Cheeto and the Whales; Plundering ANWR

The costs of destroying the purity of ANWR will far outweigh the benefits of tearing up tundra, melting permafrost, laying miles of pipeline, spillling pollutants, wreaking havoc on the Beaufort Sea, killing off marine mammals with noise and increasing global warming. Increasing dependence on what should be an obsolete energy technology, and would be if Alaska didn't have a goal of being a second world energy state, is good mostly for oil CEO bank accounts..

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/whales-dang-big-science-may-finally-answer/

President Trump, who acerbic democrats called Cheeto and the orangutan common ancestor of humanity, should send Johnny Depp in full pirate regalia as Ambassador to ANWR to inform the humans of Arctictown of the benefits of fossil fuels and value of ANWR to Exxon-Mobile, BP or whomever.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/05/22/ape-that-lived-in-europe-7-million-years-ago-could-be-human-ancestor-controversial-study-suggests/

Neither party has a responsible budget paradigm. Democrats are the nag half of Republican husbandry such that it's a one-party system of spendthrifts. U.S. public debt is a litle shy (about 80 billion) of 20 trillion and the federal budget is about 80% tied up with little for discretionary spending. What is needed are new ways with sustainable ecosphere and economic policies, and nations seldom meet new challenges to alter economic infrstructure practices sucessfully. Each party is working for a global plutocratic oliarchy-Obama's tax cuts helped with that. The ANWR gambit is just another plunder everything possible and concentrate wealth for the 1% tack.

Irony and Individuality; Why Nihilism is Relatively Meaningless

I have sometimes wondered what culture people come from such that they ask questions like; 'who am I', without having suffered from amnesia. I haven't really been troubled by a problem of cosmological meaninglessness or personal identity crisis. IMO people that have might be originally from a tightly controlled social environment wherein they really are turned out in cookie cutter fashion. I commiserate with people that have been formed in mass produced circumstances rather than with the freedom of individuality.

Escaping from conformity formerly was something of a European problem perhaps. In the United State from the time of the founders people were doomed to be free individuals on the edge of a frontier. Spiritually the frontier never really closed before the 1970s.

Cosmology is neither a source for anxiety about meaninglessness. People exist everywhere as individuals and it was what they think subjectively that they experience as conscious thought experience. It is their freedom to put together whatever package of knowledge and data they can in the best possible configuration within their own capacity.

I suppose the Universe and mass energy might be compared to a pointillist painting with everything made of strings, branes, quarks and atoms including individuals. As in the novel Utopia that means 'nowhere', nowhere is where anyone exists...one place is in an absolute sense (against a transcending Universal backdrop), as central as any other. Even so people are not just quantum dots clumped together by their own free will. Instead there are forces, patterns and destiny that holds people together in addition to elements, planets, stars, dark matter and energy etc.

Individuals exist apart from any other in a unique space-time position. In theory the force of gravity holding them on Earth could be negated with technology and they might relocate anyplace in the temporal Universe. As individuals meaning would still be relative to themselves and their understanding of all of the waves of communication they perceive, and reason about what they find.

Kripke and Quine had somewhat different approaches to nominalism and pluralism, Platonic realism and nominalism (e.g. 'Naming and Necessity' and 'Ontological Relativism'. Particulars and Universals such as Socrates regarded and Plato wrote of were somewhat ahead of Aristotle's great efforts at classifying human knowledge are tools for existential analysis. Irony or self-objectivity about the external social world with one's subjective capacity of thinking for oneself is what all humans necessarily do to a certain extent since they are not automatons only resembling sentient beings. While everything is relative to one's subjectivity, communication is a socially dialectical phenomenon. Words and ideas; meanings- are more phenomenal things to be perceived and used as one constructs their life-project in-the-world as best as they can.

