Steve Sarkisian might be the Seahawk's Best Bet

Univ of Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian is about the right age to take on an NFL head coaching job. With a good record for the Longhorns Sarkisian may be interested in returning to the NFL where he formerly was an offensive coordinator.

Sartre, Epictetus and Epicurus version 2.0

 I wanted to write something about the late first and early second century philosopher Epictetus's idea concerning death. The Roman was a well read individual who actual spent time as a slave during the reign of Nero. The Emperor Domitian banished philosophers from Italy so the freed slave move to Greece where he established a school. Because he wrote a lot; primarily his 'Discourses' history informs us of his way of thinking about many concerns. What is remarkable about his view of life is that it is similar in outlook to the 20th century French philosopher of Existentialism/aka French rationalism, Jean Paul Sartre.

Epicurus' thought about death is 'that it isn't anything to fear because one fears existing bad things rather than non-sense' (to paraphrase). Life is sense experience and death is the cessation of sensory input (Epictetus believes), hence there is nothing to fear because there is no sensation. Sensation is required to have anything to fear in Epicurus' experience.

The premise that one does not exist after death cannot be confirmed while alive. Non-existence after physical death is an assumption. One knows that information cannot be destroyed (Shannon Entropy) and that an omnipotent God could map or store all of the information comprising a human life (maybe even quantum computing will achieve that capability some time), and so restoration of a human life after death could occur whenever anyone with the information wanted to do so. Thus one could arrive at the premise about existing after death with something new to experience. That is nearly as plausible as existing now.

Epicurus was a hedonist. Epictetus was a stoic who believed in God in nature at least yet his viewpoint isn't too different concerning death than that of Epicurus. The main differentiator is that Epictetus might not go so far as to say about death; something that he hasn't experienced, that it is the absence of sensation, for that is an assumption- a logical yet unsupported inference. Instead Epictetus might say that he hasn't knowledge of it personally; there is no thought within his experience that knows it first-hand.

Epictetus and Sartre each regarded the human mind and its content as existing within the control of the individual. Some things are within our control and somethings aren't. Those things within our control are easy to think about and those without one's control are not to be too concerned about since the thought one uses about such things and relationships exists within the individual mind. One shouldn't allow one's own thought to act like a dog chasing its own tail around in a circle. That is an individual shouldn't create or generate thoughts to be fearful of or deceive oneself about the reality of one's thinking or necessity for thinking particular things; that existential viewpoint covers even death.

Epictetus believe there is nothing to fear of death because if there is, the fear is created within one's own thought. Dividing things within one's control and things that aren't, death is finally one of the things that aren't and so one should not spend much thought being troubled about it. Epictetus and Stoics believed God rules nature and the natural order. God's will and nature has its course and the things it has given to an individual, such as life or real estate it can recover and return to other purposes-even the lives of others.

Though Sartre believed that death is "the complete triumph of the other" he does not well describe what the heterodox otherness is, or who it is-perhaps nature or God or God through nature that is not the content of one's own thought. In that regard neither Sartre or Epictetus are solipsists.

There is an implicit valid logic regarding the Stoic outlook on death and the unknown. One should not invent troubling thoughts concerning things one hasn't muck knowledge of nor control over. Epictetus apparently knew little of Jesus Christ and the way to eternal life in the gospel; he believed in God or Zeus as an omnipotent ruler of nature. He has read Plato and Aristotle apparently being in agreement with the heterodox nature of the phenomenality of life.

Castes and Concentrated Wealth

 The Indian caste system is about 3000 years old and is still strong. Despite some liberation following independence in 1947 with the untouchable class being outlawed or abolished, the majority- 85% of the population remain in lower castes. The caste system affects the economy pervasively; is the development of the concentration of wealth in the United States the equivalent of developing a national caste system?

"In the third quarter of 2023, 66.6 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.6 percent of the total wealth"-quote from https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/#:~:text=In%20the%20third%20quarter%20of,percent%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/caste-social-differentiation

Real discrimination follows economic lines. Caste systems of priests and warriors developed long ago for practical reasons, yet the value of those for protecting or advancing social development stopped long ago and instead, economic classes resembling castes became oppressive and a factor of economic retardation.

