Posts Tagged ‘Destiny’

Why The US has to be Nice, The EU has to Retaliate and the Underdeveloped Countries have to Forgive

Monday, July 7th, 2008

The Bretton Wood agreement was created in 1947 to prevent that nations use their currencies to obtain an unfair advantage.

This was the main cause of World War I en II. The countries were obliged to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rates of its currency within a fixed value.

President Nixon broke up the Bretton Woods international monetary system on Aug. 15, 1971. The US was unable to keep its finances stable because of the costs of the Vietnam War. Nixon destroyed the Foundation of the World Financial System, the Dollar.

In 1992 the exchange rates of the member states of the EU were fixed. The Euro, a new financial foundation, was born. At this moment the Dollar is not the foundation currency of the world anymore. This position is taken over by the Euro. The EU (and other countries) are paying a high price for the Economic Policy of the US. They are paying the bills of the biggest Debtor in the World.

Many US Citizens are moving into a state of panic. Not only Real Estate and Banks are in big troube. Other highly respected industrial companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are close to a bankruptcy. The Entertainment Business is also on its retreat.

The Big Casino’s are losing their customers and companies like Walt Disney, CBS and Time Warner are getting in trouble. The situation of US Big Companies is so bad that Warrren Buffett, the most succesfull investor in the World, is moving his investments to Europe. He is mainly interested in family-owned companies in Germany.

The FED is unable to lower the Interest Rates. The effective interest is already negative. When they higher the rates the economy will drop into a spectacular recession. Their only hope is a Little Help from their Friends but the amount of Friends of the US is decreasing.

Finally the Climate Issue is proving itself in many ways. The Amount of Natural Disasters (Flooding, Hurricanes) is increasing. The only thing that is still not happening is a major Big Bang Earthquake.

The US Regulators (FED) are trying to stop the Recession by Lowering the Interest Rates. The FED is helping the Banking Industry to recover from the Credit Crunch but it is not helping the rest of the economy at all. The EU Regulators are trying to stop Inflation. They are doing exactly the opposite the US is doing.

Lower interest rates push down the value of the dollar. This prompts the oil-producing countries to push for higher oil prices.

The rising prices of oil and other commodities are also a result of a Rising of the economy in India, China, Russia and other countries. A small part of the World is Going Down and a big part of the world is Going Up. The total effect of this process is a growing demand and a growing demand simply increases the prices.

The growing demand has a huge effect on the World Climate. The rising economies are polluting the environment and the decreasing economies (especially the US) have polluted Earth for a long time already. The Underdeveloped Countries are just doing what the West was doing all the time. The huge change of the World Climate will eventually hit all the economies of the World.

The World is caught in a State of Catch22. Every course of action that is chosen ends in the long term in a Global Disaster.

In reality the World is changing on many levels. We are trying to stop this change. We are unable to do this because we are unable to find a Global Win-Win-situation. To find a Global Win-Win-situation we have to Change Something on Every Level All over the World.

The Western World is not accustomed to a Way Down. It believes Everything will go UP all the time. A Recession is a temporary state down between to rising states.

The Eastern World has a completely different World View. They believe the World is governed by Cycles. We have to accept the process of UP and Down because it is the Will of God. The Eastern world believes in Destiny. Eastern people are not afraid to die. Western people fear death.

In the Western World a Human is the Centre of the Universe. In the Eastern World the Human is a Part of a Whole. The Whole is much more important than the Individual. Western Democracy is trying to Unite Individuals. In the Eastern Culture it is much easier to Move the Masses.

The population in the Western World is decreasing. The population in the rest of the World is increasing. The Culture of the Eastern World will simply take over the World just by the numbers. They are the Majority and their Majority will grow. If the World would be an immense democracy The West would be without any power. The Democratic Party of the East would win every Election.

The only way for the West to stay in power is to use military technology. The US is already doing this and it is not helping us and the US at all. The fight againgst Terrorism is seen as a fight against the people of the Underdeveloped Countries. When you are hungry you do everything to get food. When your family is killed you fight back and kill the enemy. For many people in the World it is very clear that the West is the real Enemy.

If we look at the Strategy of the Financial Regulators we can see that the US Financial Regulators are Nice to the Banks and the EU Financial Regulators are Retaliating. The US Regulators are hoping the actors (mainly the Banks) in the US will start to cooperate. The EU Regulators are defecting the same Actors. Both of them are very Clear about what they want to accomplish. Both of them want to keep on moving UP.

This is for many reasons an impossible option. To keep the World in balance the West has to Go Down. His has to go Down in a controlled Action or it has to Go Down in a Forced Action. The West will be Forced by the East or it wil be Forced by Nature itself.

The Citizins of the West have be Informed about this Situation. They have to be Informed by Politicans, Writers, The Press and they have to Educate themselves. For many reasons Everybody is Hiding the News because in the West we only want to hear the Good News.

The Banks are controlling US Government and the FED is afraid to retaliate. They are afraid that the complete US Banking system will collapse.The situation is so bad that officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have informed the FED about a plan that would have been unheard-of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system.

