Diverse Philosophy

For a New Economics: New version of ebook by Cage Innoye

2012-02-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

For a New Economics, 200 pages, PDF

Version 3 now available. This version includes new articles discussing creativity and forming a creative economy. Also there are articles on multiple values and measures, new economic organization and a programme for the recession.

Table of Contents:

6 Introduction

Economy of multiple measures and diverse method:

7 What to do after Occupying Wall St? -- Create a new stock exchange

20 After Wall Street, an Economy of Multiple Values and Measures

27 The Essential Social Problem Is the Economic System

34 5 Themes of a “Metric Market Economy” or “Diverse Economy”

35 Will There be a Recovery from Capitalism?

49 What is Economic Power?

53 Wanted: New MBAs, New Entrepreneurs, New Economists

57 Create Money!

62 The War of Quantity and Quality – the history of economics

64 Measure vs. Immeasure, the limits of economics

66 Das Kapital is Kaput, The Wealth of Nations is Spent

67 On Diverse Economics

81 New Mendicants for a New Economy

Creativity and economics:

82 Time for a New Economic System -- 20 Features of a Creative Economy

89 Silicon chips, Moore’s law and forming a creative economy

94 Social Creativity uses various types of organization

103 Mis-creativity will keep the US in Recession

106 A National Mis-Creativity Index

108 Proletariat, Polletariat, Pandermath and Geniotariat

113 The New Creative Class: the Geniotariat

115 Social Institutions and Creativity

118 Creativity is an Unstoppable Force of History

128 A Basic Overview of Creativity

139 Creativity and Thought Methods

144 5 Features of Social Creativity

Recession and other issues:

146 Will USS Titanic Hit Foreclosure Iceberg?

149 There Is No Federal Budget Crisis

152 Militarism in a one world economy is not very smart

154 Health is the Infrastructure of the Infrastructure

156 Methods of Creating Diverse Wholes -- government, economics, neurology

160 Economics Maintains Our Broken Whole

165 A Triage Program for the US Economy -- some initial thoughts

173 Consider Local Investment Banks and a New Kind of Federal Reserve

175 US Universal Healthcare is Law – Next step is a strategy to reduce costs

178 Conservative Economics is Based upon Magic, Cruelty, Fatalism & Greed

183 Money is there to Fix the Economy – There is a way out

188 Poverty and Job Programs

191 Whom does an Economy Serve? – for a new economy of self growth, giving and living things

194 Why not Declare a National Bankruptcy?

197 Control Land Prices and Reduce Mortgages

New book: "About Individuality", free ebook by Cage Innoye

2012-02-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

About Individuality, 130 pages, PDF

New book. A collection of articles about individuality, identity, unhealthy individuality and Tea Party thinking

Table of Contents

4 Healthy vs Unhealthy Individuality -- about the Tea Party

7 Individuality, Sociality, Social Ground

12 Tea Party Creates New Philosophy: Bodyism

19 On the Development of Identity

36 Tea Party could never pull off an Occupy Wall St

40 Freedom is all about Difference

43 Diverse Thinking and its Social Strategy -- A Brief Summation

48 Adam Visits a Tea Party City – a short story

61 Wall Street Response: Occupy Obama? Dump the GOP/Tea Party?

67 The Way of “Directness” – rely on yourself and not “saviors”

72 14 Personal Axioms of Diverse Thinking

83 9 Themes in the Evolution of Personality and Identity

87 Atlas Shrugged But Never Hugged About Ayn Rand and the Tea Party

107 Notes on the Individual

123 Resist Identity Theft

128 Does Marketing Try to Extend Adolescence, the Culture of High School, and Clique-thinking?

New Version of "Philosophy for a Diverse Planet" available -- free ebook by Cage Innoye

2012-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

Philosophy for a Diverse Planet, 285 pages, PDF

This is a free ebook by Cage Innoye.

Version 3 now available. Key articles gathered together. Articles are about diverse thinking, diversity, individuality, creativity and diverse wholes.

Topics include economics, history, theology, psychology, education, individuality, nature, individuality, time, methods and more.

Also includes summary articles of key ideas in this philosophy to simplify things.

View or download from this site:

https://sites.google.com/site/cageinnoye/download-book

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Introduction

Introductory and summary articles:

16 We Live in a Great Diverse

24 14 Personal Themes of Diverse Thinking

35 23 Social Principles of Diverse Thinking

49 Are You a Diverse Thinker?

51 Freedom is all about Difference

54 Diverse Thinking and its Social Strategy -- A Brief Summation

Economic articles:

59 After Wall Street, an Economy of Multiple Values and Measures

66 What to do after Occupying Wall St? -- Create a new stock exchange

78 Five themes of a Diverse Economy

79 What is Economic Power?

83 Wanted: New MBAs, New Entrepreneurs, New Economists

86 Create Money!

Psychology articles:

90 Your Mental Diverse is composed of Many Minds

98 Elaboratia – the suppression of emotional development

102 Nine Ways your Psychology is undermined – about the differentiation of personality

Government:

106 For a Direct Democracy

Education:

112 On Schools – A Whole Human Being Requires a Whole Curriculum

Directness and the Empiric:

115 The Way of Directness – rely on Yourself and not Saviors

121 On the Empiric

Love:

125 Love of the Different

History:

128 Replacing Karl Marx's view of History ---The theory of Historical Differentiation

Nature:

142 Our “Diverse” also includes Nature and Animals

146 Reduce our Footprint, Control our Ex-natures, Think out of the Human Box

148 Will Our Lower or Higher Natures Win?

153 Ex-Suffering and Ex-Nature are Connected to Suffering and Nature

154 Nature and Human Differentiation

International relations:

156 For a Planet of Diversity and a Planet that is a Whole

161 A Ten Commandments for Nations

Creativity:

163 Creativity uses the Power of Differentiation

167 Creativity is an Unstoppable Force of History

Spirit:

175 The Golden Rule

176 On the Entemple – the Temple within

178 The Shifting Dynamic of Your Two Spirits

188 You are Not Mere “Matter”

Individuality:

189 On Healthy Individuality and Society

196 Healthy vs Unhealthy Individuality -- about the Tea Party

200 Bodyism, an Extreme Individuality in the USA

Identity:

208 On the Development of Identity

224 “You”, “They”, “Me”, “We” and Your Identity

Time:

227 The Manipulation of Time – the rise of "Momentia"

234 Simultry: a form of oppression that arises from differing stages of development

Methods:

236 Diverse thinking and the synthesis of ideas

238 The Methods of Range Thinking

242 The World of Iso-thinking

248 Some Important Points About Differentiation, Undifferentiation, Wholes, Subsumes, Evolution and Reproduction

250 What is Differentiation? – a simple formula: individuation, duality, evolution, chaos

254 The Dialectic of Progress, Striving and Value

260 Returning to the Subsume

278 Examples of Differentiation and Undifferentiation

280 Nature’s Genio, Differentiation and Undifferentiation

281 Some Principles of Multiple-perception and the Multi-cultural

283 Methods of Creating Diverse Wholes – government, economics, neurology

Replacing Karl Marx's view of History ---The theory of Historical Differentiation

2011-12-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

Is history just chaos? Does it have any rules or direction? Now that communism has collapsed and capitalism has suffered a major catastrophe where are we to go? Are things going to get better for humanity? Are the negative features of modern culture going to get worse? Can we learn something from the past?

This is a very confusing age, there is no about that. So many things are happening all at once. The speed and complexity of events is mind numbing. Is there a perspective that can help us unravel all of these crazy things? Yes, there is: Going back to the Beginning. Here is a starting point that gives a thread to follow. This thread shows us how this modern world developed, and therefore tells us how to fix the modern world.

An important phenomenon is happening right now in Asia. Two peoples are at war today in a very interesting and symbolic conflict — Afghanistan and America, a very tribal culture vs. the most advanced culture on the planet, one culture near the beginning, one very far away. This raises some very interesting questions about history. This event too points us back to the beginning.

We can study and create a theory of history. Without one we will not know where to go from here. History then will not evolve, it will not progress, it will just become reruns of old shows.

Karl Marx gave us a thesis of human development, it failed. There is really no other sweeping account of our racial trek, unless you want to consider the view that modern culture, in particular, modern American culture is the end result of history and the future of history. And most of us know this can’t be right, though we must agree elements of the future are indeed manifested in America.

Karl Marx gave us a perspective on history focusing on class struggle. It was called “historical materialism”. Here is offered a very different thesis that is based on the principle of “differentiation”. In the cosmos all things differentiate over time, they become more diverse, more individual, more particular over time. This is a long-term process in the world too; call it “historical differentiation”.

In this view, class struggle is incorporated as one type of “differentiation” though it is modified here. The general notion addresses not only classes but all forms of inequality — gender, race and more. The thesis also appends the class issue with problems in the formation of individuality. It addresses the rise of social institutions, the rise of complexity in society, and the war of institutions. It addresses the consequent war of minds within the brain. It addresses the appearance of false ideologies and delusions like consumerism and more. Historical differentiation accepts certain of Marx’s ideas but finds itself at odds with many more, including the Marxist strategy of centralization, statism, materialism and more. Marx prematurely summed up a thesis that led on a road against differentiation, difference, individuality and creativity.

What is the fundamental theme of history? It is the same as the whole cosmos! It is differentiation — the creation of difference, individuality, particularity, complexity. Humans are no different than over living organisms or inanimate things. This force produces galaxies, planets, living things, Humans, Human minds and Human society.

This differentiation must begin somewhere. For the cosmos it begins, at least as far we can trace it now, in the Subsume of a singularity and then the “big bang”. A Subsume is an origin point where all things are fused and confused, and all future things exist in potential. At some point, there was an Earth Subsume for nascent life, though we don’t know yet what it was and when, but it “elaborated” outward into many species and an ecosystem. Then Human Subsumes appeared in evolution too. For the purposes here concerning modern history, we begin in another Subsume — that of the tribal village long before the rise of “civilization”.

The village splits into parts, differentiation causes this. Class groups arise at a certain point, classes of all sorts, inequality appears. Institutions arise — church, economy, government, science and technology, education, art, theatre etc. Affluence, specialization and organization propel this process. As elites grow wealthy and powerful they take over the direction of the former tribe. City states evolve, the beginnings of empires appear.

The extended family decays and the nuclear family appears. The once friendly community becomes a hostile camp. Women become second class citizens.

Individuality arises as people become more aware of their unique identity and inner powers. A new level of moral conscience appears. Efforts to understand and manage our complex minds appear.

In addition, individuals are disconnected from the new state; they are now alienated and alone. They either accept the new situation or they band together into new religions of both individuality and connection or they rebel. People now seek individual freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. A citizen now has an individual soul, a personal conscience.

The mind also differentiates; where all was once fused, now a split begins. Experience, knowledge, techniques and sciences develop these new sub-minds of logic-science vs. spirit vs. subconscious vs. the mind of doing vs. emotions vs. wisdom vs. creativity etc. All once mixed in a whole mind, all interconnected, now this is shattered; people choose which house to live in and champion it.

And the Subsume mind that is the guardian of the whole is ridiculed and tossed aside. It is replaced with a kind of logical mind that does not see wholes only parts, only distinct and separate things, but never a big connected whole. Today this mind reigns and suppresses the rest of our neurology.

Old tribal perspectives are gone. Economics that was supposed to help the whole tribe has vanished, classes separate themselves and get rich. Education that was supposed to be about life has been replaced by new curriculums. Communication once two-way and direct is replaced by one way communication from a distant bureaucrat or godlike king.

Many more events also occur -- mythology that united the tribe is replaced with religions of elites and power. Spirit, the mindset that arises from connection to community, to Nature, to the origin of all things is replaced with a new “spirit” of worship and wealth and control.

Work once a varied activity that reflected varied needs is now for the purpose of enrichment of others or self. Consumption once limited by other social needs and natural limits now has no bounds.

A high priest replaces the old shaman; religion is removed from community and daily issues of life. Feelings of tribal brotherhood are gone. Intimate connection to Nature is gone. Ancestor religion is gone; no more connection to your family, immortality is redefined. The dreamtime is gone.

New ideologies arise, new religions, emperor worship; in modern times comes consumerism and philosophies of self absorption.

After the tribe, war is everywhere. The war of individuals, war of social classes, institutional war, mental war, and ideologies justifying this war, all appear together. And the fundamental war that is often not addressed, the war between Human and nature which also is a form of bad differentiation where the Human evolves great powers and differentiates himself from the ecosystem and environment, and thinks he is master and controller of planet Earth.

All this happens because of differentiation. But this is a very bad kind of differentiation, not a good kind. This process leads to break up, alienation, conflict, exploitation, manipulation and elitism.

This is a NEGATIVE DIFFERENTIATION which leads to warfare or chaos or subversion or control. Negative differentiation comes in various forms: one type is simply chaos and cultural warfare; another type expresses the suppression of all other social groups and institutions by a singular, primary elite; a third form might be called "shell culture" – this is where an elite professes to uphold democratic values, that is, true differentiation, but only does so superficially.

POSITIVE DIFFERENTIATION has yet to come, this is a self aware and self managed mindset which understands the historical process, anticipates potential problems, and manages a transition into a differentiated whole or new “village” – more complex but still connected. Positive differentiation supports free differentiation and the whole and merges the two into a differentiated or diverse whole.

Negative differentiation leads to some groups abusing other groups or the majority, the “people”. Or it leads to neglect of some groups or most groups by elite and controlling people. This process began thousands of years ago. It first produced city states all over the planet. In the West, this process has been most extreme and most advanced. But by “advanced ” it is not necessarily meant “healthy”.

This breakup of the original tribal Subsume did not have to happen; it did so because we were ignorant of the process and its consequences.

There was simply a lack of awareness of what was happening. These new events and behaviors have not been seen before; tribal lore, history and wise ones had no way of understanding or responding effectively to the new developments. In fact, it is only recently in Human history that the process is comprehensible. For tens of thousands of years the tribe and its mentality of the whole reigned.

Dissemblers and schemers appear, they know what they are doing, but they know too that they must hide their intentions. And be aware that the schemer has a great advantage over the moral person, for the moral individual is trusting and unsuspecting, while the schemer cannot be trusted for a minute. The schemer is no genius, this has nothing to do with any brilliant intelligence, it is simply the dastardly evil of it. No one suspects, for they have not seen this before. Who could have imagined the dissembling, double-mind of the new order? No one behaved this way before -- village members are lambs going to the slaughter.

Negative differentiation also led to trends of group think and statism...and then reactions to it. Some used the new differentiation to get into power; others used the old to stay in power. History became highly complicated with so many differing cultures and values and social systems. There is so much variety even amongst those who oppose variety and difference!

One thing which we can be sure of is that there are very few examples of true positive differentiation in history.

“Negative differentiation” or “negative elaboration” has dominated for some time. It brought chaos, strife, elites, statism and more. Yes, good things have happened too within all of this. Evolution and differentiation continued in these hostile conditions. Discoveries, inventions, industry and sciences, but much of this came as a super-focus or even obsession — because some ideology, class or institution ruled and promoted its biased view of the world and one Human need against all other.

The ancient Greeks were not like us at all though we like to pretend they were. In China and the East the negative differentiation did not go so far. One can argue that other cultures went in the extreme direction of the religious or imperial. And this is true but the West has outdone them in sheer excess.

In the beginning in the West an embryonic culture of self-aware differentiation arose. Its elements were combined -- merchant capitalism, the protestant religion of the individual, science, new art, frugality and work.

It gathered great support from the masses and came to power. At first this culture seemed to stand for a genuine differentiation of individuality, free thought, democracy, free economics and more.

Other cultures, at different times, showed potential for forming an embryonic collection of new behaviors. In other parts of the world, there were periods where such an embryonic culture of differentiation might have arisen but because of various factors and events it did not. In each case the new kind of culture would have been very unique and different from the Western model.

When the new forces came to power in the West, a reversal took place. Once in power, fresh groups took over, both political and economic. The stated values of the new order were then subverted over time.

A shell culture emerged which superficially stood for the great new values but underneath acted for their limitation. The shell system is run by shell people, these are dissembling minds, shell minds that say one thing publically, yet do another.

But the shell mind does not fool those who really look, for we can know the tree by its fruit. And its fruit is physical and economic suffering, and also includes the psychological pain that follows from their notion of “happiness” for the mainstream.

We begin to see big paradoxes and contradictions in modern culture -- economic freedom but really little economic freedom, individuality but without real choices, support of diversity but not really. And so on.

So historically speaking, negative differentiation has come to a transitional phase where it says one thing and does another. This creates a conflict in society of dreams and desires, and we are getting close to a break out. It stands for positive differentiation on the outside, but works for negative differentiation on the inside.

