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.

Social Castes and Concentration of 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.

Epictetus; a 2nd Century Stoic Existential Philosopher

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 believed 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.

Fake 28th Amendment on Ecologically Sustainable Economy

 The Twenty-Eighth Amendment

Transition to ecologically sustainable economic policy

Section One; Congress shall establish a basic income for all adult Americans in order to prevent homelessness and time wasting futility with loss of possessions while unemployed that shall be indexed to one quarter of the average annual national income to take effect when an individual’s income falls below one-quarter of the annual average income.

Section Two; With no Americans being destitute it shall be practical to begin restructuring the national economy to a modern ecologically sustainable basis. Incentives and guidelines for business opportunities shall be favored that add no or minimal harm to the environment. Tax incentives for ecological sustainability shall be created.

Ends and Means; No Justification↔Ends Justify Means

 It seems it’s all a discrete process rather than an objective means/ends fact. It occurs separately from the empirical world; that is means-ends are a neuro-ratiocination. One enacting a means-ends ratiocination would apply one’s own ethical valuation while others might be unaware that a means-ends ratiocination had even occurred and implemented. Negative impacts would be badly regarded by others victimized by actualization of the ratiocination.

Gravitational Extremism is the Worst

 

  Draws everything toward a singularity
severything interested in elsewhen
eigenvalues and gage symmetries
flipped fields forward with a Higgs
allegedly, after the strong force separated
from the electroweak disintegration
that Higgs and weak force paradox
typologies of strung together mass
until gravity brought them down
its irresistible force
original massless field
burgers flipped above grills
thinner air everywhere
taking them home
more than fields concentrated like ultra coffee
waiting to fly apart
unbalanced balance of scalar field extensions
space-time warped ineffable patterns
directed by a Spirit
in the know.

Aleme-Novenary; Chapters (a poem)

The novel, paradoxically

stands unwritten like a shadow now

a silent visage I’ll write somehow

the book would be a fait accompli

while snow does melt from frozen ground

chapters may bud from oblivion’s tree

tough to believe, yet I must see

one dozen chapters flow around

when the unknown grows with words in spring.

The Art of Time (poem)

 

  As an art
time structured itself
for natural quarks
with beauty marks
apples of the eye
give to death the lie
hope paints infinite breaths
giving time all the rest.

On the Proximal Source of the Higgs Field

 Some wonder about the Higgs Field that is said to give mass to all of the massless particles that it encounters (except for photons and neutrinos etc.?). I wondered where the Higgs field comes from and what powers it, if it continues to have energy go in to it, if it is subject to general relativity and sundry other questions the least of which was not 'does it continue to expand if the space-time of the Universe is expanding at an increasing pace.

Some of course say that the metrics of the mass of the Universe are changing instead of space actually increasing, because the idea is that since space is non-existence it cannot expand; it already must be everywhere infinitely except where there is mass, massless particles or fields present.

The Higgs field reportedly started existing early in the history of the big bang; some say just before inflation and some say after. The time was t ≃ 10−11 s, and the source of the energy for the Higgs Field was in the electroweak epoch when that force separated from the strong force in a symmetry breaking event.

There are some fairly exotic theories and explanations for the Higgs field. It became an low energy phenomena.

Vincent Hsu has a good, mildly technical account of the way gravity seperated first followed by the strong force from the electroweak force and how the electroweak yielded the Higgs Field

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-strong-force-split-away-from-weak-force-in-the-early-universe

It is all theory. Apparently the electroweak theory required particles to be massless and Hsu explains the Higgs field was developed theoretically as a way to allow particles to get mass.

Obviously there are myriad questions and points of view one may develop or encounter if one has some cosmology hobby time.

World Population Will Reach 8 Billion in a Day or Two

 The human population of earth is expected to reach 8 billion in a couple of days. There were 75 million more people born this year. If the new people are to have a fair chance to breath clean air, have global heating slow and get a chance to experience wilderness and a healthy population of wildlife politicians will need to get active on repairing the environment and eliminating automobile exhaust gases.

ttps://apnews.com/article/world-population-census-bureau-growth-b2a32ff77b9f3ae977c943014fe2b853

On the Original Name for Africa etc.

A popular(increasingly) name for ancient Africa is 'Alkebulan'- it means garden of Eden or something like that. Africa or African names are mentioned more than a thousand times in the Bible. Here is a scholarly article on the subject. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext...

