how effective is the bootstrap?
who knows .. but it appears to be working.. dragging my inner ramblings kicking and screaming clawing at the melodrama .. but it appears as if i have managed to surface from the inner self pity .. so are we on the path to recovery who knows .. but it feels better..
but back to the more prominent discussion on perspective and happiness....
how much can we deceive ourselves within our own self pity losing all perspective on the world around us and life in general.. one would imagine that there are those who through time have managed to pull themselves through this from situations imaginable to the bulk of us .. there were those in abject poverty and absolute reign of despots and tyrants have managed to see the silver lining through the dark clouds .. when the rest of the western world on a hole appears to have lost this ability on a whole. It may be due to the constant programming through pulp movie and fiction that we have lost the ability to actually live our lives.. what is the essence of our lives and how do we perceive things in accurate way and how often do we create our own self fulfilling prophecies which pull us into our own depths .. how much can we blame on society, how much can we blame on ourselves how much can we blame on the medias constant obsession to sell the most horrible and depressing news.. sadness and tragedy sells the news..
this is something i just cannot understand ... and how this self fulfilling prophetic babble influences our lives.. and how the death of a superstar .. yes he was a superstar can mould the entire news on a world wide basis? Yes we have sympathy .. but seriaaaas.. seeing it flashed all day on the cnn and cnbc channels in the tea area of my office just seems to highlight something to ponder over..
well more for me to ponder over and for you to all ponder .. WTF why does he think that crap ..
But the longer I am and the longer i ponder the more i realize that there is a distinct segregation in society especially into those who consider and ponder and evaluate their daily existence and the existence of those around them and those who are bound to the media and its representation of their lives. I cannot say that this a new thought or even mine .. it is just something that i am gaining more and more resonance with.. that the life and the world around is definitely split into Jungian or similar archetypes of personalities and motivations.. i see one of the guys at my Gym who is a very successful director of a huge telecoms organization .. no not that huge..more in the least cost routing side of things .. but they have been in the news .. and i see him .. going to gym and reading his blackberry all the way .. running that hamster wheel raggid .. we have and are all there at certain times of our lives..
bringing me back to some other observations over the last week or so about soem of the personalities that we have to do with on a daily basis people with amazing abilities and people with amazing abilities to deceive those around them and some who even go so far as deci4eving themselves in the process .. how 'we' as humans build elaborate houses of cards around our existences .. how we throw stones in glass houses .. people who build castles of sand into the sky building empires without and conception or perception of the influence or impacts of their actions being driven my some of the bassist egotistical motivations for existence and self justification..
but enough on that for now .. you may all now begin to have some notion that i may have some form of deep seated hatred for people in general which in general is not true .. it is just i standing there as an observer watching waiting looking at what people do and what i experience of it on a daily basis ..
more another day dudes and dudesses
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
perspective happiness and objectivity
I must admit over the last few days the melodrama has been rife in the internal ramblings of my mind.. I have been pondering a lot ..
two friends of ours have lost their houses and almost everything due to the turn in the economy.. me considering then that i should be happy due to the fact that i still have a lot and have lots to be happy for did not ward off a wave of deep seated chronic depression.. no worries it is passing.. but what i was feeling is merely a mirror of what a lot of people are thinking at this stage.. the hamster wheel is turning faster and faster and taking more of our time due to the insidious traffic and traveling the bulk of us are subjected to on a bidaily basis..
We have to question the value and context of our lives as a whole in this rapidly spiralling economy and lifestyle we are all forced to partake in.
But at the same time are caught in the juxtaposition of perspective, when us the lucky ones still have jobs and cars to travel to work .. well most of us..
when the bulk of our countries populace has to travel in overcrouded trains, busses and insane taxi's .. when all of us know people who are directly and indirectly affected by the insane financial meltdown and are losing so much.. but this just makes it ahrder for us to digest the reality of our personal situations..
when we should be gaining some solace in our own comfortable lifestyles..
Does it make us bad to question the quality of daily exsistence when there are so many with much less and harder lives..
Brings us back to perspective on life, how often we are drawn into our own mental enclaves where we wallow in our own personal crisises and feel sorry for ourselves.. well maybe not all of you.. many of you may be able to remain in more chearfull demeaner .. Bringing me back to my previous questions on objectivity and subjectivity.. is it ever possible.. are we ever able to be totally objective about the thing closest to us .. our lives.. it is so much easier to look ouside viewing the world through the scope and view everything around us and view the abject poverty crime and unhappiness and suffering and in total humaness not be able to view our lives in context to this, Is this possibly becasue this outside of our real context.. how absoloute are our lives, how much do we live within or without society..
onto more cheerfull things .. USA beat spain in the soccer .. strange how a super power can be viewed as an underdog with a different perspective on life ..? very strange the way we rationalize things? now only for bafana bafana to overcome the brazillians? is this in any way possible who knows..
this lead me to a discussion I had to day with some of the people i work with .. and we questioned if we are actually a nation of chokers or not? Does our society breed a nation of people who can see it all the way to the end of a struggle? we have fantastic fight, often giving up at the finish line.. just not being able to cross the finishing line.. tripping at the last step.
