Regarding Extremism

 Extreme views are nothing more than those that are not mainstream. For quite a while and even continuing today the green economic movement was regarded as extreme by the fossil fuel and coal mainstream votaries. The result is global warming. Mainstream opinions are driven by social inertia and are not necessarily the best. Instead they simply dominate for sundry reason including the concentration of wealth and power invested in the established order.

The historian Arnold Toynbee pointed out that one of the basic reasons for the failure of a civilization is that once its economy becomes established it is very difficult to get it to change. Not just economics; politics too. He used ancient Greece as an example of a failed civilization with a cause of being unable to upgrade to a Republic like Rome with a unification of all of the city-states into one nation. Without unification they were easy prey for the Roman legions.

Common mainstream views need be upgraded for a society to continue to advance after it has already reached maturity. Usually societies do not. If they are successful the wealthy become globalists so far as possible and neglect upgrades to their own country. I suppose the United States is a contemporary example. Fundamentally anything that would actual change the established social structure is considered extreme. It is the media that presently defines what is or isn’t extreme anyway.
Leading, new ideas are often perceived as extreme in comparison to established mainstream ideas. I believe that some ideas are good and others bad. Mainstream views are safe because they have been around a while. new ideas may be good or bad because they are untested and haven't been implemented. Remember that in the ante bellum south abolitionists were regarded as extremists.

At Last (a hypo-test stanza)

 

Beginning and end are nothing to mend
alpha to omega are stars just to spend
being and becoming eventual days
from childhood memories to twilights' last rays
emptiness found that forest all around
devoid of the people one knew like the sounds
echoing laughter to shelter the now
silence has overtaken time with the Tao
over the edge of the waterfall it flows
finally with the Lord one may at last go.

Some Kind of Being Has Always Existed

Energy always exists, or something does. As Parmenides said being exists and nothing is impossible. Virtual energy from a vacuum is energy from a field. A singularity is something. Some phase of something always has existed. Science doesn't understand all about fields. They speculate a gravitational field emerged first followed by the strong force then the electroweak breaking up into the Higgs, electromagnetism and the weak force, yet certainty about that isn't plain. Virtual particles appear and disappear yet they are from some kind of field- maybe fluctuations of the Higgs as some kind of leftover. Imagine that the Higgs covers the entire region of space-time in a very thin way yet enough to entangle massless particles and give them the appearance of mass because they acquire a third dimension rather than the usual 2 dimensions of massless particles. The Higgs field must have energy or potential energy as a field that yields virtual energy. There could be micro-dimensional slipping of energy occurring too. Even God exists (or if for the atheists and agnostics out there) and is 'something' always existing capable of issuing stuff. Some people want to believe in nothing as a kind of moral reverence reassuring their faithlessness . Parmenides was right; being is the sole possibility

Trump or DeSantis; Does Either have Virtue/Arete?

 I'm enjoying taking a second course in ancient philosophy. It's a great review since the days when I read the Socratic dialogues and other ancient works passed long ago. Within the course the concept of virtue appeared; what did Socrates mean when he investigated virtue, or rather what did others mean when using the term.

The Greek term for virtue was arete. Classical virtue is somewhat vague to moderns. Apparently in the Meno politicians like Pericles and Thermistocles were held to have virtue. I would think that Winston Churchill 'had it', as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Virtue was bravery and great, effective leadership that benefits the nation rather than just the politicians and his family members.

Modern ideas of virtue or classical virtue were about good character, wisdom, patience, stamina, sound judgment, benefiting the state, moderation in use of materials- rather Stoic characteristics to a certain extent. And one must include self-sacrifice or personal risk to benefit others. Numerous example exist such as a young woman in Portland that risked electrocution to save a baby in danger of being electrocuted where three attempts and deaths had already been made.

DeSantis may have elements of both types of virtue, whereas Donald Trump has more of the be-like-Pericles kind of virtue. Modest demeanor-not being a braggart is a classical virtue and Donald Trump tends to fail at modesty and excel at international relations rather than waging unjust and superfluous wars. It is a virtue to seek after peace when reasonable prospects for it exist instead of running willy-nilly into wars in pursuit of glory and profit at the cost of other's lives.

