Our Only Debt is to Nature. The Great, “What Is”? Part 7 #ConquestofDough
7. The Great, “What Is”?
“as the Romans knew, gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo—
A drop of water hollows a stone not by force but by continually dripping.”
Energy and Civilization: A History
“Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate
With thy most poison! What is here?
Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods,
I am no idle : roots, you clear heavens!
Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,
Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.
Ha, you gods! why this? what this, you gods? Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed,
Make the leprosy adored, place thieves
And give them title, knee and approbation
With senators on the bench: this is it
That makes the widow wed again;”
― William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
Our only debt is to Nature and ‘What Is’. Environmental Pragmatism, Live and let live.
Our only debt is to Nature and What Is.
Environmental Pragmatism Live and let live.
As autumn turns to winter we can reflect upon the events of the past 6 months having reaped the political harvest. Traditionally we would be celebrating if it were a crop reaped from the land as our ancestors have always celebrated their harvests.
In our reflections, as our ancestors surely did with their own reflections, we can look at how well our methods worked. Which lands seemed most fertile or suited to which crop? Which seed stocks seemed to thrive and which methods of cultivation seemed to produce more of what we valued most? After reflection comes the next sowing season we, as our ancestors did, will return to our fields to sow again and hope to reap a harvest even more bountiful than the last.
Some years our harvest will disappoint and others they will surpass our expectations. Often interventions outside of our control determine that in spite of our ingenuity skill and dedicated application of all we know and all we have applied our harvest will disappoint, even fail and in those times we can but look forward to the unfolding of future seasons and the cycles of nature and try again always doing our best, and live off the surplus stores from better times.
Human environments and what we call the phenomenon of, what anthropologists call, sedentary societies. Down the millennia the Urban systems and communities we know have now adapted to a pace of life still affected by seasons and the food from the earth but not as intimately connected to it. Assumptions become ingrained which lack the immediate feedback that allows us to see when our crops need irrigation as rain has not fallen or where shade has fallen upon fields that need more sunshine. This metaphor for a disjoint between assumptions and feedback from the Soil or from the Coal Face or the factory floor or indeed from the food banks, soup kitchens, and unemployment lines denotes a failure of communication.
Information is emitting in both directions but the hearing receivers at either end of the line have been turned off.
Many things can cause us as humans to stop listening, we all of us do not like to hear bad news or to hear information that challenges that which we wish to be true. Down the ages, it has always been this way as far as we can gather. In this susceptibility to tune into what we want to hear lies the heart of the art of being followed. Followers will follow those who others seem to believe in, sometimes the route prescribed works out, reputations are gained and eventually myths are born. At what point do we turn back though from a course which seems to be leading us up the wrong path we find it hard to convince ourselves often that what should have worked is not now working, after all, it has always worked in the past.
As humans, we know we can change our own conditions and of course, we can do much to build a better life and better conditions for ourselves our families, and our loved ones. In this, we develop a curiously human-centered world. A world where we place our species at the center of things is called Anthropocentric. It is natural that we see ourselves as the object at the center of things it is our ground zero from where we need to measure our own progress and experience. It is a large jump from there, to believe then, that the cause of things is for our benefit or stems from us, or is Anthropogenic. Our efforts are a small sum of all the work done in the world and we recycle What Is and harness What Is rather than create What Is.
That is, our ability to build what we build is limited by the feedstock that preceded us and which will outlive our species as far as anything we can gather from our earnest and ingenious scientific inquiries and human industry.
Man is his own false idol, and often times religions prohibit idolatry. Whether one is of religious faith or not there is a secular atheistic substitute for the prohibition of idolatry found in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (the Abrahamic Faiths). In other faiths and in most cultures, the idea of Pride or Narcissism is warned against. The story of Narcissus is found in the Ovid, a myth arising from ancient pagan beliefs. For me, Narcissus is a story of a disconnected ego, estranged from a true sense of the individual singular self and of course, a self that refuses to recognise Echo’s presence. Echo is the scorned suitor of Narcissus and Narcissus falls in love with his own image as a punishment for tormenting Echo, surely a story of pride and idolatry.
When Man places himself at the center of things, this is dangerous and one instance where this is so is in the matter of Climate where rather than becoming God, man is cast with godlike omnipotence as the cause of Climate Change. Rather than examining man as one aspect of the whole complex system of What Is and testing the hypothesis as an aspect of man’s activities as a singular part of a huge complex whole. The hypothesis becomes a necessary belief that the production of Carbon Dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels is causing Global Warming. This issue has become a matter of faith and to question CO2 emitted from human activity to be the prime driver of Climate change is to commit heresy to those who believe in the shorthand ´Climate Beliefs´.
I am one of those heretics, I have read all I can find on the matter but remain unconvinced that the case has been made scientifically for Human emissions being the primary cause and driver of climate change or Global Warming. I will not admit or submit to faith in any government, corporation, or indeed any Church or political ideology. I do have a belief and faith in God, a non-anthropomorphic god, that is a non-corporeal god as conjectured by Spinoza and by Maimonides and as we find in the Quran, old testament, and the Torah. My faith warns me and I believe for a very good reason not to worship false idols. Global warning is I believe a false idol, placing man in the great What Is of existence, in a starring role well above his acting abilities.
