Month: June 2014

The Egregore, an introduction

Shot:

Chaser:

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UF makes the subtle point that one cannot engender a positive egregore, or collective mind parasite. This is related to the principle that the mind parasite is an effect of “congealed” or “coagulated” psychic energy. As a result, it always “enfolds,” whereas the good radiates. The former is an inward, contracting movement, whereas the latter is an expansive, radiant movement.

— Robert Godwin, One Cosmos

In the Hugo award winning comic Digger, there is a god called ‘The Black Mother.’ The Black Mother is not an actual god per se, that is to say, she is not part of that world’s mythos which predates history and whose mysterious ministrations call forth the dedication and belief of pious souls. Rather, she is the imaginary perversion of the mother of a god (who in the story seems to have been a real person) called ‘The Good Man,’ a Christ-figure in that world.

Suffering children who prayed for deliverance and did not receive it created an explanation for this in their devotion and fear of this Black Mother, who through their fear and hatred actually took root somehow in the souls of these children, one of whom is an integral part of the story.

In the world where we are made to operate we desire the good; therefore we try to understand our well-intentioned mistakes in terms of the good, if not because we are afraid of condemnation at least because we have no knowledge of how to seek the good outside of our own feelings. The soul asks per Nietzsche, if what I do is not good, then who is left to correct me? If the world will not correct me, and I am pleased with what I do, and there is no longer a god to correct me, and I no longer feel shame about it, then what I do must be good.

The concept of the ‘radiation’ of the good is essential to understanding what an egregore is and how it could be in any way real at all. (And why this phenomenon is seemingly asymmetrical) There are some among us that believe, as the Gnostics did from time to time, that through thoughts they could change the world directly. A lot of quasi-science is based on these concepts, where it is thought that good thoughts attract the good and evil thoughts, the evil. Extrapolation on this idea comes to concepts such as using breathing techniques to become a god, to use mantras to bring good fortune, and so forth. Underlying it is an assumption about the universe, namely: that it is in reality nothing more than pure thought, and strong thought makes reality, while weak thought is made by reality.

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On child labor

I have been in Honduras since Monday and am spending the next week in El Salvador. One thing I notice when traveling in the third world is child labor. There are always children, some as young as 7 years old, trying to sell you something, usually gum, other candy, or cigarettes. These kids are not in school and their futures are bleak. However, despite the obvious poverty of their situation one feels compelled to buy from them. Buying from them increases their income, making them better off. There is an implicit recognition that the alternative is not school, but hunger.

There are two reactions to child labor, one which comes from thinking about it, and the other which comes from seeing it. No one likes the idea of child labor to the extent that even considering it can get you ostracized from polite society. However, actually seeing child labor elicits a different reaction. The feeling is not to ban the child labor itself, but to help the kids in another way. The visualization of child labor forces one to understand the poverty of the choices they face.

The question is how to get people to understand opportunity cost as an abstract concept. Common arguments that children are working because it is the best option available to them fall on deaf ears. Even pointing out the outcomes that follow from restricting child labor is not enough. Paul Krugman notes that when Bangladesh banned child labor many kids turned to prostitution or starved. Even this is sometimes not enough. People have ideological predilections so strong they ignore problems of scarcity, ignoring the fact that the literal alternative to child labor is occasionally starvation.

When we think about child labor sometimes it is better to forget the statistics. Remember the kid trying to sell you gum. Would you take away his livelihood? How would he live? How would he eat?

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For the greater good — mine.

The rise of modernity has brought with it a moral shift from the universal laws of good and evil to the taste-based judgment of individuals. Our world grows ever more dizzying with the complexity of the threads of modern contingency, and individuals feel ever more alienated from the happenings around them. The plight of a neighbor is no longer as present in mind, since actions are more divorced from knowable results and meaning. For better or worse, the low-level functions of human beings will naturally lead down the easy path of enjoyment and aversion to non-enjoyment, outside of a moral system dictating that there is a correct way to behave. Of course, people still have ideas of  right and wrong. If you ask any given person living in a coastal urban area about what is a good thing for a person to do in life, the results won’t be that startling. Much like the Simpsons after season 10, the concept of “doing the right thing” has been quietly replaced by an impostor with the same name and appearance, aping the mannerisms of the original with middling success. Helping others will probably come out as part of our urban sophisticate’s answer, and everything still seems pretty normal.

When examined, this answer leads to to this conclusion: being a “good person” is a desirable trait because it feels good. Things are getting a little odd in this world of morals – but they’re about to get a whole lot stranger. We are told that being a happy person is the moral imperative. Follow your dreams! Find true love! Have a fulfilling career! See the world! This is definitely an incredible deal — these are all gratifying things that you already wanted to do, and it gives you the added bonus of making a good person. Of course, her moral prescriptions for living the life of a good person don’t even require thinking about right and wrong, meaning you don’t need a moral system to guide you to such behavior. The less easy truth is that while such things are certainly not bad things to want, they aren’t the final boss of moral goodness, either. In the mind of people like our friend, who is actually an intelligent and kind hypothetical person, the moral imperative to do what is objectively right, whether we would otherwise like to or not, has been replaced by the wholly redundant moral imperative to stimulate the enjoyment-seeking and novelty-seeking firmware that is our animal nature.