But other than that so where to now .. how do we bootstrap ourselves into happiness. is it possible...
maybe with a healthy dose of objectivity in its truest sense and a conserted effort to overcome our internal deamons we should be able to have a more focussed and possitive outlook on life .. but maybe not.. maybe those 'clever' brain shrinkers and their associates are all right and it is all about chemicals.. how often or not there are those who think and those who dont ..
what does this difference mean? who knows .. i am not thinking now :-)
on a sane note.. if in anyway ever possible can we forge forward into the darkness seeking light where there is apparently none?
by clear reference and perspective on what we have and what we ahve achieved sic! what ever that means itis possible to destroy those feelings of unhappiness and self pity and convert them back into an enthusiasm and movement forwards .. starting to sound a bit like a deepak chopra lecture .. now that is Sad..
I m just considering where to now .. no not at any level other than my mind .. our mind is the vesel life creates the chemical journey that we experience, augmented by the fine wine dying on the vine .. or in a more socially sensitive way .. or politically correct or whatever ..
And to all those sceptics and evil others no .. this is not a MLC .. :-)\\
but just a seasonal deep introspective retrospective subjective existential crisis :-)
Later dudes
and dudedesses
two friends of ours have lost their houses and almost everything due to the turn in the economy.. me considering then that i should be happy due to the fact that i still have a lot and have lots to be happy for did not ward off a wave of deep seated chronic depression.. no worries it is passing.. but what i was feeling is merely a mirror of what a lot of people are thinking at this stage.. the hamster wheel is turning faster and faster and taking more of our time due to the insidious traffic and traveling the bulk of us are subjected to on a bidaily basis..
We have to question the value and context of our lives as a whole in this rapidly spiralling economy and lifestyle we are all forced to partake in.
But at the same time are caught in the juxtaposition of perspective, when us the lucky ones still have jobs and cars to travel to work .. well most of us..
when the bulk of our countries populace has to travel in overcrouded trains, busses and insane taxi's .. when all of us know people who are directly and indirectly affected by the insane financial meltdown and are losing so much.. but this just makes it ahrder for us to digest the reality of our personal situations..
when we should be gaining some solace in our own comfortable lifestyles..
Does it make us bad to question the quality of daily exsistence when there are so many with much less and harder lives..
Brings us back to perspective on life, how often we are drawn into our own mental enclaves where we wallow in our own personal crisises and feel sorry for ourselves.. well maybe not all of you.. many of you may be able to remain in more chearfull demeaner .. Bringing me back to my previous questions on objectivity and subjectivity.. is it ever possible.. are we ever able to be totally objective about the thing closest to us .. our lives.. it is so much easier to look ouside viewing the world through the scope and view everything around us and view the abject poverty crime and unhappiness and suffering and in total humaness not be able to view our lives in context to this, Is this possibly becasue this outside of our real context.. how absoloute are our lives, how much do we live within or without society..
onto more cheerfull things .. USA beat spain in the soccer .. strange how a super power can be viewed as an underdog with a different perspective on life ..? very strange the way we rationalize things? now only for bafana bafana to overcome the brazillians? is this in any way possible who knows..
this lead me to a discussion I had to day with some of the people i work with .. and we questioned if we are actually a nation of chokers or not? Does our society breed a nation of people who can see it all the way to the end of a struggle? we have fantastic fight, often giving up at the finish line.. just not being able to cross the finishing line.. tripping at the last step.
But other than that so where to now .. how do we bootstrap ourselves into happiness. is it possible...
maybe with a healthy dose of objectivity in its truest sense and a conserted effort to overcome our internal deamons we should be able to have a more focussed and possitive outlook on life .. but maybe not.. maybe those 'clever' brain shrinkers and their associates are all right and it is all about chemicals.. how often or not there are those who think and those who dont ..
what does this difference mean? who knows .. i am not thinking now :-)
on a sane note.. if in anyway ever possible can we forge forward into the darkness seeking light where there is apparently none?
by clear reference and perspective on what we have and what we ahve achieved sic! what ever that means itis possible to destroy those feelings of unhappiness and self pity and convert them back into an enthusiasm and movement forwards .. starting to sound a bit like a deepak chopra lecture .. now that is Sad..