Science has a long history with Religion and I am a keen believer in the scientific method. The scientific method deals with physical things with things one can measure, deconstruct and test. With the scientific method one can confirm or falsify propositions that relate to observations, science does not require faith, only evidence.
Faith requires faith and faith is required when evidence is beyond the demonstration of mere men. it seems to me is a conceit to be wary of and as Religious, philosophical, and folk teachings have been good enough for our ancestors they are also good enough for me. To accept the idea that Man and any individual man or woman is worthy of idolatry seems to me absurd. Some men and women are admirable even great. Humans are however all human and What Is, is always greater than any individual part of the whole of what it is only ever part. What Is, is infinity, and for me what is, Is God!
For an atheist what is, is whatever they want it to be, is it infinite for an atheist? I do not know, I am not an atheist and we are all at the center of our relationship with What Is, whatever What Is, Is?
The climate is a part of the whole What Is, we can not know why? What Is, is. That is something that none of us, be we great or be we humble, have any chance of making our servants. It is a ridiculous notion and a notion that mathematics has grappled with and more or less resigned itself to being insoluble, with various set theories and completeness hypothesis, just Google Tarski–Grothendieck set theory, ultimately in an emergent reality we find that life really is not like Forest ´ box of chocolates. What Is, is unbounded, or bounded at its own determination, not ours.
Where is all this leading, my modest hypothesis is that we should resign from the false idolatry of ´´Climate Belief´´, and man’s omnipotence therein and concentrate on Environment. With, the environment we encounter real scientific possibilities. Here grounded in measurable outcomes we can and should stop Fracking because earthquake and water table pollution are provable and proven consequences.
We can show the public health harms done by the burning of fossil fuels and also demonstrate the sustainable nature of alternative energy which stems from the great unknown of the ´´What Is and what will be´´.
We reap as we sow and future harvests are wrapped up in our own industry and prudence they are also though, ultimately the bounties of the eternal What Is.
I believe we should also listen to the ancient wisdom against Usury and its promotion of, such wisdom as is found in the writings of Henry George. The watchword for Economics is political, and it is part of the study of Political Economy, which is a human construct. The Study of Science is Scientific, and Political Science is a branch of Political Economy and faith-based or opinion based. I suppose what one would call a belief-based set of truth claims within, what Foucault calls, The Episteme or a field of allowable possibilities. There is a big difference in that Science is not an inquiry into man-made things so much as into natural phenomena which may then be harnessed into man-made technologies. Natural Sciences is perhaps the subject and word which I am groping towards, I think Quine says it best so I will allow myself just one quote and reference and it is this.
´´ As an empiricist, I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries — not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible comparable, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise.´´
http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
Our only Debt is to Nature and nature is What Is. It is human nature to construct beliefs and to become indebted to the custodians of those beliefs.
Belief and Faith are subtly different things. Basing our money on Debt is a source of many of the ills we face in the world. At the heart of our delusions of grandeur, we submit to debts at usury enabling unnatural idols to dictate injustice justified in convoluted dogmas. Beliefs beget priests, priests demand churches, Churches require offerings, and idols command tribute armies then enforce an order based upon the Strong ruling over the weak The strong become the idols, gods, and protectors of the weak and are held as infallible. A prohibition of idolatry seeks to the free and weak from falling into slavery. Those with the correct observance of the correct ideologies the otherness of those who refuse to submit to alien cultural constructs all of who become more estranged from each other the further they stray from the truth of What Is and what becomes. Straying that is, from the autonomous authority of Nature.
One final word on ad hominem. When one attacks the arguer and not the argument the arguer is putting forward that is ad hominem. On Climate Belief I think that a new low in ad argument was ushered into the public discourse setting an example in social media and mainstream media political discourse which is highly regrettable. Here the specter of exclusion or ridicule is used to silence dissent from the consensus view of the official view or the Settled scientific consensus. All of this terminology is from the basic course of Rhetoric any Sophist would have happily taken your payment for back in the days of classical antiquity. They are not terms consistent with or found within the precise language and notation of people involved in and faithful to what is called the scientific method which is devoutly Skeptical.
When someone is alive and able to clarify or explain further views that have been ascribed to them we owe it to that person and ourselves to seek out statements and written evidence that they can confirm or retract. We can also see what consequences flow from any acts or omission any person who is still alive and able to speak for themselves should be held responsible for. As we can test the claims made 10 years ago in an inconvenient truth we can also test claims made by Al Gore for the North American Trade Agreement, that be debated with Ross Perot in 1993. Politics is a matter of taste and opinion, political policies can be measured according to the success of outcomes where an agreed measure for success is agreed upon and then accurately applied to the data taken as our standard measure.
