Fred’s Cozy Little Nook

I have long held that evolving systems may subsume each other. For instance, social evolution may subsume genetic evolution. Or memetic evolution may subsume genetic evolution. It is clear that social evolution subsumes memetic evolution. But is it possible that memetic evolution also subsumes social evolution?

If that’s the case, we may even have co-emergence to talk about as well. But this probably sounds like crazy-talk. I mean, how can you possibly have A emerging from B at the same time B emerges from A? Is that not a chicken-egg problem?

I say that not only is this a possibility, in in fact goes on all the time. Let me see if I can present an example.

There is a genera  in the media call Manga (and Amime is closely related) . If we consider Manga to be a meme-complex or memeplex, then it is clear that this memeplex has been evolving over time. It has given rise to a cult following where fans read Manga  and talk about it, blog about it, do art about it, and even have conventions on it. This is the Manga social-comple, or socialplex, that has taken on a life in its own right.

But wait! Didn’t I just say that these Manga fans, due to the socialplex, give rise to new memes in the memeplex, which obviously affects the socialplex?

This all becomes very complicated very quickly, trying to deal with two highly dynamic systems subsuming each other in this manner. But the key to understanding this is that both share a common host, both influences host behavior, and so it’s not so surprising that co-subsumption and even co-emergence can arise in this situation.

Obviously, I need to give much more thought to this issue.

If there is one qualifying thing about humans, it’s one thing: They love to communicate.

Witness the births and rapid development of communication technologies, from smoke signals (well, they did travel at the speed of light!) to the Gutenberg Press to telegraph to telephone to mass media systems like radio and TV to now the Internet.

Now, you can find others that share your interests, no matter how obscure, anywhere and everywhere on the planet.

You can hook up with old high-school and college chums you haven’t seen in 30 years. You can find those local with your common obscure interests and meet them in person. You can sell objects of limited interest — or find them. You can conduct business with others around the world that you have never met in person.

You can even work from home in a “virtual company”. Or you can make money selling ads on your web sites. Or find other creative ways to make money. Even find jobs and the like.

Information abounds from Wikipedia to every college and university that have cared to put up free courseware and research papers  on the web. Or you can get the goods on a person by hitting aggregate data services and track a person’s every address, job, and other activities going back decades.

Governments also have the goods on you, secretly monitoring your communications and bank transactions for whatever purposes they see fit…

My point here is that we now live in an age of hyper-connectivity. Not just instant communication, but for each and every individual being able to reach hundreds if not thousands with ANY information for ANY purpose at low to no cost.

With all this hyper-connectivity, some emergence is inevitable. The question is, of course, can or has that emergence organized itself to be a thinking, throbbing entity all its own? Is this possible? And if so, how would we mere “neurons” know it’s happened?

Keep in mind, as well, that this “mass mind” might operate — and most likely would — on time scales much different from  our human time senses would recognize. What if it took a day to complete a “complete thought”, whatever that would be? A week? A year? How would we know?

I do think this question is answerable — in time. And wouldn’t it be ironic that, in our searching and yearning for discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence, that is emergent intelligence was with us all along sitting right here under our noses?

Well, what would we call such a thing? What would a neuron call the brain? I’ll leave you with that thought.

I told myself I wouldn’t bother debating with theists anymore because the arguments are usually pointless and the theist still walks away a theist, despite the most cogent, logical, rational presentation I can muster.

But where I think these debates can sometime be useful is in helping others understand the deep issues involved with the proposed questions of whether or not some deity exists.

These issues go straight to epistemological concerns and approaches, and that represents the greatest dividing line between theists and myself. I am a scientist, an empiricist, a skeptic. I want to see the evidence; I want to see reason. Your typical theist, on the other hand — and especially Christian theists — insist on what they call “faith” and internal messages “from God” that no one else can hear but themselves.

This dichotomy in the epistemological approaches are, at best, irreconcilable. Indeed, they are diametrically opposed to the nth degree. One requires hard observations and hard reasoning; the other involves wishful and magical thinking, and self-delusion.

In asking the question of “does God exists?”, the first thing to be settled is “which God?” Why only one? Why not millions?

The next question to be asked is how one defines this “God”. Is there a workable definition that we can all agree on? Or will this definition vary from person to person, from culture to culture, from religion to religion?

Once we can get past that, there is the question of falsifiability.  This is where the theist falls down, because the theist will scream “you gotta have faith!”, and I want to know that there is something there beyond the delusion of humans.

The debate will probably never end, simply because there are people who seem to have a “need” for some sort of deity. Indeed, that “need” seems to have plagued Mankind throughout all of history. I have discussed some of these issues in other blogs, so I won’t repeat them here.

The debate is here at http://urlbit.us/gno (Is belief in God a sign of intellectual impairment?)

From article: Can the Auto Industry Retool itself to build rails?

1. Today is not anything like the economic system that existed during the last Great Depression. Completely different world. It is almost unhelpful to draw too many parallels between then and now.
2. Today’s economic system is much more global than it was back then.
3. Chaos Theory and Complex System Dynamics needs to be applied to the global picture we have today. For any number of reasons. And I have yet to hear any economist speaking of today’s world in such terms.
4. The principle of Self-Organized Criticality is definitely apropos here. The market organized itself to a critical state, where nearly any shout in the mountains from anyone would bring the whole thing down.
5. I have my own variation of this principle — let’s call it the Evolutionary Humpty-Dumpty Principle. A Complex Dynamical System (CDS), if of the right character, has a tendency to organize itself to a critical state such that your typical control points will simply fail to function. The Feds always attempt to control the market through interest rates and the supply of money; other major governments around the world employ similar controls, and others as well. The details, after a fashion, are not all that important so much as the fact that the market will “build up a tolerance” for such artificial control artifices. Hell, our own bodies do it with drugs constantly taken all the time. Why not the global market?
6. There are many aspects of this economic system that is predicated on the fallacy of “infinite resources, infinite growth”. Yet any 7-year-old can tell you that the system is NOT infinite. So what do we have? Many free-running Ponzi schemes, like Social Security and the Stock Market. Yes, boys and girls, those gaining money out of those systems do so at the expense of others.

