Posts Tagged ‘Ethics’

About Good Vibrations

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

The Good (Creation) and the not-Good, the Bad (Destruction),  are two Waves that are moving in Opposite Directions. Together they create interference patterns called Standing Waves.

Standing Waves are Waves that preserve their Form and can be perceived as Material Particles.

If the Good is a Wave Moving with the Clock, the Bad is a Wave Moving Against the Clock.

I believe the Good is moving with the Clock because the words “Right” and “Wrong” were associated with the Right Hand and the Left Hand and the concept “moving” (wringen in Dutch).

In Magic the Left Hand Path is associated with Black Magic and in many cultures the Left is associated with Evil.

In China the Rotation with the Clock is called the Generating Cycle and the Rotation Against the Clock the Destructing Cycle.

The Standing Waves of Matter contain the Bad and the Good in a certain proportion. Therefore every part of Nature (including the Humans) contains a piece of the Bad and a piece of the Good. That’ s why it is rather difficult to make a distinction between both of them.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so“  (Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251)

Doppler_div

A Moving Standing Wave

proton10

Two Moving Standing Waves Interfere and produce a Magnetic Field

About the Svara

The idea that our Universe is a Wave goes back a very long time. In Ancient Indian Philosophy the Wave of the Universe was called the Svara, the Wave of Life.

It is the manifestation of the impression on matter of the Power Which Knows Itself (Atman). The Atman arises out of the Emptyness (Brahman). The Emptyness is a Mystery. It is impossible to Reason about it.

The Svara consists of Five Types of Waves called Tattvas. They represent distinctive Forms and Vibratory Motions and are the five modifications of the Great Breath, Prana, of  the Atman. Prana is called Chi in China.

The first Wave that came out of the Atman is called the Âkâsha (Spirit, Egg, Black). After this came  the Vâyu (Air, the Circle, Blue), the Tejas (Fire, the Triangle, Red), the Apas (Water, the Crescent of the Moon, Silver) and the Prithivi (Earth, the Square, Yellow).

The Svara has two different States,  the Bright Sun-Breath  and the Dark Moon-Breath. In the first state the Svara expands, away from the Void. In the second state it contracts and moves back to the beginning.
At a certain moment we will experience the spectacular Twist of the Svara. This is the moment when Time will move back and the Apas (Aquarius, Water) will dominate the Fire (Bull) of the Tejas.
The Âkâsha and the other Four States of the Svara are the States of what Western Scientists call the Aether, the Carrier of the Standing Waves of the Universe.
The Five Tattvas

The Five Tattvas

About the Aether

Until the experiments of Michelson and Morley in 1887 every Physicist believed in the existence of the Aether. Everybody was very surprised when the experiments showed that the Aether was moving with a constant speed, the Speed of Light, in both directions of measurement.

Nobody questioned the experiments so a completely new theory had to be created to explain the strange behavior of Light. This new theory was the Relativity Theory of Albert Einstein.

The situation became even stranger when Niels Bohr (and others) invented Quantum Mechanics and showed that Light could be interpreted as a particle, a Photon, and a Wave.

At that time almost nobody understood the Concept of the Standing Wave. A Standing Wave is a Wave that preserves its Form and therefore shows itself as a Particle.

It is now proved that Michelson and Morley made a fatal mistake. The Unification of the Theories of Einstein and Bohr is going on but two foundations of the Theory of Einstein, the non-existence of the Aether and the Constant speed of Light, are gone.

The concept of the Aether, the Svara,  is back and new theories of the Universe based on Standing Waves are produced and verified. These theories are much simpler than the old theories.

What is the Same?

The Ethical Law of Resonance states that ”The Same attracts the Same and Repels the Not-the Same“.  The Good  attracts the Good and the Bad attacts the Bad but the Good also repels the Bad and the Bad repels the Good.  If we are able to define the Same we are able to define the Good and the Bad.

When you want to find out if some Thing is the same as another Thing you have to define the concept of “the-sameness“.

Every thing is different from any other thing when you collect enough different data about both of them. When you ignore every detail every thing  is the same (A = A). When two objects are literally “the same” we call this relationship an equality (A=B).

The same objects can appear differently when we Look at them differently. In this case a “the sameness” (now called a congruency) appears when we are able to create the same object when we move (translate), rotate or reflect the other object.

congruent2

Two Congruent Triangels

To find an independent reference framework for an Observer who is “not moving” and a constant Speed of Light Einstein had to abstract from Translation, Rotation, Reflection and Movement (Speed and Acceleration). Einstein’s friend Minkowski solved his problem by creating a new type of “curved” space now called Minkowski Space.

The Ancient Scientists of India not only abstracted the Aether from the Eyes like Einstein did. They abstracted the Aether from the other Four Senses too.

Every Tattva represents another Sense Organ and a related Wave pattern. The interesting point is that the Waves of the Tattva of the Eyes, the Light Waves, the Tejas, behave, exactly the way the current scientists describe.

The current Scientists ignore the fact that Humans observe their Environment with their Five Senses. The ancient Scientists not only detected five types of Waves. They also found a way to combine the Five Wave-Types into one Wave Model.

In general Objects are “the same” when we are able to find a Structure Preserving, isomorphic, transformation (F) from Object A to Object B. F(A)=B and G(B)= A and FG=Identity. With the help of an Isomorphic Transformation you are able to map a structure A to another structure B  and move back to the same structure A.

Every Isomorphic transformation can be seen as a “specialized Organ“, that  ”looks” at Reality in its own way.

The mathematical field of Topology is concerned with the “the sameness” of objects that are Expanded and Compressed. Topology represents the Organ of the Emotions. With this organ we are able to  research the effects of the Great Breath of the Prana.

Mug_and_Torus_morph

Transforming a Mug into a Torus

About the Great Breath

With the help of isomorphic  “topological” transformations it is possible to make the huge Diversity of Forms in our Universe the Same. It is even possible to compress every structure in our Universe into one structure, the structure of the Void.

In this case there are a few topological possibilities depending on the dimensions of space. In two dimensions we can choose out of the Point and the Circle, a Closed Line. In higher dimensions strange twisted structures appear such as the Moebius Ring and the Klein Bottle.

If the Universe is compressed into a Rotating Circle,  The One who is in the Centre always Returns on Itself.  The Universe is expanding and compressing until Eternity. At a certain time even after a huge expansion the Power of Creation is able to “Knows Itself”. This concept is called the Cyclic Universe.

If the Universe is compressed  into a point, called a singularity, we live in a “Big Bang-universe“, the standard cosmological model, which will expand into Eternity.

It will be clear that the structure in the beginning determinates the way the Waves of the Universe expand.

Twisted Topological Structures

Twisted Topological Structures that are Closed in Itself

If the Universe is Closed in Itself the Outbound Waves of the Beginning  will meet the Inbound Waves of the Utmost Boundary and will create Interference Patterns that look like Standing Waves.

When the Universe was small the Interference Patterns came up almost immediately. When the Universe expanded it took more time to Close the Loop.

If the Universe is a Closed System, the Waves of the Past and the Waves of the Future will meet in the Now.  At every moment in Time we are able to look into a possible Future and a possible Past.

At every moment in Time we can Change the Past and the Future if we are able to start a Powerful Negative (Destructive, Bad) or Positive  (Creative, Good) Wave of our Own.

According to the Ancient Scientists the Forces of the Tattvas at a certain Level of Enfolding represented Consciouss Beings (Angels, Devils) who could be Called to help to influence the Standing Waves of Matter.

In the strange terminology of Quantum Mechanics this state is called a Quantum Superposition and the union of the waves is called Quantum Entanglement. Quantum Entanglement moves with a speed much higher than the Speed of Light.

Sometimes the fragmented Tones of the Universe unite into one Symphony when the Strings of the many Violins of the Individual Standing Waves are in Tune.

We are able to change the Past and the Future when we are in Tune with the Waves of the Universe.

About the  Number Five

The symbol of the number Zero (“0″) looks like an Egg, the Âkâsha. The Âkâsha represents Space.

The name “zero” comes from the Arabic صفر, şafira, “it was empty” and the Sanskrit śūnya “void” or “empty”. The 0, Space, was Empty, Ø, before it was created.