In Europe there was the rise of science, technology and capitalism. England was most advanced in this process however its cousin, America, outdid it. The USA is the most advanced in this kind of destructive elaboration about money, extreme individuality, alienation, consumerism, culture and mind wars, technology obsession and blindness to the environment. America has pioneered its unique form of negative differentiation with a sophisticated shell. At the same time, in the USA are seeds of an escape from this law of history, from this negative process into a healthy differentiation, though it will not be easy.

The USA beat its competitor the Soviet Union and won. And we must note something about Russia: The socialist revolution in Russia took place precisely because of a proximity to the tribe. Russia was not Western Europe, workers came from communal villages; they spontaneously created the Soviets, the worker’s councils, for self-administration.

Eventually, communism of course undermined the Soviets but the point is that communism was a reaction to history, not history itself. Communism arose as an antidote, partly seeing the process, mostly ignorant of so much more of the process. It did not recognize the whole process about evolving individuality, all realms of the mind, all forms of elitism and inequality, the diversity of all institutions. Thus communism opposed all differentiation, freedom, creativity and direct democracy.

When communism represented class struggle as a real issue, it made headway. And when it supported the liberation of colonies from imperialism, it grew in the third world. For a time it was the great hope, it was “revolutionary”. And for those a little critical, the class issue would lead to resolving other issues...but this did not happen, hope was lost.

In Marx’s immense thesis everything seemed to be addressed, so people assumed it would change everything. And it did, but not in good way. Terrible abuse and neglect happened in communism, though its original idealistic intentions were to escape this horrible historical progression. But it made the general mistake of opposing history and thus sidelined itself.

Marx’s thesis while correct on class struggle was wrong on many other issues. In the first phase of the rise of Western differentiation, we have capitalist and worker alike in the same movement, libertarian and common person. In second phase this movement naturally breaks up, as the workers and radical libertarians move toward a new ideology: Socialism.

Enter Karl Marx, who systematically critiques the entire culture and its historical process and critiques even the critics, his fellow socialists, he brings the extreme of ‘Communism”. Marx takes a stand against individuality for collectivism, poses materialism against religion, redefines a Human being as a material entity whose only want is work, jettisons personal morality for class morality, which is no morality at all. He advocates centralism and the state over the free actions of private civil society.

Marx aligns himself in a thorough one-to-one way against all the ideals of the early phase of capitalist culture. Thus Marx ended up with a severe thesis of history. This was his “scientific socialism”.

Communism was for a time a solution and many good people flocked to it. It took time to see where the theoretical problems might be manifested as real social problems. Or whether there were real theoretical problems at all, only perhaps, errors of bias or minor points. Marx’s ideas contained a seed of totalitarianism, but this seed did not germinate until there was severe political struggle, a survival necessity for the activists, and then disciplined parties, and then the real possibility of power.

It is no wonder that communism collapsed. It suppressed Human motivation and freedom. It had no vigor or verve, no élan vital. There was no innovation, no creativity in it – things that capitalism had learned to utilize.

And more, communist economics was not economics at all! It was politics masquerading as economics, its prime issue was ownership and control but there was no grasp of economics at all. To understand economics, one had to borrow the evolving science from capitalism, and this was not acceptable at all. To grasp economics, and this is very important, would be to understand that economics is inseparable from markets. And Marx opposed markets, and markets are the essential expression of economic differentiation. Markets express a special type of diversity -- competition, entrance and exit, innovation, direct economic control.

Economics is actually a very complex affair that cannot be contained in the oversimplified dialectics of socialist economics, of party control, and its 5 year plan for the workers whose "only want in life is to work". Healthy economics is ultimately about diversity and differentiation.

Thus, communism had no economic theory and thus no real economy; what it substituted was bureaucracy and command, politics for economics. And so it could not compete with capitalism on this playing field. Only on the playing field of global revolution did communism have a chance. But when these insurgencies ran their course, the true weakness of Marxism became clear. Without a diversity of firms, without competition, innovation, mass participation and mass motivation, socialism could not work. So with all its faults, capitalism was far stronger and it won or, at least, outlasted tubercular communism. Communism failed though it seemed for a moment it may have succeeded.

When the 3rd world exploded with revolution driving the US to the ropes in the 60s and 70s, it looked like capitalism was near its final eulogy. But eventually communism failed because it stood against the force of Human history, it opposed all differentiation, it took a stand against the very fundamental process of the cosmos, thus it only had a 74 year reign, miserable, blaming and impoverished as it was.

Communism fell. America was able to push further recklessly down its road; in 17 years America accomplished in 2008 a breakdown. The locomotive of the great train of history went off the tracks. Now nothing makes sense anymore, communism did not work, capitalism does not work. We are stuck in two boxes of history needing to break out toward a creative horizon.

Offered here is another way of looking at history — a history of differentiation and elaboration that did not have to be, but occurred because of ignorance, innocence, dissemblers, power and wealth.

Where are we then in this long Human evolution? In the USA, the program should be to accept individuality as a historical process, but promote healthy individuality and limit alienation and selfishness. Individuality should be appended with social activism, compassion and caring, and building new institutions. Principles and ideals are key — when your new world does not exist, you need ideas first to drive you to create it. The tribal person did not need ideals of community because the connection was there, they lived it every day. In our period, a heavy idealism is called for precisely because the world of these ideals is not here yet, and we must grip onto those ideals lest we fall into the amnesia and apathy of the mainstream.

Social institutions, principally, business and the economy should not be allowed to control or destroy other institutions like education, government, healthcare and more. Democracy should include a diversity of institutions that should work together. And direct democracy in government is the only solution to prevent politicians from serving their own narrow interests.

We should promote equality and help the victims of poverty. Negative psychologies and ideologies that come from consumerism and entertainment should be abandoned. And we should change the way we use our brains, we must use all our brains, and learn how to manage our complex minds and emotions. This is something that marketing and politics does not want because its aim is manipulation of our neurology.

The shell culture must be ended, its mentality of hypocrisy and contradiction. And all its strange dualities must be eradicated – for example, extreme individuality vs. group think. Shell minds have created a culture of vast complexity and self contradiction. But beneath the shell game we can see the core values and drives.

The general themes of historical differentiation are balance, connection and the whole. Complexity is good, individualization is good, creative development of new things is good, technological advance is good. As long as we stay connected, in balance, and as wholes, this is all very good. We cannot stop evolution and creativity, and we should not try. These are fundamental forces in the cosmos, in Nature, in Humans, in society, in our minds. But there are consequences and vigilance is needed.

Post-communist cultures are in a very different situation from the West. Communist nations come from a culture of undifferentiation, that is, a culture that stressed centralization and imitation and group think.

Peoples coming out of communism are then in a very different situation from those in the West. Moving out of a culture that lacks individuality, diversity and creativity is not an easy process. By degrees, by fits and starts, by revolutions and then pauses, the ex-communist moves toward a new culture. It is a long development. When people are ready then one group of issues at a time is tested and understood.

Over time many transformations must occur – in personal code, law, contracts, psychology, religion and the spirit, individual responsibility, democracy, organization and leadership, art and entertainment, freedom of speech and media, multiculturalism, education, the entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and so on.

The West offers some solutions to a post-communist culture. But there will be no blueprints from a sensei teaching its student. Western history and culture is complex and contradictory and just very different. It must be studied but ultimately the East is on its own.

The East will find it is exploring new territory, innovating, being creative. Very importantly, it will have to jettison any kind of dogmatic thinking. Thought methods must be flexible, open, creative, pragmatic and diverse. Further, simultaneous strategies may appear that are contradictory or incongruous to handle a complex problem.

At the same time the West has not solved all of its problems -- either because it has its own difficulties in these fields, or because it pursues the opposite extreme, due to its own peculiar complications and heritage. This is a long process and a staged process for the East, just as the West evolved through definite phases. The West constantly advises the East but the fact is that the West does not understand the culture, values, history and particular problems of these nations. The West can only partly understand.

These are the lessons of the history of differentiation. For Human beings this process must be conscious. From a tribal Subsume comes elaboration. In our minds we often return to tribal Subsumes, we mourn the loss of the days when we were all one, for the current world vexes us. We seek the “ideal” time or “dreamtime”.

We can mentally go back to the tribal whole. And we can study it as it exists in authentic wholes or remnant parts around the world. The modern nation can go back intellectually and emotionally, it can learn about healthy differentiation and diversity and healthy social wholes.

We should not throw out the great accumulation of knowledge and things that we have acquired; that would be stupid. But we should rearrange our complex world so that we have new organizing principles and new priorities. It is not a matter of destruction or enforced poverty, we want to preserve our gains in knowledge, science, methods, organization, affluence.

However, we should use them in the context of a society that is a whole, that is connected, that is diverse. We are making a trip, we are returning to the Subsume to learn a new behavior. In one sense we are moving in a great circle, returning to the original whole. In another sense we are ascending with our achievements and not letting go of them.

All of this new activity is a highly creative act where new institutions and methods and codes are imagined and produced. And ultimately of course we are recreating ourselves as new citizens of this new world.

The present and the beginning are connected. What happened in the past determined today. At the same time we are bringing the past into the future.

In the advanced nations there is a rising sense of dissatisfaction. Major movements to change are coming.

In the modern world, nations right behind the USA in evolutionary sequence should take pause, make a course correction. The US is most extreme down this road of negative differentiation.

Its people are advanced and suffering, so it is an “advanced suffering” if you will -- a suffering caused by an elite’s version of “happiness” for all.

Post communist countries are on their own path, they cannot use the West as a model; there are too many differences and opposites between the two.

Those peoples further back, not fully in the modern world, are closer to the tribal Subsume; they may be in the best position. They can avoid the suffering that we know as daily life. They may be in the most creative situation while moving toward more individuality they may learn from our mistakes, while we in the modern world have many bad habits to unlearn. They may be able to avoid social alienation, emotional dysfunction, manipulations of marketing and consumerism, and the double-think of shell cultures.

Human beings ultimately have a simple choice, we can express the fundamental force of Human evolution which is differentiation and evolution or we can try to misdirect it or oppress it or warp it.

Marx offered another alternative which was to simply escape from the process of differentiation by opposing all its forms. Communism took a leap from history into a sidetrack and thus history swiftly passed it up.

Marx offered a highly simplistic thesis of class struggle to answer all questions and solve all problems. We now know this is was quite wrong because our social world is much more complex, and the forms of possible oppression are far greater than one item.

But on the other hand, Historical Differentiation does offer a simple explanation of its own. It notes that the many complex issues can be understood by a simple concept: differentiation. The evolution of difference and parts and new buds is the underlying theme of history. And the simple solution to the potential problems that may occur is to link the diversity into a whole, a democratic, flexible whole. And not by means of centralism but by new sophisticated methods that ensure freedom and promote coordination.

Cage Innoye

Tea Party Creates New Philosophy: Bodyism

2011-12-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Just for Fun Series:

The Tea Party which has embraced the Objectivism of Ayn Rand has also have developed a psychology of its own: Bodyism. So just for fun let’s take a look at this bizarre new personality and try to understand this extreme egotism from another point of view:

Citizen suits up to protect individuality and personal freedom

The Crazy World of Bodyism
America has its share of problems of individuality, that is, of unhealthy individuality. But in the realm of extreme individuality, “Bodyism” is the most bizarre and dangerous.

Bodyism is the fallacy which states because we have separate bodies, therefore, we are completely separate entities from society. Bodyism is an extreme view that takes personal disconnection to absolute realms never seen before. Bodyism may at first seem to be an ideological or political perspective but it is at root a psychological state of mind. Libertarian and Conservative views have become so extreme that they have taken individuality, a very good principle of living, into the land of unhealthy individuality, of extreme individuality that goes far beyond egotism, alienation, narcissism or greed.

Here are some examples of its thinking:

The Bodyist feels that all government is an imposition; all government is a limitation of individual freedom. They believe there is no such thing as common need or interests. Bodyists want no taxes at all, because taxes are theft, funds are given to others, there is no gain for themselves. The Bodyist view of economics is a fully deregulated capitalism because this system will supposedly maximize their economic interests and freedom. There shall be no product or safety standards, no requirements of transparent reporting by corporations and financial institutions and so on. In the present economic crisis, there will be no government intervention to help anybody -- no aid to homeowners, the unemployed and small business, though Bodyists are homeowners in trouble, unemployed and small business people too. Government is the prime suppressor of the body.

On the subject of Nature and the environment, the Bodyist has no view because Nature and the Environment do not exist. There can be no destruction because it does not exist, only the body exists, nothing else. Reports of environmental destruction are all nonsense and hyperbole to them. Nature is something "out there" that has connection or meaning or impact upon a Human being.

The Bodyist has a fascination for guns because they are the symbol of their freedom against oppressors, and everyone is a potential oppressor. The gun protects the body, it is the sacred talisman.

The Bodyist view of poor people is that they are a nuisance and drain. The Bodyist offers them no help and no compassion because helping them would be a cost to the Bodyist in time, energy and money. There is no grasping that poverty is actually a cost to the Bodyist and the nation as a whole. The Bodyist is against universal healthcare though he might not have any healthcare himself. The Bodyist has no compassion, care or empathy for OTHER bodies.

The Bodyist view of discrimination is that it does not exist. The Bodyist declares that all are equal and free. The past legacy of discrimination which manifests itself in poverty, in lack of education, in unequal pay and opportunities, and in certain psychological behaviors is gone. The Bodyist does not grasp the realities of prejudice, the real palpable affects of it, that the victims need some help. The Bodyist disguises his bigotry behind principles of “equality” and “individual freedom”. Bigotry is in fact another side of Bodyism; it is another tool to cut off people, in this case whole social strata. Further, the Bodyists are big on fences and gated communities. And their biggest fences are names and categories to label people, to fence people in secure ideological pens. The Bodyist practices a first level prejudice against those not within his social group, and eventually he moves to the highest level of bigotry: Me against everyone else.

The Bodyist view of global relations is no global connections, The Bodyist is an isolationist par excellence. He wants no world organization in any form, for the world is a threat to his freedom. At the same time, the Bodyist is an imperialist and invader. Why? Because when he perceives some international threat to his interests, he attacks and subjugates. He will even hold the entire planet in a prison, if he thinks this will preserve the freedom of his “body”, his bodily essence. The Bodyist has no respect or allegiance to a Human species, he only serves his solitary body.

On education, Bodyists would rather not have others teach their children, but the problem is the Bodyist has no time for home schooling, so he seeks the sectarian private school. Connected to this, the Bodyist develops a curious view of the storehouse of human knowledge – he seems to be free of whole swaths of science, history, sociology. He lives ignorant of these lessons and laws, for it seems that knowledge is another restriction of the Bodyist’s freedom. The Bodyist relies only on his direct and immediate experience, meaning that knowledge in books or classrooms, experts or teachers is irrelevant because it has not flowered within his body.

While the reality of society is that it is a kind of network of human souls where each soul is a product of other souls and helps create new souls, the Bodyist sees no such spiritual connection between Human beings. There are no appreciations or obligations; the human soul stands completely alone. But is it lonely? Hardly, for it revels in itself, in self love, it is never lonely looking in the mirror of itself. But because of this, the Bodyist faces the ultimate final crisis: He cannot achieve a certain kind of immortality because this immortality is through the support, care and education of other souls. Because he does not help others, he can live through others. He has chosen to live outside the community of individuals and its progressive evolution.

This notion of the soul then extends to a kind of god too. The Bodyist who is religious has a god of his very own, he worships this god. But this god is interesting for it could care less about other Human beings, and is at war against all other gods. In ancient times, gods were of nations and peoples, today god has become private and hostile and petty.

This raises the issue of morality. Morality is a social process. The point of morality is social betterment, thus one must measure her or his morality by the results of one’s actions. But the Bodyist has no such measure, he practices his solitary code and never asks about the results of his work. If his morality makes the world a worse place, that is okay. The Bodyist does not have what many of us have, a conscience, he has substituted something else, “me” and its desires, self interest and obsessions. The Bodyist is his own mentor, counselor and priest, no other bodies are allowed to participate, and because of this he cannot measure his own behavior and improve his righteousness.

Let’s continue on, the Bodyist stands for the nuclear family. He champions this atomized unit as he champions the atomized individual. He mythologizes the lonely nuclear family isolated in the world, battling and suffering but proud and strong. He does not grasp that the family has been in misery for some time in modern society, after the breakdown of the original tribal village where the extended family gave fundamental help in the raising of children. Here was a more effective strategy for raising healthy children. The present system, which is not a system at all, throws all the obligations and work on two lonely suffering parents who can barely cope with jobs and career. The Bodyist is against all aid to families. And now the nuclear family is breaking down into the single-mother family, and this is actually the logical conclusion of the Bodyist social program. The family now disintegrates to the next level of disconnection, increasing the suffering of young women, and causing more separation between men and women. Ultimately, the nuclear family disperses into disparate bodies, just as the Bodyist would like.