When you wrap your mind around all of this — and more — you will begin to understand how truly frelled we really are. Where you should focus your view is not on what the “talking heads” babble to you every day, but on the flow of money and the structure of the system, noting where assumptions are made without basis. Noting the points where the lack of transparency exists. Noting all the zero-sum instruments in finance that is billed as something other than what it really is. Noting that when governments print money, the actual value of the overall picture has a tendency to stay constant. Printing money is a panic reaction to a situation that our leaders have no understanding of. Printing money will only buy a short-term advantage, with a much bigger drop later.

Look for the lie in anything you hear over the major media outlets with regards to the market. They are most likely not telling you the truth so much as they are trying to influence and manage your behavioral dynamics in hopes they can stitch Humpty back together again.

Take what I state here with a grain of salt if you wish. Or do your own research and come up with the same conclusions that I have. And doing the research will not be easy because many of the players in the financial world actually believe the lies they spout on a daily basis. You must reach behind them to see the circuit boards for yourself, and follow the actual layout, not what they tell you what it is.

And most of all, embrace complexity, because the world is far from simple!

It occurred to me this morning that Memes have the greatest successes for existence if they can do two things:

1. Program for their own retransmission (Thought Contagions, Lynchian Memetics)
2. Quell or Obliterate competing memes.

The two above are not new ideas to the field of memetics. However, what interest me is how memetic evolution can influence genetic evolution. That is to say, how can memes direct the biological evolution of their hosts? Those meme sets that can accomplish the above 2 and also improve on the biological reproductive rates of their hosts whilst at the same time leveraging parthenogeneic transmission, will be especially virulent over time and become solidly entrenched.

Such successful meme sets are usually referred to as “culture”.

A principle for memetic success I will put forward is that it also induces “clumping activity” in its hosts. Normally, we refer to this as “clans”, “city-states”, and “countries”. We also refer to this as “race”, “ethnic identity”, “feminism”, etc.

Indeed, any of the “isms” can be construed as a set of memes that strongly induce clumping behavior among its hosts.

The Global Financial Picture and its Antecedents

In these tumultuous times, one looks at the stock market with dread. Titanic shifts in wealth occur on a daily basis as the players in this zero-sum game battle it out for the challenge of a lifetime. What is really sad is that many of the players do not ever understand that this is a zero-sum game; that the stock market is nothing more than a wealth-exchange system. That’s right. Wealth is not created by the stock market, but is exchanged among the players. To be in that market without realizing that very fundamental fact is, in my opinion, rather foolish.

Many have their life’s savings and their retirement tied up in the stock market, and it amuses me even more to hear all of the talking heads giving the exact wrong advice about what to do. They all say “stick it out”, “hang in there”, and “you don’t want to miss that uptick”, etc.

But many of these naieve players have been listening to this very wrong advice as they watched their portfolios cut in half or worse over the past year. Many are actually getting hit by margin calls and thus are seeing their holding sold by their brokers to cover themselves. This is part of the drive in the titantic moves being seen daily in the market right now.

I tell all my friends these days to *be in cash*, but they get so many mixed messages they don’t know if they should listen to me or listen to the idiot financial advisers. And I can fully appreciate the emotions involved. Moreover, many are in complicated financial instruments tied to the market carrying tax consequences and other hits for an early pullout. This is really sad, because it only complicates the picture even further for them.

I still stick to my mantra: BE IN CASH. You can always jump back in when the smoke clears. And so what if you miss the “initial uptick”. At least you would’ve limited your losses.

But where did all of this come from? Where did all of the bad advice on how to deal with the market generate? This is my take on it.

During the 20th century, we saw something incredible — the stock market always seemed to go up in the long run. The thinking of that times was to “be in it for the long haul”, without any thought or consideration as to how a zero-sum game can always keep going up indefinitely, and what was driving it. No one was interested since it seemed to be going up forever.

Now, I invite you to click the following link:

Big Charts of NYSE

Now set the time frame to “All Data”, and the frequency to “Yearly”. Yes, I am too lazy to past a picture of the chart into this blog, but I think it’s better if you play with these charts for yourself.

You will notice that the NYSE, a composite of all the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, has shown a steady increase from 1970 till 2000 or so. Then you see a very sharp decline. Then you see it rise again from 2003 till now, where you see an even bigger decline knocking its levels back to where it was back in 2002. You will also note that since 1970 where the data starts, there has been no such titanic shocks before on that scale.

Now, look down beneath the price chart to see the volume chart. Look at how the volume increases corresponds with the rise of the NYSE, and look what took place from 2000 till now. This, my friends, tells the true story about the markets. Charts don’t lie, and what you see here is the real truth about the market. But how does one interpret this truth?

Think for a moment. The stock market is a zero-sum game. It does not create money; nor does it destroy it. Money simply shifts hands. Every dollar you make on the stock market *must* come out of someone else’s pocket, and every dollar you loose *must* going into the pockets of another. That is the inherent nature of a zero-sum game.