I m just considering where to now .. no not at any level other than my mind .. our mind is the vesel life creates the chemical journey that we experience, augmented by the fine wine dying on the vine .. or in a more socially sensitive way .. or politically correct or whatever ..
And to all those sceptics and evil others no .. this is not a MLC .. :-)\\
but just a seasonal deep introspective retrospective subjective existential crisis :-)
Later dudes
and dudedesses
Friday, June 5, 2009
Order out of chaos and the tale of the … comma and proto-autoretroscope
How do we equate the search of order from chaos with any level of rationality, they appear to be inherently contradictory? Is it possible through artificial manipulation to convert a system in a chaotic state back into some form of stasis? At what level can we play god and recover things to a level of apparent homeostasis whilst things spin so inevitably out of control in the world around us. How much of the chaos has been derived from our human behaviour to try and understand, map manipulate and describe those systems? Or is it from the lack of understanding that we have this apparent stochastism or anti order or even chaos. Is it through an absoloute lack of understanding or due to too little understanding? The question that begs to be answered is if systems tend to a level of stability over time or to instability, both in the natural and the human derivation and or the construct we now call humanity? What ability do we have to manipulate the contribution of entities within an amalgam of entities? I think we can extrapolate this to natural, human, agricultural, cultural, and all possible systems. I think at systems levels the tinkering and messing about definitely increases the inherent stochasticy or chaos as we perceive it. From the little I remember from the ecology I dabbled with somewhere in the time of Noah it seemed a lot to me that the stability of a system is often dependent of the multiplication of actions from each of the different entities, often the greater the number of entities the higher the stability. Some of the simpler analogies show the fox and the rabbit population dynamics and an example or premise of this process, attempting to reduce all of this stability and interactibility into simple, or complex, mathematics, yet always reducing things down to their smallest grain. Is this exploration of the individual or measure thereof often not the undoing of the understanding, or at least the parameterization of the impact or effect of the individual’s entity within a system. We often as humans make the mistake in trying to control each of these interactions, as a simple example we go to the old woman who swallowed a fly and lands up killing herself by having to swallow a large bovine beast ;-). In Agriculture I think we play this game really strongly, substituting natural processes with augmented processes and treating it by viewing it all through a retrospectoscope… In stock markets we do a very similar thing, we pre-empt the future with visions from the past, drawing correlations and deductions from things that happened in the past without ever considering what other possible permutations may have resulted in these anomalies, or normalities as most of our cleverer mathematicians or actuaries do. But through this and the understanding/lack thereof make decisions and create trends through the actions they have applied either on purpose or by accident. Often these choices are done not with the eventual stability of the environment at heart and we treat the environment around us as if we are natural disasters, the hand of God. But this is all a lesson we must learn in getting to grips with the world around us. In the same vain I wonder a lot about the diversity of people and processes and ecology, how much can we dictate the inherent homogeneity or heterogeneity of the system. We plant huge tracts of land full of the same plant not expecting the flow of the system to take any strain. We attempt to homogonise the human race through the great meat blender of western civilization, communism, socialism what ever the flavour of the day is. Does it make more sense to have highly heterogenous societies brought together from many different origins and types. Or should we be homogonous or apparently like some of the larger “super” powers.. What dictates stability within the human race, is it the similarity or is it the diversity within, why can we not learn lessons from those around us. It is difficult to quantify the effect of homogenising cultures or not?
Just got interrupted here for a few days and have totally lost my own thread there
But on the whole I wonder how much the homogeonizing of our cultures benefits or deteracts from their ability to move forwards? In certain cases the mingling of cultures definitely appears to enhance through the cross pollination? But I wonder what effect large moulding and conforming of societies do? A point in case are America and China? Do we benefit from the larger numbers of similarily thinking people? Does this generate new thought and improve the human condition or does it have the effect of dumbing people down? Difficult to decide….
But on a more ominous note, I went to a presentation recently where the title of the talk was about the flat earth and the shrinking planet. The long and short of the entire thing is the level to which things are going to go in terms of information…. The larger mega it vendors especially the data management vendors appear to be moving into a world were everything is documented and tracked through our every movement with RFID tags and cross referencing of our every action for marketing and behavioural modeling and augmentation.. It is a very scary thought that they will soon be plotting our every move and our future moves and trends .. it seems like large scale dehumanization in the name of technology and advance.