About organization: The Bodyist is against all organization, period. There shall be no coordination, no central institutions, and we are not just speaking of authoritarian forms, Bodyists are against all forms of organization. The Bodyist says no government, no institutions for fiscal policy, no rules for a market economy, no mutual global institutions agreed to by consensus -- all organization is viewed with hostility. Why? Organization restricts the solitary body with rules and obligations.

Thus, the Bodyist has no understanding of the concept of a “system” -- there can be no overall principles or strategies or institutions that do overall regulating or coordination, even if they are minimal, for all of this suppresses the freedom of the parts, and the individual is the ultimate part. The Bodyist only sees atomization, chaos and conflict, and this is good. If the Bodyist were to design the human body there would be no organs to regulate hormones, heartbeat, growth, and the digestion of food because this would be a restriction of freedom and dictatorship by the some authoritarian organ or gland! So nothing could actually live, no complexities, that is. But since complexity is the nature of our cosmos, our bodies, our minds and our societies, then we cannot build anything. This is the result of the Bodyist program, we cannot construct a thing. We have parts but we are not allowed to assemble them, thus, the Bodyist causes the breakdown of the world. And why not? The Bodyist is already a product of atomism and chaos, he is already the result of a general breakdown and he loves it.

The disintegration of government, economics, global cooperation, the community, and the family eventually leads to the breakdown of the mind itself, for it is a complex whole too. The Bodyist has no conscience, and conscience is a very important regulator, one’s moral regulator. The Bodyist ignores science and human knowledge; this too is an attempt to evade regulation. The Bodyist is attracted to the most severe pragmatic thinking because he is only concerned with doing and action, and not with general truths. He is only concerned with the most immediate truth and his very subjective goals.

Further, the mind itself is a collection of competing minds – of logic, imagination, subconscious, memory and emotions. If we let all go free without coordination how will we fare? We need some management and this is what “wisdom” is, it is, essentially, the coordination of all the minds. Wisdom is more than profound observations, wisdom is a behavior that rises above all your minds, makes judgments, and finds ways to make the various minds work together. Without this power of wisdom, we live in pure chaos moment to moment, and a Bodyist program on the mind leads to this highly irrational and disorganized behavior. Without mental coordination and some restriction we are not capable of higher thought and organization of all of our minds to execute a plan. The Bodyist approach to our brain leads to chaotic behavior and a definite decline in wisdom, mental collaboration and planning.

The basis of Bodyism is psychological; it is not in the main a political ideology. Bodyism expresses an evolutionary breakdown of American culture away from connection, community, and diversity. It is an extreme version of the general process of isolation in US culture, and a very unhealthy form of individualism.

In sum, Bodyism is only concerned with the body, it perceives only the narrowest needs. Bodyism sees the individual cut off. And it reduces concerns to a material, body level.

So for example it does not grasp these:

Relationships are avoided because they are beyond the body, they involve other bodies.

Dialogue, compromise, collective agreements are not wanted by Bodyists, these limit the Bodyist's freedom.

Diversity is an imposition for a Bodyist because it means he must honor someone else's body.

General moral codes do not exist because they imply a social agreement and a limitation on the actions of the Bodyist.

Likewise the notion of mutual benefit is spurned in favor of chaos, paranoia and social conflict.

Communication which is two way is bad, for the Bodyist communicates only way.

Indirect connections are nonexistent, the Bodyist only sees what is directly in front of himself. He is an immediate thinker.

Indirect knowledge is spurned because it does arise out of the Bodyist experience.

Abstraction is disregarded, for someone focused upon the material body, abstraction is mystical, ethereal. Abstract ideas and abstract connections do not exist

Higher or centralizing institutions are not accepted because they restrict the body. In fact, organization in general restricts the body.

Empathy and compassion cannot occur for other bodies, these feelings can only be applied to the self.

Large entities that surround the solitary body such as Nature, environment, ecology, planet, global warming, cosmos and the Human race, cannot be comprehended by the Bodyist, because they are simply too big for the Bodyist to see, for he observes on a much smaller body level of bodily proportions.

Wholes do not exist, the Bodyist is not part of a whole -- unless the whole is himself, then in that case, the whole of himself is indeed magical and transcendent.

Thought is generally direct, immediate, pragmatic, short term and highly subjective. Because the mind of the Bodyist cannot rise above these behaviors which might involve other people or alien knowledge or looking too far ahead.

And so on.

The Tea Party not only brings to us a political ideology, it also begins to us a broad psychological programme, an entirely new way of living.

Cage Innoye

On the Development of Identity

2011-11-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

On the Meaning of "Identity"

We must make a distinction between "uniqueness", "individuality" and "identity". A Human being is a collection of traits, a diverse aggregation of elements. This collection of traits is unique for each Human, but being a collection does not give you "identity", because "identity" is the integration of all these traits into a coherent personality. And collections are ubiquitous in world, everything is a collection, there is nothing distinct about that.

According to Diverse theory we all are "individuals". The difference between individuality and identity is that identity is self-conscious, self-aware individuality.

Identity is about the whole of your personality, identity is the singular definition or meaning of your personality. Multiple identities are, in fact, not an identity at all, for identity must be integrated.

Identity is derived from a great complexity, including differences in experiences and conditions, the choices we make, our inborn and acquired personality traits, beliefs and values, likes and dislikes, style and manner, career and life path, and much more, in so many parts and layers.

(In this discussion, the idea of coordinating psyche elements into a whole, such as mind/body, imagination/reason, intuitive/empirical-sensory, analysis/emotion and various sets of skills and perceptions, is a different notion. This concept of “integration” addresses more the theme of general psychological management, which does have impact on personality and identity, but this is not the focus of discussion here. In Diverse theory this sort of coordination is essential and would be the subject of classes in personal training.)

On Superficial Identity

The body and the brain hold everything together on a physical level, but on the mental level there is a chaos until identity is organized by the mind. An image of yourself in a mirror or a photograph is not an identity; it provides a singular sign or tag of you. It only tells you that you are one thing, an organic organization. It is not a true "identifier" of you, it is mostly a cipher of you, as of yet not decoded.

The image of yourself can become a symbol of your identity later after some work. You are given a name, you have a look and that is a kind of identity; people first know you this way, but this is merely for "identification purposes". This is not your true identity, though they may know some of your identity traits.

When do you enter the vestibule of “you”? Birth opens the door, and youth takes the body into the entrance of identity. The many qualities and traits of yourself evolve throughout your life. Conflicts arise, new attributes are added, old ones are deleted, and new mixes appear; the friction and chaos of all this demands organization, coherence and rules. The sheer entropy pushes us to build an "identity". Not a simplified, narrow, one-sided, impoverished personality, but a personality that has found some basic agreement among all the elements on how to work together, on which voice gets priority in what situation, and on what peculiar trait gets added emphasis, because it is more fundamental to being "you".

On the Personality Builder

A part of your mind must step outside all the moments of yourself to facilitate, coordinate and build your identity. This “personality builder” knows what you really are, because it stands apart from the parts, it cares about your wellbeing and the success of your identity project. It provides faith that pulls you through all your moments, positive and painful, it coordinates all the pieces of yourself, it assembles them into a working collection, a "kollect", that is "you".

Your evolution is from chaos and a split persona to simple formulations of yourself. You evolve to a "you" that subsumes all the contradictory notions into one thing, to a “you” that is no longer self conscious of identity, and to a "you" that is a habit. And this "you" becomes simply your name. This name now stands for your personality collection, for all your biases. You finally become your name, when originally your name disguised your true nature.

This part of yourself, which steps out of your moments to build your personality, has no personality itself. This force has no personality, yet organizes your personality, that is the ironic duality of it.

On Bias vs. Balance

The personality builder does not favor one part over another, though your personality does. It is more concerned with equality and participation, though the personality is biased by nature, by definition. The personality builder counters one bias with another, one part with another, one attribute with another, one quality with another etc. It is concerned with overall balance, the whole, a sort of equal treatment of the persona. Personality is in the IMBALANCE, IN THE PARTS, IN THE BIAS, AND IN THE QUIRK but not in the generality. Thus the personality builder has no personality per say.

The personality agent constructs a WHOLE of you that is unique, at the same time; all personality wholes are similar in construction because they use the same general rules and techniques. You could say the personality facilitator is objective, while the personality itself is subjective. This objective force is the only way to facilitate and organize the personality Diverse.

Struggle erupts between the facilitator and the personality elements.

There are times when the identity manager is in control and directs, however, most of the time we are caught up in the moments of our personality. The process is difficult at first and highly confusing, for in the beginning, a personality side can take over as the facilitator and fool you. What you may think are objective actions to build your identity may well be covert activity by a very biased part of you. Eventually, you learn to sort out the tricksters and the masks, because everyday practice will prove who is the facilitator and who is not, the pain and suffering itself will be the clue. False definitions of you will lead to continuous inner conflict between parts of yourself; there will be campaigns of suppression, moments of surprising revolt, unconscious hypocrisy and confusion.

The goal of the personality facilitator is not to create a general personality but a biased and unique personality. At a certain point it must cede to the newly created identity, its work is done. The facilitator helps you build your complexity, then you must choose the key elements that are truly you, you must choose the primacies. If not, the facilitator will continue to build a vast inventory of elements that will confuse and overwhelm you. So it is necessary that at points you must choose biases, if only to test them provisionally. The facilitator serves the process of bias, it serves your unique identity, you do not serve it. In the long run, you and the facilitator will work together in lengthy cycles throughout your life both building up elements and then selecting biases and then building up more and then selecting again.

On Stages of Integration

When does the first personality integration take place? When you initially bring together a working organization, when you say, "I am this and this and that", it comes in stages, but, at some point, a full identity is postulated and then tested, at some point after the acquisition of a philosophy, beliefs, values, career, life path, sets of likes and dislikes. And after the acquisition of some self awareness of traits and behaviors, style and aesthetic, cultural activity, even special language, the persona can be pulled into a unity, a first identity can be forged. This, usually, occurring in mature youth.

Though in the teenage years elements are being acquired, only a pre-phase of identity is all that can be achieved, because the inventory is not large enough to build an organization of true identity. This is primarily because a true identity cannot be forged until an individual lives INDEPENDENTLY.

Independent living forces you to generate belief systems, to choose a path of life; and the everyday experience of being alone, thinking and making decisions on all issues leads to self absorption which propels the process of identity.

Ironically, the teenage need to join groups is the first stage of identity and individuality. The group offers the first experience in identity; it provides a range, though limited, of personality elements: language, symbols, likes, dislikes, values. This becomes not just an experience in personality and identity, but more importantly an experience in identity formation. The lessons and habits are used at later stages in life.

This dynamic between the group and the individual can occur when you are older too, when you join political, social, spiritual, vocational or cultural associations. Ethnic identification is also such a stage on the path of identity formation (and can be very important if the ethnic heritage is suppressed and denigrated).

(More ancient societies offered transitional kinds of identities for youth to ease them through the process of personality formation. A general sort of identity was given in each a stage of maturation. Afterwards, the true personal identity was to evolve later. In our modern culture, the teenager is on her own or his own with no such assistance; thus, they try to form their own identities thrashing about and suffering. The stress on some individuals is incredible. A culture that assists with transitional identities and allows experimentation toward higher and more personal identities would be ideal…reducing pain, lost time and, very importantly, rates of suicide.)

Naturally, stages or conditions of life are fundamental pressures on identity -- family, career levels, and age and so on. These bring new personality qualities to the mix. At the same time there are other issues of personal evolution that grip us too. We proceed to higher levels of personality management, higher levels of belief, ethics, philosophy and the spiritual. We become social activists and so on. Then throw onto this the march of historical change, culture and technology, these forces put their own demands on identity.

Stages of life, stages of awareness, stages of culture all cause a continuing integration of personality -- new traits, elimination of undesired traits, higher traits, new hybrids of behavior.

Identity continues to evolve. It assimilates new traits. Identity never stops until you do.

On Lack of Identity and Identity Theft

Inability to unify identity results in psyche splits, emotional warfare, confusion and hypocrisy. One-sided and fixed notions of identity have to be maintained with force and acrobatics. Rebellions by one part of the personality against another often take one by surprise. Despair and confusion result. False identities fall domino to domino until the last domino, until you cannot stand the suffering and ineffectiveness anymore.

Dysfunction often causes the victim to create a false identity, an identity that develops in the caldron of abuse and chaos. These identities, self made or given by family members, serve the system of dysfunction, they must be cast off, for these identities point you back into dysfunction. New identity and true identity evolve on the basis of a positive, healthy and rich collection of emotions.

In addition to self-made delusion and pressure, social forces can suppress identity too. Individuals are imprinted with layers of behavior, traits, beliefs and attitudes. Beneath them are innate personality elements. Ideally, the external elements should fill in the gaps in our basic personalities and help us develop our potential qualities. But too often families, communities, educators and media provide elements that suppress personal potential or create outright conflict with our true basic natures. The result of this hostile imprinting on a person can be lifelong confusion about self; and constant inner conflict with alien inhabitants. The world is often hostile to your true nature, and it has little compassion. It pulls the tears from you and pours them in its giggling sea, loots your dreams and muffles your screams, auctions off your devotions, weaves you into a web of lies, and hangs you from sentimental tangles. The community of alarm only wants to do you harm.

“Who were you before you were left at the door, who were you before the silent infant's snore, who were you before your memories were poured, who were you before the world and its lore, who were you before the twins at the door, who were you before career and good cheer, who were you before the calculated succor, who were you before, when you could soar to distant shores, who were you?”

A Human being devoid of self identity is not yet truly a Human being. Some go through their whole lives without a clue as to who they are. They have no inner content, they wear a Human suit but they are empty. Do not become a “Human suiter”, all around you are millions of Human suiters, Human in form but void and lost.

There are social forces that steal or repress your identity. We live in a world of “poly-thea”, of many theatres, where theatre mixes with all realities, all aspects of culture. Entertainment becomes a diversion from seeking identity. Just as work and ideologies can divert from finding yourself, so does modern art and media. The principle task of poly-thea is “myth substitution”, that is, the substitution of your personal myth by someone else’s myth or a contrived myth by the entertainment industry. The most important story that you can ever read, write or tell is YOUR story. There is no other story more pertinent to your life. Do not give it up. The poly-thean wants to substitute another myth for your own. Be careful when you go to the theatre, watch TV and play computer games, for the poly-thean wants to derail your personal evolution and put you on the track of entertainment evolution. Your personal identity means nothing to him, he wants to make you a movie or game.

Consumerism is another force that we must be wary of. Consumerism opposes the formation of true identity. It opposes it in many ways; it substitutes a good and a marketing image for an identity; it substitutes the shopping experience for that of the arduous process of personality construction. Each of us must be unmasked in this age of disguises when the heart is not the wisest.

The mere association with a good, image, company or logo leads to an identity, but a shallow one. And when these false identities lose their power, and they all do, consumerism provides a new identity, it attacks the old, substitutes the new, with a new trend or fad, a new and improved identity. The consumer goes through a phase of self repulsion, depression and self criticism. The citizen destroys the old commercial persona, which was shallow in the first place, replacing it with an equally shallow one but with a new temporary power rooted in novelty itself.

The primary factor is the negation of identity not the regeneration of it. It is the maintenance of the lack of identity which gives power to the seller. Lost, unsatisfied, desperate consumers quickly latch onto the fabricated identity. The consumer is purely plastic, a super-liquid thing poured into a flask, becoming anything they ask, molding to any mask, all its dreams are poured by the gray boys of the void.

The consumer is the child of the satisfactory factory, shopping is its slight of passage, it sings the happiness slog in the bog of lifelong dissatisfaction, it throws away identities like old appliances, it reincarnates itself in a shopping frenzy. The consumer is the frivolous phoenix recreating itself from its own ashes over and over, never happy, never sure, never still. We worship money, logos and stars but in the end we despise who we are. Ultimately, the consumer’s life is bland, endless inner bland and packed closets full of bland, a life of increasing “blandage” and boredom, and more blandage and boredom. Of blandage and bondage is the fate of the consumer.

Thus they sing: “I analyze and methodize but when my shift is finished, my capacity is diminished, I drool in pools a buying fool, for the tools and jewels and all the products that are cool. I am the science proletariat, and the consuming cash and carry it, I'm Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, we heckle and collide, but I refuse to take sides.”