Now, look back again at the volume chart and you will start to understand what is really happening. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, there was a big push to get more and more average people involved in the stock market — either directly, or through some derivative instrument, like mutual funds, 401Ks, IRAs, and the like.

My “Greater Fools” theory on the stock market: in order to make money on the stock market, you need greater fools to take the stocks off your hands at a greater price than you paid for it. Therefore, the only way the market can continue that growth curve in the 20th century is to have an ever increasing number of “Greater Fools” to keep flocking into the market, and this is marked by the steady volume increases you see from 1970 till 2000.

The problem is, of course, is that the supply of Greater Fools is limited. You eventually hit exhaustion. Then the prices stop rising. Then panic ensues and everyone starts selling off, generating even more panic which leads to ever more sell-offs. Those fools caught at the top of the market then give up their dollars to those whom they bought from. Yes, my friends. Those fools at the top of the market are left holding the bag for the wealth the rest of us have managed to extract from the market before the fall.

Fun stuff, huh?

What does this mean for the greater financial picture overall?

Implicit in many financial policies and financial instruments is the fallacy of “infinite growth” — that is, the markets will continue to grow forever without bound. Because of the fallacy of that assumption, anything based on that fallacy must fail eventually.

And now to introject some chaos into your understanding of the markets.

In systems that grow beyond a certain “magical rate”, the growth become chaotic. It does not matter what the system is — it could be populations of bacteria or players in the financial world –, it’s almost a “law of the universe” from the standpoint of chaos. Click the next link:

Feigenbaum Logistic Map

You will note the simple recurrence equation for growth listed, and the map of what happens when growth rates are too high. The numbers bounce around chaotically. Why? Because you have growth that depends on finite resources. If you grow faster than your resources does, you hit a ceiling and — well — chaos ensues. No pun intended!

What we see going on in the marketplace is a similar story, though more complicated than this simple formula. Humans with a stake in the game will do whatever they can to keep the party going even when it’s quite evident that the party must end eventually. We see this in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco going on right now. Since the greater fools ran out of their normal market, they kept it going higher artificially by seeking out riskier and riskier investments, which themselves came to a head as we have seen. It merely delayed the inevitable. If you go back to that NYSE chart, you see after the big drop in 2003 the market go even higher, but without the matching concomitant increases in volume. The NYSE figures were pushed up artificially higher by something, and since the markets are so interconnected, my guess is that it was pushed up higher by all the bad loans that were made.

You see, I am as guilty as the next guy here, because not only did I benefit from the financial boom in the 90s, but I also — after the so-called “dot-com” crash — managed to re-fi my home twice without any real income!!! Now admittedly, it helped tremendously in keeping my home and thus a roof over the heads of my family in those times, but really and honestly I should not have received those two loans without a solid financial basis.

Well, these days I am on better financial footing, but many were not able to make that transition and had to default on their loans, and thus began the “shout in the mountains” that lead to the avalanche in the financial markets we see today. Yes, my friends, another aspect of Chaos Theory: Self-Organized Criticality:

SOC Link

The language in this link may be beyond some, but basically what it states is that dynamical systems have a tendency to organized themselves to a critical state that can then undergo a “phase transition” — a drastic change of state — almost spontaneously. Basically, a fancy way of stating that “what goes up, must come down”, at the risk of oversimplification.

I am basically stating that all the current efforts to blame the fall on the last administration, on the CEOs of AIG, Meryl Lynch, and Lehman Bros, etc. is all a wash. Once that critical state was hit, a little girl going “BOO” on Wall Street would’ve triggered the avalanche. And no, I am not kidding.

The Obama Win and what that means

What about the [ast election and the overwhelming win by Obama, who has now become the nation’s “Great Black Hope”? (There are reasons I use that phraseology, but I will go into that in a future blog.) I am not convinced that He nor his team he’s assembling has a clue on how to halt this avalanche. He seems to be picking everyone who is from the “old school” understanding of economics. No one has yet to mention the very plain fact that most of our financial infrastructure is predicated on a fallacy. I suppose to mention that fact would really cause the panic to amplify even more. You don’t want to spook the poor saps left holding the bag too much or they would all want to dump their bags at once driving everything to zero.  And yet, the governments around the world pulling money out of thin air in their vain attempts to “shore up” the banks will only trigger a devaluation of currency that will send the market down even faster.

There is the spectre of deflation which would seem at odds with creating money out of thin air which should trigger inflation. Fun stuff huh? But I have come up with a modification to the self-organized criticality theories with special regards to the financial markets and how governments try to manipulate them:

The dynamical system so conditioned will see to organized itself to a critical state that will thwart any and all of the usual attempts to control said system. Basically, the dynamical system will evolve itself to the point of ignoring the usual control points. Basically, what I am saying is that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put the financial markets back together again!” Could there be hidden wisdom in a simple tale for kids? Hmmmm….

And yet we see that very thing taking place. Of all the coordinated efforts of many governments to inject money into the broken Humpty-Dumpty market, nothing has really worked. If that doesn’t scare the willy out of your pants, it should.  I am basically saying that we are in for some “interesting times” the likes of which have never been seen before in the history of the world. I dearly hope my prognostication is dead wrong, but I see no reason to assert otherwise. I predicted this 2nd financial shock about 8 or 9 years ago; I just wasn’t sure when it would happen. It’s actually happening earlier than I had anticipated, and we’re just seeing the beginning, folks. Now GM is talking about needing a bailout, and perhaps a couple more US auto manufacturers will be sucked into that downdraft as well. And the cascading cacophony of failures will continue for years to come. No market will be immune. Attempts governments make to stop it will only either make the problem worse or delay the inevitable.