It's an interesting topic, that is, the origin of names for what today is called Africa. The name Africa supposedly originated when the Romans named the land after a tribe-possible the Berbers, living in Tunisia who they called the Afri. So Afri-terra or land of the Afris. Apparently Alkebulan, used in the Koran, may have either an Arabic or African origin. It requires research. The word is increasingly popular yet it may be from an old Arabic word 'al-qalb' meaning 'heart or interior'. I would guess that several tribes had their own name for various regions locally. The Bible refers to Africa generally as Cush or Kush. Kush was 'the most powerful kingdom in the nile valley in 1750 BCE". That's pretty early. For a while the Kushites or Nubians ruled Egypt.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissakravitz/2022/01/04/harlem-and-london-are-getting-a-brand-new-african-food-hall-alkebulan/

Some Europeans took Biblical names to a certain extent rather than the reverse. The Bible hasn't got names like Swedenborg, Rasputin, McTavish or Stanislaw in it. The names were originally Hebrew and translated-sometimes crudely, into English. To be more correct one might use the Hebrew spelling instead of English. Christianity had a centralized origin geographically speaking in the era before the settling of the western hemisphere. It needed to be near enough to pagan Europe that missionaries could bring the word of God to the pagans lost in their primitive ways. It was a transitional catalyst in bridging the older, fading civilizations of the fertile crescent with the rising civilizations of the north. Africa and Israel are 422 miles apart. Europe was closer to being colonized by an African religion than vice versa. Islam is also from the Middle East not Africa. Jesus was taken to Africa for a while as a kid by his parents, as Barrack Obama was removed from Hawaii and raised in Indonesia.

Christianity has been in Africa since the first or early second century A.D. The disciple Mark is said to have taken the gospel to Alexandria. Coptic Christianity has existed in Africa since the year 55 A.D. and is one of the oldest Christian churches.

It is the case that economic colonization has occurred with other cultural elements simultaneously. It is wrong to conflate the causality and meaning of all issues with those of the primary power and political force though. Even in history one should follow the money to determine power. Land used to be nearly equivalent to money. before machines proliferated even human labor as slaves was of great value to the rich. Today maybe technology is the main creator of economic value as an equal with natural resources while human capital is decreasing in value. Lawyers will face tough competition for work with Artificial Intelligence one of these days I would guess.

Millions of Africans risk their lives to migrate to Europe because it has economic power that southerners desire to obtain. I am concerned that they do not get anything like a true Christianity from Europeans these days. Being a nominal Christian was a convenience for many and a necessity for others. Mankind is corrupt with original sin and there isn't a pure society where one may contemplate philosophically and critically spiritual concerns without pressure if one were so inclined. At some point the economic power of the ultra-rich draws many followers to their values that today is more of a decadence, soma and homosexual, trans-genderized, mono-sexual, atheist mileau rather than Christian. Not everyone is chosen to be a Christian; "all are called and few are chosen". If one is just outwardly Christian and not spiritually renewed with the Lord's grace it may not have effective eternal value.

I tried using microsoft's AI Chat for a search of the Koran and it found nothing. Yet it insists that it is the oldest name for Africa. I will quote it's answer to my question about Alkebulan- "The term “Alkebulan” is believed to come from the ancient Egyptian name “Alkebu-lan”, which means ‘mother of mankind’ or 'garden of Eden’1. It’s an ancient African word that has been used to describe the African continent for centuries1. The word “Alkebulan” is derived from the Arabic adverb “qabl” meaning “before”. “Al” is the definite article “the”, and the suffix “lan” denotes the plural form of the adverb. Thus, the Arabic word “Alkebulan” means “the ones before”, or simply “the indigenous people”2. It’s also interpreted from Arabic as the 'Land of Blacks’3. It’s considered to be the oldest name for the African continent, used by many African cultures, including the Berbers of North Africa1. It symbolizes a sense of pride and identity for many Africans1. However, the exact origins of the term are still unknown1.”

The age of colonization didn't start for about two thousand years after the start of the events in the Bible became recorded. AVRM (Abraham) lived in Ur circa 2000 B.C. before famously wandering to the site that today is Jerusalem. The age of colonization is said to have started circa 1500 with Portuguese in South Africa etc. Yet European people like the Carthaginians and other like the Phoenicians have lived on the North Shore of Africa for a very long time. So they and Alexander the Great's military might be said to have begun an earlier age of Euro-settlement in the region. The history is complex. You may know that the Septuagint version of the Bible- the Jewish Old Testament, was made by 72 Jewish scholars translating Hebrew to Greek in Alexandria Egypt. Jews also lived in Africa while slaves of Egypt. Moses- a Jewish prince of Egypt (the Pharaoh didn't know he was Jewish), led them out of Africa and to the land named Israel presently. One should lose the racism and simply learn history from zillion sources.

Rocket in a Tube for 2025 Anyone?

 Will Trump or DeSantis finally build a nation-spanning rocket in a tube freight transportation system if elected? Using electromagnets to prevent a charge shipping container from scrapping tunnel walls, rocket engines will power the rocket shaped shipping container through a tube to a few thousand miles an hour to expedite shipping cargo and maybe bite into the cost and deflate prices at Wal-mart and other retailers a little that has made Wal-mart a prestige store for those that can afford a bottle of coke from an ice box near the check-out line.

I won't draw a technical illustration of a rocket passing through a tube for this comment so you will need to imagine that for yourself.

