Capitalism & Linearity

Capitalism operates under a set of Linear Principles based on the Balance Sheet. This is an extreme reduction of complex interactions. The Balance Sheet assumes that whatever is unknown, or beyond the tangible self-interest of its controlling parties, may be simply left out of consideration. Only what they have found to be of value is

Imagine we had a compass…

This thought experiment came to me while out sailing with a friend. What if we discovered that our boat has a compass? What if we had no idea what it was, or how it worked? There it sat. And, at times we would notice certain apparent coincidences. Certain alignments with other things we were familiar

History

I’ve long had a sense that the story of the Twentieth Century is hidden behind the stories that century’s victors told about themselves. World Wars, I and II, were not what they appeared. Actually, they were more what they appear to be and less what was so shrilly repeated about them in an attempt to

Space at the end of the year

The close of this year has me once again in a curious form of free-fall, as if the inertia of past impetus is losing to the sheer force of gravity. I tend to welcome these periods. Without the chance to notice the tug of futility it’s easy to get caught-up in enthusiasms that might entertain,

Wealth, Let’s see it for what it is.

Everyone is talking about wealth these days. Some want to continue to amass it without constraints. Others want to find ways to get theirs. And still others want to spread it around more equitably. All these efforts lead to so many infamously “unintended consequences.” Except they’re not so mysterious if we look at what wealth

Doing what I’m told…

Following a link from the inimitable Dwight Towers, I sent him a quick response. This afternoon, I returned to find he’d sent me the following instructions: Tony, cut and paste that, don’t touch a thing (other than writing out Bohm and Krishnamurti), and turn it into a blog post.  Seriously. So here it is:

You Can’t Hide from Futility

One of the defenses of denial is that if we were to begin to accept what is in store we would fall into despair. Better to be busy than desperate. This ignores the power of Futility. It continues to amaze me the way the most self-declared pragmatists; political, military, and business leaders; remain by all

Futility, the chasm between efficiency and effectiveness

In the tension between our immersion in the fabric of being and the atomized self’s struggle to achieve a stasis, a utopia, not of richness, but an illusory concretion of wealth, in which we wish to stop without falling; we define the human condition. The workings of consciousness are so easily misunderstood as signs of separateness from the rest as epitomized in Cogito Ergo Sum. Yet consciousness, our phenomenological embededness in experience is the only window we have through which to glimpse an awareness of our integration into greater systems and structures.

War of the Worlds

In the past we had place. Now we don’t. In the future place may re-assert itself – at least I hope so…. Any search for a carving out of our own agency soon comes to the absolute necessity for a place on which to stand. Most fundamentally that distills down to a physical place upon

Capital, Productivity and Value

The infamous Signor Ponzi has given his name to the felonious concept of extracting “value” from the unsuspecting by generating an economic perpetual motion machine. Human greed and gullibility united in the deep wish for something for nothing leaving lots of nothing for most and all the something to a few. Is this all that capitalism has ever done? If we balance all the books, that may be what we find.

The Grand Kachinka Game

Complex systems evolve to deal with entropy. The why for this is unclear, but all great complex systems slow down the effects of entropy within them and this provides the opportunity for Life and the only stage on which life can be lived. In a simple system, or the part of a simple system that

Captain Smith & Amelia Earhart, pathological optimism

Hope is not confidence. Confidence is propped up by optimism. Hope is sustained by courage.