Will when this avalanche stop? I do not know. Will the stock market ever “fully recover?” I don’t think so. I cannot see beyond the current mess because the picture has become chaotic that there is simply no way to know what will emerge “on the other side”.

But I will say this: We are in for one helluva ride!

So what does poor “Joe the Plumber” do?

Well, actually, if you are in the plumbing business, I wouldnt’ worry too much. For starters, your job can’t be outsourced. And as long as people continue to use pipes for their water supply and flush toilets to get rid of their shit, there will be a demand for you. They may pay you a bit less, but you’ll get by.

If you are “Joe the Hedge Fund Manager”, it was nice knowing you. Time to start thinking about a serious career change and possibly relocation. You really don’t want to be in an area with 10s of thousands of out of work people in your field all competing for the same scant handful of alternative jobs available. Do your research well and get the hell out of New York NOW.

If you are “Joe the Software Geek” working in IT, especially on a hot money producing website, stay exactly where you are. If you are thinking about hopping jobs,think carefully about whether or not the company you hop to can weather the impending financial firebomb headed our way. Even think that about the company you are with currently, and make the necessary adjustment in your short-term career goals.

If you are “Joe the Nurse”, stay put. Or better yet, consider relocating to Florida or California, or any place where wealthy seniors like to flock to. There’s still a shortage in the nursing field, so mop it up.

If you are “Joe the Entrepreneur”, think creatively yet realistically about your plans and goals. There may be hidden opportunities to capitalize on the firestorm to come. Drink in information from many sources about the global and local marketplaces, and try to understand how one relates to the other. Then POUNCE.

If you are “Joe about ready to divorce Jane”, this may be a wonderful time to file if you can kick Jane out of the house first. Especially if your mortgage is below water due to no fault of your own. You may be able to get rid of Jane and keep the house too. But be sure you keep the kids as well, because if Jane leave with them you are still screwed.

If you are “Joe the Homeless Beggar”, expect to get a lot of competition in the upcoming years. Expect also your begging clientele to become increasingly tight-waded as this burn-down progresses. You might actually consider this a golden opportunity to do something more meaningful with your life. Hop to it.

If you are “Joe the Civil Servant”, stay where you are. Rest assured that the government you work for will find newer and more creative ways to rip the rest of us off in order to maintain their power-base, of which you are a part.

If you are “Joe the Student”, you’ve got some real issues to think about. You have to do the hard thing of thinking about where the world will be when you graduate and whether or not a market will exist for your hard-won skills. Never-mind whether or not you’ll be able to afford it or not. Coming out with your sheepskin and a $100K debt just to take up a career of taxi driving is worse than skipping the whole affair and just jumping to taxi driving. Or consider the career of being a beach bum. Or leech off your parents for as long as they will let you. Forget joining up with the Armed Forces unless you have a death wish. Talk to some old vets first — especially from the Viet Nam War era — to get a good picture  of what to expect before you do something foolish. Trust me; it’s better to be a beach bum or a continual headache for the old man.

The Upshot of all this?

Unless you pay attention to what is REALLY going on (as opposed to what all the talking heads are babbling) and plan according to your own personal situation, you will be screwed. Plain and simple. It’s going to be tough enough even with the best laid plans of Mice, but really you don’t want to leave your future to “Fate”. Now is NOT the time to be believing in all that “God” hogwash. Now is the time to consider No. 1 your primary importance. Understanding instead of “Faith” is what will save your ass. Let the fools do as they will. Let them burn in their own self-created hells. YOU, on the other hand, must look and think in ways that are extremely non-traditional if you are going to come out of this alive. Don’t take my advice; don’t take anybody’s advice. Understand the situation for yourself and TAKE ACTION. Do this and there’s a good chance you will emerge victorious. Listen to the idiots on CNN, Bloomberg, and your Nice Friendly Government to your own peril. Understand why they say what they do, and what’s in it for them vs. what’s in it for you.

An interesting thought occurred to me this morning. It’s all about the “teaching a man to fish” aphorism.  I thought about this in context with the way I’ve been homeschooling my kids.

Basically, as you know, the aphorism goes thusly:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Well, that’s nice and all, and demonstrates the importance of education with regards to self-actualization and a lot of other goodies. But it seems to be lacking something, something that is embrolied in the approaches I have been using to homeschool my kids.

You see, I always thought that the love of knowledge actually more important than the knowledge itself. A person can  be”taught” anything, but if the person has no love for it, no passion, no desire to embrace what has been taught, then the teaching will only go so far.

The goal with the teaching of anything is not only to teach a thing, but to somehow inculcate a love for the thing. When you desire a thing, you are more prone to go out on your own to learn more about the thing. Of course, inculcating desire is not always possible in the typical teaching situations, but as a parent, I have an avenue open to me that few other would be able to travel.

By example, by being passionate myself, by openly showing my own love and thirst for knowledge, I can inculcate that desire for knowledge and understanding in kids, and have done so.  And actually, any good teacher can do much of the same. Though, as a parent, my kids see me everyday, so I can be much more effective.

You don’t even have to be perfect as a parent, either (but you do as a teacher! ) For instance, I have shown a desire and love for learning foreign languages to my kids– and most notably French.  Today,  after 10 years, I still struggle with French and would probably have a hard time asking for where the nearest drugstore is in Paris, but I did learn something, and the kids saw that.