According to many creation myths the beginning of this world,  Non-Being, Ø, the Empty Set, expanded into an Egg, 0.

The Egg started to Rotate (Air, Vayu, Movement) and was splitted into the Duality (-1,1), the Crescent of the Moon (Apas), the In-Between-Moon or Half Moon (1/2).

The negative part of the Duality started to move in the Opposite Direction. At that moment the Good (Creation) and the Bad (Destruction) were created.

The Apas are the force of Contraction (Control), the Opposite of the Tejas, Fire (Desire), the Force of Expansion. The Apas wants to bring the System back to the Void.

In the Beginning the Good (Fire) was much stronger than the Bad (Water). Therefore the Universe started to Expand.

The Trinity, the Triangel (Tejas, Fire), contains three numbers (-1, 0, +1). When the first Trinity was created the Force of Fire and Desire, the Tejas, started to Expand the Trinity into more Trinities. The production of Trinities in Trinities is a Fractal Pattern (“So Above, So Below“).

The first two Triangels, the Triangel of the Trinity of the Mind of the Atman and the Trinity of the Material World, are combined into a Square (Prithivi, Earth). The Prithivi are seen as the Force of Resistance, the Opposite of Âkâsha, Space.

The Prithivi, the Square of the Four Forces, the Human,  resists the movement back to the Void. The main reason is that the connection between the Spiritual World and the Material World is very strong.

The Spirit of the Human, situated in the Heart Chakra,  needs Matter to create all the possible combinations of the Becoming Trinities to Experience the Fullness of Being.

The Square is a combination of two Triangels. It is represented by the Of Star of David, the Symbol of the Heart Chakra.

The Square is a combination of two Triangels. The Square, the Four Foces of Nature, is represented by the Star of David, the Symbol of the Heart Chakra.

The number Five can be found in the Middle of the oldest Magical Square on Earth, the Lo Shu Square. The Lo Shu Square was given to Emperor Yu the Great after the Great Flood (3117 BC) by a Turtle, the symbol of the Star System Orion.

About the Magic Square of Lo Shu

The Lo Shu Magic Square contains the numbers 1-9 (3×3). In every direction they add up to a total of 15 (3×5).

The Magic Square Constraints the Expansion of the Force of Fire and makes it possible that the Cycle moves back to the zero, the Void, the Mystery.

The Lo Shu Square in the Middle of the Mystic Tablet from Tibet

The Lo Shu Square in the Middle of the Mystic Tablet from Tibet

-1 4 -3
-2 0 2
3 -4 1

When we subtract all the numbers in the Magic Square with the number 5,  the Zero of the Egg of the Âkâsha appears in the Middle.

The transformed Magic Square shows an interesting symmetry.

On the six “crosses” the same negative and positive Tattvas are found. The Four Tattvas are Balanced in the o, Space, the Âkâsha.

On the straight lines  two symmetric patterns emerge ((-1,4,-3) and (1,2,-3)) again both positive and negative. In these patterns the 4 balances the 1 and the 3 and the 2 balances the 3 and the 1.

When we follow the Numbers of the Square from -4 to +4, the Sheng Cycle appears.

About the Sheng Cycle

The Sheng Cycle not only contains the Cycle of the Five Tattvas. It also contains Five Triangels in which One Tattvas Balances Two other Tatvass.

The number Five is the same as the Number Zero when we accept that there are Two Structures (or Two Universes). One structure rotates in the Positive Domain, The Sun, and one in the Negative Domain, The Moon.

The Square represents the Four Force of Nature who are the Four Combinations of the Two Forces of the Duality, Compression and Expansion, Yin and Yang, the Apas and the Tejas, Fire and Water, Control and Desire.

The Sheng Cycle is the major Cycle in Chinese Philosophy. It was used to explain and control the many levels of existence (State, Family, Environment, Body,..).

The Sheng Cycle moves in two directions, With the Clock (Generating, +1) and Against the Clock (Destructing, -1).

When we combine the two Cycles a 9(3×3)-fold Twisted Moebius Ring is created with the Earth in the Middle. This Cycle is represented by the Symbol of Infinity (). This Cycle is comparable to the Tree of Life, the Jewish Sephiroth and the Ancient Egyptian Pesedjet (the Nine).

In the Bright (positive) Part of the Moebius Ring we are in the Sun-State, Life. In the Dark (negative) Part we experience the Moon-State , Death, the Underworld (Our Twin Universe), the place where the Souls exist when they Die.

Now it becomes very clear what the Ancient Indian Scientist meant with the Dark Moon-State of the Svara. When the Wave of Life moves back to the Center, the Void, Death will become Life  (“the Death will be raised“), Time will Reverse, the Universe will Compress and the Good will become the Bad.

The Sheng Cycle

The Sheng Cycle

About Harmonics

In 1931 the US Department of Commerce assigned Edward Dewey the task of discovering the cause and underlying dynamics of the Great Depression. The US Government created a special institute the Foundation for the Study of Economic Cycles. The Institute contains a huge database of the times-series of almost every Cycle there is.

The most interesting observation of Edward Dewey is that Cycles restore themselves all the time and are influenced by other Cycles. The Cycles Resonate.

Ray Tomes, a statistical mathematician, started to do research on the time-series of the Institute. He confirmed the Insights of Dewey but with the much more powerful tools of his time he was able to dig a lot more deeper into data.

Tomes detected a relationship between the Cycles and Music, the Âkâsha. Tomes also developed a  method to find the basic structure behind the Waves of the many Cycles.

Tomes found one Basic Standing Wave that generates other waves by producing Overtones. Tomes rediscovered the Svara and could also explain why the “numbers” behind the Svara are the way they are.

The explanation can be found in the so called Highly Composite Numbers (HCN). The HCN are “social” numbers with many divisors. They represent the major “harmonic” connectors in the Universe. The HCN are the opposite of the “lonely” Prime Numbers who only contain themselves.

The structure behind the HCN is self-referencial and is based on the numbers 2, 3 and 5.

About the Cyclic Universe of Paul Steinhardt

The Cyclic Univere of Paul J. Steinhardt

The Cyclic Universe of Paul J. Steinhardt

Paul Steinhardt has created a new theory about the Universe based on the Four Forces of the Square and the Void in the Center. In his theory the Universe is Cyclic. It is expanding and contracting.

The expansion of the Universe ends when the Two Major Structures (-1,1) in the Universe, called Membranes or Branes, are in Balance with the Center, the Void (0).

The two Branes are higher dimensional flat surfaces that are in parallel. The Left and the Right Brains split into many similar Cell-like Structures. We live in one of the Cells of the Cyclic Universe.

When the Universe expands the constraints of the Flat Surface (the Lo Shu Square) create a huge tension and the flat surfaces start to Ripple. The Ripples are waves that are closed in themselves (loops).

When you use your imagination you can see that the Cyclic Universe of Paul Steinhardt has a lot in common with the ancient theories of India and China with only one difference.

In the Ancient theories the creator of the Universe was “Aware of Itself” in the new theories Awareness is a Feed-Back-Loop, a Cycle.

About Ancient Spirituality and Modern Science

This blog started with the Ancient Spiritual Indian Concept of the Svara , the Wave of Life. It ends with the Modern Material Cyclical Universe of Paul Steinhardt.

In between I have tried to show that the old theories of the Self-Aware Universe and the new theories of the Endless Feed-Back Loops in Our Universe have a lot in common.

The Ancient Spiritual Scientists developed a Theory of Everything based on the principle of the Fractal Universe (“So Above, So Below“).

If the Universe is a Fractal Structure,  the only thing the Modern Sciences have to do is to find the Right Level of Observation (Cells, Body, Family/Group, Culture, State, Earth, ..) of the Fractal Expansion of our Universe and the Same Laws will appear again and again.

The Levels in our Universe

The Levels in our Universe (Calculated by Ray Tomes)

About the Good, the Bad and the Nothing

If the Good and the Bad are Standing Waves that move With the Clock and Against the Clock it will be much more easier to determine what is Right and what is Wrong (Left).

With the Clock moves With the Flow. It generates new structures until the Limits of the Universe are reached.

Against the Clock moves Against the Flow. It destructs new structures until the Limits of the Universe are reached.

The Bad wants to Control Everything. It Fears the Good and the Future.