This modern doctrine’s Achilles’ heel made manifest is the fact that a system of right and wrong based on the feelings of people necessarily inherits the pride, prejudice, and desire for self-gratification that are inherent to the feelings of people. Even assuming the moral conclusions drawn from this relative system are the same as an objective one, the execution is different. As soon an opportunity arises demanding the right thing to be done, a moral relativist will, by the rules inherent to such a system, falter as soon as his egotism or prejudice are challenged. Of course, moral objectivists are prone to the very same human frailty, but not because of the very rules of their moral system. If we are to believe that we ourselves are moral lawgivers, then we are just self-canonized saints in the Church of Me. All experiences start and end with the individual, and absent of a meaning beyond our limits, the unexperienced experience of other beings is beyond our limits. We are the alpha and the omega of our own existence, bounded in a nutshell and counting ourselves kings of infinite space.

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Sacred Harp 312b: ‘Restoration’

You’ll recognize the words, maybe not the tune. I picked this video because a kid is leading it:

Come, Thou Fount of ev’ry blessing, / Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, / Call for songs of loudest praise.

I will rise and go to Jesus, / He’ll embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior; / Oh there are ten thousand charms.

Teach me some melodious sonnet, / Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount — O fix me on it — / Mount of Thy redeeming love!
Source

On middle classes and vote disposal

The situation in Thailand is now reverted to what is essentially a standard practice since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1932: Absolutist military rule with backing from King Bhumibol Adulyadej, because direct absolute monarchy is so unmodern. The country did not have a stable democratic government for about 60 years until approximately 1992, after the tenth coup since 1932 forced civilian elections without military meddling. That lasted only 14 years, before another coup forced the one Prime Minister to complete his term, Thaksin Shinawatra, out of office and out of the country.  Since then, there has been either military rule or military-backed rule, with some attempts at neither in between.

What is interesting is that, for all the factionalism in Thai politics that is built on either complete support or less-than-complete support of the sclerotic Royal Family, the main factor in this situation is a middle class that is either indifferent or actively antagonistic to the principles of democracy. This much is particularly clear with the leading supporters of the coup, a People’s Democratic Reform Committee made of middle-class figures in Bangkok and the southern provinces, calling for an unelected “people’s council” (whatever that means) to reform the Thai government.

Uri Friedman argues that such coups happen because the middle class seeks stability:

In both Egypt and Thailand, the protest movements that prompted military intervention enjoyed support from middle- and upper-class citizens. These aren’t isolated cases. Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has argued that around the world, a growing middle class “is choosing stability over all else,” and embracing “the military as a bulwark against popular democracy.”

However, to say stability is the primary interest lacks a lot of nuance. In both cases, but particularly Thailand’s, the governments that were toppled won significant majorities or at least a majority coalition in (mostly) fair elections, and were at least initially stable.  Seeking stability by agitating and overthrowing a government that has done little to destabilize the country sounds, well, counter-intuitive.

The greater interest of the middle class, in Thailand and in similar countries, is not so much stability but a belief of wanting their side to be the rulers at all costs, even if it means throwing away their votes (which they literally did in 2006, instigating the coup that got rid of Thaksin). The middle class in Bangkok and the south has long been supporters of the Democrat Party, whose electoral strategies seem to follow a pattern of simply placating to those voters, and hoping that the multiparty nature of Thailand will play to their favor. Consequently, even in elections where they have earned the most votes, they have never earned more than a quarter of the electorate, and a third of the legislature.

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Secession lagniappe

Several more Northern California counties plan secession votes:

Voters in Del Norte and Tehama, with a combined population of about 91,000, will decide June 3 on an advisory measure that asks each county’s board of supervisors to join a wider effort to form a 51st state named Jefferson.

Elected officials in Glenn, Modoc, Siskiyou and Yuba counties already voted to join the movement. Supervisors in Butte County will vote June 10, while local bodies in other northern counties are awaiting the June 3 ballot results before deciding what to do.

A similar but unrelated question on the primary ballot in Siskiyou County asks voters to rename that county the Republic of Jefferson.

“We have 11 counties up here that share one state senator,” compared to 20 for the greater Los Angeles area and 10 for the San Francisco Bay Area, said Aaron Funk of Crescent City, a coastal town in Del Norte County near the Oregon border. “Essentially, we have no representation whatsoever.”

More here.

Frank Bryan, the legendary historian of Vermont town meeting politics, has a new essay in Green Mountain Noise, the Second Vermont Republic’s magazine, about decentralism and human-scale government:

Within the chaos of incompetency lies the great danger to our Republic. A proliferation of unseen, unaccountable and thus uncontrollable nodes of influence have arisen to deal with the complexity of governing a continental enterprise from the center.   The result is what political scientists have traditionally called the “politics of muddling through.” Accordingly, any serious notion of “democratic accountability” has long since vanished.

Those who face the daunting challenge of reinstating a truly democratic America should see this as an opportunity. The tide of history is with us. We are not challenging a healthy, robust and competent democracy. We are challenging a tired democracy and therefore a weak democracy; a splendid achievement in the history collective human behavior that unfortunately has been hobbled by its inability to reign in its natural appetite for aggrandizing authority — even though the cost of this authority was paid in terms of democratic legitimacy. …

In 1789, we created the framework for a continental, federal enterprise, dividing authority between the states and the central government.  More importantly we trumped any chance of coherent central enterprise (one thinks of Canada) by setting our national institutions against one another. …

The structure of our democracy is currently out of whack. Power to the states and within the states, power to the towns and within the towns, power to the individual and within each individual the awareness that it is in the small community alone that true distinctiveness can be accurately perceived, assessed, and rewarded – where authentic individualism is possible.

We live in a democratic moment and place. Let us behave accordingly.

Read the whole thing. These essays in the same issue about Burlington’s drug culture aren’t bad either.

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