Their young minds are much more able to pick up languages than my 40-something brain is, and so one daughter has taken it upon herself to learn Japanese and German. The other daughter is starting to pick up an interest from her sister and — I estimate — will increase in her interest soon. Perhaps she’ll pick different languages to learn apart from her sister or her dad. Or maybe some of the same. Who knows?

So, getting back to that aphorism, I thought to add an additional line. So now it becomes:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. 
Give a man the desire to fish, and he’ll start a whole fishing industry that will teach and feed thousands.

Yes, that is the distilled essence of my approach to homeschooling, and how I approach life in general. Find a way to create desire, and you have found a way to create something disruptive. Something with the power of changing the world, something that will have a ripple effect that will reach many people in ways you would never have thought of.

A good question to ask is how we can accomplish that small feat in not just the homeschooling environment, but with any teaching establishment in general?

The answer is simple and plainly obvious. Alas, the devil’s in the implementation. The answer is, of course: find those passionate teachers and put them in front of students. But where do you find enough passionate teachers to kick something of this magnitude off? Something that will take the US school system from being ranked 18th in the world back to number 1?

There are those who blame the poor performance in the educational system on the heterogeneous composition of the United States.  To that I say, hogwash. The link above indicates a few possibilities as possible causes, including how subjects are taught here in the US, which tends to focus more on procedure than concepts — something I have personally noted myself, which is part of the reason I elected to homeschool my kids.  But to teach concepts, rather than procedure, the passion of the teacher will have a strong bearing on how well those concepts are taught, and how eager the students will be to learn them and use them.

It is my strongly held opinion that the nature of the bureaucracies surrounding the teaching establishment in the US has a lot to do with how poorly the US ranks in the world. Teachers are not as free as they should be on how they create their lesson plans and chose the materials to be taught. Too many subjects are thrown at the students all at once. And there also seems to be an over-emphasis on homework that eats up more of the kids’ time away from school which takes away from the time the kids have to  just be kids, to explore their own interests, or even to allow their parents to do supplemental schooling.

When I was homeschooling my kids, I only spent 2-3 hours with them on a couple of subjects, and we would focus on different subjects over the year, one or two at a time. I would also incorporate the homeschooling into our general lives, constantly introducing them to new concepts  and ideas in a very informal way.  In many respects what I did — and still do — would not even look like homeschooling to the average person.  Currently, I had to enroll them back in public school and they do very well, so my approach obviously worked.

But I digress. Where I spent 2-3 hours a day, the public school system spends 6 hours, plus they also give the students an additional 1-2 hours of homework every night.

The homework, in my state at least, counts as a major part of the grade, and if you don’t do it, you may be dropped one or two points on your letter grade. Your “A” may become a “B” or even a “C”. In some cases, it could get even worse.

And from the homework I’ve seen, it seems to focus much more on doing rote procedures than learning new concepts. It seems to be much more about  “busywork” than about actual learning and exploration of the subject. It seem to be much more about generating paperwork for the bureaucratic engine than it is about giving the desire and thirst for knowledge to our kids. If anything, it may serve to burn many kids off from the notion that education can be fun and rewarding.

In essence, it would appear the the US school system is geared and design to accomplish the exact opposite of my goals. It would seem that our public schools deliberately set out to destroy the natural and innate curiosity that our precious kids are born with.

If creating the desire to fish could feed nations, what effect would destroying the desire to fish have? Or worse, even creating a resentment of fishing? What effect would destroying the desire to learn have on our individual kids and on the nation as a whole?  In a world of increasing globalization, where would it leave this country financially? From a social standpoint, where would it leave this country? What kind of a future we could possibly hope to have with a nation of today’s knowledge and education-hating youth becomes tomorrow’s adults and the society at large?

We already are beginning to see some signs of this degradation in the overall quality of our nation. Look at what’s been going on with politics for the past couple of decades.  Witness what the media chooses to focus on and report. Note how the strong trend to “dumming down” the details of the coverage is. Or the interest in science and mathematics.  Or appeals to “just believe” rather than “gaining understanding”. Look at the quality of what’s available on the hundreds of channels on Cable and Satellite TV.

When you look at all of these fine elements and put the picture together, you begin to see the “big picture”. You begin to see where society as a whole is already headed, and you can also see what some of the causative factors are. It’s all there in front of your eyes, so look for yourself. Don’t take my word on it.

But before you lapse into  a state of perpetual despair,  ask yourself the question of what can be done to fix it.

It all boils down to individual action. It all boils down to focusing on what’s in your own backyard first. The old adage of “think globally, act locally” is close to the mark, but not quite spot on.  Let me modify that adage a bit:

Watch Globally
Think Locally
Act Locally
Solve Globally

Think about it for a moment. What influence do you have? Most of us only have local influence, so it really does not make much sense to spend too much time and effort on the global situation unless you have the power to affect global change. But if you have that kind of power, you are most likely already part of the problem rather than the solution.

But in thinking locally, you see real things that you can do something about. However, we still have to keep an eye on what’s going on globally, so we stay informed with information that may even effect how we think locally.

Most of us only have the power to act locally. So, if you have local focus with some input of the global situation, you can be much more effective locally.

And finally, the last part — Solve Globally.  This is where the collective effects of our individual local actions results at changing the global landscape. No government can stand against individuals taking local action. Governments typically don’t have a grasp on the whole notion of emergent systems and would be caught off-guard, which is the whole idea. We don’t wait around for the government  to fix the problem for us, because, frankly, it never will. I mean, think for a moment. How many decades has it been where you’ve heard politicians promising a “fix” to  the education problem in the US, yet we’re worse off than ever before? What was the whole “no child left behind” rhetoric all about, besides a sneaky way for the armed forces to get a mailing list on our kids for purposes of turning them into cannon fodder?

