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

Hai,

Limits are an aspect of information and structure. The difference between what is and what is not. If it exists, it has limits and boundaries to make it what it is. Without those boundaries and limits, nothing exists. Now energy will always be testing and pushing on boundaries, structure and limits. If there was no movement and action, there would be no way to know there are limits and structure, because there nothing testing and acting on them. Essentially boundaries and limits are opposite forces pushing, or pulling on one another. So information is the definition, boundaries and thus limitations of energy.

Regards,

John M

Dear John!

Thank you for sharing with me your experiences.

I only deem to understand what you are describing here. It seems me just like you are able to visually recall time-lines (albeit those experiences are deemed to be lived and gathered new information sequentially forward in time) of experiences of a self, but those are projected backwardly in front of you by your third eye (functioning as a focusing prism) to oversee them. Furthermore those selves are even individual bubbling universes for their own. Do you mean something like this?

I'm not able to visually recall any else memory seeing backward to my present birth, only events happening in my present life. I'm also not able to imagine, visualize any kind of abstraction of energy patterns (such as waves, spots.. etc.) However, as I pointed out to you what is interesting and I'm sure - the void there may be present in a very complex form. - If I'm concentrating to recall any past life memories it is pretty same for me I've just releasing every thoughts emptying my mind - sometimes said one is contemplating the no think, no thing - I can see only an all encompassing light. Even so I'm doing this and experience it in a living complex physical body. Whether my physical body is an illusion or this kind of experience? I'm not sure yet. But I incline to think there is my physical body in a real reality unconditionally existing however my memory projected here is no thing. There may be probably 'a program' to create my holographically projected and materially arranged body illusion and one whom I'm presently experiencing just Me from a birthing point here, however the real I may be living in a reality which exists neither in time and and space .

That is also tricky for me, as I mentioned to you I'd got an else capability. What I should liken to a computer terminology. It seems me functioning as a crawler gathering thoughts patterns on certain key nodes of a network which are factually not mine own thoughts, but thoughts of a same self living in severally projected bodies and even living yet in else time-space space-time frameworks, somehow all convolute and converge in a present point, or at least try to make a consensus with very own their/him selves. This kind of experience much rather likened to the String and M-theory described in theoretical physics.

Are you riding a horse living outside or just that is also an illusion?

Honestly said, I'm a bit confused yet, what is an illusion what is not in our life.

Thank you again for our conversation.

Kind regards,

Valeria

John,

I chopped this up a bit and re-arranged it. I skipped your mundane attempt to define God. I don't agree with the rest of your essay either. However, I will ask for your response to this:

Your view of monotheism:

"Usually religion is the area in which society collects its communal vision of what is important, but that has become a bit of a fallback position for significant unanswered questions and it is seriously fragmented. The central thesis for many people, monotheism, the premise of an all-knowing absolute being, is about 3000 years old. While it fills and fulfills a variety of

emotional needs and some convenient political ends, many do not find it coherently logical."

Me: Before the above you presented your own monotheism:

"At its most basic level, reality is the dichotomy of energy and information. Like two sides of a coin, one does not exist without the other. Energy manifests information and information defines energy. Among those for whom this is a professional concern, information tends to be paramount because it is what is descriptive, yet in the absence of any form of energy, there can be no information. The void has no form. Sorry Plato."

Me: Changing God's name to Energy doesn't change theology to science. Is it your view that energy is the cause of intelligent life?

James Putnam

    John,

    I enjoyed your essay very much especially quotes such as these:

    "We are fundamentally linear creatures. As singular organisms, we experience this kaleidoscopic reality as a sequence of events and being generally predatory, this sense is further focused. Nature, on the other hand, is cyclical and any action ultimately is balanced by other, non-linear activity."

    "We are fundamentally linear creatures. As singular organisms, we experience this kaleidoscopic reality as a sequence of events and being generally predatory, this sense is further focused. Nature, on the other hand, is cyclical and any action ultimately is balanced by other, non-linear activity."