The IMF’s board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) is to be carried out in the United States. It is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system. As part of the assessment, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team.

They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests – worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar.

The IMF is charged with the supervision of the international monetary system. Roughly two-thirds of IMF members – but never the United States – have already endured this painful procedure. For seven years, US President George W. Bush refused to allow the IMF to conduct its assessment. Even now, he has only given the IMF board his consent under one important condition. The review can begin in Bush’s last year in office, but it may not be completed until he has left the White House.

A Win-Win-situation is a state of a game called the Prisoners Dilemma. Life can be seen as a long chain of Prisoners Dilemma’s called an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Iterated Prisonners Dilemma can be won when one of the prisoners is not aimed at long term cooperation. In this case he has to cheat the other prisonner and kill him to avoid revenge. If the prisonners need each other in the future another scenario is neccesary. This scenario is called Tit-for-Tat. 

Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Cooperation (1985)) created a computer program called, “Tit-for-Tat“. The program always wins an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma by simply copying the behavior of the others.

Tit-for-Tat uses the following strategies:

  1. Be Nice. Start by cooperating, and never be the first to defect.
  2. Be Retaliatory. If the other player defects inflict a cost on him or her which is at least as severe – otherwise you open yourself to exploitation.
  3. Be Forgiving. If your opponent mends his ways after defecting, restore cooperation as quickly as possible, so that you can both get back to scoring highly on each round.
  4. Be Clear. Since there is no way to beat the Nice, Retaliatory and Forgiving strategy, if your opponent knows you are following it, there is no incentive for him or her to seek advantage – it will only destroy his or her score as well as yours.

Michael Liebreich applied the Tit-for-Tat strategy on the Climate Issue. He shows that we are able to solve the Climate issue when the players change their strategy. His advice is that the US needs to start being Nice, Europe needs to learn to Retaliate, and the developing world needs to Forgive. All players need to improve the Clarity with which they communicate their strategies.

At this moment the US Government is Nice to the Financial System that is braking down. It is not Nice to the rest of the World when the World Climate is at stake. The EU is still Nice to the US although the EU is paying for the braking of the US Financial System. The Developing Countries have to Forgive the US but it is very difficult to forgive somebody who is defecting the Game all the time. When you play Tit-for-Tat you have to retaliate in this stage.

When you define a Clear strategy you have to be Realistic. The world is on many levels highly unbalanced. Everybody knows that an unbalanced state will always move to a balanced state in due time. The West has to accept that the East is trying to move to the same State as the West. The West also has to accept that this is simply impossible. The Earth is incapable to provide the necessary Energy and Food. A Realistic Strategy is to Lower the West so the East is capable to Move Up.

In the West Politicians need Votes to stay in Power. To keep the majority of the Voters happy they have to Move UP the Economy. Almost nobody of the current leaders has the courage to tell the voters that the West is at the end of its cycle and has to move Down. We are taken by Destiny. The effect of the current Policy is a continuation of the Status Quo.

To move out of the Status Quo Politicians are looking for extreme certainty when they decide to change their policies. They need the backup of Scientists to show the voters that what they are Doing is the Right Thing to Do.

Science is unable to provide this certainty. The complexity of the Economic and the Ecological System of the Earth is so big that nobody is able to comprehend what is really happening and what will be the effect of a decision on the long term.

Prof. Mort Webster writes that climate policy decisions are normally made as sequential decisions over time under uncertainty – given the magnitude of uncertainty in both economic and scientific processes, the decades-to-centuries time scale of the phenomenon, and the ability to reduce uncertainty and revise decisions along the way.

Although staging climate change policy decisions over time would seem to make sense, he points out that the tendency of U.S. and international policy to change extremely slowly requires front-loading the painful decisions. Everybody knows we are moving in the wrong direction but nobody knows in detail what we have to do.

Webster shows that the best thing to do is to Prepare and Act for the Worst and change the policy for the Better in a later state. We have to take the bitter pill fast.

LINKS

About Stagflation

About the US Policy and Bretton Woods

About the effects of Bretton Woods

 

Jane Roberts and Wolfgang Pauli Explain the Bridge between Psychology and Quantum Mechanics

Friday, October 26th, 2007

sethThe books of Jane Roberts (1929-1984) had a deep impact on my “Scientific” insight about the Universe. The books of Seth are still valid and many things that were explained by Seth are now proven to be true.

Jane Roberts was a writer and a channel. In this state she was taken over by an entity called Seth.

I became interested in Seth and Jane when I was a student (Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, Philosophy).

Seth dictated many theories of physics that were at that time (1980) rather unknown. Jane was totally not educated in my field of Science. I wondered how this was possible.

Seth explained that there are four universes where we live in and these four universes are part of a multitude of other universes.

What Seth explained was the so called many-worlds-hypothesis.

It was formulated to explain Quantum Mechanics (The so called Oxford Explanation). Bohr and Heisenberg formulated another explanation (The Copenhagen Explanation).

The four worlds are: the Physical universe, a Dream universe, the Electrical and an Anti-Matter universe (Our Twin Universe). The last one was not explained by Seth. The Twin Universe was outside his Frame of Reference.