The Bad does not (want to )understand that The Good and the Bad are moving to the same Destination, The Nothing.

The Good gives us Joy, Pleasure and Exitement.

The Bad moves Back in Time. It wants to restore what was already there. Its final aim is the Zero, Empty Space.

The Good moves Forwards in Time. It creates new Perspectives about a Bright New Future. Its final aim is Every Thing, the Many, Infinite Space filled with an Infinite Amount of Forms.

The Bad and the Good move Back and Forth around an Unknowable Center, the Nothing, that makes Every Thing possible.

Some day the One and the Infinite, will merge, into the Impossible. When this happens the Nothing will return for a very short  (1/∞) moment.

LINKS

About the Law of Resonance

About the History of the Laws of Nature (The Website of Milo Wolff. It contains everything you want to know about the history of the concept of the Standing Wave).

Why Matter is a Standing Wave

About the Svara (This Website  contains a (big) Complete Book written in 1894 about the Ancient Theory of the Svara.  A Must Read, when you want to understand Ancient Physics).

About the Harmonic Theory of Ray Tomes

About the Experiments of Michelson and Morley

Why God is a Topologist

About Pauli and Quantum Mechanics

About the Cyclic Universe

About the Lo Shu Square

About the Trinity

About Infinity

About the Empty Set

About the Good, the Bad and the Nothing

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Sometimes You want to do the Good Thing and the result is a Bad Thing.

Sometimes You start an Activity with a Good Intention but the Activity runs completely Out of Hand because You were unable to Predict all the effects.

Sometimes an Activity starts with a Good Intention and Ends with a Good Result but much later You discover that you have started a Chain of Activities and the Result of the Chain is Bad.

Good and Bad are Context Dependent.

Look at this little Story:

A Chinese farmer awoke one morning to find a horse grazing in one of his fields. Since nobody came to claim the horse, the farmer used it to plow his uncultivated land. “What a good this horse is for you,” said his neighbor. “We’ll see,” said the farmer. Soon after, the farmer’s 18-year-old son was riding the horse when it shied at a snake. The youth fell off and broke his leg. “What an evil this is for you,” said his neighbor. “We’ll see,” said the farmer. Soon after, the warlord’s agents combed the village, conscripting young men for his army. Because of his broken leg, the farmer’s son was not taken. “What a good this is for you,” said his neighbor. “We’ll see,” said the farmer.

The Devil in the TAROT

The Tarot Card the Devil: The Devil, the God Pan, is the Force of Desire. On the Card we can see that Humans are able to Lift the Chains of Desire.

About the Golden Rule of Ethics

The big problem is that we attach a Value to the Intentions or the Consequences of an Activity and this Value has just two Names named: “Good” or “Bad“.

When the E-Valuation is “Good” we Feel Good. When the E-Valuation is “Bad” we feel Anger, Sadness, Guilty, Depressed or Worse. The Names of the Evaluation trigger the Emotions Deeply.

Most of the time we feel Guilty without any need to feel Guilty because we are not in Control of Everything that Happens.

The Ego, our Identity, is not able to stand the Lack of Control it has on the Outside World.

Humans need the “Illusion of Control” to sustain their Identity. Deep within they don’t want to believe that Other Human Beings or the Forces of Nature (“the Acts of God“) are also Active Agents.

The Science that is trying to define the Good and the Bad is called Ethics.

Ethics is the Philosophical Study of  “the Moral Value of Human Conduct and of the Rules and Principles that ought to govern it” or “the principles concerning the distinction between Right and Wrong or Good and Bad Behavior’

The most important Rule of Ethics is the so called Golden Rule : ” We should do to others what we would want others to do to us” or “do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you“.

The Golden Rule of Empathy and Forgiving is the most important Ethical Rule in many Cultures all around the World.

The Golden Rule uses the Principle of Self-Reference. Something is Applied on Itself.

When we apply the Principle of Self-Reference to the Bad, we move into the Domain of Lady Justice.

Lady Justice

Lady Justice: An Eye for an Eye (Revenge)

About Justice and Revenge

When Bad People don’t want to use the Good Golden Rule some cultures use the Rule “An Eye for an Eye” (Revenge) to do Justice to the Bad Ones. When you do Bad to a Person, the Bad Behavior is Applied to Yourself. “Eye for an eye” is used to make Bad People Aware of the Good Golden Rule.

The interesting point is that the combination of the Golden Rule and the “Eye for an Eye“-Rule  (called Tit-for-Tat) is the best way to solve the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma, a Chain of Conflicts.

Strangely enough The Good (now called Cooperation)  is Accomplished when you just Imitate the Behavior of the Others.

There is One (fatal) Exception to the Strategy of Tit-for-Tat. If you want to operate On Your Own and You think You don’t need the Others to Survive the best Way to Operate is to Betray Every Body. Bad Behavior provides you with a Huge Economic Win but also with a  Huge Social Loss.

When you Betray the others, You have To Protect Yourself for the Revenge of the Others.

To Compensate your Social Loss You have to Buy the Others (Lawyers, Mercanaries, ) or (worse) you have to Force the Others with Violence to Cooperate with You.  In the first Case you lose a lot of Money and in the last case the Amount of Revenge increases exponentially.

To Survive you always have to Balance the Social (“the Other“) and the Economic (“the Ego“). The “easy way’ is to do the Good and the “difficult way“ is to do the Bad.

Cooperation is a highly Effective and Efficient Method to accomplish the Good for Your Self and the Others because Good Behavior attracts Good Behavior and Bad Behavior attracts  Bad Behavior.

Seven Virtues

The Seven Virtues

About the Seven Virtues.

To do Good or to do Justice you have to Apply the Same to the Same because The Same Attracts the Same.

The Same not only Attracts the Same. The Same Repels the Not-the-Same.

The Same Law:  ”Look-A-Likes Like Each Other and Repel the Organisms that are not looking alike” (called Genetic Similarity Theory) also explains Evolution. This rule was detected by Charles Darwin when he wanted to explain the huge amount of Cooperation in Nature.

When you Apply the Same to the Same (Self-Reference) it generates a Fractal Structure in which the Same Structure Repeats Itself on Every Level (“As Above, So Below“).

It Looks Like there is a Universal Moral Law that explains  Behavior on Every Level of the Universe.

Some Scientists believe the Moral Laws are Eternal Truths. This believe has a long History that goes back to Ancient Rome (Cicero), Ancient Greece (Plato, Socrate) and Ancient Egypt (Ma’at).

During the Renaissance (“Rebirth“) the Moral Principles of Rome, Greece, and Egypt were reborn and transformed into Moral Systems based on the Four (Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude) or the Seven Virtues (The Four Virtues & Faith, Hope and Love).

When you understand and apply the Universal Moral Laws you use the Virtue of Prudence (Wisdom, Knowledge).  To Apply the Golden Lesson you need to have Courage and a Strong Will, the Virtue of Fortitude. When you keep the three Virtues (Wisdom, Justice and Will) in the right Balance you are practising the virtue of Temperance.

They last three virtues are derived out of the First Letter to the Corinthians written by Paul:

“If I speak in the tonguesof men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”.

Balance of Ma'at

The Golden Rule of Ma'at (Forgiving and Empathy)

About the Temperance of Ma’at

Ma’at (later  named Sophia ) was one of the (3×3) Nine Egyptian Neteru . She represented the Virtues of Truth, Balance, Justice, and Order. Just like Lady Justice she uses a Scale.

The dead person’s Heart was placed on the scale, balanced by the Feather of Ma’at. If the Heart weighed the same as the Feather of Ma’at, the deceased was allowed to go on to the Eternal Afterlife and gained Immortality (Heaven).

If the deceased had been found not to have followed the concept of Ma’at during his life (if he had lied or cheated or killed or revenged) his heart was devoured by a demon and he died the final death and was Reincarnated (Hell).

The Human,  the Talking Baboon,  had to start all over again to Learn and Apply the most important Golden Lesson of the Universe.

The way of Ma’at was to Act out of the Center of Conscioussness, the Heart. Acting out of the Heart is called the Virtue of Love.

Ma’at was also the God of Balance, Rythm and the Cycles. The Good and the not-Good moved the Cycles of the Universe.

The Good and the not-Good came out of the Same Source, the Void, the Sekhem, the Source of Infinite Potential and Love.