I leave it to you, then, to take action locally and solve the mess we are currently in globally.

A good friend of mine sent me this link on an article about how China has taken an interest in Ithaca HOURS. I find it a fascinating subject the possibility of establishing local currencies and economies that are immune to the economic geopolitical hedging, speculation, manipulation and control. Indeed, it would be a good thing to have stable economies free of government control and exploitation. It would be a good thing to have some means of currency backed by something other than fiat.

It is not my intention here to discuss — or even criticize — traditional economic theory, though some of what I state will give that appearance. But for the longest time I have always been curious about currency, instruments of trade, and the human perception of value. What is is that compels so many of us to work long hours and do other things in order to gain a count of “tokens” that we then use in trade for exchange of goods and services? What is the intrinsic basis of “worth?” Why would we do something for, say, a million dollars, but not ten thousand? Just what is this human psychology of value?

Let us begin with the Individual. That would be you, me, any one person of sound mind living in this world. An Individual has needs, wants, and a desire to live. An Individual has a level of self-esteem and a level of self-worth. An Individual has certain talents, skills, traits, and — well, yes — value.

But just what is this “value”? We normally take this and other human concepts for granted, but I find it extremely helpful from time to time to take a critical eye at these default notions in order to try to understand them and what underlies their function in our inter-dependent world.

It is clear to me that “value” occurs at the Individual level. An Individual posses the notion of “value”, and, of course, that notion is relative to the Individual. And let me state this: “value” is the Individual’s perception of the exploitability of a thing. In this discussion I do not use “exploit” in a negative context, but as a neutral way to describe one’s desire to leverage advantage, which is something we all do every day of our lives. We “exploit” our cars to get us from point A to point B. We “exploit” the people we may hire to get useful goods and services out of them. At some level, we even “exploit” our friends so that we can have a sense of community. So I don’t see the concept of exploitation as a negative. Where the negative comes in is when we may exploit other individuals without just compensation. If we exploit the window washer to wash our windows but fail to pay him the agreed-upon compensation, then we have cheated that Individual and that is NOT a good thing. But this is an important issue to my discussion as well, because Governments exploit Individuals all the time without just compensation. Yes, it’s true, and think about it. Every government around the world exploits its Individuals under its rule without just compensation. And the modus operandi of that negative exploitation is based on manipulating the perceived “value” of government-created currency by means of fiat, global politics, controlling financing and debt and the like.

But I digress. But hold that thought. Individuals create the notion of “value”, and Individuals act on that perception of value for reasons of exploitation.

Individuals living in a group is what we call “community”. Each Individual member of that community has distinctive talents and skills, and may also hold various distinctive resources that may be used in trade. Some of those resources may be the result of other trades the individual engaged in in the past; other resources may be due to what the Individual himself created. (And in this discussion, I use the pronouns “him”, “he”, etc. strictly in the epicene and is understood to also mean “her”, “she”, etc.)

It is clear, therefore, that “value” is created due to human effort, and that time is involved in the creation of that “value”. It is also clear that all Individuals possess within themselves the means to create “value” of one form or another, and so to trade in time units of human effort seems all too natural. Because, in effect, we are trading some intrinsic value based on time spent creating these things we value.

But it is also clear that the time of one Individual may be more “valuable” than the time of another Individual. A window washer’s time, for instance, will simply not equate to the time value of say, a neurosurgeon. A brick layer’s time, while a valuable skill to be used, will not be of the same value as, say, a software engineer. 2 hours of a software engineer’s time might be worth 20 hours of a window washer’s time.

So how a thing is valued also has to do with supply vs. demand, which sounds like “old school” economics. Old-school economics is not necessarily a “bad” thing or even a “wrong” thing, but it does represent an incomplete picture, because it does not attempt to describe the human nature and perception of “value”, but takes it as read and creates artificial idealized notions based on some highly idealized assumptions on what “value” is, which, in the opinion of this writer, simply does not represent reality.

But back to my main point, Individuals with diverse skills, talents, and resources live in Communities for the mutual benefit of exploitation. Members of a community exploit each other for mutual gain. The concept of mutual gain is an extremely important one to keep in mind — it means that the net value of the community at large actually increases over time. With every single honest transaction, new value is created where none existed before. That value — unless it is subjected to negative exploitation by externalities — accumulates over time and results in a stronger community overall.

Strong communities are very good things. Strong healthy communities create their own intrinsic safety nets — should a particular Individual member of that community befall “hard times”, that Individual can be — and usually is — helped back on his feet by the strength of the Community and the collective value that has been accumulated over time. And this takes place without taxes, without force, without the usual mistaken “Robin Hood” notions that many in the United States and other socialist countries see as a “necessary” thing to help those “in need”.

Strong healthy communities help to foster good self-worth, self-identity, and self-responsibility. In such a positive atmosphere, Individuals are encouraged to be creative and to find newer and better ways of creating value that all with benefit from. That can only result in the community becoming ever stronger and more resilient. An emergent phenomenon that is truly wonderful is the notion of “value” to the community, which is not to be confused with “community values”, which is a moral, not economic connotation. When an Individual understands what is valuable to the Community he is a member of, he then understands how he can exploit what is value to increase his own worth and wealth, whilst adding even more to the collective value of the Community at the same time!

So if all I have said here is true, why don’t we see more of the same today? Recall, if you will, I mentioned externalities that may get in the way of this wonderful dynamic of Communities creating their own wealth. External agencies that seek to extract wealth from a community and from individuals. External agencies that seek to exploit value without just compensation, and does so by force, removing Individual choice from the equation.