Our physical universe is created by the power of our mental projections. When people share the same projections they are able “to Move Mountains”.

You usually think, for example, that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around. The all-important matter of your focus is largely responsible for your interpretation of any events”.

This is an important insight. It is a very powerful tool for change. When a collective projects Peace on Earth or The Restoration of Nature it will happen. The Mass Media could help by projecting “positive thoughts”. At this moment they accomplish the opposite.

Seth also gives an explanation of Time/Space (The Chronotope). Past and Future coexist with the Present. They are created in the Now. This is currently the most interesting theory explaining strange effects (the Bell Tests) in Quantum Physics.

inner selfAll our “Representations (“bodies”)” in Time/Space (the “many worlds“) are in direct contact with something called the Inner Self. The Inner Self is the Observer and it gives “feed-back” to all the representations.

In every representation the Inner Self comes through as Intuition or the “Inner Voice”. It helps its “occurrences” to find Balance or Harmony. Most of the time people are not able to listen. When this happens they move away from their Path (Tao).

The Inner Self also influences our exterior. It gives us Signs. Most people in the West don’t understand or see the Signs.

If they see a Dove in a place where there are no doves (a strange coincedence) they don’t understand that The Higher Self is advising them to follow their Heart and stop Thinking (The Dove is the Symbol of Sufism and Gnostics).

Later in this Blog I want to tell you about Wolfgang Pauli. He was a very intelligent Scientist involved in the creation of Quantum Mechanics. He was gifted with a strange talent called the Pauli Effect.

Everywhere he came “Psycho-Kinetic Effects” started to happen. These effects could not be explained by Science. They were always connected to something Pauli was Trying to Find Out. The Signs contained a Deeper Symbolic Meaning.

Seth explained that to use Jane Roberts he had to shift to another “frequency” in the Universe. His Time/Space was on another “Plane of Vibration“.

To get into contact with Jane he had to create a “Resonance-Pattern (a channel)” with the “Standing-Wave” of Jane Roberts.

When this channel was accomplished he was able to link his Symbols to the Symbols of Jane. Jane was not chosen by accident. Her “State of Mind” was able to resonate with the State of Seth.

When you want to channel your “State” is crucial to the connections you are making in this “strange” Universe. When you’re “wave-length” is “low” you attract “lower” entities of other planes of vibration. They will tell different stories because they are not aware of the “higher” planes.

The same applies to your contacts on Earth. You attract people of the “Same Wavelength“. When you’re wavelength is low this does not mean that You are a Bad Person. It means that something is connected to you that is influencing you’re wavelength.

magicianAlthough this sounds strange people are able to give “their problems” to others. This is a big problem when you are Empathic (from the Heart). I am Empathic and it took me a very long time to understand why I was carrying “Strange Moods” when there was no reason for it.

When you are an Emphat you are able to understand people with ease but when you “move into the other” without any protection the chances are high that you take something over. The Others love you for this. They feel refreshed and happy and You are suddenly in their state.

When we translate channeling in “Getting an In-Spiration” we can see that channeling is not new. It happened in every time in the History of Humanity. An inspiration is received when you are able to Articulate your Intuition. A very important condition is Tension.

When you are looking for an answer and time is running out You suddenly know! Artists use this (called dead-lining) to make sure their expression is the best they can do. They have to wait for the Magic Moment and when this moment appears they are taking over by the Creative Force.

In earlier times these people were called Magicians, Prophets, Druids, See-ers, Artists, Bards and Poets. In our time the distinction is much more difficult to make.

In every place in Society there are people who are equipped with a strong Intuition and/or Empathy. A nice test to find out “What you Really Are” is the Myers Briggs Test.

Many very important discoveries in science appeared when people got into a highly intuitive state induced by Tension. A famous example is the “discovery” of the Benzene Ring by Kekulé.

A very interesting case is Wolfgang Pauli.

ezekielJung (1875-1961) and Pauli (1900-1958) met in 1930 when Pauli asked Jung to help him with his Emotional and Psychological Tensions. Jung reviewed thirteen hundred of Pauli’s dreams and studied a selection from the first four hundred of these. Pauli was a brilliant scientist, highly involved in the creation of Quantum Mechanics.

Jung was never able to understand everything Pauli discovered. He was not a mathematician. What nobody understood at that time was that Pauli was creating the Bridge between Physics and Psychology.

He found this bridge when he started to study Alchemy. He found out that the so called Lumen Naturae (Paracelcus), the Light of Nature, or “Spirit in Matter” was “The manifestation of something deeper, an Unus Mundus that is also the domain of Symmetry“.

He believed that this Light was the Source where “Mind and Matter, Religion and Science originate“.

At this moment Symmetry is the most important issue in Physics. It is needed to solve the “Multi Dimensional String“-equation (The Beta Function) that is played by the Cosmic Violin Player in Super String Theory.

What Pauli discovered was that there are two worlds. The Masculin World of Order (The Circle) and the Female World of Chaos (The Square). When the two worlds connect Synchronicity takes place.