The Tree Faces of Shiva

The Tree Faces of Shiva (Creator, Destructor and Brahman (Void, Love, Infinite Potential))

About the Trinity of the Mind

In the Eastern (Gnostic, Egyptian, Indian, African, Mystic) Believe System the Good and the Bad are both created by the Demiurg (or the Logos, “In the beginning was the Word and Word was God“) one of the Creations of the Void. The Void exists outside our Level of Existence. The Void is a Mystery.

The Good and the not-Good, the Bad, are Complementary Opponents. Their Union is the Whole. They Share the Void, the Empty Set. The Empty Set contains Everything that is Impossible.

The Good and the Bad Move the Cycles of the Universe. They represent the E-Motions (Expansion (Desire, Creation) and Contraction (Control, Destruction)) of the Void.

The Good and the Bad Cooperate by Competing to bring the Lonely Souls back to the Void.

The Good, the Creator, and the Bad, the Destructor, are Two Faces of the Same Entity, the Spiritual Trinity, who came out of the Nothing.

The connection with the Void can be found in the Middle (the Golden Mean) of the Body, the Heart, the Link between the Triangel of the Material World (the Body) and the Triangel of the Spiritual World (The Mind).

The Heart, the connection with the Void,  is the Seat of Consciousness. It is also the Seat of the Emotions (Soul).

When the Heart Weights like a Feather, the Upper (Mind) and the Lower Trinity (the Body) connected by the Emotions are in Balance.

The Bad and the Good are Attractors. When the Attraction becomes too High you get Addicted to the Bad or the Good. A huge Expansion is compensated by a huge Contraction to Balance the Cycle. When you want to avoid the Pain of Contraction you have to Balance your Life.

The Two Triangels with the Heart in the Middle are the Same As the Seven Chakra’s (2×3+1) and the Seven Virtues of the Renaissance.

The Seven Chakra’s together with the Spiritual Trinity are Similar to the Tree of Life, The Egyptian Pesedjet/Neteru and the Jewish Sephirot (3×3+1).

The Seven Chakra's

The Seven Chakra's

About the Trinity of the Body

When Body and Mind are in Balance, the Ideas of the Spiritual Trinity are received by the Trinity of the Mind and are Implemented by the Trinity of the Material Body in the Material World (Earth).

When the Mind is not connected to the Body and the Spirit, the Ideas become Abstractions (only Words) or the Impulses of the Desire of the Body Takes over Control.

When the Mind is not connected to the Spirit Innovation stops and Old Ideas (the Seeds) Repeat Themselves All the Time. The Human becomes a Machine Caught in the Wheel of the Good and the Bad.

The One, the Spiritual Trinity, who is The Void, the Good (the Creator) and the Bad (the Destructor), uses the Strategy of Tit-for-Tat, the Trickster.

The Trinity Imitates the Behavior of the Humans or We the Humans Copy their Behavior (“We are made in the Image of God“)!

The One wants to make the Humans Aware of the Fact that the only way to Survive the Infinite Chain of Conflicts (Dilemma’s, Contradictions), which is Life, is to Cooperate (Live out of the Heart) with the Infinite Potential, the God of Love.

Implosion

The Big Implosion

About Destruction

The Golden Rule of Ethics tries to avoid the Negative Emotions, the Emotions of Loss. It wants to Create a situation were Everybody is Happy.

The Golden Rule of Ethics helps a lot to Evaluate our Intentions and the Consequences of our Intentions but the effect of our Collective Actions on the Bigger Structures is almost Unpredictable.

It would help a lot if we could Expand our View from the Emotional Human Other to “all the Other Life-Forms” that are in Existence.

In this case we have to Understand the Effects of our Behavior on the Negative Emotions of the Bacteria, the Plants, the Animals, Earth and even the Universe.

It is not clear if our Emphatic System is able to Imagine the Inner World of the other Life Forms.

If the Act of Destruction is felt the same by all these Organisms it will be simply impossible to Live.

We have to Destroy Others to stay Alive.

The Universe Destroys to Stay Alive.

The Destruction of the Old is needed to Create the New.

At this moment we are confronted with a World-Wide Crisis on many Levels of Existence. The Collective Behavior of the Human Race is Destroying our Environment.

The Collective Desire to Create and Expand has reached the Limits of the System we Live in.

It is almost impossible to Control this Expansion. The Control Systems have also reached their Limits.

The Two Complementary Forces, The Good and the Bad, Expansion and Contraction, Desire and Control,  have both reached their Outer Limits.

If they both reach the Limits the Expanding Balloon of our Outer Universe will Explode in Itself (Implode) and move through the Void to another State. There is Simply no Space Left to Expand.

If this happens the Expansion of the Outer World will be Transformed into an Expansion of the Inner World.

The Big Bang, the Big Explosion, the Sublime Act of Creation, will Repeat itself and the Big Implosion will Create a New Universe.

The Flow of Time

The Flow of Time

About Not-Acting

Wu Wei (Not Acting, Acting without Effort) is an important concept of Taoism.

When you want to apply this concept you have to Know Everything There is to Know about the Cycles and the Forces of Nature. Wu Wei is only possible when you have aquired the Knowledge and the Wisdom of Ma’at/Sophia.

Most of the Time the Power of the Cycle is so Strong that it is impossible for Us to influence the Flow of Time.

Sometimes on a Rare Moment on a Special Place the Cycles can be Influenced.

Only at that Special Magic Moment the Human is able to do the Good or the Bad.

At all the other Moments History Takes its Course. The Good and Bad Forces, the Acts of God, Act without our Consent on the Higher Levels of Our Universe. It is a Waste of Time and Energy to Oppose these Forces.

Most of the Time we are Pushed by the Forces of Nature. We Act without Effort.

In Ancients Times the Forces were called Gods, Angels or Devils. At this moment we Name these Forces with Different Names (Gravity, the Strong and Weak Force and the Electro-Magnetic Force) but the Effect of the Forces on our Field of Existence stays the Same.

At a Magic Moment Everything, even the Impossible, is Possible. At such a moment we are ”in Tune with“  the Empty Set, the Void, the Sekhem, the Tao, the Field, the Love, the Mystery, the Unspoken.

The Emotions of Loss are created when we Lose Something.

If you Own Nothing You have Nothing to Lose.

If you Expect Nothing, Every Thing will Happen.

When people see things as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other
.

Therefore the Master
can act without doing anything
and teach without saying a word.
Things come her way and she does not stop them;
things leave and she lets them go.
She has without possessing,
and acts without any expectations.
When her work is done, she takes no credit.
That is why it will last forever
.

(Tao Te Ching,  Chapter II)

LINKS

About Game Theory and Ethics

About Cybernetics and Ethics

About Social Balance Theory

About Addiction

How to Resolve a Conflict

About the Seven Virtues

About the Illusion of Control and other Human Biases

About Morality and Ethics

About Ethical Dilemma’s

About Tit-for-Tat

About Tit-for-Tat and World Politics

About Genetic Similarity Theory

About the Renaissance

About Ma’at and the Measure of the Heart

About the Nine Egyptian Concepts (the Neteru)

About Plato and the New Harmony

About Socrate and the Golden Rule

About the Demiurg

About the Mystic Experience

About the Heart

About the Void

About the Sekhem

About the Trinity

About the Trickster

About Morality and Ethics

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Eyal Weizman wrote an article about the Isreali Army. To his surprise they are using the work of Deleuze and Christopher Alexander to define “Post-Modern” tactics. When you read the article you will see how clever the Army uses the insights of people who never had an idea that their insights should be used to kill and terrorize innocent people.

Somehow you Feel that it is Wrong that a “Killing-Machine” is using the theories that were developed to bring Harmony and Beauty (Christopher Alexander) to the world.

Ethics shows itself in two ways Norms and Values. The first part is about Morality. People have developed Rules to determine what is Good and what is Bad Behavior. Rules are prohibiting the Freedom to Act. Every time people override these rules because they have a different theory about Good and Bad or are Forced to Act in a certain Context. Most of the time We Act without Thinking.