In a sense political rhetoric and political policymaking will become falsifiable, but who picks up the Tab when theories prove to be incorrect? The people who voted for Trump and Voted for Brexit are the people who are picking up the Tab and yet still the Elitists conjecture and bathe in their feel-good consensus having been proven wrong over and over by any common measure of Voter Experience. For those who vote for the status quo, we have to look into the psychology of Stockholm Syndrome and mass media manipulation. Here again, though, whilst belief can be provoked in a captivated audience, the evidence where measurements are made and records kept will always be available to falsify the mistakenly held or fraudulently instilled belief of the credulous. Political Tipping points seem as hard to identify for consensus-based Elitist Political classes as it does for the high priests. Self-fulfilling, self-referential and self-serving. Will President-Elect Trump, our Narcissus, requite the message from the echoing masses both those who celebrate and those who protest his victory? The architects of the problems of the Working and Middle Classes and the Lumpenproletariat will be found in the corridors of power and the Green rooms of and boardrooms of Madison Avenue and Wall Street, not on the streets, and in the gutters.
So let’s talk about, Al Gore, The senate hearings on Explicit lyrics in music, the enactment of the NAFTA Trade Deal, and The Film an inconvenient truth and Climate Change. In Twisted Sister and the song Under the Blade, we find that Mr. Gores’s Wife Tipper was mistaken, that the song was not about Rape. Dee Snider the lyricist says ´´The only in the song is in the mind of Ms. Gore´´ and clearly, that of Mr. Gore.
On NAFTA Ross Perot’s giant Sucking sound came to pass and is set for an encore in and.
On an Inconvenient truth, Polar bears are reported to be alive and well and thriving, not extinct. Much fuller and more serious analysis making the intellectual accounting for Mr. Gores, internet inventing intellect, are plentiful and searchable online. If you dare to look.
3 strikes and you’re out. Mr. Gore is not alone in having been found wanting yet still rewarded for failure. Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq anyone? The list of Corporate and Establishment failures are too many to number and the victims of the fraud, negligence, and abject indifference are everywhere. And the people who are victims of or know victims of the giant sucking sound, apparently are now motivated sufficiently to vote their complaint in sufficient numbers to overturn status quo, establishment candidates.
Mr. Trump´s Climate beliefs ‘ have been questioned in some circles, and he is variously accused of all manner of vindictive viciousness. His policies and actions will be capable of review and oversight at the end of his first term and in 10 years and indeed 20 and 30 years time as Mr. Gores’s record and predictions can be reviewed as in the previous paragraph. Mr. Trump is a practical man, success is something that clearly matters to and drives Mr. Trump. Mr. Gore has done very well and has been handsomely rewarded for what I would class as a record of failure. What schemes do we suppose Mr.Trump could concoct, without the support and complicity of the Establishment elites to enrich himself as extravagantly as Mr.Gore (in conjunction initially with the now defunct Enron), seems to have done, or the, The Bushes and the for that matter. Mr. Obama’s fortunes will be of some interest also upon his leaving the White House. Mr. departure from the beneficent bosom of the EU into the Bounties of Goldman Sachs shows the transatlantic extent of this Elitist revolving door. Again this has been going on for a long time.
I wonder if Mr.Trump will withdraw the US upon Mr.. Pardon Mr. Edward and make good on his promise to stop the race to the bottom in The United States of America. His is not an easy Job and the challenges and opposing forces of vested interests should not be underestimated. Mr. Trump it seems knows something of being underestimated, I find it difficult to believe that many of those people are still, confronted with the evidence, underestimating him. Ad is a sign of not having an argument to field. Mr. made the Best statement in my opinion in Congratulating President-Elect Trump, whilst also standing ready to debate the Issues.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn said an economic system that “isn’t working for most people” had been rejected.
Corbyn said Mr Trump’s victory was “a rejection of a failed economic consensus and a governing elite that has been seen not to have listened”.He added: “And the public anger that has propelled Donald Trump to office has been reflected in political upheavals across the world.“The Labour leader also said Mr Trump’s campaign had been “nasty and divisive” and that he looked forward to “robust discussions” with the president-elect about climate change and the importance of the United Nations.’’
Mr.Corbyns Brother Piers has something of his own to say on Climate Change and stands with people like Henrik Svensmark, who following that organ of populist journalism say ´ the sun wot won it’’.
Piers (Climate Change and Religion)
Counsel for the people charge usury of its crimes.
Concluding prayer.
Conquest of Dough
The Conquest of Dough,
Part 1 Introduction
The wise king said, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in vessels of silver” (Prov. xxv. 11). Hear the explanation of what he said:—The word maskiyoth, the Hebrew equivalent for “vessels,” denotes “filigree network”—i.e., things in which there are very small apertures, such as are frequently wrought by silversmiths. They are called in Hebrew maskiyyoth (lit. “transpicuous,” from the verb sakah, “he saw,” a root which occurs also in the Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xxvi. 8), because the eye penetrates through them. Thus Solomon meant to say, “just as apples of gold in silver filigree with small apertures, so is a word fitly spoken.”
Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed.
Part 2 The Last Bakery In Aleppo.
The Conquest of Dough
1 thought on “Part 7 #ConquestofDough 7. The Great, “What Is”? Our Only Debt is to Nature.”