The Masculin World is controlled by Rhythms, Patterns and Clocks. Many people think this is a Power who is Controlling Human Destiny called God.

In reality it a Power that is Able to Create. It is able to create when We, the Humans, use it. It is the Power Seth talks about when he explains the Power of our Mental Projections.

worldclockOne of the most important dreams of Pauli is the dream of the World Clock: “There is a vertical and a horizontal circle, having a common centre. …

The vertical circle is a blue disc with a white border divided into 4 X 8 — 32 partitions. A pointer rotates upon it.

The horizontal circle consists of four colours. On it stand four little men with pendulums, and round it is laid the ring that was once dark and is now golden (formerly carried by four children).

The world clock has three rhythms or pulses:

1) The small pulse: the pointer on the blue vertical disc advances by 1/32.

2) The middle pulse: one complete rotation of the pointer. At the same time the horizontal circle advances by 1/32.

3) The great pulse: 32 middle pulses are equal to one complete rotation of the golden ring. …It is supported by the black bird“.

It is very clear that Pauli saw a “modern” version of the Vision of Ezekiel.

rosarium03The Female World (the Moon) is the World of the Game played on the Square. It is the World where The Human is a co-creator with a Power that shows Herself as a Trickster. The Male World of the Sun is the world of Control and Order. The Male World defines the Rules that are Played when the Game is created.

She is Playing Games to show the Human that he has aquired Free Choice (not Free Will) and HAS TO USE IT. “God” will never interfere with our Free Choice because Our Free Choice is God. God is the creator of the many paths that are there to explore.

When both World (Male and Female) are in Harmony, the Human Co-Creates with The Creative Force (The Dove, The Holy Spirit) of God and moves unto the Path that is created for him to explore. This Path is there to learn the lessons that his Soul has chosen to learn in the Learning Simulator called Earth.

The Past and the Future are already there and the Now is the starting point to move back and forwards in Time and Up and Down in the Six Multi-Universes that are connected to our Seventh Universe, the Universe of the Heart.

The idea that Future and Past are interacting in the Now is called Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory. It predicts that the Future influences the Now.

Jung asked Marie-Louise Von Franz (Number and Time) to research the domains of Pauli he was unable to understand.

When I searched the Internet to find more about Pauli  and Von Franz when I found the website of Remo Roth.

HeartChakraRemo Roth and Marie Louise von Frantz worked together to explore Pauli’s heritage.

It is now 33 years ago that I began to dream and have visions about the Seal of Solomon. In one of the first visions dating from July 1973 I saw two open graves. One of them had a tomb stone with a Christian Cross on its top, the other one a stone with the Seal of Solomon, the Heart Chakra, chiselled into its surface”.

“Further, already in 1974 I read in Marie-Louise von Franz’ book Number and Time about a dream/vision/audition of “a modern physicist” that dealt with the Seal of Solomon and the square – exactly the symbolism also my vision talked about.

Of course I was completely fascinated by this vision and asked Marie-Louise von Franz about the dreamer. She allowed me then to publish his name; it was Wolfgang Pauli“.

In April 24, 1948 the foundation of the C.G. Jung institute took place. When Pauli entered the room, a so-called Pauli effect occurred. Without any outer cause a Chinese vase fell onto the floor and the water poured out, resulting in a flood. Symbolically seen, we can say that this psychokinetic event was a Chinese water flood“.

Pauli had begun to deal with the hermetic alchemist Robert Fludd, who wrote his name in Latin as Robertus de Fluctibus. Therefore, we can conclude that these two events belong to a Synchronicity, the psychic (inner) event of it consisting in the tension in Pauli concerning the dispute between Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd, the physical (outer) event in this strange psychokinetic anomaly, the Pauli effect of the overturned vase, resulting in a flood“.

robert fluddSymbolically seen we can say that the meaning of this flood is as follows: An archetypal conception which has a lot to do with “Watery” and “Being Liquid”, which was still living in Fludd’s hermetic alchemy, but repressed after Johannes Kepler, wishes to be integrated in the new Zeitgeist of the 21st century (The Age of Aquirius, the Water Bearer)” .

In Robert Fludd’s hermetic alchemy the world soul, the anima mundi, was still the vinculum amoris (ligament of love) of matter and spirit. Thus, we can conclude that a meaning of Pauli’s synchronicity is the challenge of going back behind Kepler to Robert Fludd with the goal of finding a new synthesis of the Divine Male Principle with the Female“.

By means of a symmetrical symbol, the Seal of Solomon, which pursued him in so many dreams and visions, Pauli is now able to define the dark female part, matter, as a mirrored image of the spiritual layer, and vice versa. This material trinity unifies with the spiritual one, leading by this into a new sphere, the psyche which he calls here the “realm of the middle” (i.e., China)”.

What Roth is trying to show is that we are at a “Point of Transition“. We have to stop Male Dominance (Order) but we also have to stop Female Dominance (Chaos, The Trickster, Playing Games). What we have to accomplish is a New Synthesis of the Divine Male and the Divine Female principle (The Holy Wedding). We have to start to act with Spirit and our Soul again. We have to use the Creative Power that comes out of our Heart.