There is no reason to subject all the actions we undertake to the criterion: Is it free or not? Freedom is only for certain acts. There are all sorts of acts that do not have to be confronted with the problems of freedom. They are done solely, one could say, to calm our disquietude: all our habitual and machinal acts. We will speak of freedom only when we pose the question of an act capable or not of filling the amplitude of the soul at a given moment” (Deleuze).

Values are part of the Emotions. They are “personal rules” that determine the behavior of humans. Most of the time the values are not known to the person that uses the “rules“. A person = “his values“. They show themselves when he (or she) is Acting.

When we observe a person for a long time or the person observes himself (introspection) the values show themselves. If the values show themselves the person develops a personal ethics, an inner voice, the conscience.

The fundamental question of ethics is not “What must I do?” (which is the question of morality) but rather “What can I do, what am I capable of doing (which is the proper question of an ethics without morality). Given my degree of power, what are my capabilities and capacities? How can I come into active possession of my power? How can I go to the limit of what I “can do“? (Daniel Smith).

The astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike” (Deleuze) .

People are driven by their Emotions AND they are capable to Control their Emotions. They control their Emotions when they apply Norms (Thinking, Morality) or when they use their Conscioussness.

The Primary Emotions, are those that we feel first, as a first response to a situation. If we are threatened, we feel fear or anger. When we hear of a death, we may feel sadness. They are un-Thinking responses that we have. The Primary Emotions are not controlled by our Thinking or our “Inner Voice”. The Primary Emotions are sometimes called Desires or Drives.

The System We Live In has created many situations where our Desires are activated. All the efforts of Marketing are directed at overriding the Consciouss. All the Efforts of Propaganda are used to motivate Soldiers to Kill out of Anger.

“Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational-it is not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium and drift” (Deleuze).

The Personal Values are overridden when something or someone activates the Desires. Everybody is Able to Kill or Harm another Being if the Right Situation is Created.

Everything that helps me to preserve my existence I take to be Good and everything that goes against my existence or the I take to be Bad. What is good is what is useful, relative to my existence, and what is bad, is what is dangerous, relatively speaking, to my continued existence. My existence or the existence of my family or group is a major priority when I act. The problem arises when different groups are trying to exist in the same context.

Are people doing something Wrong when something is activating something they are not controlling? Are we Responsible for our Desires? I don’t think so.

When we look at the “causal chain” we can see that there are somewhere consciouss people (the “architects“) who have created and perfected “killing-machines” to secure the existence of their people (The Jews). They have used their rational abilities to find a reason why they are doing this. A reason might be to protect their family and their children. They fear (a primary emotion) something is going to happen. They develop technology, methods and scenario’s to prohibit “this” from happening. Again they are “deep within” activated by something they don’t control.

Are they doing something Wrong when something is activating something they are not controlling? The Causal Chain does not give an answer. Everywhere we find the Invisible Power of Desire. Underneath all reason lies delirium and drift. We are a Body and a Soul. In this World we have Live with the Body, the Perfect Desire-Machine.

Pushing to the utmost what one can do is the properly ethical task” (Deleuze).

All one must do is experiment with what is, to create the new. Are the architects of the Army doing their utmost best to prevent a conflict? Are they able to use their technology to make a better use of the available resources?

The principles of Alexander identify the character of Living Systems. The principles are not there to Kill but to make a Living. I am sure the military architects did not fully understand his books. Perhaps they can ask him to help.

LINKS

The 15 principles of Alexander to Create a Living System

DELEUZE AND THE QUESTION OF DESIRE: TOWARD AN IMMANENT THEORY OF ETHICS, Daniel W. Smith

About Virtue and Wisdom

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

When you lend somebody something you assume he (or she) will give the item back in due time. To lend you have to Trust somebody. There are many ways to create a trusted relation. When a long term trusted relationship grows out of a long chain of interactions the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma is at stake. The Chinese are the Masters of Playing this Game.

In some situations it is very clear that a try-out is not necessary. If we look at the cultures of the Earth we can see that the concept of Family or Tribe more or less guaranties a trustful relationship. In a Family it is not needed to create very complicated arrangements like contracts, procedures, laws and judges. The Family uses it own rules.

The consequence of the Concept of the Family and the Tribe is a formalization of relationships based on a Place in a Hierarchy. Everybody has to know its place.

A King has to play the role of the King and a Father has to play the role of the Father. In a Family or an Extended Family (Tribe) you are trained to play the roles you have to play in your life.

Confucius (551-479 BC) saw the universe and all living things in it as a manifestation of a unifying force called the Doe (translated as the Truth, Unity, or the Way). Doe constitutes the very essence, basis, and unit of life that perpetuates order, goodness, and righteousness.

It manifests itself in the harmonious opposition of yin (“feminine, gentle“) and yang (“masculine, strong“), and in humans through duk (“virtue“). Virtue is a gift received from Heaven.

It is through Virtue that a person is able to know the Heavenly Truth and it is the “locus where Heaven and I meet“. Virtue can be realized through self-cultivation. It provides the fundamental source of insight and strength to rule peacefully and harmoniously within oneself, one’s family, one’s nation, and the world.

There are two inter-related aspects of virtue: in (“Human-hearted-ness“) and ui (“Rightness“).

The basis of individual and humanity is the Human-heartedness. Human-heartedness is essentially relational and it involves loving, sacrificing and taking care of others. Individuals are born with Human-heartedness and experience Human-heartedness through the sacrifice and devotion of their parents.

The second concept, ui (“rightness“), notes that an individual is born into a particular family with a particular status. Rightness articulates that individuals must perform and fulfil their duties as defined by their particular status and role.

Confucius considered family and society to be hierarchically ordered, necessitating that everyone fulfil their duties. Fulfilling one’s given role as a father, mother, child, elder, teacher, or politician is considered a moral imperative and not a matter of personal choice.

Confucius considered society to be socially ordered and that each person has beun (“portion or place“) in life. Each beun had attached roles and duties, and each person must fulfil these roles and duties. Duties and obligations of each beun are prescribed by yea (“propriety“).

Propriety articulates expectations, duties, and behavior of each individual according to his or her status and role. For example, chemyon (“social face“) need to be maintained by a person of social stature defined by his or status, regardless of his or her personal preference.

Social order and harmony are preserved when people observe their place in society and fulfil their required obligations and duties.

The fourth concept is ji (“knowledge“). Knowledge allows us to understand the virtues of Human-heartedness and Rightness and to follow these virtues through Propriety. It is the basis of the development of Wisdom.

By the applying the principles of Confucius Chinese Society became a Well Oiled Machine. Every action that was taken was pre-programmed by all levels of education. Every part in the machine knew its role. Life was highly predictable and everybody accepted its place in Society. There was Harmony and Peace in the world.

If there be righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in character,

If there be beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home.

If there be harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation.

If there be order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

The big changes of Chinese Society came Out of the West. The English Empire destroyed the Heavenly Order by selling large quantities of Opium. The huge underclass of China was a beautiful target for the people who followed the theories of Lenin.

The Upperclass was destroyed and a new Upperclass, The Communist Party, took over. The culture of China has not changed. People still know their place and the Doe (The Way It Is) is now proclaimed by the Party. The new upperclass knows it has to keep the underclass in harmony.

The Party decided to create a higher standard of living by importing capitalistic principles from the West. It is now moving in high speed to the level of the Consumer Society. The West is paying for this move by buying Chinese products for a very low price.

In this way China has accumulated an enormous amount of money (mostly dollars). They are able to buy what they want. With the enormouss stock of dollars they are able to manipulate US Government. China is able to destroy the US Financial System in one fast move. They certainly will not do that.

The Chinese people are experts in strategy. They know how to acquire power without fighting. They keep a social face and play the game others want them to play. They are experts in applying the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma. They know Confucius and his predecessors were Wise man. They knew how to move with The Cycle, the Tao.

Western Society has lost its cultural foundation. The principles of Confucius don’t sound very strange to us. They are easily translated into Christianity.

When the West lost the basic principle of Christianity, Human-hearted-ness (in) one of the two pillars of Trust was lost. The West rationalized Empathy (Compassion, Emotion). I Think, therefore I Am (Descartes) became the basis of the Self.

When people started to do the “wrong thing” the second pillar of Trust, Integrity (ui, Rightness) dropped. Politicians were not Playing the Role of the Politician and Managers were not Playing the Role of Manager. They lost their Virtue.

