Confessions of a Lazy Contextualist
Analysis deals with a set of knowns and ignores everything outside of the set. Political discussions rarely venture outside of 'the frame' except to consider different ideological perspectives on the given set. But once we consider the real context, what we do not know about a subject, we are confronted with the unspoken assumptions that we use to deal the unknown; religion, superstition, folklore, conventional wisdom and the prevailing cultural norms. When we take these values into analysis it becomes clear that the underlying currency of all cultural transactions is certainty regardless of whether it is based on evidence or belief.
There are two interconnected sets of certainties, an existential set of sensual boundaries and a cultural set of shared values.
Our shared cultural understandings mediate the uncertainties of our physical existance. Without language we would all be autistic, unable to navigate between our needs and our limitations.
Do you percieve your past to have been chaotic or claustrophopic? If it tended towards chaotic I would bet that you call yourself a republican and if it was claustrophobic I will bet you call yourself a democrat. If I am wrong then perhaps you are a force of nature, not nurture. My theory is that the experience of our past to a certain extent determines the narrative of how we mediate the unknown. And our narrative is our politics.
I suspect many come to relativist perspectives in reaction to rigid or authoritarian environments. Either that or they are easily bored and find a certain comfort in complexity or they have a hunger to encounter the full range of possibilities that life has to offer. Meanwhile I do not doubt that relativists often act on absolute judgements while explaining their actions in relativistic terms and condemning others for absolute decisions.
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brodix's 1'st law of career choices;
The truth is that which is. Answers are those parts that people are willing to pay to hear. Philosophers seek truths. Priests and politicians provide answers. That is why there are far more professional priests and politicians than philosophers.
I suspect you are not making a living at this?
I think much confusion results from the fact that many of our basic assumptions originate from a time when the earth was flat, or presumably so. Contrary to absolutism, the absolute is medium, not extreme, because any extreme is balanced by its opposite.
Relative means that while content is relative to context, there is no limit to context, which is far more absolutist than we give it credit for.
Relative not only applies to space, but time as well...
While the arrow of time for the observer proceeds from past events to future ones, the arrow of time for these circumstances proceeds from being in the future, to being in the past. Content and context go in opposite directions. To the hands of the clock, it is the face going counterclockwise.
Time isn't a dimension because the frame of reference does not constitute an absolute against which the point of reference transcribes another dimension. It is a process in which the point and frame move relative to their respective influence on one another.
Reality consists of energy recording information. As the amount of energy remains the same, old information is erased as new is recorded. This information is a product of relationships of the manifest energy. As there is no absolute frame, any action is balanced by an "equal and opposite" reaction. Explicit reality is the energy. Time is only a function of the information. "Past" and "future" do not exist because the energy to manifest them is currently tied up in the present. Time travel would require speeding up or reversing the entire universe.
A clock which would represent this process would have no face, but innumerable hands going both directions, at various speeds. The sum of this motion would be zero. Isolating any particular hand as a point of reference would leave the remaining hands with a net motion in the opposite direction. As we are part of that frame of reference, we only see the particular hand move.
The unit of time goes from beginning to end, but the process of time is going toward the beginning of the next, leaving the old. A day is measured by the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, but the reality is the earth is rotating the other direction. As our day ends, others are dawning.
Think of a factory; The product moves from initiation to completion, but the production line faces the other way, with its mouth consuming raw materials and finished product being expelled. Life is the same. Our lives are units of time going from beginning to end, while the process of living goes on to the next generation, shedding the old like dead skin.
The mind is a form of factory and the products are individual thoughts. Our senses continually take in information and out of this, we construct coherent conceptual units. Meanwhile the mind continues to absorb fresh information and as the particular thought matures, it factors in less of this additional information. At some point a new thought has taken shape and displaced the previous thought.
This relationship of the process and the unit is one of perspective. A unit at one level is a process at another and vice versa.
With the assumption that entropy constitutes an irreversible direction of time, it should be noted that this applies to a closed set. Such a closed set is a form of unit. As such it does go from beginning to end, but the larger process is constantly creating new such sets. Much like any living organism will accumulate metabolic junk and deteriorated DNA until it dies, but the matter of which it consists will be recycled by the environment and the larger species will carry on within the context of an eternal present. remember that in the beginning, it was an open set, or it never would have formed in the first place.
Time is not so much a projection out from the present event, as it is a coming together of factors to define what is present. The past is the influences which defined current order and the future is the sources of energy which will motivate that order. When the order of the past is an open set, it absorbs fresh energy, defining it, so the future is a continuation of the past. When the order is a closed set, the energy accumulates in open spaces and the future becomes a reaction to the past. Evolution and revolution.
One of my earlier influences in putting this together was Complexity Theory, which is based on the same relationship of order and chaos, except that I replace chaos with energy. The only real difference being they hadn't associated the relationship of this top down order and bottom up growth with a description of time. Think about it; The top down hierarchical order is what we see as evidence of the past. It is codifying the chaos of this unstructured energy, while the energy/chaos is constantly building up and breaking down the order, depending on circumstance.