You see, taxes have to be done by force for the plain reason that there is no just compensation for the Individual. If there were, force would not be necessary. If someone were to give me 3 pieces of gold for every 2 pieces I gave away, there would be no reason to hold a gun to my head! But, on the other hand, I only get back one piece of gold for every 2 I give away, I would not do so willingly, so a “gun” would have to be held to my head to force me to do it. That agency looking to give me back less value for my hard-earned wealth could only do so by way of giving me a reason to fear if I did not comply. In effect, they would have to threaten me with stealing even more of my wealth, destroying even more value!

Think about this for a moment. What effects would this have on a Community? The community that has to also deal with being robbed of its collective wealth could never become very strong. It could never create a good intrinsic “safety net” for its individual members. Creativity would not have the payoff it otherwise would. All Individuals would be discourage by the specter of getting less back for hours spent, not more. There would be no incentive for self-improvement, self-innovation, and self-actualization that is so important for growing healthy communities of Individuals.

Now, those in that communities that are less well-off will have to depend on the external agencies — that looted the community wealth in the first place! — for “help”. And that “help” will undoubtedly be of far less quality than what the Community itself could’ve offered would it have been allowed to grow strong on its own. The “help” would not be of a positive variety — one of “teaching one to fish for a lifetime”, but for a lifetime of dependence. This only has the impact of further undermining the community and its collective self-worth and collective self-esteem.

Whenever something “has” to be done “by force”, that is usually a very big warning sign that things have already gone horribly wrong. And that changes must be made. These externalities care nothing for the Individual, but have their own goals in mind for dominance and power. Whenever power and control becomes more important than the Individual, no good can come of that. Whenever the use of force becomes routine rather than the exception, we have already lost the way and freedom is compromised. Whenever we are forced to give up value in exchange for something of less value — or nothing at all, building collective and Individual wealth becomes impossible, and we forever become slaves to those externalities that see to use its negative exploitation tactics on us.

In a world where negative exploitation by powerful externalities have become the rule, how do we deal? One way is to create a system of fair exchange that exists outside of the powers to be negatively exploited. If my friend values my time and I value his time, we have a mutually valuable relationship that would be hard to negatively exploit by some external agency. We have a mutual trust and a mutual expectation that can go a long way to building our collective wealth. And this happens solely on the basis of exchange of time — my time for his time and his time for my time at a mutually agreed-upon exchange rate. And there would be nothing there for some externality to manipulate or force to our mutual disadvantage. We can build our collective strength as a community and get much accomplished.  And we would be immune to the shocks and downfalls of the global economic jungle.

As I stood on the Shores of Infinity, a break in the Serenity occurred, and for an instant the Ocean was replaced by the fiery Tarpits of Flajann. Flajann, the Indestruction; Flajann, the Austere; Flajann, the Giver and Receiver of Infinite Justice with Perfect filamentary tendrils reaching out to all Existence.

Awoke, I stood watching the backdrop of a smoky orange-red extent to the horizon beneath a sinking Sun . I silently contemplated this phase of Existence and its Significance as the Sun became increasingly obscured by the rising black and grey pillars of sadness as far as the eye can see.

I looked down at my hands in despair. The failure of my hands were rather complete, not being able to hold on to the oceanic serenity. For the replacement of the soft crashing of the ocean waves to be replaced by the horrid crackling sound of things burning is quite a loss, indeed.

Somewhere from within a Determination to Not Loose All Hope flashed forward, hands giving off a faint blue-violet glow, which instantly shifted the Shores of Infinity back to the Ocean, with its familiar crashing waves and receding tides.

Even though I now stand amidst the tides again, I stand shaken. For I deal with Universal Forces that are no mean feat to control and guide, and yet I must tunnel though Reality to create a Future despite the Tarpits that always seek dominance at the edge of my perception.

Yet I shall move forward even as I am shaken, because the 2 stars in the distant horizon are worth my while. I therefore fill the present with Future Realities  Serene to combat the Tarpits.

I awoke this morning. That in and of itself is a noteworthy goal.

As I got up, I noticed that I was standing on the Shores. The sand beneath my morning feet, the rocks, the sea gulls, the crashing of the oceanic waves amidst a million years of evolution to be heard by ears fashioned by the ancient need for survival.

I found that I can stop any wave, any whitewater crash, any tidal, any disaster by just waving my hand gently in the air at it. There, done, frozen in space-time.

And then the Shores beneath my feet themselves shift in scope beyond all measurement into a star field, a galaxy slowly turning beneath my feet, or a whole field of galaxies, or a supernova, or a quasar, or the entire universe itself. Like sands on the Shores of Time so are the Stars in the whole of the Universe. Like the rippling of the waves along the Shoreline, so are the Great Cosmic Events throughout all existence. Like the crash of the waves on the rocks, so are the supernovae, the galatic collisions, stars spiraling down great black holes flashed into x-rays.

I stand at the apex of 13 billion years of space-time evolution to contemplate its Path, and wonder at all the details of its Grandeur. I am known to the intricate fabric of Space-Time, and it is known to me.

I AM. I am one with the Universe and everything in it.

I KNOW. I know and understand The Path.

I WAIT. I await my time to take my rightful place in this Universe as a diminutive speck of dust wrapped in billions of light-years of existence.

I LOOK. I look upon the seascape of all existence and see myself staring back at me. The Circuit is now Complete, as it is time for the Next Phase.

And so I stand, thinking.