But who am I to be a soothsayer of the things to come … I just found this very scary.. To think that we are now really on the brink of a big brother society.. The astronomical growth of data is also becoming a real concern, it appears that we are doubling the amount of structured and even more so unstructured data at a rate beyond our own comprehension. I feel that at a point there will be some much information around us controlling everything to such a level that we will merely be cogs with a purpose and no humanity. Not that we are not cogs already.. we will become real controlled cogs, being told it would be best to do this and that and the next thing … insane .. and one of the most insane new technologies we were introduced to was concepts of analyzing streams of data in flight .. so that descisions can be made
Part # 37: The episode on the twits, men behaving like they shouldn’t and more insights on stuff.. and generations of the alphabet
Was carefully minding my own business this morning in gym.. just watching the people in the gym.. thinking quietly to my self and the one dude mentions to me .,. why am I being to quiet .. little did he know.. so I wound my self yup and sprouted that .. yes it was true that I was being rather quiet .. but that did not really mean I was not thinking a whole lot .. he then got the brunt of a verbal barrage ..
I then went straight to the point and mentioned that I had been considering whether or not it would be in inpolite/untactful/rude to ask him why he was weathings mens perfume .. and not that I thought this was specifically wrong, but rather that I found this rather silly.. and attempting to difuse this by mention of generation Y and him being part of it .. and a little on self entitlement .. and generation X, baby boomers and and .. not that this made it any better .. but that is life .. he chose a bad time to ask me about something ..
But this alphabet generation thing .. is quite interesting .. gen x,y, baby boomers, yuppies etc etc .. all this categorization name giving for times in our cultural .. or should I rather say a-cul;tural history ..
Part # 24 The retroscope, the autorestroscope and the preemptive autoretroscope and the myth of objectivity
To continue on some other rambling before this .. maybe a brief explanation of the retroscope TM (Slats Naair Circa 21st century unpublished works). The retroscope is something akin to the 20-20 vision delivered by hindsight.. Yes it is much easier, or at least we think so, to view our past with a certain level of clarity and (as)surance that whilst looking into our past we can very clearly define and clarify some of lifes decisions and choices and deliver some verdict on this… This is why I have included a few aberrations of this terminology .. I think the prior descripotion should be altered to the autoretroscope .. which implies self referencing view of the passed where we view our passed with an apparent level of objectivity without any bias or subjectivity we think.. In it’s purest form the retroscope is a view which is unbiased and manages to view the past without bias or …. Cannot remember the word .. but the theory is that it is a purely neutral view of the past and it’s implications, actions and what should have been could have been etc etc ..
But I do think that we more often that not apply the autoretroscope which is a self referenceing and fulfilling view of the past where we view the past and its events thorugh a distinctly rose coloured window pane, from which we have not wiped the steam and grime and dust.. This retroscope is not something which is specifically objective, but often a self satisfying view of the apst as we wished to have seen it .. factors, incidents and events are changed to protect the innocent as before I do not think it is within our power to actually be objective .. life is about the subjectivity of living.. And I do not think that it is possible to be objective.. Is life not based on the subjective experience rather than the objective one? WE are by nature subjective beings .. I am slowly but surely wonder if objectivity is not but a myth that humans .. or more exactly scientists have generated,, which may incertain circumstances be termed as the pre-autoretroscope .. the view that we are objectively viewing the present and future as if through a retroscope, which is already an autoretroscope .. just a thought .. is our objectivity not just a finely tuned subjective view that draws on the subjectivity of others peoples retroscopes. When cammus viewed himself in an emotionless state in the outsider and other books.. He views life with a clinical introspective view on life.. Not a view of sadness, not a a view of regret just an outsider viewing in.. there are many others who have said similar things… are the mystics, soothsayers, shamans, witchdoctors, and church ministers just proto-retroscope disseminators .. giving us a view of the possible mingling with the past, the future and the unknown? More on this another time..
Part # 117: The tale of the fishpond, the polycuture and the perfect aquaculture system
This is a dream.. not to sure if it is at all a current practicality :-0 After some serious levels of testing and attempting to implement this we surge along .. more a bout this another day ..
I must appologise .. I could not post due to serious technical issues … network nazi’s broken 3g cards ?
Just got interrupted here for a few days and have totally lost my own thread there
But on the whole I wonder how much the homogeonizing of our cultures benefits or deteracts from their ability to move forwards? In certain cases the mingling of cultures definitely appears to enhance through the cross pollination? But I wonder what effect large moulding and conforming of societies do? A point in case are America and China? Do we benefit from the larger numbers of similarily thinking people? Does this generate new thought and improve the human condition or does it have the effect of dumbing people down? Difficult to decide….
