems I have missed out on some important expansion of the ideas in the essay. Its obviously a topic that many people feel strongly about and I expect especially Americans, given the recent severe financial woes of the country.

        Good Luck, Georgina

        Thanks, Georgina.

        Some of it's been discussions I've started on other's threads as well. While it concludes on a financial note, I suspect some of the more controversial ideas are developed before that.

        Given they made it pretty clear the winners will be chosen from FQXI members, I simply set out to stir up as much controversy as possible, rather than appeal to any particular group. It is an interesting topic from my perspective though, as I mostly became attracted to physics in the first place as a way to make sense of cultural and social complexities and views. I think that a lot of people generally operate from within those models, so what I try to say mostly comes across as a foreign language. Even though it may seem logical to me, I do have a fairly good grasp of many of those cultural memes, at least the western ones, to know how simply different some of what I propose does sound. In fact, it seems to resonate best to those who tend toward an eastern, spiritually dualistic view, from a fairly modern western perspective. I think the true easterners approach these ideas from a much more cultural set of ingrained beliefs and so still might see it as a foreigner trying to speak the language. Since much of it comes from my own personal experiences of dealing with life and nature, along with a fair amount, but not what would be considered extensive reading, it is what it is.

        Regards,

        John

        Valeria,

        We have to express the world the way we see it. You are you and you probably have a better memory than I. One of the reasons I have to focus and edit as much as I do, is because I am someone who does get distracted easily. Personally I mostly work outside, with horses and tend to view reality as much thermodynamically, as narratively. I just know language is a linear medium. Of course, it is old fashioned and now people use visual communications much more. Best of luck!

        Regards,

        John

        Letslink UK Local Exchange Trading and Complementary Currencies Development Agency Have you come across this scheme?

        Wikipedia local exchange trading system. Quote:" A number of people have problems adjusting to the different ways of operating using a LETSystem. A conventional national currency is generally hard to earn, but easy to spend. To date LETSystems are comparatively easy to earn, but harder to spend." Wikipedia Local exchange trading system. That might be a good thing because there seems to be an addiction to consumption which is unsustainable.

        Quote:"LETSystems often have all of the problems confronting any voluntary, not-for-profit, non governmental, community based organisation. LETS organisers often complain of being overworked, and may suffer burnout. Many schemes have ceased operation as a result."Wikipedia Local exchange trading system. That is something that would need addressing if their use is to be sustained and proliferated.

        Wikipedia Local currency Found this interesting as although I knew of the transition town movement I did not know that some towns have associated local monetary systems. Also a long long list of benefits. I like this idea-Quote: "4.The Fureai kippu system in Japan issues credits in exchange for assistance to senior citizens. Family members living far from their parents can earn credits by offering assistance to the elderly in their local community. The credits can then be transferred to their parents and redeemed by them for local assistance."Wikipedia Local currency. What a good idea.

        Dear John!

        Thanks again for your answer.

        Yes, I agree basically with you! We can express thoughts about our reality on ways we are just experiencing it, mainly by sensual ways through an actual genetic make up arrangements - you probably call individual I'm. However, much depends on our previous personal experiences somehow stored we call - memory. Also much depends on what our actual conditioned thoughts allow to apprehend. The latter generally means the actual mutual memory complex sometimes called social or group memory - noosphere. Furthermore, also much depends on the environment in which one actually lives. Also those thoughts are present non-locally and non-linearly which are not yet coherently probed, tested, but we call - future or probabilities. All incorporates I think, structurally, but factually neither in space nor time, but somehow there are things (e.g. sensing time and changeable environment/places artificially created or not) for us by some ones who are intentionally trying to steer the - larger reality processes. We should call - history.

        What is the long time/short time, genetic, visual memory? How are our experiences both individual and collective stored? How far can those be got back and expressed by and through a naturally built organism? Or how far can our memory be bettered even substituted with synthetics to have bigger capacity, quicker etc.? (likened to as Turil said a kind of heterogeneous even extra or ultra terrestrial database). All revolves around in our presently seen reality - That is a huge topics, truly.