Intellectual liberation occurs when intellectuals of any social background are free to develop their interests with equal opportunity. Social and intellectual repression occurs when castes, classes and those supported by political power without intellectual merit rise to dominant intellectual culture. In a purely material culture the primary value of  positions of prestige are regarded as economic advantages and are desired for that reason by materialists.

The Biden administration has not done enough, if anything to outlaw the development of a caste system in the United States along economic lines. The increasing concentration of wealth in the United States has continued after the Obama administration strong armed congressional passage of a law to make the Bush II tax cuts permanent. Despite having control of the legislation branch of the federal government during the first two years of the Biden administration to tax increase on the most rich saw the light of day.

India is a great nation with a good future and a caste system that makes its international economic role a little suspect; that is the most rich may too easily emulate or otherwise soak up elements of a caste system that segregates society economically. In my opinion economic advantage is the primary reason for caste systems, slavery and oppression of various social classes. It is rare when individuals are economically segregated and not socially segregated too.

The U.S. Congress should pass a law or two banning caste systems or rescind most favored nation status to nations that have caste systems in order to encourage more egalitarian policies with equal economic opportunity and basic national income for all citizens as a more pragmatic application of the minimum wage ideals. Ad hoc caste systems assure that people will be poor or become poor through numerous means including forcing people out of work.

Record Global Warming on Von Biden's Watch

 Last year was one with record global warming. The administration's effort to slow or reverse atmospheric heating were plainly ineffective. The nation can look forward to another four years of ineffective or toxic leadership from Republicans and Democrats in the 2024 Presidential election if the Charybdis and Scylla pair of dinosaurs hold place as likely party nominees,

France just appointed a shiny new 34 year old queer Prime Minister. The west has such unusual political leadership that one may be confident that public affairs will be all f ' d up for the rest of the decade.

No one has good sense in politics...no not one.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2023-hottest-year-record#:~:text=2023%20is%20confirmed%20as%20the,highest%20annual%20value%20in%202016

Pantheism is Wrong

 God is not the Universe. He is not the moon or stars, a forcefield or particle and waves though responsible for making them.. Consider an arm. Is an individual his arm? If the arm is lost does the individual no longer exist? If someone manufactures an electric car, is she also the car? If the car is hijacked by rabid dogs is the manufacturer also the dogs because they are in the car? Everything in the Universe passes though God is none of that.

I would say that the universe is the sole individual being containing everything else. Within its monism there is pluralism.. The pluralism emerges as stars,, galaxies, hadrons, muons, people and everything else that sentient beings may distinguish as individuals. The Universe at the start was said to occur from one unified,, individual field.. In an instant probably just at the big bang or initial field instability caused perhaps by a word from God gravity separated, then the strong force followed by the electroweak force breaking down into electromagnetism, the weak force and the Higgs field that let massless particles acquire mass.. God was not subject to the fields he issued though His omniscience remained aware of what and where everything he planned was.. Universals and particulars in the Platonic sense are more applicable to the structures of particles, language categories and classes than to the set of all sets, Godel's idea of what might be compared to the Platonic realm of forms. It would be a logical categorical error to posit God as contained within something he created.

The Icon and Axe; A Billionaire and a Destroyer Concentrating Wealth

 Joe Biden is hard to classify. His platform is to enrich his family and promise anything to anyone that will get him elected. He is a globalist for open borders, dope, abortion, low tax on the rich, a concentrate wealth pragmatist delivering mediocrity on any plank including global warming. He continued the Democrat's start-lasting-wars tradition of the 20th century. His likely opponent is a a neo eco-Luddite billionaire for the concentration of wealth. The billionaire should have one the Nobel Peace prize during his term of office and would probably end the Ukraine conflict on terms Russians could live with and get the global economy back on track working together if Democrats let him- as doubtful as that is. Mr. Trump might let global warming increase by a full half percent in fours years while Mr. Biden's failure would be somewhat less.