The “Realm of the Middle” has a lot to do with China. The Culture of China was aimed at Harmony. The Seal of Salomon “symbolizes a potential world that contains a new creation”. This New World is the world of Aquirius. When we want to find its foundation we have to Move back in History and Start all over Again. We have to become aware that We Are The Creators and we have to Take the Responsibilty for our Creations.

Raimundus_Lullus_alchemic_pageWe have to move back to the time of Alchemists (Fludd, Paracelsus), the Essenes or when you believe this, even to Le-MU-ria to find the “Old Tools of Creation” (The first Emperors of China came from the Land of MU).

As a psychotherapist and healer I have the possibility to penetrate into the deepest depths of the collective soul. Therefore I can testify that this renewed God-image, the Seal of Solomon, is constellated in many humans of today”. “These observations showed me that all these people were or are already being transformed into a modern mystic, even when they did not know this consciously” (Are You aware of this?).

As the well-known Jewish myth researcher Gershom Sholem stresses, the Seal of Solomon or Star of David is not of a specific Jewish origin. This symbol occurs therefore throughout the whole world, in many different cultures, so for example as a symbol of the heart Chakra anahata in the Buddhist and Hindu Tantrism or in the heart of the Sufis of Islam mysticism

This is a citation of Seth: “What we need is a whole new myth of man and his beginnings, one that leapfrogs local gods and places God inside his creatures, within creation. We need a god as blessed or flawed as its creations, a whole new cosmology giving birth to a God that is male and female, Jew, Arab, American, Chinese, Indian; that is within each individual alike; that is not parochial and not man’s alone; a god that is within stones and stars; a god-goddess big enough to be personified as a Buddha, Christ, Isis, Athena, Muhammed-animal god, insect god, tree god; each seen as a local symbol standing for an unexplainable reality that is too super-real to fit our definitions. We need a new myth, imaginative and creative enough to leap above our puny facts

LINKS

About Robert Fludd & the Magic of the Memory Palace

An Article about the Relationship between Pauli and Jung

An Article about Pauli’s World Clock

The Website about Pauli of Remo Roth

About Gnostics

About Alchemy 

About Alchemy and Logic

About Egyptian Alchemy

About Heliopolis

About Old Fashioned Thinking

About Al-Khemia

Why the Finance Gurus Get Risk All Wrong

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

When I read the news I feel the Worldwide Financial System is slowly moving into the disaster zone. The main reason is the absence of Trust. For almost 25 years I have been active in the Banking Industry.

I started my career as a mathematical analyst doing Operations Research. Our most important client was the International Money Market. The next 25 years I was in many roles involved in this area.

Banking is in its essence very simple. A bank buys and sells money. All the products of a bank are sometimes very complicated structures where the flow of money (the cash flow) is regulated. A bank has to balance its cash flow every day. When the cash flow is unbalanced it has to buy or sell money from other banks or the National Bank.

The money market is the most complicated market. The most important person in this market is called a Dealer. To balance the activities of the Dealers a Manager gives them all kinds of Limits. The sum of all the Limits has to be zero on a daily basis.

When they buy and sell money it is very easy to manage the dealers. You just have to add all the cash flows and compare them with the given number.It became much more complicated when the dealers created new products.

In these new products they started to trade Expectations (Options). An expectation is a statistical construction. To calculate the Limit a new way of calculation had to be developed. Not only a new way of calculation had to be developed we also needed a new way to keep the books.

Everytime when we were able to find a way to solve the problems the dealers invented a new product. They started to trade in expectations of expectations and many other very complicated combinations of other products. In the end we were not able to keep the book anymore.

This was the moment when things went totally wrong. Perhaps you remember the end of Barings where a dealer called Nick Leeson was able to fool almost everybody. He wanted to regain his losses and to do this he had to take more risk in every step he was taking. He was gambling with the money of the bank. I don’t want to offend dealers but I think GAMBLING is the best way to describe the current situation in the financial industry.

Not only the bank is gambling but also Companies and Customers are gambling in every aspect of their lives. Customers buy a house and hope the price of their house will rise. Companies buy a company and hope the merger will make a profit.

Gambling is a zero sum game. Gambling is a very complicated way to distribute a whole. The sum of all the chances is one. To state it simple when one person wins the other has to lose. We created a very complex system that hides the fundamental laws of gambling. An example is inflation. Inflation changes the value of a currency. To compensate the ups and the downs of the currencies money flows from one country to the other.

When a bank is unable to reach zero (balance) it has to lend money. There are many arrangements between banks to make this possible. Most of the time banks operate in clusters or networks. They use preferred partners to do so. When you are playing in the lower league you have to pay more. You are playing in the lower league when the chance that you become unbalanced is high. You are a risk and to compensate the risk you have to pay a higher price because the bank has to reserve money to compensate for the risk. The money the bank has to reserve is not making money.

A very long time ago I was responsible for a project called Global Limits. We used the GEIS (General Electric)-network to connect all the dealing centers in the world. The system operated on a real-time basis. Every transaction with a bank was stored in the central database. With one button a central manager could block a bank. If the bank was blocked the dealers were unable to deal with this bank.

