Assorted reports from the Day Watch

Assorted reports from the Day Watch

A friend recently asked: “Just what IS going on in the noosphere right now?” OK, here is an analogy. Imagine having a teenage son or daughter with an IQ of 300, going through a typical adolescent style nervous breakdown, saying everything which pulls them and pushes them in all directions, speaking faster than you can decrypt, thrashing faster than anyone could speak in English (or Arabic or Chinese).  The expression “drinking from a firehose” resonates.

Of course, Trump is in there at this time. (Duh!!!).  But just a few days ago... when Trump crossed the line in the specific way he attacked Bill Clinton... (I am waiting for the jokes like “Trump says Bill Clinton was the sexiest man on earth”... and “do we now get to hear about the adventures of all the women in Trump’s life?”) ... different currents appeared. One current reinforced the view that it is “time to turn it over to grandma, she is the only one who really cares about the kids”, followed by some sheer horror in Russia and some other countries terrified of the continued decay which may occur if the US reverts to its recent policy of trying to be “mother in law to the world,” somewhat insensitive to the real intelligence and goals and problems elsewhere.  But another current, more of the gotterdammerung variety, maybe ready to prevent H2S death of everyone by just enough way and nuclear winter to block the light causing meltoff of the Antarctic and reduce fertilizer use in California, China and Japan.

Watching these forces at work and in play... I certainly remember that my own role is just as witness (the job of the watch) and as occasional messenger. I respect and support the police and the judges, but I am not one of them. In fact, I am only now beginning to understand some of the very special “principles of law” at work in noospheres which allow them to have a life expectancy more than one might expect from the entropy obvious on earth (and in all but “a set of measure zero” of most complex systems).  A certain kind of deep respect for the truth at a certain level is part of that. We all owe Trump some serious good feelings and gratitude for the role he played in help avert the real risk of a war of US and Israel versus Russia and Iran... and it is fascinating to see how the RT television channel has become much deeper and more interesting in part because of the US not being enticed over the deep end as the team of Cheney and the Moslem brotherhood tried to make happen ... but ... what would the judges and the police do if the US picked a president too far over those lines which really count? After the gotterdammerung currents started to appear... I wondered how far the limits would be... but in his book (which I saw just a couple of days ago) Trump not only opposes student loans, but endorses the line of fracking forever and makes it clear he would do nothing to dampen the most serious corruption which blocks hope of a less painful preservation of some life on earth.  Gotterdammerung is not the way. (Also: if Hillary would pick John Kerry as running mate, perhaps Putin would be more reassured. Who else is there, aside from maybe a google executive to counterbalance Trump’s claims about line management and energy?)

In discussing this with Luda, I mentioned a science fiction by Philip K. Dick which I read... in my room in the nicest graduate dorm at Harvard, the room which was previously occupied by Hashim Yamani (son of the Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, and also a kind of remote personal friend). In that novel, a psychically or spiritually sensitive person looking for guidance gets to hear from tow powerful spiritual transmitters, one who reassures him that he is the god of the earth, and another who gives a Chinese name meaning something like “useful frying pan” or “little word.” He later learns that the self-proclaimed “god of earth” is the last person he should listen to, because he represents false misunderstanding. As Luda asks my role... “No, in trying to save the earth (more precisely, minimize the probability of human extinction), I am not misconstruing myself like that god of earth person. It’s more like a useful carbeurator (sp?). Yes, the carbeurator is not of any value or use unless it is properly installed in the car, but it also needs to work right, and be connected right to the whole system.” So many myopic decision-makers excuse behaving in ways which may cause their entire species to go extinct (including all their own family!), based on the excuse “We are not God, we are humble...” But if everyone is so humble that no one thinks about what is needed to really save life on this planet, in a full and rational and truthful way, accounting for everything we know ... well, perhaps the repo man cometh.  

I still watch CNN, but watch France24 and RT more often (sometimes Bloomberg and Al Jazheera even). It was interesting to see an RT special a day or two ago, interviewing the former head of Al Jazheera, who commented on how CNN more and more tells us about the US only... people who rely on it less and less aware of the world as a whole.

Facing this complexity... I get to root myself on ground more like what everyone else has to ground themself in.

“As above, so below.” Even at the spiritual level – our souls, our life in the noosphere and in kindergarten... there is a kind of market system at work. As in a neural network. Survival of any neuron, like survival of a real market corporation, requires customers or connections. Some neurons specialize more in analysis (complex local recurrent networks), while others broadcast more long-distance connections, but all must have SOME outgoing connection or they just die off, even more in the noosphere than in mundane markets (which are often corrupted or warped in ways not allowed in the noosphere). So I too must try to understand “market conditions”, supply and demand... where demand is ultimately what the system as a whole needs and wants, flowing out from the core utility function of the noosphere... and supply is the assessment we each need to make (with some help from others) of what we can do to add value to the system. Because life is complex and diverse, the right spiritual answer is not the same for everyone, nor even the same at different times. Both my Rosicrucian brother and the leader of our local Quaker discussion group have accepted the “puzzling” truth that “our assigned mission from God may change form one day to the next;” I see no puzzle here, because I know that the higher J function of the noosphere is far too complex for our small brains to fully contain (let alone the bandwidth of people’s meditation abilities), so of course what we receive at any one time and place is more like a local gradient, just like what the cerebellum and olive receive from higher centers of the mammal brain.

For me... I have focused on developing unique understanding of the drivers of the probability of human extinction, the ultimate bottom lines, which I simply as “the unholy trinity, H2S/NUC/AI”, each element of which requires careful definition. To be trying in harmony with the larger realms of thought, we must of course ask what lies both before and after these three threats.. and of course things like overpopulation, dishonest or psychopathic ideologies, and oil money in politics will have big impacts on deciding whether one or all of these three mechanisms of total extinction go all the way. So avoiding those three, and maximizing the quality of our afterlife (even harder to understand), defines “demand” in a way. For supply... well, at this moment in my life, I need to consider inventory, and not just things I can do. Inventory, as in specific important bits of knowledge – especially a few things crucial to material survival which I somehow have not yet successfully communicated.  I also understand how my friend Yeshua is in a similar situation... another very important speciality, but neither he nor I would currently expect everyone to leave their homes and family as ... some parts of the New Testament call for for some people. (Though what it says about hypocrites and pharisees apply even more today than then, in all religions of the world.)

The failure so far... reminds me of 2009, when I worked for Senator Specter on climate legislation, with more access than anyone else to the serious staffers in “all three political parties” (like Boxer, Inhofe and Bingaman). The summary: “We ALL failed that year – Boxer because she introduced an unpassable bill, me because I had a chance to speak to her directly and seriously and did not communicate well enough what needed to be done to save the situation.” Yes, there was a lot of important other complexity here, but at the end of the day, ALL of us on earth have failed so far, and any hope lies in us somehow working together better to rise above those past failures.  New directions, new efforts....

Of course, H2S and NUC and AI all really cry for a lot more detail; that’s important; but this blog post is long enough already. I can say... the inability of any group on earth to be honest about the technical requirements of low-cost RLV is closely correlated with my judgment of how effort should rationally be reallocated to the “afterlife” market.  Don’t shoot the messenger; anything I say here is real milktoast compared what may be in the works.

Best of luck for the new year.

For myself... well... I do not have New Year’s resolutions, but for this year I will try to balance my original Goethe/Faust kind of heroic spirit with more calm benevolence... more yin to balance the yang?... we will see.