Original Sin Expressed/Contained Via Entropy Converting Order to Disorder

 Original sin is expressed as entropy converting order to disorder. Something of a bit of humor in that; ha ha hanahar!-הנהר. Human nature is embedded in thermodynamic fields that may be the containment for original sin. Converting order to disorder-energy to mass and the most disordered state of mass, expresses the nature of original sin. Humans require energy input and have drives for that, reproduction and sometimes power to increase the ability to input energy. Capitalism is a great converter of energy from a high state of order in nature to a low state of energy and eventually disorganized waste. Ecological economics would be more efficient and sustaining social stability and creativity with 8 billion souls on earth yet thermodynamic drives converting energy to mass make most people insecure, avaricious and in quest of expansion in the case of billionaires and eventually trillionaires. People want a lot more than they need and use the extra income to convert nature into disorder with thermodynamic entropy.

Will Africa be the Pot of Gold for Illegal Migrants Seeking the American Dream?

It just an idea suggested by the recent actions of the U.K. to relocate illegal migrants to the U.K. to Africa. The United States has a backlog of more than three million souls claiming political asylum in the United States and the federal government has turned them loose in a catch and release policy. There are millions more migrants here illegally that haven’t claimed political asylum. Since the government cannot deal with the problem with competence perhaps it could consider relocating detainees to some safe neutral nation until their court date arrives in a few years.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-will-ignore-international-law-deport-illegal-immigrants-sunak

Plainly the special asylum seeking quasi-legal-illegal category is challenging for Democrats to address with a measure of intellect and competence. Rather than make them temporary legal guest workers and hand a victory to hundreds of thousands or millions of bogus claims it might be better to relocate them to some nation that could use the income of sheltering a few million should in refugee camps with good security and facilities.

It is useful to have order in a nation and not undermine the efforts of legal residents to improve the quality f their lives by dumping millions of workers and resource users that had not the consent of the people of the United States through their elected representatives to arrive here. In the United States the economy is stratifying between the 1% and everyone else. Though a reasonable standard of living is common there are many that don’t own a home these days. Wealth is concentrating. Presently the distribution of wealth is beginning to resemble that of a caste system. Flooding the nation with badly educated foreign workers with dubious legal status is a way to break down traditional America and the Middle class so it is more like that of India or Mexico. Perhaps Wal-mart shifted its door entrances to the left from the traditional right in order to help condition American shoppers to political ineffectiveness and prole status as if they were living in an updated Orwellian society. Could Namibia or South Sudan be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for illegal aliens pursuing the American dream?

It is important that every human being on Earth has opportunity for a good life. That can only occur with order since the wild is no longer capable of providing a bountiful larder for eight billion people. The world political economy need change one an ecologically sustainable format, and civil stability need be the rule rather than exception.

A foreign diplomat was quoted recently in reply to a question asking him about the future of the United States. He said; “The U.S.A. is a fat buffalo trying to get a nap while a lot of hungry wolves are approaching.” Plainly he was trying to elicit military support for the European/N.A.T.O. was on Russia in Ukraine in the effort to exploit the west’s military advantage over Russia to benefit Western Europe. Europeans would like to seem like the victims of Russian aggression and expect the United States to be the military bully to provide advanced weapons to allow Ukraine to defrappe Russia’s efforts to recover some of the historically Russian land lost in the Bill Clinton era when Russia was basically helpless.

Yet the United States is largely divided between those seeking to make America a part of a global caste system ruled by the 1% with the masses being peons, serfs or communard proles living in a kind of open air prison/lunatic asylum happy with dope and slopped with jobs that allow payments on new cars and homes they don’t own until a new economic shock makes them lose everything they own to the 1% holding mortgages, and those that prefer a little civil order that isn’t ephemeral and disappears like morning dew.