The system was created because of the Oil Crisis. The management of the bank was very afraid the Domino-effect would take place. The Domino-effect happens when a bank goes broke and influences the next one. We calculated this effect on a daily basis.

At that time the banking network was not too complicated. Many banks worked in alliances (ABECOR) and the alliances could stop the cascade.

At this moment we are in a totally different situation. The banking network is worldwide, highly interconnected and the transactions between banks are based on expectations. When a worldwide expectation fails the system is almost unable to stop the cascade.

Most of the time expectations are also balanced. When many expectations fail at the same time the Insurance Industry calls this an Act of God. Acts of God (or Destiny) are outside the reach of statistics. They are so rare that it is impossible to predict them.

It looks like the world is hit by many Acts of God at the same time. The System is able to take one blow and a second blow but at a certain point in time the System is down. The money that was reserved to compensate is gone. At that time only Governments are able to help.

They are able to create (!!!) money to help the System to survive. Creating money is a temporary solution. In the end the balance has to be restored. The total System gets out of balance when very big or world-wide disasters occur. When the System is unbalanced for a long time the system is permanently vibrating and is basically unpredictable (volatile).

The creation of money creates Inflation. There is an end to this Support System when the Inflation rises to an unexceptable level.The only way to solve this problem is to change the value of the Currency or to hide the Inflation. This a trick many countries apply. It buys them some time.

The effect is a change of the flow of money from one country to the other country. The most terrible situation arises when the Economy is going down and Inflation is going up (Stagflation). Stagflation is something the brightest economists are unable to handle. You have to stimulate and stop the System at the same time.

The current system is still highly dependent on the Dollar. When the US is unable to manage the flows of money the Worldwide System is in big problems. Currently the World Economic Power is the cause of many Acts of God and experiences many Acts of God.

Yesterday the former president of the independent financial autority in the US(FED) Alan Greenspan predicted a financial disaster in the US. He explained that the US does not have the financial buffers to handle a crisis. When this crisis comes (the baby-boomers) they have to lend the money elsewhere.

What we see now is a very dangerous situation. The banks are afraid to help their colleagues. They don’t trust anybody anymore. When a bank is unbalanced it has to ask the Government for help. When the Bank has to ask the Government for help the customers that have given the bank a loan demand their loans back. The Bank is unable to survive this. When the first bank has fallen the other banks want their money back. When the money is gone the next bank falls and the next bank falls. An endless cascade starts to move like an avalanche.

In 1996 Per Bak wrote the book How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality.

Self-organized criticality is one of a number of important discoveries made in statistical physics and related fields over the latter half of the 20th century. Per Bak used the metaphorical visualization of a “sandpile” on which new sand grains were being slowly sprinkled to cause”avalanches”. The Domino-effect takes place when the last grain falls and all the sandpiles start to move.

What Per Bak discovered was a Power Law. The Acts of God are predictable by a mechanism that underlies the natural phenomenon in question. The Power Law is fractal which means that the rules of the system come back at every level and behave like the tones and overtones of music. Sometimes the disaster is repeated at every level of enfolding of the system and creates a multi-level avalanche.

What Per Bak discovered was that the sand-pile system is fractal. It is a self-reference. Old fashioned statistics, used by Banks, are unable to handle fractals.They are not able to predict the “sudden disaster“.

Benoit Mandelbrot (the inventor of fractals) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote an article called “How the Finance Gurus Get Risk All Wrong

Conventional finance theory treats big one-day market jumps or drops as anomalies that can be safely ignored when gauging risk or forecasting returns. But if you remove the ten biggest one-day moves (both up and down) from a chart of the S&P 500 over the past 20 years, you get a picture very different from market reality. The big moves matter

In market terms, a power-law distribution implies that the likelihood of a daily or weekly drop exceeding 20% can be predicted from the frequency of drops exceeding 10%, and that the same ratio applies to a 10% vs. a5% drop. In bell-curve finance, the chance of big drops is vanishingly small and is thus ignored. The 1987 stock market crash was, according to such models, something that could happen only once in several billion billion years. Another aspect of the real world tackled by fractal finance is that markets keep the memory of past moves, particularly of volatile days, and act according to such memory. Volatility breeds volatility; it comes in clusters and lumps. This is not an impossibly difficult or obscure framework for understanding markets. In fact, it accords better with intuition and observed reality than the bell-curve finance that still dominates the discourse of both academics and many market players“.

What they are telling is that disaster breeds disasters. What they are also telling is that INTUITION is the best tool to use when you want to besuccessful in the financial market.

Alan Greenspan explained yesterday what he experienced when he was trying to convince the Government to stop to destroy the Country. He also told the reporter that he was convinced they would not stop the process and he was also convinced the process could not be stopped. I hope he is wrong.

LINKS

About Fragile & Anti-Fragile Systems

The Wordwide Carnival: A Short Introduction into the World of Mikhail Bakhtin

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

The work of Bakhtin was disclosed to me by Will McWhinney. He used Bahktin in one of the many versions of his never published book Grammars of Engagement.