Finally the Doe (Unity) of Western Society was gone. Families broke up. Everybody was Left on its Own and started to act on a Short-Term Perspective.

The Interated Prisoners Dilemma changed into a chain of disconnected attempts to leave the Prison. The best way to win such a Game is to defect. You always win but your victory is never a Win-Win. On the long term Everybody changes into a potential Enemy.

The West entered the State of Individualism and even Egoism. In this state it is almost impossible to act out of Unity. Everybody is going its Own Way or is Competing with the Other. This makes it even easier for the Chinese Masters to create a new Machine to support their Extended Family.

About the End of the Banking System

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

I left the Banking Industry in 1997 because I did not want to be part of an environment where cooperation and compassion was gone. At that time I expected a major crisis. It took ten years until the crisis of the Banking Industry was very visible to everybody.

Until now I don’t think many people are aware of what is really happening and what will finally happen. We are approaching the End of the Banking System. In this blog I will show you that everybody was aware of the reasons behind the crisis. The reasons are extreme greediness and incompetence.

The solution to the crisis is simple. We are able to create a New System with Ease. It is just a matter of time when this will happen.

Let me start with two citations out of an article of Fortune April 1, 2008: “half the huge gains from 2003 to mid-2007 could be attributed to increased leverage – otherwise known as gambling with borrowed money – that magnified earnings in a boom. If a firm’s portfolio is leveraged at 33 to 1, it takes a mere drop of 3% to wipe out its entire capital“. “The compensation system is a fundamental problem. The system rewards swashbuckling behavior by everyone from traders to CEOs“.

Bankers are Gambling with Your Money. When they Win they get huge bonusses. When they Lose You Pay their Debts. You Pay their Debts because Your Investment has evaporated and/or because You Pay more Taxes.

Related post: Casinos en ligne .

The Investment Bankers know everything that is happening in the Market months before You know What is Happening. They are not allowed to use this knowledge (Chinese Walls) but Bankers are Humans and Sometimes they Forget to Keep their Mouths Shut.

The Chinese Wall is an ethical barrier between different divisions of a financial institution to avoid conflict of interest. A Chinese Wall is said to exist, for example, between the corporate-advisory area and the brokering department to separate those giving corporate advice on takeovers from those advising clients about buying shares. In spite of Chinese Walls, these conflicts of interest allegedly arose during the heyday of the Dot/Com era, when financial research analysts published dishonest positive analysis on companies in which they, or related parties, owned shares.

The U.S. government has since passed laws strengthening the Chinese Wall concept (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley Act) with the desire to more carefully formalize and prevent such conflicts.The big problem with procedures is that they are imaginary.

In reality people always find a way to avoid procedures. It all comes down to two things Personal Ethics and Transparent Working Methods implemented in “simple” IT-Systems. As you will see later the Personal Ethics is highly surpressed by the Corporate Culture and the IT-Systems are exceptional Complex.

 Now two citations out of an article of Bank Director, Second Quarter 2003 by John R. Engen.

The past few years have witnessed the big-money failures of institutions, due to fraud or risky business strategies“”But L. William Seidman, FDIC chairman in the Reagan and Bush administrations, says regulators shouldn’t be judged too harshly. The industry turned in record profits of $105.4 billion in 2002, up 21% from the previous year“. “To go through the stock-market drop we’ve had, 9/11, and everything else without a major banking problem shows the value of having someone looking over your shoulder“.

The Regulators knew and know about the Fraud and Risky Business Strategies but their Theory is simple. When the Banks make a Profit Everything Works Fine. The Banks earned the Profit by Gambling. The Regulators just watch over the shoulder of the Banks and are Very Happy about the Gambling System. It always Cures Itself. Some People Win, Some People Lose. It is all in the Game. Funny Enough the Winners are Always situated in the environment of the Banking Business and the losers are Small Investors.

A few citations out of an articles about Index Funds in The New York Times (May 17, 2008): “It has been long established that even most active fund managers fail to beat the overall market on a regular basis”"Stock bubbles are examples of huge inefficiencies, in which prices get completely out of whack for months and even years at a time” “We have people investing tens of billions of dollars in index funds and they are getting drawn into bubbles“.

The Stock Market is a Gambling Machine and the Value of your Stocks has nothing the do with the Real value of Your Stocks. Nobody is able to predict the effects of the manipulations of “Greedy” Bankers on the Market. The only people that really profit are the bankers themselves. They create the Stock Bubbles and Collect the Bonuses. The real value of your stocks is the dividend a company pays to his investors. Many Stocks are Highly Overvalued.

Let us move to the Employees. A few citations out of New York Times (May 16, 2008):

You’re seeing a very, very inconsistent message to employees,” “It’s, ‘I don’t know when it’s going to happen, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month; we may be able to keep you, we may not.’ “banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs”. “She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk”. “many laid-off employees are not allowed to return to their desks, because the banks fear departing employees will try to take valuable colleagues or clients with them” “Euphemisms for layoffs are making the rounds too. Banks do not just fire people anymore. They engage in “head count reduction,” “reduction in force” and “redundancies.” And gallows humor is rampant. One joke: A banker calls a colleague and asks, “Are you busy? Or are you lying?”

Investment Banks use Fear to Manipulate Their Employees. You Never Know if you are able to Keep your Job. When You Live in Fear You never tell the Truth. You are Busy or you are Lying.

When You have to Perform to keep You’re Job You have to take High Risks. You keep you’re mouth about these Risks because in a Fear Based Culture You never talk about Failures. You hide them and Hope Nobody will See. When You tell Somebody about the big problems that could happen You are Fired because Everybody Knows and Nobody Wants To Know. “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the deluge”)(Louis XV).

Again the New York Times (May 17, 2008):

Few employers want us around for 40 years, so our income is likely to have ups and downs and disappear altogether for brief periods between jobs. Saving for retirement is now mostly our responsibility, too. Health insurance, for those of us who have it and manage to keep it, requires increasingly large amounts of money out of our pockets. The list goes on and on”. “As fewer people have pensions and more retirees live longer, an increasing number of people may need financial help from their children” “Financial planners may not have all the answers, or the best answers, all of the time” “Thankfully, a number of Web communities and blogs have grown up around almost every aspect of spending and saving“.

Many more people will be Without a Pension. They have Lost their Investment at the Stock Market. Perhaps You even have to help you’re Parents. To do this You have to Save Money but You don’t know what to do with the Money You have Saved. The best way to get an independent advice is to use Networks of Experienced Customers. Never Ask a Bank to Give you an Advice.

And the Customers. Citations out of the Telegraph (16/05/2008):

The conventional wisdom in financial markets is that the time to move back into bank stocks is just after a slew of rights issues has depressed prices. There are, however, good reasons not to give the banking sector the benefit of the doubt. At the best of times, as Anthony Bolton, the fund manager who ran Fidelity’s Special Situations fund for many years, observes, banks “are the most opaque of all companies”. With a building materials company, you more or less know that, barring fraud, the right amount of stock is there. With a bank, it is much harder for investors to understand the assets on the balance sheet; and in the course of the credit crisis, it has transpired that the banks themselves experienced severe difficulties in this area“.

Nobody Understands the Financial Practises of a Bank. Even the Bankers Themselves don’t Understand what they are Doing. I am not convinced Banks have kept all the Data about You in the Right Order. Someday You will Find Out that You’re Savings are Gone and Nobody Knows Why.

It does not help to create Chinese Walls when Nobody Knows what is really happening. The Controllers are and were unable to understand the complicated financial structures that were created. The Book-Keeping systems are not Covering the Truth. Even very Bright Mathematicians are unable to value the Complicated Financial Transactions. The Effect is that Dealers are able to go their own way without a proper monitoring instrument. This has created many “unexpected” situations where low-level Dealers were able to build High-Risk Positions for a Long Time without the Knowledge of the Management. When the Gambling failed the Bank lost billions.

Reactions of readers to this Column:

I still think banks are greedy and lack integrety but they will bounce back because they are essential to a capitalist system” How can anyone believe a word they now say? Furthermore they remain in position, collecting their millions”. “It is the real investors namely pension savers and private investors who have no meaningful say and ultimately pay the price for this corrupt state of affairs, deception and lack of accountability” “Don’t let the politicians throw our money at bailing these irresponsible bankers out” “I am suffering in this downturn, and feel worried about the future. But we all have had a hand in this fiasco and we all can be affected by events (floods, droughts, disease, terrorism, earthquakes, storms and wars) which not wanted by anyone, we must plan for“.

