Posts Tagged ‘Family’

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 War of Words

Monday, May 12th, 2008

The amount of people that are confused or are creating confusion is growing. It all has to do with Language. New words are created. Languages and Cultures are mixing. New Inventions and Theories are Created and Destroyed. We are in a highly creative phase, the End Game of Time Wave Zero. Is it possible to find the pattern behind this pattern?

The Encyclopedia Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh and quickly grew in popularity and size. The Brittanica expanded from 3 volumes in 1768 to 32 volumes today.

In France Diderot created the first French encyclopedia in 1745. It started as a translation of the English Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers. When he and his co-editor, mathematician Jean d’Alembert, were finished, they created a new work, the ‘Encyclopedie’. At that time it contained everything that was necessary to known about the Western World.

Its aim was “to collect all the knowledge that now lies scattered over the face of the earth, to make known its general structure to the men among we live, and to transmit it to those who will come after us,” to make men not only wiser” but also “more virtuous and more happy“.

Denis Diderot was one of the originators and interpreters of the Age of Enlightenment. This 18th-century movement was based on the belief that Reason could find True Knowledge.

During the Enlightment many scientists hoped that it would be possible to find the Eternal Truth, The Simple set of Rules that would Explain Every Thing. It was just a Matter of Time.

What they did not realize was that Truth is Highly Context Dependent. It is dependent on the Spirit of the Time, the Knowledge and Interpretation of the Writer of the Context, The Status of the Writer and the Genesis of Science.

Not only Knowledge changes but also Words change their meaning all the time. Everything Changes and the only thing that is left is to accept this Fact of Life.

The awareness of the problem of the Eternal Truth has created Cynicism. Scientists especially in the Social Sciences (Post-Modernism, Deconstruction) don’t believe it will be possible to find any objective general accepted pattern or explanation. They are fighting the goals of the highly rational Enlightment with very complicated rational arguments of their own.

When the exponential rise of Novelty predicted by Time Wave Zero (and other comparable models) reaches the Point Omega we will be literally lost in Space. Innovations that took centuries to happen in history will happen in a few days.

It is really true that there are no general Explanations possible? Is Everything Context Dependent?

The problem that the Eternal Change of our primary communication vehicle, Language, is creating is analyzed by many great minds in history. Perhaps the greatest genius was Wittgenstein. At the end of his life his students put all his Observations (he did not believe in Theory) in something called The Blue and Brown Books. In these books he is teaching the Art of Clarification.

Wittgenstein invented a new way of looking at the world called a Family Resemblance. If we gather together members of the same Family, they probably Look Alike, although there is no Distinctive Feature that they all share in Common. A brother and a sister might have the same dark eyes, while that sister and her father share a slightly turned-up nose.

They share a group of features, some of which are more distinctly present in some members of the family, while some features are not present at all. Wittgenstein argues that the different uses of one word and rules share the same Family Resemblance.

A Family is a Vague Set of Relationships that have something in Common but the parts of the set are Different. A Family is a unique set of permutations of distinctive features.

The only way to recognize a Family is to meet the members and create an intuition, a feeling. To do this we have to leave our study room and walk around in Reality. We have to move into the Context instead of floating above The Context.

Floating above the Context is called Imagining. There is nothing wrong with imagining. The imagination (Spirit) is the Mother of Art. Changing Art into a Science Destroys the Beauty of the Work of Art. Just like a Family a Piece of Art shows a pattern but is also shows exceptions of the pattern. The exceptions show a pattern but this pattern also contains a pattern. The world is a self-reference, a Fractal.

Scientists don’t realize that they are creating Fiction. When they would realize that they are producing Fiction they would certainly improve their Style. Scientific Fiction (a Genre) is mostly unreadable for other Scientists and especially for “Normal” people like me.

There are Many Families and there are even Families of Families. Some people have been born with a Talent to Observe one Family. Others are aware of completely different Families. All of them share features but it will never be possible to find The Set of all Sets of features. Finding the set of sets created a huge problem in Mathematics. It was the main reason why Wittgenstein changed his “theory”. He left the field of Mathematics, spend years in complete isolation (he was a teacher) until the people of Cambridge begged him to come back.

It does not help to spend a lot of time to discuss a joint Family. It only creates a War of the Words or a nicer term of Wittgenstein, A Language Game. A major part of Scientific Fiction is about the Quest to find the general Definitions of the set of all sets, The Holy Grail of Science… When we spend too much time to Fight we will never See.

The quest of Objectivity shows itself in the Use of Statistics. Scientists are unable to find the right Context (a Family) but they are also unaware of the Fractal Structure of the Universe. They are also completely unaware about the boundaries of Statistics. They accept the General Truth of Statistics without any awareness of the background.

What is the solution to all these problems?

The fist step is to accept the Spiraling Spiral and Self-Reference as the fundamental Fractal of the Universe. It is really a simple clarifying explanation.

The next step is to determine the Level and the Phase of the Spiral You are in (Style, Chronotope, Family, Network, Field of Reference, Bias). It determines what You are able to See and Do. It defines the Place in Time/Space you are Watching. If You want to move to another Level or State change the State of Your Awareness.

The last step is to feel the Movement of the Force of Life, The Tao,  and connect to this Movement. If you have accomplished this all the Clarifications you are looking for are given to you by the Great Force of Creation, Inspiration.