The discovery of Bahktin started with a book about Bahktin by Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson. Later I also read many other books and articles like “The dialogical imagination”, “Towards a philosophy of the act”, “Discourse in the Novel”, “Rabelais and His World”, “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” and “Speech Genres and Other Late Essays”.

Bahktin invented the term Chronotope, “The place where the knots of narrative are tied” or “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature“. Currently we use the term Content or Media for Literature.

A Chronotope is a Topological Concept

knotSpace (Place, Location) and Time (the narrative) are connected by a Knot. A knot is a complicated twist in a rope. The twist is needed when you want to close a system in itself. The simplest topological structure that visualizes twisted space/time is the Moebius Ring.

The Chronotope is the Centre out of which every narrative that we are able to tell is enfolding and unfolding. It produces narratives and absorbs narratives. Bahktin places Folk-Lore, Myth, the Language of the People, in the Centre.

Every narrative contains a twist, a moment where the expansion of the beginning turns to the contraction of the end. It is the moment where the narrative is balanced. The reader holds his breath. It is also the moment where the narrative is aware of itself. It observes the whole.

Sometimes the twist is in the end. You know “who done it”. Sometimes the narrative starts with the twist. There are even narratives without a twist. You know all the time what will happen.

Scientists don’t realize that a scientific article is also a narrative. They use citation to prove they are telling a true story. Funny enough scientific citation has created the Internet. A hypertext is nothing but a citation-structure.

Old narratives produce new narratives. This is always accomplished by Citation. “The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language. . . but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own“”. The cursive sentence between brackets is a citation of Bahktin.

New narratives also oppose old narratives. They are Dialogic. “The entire life of language, in any area of its use . . . is permeated with dialogic relationships“.

Dialogues are converging (Socratic dialogue), diverging and conflicting (Menippian Dialogue) or one sided (the Magisterial Monologue). “Thus at any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth

The Centre generates new narratives all the time. They are a mix of the old and the new. The centre is the Centrifugal Force and this force is powered by Contradiction.

Roller_CoasterThe Institutions, the Ruling Power, are constantly trying to standardize (the Centripetal force). They formulate rules and try to transform the dialogue into a monologue.

The centripetal and the centrifugal force create a huge tension. This tension moves the Wheel of Creation. The wheel always moves through the stages of Order and Chaos. In the middle of the Tornado of Creation is the Centre, the Chronotope. In the centre you will always find rest and inspiration.

The monologue (the magisterial dialogue) is the dialogue of the Magister, the scientist, the manager, the judge, the physician and the teacher. They use science, the law, books or other Magisters to enforce their power. By formulating rules they try to destroy the creative centre (the context).

A context is potentially unfinalized; a code must be finalized. A code is only a technical means of transmitting information; it does not have cognitive, creative significance. Code is deliberately killed context“.

At this moment the Centripetal force is implemented in the Search Engine. Narratives are found by typing codes. This makes it very difficult to find a context. Companies like Google are manipulating the coding. They are paid by the Centripetal Force of the Commercial Companies.

The centrifugal force is never at rest. It always generates new alternatives. The creation of new literature is not bounded by rules. Every time a new structure is defined the Centre starts to play with the rules and generates a new combination. The Centre is not only combining rules it even invents new rules. The Centre is the inventor of new Games to Play.

Producing literature is a process of spiralling out. It follows a cycle but at a certain point in time a new Centre appears and the Cycle starts a new process of Folk-lore. The new centre is always connected to the old Centre. New myths and new fairy tales are created that are a representation of the Spirit of the Time.

Every cycle is governed by a Clock. The periodicity of the Clocks is determinated by the number five. It runs at a frequency of 1250, 250, 50, 10 or 2 years. There are frequencies that are moving faster (the Atom) and much slower (the Universe).

Bahktin has developed a very interesting theory about the development of the Chronotopes in history.

I will tell the Tale of the Chronotopes of Bahktin on the level of the Cycle of Culture (1250 years, 250 years per stage).

HunsBetween 450 and 700 the Roman Empire is destroyed by the Huns. It is the time of the Great Deportations. People out of Asia move to the West. They are the ancestors of the Ostrogotes, the Visigotes, the Franks, the Gauls, the Germans and the Celts. 1250 years later they are integrated in what we now call Europe. Between 700 and 2000 the Europeans explore and conquer the World.

Around 1200 the new powers have created many Kingdoms and have organized the Crusades to conquer the Holy Land. To show their power they build the Cathedrals. The Cathedrals are the instrument of the Education of the Masses. The old folk-lore is transformed to the new of the Christian Faith. The old-folklore is not destroyed. Many symbols and important events are preserved. They are cited. The transition of the Sun in Winter is transformed in Christmas. The new apostles are connected to the old animals of the old Wheel of Fortune.