    I think you are totally right in suggesting that our current financial system is out of whack. Not to pick on the much lambasted high frequency traders, but they are indicative of our problems. Talk about short term thinking! HFTs trade in micro-seconds not even perceivable by human beings dis-attaching us from the slower cyclic moves of the economy and the slow emergence of the future as the product of our investments. A re-conceptualizing of money is certainly in order.

    Like the Sabbath we need reminding that "money was made for us and not us for money". Your essay is a good move in that direction.

    Best of luck!

    Rick Searle

      Valeria,

      It has been a tendency I've had since childhood. Once when studying this ant, it stopped and I had this sense of a cone of awareness waving about with its antenna. When I drive down the road, I'll frequently get a visual sense of the drivers coming the other way. So much of our sense of sight is a matter of focusing on details, yet this is the opposite, to just objectively allow the vision to go in a zone. Remember the eyeball is a fluid sack being lensed by the muscles and much of what we think we see is really the brain patching together all the input into a semi-coherent narrative. As I'm someone who grew up as a younger child in a large farm family, with lots of large animals, I suppose I have the personality of a prey animal, so I know how to just melt into the circumstance, and just absorb my environment and physically function at a subconscious, muscle memory level. In some of those cave paintings in France, there are a various abstract symbols, alongside the drawings of the animals and they resemble the sorts of forms I see. For instance, one is the classic heart design. Now if you take one of those spot forms and have a line going through it and pulling on it, it creates that classic heart shape. As though that spot of awareness is being pulled by another. This line pulling on it would be the Cupid's arrow.

      Not to get all cosmic here, but people these days do live very emotionally and organically sterilized lives, with all food, information, environment and often relationships being highly processed. My experience is that much of the actual organic nature of life is being lost.

      Regards,

      John

      James,

      I can see getting that from my comment of thinking about the spirit as more energy than form, but that is within the context of my observations that the real mystery is this elemental sense of awareness which which life seems to be possessed of. So often with many things, we naturally relate the process with the form. For example, we tend to think of the present in terms of the specific situation, rather than that more vague presence of being. So when people think of God, they tend to associate it with some formless power, 'up in the heavens,' because that is what they are taught, rather than the source of their own sense of being. Logically then the source doesn't particularly know every detail of what will ever happen, only that it keeps pushing onward. Since many people want to be given some sense of direction and only really want freedom when their forward progress is blocked, especially those who feel the need for an all powerful deity, this notion of a bottom up spirituality probably isn't all that appealing, but I'm trying to figure out what is logical, not what people want. So for me, the question is trying to explain the sense of being, not the physical reality it manifests. That physical process seems to be a cycle of expanding energy and contracting mass, but that we have discussed previously.

      Planning on getting around to yours, but with my limited time, have mostly been reading those who don't converse in the forums.

      Regards,

      John

      Rick,

      Thank you.

      I do start with a broad view and try to narrow it down to some specific points, because that is how we need to distill any form of logical argument. In a sense, we put that predatory impulse to good use, with extracting the desired from the context. This then goes to my observation about the nature of utopia. It is a social idealization and ideals are all the good stuff distilled from the seeming extraneous, or simply undesirable parts. Yet often one person's ideal views another's nature as imperfect. We conflate our sense of perfection with a universal absolute, but as I point out, the absolute is basis, where all those details are lost. Given the nature of structure in general, it tends to be inherently self supporting and so like a gravitational vortex, draws everything inwards. When we then set up the ideal, it tends to become the center of this vortex, pulling everything inwards. While this is all very natural, when it happens with complex forms such as human societies, that simple, central thesis can be overwhelming to all the networks forming that society and you can end up with the various forms of centralized totalitarianism, drawing out the society into the black hole in the center.

      So while we do very much need the focus of our desires and ideals, we also need to keep some sense of the larger context and a balance between the two.

      Regards,

      John M