Jesus Christ was/is the truth that makes one free. He was God-for others and one of the three persons who is God. One is phenomenally free yet existent within various physical force fields. People are as unique as anything that is just as one planet is not another though there are billions, and one number is not the same in an infinite series though there is an infinity of them.

Developing introspective and reasoning skills can be fairly said to have entered intellectual history with Socrates, yet he also was an exponent of classical virtue. I believe he should not have been able to precisely define 'the good' yet he does provide a fine exposition of classical virtue and pursuit of the good and knowledge in the Platonic dialogues. That is lacking from modern nihilism and relativism. Socrates and classic virtue did not vacate morality claiming that relativism made everything absolutely subjective. Just as Jesus said the kingdom is within you and the truth shall make you free, Socrates sought to awaken individuals to an inner reflection on virtue and its meaning finding that it would comprise a dialectic with the natural world. It is a kind of natural law as Cicero wrote of later, yet even more virtuous.

Any age may have a spirit of the times. However the Holy Spirit is the sole guide worth following. It is wisdom as well as natural law. It transforms the individual from bondage to nature and unreflective pursuit of baser desires to contemplation of virtue, the good and the divine. With irony and individual might discern that it is his or her own responsibility to improve their intellectual library of understanding of how the Universe or Multiverse functions, to be aware of one's place in the temporal phenomenon and to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior who is prior to space-time in any possible material Universe. 

Salvation does not mean that one blandly, blindly follows the way of the cultural-economic world show wherein 'one struts and frets an hour upon the stage meaninglessly signifying nothing'. Christians may work, construct, design, solve, journey, forgive, innovate and provide relief so far as their capacity permits. One has an infinite sea of words, ideas and Universes of learning and wisdom to consider in this life awaiting the personal eternal transformation to the realm of God, who is good.

President Trump Joins Eco-Pirates withn ANWR Lust

President Trump wants to plunder the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for its oil to provide global oil corporations more oil than they need already. Trump's analysts have given him ANWRs value as 1.6 billion dollars over a decade, yet the environmental costs are probably greater. And the United States already has more oil than it needs due to fracking, fracking has already started in Alaska and existing fields may be regenerated, and eventually the public will be left holding the bag with the costs of cleaning up after thousands of weather beaten dried up wellheads, pipeline, melted permafrost from global warming, costs of saving endangered species, costs of leaking oil wells into the Arctic ocean and rivers never before polluted by mankind, underground water purity violated with fracking fluids etc.

The President really is unlikely to get a second term if someone other than satan doesn't run against him, as he loses independent yet ecospherically informed voters. The high Arctic needs to be protected, not plundered. He may want to have Johnny Depp in full pirate gear serve as Ambassador to ANWR  persuade people of the value of extracting the oil.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/23/trump-proposes-opening-anwr-to-drilling-selling-strategic-oil-reserves/

Irony and Human Knowledge

The book of Genesis is arguably the most influential work in human history. It has influenced innumerable intellectuals and ordinary people. Yet ironically it has largely been misunderstood.

Especially interesting as an illustration of the double-edged nature of knowled regarding bomb making knowledge yesterday was a suicide bomber detonating him or herself (or indeterminate in the midst of sex confirmation evolution) at an Ariana Grande music concert in England killing more than 22 people. Knowledge is dangerous yet human life is dangerous, as is virtually all animal life. The three stooges with uncertainty on how to use or configure what-they-know.

Ferdinand Christian Baur was the founder of the high form of Biblical criticism at Tubingen and was influenced by 'Kierkegaard's dialectic' (ref. Wikipeda). Preaching or providing one's opinions about the state of worldly affairs and/or religious concerns is of the essence of irony.

And that too is why it is ironic that the largest paradigm for human existence at its traditional genesis is misunderstood. Adam and Eve were cast out of an atemporal existence not subject to space-time entropy and then were cast out into-the-world. Apparently they existed apart from the space-time Universe. Only after the fall did they receive the containment corrections for original sin. Human mortality and the paradigms for animal existence in the Universe were where Adam and Eve as souls were sent. That is, the physical existence of being human and like animals requirement to metabolize is the context for original sin.