https://youtu.be/-c6qmsL_Qto?feature=shared

On the Notion that Plato Influenced Christianity

 There were several philosophers before Socrates and Plato that wrote about the Logos and God. People like Thales, Heraclitus and Parmenides, Anaximander and Anaxemenes all presented fascinating ideas concerning being, change, nature, God and substance. Some Christians were influenced by Plato, yet one knows that people like the disciple Mark were unsophisticated in philosophy and that the Q document, or Quelle/source mostly just relates the life the Jesus Christ and His work as God in saving mankind, or at least those with faith, from the inevitable destination of eternal hell. Parmenides presents a paradigm almost as a precursor of Sartre, a loquacious Sartre unafraid explain a logic for his ontology, of being and the necessity of being and impossibility of nothingness. In that paradigm Jesus Christ being God himself, as one of the Trinity, delivers the faithful to a good place in being while the lost find their way to hell- a bad place. Interestingly physicists have speculated that below absolute zero the temperature may be infinitely hot. Some later theologians like Augustine were influenced by Plato, or properly Plotinus, for he was a Plotinian before becoming converted to Christianity.

The gospel is simply narratives by disciples and the Apostle/Doctor Luke from personal and first hand sources. The letters of Paul are by an author who was a Rabbi in training and a student of Gamaliel or Schlemeil and steeped in the torah yet not so much a reader of Plato or Peripatetic philosophers which he could have read as readily as those of the Academy if he were so disposed.

Nothing Cannot Exist- Parmenides

 It is something of a classification or categorical error when one says something like 'the Loch ness monster does not exist'. It does exist as a thought, yet not outside of thought or language. Whatever one says creates something at least as an idea including the Loch Ness monster. The question is how it exists or in what form- perhaps no more than as an idea.

The fallacy of equivocation concerning Parmenides' formulation of the impossibility of change is a valid objection. It should be noted though that if change has always existed then nothing changes because change is a constant. Observational physics seems to support the idea of constant change in a thermodynamic field. Being always exists, non-being doesn't and change is constant so nothing changes. God always exists, at least a seed of the Universe always exists, pre-determined in His thought and continues if emerged as a singularity and expansion.

Language is rarely the material that exists in-the-world. Instead, language refers or points to things/referent objects of the world of mass. Even fictional referent objects exist as fictional referent objects at least...that is what so much of television is about. Does Jason Bourne exist or not? Well there is no real Jason Bourne or Loch Ness Monster in the real world, yet those referent objects exist in language, in books and in thought. In that sense they do exist. One may say that there is no Loch Ness monster materially existing in Loch Ness except as a thought about Nessie swimming in Loch Ness rather than the 'real world'. Thus is the stickiness of language and linguistic philosophy in trying to exceed it's own limits in language. It cannot directly be the material objects it refers to for the time being. Maybe quantum computing and AI will change the reality of that to a limited degree.

Parmenides, Heraclitus and the Milesians saw nature as God or providing the substance for nature in various ways. Less than pantheistic, it was a useful way to understand being while eschewing non-being and atheism. They tended to believe in being as the sole possibility and non-being as impossible; the argument tended to be about how change occurs. Yet if change has existed from eternity then nature could be said not to change because the nature is change. All forms are embedded within precursor forms actualizing in time. Jesus directs those of faith to the right relationship with God and being while the lost discover a hot way to hell. Below absolute zero physicist speculate the temperature is infinitely high- another mystery for most of the faithless.

Christians believe in the eternity of soul- possibly in one direction starting with birth. Once a soul exists it will exist forever, even after physical death. The destination for the saved is different from the lost. Jesus is captain of the soul through eternity- God, rather than the satanic forces of chaos, evil and faithlessness. So if mankind brings a war to fruition that wipes out most of mankind that is a product of the original sin that affects all mankind. I would guess that it was corrected by the thermodynamic fields in which humans are embedded that drives to to input energy as food to exist. Thermodynamic drives in human nature are the cause of conflict as much as anything. People have insecurity in matter and want more than they require for staying alive, being productive and happy and generally don't have a clue about how to change to sustainable environmental economics. Christians have different eschatological hermenutics. I am a post-tribulationist and partial preterist with the belief that this is the age of the increase of the kingdom of God within the hearts of the elect rather than the edge of some kind of neo-theological apocalypse based on bad pre-tribulationism. Plainly human economics, political leadership and ignorant attacks on the faith communities are driving the world to a good chance for a bad end.

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.