On the Emotions of Integration

What feelings are common to emotional integration? Depression is essential to this process, negative feelings are part of it, and without them there is no progressive growth. When you break through to identity there is great elation, liberation. We develop faith, a quiet but strong faith that is ever present, bringing you through periods of depression. The more successful we are at managing depressions and staying partly detached from them, the stronger our faith gets in our ability to get through them. Further, the depression becomes an opportunity to change and grow.

In a way we welcome it, for it represents the first stage of an evolution. Self criticism is one thing, but a depression means you have met some very core emotional issue; you have gotten to something important about yourself that paralyzes you. It is perhaps an issue that you were not aware of, but now you have the opportunity to fix it. One of the functions of a depression is to shut off your energy, desires, goals and attachments. A depression shuts you down, disconnects you and wipes your agenda clean. A depression offers you a chance to set new behaviors that will restart your desires and your drive. Without depression there is no resurrection.

Confusion is a feeling that often appears as we try to understand the complexity of ourselves. We are a chaotic Diverse of traits. Often we make a great circle from one behavior and moment of ourselves to another. We journey in great loops from this perception and persona to another, over a period of weeks or months we have been many different people. Confusion reigns, despair rises but eventually after repeated trips through the labyrinth of ourselves we find a pattern. The circles are indeed a structure of what we are, a complex system with many differing and perhaps competing elements, but still a collection that is us. The confusion dissipates and the despair dissolves away; now we do not fear the loops, we know they are moments of ourselves; and the shifts and negations are not signs of instability or insanity but simply expressions of the rich nature of our personalities.

Anger with the self, repulsion to unwanted traits is natural at positions in the identity process. At some point we must reject obsolete, negative and damaging behaviors. There is nothing wrong with waging this battle. If you accept retrograde traits and say all these things are me, you may subvert your own growth.

Joy is highly important in personality formation. Certain things give us joy, certain thoughts, dreams and goals give us bliss. These are great hints and keys offered by your psyche to you. Pursuing these joys will lead to who you really are. Other people and institutions will oppose your joy and replace it with activities and goals that will bore you, and send you into a permanent state of angst, pain and longing. Some of us have had the joy suppressed so early in life that we do not even know what joy is at all! Joy is the key to happiness, and happiness is the key to identity. Eventually, we throw off the rule of masks and build a “cantocracy”, the rule of song. We now live an improvisation sing along where you cannot sing wrong. We sing, sing, sing, and we cannot sing wrong. Our hearts are fluttering stacks of glee and we sail with ocean going faith. Joy would have no reason, fun would have no season, we could abandon the banned and the can’t, and lose the seriousness of youth and its delirious truths.

“Power” is an important theme in the evolution of identity. Many of us feel weak, inferior and exposed in our journey to who we really are. Others take advantage of us, and systems shuttle us here and there. To defend ourselves against the identity thieves of the world we need raw power in all of its forms – the power of speech and writing to express and defend our views, the power of courage and will, the power of calmness and stillness to think clearly and act decisively, the power of information and ideas, the power to say “No”, even the power of organization with likeminded people and so on. Power is what all of us on our confusing personal journeys need, without it we could not protect ourselves from a hostile world. The infant in Nature is protected by its kin, but the infant in present Human culture is not protected by its kind, and must gain its own power as quickly as possible or it will become a manipulated victim that will never know who she or he really is.

Difference is an important need for one seeking identity, to simply be different, to experiment with difference. These trials and tests eventually lead to things that work for the individual.

Creativity is another important need in the development of personality. Creativity not only helps you experiment and break boundaries about the definition of yourself. But the very act of being creative is a liberation from “yourself”, a liberation from the false identity and passiveness imposed on you by the culture. The act and joy of creativity can lead to “you” by stages and transitions.

Directness is another major need for the individual on the path to identity. Identity is one of the most direct experiences there is. No one else can tell you who you are. No one! You have to find it out for yourself, the directness you need inside will parallel the directness in you need in the outer social world.

Freedom of behavior is important to self evolution, that is, the freedom to break from etheria, the domination of the rational mind and to explore other parts of your psyche – the creative, the subconscious, the dream realm, the spontaneous and more.

Love and care is important in the work of evolving personality, for the act of loving and caring gives us a way of handling the world, achieving goals. If we learn to love and care, we will be loving and caring in our work. When your primary work is yourself, this loving and caring will eventually lead to great results. Love and care improves the quality of your effort and the transcendence of your work.

Idealism is a natural perspective of youth. It follows from a natural way of grasping concepts, first they are acquired in a pure way, in themselves, then later through experience they are connected to other concepts so that the original idea hits a limitation. After this, all the concepts work together in a whole. But also idealism plays a role in personality development because it inspires a drive to higher standards; the process of identity formation requires a high goal to drive the progression. A person without strong ideals in general is not going to have the energy to push through his or her personality project because it is too complex, difficult and long term.

Thinking the "unthinkable" is a very important feeling and attitude, that is, exploring definitions of yourself that are odd, bizarre or improper. It is important to entertain these “unthinkables” for in the long run they may have some element of truth in them. If self images were “thinkable”, it would be because these traits fit into your biased view of yourself; when you consider the “unthinkable”, you are stepping out of your comfortable accepted self image.

It is when you kill the icon and become “evil” that you become free. If you see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil, then you are ruled by a “good”. Who will hold your hand and rescue you from trembling dreams? You must let your mind go, scratch the poem that is you, flay their brands and smash their logos.

You can no longer sing their song:

“I was ruled by good, I lived in the cages of the sages, repeating all their pages, and, yes, never any rages, Oh a great moral tourney, but no emotional journey, each contest a demise of what is free and wise, a torrent of mourning, and every garland of good, a grave and cryptic warning

In the penitentiary of good, in our penitent black hoods, we swung from the rope of goodness, as we sung mea culpa, in the grip of our prodigal grope, I was ruled by good, let me make it right, let me take control, let me bear the burden, We were ruled by good and never did we know the difference between a role and a soul.”

Fear and anxiety are also feelings that may be present in the personality process. As we experiment and try this or that, we are unsure about what we are doing, that is a perfectly natural reaction. If you knew who you were from the beginning, then you would have no fear or stress or confusion at all, because you would know exactly who you are. However, one cannot know one’s identity beforehand, that is an impossibility. So fear and nervousness are going to coexist with your efforts. You are looking into an unknown, you do not know what the outcome will be. It is only in hindsight that you can look back and see the whole process clearly. In hindsight identity is 20/20 but in foresight identity is murky and muddy. As you get closer to your identity then the angst will subside. First, it will disappear when you are doing what is really you, then it will dissolve in other realms of your life.

(But it never goes away completely for in the long run your identity is never complete. However, this first stage of great stress is now over, and from that point on you have an identity you can step off from, you do have a footing and some stability. The pain that you suffer before you forge your first identity will not be duplicated again, because in the first period you had no identity at all to rely upon, you were cast into the world with nothing. Other more ancient cultures actually offered various general and transitional stages of identity for youth to ease the process along….)

After bouts of depression, self repulsion, thinking the “unthinkable” and other negative states, inner conflicts will die down. The art of managing the crises is learned. Self examination and critique becomes a regular practice. Thinking the “unthinkable” becomes a productive exercise.

The death inside you that watched the living through your eyes and heard all your ear drum’s patter, this ever present guest goes missing for longer and longer periods.

Entombed in your deepest dreams are dreams of you.

Eventually, the pain is not so bad, you now savor the revelations, self growth is now a challenge you embrace, your faith in yourself gets stronger and stronger. You look forward to peace and control in the next phase of our personality.

As time goes on, you become your own bliss valet; in the past it took extraordinary events and other people to send you into bliss, the external world was your valet, but now you are your own bliss valet taking yourself to joy after joy.

We often think that our true identities existed before the world, and that the world erased them, it is a nice poetic concept, but the fact is that we have no true identity coming into the world. Experience generates identity. At birth you only have rudimentary personality traits; your real identity is forged in time.

Some people may think that they know who they are in youth. But they have not yet been exposed to new career possibilities, new localities, new social groups, travel, new ideas, changing social periods, new hobbies and yearnings that evolve into fundamental desires and so on. Some of which will render unexpected radical breaks in self identity.

For some there is too much time and they laze through their lives until the last moment to integrate an identity. You have only one chance to discover who you are, and what a tragedy to live in your body and mind for so long and not even have created an identity. What a shame for others to have not ever truly gotten to know you, when all they really knew was an unfinished, sketchy version of you. You want no mysteries in your pictures, when you look at photos of yourself at the end of days; you want no mysteries in your pictures. You must know who that person is; to not know is the saddest thing in the world. You could never cry enough tears. “Who is that in the picture?” you must ask yourself, if not you will spend your life perfecting character neglect, and then endlessly fetching regret after regret.

Others have different problems, they fret about time. We can only say that there is more than enough time to create an identity, and then to move to higher identities. Nature provides you more than enough time to achieve these sacred goals. Many people before us have proven this in their lives. Do not measure time with numbers and quantity, stay busy, and stay active. You are either perfecting the management of yourself, or you are climbing up to the next stage, there is always something to do. Enjoy the quieter periods, the tumult will come.

What then is time? You are time, time without end.

Time has memories meeting imagination, past meeting possibility. You are continuously made from the raw material of experiment and expectation, of suggestion and rejection. You'll burn each concern in turn, you'll transform your norms from egos torn, you'll hypothesize and cut for size a soul, you'll make alterations of your lies.

Time is you, time without end, time is your friend. In time is your identity.

Evolution has no memory, it always surges ahead. Evolution has no memory of you; it always surges ahead to you.

On the Path of Identity

In brief we can say that the personality develops along this path:

You are born with certain initial traits or orientations to the world, and inherent types of "IQ", and a myriad of personality behaviors and details. Over time, rudimentary and potential traits evolve and elaborate, they reach toward their possibilities.

At the same time, you add new traits, skills, perceptions, and behaviors. The initial traits are acted upon by personal and external forces. Family, community, society, culture, media, education, mentors, values and everyday experience mold your personality. That is, they stress or de-emphasize features of your personality, and they add new features, and they may or may not evolve potential traits to their promise. These forces may help or retard your evolution.

At the same time, you are a force on your personality. You make choices about behaviors, skills, perceptions and so on. Whether they are good or not, you make judgments and direct your life too. Naturally, the younger you are, the less powerful your personal effect on your personal path. But as you get older, your personal direction becomes primary, it can supersede the friction from the external world. Yet, it could generally never eradicate these other forces.

Thus, the personal and the social evolve your initial personality -- new features are added, old removed or suppressed. Potentials are realized or lost. Manifold judgments, choices and shifts in direction are made.

Then at a certain point, we get to a more conscious level of personality formation, we grasp that we are forming an "identity". Now, we are creating ourselves, and not just elements haphazardly, we are trying to figure out who we are. We are asking, "Who am I?" We are trying to get to the core of who we are. We are now in the self-conscious stage of personality formation. We are working on ourselves, waging battles, sorting things out, testing suppositions on our natures. We experiment with identities. We move from more general or shared identities with groups into smaller group identities, into more specific identities. We mix and match identities too.

Essential in identity formation is the notion of “bias” for a purely “balanced” personality has no personality. It is in our biases and focuses and quirks that we have our uniqueness. So though we are many things we try to assign primacy in our traits, we ask, “who am I mainly?” We select a bias and say, “I think this is me.” And we go through many stages of choosing and exploring biases until we find what is truly correct and truly false.

True, we are complexities but still in that complexity will arise our peculiarities and these will define us. Without the biases you will simply spin about from personality aspect to aspect with nothing to hold onto. You become a swirling cosmos with nothing to grab onto and nothing to build upon. For people who have more complex personalities this “moment circling” through many moments of personality can be confusing, destabilizing, depressing, frustrating and angering. But at the same time a certain amount of moment circling is inevitable as we get closer and closer to the true biases in our nature. When we finally achieve the correct bias formula then the rest of our personality fits in easily to the whole framework, every personality in the greater personality finds it place.

Personality creation like many other things is a matter of focus. Without focus we cannot achieve knowledge or skills in a particular realm. If we spread our energies we become good at nothing. Focus in the realm of identity is finding and developing our biases so that we have something to grab onto psychologically, and so we have a definite way of doing things, and so that others can appreciate our uniqueness and find a place for us in their world. Focus in the realm of personality is about human differentiation, the creation of human individuality.

Without focus we have a general complexity that tends to seek “balance” and thus suppresses identity and individuality. We get general personalities but no personality at all. We thus lose the joy of having identities and the power of imbalance and become exactly like everyone else in a kind of groupism. We live without the ground of bias and quirks and uniqueness, we swirl about within ourselves and seem to go nowhere, we become stuck and passive.

This stage of finding bias out of all the personality moments is ongoing, for once we do succeed in establishing an identity, and are able to manage ourselves more smoothly, evolution still continues. Secondary traits may come to the fore; new conditions of life may demand a reorganization of identity. And growing to higher levels of spiritual, philosophic and moral practice will bring higher behaviors out of you. Love, wisdom, patience, power and skill, social activism, range thinking, and many more of the transcendent attitudes will come. These you will add to your personality too, and these traits will become fundamental to who you are also.

It would be nice if schools and colleges could aid in the identity process, that at least they could teach the issues to students and prepare them for the changes to come. Is not identity a fundamental theme of a university? Certainly in civil society there will be the counselors and mentors who can help us evolve, guide us along without violating the sacred rule: that no one can substitute their identity for another’s. What we need to do is make identity formation a fundamental need in life and then create the institutions to help it along.

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Differentiation is the primary feature in personality development.

Undifferentiation, that is, stability of personality, organization of personality plays catch up to the nonstop process of identity. If our personality process was purely differentiation we would become insane, if the process where purely undifferentiation there would be no process, there would be no change or motion. We know from observing life that personality does indeed continue to evolve for a lifetime, that people do succeed at this to the very end, thus we know that differentiation is the primary force in identity matters. But that these people succeed and exhibit stability and rational sets of views at each stage also tells us that undifferentiation is operating too.

Cage Innoye

Thanksgiving, Reconnecting, and the Quietic

2011-11-23T19:33:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving is one of the more important of our holidays in our annual trek through the cycle of the seasons.

Thanksgiving is the one observance that truly stresses family, friends and community, it is the one ritual that focuses on reconnection and reclaiming the Human social whole. It is not corrupted with the commercialism of Christmas and is simpler, more innocent and carries a higher integrity. Thanksgiving is a holiday the gets us out of ourselves, it brings us back together with others simply for the sake of being with others.

Thanksgiving is an example of a specific type of ritual, on the that reconnects us.

On the Meaning of the Quietic
It is the natural state of a Human being to exist as an individual, as a part of a whole. But there are moments when we must reconnect and even fuse with the whole. This rebinding is called "quietic". It is a secondary state of being, but it is all important, it refreshes our perspective of the Diverse. This secondary state is more the quiet aspect of ourselves, the part that gets less attention, hence, “quietic”.

The quietic is a profound state of reunion and realization. The quietic is essentially a form of ritual. The quietic is the quieter state, contrary to our primary state, contrary to the hustle and bustle of our natural everyday existence, contrary to the expression of our natural individuality, contrary to the work of our differentiation. The quietic is a specific kind of essential Human ritual.

The quietic comes in many forms of rebinding and reunion -- reconnection of family, reconnection with Nature, unity of self identity, reconnection with Genio and creation, reconnection with the cosmos, unity of all Humankind, realization of immortality and eternity, reunion of the gender whole, unity of the community, the unity of love and partnership and more.

Atonement is a quietic ritual that unites us with our higher selves, with our ideal selves, our potential selves, our "divine" selves.

Some forms of the quietic are social, and others are personal, some can be marked by rituals, and others are more frequent practices, regimens or exercises. All are necessary states for the healthy functioning of an individual in the Diverse.

And not all forms of the quietic are quiet. There are forms of reconnection and rebinding that are quite boisterous and chaotic, things we need, though they are often left dormant in a quiet mode, unattended for long periods.

On the Power of the Quietic
Though we spend more time in the non-quietic state of existence, the quietic is a highly important state that reminds us and inspires with the opposite frame of mind. We are transported out of our daily mind set, out of ourselves or to other dormant parts of ourselves. The quietic then gives us an appreciation of unity, of our "one-ness", our participation in something larger. We become members of a true whole, we have been reconnected to it, and we are rebound.