NFL stars are in the 5 per cent of the 1 percent economic class serving as promoters of economics concentrating wealth while moving America toward being a second world country for the majority. The very rich need deflect public attention away from interest in anything that could move move policy toward economic egalitarianism with a moderate distribution of class wealth. The masses love bread and circuses now as in imperial Rome.

Ron DeSantis may be the last chance for the nation to conserve a little stability. People do prefer excitement, AI, illegal aliens labor and defenders known as MICE (or is it ice to illegals?) so long as deficit spending financing of government continues.

Israel's Effort to Remove Hamas /Nazis from the Gaza Continues

 A portion of the member states of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its war on Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. That in effect would be like a catch and release policy for terrorist that instead should be facing something like the Nuremberg Trials that followed the end of the Second World War. The murderous Hamas terror attack- a surprise attack on Israel 7 October 2023 was comparable to the 9-11 assault on New York and Washington D.C. Many Arab and other Muslim states support global jihad against the west through a variety of means and Israelis their first and foremost target.

When the Second World War concluded the allies sought to remove Nazis from Germany so far as possible. A dozen were hanged after being found guilty of various crimes against humanity. Some other higher ranking members were arrested and sentenced, yet the clear and present danger of Soviet Communism made the wholesale elimination of Nazis impractical although the society of Germany was ideologically cleansed. The state of Israel seeks to pacify the Gaza and Muslim militants vociferously oppose that; instead they regard the entire affair as simply a skirmish in the global war of expansion of Islam- something the Democrat party of the United States has indirectly and sometimes directly supported with its open borders policies and lax immigration enforcement.

 The Biden administration has tripled the number of immigration cases waiting to be heard in federal courts to reach a backlog of three million. It seems weak and unwilling to defend the United States’ sovereignty against the practical measure of slow invasion from illegal entry. U.S. culture is being erased and replaced by a new normal global culture increasingly influenced by those practicing the Muslim religion.

Hamas is a terror organization and like a gang its leadership is compelled to be aggressive. Some of the members of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its effort to remove HAMAS leadership that have the same attitude toward Jews as did Nazis, and let them rebuild their military power with copious donations by sympathetic Muslim states. In that regard the U.N. is comparable to those that sympathized with the Nazi Party following the Second World War, yet they are far worse than was Argentina in allowing safe haven for a few discreet Nazis. They are active propagandist and wicked perpetrators of an effort to obfuscate hatred and international conspiracy to eliminate the Jewish race in the black, unsaved, unrepentant hearts of many Dar al Harb supporting Muslims.

Raphael Lemkin invented the term “genocide” in reflecting on the Armenian Genocide of 1915. A Jewish-Polish attorney, he circulated a pamphlet to the forerunner of the U.N. named The League of nations in 1933. It was rejected. In 1944 he published a book named ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe’ . The term genocide was used at the Nuremberg trials and on 9 Dec. 1948 the U.N. made genocide officially a crime within international law. Jews in prosecuting removal of a terror organization spearhead supported by members of the U.N. presently charging Israel with attempted genocide are accomplishing a task the hypocritical, callous and disingenuous corrupt Muslim members of the U.N. supporting the action should be supporting rather than opposing.

Lemkin descried genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves". That is the Arab and Palestinian policy toward Israel. The Jewish state on the contrary is simply trying to eliminate the militant leadership that is hiding behind it's own people as if they were human shields. Israelis have already shown a willingness to live with Palestinian culture as neighbors- just not aggressive war like neighbors that invade and slaughter thousands in sneak attacks.

The world will not be a safer place if Nazi like organizations are enfeofed with Muslim support on Israel’s porch fattened annually like war pigs with the fruits of Islamic weaponry and finance.

Heraclitus and the Ukraine-Russia War

 Wars in Europe indicated a failure of intelligence and adaptability in political leadership. That is not surprising in an era of marketing products and people as products. pre-Socratic philosophers were not so superficial. In an age that believes itself wise because of scientific knowledge and quite assertive about rights and litigation, arguments and eros as a matter of course it isn't a paradox that politicians have no interest in understanding an opponent's viewpoint on issues; a necessary step toward avoiding conflict.