The Customers are Powerless and Very Angry but there is no Alternative. We have to Live with the Greedy, non-Ethical Capitalistic System.

It is wrong to associate Banks with the Capitalistic System. Everywhere in the World people are Saving and Borrowing Money. The fundamental principle that was lost is to take Responsibility for what You are doing with the Money of Others. There is nothing wrong when you Gamble with you’re own money but don’t Gamble with the Money of Others. It is as simple as that.

My Conclusion:

There is Really Nothing that stops Us (the Customers) to start a Bank of our Own. The Technology is there and the Customers are really fed up with the Current System.

There are already Customers who are advising Customers for nothing. It will be very easy to transfer money without the Use of the Banking Payment Systems. If we agree on one principle, “You are trusted until you prove the opposite” it will be very easy to make a loan. There are already Systems Operational who are doing this. They are called Cooperations.

Nobody is taking the initiative to create a new Banking Infrastructure. Everybody is waiting for Everybody.

The Regulators wait and see. They hope the System will recover. I think it has died recently and nothing will help us to revive the dead body.

How the Hedge Funds are Starving a 100 Million People

Friday, April 25th, 2008

The Banking Business has created the Credit-Crunch. The Banking Business has created the Great Depression. The Banking Business has created many Bubbles. The Banking Business has advised people to buy shares while they knew the shares were highly overvalued. Now the Banking Business is stimulating the Food Crisis in the World.

 Analysis being carried out by World Food Program (WFP) estimates that about 100 million people have been pushed deeper into poverty by the high food prices.

The “Silent Tsunami” will affect more people on every continent than the real Tsunami in 2004. It will destroy more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime.

Everybody believes that Prices Rise when there is a Shortage of Something. The highest bidder takes all.

The main cause of the World Wide Food Shortage is Western Way of Producing, Selling and Wasting Food. We are Manipulating the Market and The Consumer but we are also destroying nature by fertilizers and genetical manipulated seeds. We are also throwing away a enormouss amount of food.

The Multi-Natioals produce genetic manipulated seeds, artificial fertilizers and artificial food. They control the Transportation, the Media, The Financial streams and the Governments (The World Bank). The multi-national food companies are making record profits.
 
The profit of Monsanto has doubled. Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, saw its income rise more than 12-fold. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Farmers at the beginning of the production lines are mostly poor. They will not profit from the rise of the prices of their products. This is not something new. The Poor get poorer and the Rich get richer. They are blocked to enter the Market. They are also blocked to produce their own natural fertilizers and their own natural seeds. Most of them are now unable to be self-sufficient. They have to buy food and y are unable to pay for it.

When you are very rich you can play with “the Fundamental Law of the Market“. You can buy a lot of goods, store them and create an artificial shortage. This game is called Speculation. The Multi-Nationals are creating an artificial shortage.

A very advanced Speculation Game is called Hedging.

When you are Hedging you use the Power of Money to Move the market UP to a certain point you want it to reach. If your hedge works out fine you leave the market when it Moves DOWN. At that time you let the “Bigger Fools” pay for the Downfall. At this moment the Tax-Payers are paying for the Downfall of the Speculators in the Housing Business. The Hedge Funds have already found a new Target, Hunger.

At this moment Hedge funds are Moving into the Food-business and they are making Big Money.

Commodity speculation spread long ago from standard products like oil and gold to anything edible and available for trade on the Chicago Futures Exchange. These days there are futures contracts for everything from wheat to oranges to pork bellies.

The futures market is a traditional tool for farmers to sell their harvests ahead of time. In a futures contract, quantities, prices and delivery dates are fixed, sometimes even before crops have been planted. Futures contracts allow farmers and grain wholesalers a measure of protection against adverse weather conditions and excessive price fluctuations. They can also help a farmer plan how much to plant for a given year.

But now speculators are taking advantage of this mechanism. They can buy futures contracts for wheat, for example, at a low price, betting that the price will go up. If the price of the grain rises by the agreed delivery date, they profit.

Some experts now believe these investors have taken over the market, buying futures at unprecedented levels and driving up short-term prices. Since last August, this mechanism has led to a doubling in the price of rice-including the 500,000 tons that the Philippine government plans to buy in early May to address its own shortage.

Experts are already discussing what they call a “Super Cycle,” set off by constantly growing demand in China, and by farmers unable, in the long term, to keep up with that demand as they sow their seed and harvest their crops. The planet has only a finite amount of land for farming.

Greg Warner has worked in the grain wholesaling business for more than two decades. His office sits a block away from the Chicago Futures Exchange. He’s an analyst with the firm AgResource, and he says what is happening now in the wheat market is unprecedented.

“What we normally have is a predictable group of sellers and buyers-mainly farmers and silo operators,” he says. But the landscape has changed since the influx of large index funds. Fund managers seek to maximize their profits using futures contracts, and prices, says Warner, “keep climbing up and up.”

He’s calculated that financial investors now hold the rights to two complete annual harvests of a type of grain traded in Chicago called “soft red winter wheat.”

Wagner is stunned by such developments. He sees them as evidence that capitalism is literally consuming itself.

One of the major players in this business is ABN AMRO. When somebody asked the manager of this business about ethics he answered that he was not interested in a discussion about this subject. “We are aware of the current discussions relating to agricultural commodities but we make the drills, but others have to do the drilling”.

The World Food Program is asking everybody to donate money. They need more money (775 million!) than the “real” Tsunami to solve the problems of the 100 million. The sad thing is that donating is helping the Hungry but is also helping the Rich. It helps them to sustain their Gamble.

In the end your donation will be payd to a very Rich Person who has enough money to buy an enormous amount of Food.

This also happens when Governement is “helping” the WFP. It is a very intelligent trick to move money from the Public Domain to the Private Domain. In the end You pay More and They Increase their Wealth. IT happened with the Credit Crunch. It happened with the Great Depression. It happens all the time.

Just like every Bubble the Food Bubble will also burst at a certain moment. It is not difficult to imagine when this will happen. It will happen when a very small part of the world is able to pay for the food.

The Bubble is already infecting the Economy of the Rich Countries. When a Very amount of people is able to buy Food the End State will be reached and the Prices will drop. At that moment The Hedge Funds will move into another area of (artificial) Shortage.

The poor people in the West are already unable to pay for the food. At a certain moment the Middle Class will feel the effects. When the Poor People in the Rich Countries will experience a Food Shortage they will Riot.

Just like the poor people in the Underdeveloped Countries are Rioting. When the Riots start in the Getto’s of the Big Cities the Rich will become Afraid. They will Ask for Protection of the Police or the Military. In the end they have to surround there homes with walls and create there own food supplies.

The rising prices not only affect the Poor. They also affect the Policy of the FED to stop the Credit Crunch. Higher prices stimulate Inflation and Inflation can only be stopped by an Increase of the Interest Rates. Higher Interest Rates will deepen the state of Depression.

Is this what the Investors really want?

The Ethics are not of My Concern. They are the Business of Somebody Else.

We Produce Weapons but we are not responsible for the Use of the Weapons.

We Fight a War but we are not responsible for the Killing of Innocent people.

We Advice people but we are not responsible for What we are Advicing them.

We Pollute the World but somebody else has to Clean Up.

We Use all the Resources of the Earth but somebody else has to Take Care of our Children.

In the advanced Western Civilization we just look at the Profit. Investors are playing their hedge in the Global Casino and just don’t realize that they are gambling away the daily food supply of the world’s poorest people.

In the old, “Savage”, civilizations the Decision Makers had to Evaluate their Decisions on the effect of Seven Generations. They Knew they needed Nature, their Neighbours and their Offspring to Survive.

Funny.

Every Company has turned itself into a Green Company. They want to “Save the Earth”.

Are the Poor People on this Earth not Included in their Policy?

I know Why. You Know Why. Money makes the World go Round?

My Advice:

Always Take Responsibility for Every Action.

We are all Part of an Ecology and someday the Ecology will React and You will encounter the same things Others are Experiencing.