Thus, when we return to our individual, everyday existence again, we are refreshed with a new perspective that gives us counter-balance, new tools, a reduction in alienation and egotism, a joy to the world, a joy to our whole selves, the emotion of reunion, and the feeling of security in the whole.
With the power of the quietic, we are not alone anymore in the world; we have friends and allies, resources and powers not available before. We go the world alone, we have our biases and personalities but after quietic reunion, we can be in the world more effectively, we can be ourselves more skillfully.
The quietic does not erase our particular natures, our individuality, our personal lives, views or goals at all, for this individual existence we experience is the way of the cosmos, the way of the Diverse, the way things are and will be. Do not fear the quietic it does not erase "you", it cannot, it only adds to you, it only makes your individuality richer and joyful. The quietic only takes away your lonely, and thus leaves you wholly.

"Quietia" (kwai'-esh-ee-uh) is the state lacking quietic practice and its perspectives. We can exist as individuals with "quietia" and millions have, and in our modern age millions more certainly will, but why? Why do we have to live our lives as fragments, disconnected, "dis-connectional"? There is no reason to suffer in the desperation of separation.

Quietia leads to obsessive behavior and, at the same time, intense longing and lack of grounding.

On Types of the Quietic
We can divide the quietic practices into two types, the "sidereal" and "in-sidereal". The "sidereal", meaning star time, are those defined quietic practices which are rituals, events, festivals, and holidays. They can be social or personal but they are date related. They could include events about planetary unity, Human brotherhood and equality, multi-culturalism, reconnection with Nature, atonement as a reconnection of the everyday self with the higher moral self, a gender reconnection of the male side to the female side or vice versa, rebinding of the family, reconnection with a mate, reconnection with the Diverse, reconnection with your Genio side, rebinding with the higher values of a national or ethnic culture, events related to a shared Human soul, rituals aimed at rekindling our commitment to higher Human goals, times to meditate and times to pledge to Self Genio, to re-create yourself and so on.

The "in-sidereal" are those practices that are not calendar related. They may be regular practices or those that come at a certain stage of development. They generally include methods much more personal in nature, tailored for yourself.

On the Exceptional Quietic
Some individuals live in the quietic more than others due to their chosen paths or to stages of life. This could be called the "exceptional quietic". A monk naturally lives in a permanent or long-term quietic state. A professional military person dedicated to the defense of her or his country lives in a kind of long-term quietic state, suppressing individuality and normal living. These kind of lifestyles though different than the norm are useful and necessary. Someone has to understand the quietic, and be a professional at it, study it and teach it, thus we have monks and philosophers. Someone must look to the overall safety of a nation and defend it, thus we have soldiers.

Entire cultures can go through whole periods of quietic behavior, when unity, collective effort and single-mindedness are the demands of the period. These periods are perhaps because of war, economic disaster, natural disaster, revolution or other conditions. Social activists appear who dedicate their lives to the social whole.

Such long-term quietic states are unusual, but history is filled with them. Often in these periods, quietic rituals and festivals are created, philosophers develop particular quietic ideas, songs are written, and myths are generated.

In the US we are in an exceptional period due to economic and political crisis, today the need to rebind with others is being felt at an intense level, acts of social reconnection are growing. And the over-focus on the self is beginning to wane.

On Too Much Quietic
Can you have too much quietic? Certainly, the average person can lose his or her individuality, life goals can be lost, creative work can decline and so on. But it is difficult to say what too much quietic is, in general, it is best given to the individual to decide.

On the Substitute Quietic
Quietic behavior is not supported in a society of alienation because it makes the individual stronger and it binds healthy individuals into a whole.
Elite forces offer a substitute for the natural impulse for quietic reunion. These are entertainment events such as concerts, sports etc. Here, there is only a shallow connection made between the spectators, "bread and circuses" was the old phrase. Shopping in our age has even become a substitute quietic, where thousands converge on malls in a ritual of commercial reunion.

The substitute quietic does not break down alienation or disconnection at all; it only provides the facade of reunion and rebinding. In the end, everyone is alone; the only reunion that takes place is between the event manager and crowd, or the “star” and the crowd. And these relationships fuel the need for more of the substitute quietic, because the substitute quietic is never fully satisfying, thus something akin to an emotional addiction to these events is created.

The “Riotic”
The quietic orders our world, it manages our complex nature. But when we cannot practice our quietic then the ‘riotic’ may appear, the quiet is quite simply overwhelmed by a riot. The comical sounding ‘riotic’ explodes when other sides to our nature are not acknowledged. Without warning the explosion occurs.

After the spontaneous revolt, we have optional paths. We may ignore the event as an unexplained craziness and return to the old restrictive behavior as if nothing ever happened. Naturally, the riotic returns again, but this is a kind of sleeping revolt, and the denotation of ‘crazy’ is simply a way to say we are ignorant about our own processes.

Another reaction is to ritualize the riotic break, some cultures do this as festivals or even sanctioned frenzies. This reduces the threat to a system by the behavior, but allows an outlet for it, satisfying the ruling party more than the lower party.

The third path is to grasp the underlying basis of the riotic rebellion, and to create a method that allows it to be free, a viewpoint that accepts the secondary behavior and forges rituals and skills to express it. The third path brings the riotic insurrection to consciousness from confusion and ignorance, and from there individuals have a clear goal and plan for their mutual happiness.

Quietic and Mental Health
The quietic is an absolute necessity for good mental health, for individuals and for nations. The need to rebind with other aspects of ourselves or with other people is an essential behavior in a world like ours, where we are all essentially individuals. The quietic reflects our complex nature, as dualities and as complex wholes with many parts. While we have biases and focuses in our everyday activity, the quietic prevents us from neglecting the other parts, the nether regions of our souls that need attention too, so that we can healthy and grounded.

Cage Innoye

Occupy Wall St is good example of "Directness"

2011-11-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

When people take matters into their own hands, business-as-usual becomes a thing of the past.

When they take direct action, the ripples effect all of society as many are inspired by the act of individual freedom.

When they practice directness, they build a new base of power, a new kind of power.

Occupy Wall Street is a powerful example of “Directness”.

Your power is expressed through Directness. Directness is a highly essential relationship between a Human being and the World. This method expresses itself in two forms, one is personal and the other is in social behavior. Directness is applied to your inner realm or the outer realm of society, culture, economics and politics.

Being a disciple of directness, we would seek directness in all things: direct connection, direct participation, direct knowledge, direct control, direct responsibility, direct reciprocity, direct communication, direct evaluation and direct correction.

We have no choice in life to use the strategy of directness because each of us is a disconnected entity facing a complex and quickly changing world. Without direct relations we are either simply outside the loop and ignorant of processes and forces that may exploit us or we are relying on the goodwill of middlemen and agents and representatives and leaders to give us information, make decisions and manage the world for us.

As a singular entity facing a mobile and diverse world, your only option is to seek direct relations with all things.

We live in a world of diversity, a “Diverse”, where each of us operates as an individual. We are separate entities with distinct thoughts, perception, plans, skills and emotions. Though we are part of a society, we are manifested as individuals. To achieve our goals and represent our personal interests we require a direct connection with all things that affect us. You cannot allow middlemen to represent you or tell you what truth is, what is best for you.

Every relation is direct. Because this is the only way that you as a separate entity are going to know other entities and properly relate to them. If you do not practice directness, then middle men will stand between you and the world, and you and your true self. Only directness connects you immediately with your inner and outer Diverses.

Life is a direct experience, the world and society must be met head on. This is the primary basis of intellectual and emotional knowledge, and the only way to manage life.

Social directness by its nature leads to mass participation and popular democracy. Social directness completely changes the nature of organization and the concept of leadership.

Social directness also leads interestingly to issues of individuality and identity. When a person engages in direct activity then she or he is confronted with the issue of “who am I?” A concept of self identity is required, a self mythology must be developed or the journey would be too difficult to take. One needs a self image, a self story to drive forward, we must ask: “Why are you doing this, how do I fit in?”

Issues of individuality having to do with psyche strengths and managing ones emotions arise almost immediately. So social directness is inseparable from self knowledge and mental management.

Personal morality is also a very important theme of individual behavior. Directness requires a moral code and the development of skills in using that code properly.

And this all eventually leads to personal creativity, for you in your social directness are expressing yourself, your identity, and this is done through the distinctness of your own personal creativity.

And the sum of these creativities drives a movement ahead into new forms and directions that are quite unexpected and much more effective.

Cage Innoye

Will any of these people solve our Crisis of Creativity?

2011-11-23T19:32:00.001-08:00

Will any of these people solve our Crisis of Creativity?

The central theme of our time is Creativity. The central problem of our time is our Crisis of Creativity.

Surveying the field of presidential candidates and political leaders, do you think any of these people can solve our Crisis of Creativity.

Do you think any of them are creative? Do you think any of them can lead a movement of Social Creativity to change our cultural landscape?

There is a great crisis of creativity in our age. Critical problems are mounting up and very little is being done. It is because we do not understand, teach or promote creativity that we are in the great mess of today. Leaders are not creative and have no clues as to learning about creativity.

We live in world of advancing complexity and evolving situations and contradictions; and there is no way a species can manage all this without being creative. The more developed a culture and society, the more developed must be its creativity. But look at our nation, its creativity is either inadequate or simply non-existent.

Further, we are in a state of economic crisis, and the demands for creative solutions are greater than ever.

“Genio” is a word for creativity. The modern nation is one whose Genio needs examination.

Our crisis of creativity appears in various ways:

Money is declared as a creative force in itself. But since October 2008, money has shown this is not true — real value, ethics, imagination, innovation and hard work are still primary behaviors that make money creative and productive. Money being creative is a mantra that no longer spells us. The dollar is no longer a unit of creativity.

We see leaders and institutions block creative solutions in a country with many problems. Difficulties get worse, the crisis of creativity worsens. There is very little creativity at the top.

Monopolies suppress innovation, and at the same time if they can steal a good idea they will try.

In some fields there are creative solutions but they are suppressed by powers that be, for example solutions in alternative energy, green, organic etc.

In many other fields there are no fundamental solutions at all to problems — for example, the economy, government, foreign policy, education, healthcare, mental healthcare, diets and nutrition, poverty, crime, drug addiction – just name a few.

Further, we live in a culture that celebrates “Mis-creativity” which serves consumerism and bad entertainment. Vast amounts of potential creative energy are drained away on the trivial and manipulative. “Prodigy slayers” stalk young creative talent and convert them into “Pandermaths” (talented people who serve consumerism and entertainment), who don’t create art but “dis-art”.

And consumerism makes you a user, but not a creator. By the very fact you use its products and worship the “creativity” of corporations, you do not develop your own skills.

Corporate organization opposes creativity and creative people because by nature they will not submit to a hierarchy or allow their innovations to be corrupted into tools for maximum profit

Group think promoted by marketing and advertising reduces individuality and thus creativity, for the creative impulse is driven by the need to be different and unique

The general condition in our culture of alienation and disconnection causes us to be fearful and this reduces the creative impulse

And think of this: At the level of education, we have NO curriculum that teaches creativity in secondary schools or in universities. What creativity a nation has comes spontaneously in a hit or miss way by individuals. This uneducated, haphazard creativity is a testimony to its drive in all of us, a drive which overcomes the barriers set up by education and the culture at large. But think how much more creative we might be with training from a very young age? Creativity is spontaneous because the curriculum is fully academic and logical. How then does creativity arise from the elite University system? It does not and that is why we are in a crisis.

Our crisis of creativity is our central problem today. To get out of this crisis we must first start thinking in terms of CREATIVITY. We need training in creativity, an inventory of creative skills, ways of organizing collective creativity, applying creativity to social movements and more.

When we address the core issue then we can make strides toward ending today’s crisis. The core issue is ultimately not economics or politics or etc, it is our ability to solve these problems, and this is all about creativity.

Cage Innoye

Tea Party could never pull off an Occupy Wall St

2011-11-23T19:32:00.000-08:00

The Tea Party could never have pulled off an Occupy Wall Street.

Why?

First of all, these individuals are pro Wall Street. Perhaps, at first, the Tea Party had members who were anti-Wall Street, when the formation was young and in a centrist form, today the Tea Party is securely controlled by the far right and is a willing minion of big business.

The Second reason that the Tea Party could not pull off an Occupy Wall Street is that its membership has no empathy or sympathy or love or care for other Human beings. Tea Party individuals rail with glee at the thought of cutting people off of social benefits, even if it means great suffering, and in some cases death.

The Tea Party WOULD not engineer an Occupy Wall Street because it worships Wall Street.

And the Tea Party COULD not initiate an Occupy Wall Street because it does not like Humanity.

In short, the Tea Party is sociopathic in both an economic and inter-personal mode.

This mentality does NOT create a bond with other citizens. The cold heart of the Tea Party does not find reciprocity in the hearts of the suffering. We have no resonation of empathy or pity. Those living in the pain caused by corporate America do not find the Tea Party a champion because it has no sympathy to the victim. The Tea Party does not care, and this is why few care about the Tea Party. Callousness can never succeed as a mainstream strategy.

The emotions of the Tea Party include anger and resentment and jealousy. Further the Tea Party is pioneering forms of stinginess, selfishness and miserliness. The Tea Party is certainly not a movement of generosity, charity and warmth. We are seeing the invention of a new type of Scrooge for the 21^st century.

Because the Tea Party heart is so small, the movement has restricted itself to a very narrow range of actions.

Primarily this ideology is best in the form of an electoral organization. While the electoral is highly important for any movement, for the Tea Party this is all it has. While other movements have social service, charity, green, organic, reform organizations, new types of businesses and so on, the Tea Party cannot participate in these kinds of activities because it is so anti-social and negative.

It is a one trick pony…and this is a very negative pony. We only need to remember Tea Party behavior during the budget negotiations this summer, when the nation was threatened with shutdown and gridlock, in a nihilistic and destructive attempt at economic blackmail.

Also, the Tea Party, it must be pointed out, has included a severe demographic blunder in its political strategy. The Tea party hates everybody. Its enemies list consists of teachers, fireman, all government workers, retirees on social security, the poor, minorities, immigrants, environmentalists, union members and many more demographic groups. Anyone can see that this hit list adds up to more than half of the nation, a majority of the nation.

Moderate Republicans are freaking out at this strategy because they know this battle plan can never win ultimately. Any movement or party that targets more than half the nation as its enemy is absolutely moronic. When you are ruled by sectarianism, repulsion and bigotry, you will indeed target most people, because these emotions have no bounds. Hate and revulsion have no limit, they simply progress, evolve, replicate and expand. Once it starts, it cannot stop.

And the world constantly needles and irritates the hater because it is diverse, and this vast diversity of the world causes endless pain to the poor Tea Party, moment to moment, encounter to encounter.

Since this inane strategic plan can never succeed, this leaves the Tea Party with a long-run loneliness and a severe issue with lack of love and attention.

In the short run, some people were attracted to the Tea Party thinking it was anti Wall Street and it was anti corporate. But the Tea Party was not able to target the core problem in the country: economics and big business. Instead, it spun us a confused ideology about supposed socialism, cutting government services and how this was all about individual freedom for you and for the corporations too.

Occupy Wall Street simply cut through the tangle of nonsense and addressed the simple fundamental issue of who is responsible and who should pay.

With all of this in mind it becomes quite clear why Tea Party leaders are so pro Wall Street, and so adamant about deregulation and taxes. They need corporate America because they cannot win the people. Big business provides the longstanding alternative to popular support, and that is money.

The battle is between money and masses. Certain Tea Party leaders have known this all along and have poised the movement toward the rich. They have always known that economics would not be their issue, that their song would be about the values of liberalism, and not economic manipulation and theft, which is apparently fine with them.

It is hard to say what will happen in the near future. Through confusion and the ineptitude in the Republican party, the far right may get their candidate. Accidental events may figure into this too.

And we do not know what great economic or political crisis may occur in 2012 for which Obama will receive the blame, justified or not.

It is hard to say. But we do know that even if the Tea Party has some initial success, it will inevitably fail because it stands against the interests of the vast majority of America. And it will be hurled to the margins of the political fringe where misery and company coexist.

Cage Innoye

The Transcendent Emotions Make Us Human

2011-11-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

There are certain emotions and sensations that do not arise often in modern society.

We are usually enthralled with the myriad of thoughtfully designed products and services of consumerism and media. Corporate gray-men work diligently in the playlands of our neurology searching heroically for switches and pathways to our greater gratification and bliss.

Enthralled we thus become “thralls” to shopping euphoria, entertainment distractions, cultivated addictions and OCD desires, the quick and shallow highs of pop tunes, engineered foods and so much more.

And then we have the freely chosen alternative: The dark cavern of alienation, disconnection, apathy and depression which is another accepted psychological venue for those who cannot get with the emotional program of modern civilization.

And as we cycle through these moments of unstable and unearned euphoria or uncaring and unconcerned emptiness, we may wonder if we are missing something?