Back when I was much, much younger, I veered off the path of my intellect and became “a believer” of Christianity. Not only was this a mistake but a great waste of 4 or 5 years of my life. But it did a lot of damage — all that stuff about heaven and hell and “god’s chosen” and what not. Oh man.

It took me another 3 or 4 years to return to my place of intellect. I had to re-examine all my beliefs, and later I would come to question the very nature of belief itself. I did not leave any stone unturned. I questioned everything and sought answers.

And this was an amazing time, because I did get answers, and I was made better for them. I saw the world — indeed, the entire universe — through new eyes, the eyes of Knowledge and Understanding.

I called this period of my life “The Reconstruction” — but really, it was more of a Renaissance than anything. I mean, there was so much I learned. Fractals opened up my eyes to new possibilities. Indeed, Fractals was very key in helping me understand how complexity can arise out of simplicity. That gave me a very powerful basis for being able to assert — to my own tortured brain — that “god” was not required for the existence of the Universe, contrary to years of the lies I had been fed by the Christians.

I went on to learn more and more — about Complex Dynamical Systems, Artificial Life, Self-Adaptive System, and the like. For the first time in my life, not only could I understand that a “god” was not only not required, but also extremely unlikely.

I then learned about Memes and Thought Contagions from the seminal book published by Aaron Lynch. I began to understand the underlying mechanisms behind “beliefs” and how they are transmitted and themselves evolve to retransmit themselves. This put not only religion in a new light, but politics, the media, and many other things about the human social animal.

This forever changed my perception of the human — basically, human beings are little more than hosts for completing memes, some of which also influence behavior , and the memes that program for their own retransmission tend to crowd out those less successful at doing so.

Wow, most humans are little more than Mindless Vessels of Beliefs. This makes for a very dim view of the human-nodes out there, a very frightening view, one that I wish were not true, but I cannot deny my own reasoning on the matter.

And so, such more or less concluded my First Renaissance. As the Star Child in 2010 said, “I used to be Dave Bowman”.

Many years spun by, many challenges, many attacks, many triumphs, and a couple of darling girls along the way. Both girls make me very proud.

And now, once again, I find myself at the crossroads. But this time it’s entirely different. This time, it’s not a wasted flirtation with religion and other frivolous beliefs, but one of misplaced trust that has betrayed 15-16 years of investing in the emotional and material well-being of another. You know, marriage. But it goes beyond that, really.

I also find that science and mathematics has progressed much in the intervening years, and I’ve fallen behind a bit. There are new sets of “terrible secrets” yet to be uncovered. There are the futures of my kids. There’s my own future, and those I care about. And there’s the future of the entire Human Race to consider, and how I might be an influence there.

And so the need for my “2nd Renaissance” is at hand.

I couldn’t live in a better area for it — Greater Boston — where I have contact and access to some of the finest libraries and minds in this country. I have many Very Big Goals for the future. They will by no means be easy to accomplish. But then, what’s life without a challenge?

And so I go forth into the desert…

It would appear as though some people see me as a “threat”, a “danger”, and act out of fear of my presence even though I have done nothing to provoke such reactions. I am at a loss to understand why this happens.

It’s as though my very existence is some sort of “crime” or “threat”. But I don’t get that.

I normally would not care except those so predisposed to such misgivings oftentimes act on those fears, leaving me to deal with the fallout. I get to pay the price and they get to get away with it. I am told a lot of lame excuses, even things like “put yourself in their shoes”, as though there is some justification that I am supposed to be understanding about.

So not only do I “get into trouble” for merely existing, I am also supposed to understand and sympathize for those who would complicate my existence due to no fault of my own.

But such people can be quite devastating and cause a lot of damage. The bitter divorce I am going through right now is an indirect fallout of such behavior.

But these people go without consequence with their own lives. I am the one left holding the bag. They soon forget the trouble they’ve caused me; I tread water just to keep from sinking due to the fallout.

So why does this happen? What is the explanation? Am I truly the “most dangerous man alive” without even knowing it? And what makes me so “dangerous”, anyway?

Some tell me the reason is that I am a “intelligent black man”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Makes no sense to me. Aside from my supposed intelligence the only other “dangerous” thing about me is my dermal chromatics. But I truly don’t see what’s so dangerous about that, either.

I care about a lot of people. Indeed, I care about the entire world. I attempt to do what little I can to make the world a better place for my kids, so that they may have a hope and a future. That they may grow up in a world that is wonderful and prosperous; that they may grow up in a world that appreciates intellect, accomplishment, and creativity.

But many stand in my way now, and many sit in judgment of me. Why? Why are so many so critical of who and what I am? Why is it that some automatically question me without knowing a darn thing about me, not even my very name? Why is it that I must always be “on alert” for the idiots of the world; that I cannot simply relax and enjoy life, even in my “advance age” of 46? Why, oh why?

All I want to do is look up at the stars at night. Wonder about the mysteries of quantum mechanics and how that couples with the macro world. Explore the deep unknowns of complex evolving systems and how everything in the universe ties into it. Or be astounded at the beauty of a single flower. Or create wonderful algorithms that no one thought of before. Or ponder the inscrutable aspects of number theory. Or get lost all the newest and latest discoveries on DNA and genetics in general. Or…

And yet what I get to put up with is anything but sublime. Some of the things I’ve been falsely accused of would astound you. Everything from “owing” $23,000,000 to the IRS to “kidnapping” my own wife and kids that willingly wanted to come home with me a few years back. Well, long story. And I’ve got a lot of them.

All I ever wanted to do was look up at the sky and see, experience, and understand the majesty of the universe. And share part of that wonder with my kids.

Am I such a bad person? You be the judge!