Why Human Life in the Universe Need End Eventually

Stoics and peripatetic philosophers had a different take on fate, God and spirit. My point of view is Christian. One could describe a biological/physical reason why life is less than eternal physically. Apparently humans souls or spirit or information is eternal. Adam and Eve were set in a perfect place; like a condo with a fully stocked refrigerator on a tropical beach and found to be imperfect and unable to exist in perfect compliance with the Spirit. Without correction they may have become quite decadent and cast votes eventually for the moral equivalent of Democrats in what should be a Holy space.. Humans sinned, learned the difference between good and evil and were cast into the thermodynamic universe that is a containment facility. Thermodynamics mean that humans need to consume energy to exist- and therein is the source of so many human problems. All thermodynamic processes and forms change and end including humans. Matter is just two-dimensional massless particles slowed in the Higgs Field and given therein a third dimension to become entangled and massive. Maybe its like one of those complex knots where one can pull the ends of a string and it disappears. For some reason God doesn't want people to be eternal and off balance morally speaking, defective like wobbly wheels with bad kingpins on a high speed electric car. I would agree with Stoics on this point; that to be defective means to be out of compliance with the will of God. Some are saved that comply with the perfect way of the Lord (God himself), and the rest are free to go their own way to hell.

Christianity's Central Origin

 Christianity had a centralized origin geographically speaking in the era before the settling of the western hemisphere. It needed to be near enough to pagan Europe that missionaries could bring the word of God to the pagans lost in their primitive ways. It was a transitional catalyst in bridging the older, fading civilizations of the fertile crescent with the rising civilizations of the north. Africa and Israel are 422 miles apart. Europe was closer to being colonized by an African religion than vice versa. Islam is also from the Middle East not Africa. Jesus was taken to Africa for a while as a kid by his parents, as Barrack Obama was removed from Hawaii and raised in Indonesia.

Christianity has been in Africa since the first or early second century A.D. The disciple Mark is said to have taken the gospel to Alexandria. Coptic Christianity has existed in Africa since the year 55 A.D. and is one of the oldest Christian churches.

It is the case that economic colonization has occurred with other cultural elements simultaneously. It is wrong to conflate the causality and meaning of all issues with those of the primary power and political force though. Even in history one should follow the money to determine power. Land used to be nearly equivalent to money. before machines proliferated even human labor as slaves was of great value to the rich. Today maybe technology is the main creator of economic value as an equal with natural resources while human capital is decreasing in value. Lawyers will face tough competition for work with Artificial Intelligence one of these days I would guess.

Millions of Africans risk their lives to migrate to Europe because it has economic power that southerners desire to obtain. I am concerned that they do not get anything like a true Christianity from Europeans these days. Being a nominal Christian was a convenience for many and a necessity for others. Mankind is corrupt with original sin and there isn't a pure society where one may contemplate philosophically and critically spiritual concerns without pressure if one were so inclined. At some point the economic power of the ultra-rich draws many followers to their values that today is more of a decadence, soma and homosexual, trans-genderized, mono-sexual, atheist mileau rather than Christian. Not everyone is chosen to be a Christian; "all are called and few are chosen". If one is just outwardly Christian and not spiritually renewed with the Lord's grace it may not have effective eternal value.

Elements of Jewish Pre-history

 Ah- you know that Jericho is 10,000 years old and it wasn't populated by faeries and gnomes. Jews (Abraham and party) arrived in the region circa 2000 B.C. more or less. I would guess that archaeologists find evidence of humans in the area going back to at least tens of thousands of years ago. Modern Palestinians though aren't much related to the original people that settled Palestine. The ones like Yassir Arafat that resembled Ringo Starr were comparatively late arrivals from the sea who migrated in waves a little earlier than the Jews arrival, if I recall correctly. The sea peoples attacked Egypt and elsewhere and built a few coastal cities. Jews did war with them after a time, yet it really was Sargon and Nebuchadrezzer's invasions and occupations that beat down the locals solidly as they annexed the area to their empires. Jews were eventually able to move down from the highlands to take control of the lowlands.

I like the timeline since it does ‘resonate’ with the sons of Noah moving out to seemingly mix with and lead existing people living around the fertile crescent. Of course one must believe the flood was just in the lowlands of Iraq (still a large one) and the Ark came to rest uphill in the lost kingdom of Urartu on the highest spot in sight on what might have been a foggy day. In this scenario Noah's sons might have left some genetic evidence with the locals yet it would be rather vague. Abraham and his people could be a remnant of one of those original semi-indigenous peoples.

AI with Philosophical Questions

 AI does scan encyclopedias for existing information yet on philosophical questions they are not capable of much inductive reasoning yet. They tend to be conservative on venturing opinions and regurgitate what's already out there while remaining politically somewhat to the left and inoffensive. I think this sentence would get some criticism and laughs if a human wrote it. AI-"Additionally, the nature of ultimate reality remains a subject of contemplation, speculation, and personal belief rather than empirical verification." It misses the point that things entangled in the Higgs Field may be the ultimate nature of reality- even if its a ram caught in a bush made a substitute for sacrificing Isaac. Ultimate reality is likely to always be a step down from God; and that last step is a pretty big one.