And at the end of a life, we survey the pleasure and the pain, and being zealots of pleasure we focus on the vast dead desert of happiness. But we have no memories of these fleeting phantoms of delight, because they have no substance. These materialistic feelings are in the end immaterial.

What is the emotional measure of a good life we might ask? What is the true metric of sentiment? How can we judge priority and proportion?

Yes, we have been neglecting something: Feelings and moods and sensations and needs and drives that exist on a completely different level. States of mind exist that reflect your higher self.

Ask yourself:

When was the last time you felt a love for all Humanity? When was the last time you felt compassion for all animals? When was the last time you felt sympathy for a poor person? When was the last time that you saw infinity? When was the last time you saw a great vision of the future? When was the last time that you felt the need for justice?

When was the last time you realized that some thing or entity was sacred? When was the last time you felt compelled to protect someone weaker than you? When was the last time you made up your mind to fight on some issue?

When was the last time you saw beauty in some small living thing: like a toad or a possum or even a fly? When was the last time you were touched by the words and smile of a stranger? When was the last time you stopped everything you were doing to help someone having trouble? When was the last time you felt the joy of creativity?

When was the last time you grasped a great eternal truth of the cosmos? When was the last time you realized who you really are, if ever? When was the last time you saw yourself in someone else and felt a collective soul, that you were somehow one? When was the last time that you truly understood the importance of social grounding as in family, education, mental health, community and more? When was the last time that you appreciated the mind boggling diversity of the world?

When was the last time that you felt these Transcendent Emotions?

If your answer is not often or never, then you are like most people. But this should not be normal, for these feelings should be experienced regularly; these are the higher Human emotions. The transcendent emotion takes us to a higher level of emotion, the highest state of Human experience. They cause us to be Human with a capital “H”.

Cage Innoye

Occupy Wall St Protests Are Not Just a “Tactic”

2011-11-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

The mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, recently said that the Occupy Oakland protest was merely a tactic and urged the activists and supporters to go home.

She is the same mayor who ordered the police to attack the protesters resulting in an Iraq Vet being struck in the head with a tear gas canister, causing serious injury to him.

But protest, demonstrations, civil disobedience and other such mass displays of disaffection are not merely tactics. They are essential elements of a strategy for social change.

A protest is an indispensible method and approach. Reducing demonstrations and occupations to a ‘tactic’ is to diminish the power and importance of the work of these creative people.

Protests are a key tool in a large toolbox of methods to be used by activists.

Moreover, protests can go beyond the diminutive realm of ‘tactics’ to the level of fundamental strategy and plan.

Protests brought down the dictatorships of Tunisia and Egypt. Now, here’s a mere ‘tactic’ that created a revolution. Just how could that be? What was this more important thing that superseded a ‘tactic’? Who knows what the mayor of Oakland was saying.

Also, in US history, protests brought us the Civil Rights act. Here a “tactic” led to watershed changes in US society.

We are confused by the mayor’s remark. Let’s expand on the issue of a “tactic” in relation to other movements and forms of activism:

Is building new businesses and a new economy merely a tactic?

Is building new cultural institutions in art, media, education, healthcare etc. a tactic?

Are the movements of green, organic, natural health and animal rights simply a tactic?

Is electoral activity merely a tactic?

Is a reform organization aimed at ending political corruption just tactics?

Is the call for some sort of “revolution” a tactic? Or is this a deep felt need, whatever your interpretation of the word ‘revolution’, isn’t this necessary to broadcast to the nation? Doesn’t someone need to say it given our current world?

We are confused. If these are all simply tactics then what is the really important thing that we are missing?

What is the essential method, essential plan, essential strategy, essential paradigm, essential vision that we cannot grasp? Where is this secret knowledge that we are lacking?

What is the Mayor of Oakland saying? If everything is just “tactics”, which are minor, partial and temporary, what is the really important thing?

Maybe it is that she is the prime driver of social change? And that compared to her, everyone else is tactics? Or that some elite group behind everything is in control and will ‘guide’ the movement toward ‘ultimate victory’ – and merely dismiss the activities of individuals as throwaway tactics when they are not needed anymore?

Demonstrations and occupations are not simply tactics. They are longstanding activities. They evolve and change form but they are an essential method, a longstanding method.

There are many tools in the toolbox – protests, electoral work, building new culture, creating new kinds of businesses and much more.

We do them all because they ALL are necessary.

And we must recognize in a diverse world, some people are attracted to protests while others might be attracted to building new kinds of businesses, while others are driven to aid animals.

There are any many kinds of people, many kinds of movements, and many kinds of ‘tactics’.

The mayor has not grasped this fact.

We are dealing with a diverse phenomenon that is essentially a vast kind of united front though it has not as of yet come to self awareness and self organization in this country.

The thing to do is open up our minds and see the great variety in our social world and the many different types of personalities, then we can build a powerful movement that cannot fail.

Cage Innoye

For a Direct Democracy

2011-11-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, a Rasmussen Reports poll found that 46% of Americans thought that most members of Congress were corrupt.

Also, the poll found that 85% of voters think that most Congress people are more interested in themselves than helping other people. And conversely, only 7% actually thought that politicians were driven more by aiding others.

Today, the approval level for Congress is running at about 9%.

The time is ripe in America to consider a new view of democracy and politics.

It seems that what the US needs is movement that ends politics as usual, a political party whose goals is the end of conventional politics and conventional political parties. Such a movement does not really exist yet in any significant form today, and if it did, we know that the progress of this idea would proceed through stages and transitions. In any case, our long term goal should be the formation of new kind of republic, one based upon some new principles that we might have garnered after more than 200 years of negative experience with our “representative” style democracy.

The rising concept must be “direct democracy” -- a system that dispenses with middle men and allows the citizens to rule directly. Directness has always been a cardinal rule for the individual.

Direct participation, direct action, direct knowledge, direct communication , and direct responsibility are healthy life principles in general. They allow one to get control of personal existence freeing one from “indirectness” – which includes information given that is secondhand and revised, relying on professionals and “leaders” who are more interesting in their own careers, navigating complex and bureaucratic systems designed to frustrate popular initiative, and more.

In the case of politics and government, directness is absolutely essential. Ultimately, true democratic power cannot be held without direct control by citizens. When the people are excluded from governing, then elite strata arise who do the governing in their own interests.

Directness is a necessity in a Social Diverse, that is, in a society and culture of many people, many social groups and many institutions. In the end, democracy is based on the power of an individual, and directness enhances this power by propelling the citizen into action and participation. In fact, there is no way that a person is going to know and manage the world around herself or himself, unless she or he gets involved. And this way one gets involved in one’s own Fate, rather than allowing some selfish individual to determine the course of your life for you.

The Social Diverse applied to government is simply democracy. In fact, democracy is the whole Social Diverse trying to run the whole Social Diverse, not a part trying to run the whole. In a Diverse democracy all social sectors, all views, majority and minority and individual, are represented, given access, funded and supported.

Also, Diverse thinking yields a referendum kind of democracy where politicians become more like “functionary legislators” helping the citizen, and where the role of experts is elevated to help the citizen. The political party which we want to create is the one whose primary goal is the elimination of the old “politician” and the old type of “political party”.

This kind of system will probably not come soon, but it is the ideal that we should be striving for, and it will arrive in stages.

In such a government, Citizens select “functionary” legislators who help develop legislation. They work with experts to present alternative ideas. Citizens vote on general choices in direction, then the functionary legislator works with experts on details and problems. Citizens then vote on particular proposed policies and laws. There are then periodic reviews of legislation to correct its problems or to replace it. The functionary legislator’s job is essentially to support the citizen’s activity of investigation, development, discussion, dialogue and debate.

Such a legislator can be given more responsibility but only by popular vote and this charge can be easily removed. So some issues can be discharged to the legislator, if she or he is trusted. In this system, support staff for the legislator might be expanded. And citizen’s groups would play a very important role in raising issues, independently putting forward alternative legislation, conducting discussion and debate on these proposed laws, and rating the performance of legislators.

Ideally, the old style political party would come to an end with its monopoly on ballot access, war chests from corporations and the rich, backroom deals, control of political creativity, manipulative hierarchy, distance from everyday people and so on.

New political organization would gather people together of like philosophy, which is only natural – but not bring forward into the future the political machine of the past.

The functionary legislator or “derivative” legislator (because he derives legislation for the citizen) is subject to instant recall and is periodically rated for performance. In the past there was the concept of “representative democracy” but this system was actually a system of the representatives representing themselves, that is to say, only representatives experience democracy in a representative democracy -- not the people.

The role of the expert is elevated in a direct democracy because the expert provides valuable opinions on legislation and policy, and aids in the detailed development of this work, and helps solve problems that inevitably arise. Experts have different points of view and provide a range of perspectives and proposed legislation.

Politicians are not experts in fields of economic, science, healthcare, education and so on. But we have them draft legislation on such things. Here is a second problem with a system of politicians, we are asking the ignorant to make decisions on issues they know nothing about.

In a direct democracy, the Executive would also be subject to quick recall and a replacement election. Too much power is given to the executive today. Power to make war, give away the national treasury to banks and so on must be heavily restricted by an active populace.

Further, judges should be subject to removal. If a Supreme Court wanders too far from a current public consensus on issues, it should be repopulated with judges that do represent the new values. And more, one should consider a kind of Cultural Supreme Court that has the ability in some cases to nullify a position taken by a political court if it is far out of line with cultural norms.

The old system of politicians and ideologies that fought each other but united against the citizens will be replaced.

Diverse philosophy requires that each citizen as a member of the Social Diverse be active, so that all the views of the Social Diverse are represented. Diverse democracy is founded on "directness" and the elimination of middle men. Thus, the true check and balance is the citizen itself, not one institution or political party checking another, or certainly not politicians checking each other.

Skills, responsibility and knowledge are things that will take time for the new activist citizen to acquire. Some will scream “amateurism”, they will demand “professionals”, but in history we have found that “professionalism” is a cover for elites and upper castes. There is always a stage of “amateurism” in the formation of a direct democracy, we should not fear that. Just as some today charge that the internet is full of amateurism and we must return to the days of big media where professionalism went hand in hand with power, control and money.

Amateurism is part of democracy’s learning curve. It’s nothing to fear at all. The difference is that we have faith in the basic instincts and ethics of the people. And we know that a culture of intelligence will evolve. And also we have experts that will help us when we need them, so we do not need politicians and “professionals “for they are only experts at double agendas and power grabbing.

This condition where the people rule directly will be a creative affair because now there will be openness and flexibility in the design of legislation; no longer will there be political and economic impediments to the process.

Very importantly, previous generations had to separate church and state. The task of the present generation is to separate money and state – corruption, lobbyists, campaign funding, unfair media time and etc. A direct democracy pushes money out the political process forever including legal bribery and other forms of corruption that are tolerated today.

We now have a situation where there are no “checks and balances” in the old sense. Before we had legislators, executive and judges checking each other but all had an interest in maintaining a false democracy. So this type of check and balance system is actually a check against the people with not much balance really.

Let’s continue: The diverse view of a constitution is that it is a minimal document to maximize citizen participation in government -- a document that does not interfere with free behavior, allowing citizens to associate voluntarily; and that recognizes the diversity of needs and pursuits of an individual outside of government.

Further, democracy is more than government, democracy is “cultural”; it exists in civil society and within the state. Democracy covers all social behavior. Most importantly, democracy resides within the psyche of the individual, not only as the active citizen but, more, as the manager of an inner Diverse, for the skills of managing the inner Diverse are the generally the same for managing the outer Social Diverse. The inner democracy and the outer democracy are the same. In other words, democracy and healthy psychology go together.

“Reconstitution” is the process of reconstituting our governmental institution, it is a political concept. At the same time, reconstitution is a spiritual idea – the reconstitution of our morality and behavior. We are Diverse thinkers and we see the changing of government in tandem with changing our psychology. Politics and spirit are one. And it seems this will first manifest itself at the local level where citizens have more direct access to government, here, “Reconstitutional Congresses” may be called to take back government from elites.

But reconstitution is a very different notion from the “separation of church and state” for we uphold this wisdom. But what we recognize is that good government must come out of a culture that has a good philosophy and moral code, and from political leaders and citizens who use this philosophy and moral code to guide their daily lives. The fusing of state and church only increases authoritarianism and anti-diverse behavior in a society. But the cooperation of politics and spirit within an individual leads to enlightened social action.

Reconstitution is a very big task. When it will come and how is not clear. Probably it will occur at the local level first from city to state upwards to the federal level. But it is hard to say today given the volatility of politics today and the high potential for catastrophic national events.

But what can we do to prepare for a direct democracy right now? Beside the discussion of its core ideas, we can use the internet to create forums where individuals seriously take up the investigation, discussion and debate of important issues, with the idea of voting upon policies and suggested legislation. We can develop a process to design legislation with the help of experts. We can dialogue about the various options and then choose an option, develop it in detail, then revise it, if upon second thought it is problematic. Such a practice would keep us informed on current issues, propel us into social activism, and develop our skills as future citizens in a direct democracy to come.

The other thing that we can do is work toward the formation of a new movement that wants to end politics as usual and create a direct democracy of the people.

Cage Innoye

Freedom is all about Difference

2011-11-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

WHAT IS FREEDOM?

What is freedom? There are many freedoms: Freedom of the individual; Freedom of speech; Freedom and equality for social groups (working classes, poor, minorities, gays, women...); Freedom of religion; Freedom of choice and Freedom of movement.

There is also Economic Freedom that few of us have. Nations want freedom and free relationships with each other. Democracy is supposed to be system of individual freedom where there is the freedom to vote and freedom of information, access to information.

There are freedoms more personal and psychological such as the freedom to develop one’s own identity, the freedom to be creative, the freedom to achieve mental health, the freedom to escape the nonstop attack of marketing and consumerism.

Many of our specific freedoms must be connected into “systems” or institutions that coordinate the freedoms of millions. When we charge an organization with overseeing democracy or an economy, we do not want this entity suppressing our freedoms but in fact enhancing them. Many of us understand the necessity of collective institutions, but we do not accept the necessity of elites that use their position to reduce our freedoms and create centralizing powers that make them the ultimate decision-makers and the privileged few that have access to important information.

Freedom is a big word. It encompasses many, many things. It is obviously a supreme want and need of a human being. What are all of the freedoms we seek base upon? They flow from the very same thing: Difference.

DIFFERENCE IS THE KEY CONCEPT

Difference is the quintessential idea; it is the key to understanding freedom, for freedom is the right to be different. For when we are all the same, then freedoms are a moot point, aren’t they? In a group-think culture there is no necessity for freedom of religion, sexual orientation, individual opinion etc. These are not issues at all. When a nation is fused into a big “one”, when all agree then what use are freedoms? In general the more group-oriented that we get, the less we respect freedoms, even though the differences are all there right below the surface.

The groupthink of marketing, politics and media cannot eradicate difference, for all of us are different from each other, in a number of ways. Human beings are different from each other, we are diverse and individual, we have distinct identities, no two are alike.

Ignoring diversity and multiculturalism and denying respect and equality to social groups does not eradicate difference it merely hides it, suppresses it. But this cannot work in the long run for people will rebel and fight for their freedom. And the more a system tries to keep these people down because they are different, then the more likely that all of the “different” people will organize into a united front of all the “different” to fight back. And they will eventually succeed.

The universe is a Diverse, that is its nature, Human freedom merely reflects this great fact. If diversity were not a major feature of Nature then freedom would not be important for Human beings.

Lack of freedom, the dearth of rights is built upon limitation, restriction, suppression, self repression, erasure, concealment, the transient, the relative, the qualified and more.

The diminishment of liberty argues that similarity is primary, that difference is merely a secondary issue of life. Politicians, corporations, marketers want you to think this because they want power and control. They want to put you into a big demographic box.

For every difference must be a freedom to express that difference.

Difference is then the core idea. Differentiation is the process of creating difference. Differentiation is the key force of the cosmos; it produces galaxies, stars, planets, life, ecosystems, human individuals and individual cultures and nations. Existence IS Difference, revel in it.

Cage Innoye

Diverse Thinking and its Social Strategy -- A Brief Summation

2011-11-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

Difference and diversity are the most fundamental forces in the world.

From a singularity in a big bang, variety and complexity have been evolving for billions of years. Whether it be stars and galaxies or planets and living organisms or Human individuals and Human brains, differentiation is a steady long term force of the cosmos. From this we get biodiversity, Human diversity, and the diversity of stars and galaxies, diversity at the micro level of atoms and particles.

Differentiation, the creation of difference, comes in many forms such as individuality, particularity, diversity, complexity, change, evolution, chaos and more.