Thus what's wisdom to man is foolishness to God, and one may only be saved through faith. One may knock oneself out with the greatest quest for knowledge and still end up as simply human and isolated from God in the material, human condition. 

The state of the Christian church in Europe since the second century has always been an important part of civil society by increasing degrees. The church-state relation concerned empire and counter-empire, reform and counter-reform. Human development occurred within the church in Europe inseparably until recent times, as well as in parallel cultural establishment. Human knowledge and the body of thought that comprise the history of ideas continues as a fire growing from its earliest days possibly in the Balkans circa 7.2 million years b.p. where mankind may have branched off from big apes according to recent scientific reports.

Church establishments like all cultural establishments and organizations tend to seek to expand. Perpetual revolution or creative destruction seems to be the nature of governing and organizational establishment even if within a conservative evolutionary rather than a violent paradigm. Christians probably need to use irony such as Kierkegaard employed to be able to take the gospel of Jesus Christ for itself rather than as given by an established organizational hierarchy with goals virtually indistinguishable from those of any acme organization to sustain the standard of living of its members.

The human quest for knowledge will continue until the age of the gentiles is fulfilled.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/god-cosmology-and-nothingness-theory-and-theology-in-a-scientific-era/ebook/product-22947558.html (free download)

Socrates and Subjective Truth

As a practical matter; stones don't think and people do. Digital recorders and parrots can repeat what they hear without belief or knowing what the meaning is. People just existing as part of a social order may live without thinking much about why anything is the way it is either. Socrates wanted to stimulate people to think critically and to develop their own reasoning capacity, although it may have been because he was secretly symathetic to Sparta's form of government (much more like that of 'The Republic' than Athenian democracy. Free thought requires that one determine what is true or not for-oneself rather than blindly repeating what one has been told.

Subjectivity and truth are different concepts. Socrates sometimes found truth and subjectivity coinciding, sometimes not, perhaps. Modern philosophy makes retro-interpretation of Attic paradigms a little challenging. There wasn't a philosophical field of epistemology Socrates could use to compare and contrast his ideas..

Truth theory for example. There are many of them. I prefer the correspondence theory or the truth assignments practices of propositional logic. One may make up a truth table and assign various conditions such as true or false,being or nothingness to the sentence and clusters of sentences of it and test variables or constants of it for consistency etc.

I believe Socrates great contribution is that of being the founder of analytic philosophy along with Plato and Aristotle. Particulars and Universals in word and ideas, forms and a realm of forms; that was genius. Kierkeguaard's role in developing irony and subjectivity occurred in a different poltical-historical context yet is comparable favorably to that of Socrates-even more so as the political dangers were probably greater internationally. Kierkeguaard can't be credited with founding the practice of subjectivity for individuals yet he was modern popularizer of it. His writing such as Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death are I think, his great contributions.

On Socrates other notable features concerning subjectivity and individualism of which he is extolled so commonly ( I recall encountering that even in elementary school world history), I believe people don't regard his historical paradigm well enough. He was a combat veteran of the Peloponnese an war and might have had a little PTSD. He seemed more than a little stoic in the modern sense. The Republic described by Plato really resembles a philosophers ideal dream of Sparta transformed.

Supposedly Socrates twice saved the life of the brilliant Alcibiades during the wars. Before Alcibiades defected to the Spartan League he chiseled the noses off some of the Gods of Athens. The war ended only in 404 B.C. and Socrates was executed in 399. His efforts to corrupt youth exteded to seeking support for the restoration of oligarchy apparently. That is what is called sedition now days.

Socrates must have been a little torn by the comparative political systems of Sparta and Athens. His inner voice or Daimon might have been a deeper balancing thought speaking to him for clarification. Although Socrates evidently did believe in God, it was an unknown and transcendent God for him that Christians might identify with as being omnipresent.