But on a more ominous note, I went to a presentation recently where the title of the talk was about the flat earth and the shrinking planet. The long and short of the entire thing is the level to which things are going to go in terms of information…. The larger mega it vendors especially the data management vendors appear to be moving into a world were everything is documented and tracked through our every movement with RFID tags and cross referencing of our every action for marketing and behavioural modeling and augmentation.. It is a very scary thought that they will soon be plotting our every move and our future moves and trends .. it seems like large scale dehumanization in the name of technology and advance.
But who am I to be a soothsayer of the things to come … I just found this very scary.. To think that we are now really on the brink of a big brother society.. The astronomical growth of data is also becoming a real concern, it appears that we are doubling the amount of structured and even more so unstructured data at a rate beyond our own comprehension. I feel that at a point there will be some much information around us controlling everything to such a level that we will merely be cogs with a purpose and no humanity. Not that we are not cogs already.. we will become real controlled cogs, being told it would be best to do this and that and the next thing … insane .. and one of the most insane new technologies we were introduced to was concepts of analyzing streams of data in flight .. so that descisions can be made
Part # 37: The episode on the twits, men behaving like they shouldn’t and more insights on stuff.. and generations of the alphabet
Was carefully minding my own business this morning in gym.. just watching the people in the gym.. thinking quietly to my self and the one dude mentions to me .,. why am I being to quiet .. little did he know.. so I wound my self yup and sprouted that .. yes it was true that I was being rather quiet .. but that did not really mean I was not thinking a whole lot .. he then got the brunt of a verbal barrage ..
I then went straight to the point and mentioned that I had been considering whether or not it would be in inpolite/untactful/rude to ask him why he was weathings mens perfume .. and not that I thought this was specifically wrong, but rather that I found this rather silly.. and attempting to difuse this by mention of generation Y and him being part of it .. and a little on self entitlement .. and generation X, baby boomers and and .. not that this made it any better .. but that is life .. he chose a bad time to ask me about something ..
But this alphabet generation thing .. is quite interesting .. gen x,y, baby boomers, yuppies etc etc .. all this categorization name giving for times in our cultural .. or should I rather say a-cul;tural history ..
Part # 24 The retroscope, the autorestroscope and the preemptive autoretroscope and the myth of objectivity
To continue on some other rambling before this .. maybe a brief explanation of the retroscope TM (Slats Naair Circa 21st century unpublished works). The retroscope is something akin to the 20-20 vision delivered by hindsight.. Yes it is much easier, or at least we think so, to view our past with a certain level of clarity and (as)surance that whilst looking into our past we can very clearly define and clarify some of lifes decisions and choices and deliver some verdict on this… This is why I have included a few aberrations of this terminology .. I think the prior descripotion should be altered to the autoretroscope .. which implies self referencing view of the passed where we view our passed with an apparent level of objectivity without any bias or subjectivity we think.. In it’s purest form the retroscope is a view which is unbiased and manages to view the past without bias or …. Cannot remember the word .. but the theory is that it is a purely neutral view of the past and it’s implications, actions and what should have been could have been etc etc ..
But I do think that we more often that not apply the autoretroscope which is a self referenceing and fulfilling view of the past where we view the past and its events thorugh a distinctly rose coloured window pane, from which we have not wiped the steam and grime and dust.. This retroscope is not something which is specifically objective, but often a self satisfying view of the apst as we wished to have seen it .. factors, incidents and events are changed to protect the innocent as before I do not think it is within our power to actually be objective .. life is about the subjectivity of living.. And I do not think that it is possible to be objective.. Is life not based on the subjective experience rather than the objective one? WE are by nature subjective beings .. I am slowly but surely wonder if objectivity is not but a myth that humans .. or more exactly scientists have generated,, which may incertain circumstances be termed as the pre-autoretroscope .. the view that we are objectively viewing the present and future as if through a retroscope, which is already an autoretroscope .. just a thought .. is our objectivity not just a finely tuned subjective view that draws on the subjectivity of others peoples retroscopes. When cammus viewed himself in an emotionless state in the outsider and other books.. He views life with a clinical introspective view on life.. Not a view of sadness, not a a view of regret just an outsider viewing in.. there are many others who have said similar things… are the mystics, soothsayers, shamans, witchdoctors, and church ministers just proto-retroscope disseminators .. giving us a view of the possible mingling with the past, the future and the unknown? More on this another time..
Part # 117: The tale of the fishpond, the polycuture and the perfect aquaculture system
This is a dream.. not to sure if it is at all a current practicality :-0 After some serious levels of testing and attempting to implement this we surge along .. more a bout this another day ..
I must appologise .. I could not post due to serious technical issues … network nazi’s broken 3g cards ?
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