Creativity is an important form of differentiation, and is more the technique of it, the method of developing differentiation. Social creativity is the skill of creating and supporting differentiation in societies and cultures. Social Creativity is the creation of History.

Opposite to differentiation is the idea of “undifferentiation” -- this is a force that stresses not difference, individuality or diversity but similarity, organization, replication, hierarchy, models. Undifferentiation is necessary to create stable organizations or entities.

The combination of differentiation and undifferentiation helps us produce “Diverse Wholes”, wholes that are flexible and which offer freedom and variety, and which are capable of evolving. Techniques of building and managing these wholes are applied to multiculturalism, democracy, economic systems, psychology, education, media, a planet etc.

Differentiation is the primary power in the world, organization is secondary and it serves it. Organization allows the differentiation to cooperate, it protects differentiation, it sustains it, it helps it to “reproduce”.

For Human beings today, the first priority however is freedom of differentiation, that is, the liberation of those groups that are restricted and suffering. Individuals, classes, ethnic groups, races, religions, gender, those with different sexual orientation , subcultures and many more groups are unhappy because of anti-diverse social systems. Even certain institutions such as education or healthcare are dominated by other institutions because of a stress on business and profit.

Liberation of differentiation, of those marginalized takes a kind of “revolution”. Included in this process is an ongoing experiment in building new institutions and lifestyles.

Once this radical action has come to certain stage of completion then there can be free association and the project of building a “diverse whole” can be begun.

Also, note the philosophy of differentiation does not accept egotism, bigotry, close-mindedness etc. If one believes in diverse thinking then one respects the views of other individuals and groups. Difference and diversity is extended to all. Those who claim to believe in diverse thinking but do not extend it to others are not diverse thinkers, and therefore are not groups that deserve respect or an equal place in new world of social diversity.

For Human beings the issues of differentiation and diversity include many things. Below is a long list topics that reflect the core problems of our world:

· Healthy Individuality, and not egotism, alienation, group think or emotional dysfunction

· Multiculturalism and equality

· General social diversity including all social strata

· Personal Identity, the fundamental quest of every Human being

· Self awareness of the force of difference and creating thought methods to analyze and manage it

· Personal creativity

· Social creativity, the skills and process of making a better world

· Golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you

· Social individuality, the individual who has a balance of individuality and sociality

· Economic systems that have a variety of operating targets and measures, not simply money and profit

· Government that reflects social diversity by using methods of direct popular democracy like referendum and recall

· International cooperation and peace

· Balance with Nature, restoring the ecosystem

· Management of Time, so that we avoid the manipulation of time by media and marketing

· New view of History that understands the process of social differentiation and the forces that suppress it

· Communication and Media whose job is create and manage a diverse whole of information and opinion

· Rituals that rebind us, reconnect us either to the whole of ourselves or society and humanity

· Education that teaches psychology, ethics, philosophy and creativity as well as math and analysis to create a complete Human being

· Multiple institutions in society that represent multiple values, and ending the domination of corporations and money

· Mental diverse of sub-minds such as reason, imagination, emotions, subconscious, wisdom, memory and more

· Directness, the path of direct knowledge, direct participation, direct responsibility, direct communication and direct action

· Empiric, the individual who learns primarily by going into life, collecting the data of life and then gaining lessons and wisdom

· Love of the different, love of the same is common, but love of the different is what is missing in this world

· New entertainment and art that helps individuals develop personal mythology, teaches life lessons, respects social diversity and promotes creativity

· Family, a family reconnected with other families and the community, a new extended family

· New myth of a Human being

· New myth of our planet and the Human race, currently we are a planet without a myth

· New Forbiddens, that is, a leap to higher moral codex -- what behaviors are we now willing to say are absolutely NOT acceptable in this epoch, new forbiddens tell if we have actually made any ethical advances, or if we are still being just “practical”

Cage Innoye

Neg-Andro, Evil and Animals

2011-11-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

Have you ever said this about another person? “You act like an animal!”

Have you ever compared someone to a “beast” or “wolf” or “hyena” or “jackal” or “worm” or “snake” or “rat” or “insect”? But an animal would not act like an “animal”, that is a distinctly Human misbehavior.

Negative Human behaviors might be collectively called “Neg-Andro”. When our race passed out of the natural world into a realm of so-called “higher” behaviors, we also developed the potential for far lower behaviors. Our species currently suffers from quite a few Neg-Andro traits. Don’t blame this on other species. Be kind to animals.

Neg-Andro, means negative Human, this is a term to refer to negative Human behavior such as evil, dysfunction, ideology, bad values, destructive systems, addiction and so on. We often make the error of saying that people have descended to the behavior of “animals”, but the fact is that animals do not act like Humans at all. The real beast lies within us, and this personality goes lower than any animal can. This is our evolutionary struggle.

In the course of Human evolution we have both ascended and descended. And the test today is whether we will finally transcend our negative Human behavior or will this behavior destroy us, the world and all of Nature?

Cage Innoye

free ebook: Social Creativity, Activism and Revolution

2011-11-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

Social Creativity and Revolution is new book about social creativity, activism, reform, revolution and dual power. It sketches out the general outlines of a new thesis for activists to replace obsolete paradigms. Social creativity merges social change with creative theory and diverse thinking. Book is inspired by the revolutions taking place in North Africa and the Mideast.

Link to free ebook: https://sites.google.com/site/axxiadnewsandideas/p-193

Below is an excerpt:

Social Creativity, Activism and Revolution

The essence of revolution, reform and social change IS Creativity. People want to destroy one thing and create a new thing. They want to create a new culture and society for themselves and their children.

This creativity is manifested in several forms. First, is the creativity needed to achieve power, at least a first level of power. Social creativity contributes its ideas on reform and revolution, types of revolution, communication, organization, new institutions and dual power, direct and indirect leadership, creative technique and much more. Social creativity recognizes different strategies within dictatorships vs. modern style democracies.

The second issue is after power is achieved. Often in history this creativity is still born. At first it appears from nowhere, it is vibrant and compelling, it makes great changes, and then at a certain point the creativity disappears, that is, true creativity withers away. And the revolution ceases for revolution IS creativity. We then have betrayal or bad compromise, slogans and dogma, conservatism and paranoia. And we might see what we can call “Mis-creativity” which is false creativity, perhaps creative in form but not in content, a deceptive creativity that brings no change or freedom. We enter the era of new Shell Cultures with their self congratulating revolutions, with their high ideal and “low real”.

What activists must do is study the essence of social change: Creativity. If you study the ideas, practices and writings of activists in the 20^th century you will generally not find “creativity” as a theme. They have already determined all of the future -- they are proceeding from intellectual dogma, fixed ideas, singular solutions, intolerance of difference and a hierarchy of already programmed solutions. This was the psychology and culture of these times. But after witnessing the demise of these revolutions, we must conclude fundamentally what they lacked was imagination and innovation, or “Creativity” (among other things).

And if they had practiced creativity they would have brought an entirely new mindset that included a host of new behaviors: Flexibility, multiple perception, diversity, multiple solutions, acceptance of chaos, an admission that they did have all the answers and solutions, a comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, leadership that does not instruct or order etc.

To understand this new world of Social Creativity we must return to a realm of experience that is familiar to many: Personal Creativity. The mysteries of Social Creativity are resolved when we dislodge ourselves from the sociological and political then return to the sphere of the Individual.

Social Creativity proceeds first from the basics of creativity:

1) The rules and methods of creativity…of which there are many. (Please see the book: Glossary of Creativity for a full examination of the techniques and psychology of creativity.)

2) The fact that all creativity essentially is individual…even within social situations.

The goal of Social Creativity is social change while the goal of individual creativity might be personal or social. However, Social Creativity can have a personal goal in the sense of teaching individuals to be creative.

Social Creativity uses its unique set of methods – these include chaos, broad united and diverse fronts, competition, multiple solutions, promotion of schools of thought, the role of facilitators, the method of indirect leadership combined with direct leadership, not culling to soon, research and experimentation, tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, multiple perception, flexibility and more. (see book chapter: Some Methods of Social Creativity Leadership)

Social Creativity not only works for a new world, it specifically builds up institutions and practices that will develop creativity in new generations, maintaining the social cycle of creativity which keeps creativity alive generation to generation. And it is ever alert to attitudes and methods that suppress creativity in education, politics, media and business.

Reality is Plastic, and Material Illusions

Social Creativity has some very specific attitudes. It holds that reality is plastic, that it is not fixed at all. Both plans and physical things are malleable and can be reshaped.

Also, Social Creativity says that often many material things and institutions are “illusions” and that inner illusions based upon ideals and ethics are more real. Many systems are simply false realities; they are tactile, durable, physical and powerful, yet they are dysfunctional and anti-social and anti-human.

The Future

On the future, Social Creativity says that no one has yet created a new world of true democracy and freedom or genuinely fair multi-valued economic systems or mass mental health or mass creativity, so history books will not fundamentally help us. We are in new territory, there are no guides except our ideals and the rules of creativity. Social Creativity says do not fear change, do not despair. With faith and hope, patience and creative work we can build the new world.

There will be many spheres of change -- economic systems, business enterprises, government, media and entertainment and art, schools, community, family, mental health, rituals, international relations, repairing the environment and more.

Genio and Geniotariat

Social Creativity says that creativity will extend also to making individuals creative. Most people want to be creative though society has denied them this skill and mindset. Most people want to be Genios (creative individuals) and live lives of creative joy. The Geniotariat is a social group composed of creative people. It is an open “class” to which all can join. It is the Geniotariat that must be created and liberated in this age. Marx spoke of a “proletariat”, in this epoch we have a new social demographic, the Geniotariat, the new rising caste that seeks to be creative and to recreate all things. Unlike Marx’s notion, the Geniotariat is positive, open and constructive, while the idea of the “proletariat” became very negative, sectarian and destructive.

United and Diverse Front

The social activist that is creative has its principles of individuality, freedom, equality, directness, democracy, unity on ethics and values and more. She or he brings creative attitudes and behaviors to a social movement, and shapes it so it supports creativity in members and organizes creative projects. The social activist works in a “united and diverse front” to change the world. Organization is highly import for a movement for without it there is no coordination, no planning, no campaigning, no action, no collective dialogue and debate, no re-planning, no training, no recruiting, no building of institutions and thus little chance of success.

Social Individualist

The social activist is a Social Individualist, though she or he feels strongly about the principles of individuality, the activist finds a specific balance that allows the individual to think of others and act in the service of others. Social individuality is a healthy individuality, one that is not extreme and alienated from Humankind.

Personal Mythology

This social activist has developed a self mythology of being a Social Genio, a socially creative person dedicated to making society a better place. Mythology is a highly important self construct without it no one can know who they are and what they are to do in life. The Social Genio has a specific task which is more difficult than normal life, so she or he needs a stronger self mythology.

Difference and Diversity

The Social Genio thinks in terms of difference and diversity. This is only natural because she or he cannot be creative without these perceptions. Difference and creativity proceed from the same source. The activist Genio works to create a healthy Social Diverse of races, nationalities, religions, gender, sexual orientation, the disabled, subcultures and more.

Directness

Further, this Social Genio thinks in terms of Directness, that is, direct action, direct connection, direct communication, direct knowledge, and direct responsibility. In a complex, changing and diverse world, one can only know and control things by direct relationships and direct methods, otherwise “middlemen” will take control away from you. For a creative person this is a natural behavior, the social activist carries this into Social Creativity, and also tries to teach this directness to all.

New Nation

Social Creativity has many, many spheres of activity – one for each aspect of our culture. The Social Genio is building up a parallel Nation, a rising nation that will replace the moribund and declining nation.

Power, Creative Hegemony

This raises the issue of Power. In personal creativity one needs Power or one cannot be creative, we need power over our conditions and at least to prevent others from undermining our spirit and our plans. Power is very important for a creative person because the world in direct or indirect ways tries hard to suppress our Genio. The same concept applies to Social Creativity, the Social Genio must have power to engage in the activity of creation. She or he or the group must have the power to not be interrupted, to conduct free experiment, to not be de-funded and so on. If the Social Genio does not have Creative Hegemony then NO essential creativity can take place.

Dual Power

Also, Social Creativity produces Dual Power. A new world is being created, at the same time, the old world still exists though it is sinking. Cultures do not change overnight, we have long periods where people’s minds must be changed and new institutions must undergo experiment until they work successfully. More, Dual Power can be built before, during and after revolutionary events. Dual Power is not something that waits until after a revolutionary change, in fact it can help initiate a change. Dual power includes new cultural institutions, new media, new schools, new types of businesses, new stock exchanges, new healthcare and much more. Also, it might include the development of parallel forms of government on the internet where citizens actively study and debate issues and form mock legislation in preparation for a direct democracy to come.

Whether some issue requires reform or revolution is only secondary, this may seem an odd thing to say, but in either case, we will have an extended period of Dual Power. Even revolutions cannot leap into an already-made future, it takes time to create the future. A movement is engaged both in building new cultural institutions and practices as well as political activism, the two behaviors go together, each helps the other.

Civos

The core unit of creativity might be a “Civos, a civilizing act. We will advance one Civos, one civilizing act, at a time, whether revolution or reform. A Civos ends suffering, solves problems, creates healthy individuals, ceases social strife and more. This might be our metric for social change.

Positive, Builder, Helper

The Social Genio wants to do true good. She or he wants to create true democracy, make peace with nations, take care of people, stop damage to Nature. The Social Genio is positive and a builder, and not simply a negative “fighter” -- who only knows how to rally people to destroy but not how to build the new world and all of its new practices, lifestyles and institutions. Ultimately, the Social Genio wants to help people, otherwise what is the point?

Conscious vs. Unconscious Activism

Sometimes, revolution is often an unconscious act of rebellion in which the perpetrator has no clue as to the future, as to what is next. The revolution of a Social Genio is more self aware, she or he is conscious of the general outlines and some specifics, she or he has a worldview and general methods of creativity and diverse thinking. One may not have the exact solutions to a problem but with the right outlook and skills , one can over time experiment and build a new world.

Creativity and Certainty

The Social Genio has no tolerance for dogma or preconceived plans or fear of change, at the same time, the Social Genio has a high tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty. Why? Because when we are in a state of creativity we do not know what the final product will be, we are temporarily lost, if you will. Our only certainty is that we will eventually find a solution to a problem by our creative methods. Those who have all the answers live in a world of excruciating detail, while those who do not live in a zone of that is imprecise. For the Social Genio we have our basic principles and values, and we have creative process which we know will eventually resolve all problems in detail. We have unflagging confidence in our abilities and great faith in the power of creativity.

Psychology of a Creative Activist

The Social Genio revels in diversity, difference, flexibility, experiment, the new, schools of thought, multiple solutions, freedom, evolution and individuality . The activist that is not creative does not like difference for he wants uniformity. He does not like social diversity for the same fears. He is inflexible in thought. He is intimidated by the New. He does not want experiments. He does not want different schools of thought, he does not want multiple solutions. He is panicked by the idea of mass freedom. He does not like the concept of evolution or a process of change. And he ultimately does not like individuality for that means difference and eventually creativity -- creativity is the ultimate expression of conscious difference in Human beings, wanting to be different personalities with different views, with different solutions.

Fear is the emotion that parallels dogmatic thought – fear of the different, the new, the unknown. And this leads to a need to control people and processes and ultimately control history -- which is futile because history is an evolutionary process, and one cannot control evolution.

Some people cannot stand the chaotic social process that creates radical action because they desperately need something to grab onto, their tolerance of change is very, very low. However, we are in an Age when social change is going to accelerate again across the planet. We have just passed out of a few slow decades. The fall of communism signaled the end of a first cycle, social activism reached a peak in the first half of the 20th century and another peak in the 60s.

Today we can see a second wave of big changes coming on the planet, a second wave of radical change as developing nations gain economic power and established powers lose their privileged position.

The individual who has a low tolerance for change, should not be a social leader or activist in this epoch. The revolutions and reforms made by these personalities are partial, interrupted and stalled. They cannot go the distance because they cannot be creative. These personalities harbor a paradox, on the one hand, they want change but they only want change so they can control. Change however is continuous and stopping social change is futile. The best approach is to try to guide change, and this what the Social Genio does with techniques of Social Creativity that try to steer creativity. It is true that we shall find from time to time that even our plans will be upset by innovations and new things which will catch us off guard and unprepared for the next big change. However, if we are alert and honest we can quickly recover and fix our mistakes.

We are imperfect but we will do much better if we think in terms of Social Creativity guiding social change rather than the old modes of dogma and control, for this misbehavior will lead to misery and long periods of social stagnation.