A substantial part of the subjective-objective truth paradigm has been resolved by analytic philosophy (e.g. Kant (The Critique of Pure Reason) Strawson (Individuals), Quine (The Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Word and Object). Yet for Socrates and later Kierkegaard there was so much virgin philosophical turf to plow that it was more than a lifetime task developing the terms and paradigms for individuals and society. Sartre wrote that his Existentialism was a continuation of the French rationalism of Descartes insofar as it examined thought from first principles of cogitation and self-reflection. Yet the idea of criticizing social constructions and ossified praxis (Sartre's term) formally was virtually non-existent in Socrates day outside the writings of Hebrew prophets (i.e. Isaiah).

It is useful to have social roles that people can easily fit in. Socrates wrote that the unexamined life is not worth living though, and if one is to find Christ in a non-Christian culture that is certainly true. It is also true if one has an undesirable social role and wants to get out of the gutter as it were being exploited by Jobba the Hut. In the U.S.A. 11 million jobs in retail are expected to disappear to robots the next 10 years. The unemployed keep finding it harder to find anything meaningful to do for earning a living. Stability can be good, yet in ancient Athens the contrast between unchanging social forms and radical change that would be brought by Alexander, Macedonians and subsequent hordes of new pagan gods was like a calm between the past and the perfect storm and giant waves of the future.

Von Trump Plan to Cut Food Stamps a Bit Too Much

Finding work for the elderly is difficult. The socialization of youth and cultural insensitivity may preclude an amicable work environment. If reasonable work is actually available few would not prefer to have the cash rather than to subsist on food stamps. And children receiving food stamps don't have opportunities to work in sweatshops 20 hours a day anymore due to oppressive legislation passed in the 1920s.

Even so children and the elderly take half of the food stamp budget and President Trump wants to cut that 25%. Everyone needs to tighten their belts while the 1% get tax cuts and 62% of the national income of course, yet I feel the food stamp program should be reduced no more than 15%.

https://qz.com/988864/federal-budget-2017-trumps-budget-would-cut-200-billion-from-food-stamps/

I worked for a while with a federal jobs program for the elderly 20 hours a week being unable to find any other work. Actually I learned a lot in those 20 hour position working for a while in the State of Alaska archives and in a start up non-profit in Texas. There are interesting things to learn that don't pay anything of course. I finished an M.T.S. program except my thesis wasn't conservative enough for a particular theological seminary so I just let that go. The history and theology was fascinating though. I have found a good course intro in logic via Stanford and a course in Denmark of Soren Kierkegaard for free at http://www.coursera.org

 My A.A. and B.A. degrees being useless, and an automobile required for work as a painter-if anyone would even hire a 62 year old to climb 24 foot extension ladders and trim buildings. I believe many people have worse time finding employment as they get to be over 55. Millions just struggle on without substantial work as best they can until retirement age because the U.S. Government never had the creative capacity to provide real incentives and tax policies that would prioritize hiring those out of work longest, the most poor and the elderly.

Government doesn't take realistic jobs for citizens seriously enough at all.

Human-Big Ape Divergence May be of Macedonian Orignin

An interesting new scientific report indicates that the earliest divergence of the future human line from that of big apes may have happened in the Balkans-my guess is Macedonia, about 7.2million years ago.

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-scientists-million-year-old-pre-human-balkans.html

The Mediterrainian Sea was dried up at the time and the dry seafloor about as hot as hell. Wise apes moved away a little to friendlier climes on a savannah in Southern Europe. A bit higher altitude would have been good for big apes seeking to beat the heat.

Not until much later when national boundaries were formed did the human line really find itself able to focus on good technological progress such as powering 3000 fork lifts at Wal-Mart distribution centers with fuel cells and to consider how God could have issued a Universe from a zero-dimensional brane or string infinitely small.