Do You want to Live in an Environment where You are deprived of Food? I don’t think so. Nobody Wants that.

REFLECT BEFORE YOU ACT.

LINKS

About Ethics in Banking

About the Hormone of Love

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

hormone of loveIn the near future we will have many technologies that will allow us to modify and assist our emotions and reasoning.

In this blog I want to tell you what is happening in the area of the chemical engineering of the human body.

Science is digging deeper and deeper into the structures that matter most in our body. The most interesting substances are called hormones. It is now possible to make these hormones on a large scale.

One of the most interesting hormones is the Hormone of Love. If everybody would take a dose of it everyday we could create peace on earth.

In Nov 20, 2007, James Hughes gave a lecture with the title:  ”Virtue Engineering: Applications of Neurotechnology to Improve Moral Behavior“.

In his talk Mr. Hughes suggests that the introduction of coffee was one of the factors that started the Enlightenment because at that time people started to meet and discuss in coffee-houses (“the foggy ale that besieged our brains, while coffee was the brave and wholesome liquor that heals the stomach, makes the genius quicker, relieves the memory, revives the sad, and cheers the spirits without making mad.”).  

The coffee-houses at that time were called “penny universities” because of all the free newspapers. They were also classless. Working men and men from the middle class could go and have a conversation together.

A much more interesting subject in his speech is Love and Compassion. The most important chemical substance is oxytocin. Oxitocin is a neuroactive hormone that is released during breast-feeding and during orgasm.

Paul J. Zak and Ahlam Fakhar (Neuroactive hormones and interpersonal trust: International evidence, Economics & Human Biology) have investigated the relationship between culture and interpersonal trust.

They went to 32 countries, tested the amount of oxytocin in the blood of people then looked at a hundred different variables to see which ones were correlated with the amount of oxytocin in their blood.

They found a very high correlation between the level of oxytocin and the level of cooperation in a culture. You can imagine that the US was not high on their list.

Oxitocin is the hormone that manages the food intake of the body. When your oxitocin-level is low you are hungry. It explains easily why people that are “without love” eat too much.

Vasopressin has the opposite effect.  So when you want to stop eating too much you know what to do. You can take vasopressin or find a friend. When you don’t eat enough, leave your friend.

Oxitocin, the “hormone of love“, highly influences the nervus vagus. This nerve influences the rhythm of the heart.

It explains why a “broken heart” or “being in love” changes the rhytm. To solve this problem you can take beta-blockers. They turn you into a very rational being and the feeling of love will disappear.

The chemical structure of Beta-blockers has a lot in common with vasopressin. When we look deeper we see that vasopressin and oxitocin are part of a deeper structure. They are part of a “family”, called the “molecules of emotion“.

There are many more interesting stories to tell about the relationship between hormones and our behavior but I want to address the most important subject of the speech, the future use of chemical substances.

One thing is for certain we are using chemical substances all the time. They are part of the food we eat and the liquids we drink. We drink coffee and alcohol and every piece of food we eat contains something that affects us.

At this moment we are getting increasingly more evidence what the effects are of all these chemical substances. Somewhere behind them is a simple structure with complementary chemical structures (peptides) that trigger many processes in our body.

When we know this structure we are able to control the behavior of everybody. We could even put them in the drinking water to enhance cooperation or the opposite.

We could put them in a spray and every boy could easily seduce a girl (or vice versa). This is no joke it was already done by the US Army in wartime and there is no reason to suppose that they will use chemical substances when they need them.

The most important question is how far we want to go in controlling people. If the research that is performed at this moment succeeds we are able to control the virtue of everybody.

We are able to let everynody act according to “ethical rules“. They have to be formulated by somebody (government?). It is not clear what these rules are about.

If we provide every body with its daily dosis of oxytocin we will live in peace for ever. The weapon industry and the army will not like that. They will be out of work!

If you read the whole speech you will see that Mr Hughes is very concerned about all the developments that take place in human engineering.

He even wrote a book about it called Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

I don’t think he has a solution. The only think I hope is that people drink a lot of coffee when they start to discuss this issue and that people of with low levels of Oxitocin are excluded or constantly hugged by the others.

About Ethical Dilemma’s

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Moral Dilemma’s are situations where two or more moral rules are in conflict. You have to make a choice between two or more actions you don’t want to perform because Ethics forbid you to do so.

A famous example was formulated in Book I of Plato’s Republic, Cephalus defines ‘justice’ as speaking the truth and paying one’s debts.

Socrates quickly refutes this account by suggesting that it would be wrong to repay certain debts – for example, to return a borrowed weapon to a friend who is not in his right mind.

Socrates’ point is not that repaying debts is without moral import; rather, he wants to show that it is not always right to repay one’s debts, at least not exactly when the one to whom the debt is owed demands repayment. What we have here is a conflict between two moral norms: repaying one’s debts and protecting others from harm. And in this case, Socrates maintains that protecting others from harm is the norm that takes priority.

A tragic moral dilemma is formulated in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. Sophie and her two children are at a Nazi concentration camp. A guard confronts Sophie and tells her that one of her children will be allowed to live and one will be killed. But it is Sophie who must decide which child will be killed.

Sophie can prevent the death of either of her children, but only by condemning the other to be killed. The guard makes the situation even more excruciating by informing Sophie that if she chooses neither, then both will be killed.

Actions are organized in chains of cause and effect. An (ethical) rule defines a `forbidden` effect. The effect is caused by an actor. In one situation the effect is certain in other situations the effect is (highly?) possible.

Ethics tries to formulate action-guiding principles to prevent that humans create a “forbidden” effect. In the case of Sophie this effect is the killing of a human being. In the example of Plato more or less the same (“doing no harm”) applies.

The example of Sophie shows that some people are able to create contexts where ethical dilemmas are forced upon people. In this context “Sophie has no choice” and when there is no choice ethics is simply not applicable.

The only thing we can do is to avoid these contexts and to prevent the creation of these contexts (concentration camps, crime, war, violence).

Ethics is not only a cognitive action. The emotions are also involved. Although the choice of Sophie is enforced she will feel guilt when she has made a choice. The emotional effect of a forced choice is the same as the effect of a free choice. Avoiding a certain emotion (“feeling guilty”) can be the reason to formulate an ethical rule.

Some people are more empathic than other people. That is why the acceptance of ethical rules varies. People without any empathic feeling don’t agree with the rule that it is forbidden to kill or to do harm. In some cultures those people are called mentally ill in other cultures they are highly praised.

We can always create an example where one rule conflicts with another rule or where the precedence of one rule over the other rule is violated. The rule of “not killing a human being” is overridden by many other rules and these rules are again context-dependent. Some people believe “killing a human being” is allowed to punish or to defend (a human being or a country) or even to enforce a principle (“freedom of choice”).

It is always possible to formulate an external cause. Finding an External Cause is the best way to remove the feeling of guilt or to prevent the feeling of guilt. The Guard in the concentration camp was able to do his work without any remorse because he was helping to accomplish the aims of his Fuhrer.

A soldier can accept the killing of a human being when the other is an enemy. Somebody has convinced him that killing enemies is an important goal. The same applies for all the other people that are part of the immoral context. All of them have created a chain of reasoning where they are not direct connected to the immoral situation. They “have to do it” to make a living or to make a career.

It both cases people have failed to prevent the concentration camps or the war.

What is really behind this all?

Behind this is the issue of world-views.

Ethics shows itself in many (five) flavors and combinations of flavors. The most important combination of these flavors is a combination of the Unity (Rules) and Sensory (Cause/Effect) worldviews. Will McWhinney called this combination the Analytical Game.

The Analytical Game is the dominant game in Western Society. It is highly cognitive. It denies the existence of the emotions (Love, Empathy, Social) and the imagination (Art, Poetry, Music, Mythic).

The emotions and the imagination are transformed by the Analytic Game in a cognitive instrument. Everything has to be planned and evaluated. It blocks improvisation (context-dependent behavior) because it is “Afraid to Loose Control”.

What to do?

The most important advice is to avoid and prevent (!) Ethical Dilemma’s.

When you are encountering a dilemma please trust your “gut feeling”. It is guided by your Emotions and Imagination.

LINKS

About Ethics

About Ma’at, the Egyptian Goddess of Harmony