Other articles in this book will explore aspects of this thesis. For your reference below are some qualities and attitudes of a creative social activist for discussion:

Diversity

Social diversity

Difference

Flexibility

Experiment

The new

Schools of thought

Multiple solutions

Freedom

Equality

Evolution

Chaos

Competition

Individuality

Social individuality

Ambiguity

Uncertainty

Faith and confidence in creativity

Love of the different

Directness

Transitions

Reality is plastic

Material illusion

The future as art

Universal application of creativity to all things

Personal myth

And more……….

Also, here is a list some strategic concepts just discussed and others to come:

Geniotariat

United and Diverse Front, UDF

Social Individuality

Social Directness

Social Diversity

New Nations

Dual Power

Creative Hegemony

Objective and Subjective aspects of Revolution

Types of Revolution

Conscious and Unconscious Revolution

The relation of Revolution and Reform

Civos

Indirect and Direct Leadership

Facilitators

Specific Social Creative techniques

Specific methods of Social Creative leadership

Diverse Wholes

Negative United Front

Mis-creativity

Polythea

Pandermath

And more….

free ebook link: https://sites.google.com/site/axxiadnewsandideas/p-193

Table of Contents

Why this Book? We Need a New Model for Social Change

Social Creativity, Activism and Revolution

Creativity is an Unstoppable Force in History

Some Basic Principles of Creativity

The Principles of Indirect leadership

Some Methods of Social Creativity Leadership

Principles of a Creative Activist

Power and creativity

Objective and Subjective Issues in Social Change

On Revolution, Reform and Dual Power
Social Creativity uses various types of organization

Silicon chips, Moore’s law and forming a creative economy
Proletariat, Polletariat, Pandermath and Geniotariat
Creativity and Changing Social Institutions
Revolution Is a Creative Process
5 Features of Social Creativity

Appendix Articles:

Diverse Wholes, Systems, Kollects

Reality is Plastic so We Must be Creative

When Social Reality is Illusion and Personal Illusion is Real

Create the Future

Crisis of Creativity in Modern Culture

History and Power of the Vague Whole Word

In 2001: Let’s Think Out of Both Boxes of History

A Generation Without a Paradigm

Gender in Creativity

Develop Socially Critical Thinking

Education System and Creativity

The System of Polythea – Delusions of Consumerism and Entertainment

The Suppression of Your Creativity is a Suppression of Your Neurology

About the Mis-Creative, Pandermath and Dis-Art

Creativity uses the Power of Differentiation

Returning to the Subsume

About Shell Culture and the Boundary Age

Change Our Social Institutions

The Genio Cycle of Society

Can We Form a United and Diverse Front?

A Bill of Creative Rights

The World of Iso-Thinking

The Methods of Range Thinking

On the Geniotariat

About the Creative Mind, Creative Techniques and Behaviors

On Self-Genio

Measure vs. Immeasure, the limits of economics

2011-11-07T14:12:00.000-08:00

A new kind of economy is coming. It has multiple values and translates these into multiple measures for a business and industry.

But there is a caveat to this.

We must be aware that there are limits on economics, that metrics themselves have limits. Everything has a limit in the world. These limits in the new economy are about themes that cannot be measured. The world is too diverse to allow measure a universal reign.

Against measure is Immeasure, the “unmeasureable”. Many issues are simply beyond measure. We shall find personal issues that transcend measure, spiritual issues that escape measure, intangibles that we cannot begin to measure, values that we will refuse to submit to measure, creative talents that refuse to be contained in a metric...and more. In the gray areas we will explore and argue endlessly.

Where our measure ends we will find other social institutions, for economic institutions are not the whole of society and culture. There are many more organizations and associations in a nation, each is important and serves a purpose. So while a Metric Economy brings society into its web, it does so only upon an economic and metric basis. And much of our behavior and concepts and ideals lie outside of this community. Family, education, government, art, religion, community and more are separate institutions and behaviors.

Thus, one institution strives to be a Diverse, and yet in the end it is too narrow to be a Diverse, it must reckon with a bigger Diverse outside itself. Another way to say this is that we want a manifold world of multiple values, and to have multiple values you must have multiple institutions and multiple powers in a society, not a single institution that monopolize power.

Further, economic measure meets a wall when it buts up against the Individual. The individual has a vast inner Diverse perhaps infinite, and she or he will not submit to a simple and narrow economic metric box.

Thus, this economic thesis has a limit. Limits are important to grasp, for limits delineate different things, they signify differentiation, the end of one thing and the beginning of another thing.

The first error made in economic theory was to jettison a rich mix of Human values for a single value: profit. This must be corrected so that we can create multi-value economies.

The second error we could make is apply an economic measure to institutions that exist in a separate sphere of values and ethics, that is, try and reduce all culture to commerce.

Thinking in terms of multiple perception and diversity would help us not make these 2 historical errors.

Cage Innoye

Create Money!

2011-11-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

Money is a human construct, it is a human creation. And because of this it can be modified or changed.

A social metric economy alters the nature of money and its social dynamic. One re-creates money in these senses:

Money plus metrics

First, when buying a good or service we are not simply looking at monetary price as we used to. Now we are looking at a set of metrics that lie beside the price. We are familiar today with ratings, the metric system takes these ratings into new territory, makes a system of them, and follows them to their logical conclusion.

If we buy a laptop, we would be looking at the price of the device of course, and then a set of measures of its qualities. These might include:

-Issues of quality and life of the product

-Customer service ratings

-Environmental concerns in manufacturing

-Ethics of the company in treatment of surrounding communities

-Diversity in workforce

-And so on.

These metrics may be presented in a various formats, these can be very simple (a 1 to 5 system) or can get very detailed and complex with equations. You can even have a total metric that sums up all of these concerns into one number, if you like.

When you buy a product you will be looking at the price plus these other issues. You will make a sort of interpolation between the monetary and the measures to make your decision. Price will be important but so will be the external issues.

This is a kind of personal equation you are using. This would be a ‘paratactic’ formula, meaning “setting beside”. We already do this in life, but now in a metric economy we would approach this more scientifically.

Leagues and a MBX stock exchange would develop these metric performance goals and rate firms and their products. (see article, “Will there be a recovery from Capitalism”)

When using a paratactic formula you have changed money; or you could say you have created another kind of “money”. You are no longer valuing something in the narrow old terms of a specific price, a process that extends back into ancient times.

Now you have created a set of new values, you could say a “new money” has been generated. And remember that money is a human invention, it is not an immutable thing created by the universe or Nature or Platonic forms etc. And thus old money can be replaced by human invention and creativity.

Money is really only a supply and demand metric. It really measures a relationship between buyer and seller, it gives the specific price of something. It is only one metric among many metrics to consider in an advanced economy. Present money has nothing to do with actual value (just look at the prices of houses in housing market today...)

Money and metrics merged into one thing

A second thing can happen to money, one may want to create a single number that merges the money aspect of value and the other metric quantities.

For example, we have a company that begins with low metrics. It climbs up over three years to a new level of quality in its behaviors.

Its initial value of say $10 million can now be adjusted. Someone from a MBX or League could appraise the new value of this firm. After making a metric analysis we may find a great leap in performance standards.

A factor then can be used to raise the price of the firm. It may be worth $15 million now. In this case the metrics have impacted the monetary value, and raised it significantly.

So a metric assay and public presentation of this assessment has a direct effect upon a company. Metrics impact price, that is, supply and demand dynamics -- that is, the demand for this firm. (Of course we are assuming the company exists in a culture where high standards are valued -- which is actually a first condition for a metric economy, otherwise a metric economy would never take off and leave the ground.) This is a second way that metrics alters money and changes everything.

Metric stocks and bonds can be issued. These would be in classes. A company gets rated according a set of metrics and then stocks are sold based upon that rating. In this way the funding of firms has changed, they are now being financed by monetary worth and metric worth.

Banks can loan money based also upon metric performance.

There is a forbidden though in all of this. One cannot have a company repay a loan in metrics. That makes no sense. Nor can we have a loan being given in metrics, for that would make no sense, if a company gets higher metrics without having actually achieved them.

In a metric economy, metrics cannot be made commodities, they cannot be traded, stored or sold. If this were to happen then metrics would behave just like old money, and we would be back to the old problems. The whole idea of metrics appending money is to break out of the old dynamic and set standards that free us of the cycle of profit and greed.

If metrics are used like money, then we get metrics without earning them, we hoard them and buy firms with them, we create a bizarre metric financials market and so on.

This makes metrics like money and thus defeats the purpose of the metrics. Anyone who advocates this is an opportunist trying to get wealth and power, and undermine a diverse economy.

Gross metric product and national accounting

Gross Metric Product, GMP, is a replacement for the current GDP idea of summing national revenues.

In a GMP we would tally up the metrics of the entire economy trying to arrive at a total picture of quality and standards.

We arrive at an overview which is much more than revenues or assets and stocks of materials and inventories, which are very important. We have snapshot of environmental performance, customer service, community relations and etc.

On a national level we then can put a monetary value with the GDP for a complete grasp of what is happening in our economy.

With a GMP summary we can then identify problems in the economy and work toward a plan to solve these problems of low metrics. We now know where to focus nationally.

This is another way to modify money on a national, collective level.

The value of a national currency

On an international level, organizations can actually rate national currencies according to their metric performance.

If a dollar is poor, this would mean its metrics are weak. If a dollar is strong, this would mean that is metrics are ideal.

This would happen in a world where people actually cared about metric standards. If you do not, then old exchange measures would continue.

A country with high metrics would have currency that nations and corporations would prefer to hold. Naturally, this currency is based on goods and behaviors that are of higher value. The very metrics would alter the value of the currency sending it up or down.

This concept would compete with the current notion of a ‘reserve currency’. A premium metric currency would be preferred for holding and in pricing transactions and investments.

On this level, metrics has modified our notion of money of currency exchange, we have re-created money on the international level.

A National Mis-Creativity Index

2011-11-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

Have you wondered how much of economic production is simply waste?

Have you wondered how many products are trite and useless?

Have you wondered how much of our celebrated industrial creativity is actually “Mis-Creativity”?

What we might need in the developed nations is a National Mis-Creativity Index.

A way of measuring how much of our economy is actually devoted to false creativity. This would include creativity that is actually either imitative, destructive, mediocre, superficial, trivial, manipulative, stolen, shallow, exploitive, euphoric, distracting, addictive, entrancing, standard lowering, wasteful and so on.

3500 square foot houses, SUVs, toxic fast food, military production for Middle East wars, luxury products for the 1% and much more.

And what about all that junk we store in our 2 car garages that we really never needed?

What would you think that the size of this mis-creative output would be? What fraction of the US economy for instance is dominated by the mis-creative?

Another way to put this is this: Is the US dollar a unit of economic creativity or a unit of economic Mis-Creativity?

A National Mis-Creativity Index would give us statistics on many industries and products. It might give us a sobering assessment of our true spending habits and where corporations actually invest their money.

A National Mis-Creativity Index might give us hints as to which direction we should take our economy and which direction we should not continue to pursue. One thing we do not want to do is revive those industries that extol and fabricate the mis-creative, we cannot afford to waste any resources during our economic recovery in certain industries, because we do not have the luxury of too many “W” shaped recoveries in the future.

Dividing products into creative and mis-creative is a helpful exercise because it forces us to select and reject, choose and plan, prioritize and advance, and redefine ourselves as Human beings and not as consumers.

See article on this site: Mis-Creativity will keep the US in recession

http://diversephilosophy.blogspot.com/2011/08/mis-creativity-will-keep-us-in.html

also:

Time for a New Economic System -- 20 features of a Creative Economy

http://diversephilosophy.blogspot.com/2011/08/time-for-new-economic-system-20.html

Onboard Brain Navigation: Your Brain Is Too Complex To Be Run By An Amateur Like You

2011-11-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Just for Fun series of distractions:

Complicated Brain Activity

Onboard Navigation

Your brain is highly complex, in fact it is a universe, or better it is a ‘Diverse’ of many, many aspects.

In fact your brain is so complicated that you will never be able to understand it and certainly never be able to manage.

So don’t waste your time, leave it to the professionals!

This is the position taken at a recent Harvard conference of psychologists and psychiatrists.

The age of Onboard Brain Navigation (OBN) is here!

According to Dr. Roger Cloudbank:

“The problem is that the human brain is a mutation. The billions of neurons are the result of a runaway process in nature. We have far too much redundancy in our brains, way too much space on our hard drive.

Why did nature do this? We don’t know. The huge surplus of capacity in the mind leads to a complexity that ordinary humans cannot handle. But fortunately nature created another mutation, the Brain Manager. So now we can offer a solution to this problem of excess neurology.

One mutation serves another. This new professional is really neither psychologist nor psychiatrist at all, this is a new occupation which occupies the mind of the patient, he is a sort of controller or manager. He substitutes his knowledge and skill for that lack of knowledge and skill of the patient, he becomes the will and the director of patient’s brain.

You know its just like Cloud computing, the lonely brain shares computing space with other brains, and everyone gets their needs satisfied."

In his new book, Cloudbank outlines the history of psychology and therapy: First is the stage of Sigmund Freud, in this stage we have psycho-therapy. The premise is that the individual needs help but ultimately the individual is in control.

The second stage is that of drugs, the age of the psychiatrist. But the problem with this epoch, which we are now in, is that drugs are very crude. Though they are efficient we have no sophistication, no nuance. People get put into general states that are partly non-functional. The method works by limiting behavior and fixing it into a single state. Though the positive aspect of this strategy is that it tries to reach millions while traditional psycho-therapy is limited in its reach.

The third stage is that of direct management of a psyche. Professionals give daily instruction on issue and problems. This stage may be called “substitution” or “expert direct management” or “direct mentorship”. This new phase is designed to be as complex as psychotherapy but at the same time as popular in its influence as drug strategies.

Cloudbank ties this new strategy to modern electronics. “The internet allows this to happen, this technology provides the condition for a Brave New World....And even better if we could raise children to respond to a PAPA figure. They would have a professional in the form of father figure who throughout their lives would guide them.”

Who is PAPA? It is a name given to one’s direct mentor. An account is developed for each person, in it is a vast psyche history from birth to death. On a daily, even minute by minute basis, PAPA would provide advice and guidance to the user. Because the software intimately knows the patient, the advice is accurate and effective. All the user has to do is simply follow it!

Questions asked to a beta tester of the system give you some idea of the process.

“What is this software like?”

“Well, it’s like my onboard navigation system in my car.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I like it, I have no idea where I am, where I’m going. I feel secure and taken care of. So I can listen to music, play games, do other things and not worry. The navigation program will direct me in detail. I just do what it says. So I just enjoy things.”

OBN will offer advice on thousands or problems from breaking up with your girlfriend, moral quandaries, handling difficult people, communicating with your boss, standing up for yourself, self identity, critical life choices, how to deal with anger or depression, gaining the trust of your cat and so much more.

An objection was registered with Dr Cloudbank:

“Aren’t these people becoming completely dependent on PAPA?”

“Sure, that is the point.”

“But people are losing all sense of direction becoming very dependent. And if computers take overall tasks then what is left for the individual to do? If everything is provided for them by software then what?”

“No, there are millions of other things to do. They can do so many other things -- travel, shop, chat, paint pictures, work, invest in stocks, just enjoy activities. Now they don’t have to stress about emotional issues, we resolve those issues for them easily.”

“But then they develop no self knowledge or skill, and ultimately don’t know who they are.”

“Yes, but they don’t have the ability to develop that anyway, remember, the brain is far too complex for them to understand, it is too complex and chaotic and changing minute by minute. Mother Nature is not perfect, remember this is a strange mutation that made us smart, unfortunately the downside is that we got too smart, beyond our capabilities.”

“Just because it’s complex does not mean it is unmanageable. It just means it takes a while to figure it out, and that we have endless growth.”

“That’s the old idea of Buddha or Freud, it’s so wrong. But in a sense they are right, to make you feel better, just consider this system an onboard, built-in priest or counselor. They do not do well on their own, can’t you see that? So the advisor is put right inside their heads, what’s wrong with that?...Actually, on their monitor.”

Onboard Brain Navigation is the term for this new field of "e-therapy", it results from the merger of psychology with the internet.

Internet Service Providers are highly interested in this new type of “Service”. Venture capitalists are talking about setting up “Incubators” to research and develop this new technology.

Business strategists are debating whether the service should be free or whether it should be paid for. A consensus is emerging that pop-up advertising, or PAPA Pop-ups might be the solution.

Corporate Marketing departments are very interested in the uses of the OBN.

Both the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties are considering a OBN of their own.

Onboard Brain Navigation is coming soon to a cranium near you....

by Meul

I'm Your Puppet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcD2iexGqZQ