Tristan IsoldeBetween 1200 and 1450 the Chronotope of the Greek Romance (Tristan and Isolde, Arthur and The Grail) appears. It is the Chronotope of Being and Destiny. “There are a lot of suddenly’s”. Everything happens. The actor in this Chronotope is without identity. He is tested by destiny. When he has passed the test he is not changed. There is no time and space. Time (“adventure-time”) is reversible. The actors are public figures and space is public space. In the narratives we are able to see and hear everything.

We are in the Middle Ages. In the outside world destiny is also playing its evil game. Western Civilization is almost destroyed by the plague, feminine and wars between the Kingdoms. Even the Christian Empire of Rome is divided by a schism (Byzantium). At the end only a few Kingdoms survive. These Kings become Emperors. They represent God on Earth.

copernicusThis (1450-1700) is the time of the Chronotope of the Adventure. It is the Chronotope of Becoming. The identity of the actor is transforming. He is responsible for his own actions. Life is full of turning points (twists). The actor wants to take control of the outside world. Space becomes “private space”.

To give the reader insight in what is happening the Observer is introduced. He is a voyeur, a prostitute, a rambler, a rover, a tramp, a spy, a servant or an animal. The observer is not influencing the story at all. He is just watching. Objectivity is also introduced in space (court).

In the outside world we are in the Time of Renaissance (the Era of Discovery). It is the time of new inventions in Science (Copernicus), Art (Leonard Da Vinci) and Religion (Reformation, Luther, Calvin). The Bible is translated in the language of the people. It is also the time of the Great Explorations (Columbus) of the world outside the West. Western Culture starts his quest to control Nature and eventually the World.

munchThe next Chronotope is the Biography (1700-1950), the praise of a public figure who has accomplished something in life. We are moving from the outside world to the inside world of the actor.

Inner space is closed. “This offers a new relationship to one’s own self, one’s own particular “I”- with no witnesses, without any concessions to the voice of a “third person“.

Outside events affect the inner world. The actor is not showing this. In the outside world the actor is judged by his actions and not by his inner space (his essence). “The essence of man is realized not by his condition but by his activity“.

To give the reader a view on the inner space the outsider is introduced. His outside actions are governed by a distorted inner space. The outsider (the fool, the eccentric) acts as a reference.

The actor is a pretender. He is constantly in doubt, grumbling, cynical and sarcastic. He is also passive. He is watching from a distance. Everything is Relative (Bahktin was a fan of Einstein). The only time when the actor is able to show himself is at the carnival. During this short period he is allowed to choose his own mask.

This is the time of the Industrial Revolution. It is the era of mechanization. It starts with the invention of the Mill and the Factory. It ends with the mechanized Consumer watching Television.

star warsStarting in 1950 we are again in the phase of Folk-lore. Western Civilization is moving to a new Centre, Earth.

New myths and legends will be created. They have to be based on all the tales, myths and legends that are available on Earth. Some of them will be a citation. Others will be an opposition.

All kinds of dialogues will take and have to take place. We will experience many conflicts (Mennipian Dialogue). We will also have to listen and ask questions to understand the other cultures (Socratic Dialogue). We have to stop our Western Magisterial Monologue.

In the beginning it will be a Heteroglossia (a many voicedness), a very complicated Knot we have to untie. When we have found the tread we will be able to weave a new web of narratives that will start the phase of the Greek Romance again.

Between now and 2100 “We must make the new by our own effort”.“We have to face problems of reality and human potential, problems of freedom and necessity, and the problem of creative initiative“. We have to become persons “who emerge along with the world and reflect the historical emergence of the world itself”.

In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding — in time, in space, in culture. . . . Our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space and because they are others

We have to write our own Novel. “There is no causality in novels, no genesis, no explanations based on the past, on the influences of the environment or of upbringing and so forth. Every act a character commits is in the present, and in this sense is not predetermined”.

We have to act without hesitation and leave history behind. There is no experience we can reuse. The future is unfinalized (open).

The Magisters are not able to tell us what to do. They are out of tricks. We have to put off our own masks and take responsibility for what we are doing. “There is no alibi for being”. We have to stop pretending and use citations of others to prove we are right.

carnival of fools

We are now part of the Worldwide Carnival of Fools. Choose your mask out of the many masks that are available all over the world. Listen to the stories of other cultures and be surprised about the beauty and the experience they are containing. Give the Fools and the Eccentrics, the Outsiders, a chance to help you.

Laugh.

It will be fun.

I want to close with a citation of Paul Feyerabend (Killing Time (1995)): “People, intellectuals especially, seem unable to be content with a little more freedom, a little more happiness, a little more light. Perceiving a small advantage, they seize it, circumscribe it, nail it down, and in this way prepare a New Age of ignorance, darkness and slavery. It is rather surprising that there are still people who want to help others for personal reasons, because they are kindhearted and because they have not been intimidated by principles. It is even more surprising that some of the people can work in institutions despite the greed, the incompetence, the power struggles that seem to surround the noblest cause.”

Do you want to know more about Feyerabend read The Act of Creation: About Fusion and Con-fusion

LINKS

About the Cathedrals

About the Fool in African Myths

About Fools, Pyramids and Bubbles

Why Fools always Lose

About Very Long Cycles

About the Cycle of Culture