        I think, my memory not better than you! Just, I have else capabilities 'riding' on the - threads -. I know much less about the thermodynamics, physics than you could express and quite clearly formulate here. Yes, I can understand too, riding a horse naturally requires to see straightforward and suggests very straight goal orientation. I've never ride a horse seriously, only tried it unhandy, they did with me what they wanted. They had known I was not not a satisfactory partner to steer them. I highly appreciate the horses they are very clever sensitive beings, close friends to man, I like them.

        However, I got a thinking ability to oversee complex processes and putting the pieces into places where those better should fit by my right feeling. Albeit the processes can run parallel (as far as you wrote ..we have developed as physical organisms with very distinct information processing functions..and seeing same world severally expressed) even so I can keep my focus on a main thread. Probably this capability is required to do my profession when planning and creating a computer program.

        I'd like to say too. Overseeing how a complex natural (or else) organism should work and applying that model for our societal complex organism betterment as you likened to - ...are government as society's central nervous system and finance as its economic circulation system - I think, an ageless trial experiment just in time running on many threads for even I truly hope the main thread goal is - let there be balanced.

        You are just focusing on, quite straightforwardly and goal oriented, which is absolutely right in place and have crucial importance! How 'banking' or monetary system need to be 'edited', or should be put into an else context which better fit to a working of a healthy economical and ecological organism.

        Perhaps, there is nobody at the moment giving the right answers and resolutions - How to substitute the money driven inventive presently exorbitant technological, technocratic development, as a blood vessel conveying proprietary laws, for domination over the natural law for every living being. The government unfortunately does what some ones finance - perhaps this kind of neural network system also need to be put into a right context, and cured.

        Albeit the bottom up thinking and forces are growing even so the processes are controlled and planned yet from top to bottom. There are also much implication yet to be re-considered about the spiritual beingness too. We tend to think yet the spirit over the matter or backward - however, both need to be in balance.

        I wish good luck for everyone of us.

        Kind regards,

        Valeria

        Georgina,

        I do somewhat follow the various efforts to start local currencies and now digital currencies, but the national ones have a fairly strong hold on the field. That's why I keep saying this is an idea which needs to be examined, rather than implemented, unless there is a specific opportunity.

        The further point I make is what I'm saying is somewhat different than actually trying to develop a particular currency. Any form is going to have its advantages and disadvantages and maintaining one is a function of proper management, but what I'm trying to say is more in the category of vision as to how it needs to be done. As I keep pointing out, we treat money as a commodity, when it is a contract. Now when you think of it as a commodity, it is something to accumulate and store and hold, but if its a contract, the perspective changes entirely. Then it is like water, or air, or a road. You understand it is essential, but using it is a function of balance and letting go, as much as taking on. If people understand it amounts to a promise from the rest of the community and the essential value is therefore dependent on the health of the community, they will much better understand why the way we treat money today, with everyone trying to simply accumulate as much as possible and no sense of proportion, with an economy essentially geared toward producing this capital, as opposed to promoting a healthy society and stable environment, etc. it really is stupid and counterproductive.

        Now there is a bloated class of people benefiting off this system and they pretty much control the terms of debate, but it isn't going to go on this way forever and the longer it goes, the more severe the crash will be. Then people will really start asking questions and the old answers won't do.