"... men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."- Heraclitus

Heraclitus sought the nature of what exists as a philosophical inquiry. His ideas arrived at monism and apparently he regarded pluralism as contingent being. Russian, Ukrainians want the same things concerning land- to own it, yet for politicians owning land or territory is an absolute and exclusive concern that precludes reason from the social process of adjudication.

Heraclitus stresses the unity of opposites. One of his edifying fragments providing an example of the concept is "Changing; it rests". Politicians should invoke the intelligence of changing the criterion to unify opponents in peace- the new synthesis. Heraclitus also wrote (B12) "Upon those who step into the same rivers different and again different waters flow".

Plainly peace is preferable to war and prosperity to poverty. A healthy environment is better than a sick polluted one and everyone involved loses much time when somewhat equally balanced military conflicts occur in a protracted paradigm lasting years. If reason and problem solving can end conflicts in a way that belligerents can live with that would better serve the world economy and even wholistic, non-partisan ideas of justice.

Heraclitus had several tings to say about opposites merging into the One at some level. One could take that as God creating quarks, fields, mass and virtual energy in an apparent vacuum and allowing energy and mass to take form...though temporal configurations change it, or evolve it as some prefer to say, the process is God's and that which exist is comparatively like a dream.

Russia and Ukraine could have an armistice in place and a race for the political powers to create a plan and discover finance to rebuild all areas of the conflict with a fifty mile wide D.M.Z. and free trade zone roughly divided in half between Ukraine and Russia. Ingenuity and finding ways to expedite peace and prosperity should transpire rather than to allow the visage of Mordor and Doom cloud the land.

Heraclitus said; "The road up and the road down are the same." and "The beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle." Those without ossified brains should be able to learn something from Heraclitus.

Heraclitus saw unity through the pluralism evident in all things; "though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a backwards turning attunement like that of the bow and the lyre". In that he could have been speaking of day and night- different phases of the diurnal solar cycle.

There is a free MOOC course available from which the quotes of Heraclitus were sourced for this post. It's here... https://www.coursera.org/learn/plato?

Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors

Heraclitus' Fragments B1

B1 (Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians, VII, 132):

"Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though, all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."

B54 (Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 5):

The unseen harmony is better than the visible.

An Exit from Time (poem)

 

    One looks for signs and lines
revealing the last exit from time
from a stream that rolls on forever
until the last star fades away
it’s a secret place
without a trace
‘til the curve is too extreme
in the present

  Shaped like a black hole
time flows upon a grassy knoll
thickening like syrup
flowing to scuppers
aging quickens dreams
leaking like cups
offering sacraments
to the corrupt

  Where to watch the temporal flow
a train of living history
leaving mysteries to know
for the incomplete life
does have somewhere to go
through the end of personal time
In the temporal show
  

  It may roll on to silence
virtual quarks ebb and flow
conserved the energy of time is less
the faster it goes
what to write, what to see
if human wisdom is folly to be
social discourse  compacts wealth
with creativity subdued
to decadent health
martinets complete meaningless marrow
to reap  a secular shelf
forgetful of the strait and narrow.

.

Note on Pragmatism

Pragmatism was invented by Charles Sanders Pierce. Actually he called it pragmaticism. James popularized it. It is more like dead reckoning. I am not confident one could have a doctrine of pragmatism. That would require formalizing good judgment. Consider realpolitik of the 1980s with the way the Biden administration has operated things internationally. I think its far from pragmatic and it doesn't seem to promote general global peace or prosperity. Its kind of a worst case side of things. Consider that what is good for some may be bad for others, The idea of the Democrat Party having a pragmatic doctrine is somewhat laughable- even if they like science selectively. Pierce (pronounced Purse) worked on a tri-electical paradigm for thought advancing ratiocination. I wonder if he was influenced by Marxist dialectics at all.