        Regards,

        John

        Valeria,

        Living around animals and in the country, I see life and spirituality as pretty much the same. One of the arguments I frequently make here is that we look at time backwards. Since we experience it as a sequence of events, we think of it as the point of the present moving from past to future, but the reality is the changing configuration turns future into past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. This makes time much more like temperature than space. One is frequency and the other is amplitude. Now my experience of life, from micro to macro, is that it is swarming, that it is much more of a thermodynamic medium, with everything as degrees of the same sense of being and that even our sense of self is often multiple subconscious impulses and thoughts and it is our need to focus which makes them line up in a narrative fashion, like frames of a film. So when you look at the history of religion, it started off as animistic. The sense that things are mostly just alive. Remember that at the dawn of civilization, we hadn't pushed nature back and it really was very much alive. There really wasn't any aspect of what would have been encountered that wasn't essentially crawling with life, so it made alot of sense. Then came polytheism, as stories were made about this living nature. Then monotheism, as we looked for a single explanation for it all. To a very real extent, I see the natural and spiritual world as being much more like that thermodynamic medium and essentially polytheistic/animistic, while monotheism is an attempt to put it into a single narrative structure. To take all those living, conscious things, as well as thoughts and ideas and make them go in one direction. The result is we all get going in one direction and build up a lot of energy, but eventually it all comes apart again and is scattered, like the Tower of Babel.

        So while you need to keep things lined up when you have a reason, otherwise go a little wild on occasion. It's healthy and necessary.

        Regards,

        John

        Dear John!

        I feel calm, knowledge, wisdom and acceptance in your writings.

        Anyhow there be a mentioning, apprehension about time and space, flowing back and forth, yes, things seem turning back to the origin-al 'knowledge' and wisdom. Perhaps, for that reason 'there be hacked the human history' :)

        Thermodynamics means for me quite simply translating/narrating it, to be an order/disorder relation. Why the latter suggests a kind of negative attitude even so that may be a source of development, a new possible arrangement of things putting them into an order again.

        As Joe Fisher says the 'Reality Once' (I call it, the original Reality as an undisturbed Natural order) is not complicated truly. However all possible information inherently involved, either one knows, apprehends it or not.

        The Man has a capability (also inherently given) which propels him to understand, scrutinize his environment both inner/outer ones! The Man inherently wants to know! It also cannot be ignored! Surely there were and possibly there will be civilizations (natural organizations of universal arrangements or orders of beings) who never used hard technological inventions overtaking their own nature, used their knowledge wisely. (We should have heard about them as fairydom or ethereal kingdom). Also possibly there were civilizations and there will be who need to equilibrate between the incorporating dimensions. Some parts of the structure of dimensions should be meant material some parts anyhow named, termed interpreted by a kind of language. (involving mathematics, physics, esoteric, art, etc. Using those several kind of interpretation methods i.e. languages, I think, it really seems yet like a Tower of Babel.

        I also think, the spiritual part of a complex Natural system at which apex can be the Universal Cosmic Man who is able to apprehend the whole structure and stratum of the existence basically inherent, immanent, encompassing, inseparable from the material parts, all involved, and integrated. The energy conveying information about the whole structure and stratum flows and circulates bottom up and top to bottom inside outside and vica versa. Neither the material existence nor spiritual one are more important.

        What is interesting and thoughtful for me from your last advice. Yes, being wild also is a healthy part of the Nature, I can accept, even so I better prefer being balanced. We are able to keeping in balance our emotional turmoil arising from our inherent wild nature and the over controlled conscious decision making and steering ourselves supported by strong technological and artificial means.

        We are presently on a way at an exceptional 'Moment in the NOW' when the sensing of time and space can vanish and we should be - WHO WE TRULY ARE, or want to be!

        Thank you for our conversation.

        Kind regards,

        Valeria

        Valeria,

        Each of us is a little bubble of awareness and knowledge and that is the basis of our knowledge. We describe the space as three dimensional, because it takes three coordinates to measure it and one of time, to describe the sequence of events we perceive. Now we think of progress as moving forward and constantly taking in new information and experiences, but what if we are to stop and let the world rush on by, so that even our own thoughts float out in front of us, like the spots, waves, sparkles and pulses in our vision when we just sit back and let our eyes stare off into the air? Then the interior dynamic of our thoughts start to pull on themselves and the third eye can see the thought before last, just floating out there, before it vanishes into a bird in the distance. Then we know that thin surface of the bubbles of our self is as much an illusion as anything else. It is its own sense of order and balance, but if it wants to see outside, it has to let go, just a little bit.

        Regards,

        John