Time is a tensor method of measuring motion. Temperature is a scalar method of measuring motion. Consider statistical measures of the economy as a form of temperature reading, a general level of activity against a prevailing scale. Now if we were to follow an individual through the larger economy, or the activity of a particular atom in a fluid, it would be a tensor measure. The reason this form of measurement matters so much to us is that we are that individual.
regards,
brodix
November 10, 2005 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
In short, from what I can glean of your comments, everthing that "happens" is no more than statistical anomoly. Only after its possible heat death will the universe be utterly predictable, precisely because at that point it will be utterly uniform and unchangeable.
So perception certainly is relativistic, and our collective problem in getting on with life tends to involve interference from the absolutists who cannot abide uncertainy.
For them, here's a thought experiment. If we invented a "time viewer" or found a psychic either of which could peer into the future and see your death in advance, and if we were able to determine that the act of seeing one's future death made that eventuality a certainty, would absolutists still prefer their frame of reference over relativism and uncertainty? On a practical level, that's sort of like deciding whether to take a test to see in advance the sex of your unborn child. It might be handy, it might even be an entertainment, to predict with certainty important events in one's life experience, but arguably it's just as interesting to come upon them as they happen.
That said, if someone I trusted completely (say, myself 15 minutes in the future) phone me to suggest strongly that I move three feet to the left immediately, just before a bank safe fell where I was standing, I think I'd be happy for the intervention. Then again, I wouldn't have to surrender my relativist views on perception for that to happen.
November 11, 2005 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The fear of death is a pretense of wisdom and false wisdom at that, being a pretense of knowing the unknown. For who knows what men in their fear believe the greatest evil may not in fact be the greatest good." The Trial of Socrates, by Plato
Death is a function of time. As I pointed out, while the entity goes from beginning to end, the process goes onto the next, shedding the old dead skin cells. That which is most fundamentally us is a function of what is present.
As individuals, either we go on to somewhere else, or we are smeared out across the universe.
A prediction; The Big Bang theory will come to be seen as complete and utter nonsense. Gravity curves space inward and this collapsing mass sheds radiation. I think that this outward curvature that is expanding space is as much as property of radiation as gravity is of mass. Current theory proposes a universe which is 96% invisible to everything but the math, as well as supposing it inflated in a fraction of a moment to many times its visible size. Epicycles galore. This is a whole other discussion though.
November 11, 2005 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency."
"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' " Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004
<h5>Brodix Your comment makes interesting reading, half the time I think I am tracking on what you are saying and the other half I am wondering if you are lampooning my own way-out-of-context loopiness. No, I don't make a living at 'this', I am a citizen entering the forum.
One of the main points of the first post in my blog was to point out that getting paid for writing or getting votes depends increasingly on projecting a sense of certainty above all else. I don't think the "reality-based community" appreciates the potential of this so-called post-modern Presidency even if Bush now seems to be flailing like Icarus. Meanwhile scientists routinely lecture the public about 'facts' that they know are matters of probabilities and process, they are just giving the taxpayers what they want; certainty. Politics encompasses both the philosophies of science and the philosophies of the will despite the partisan impulse to believe that they are mutually exclusive.</h5>
November 12, 2005 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
BobFred,
I'm not lampooning you, just identifying with your circular approach.
Process is bottom up. The unit is top down. The object is to construct a narrative unit which defines and directs the larger process. Intelligence/science is a bottom up analytic process. Faith is adherence to a particular narrative unit.
We will always be reaching plateaus of enlightenment which harden into systems of defining reality. The better the insight, the greater the bureaucracy that grows in its shadow and the harder it becomes to reach higher. This forces us to broaden the context and see the situation from increasingly complex perspectives. We always need the point of reference which makes sense of an otherwise chaotic process, even though we are continually outgrowing these frames.
I see some larger good being brought about by the current political disaster. Many of the toxic elements within our political world, such as overuse of oil resources, the military industrial complex, religious fundamentalism, blatant political corruption, etc. are coming together in an unholy, unstable union. Like a boil to be lanced, these toxins can be flushed. Without this larger coalition, these elements would have continued to fester in their own ways.
Civilization is about cooperation far more then it's about competition.
November 13, 2005 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ohhh so you voted for Nadir?
My approach may indeed be loopy but it is not circular. I'm saying that socially constructed realities exist within a larger open system which can be manipulated through empirical testing and engineering but as yet cannot be totally engineered. Well duh. Joe Insecure Voter doesn't care if its bottom up, top down, empirical or post-modern, he just wants his remote to tell him that he is right all of the time. The neocons and the theocrats have constructed a reality for him to die for.
The so-called reality based community isn't going to succeed politically if they continue to be baited by the Straussians into believing that it is an either-or proposition. We can project certainty into the body politic even when we are out of power AND adapt to environmental limitations. The reality-based community is a socially constructed reality after all, we just prefer our reality to be testable. Right now the plan seems to be "let's watch them crash and burn then take over."
November 14, 2005 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bob,
Sorry, circular was just a poor play on loopy.
I did vote for Kerry, but can you imagine having him president with this senate and congress? If the democrats can take back both house and senate in '06, Bush will be impeached.
"Right now the plan seems to be "let's watch them crash and burn then take over." "
That is half of any plan. As in any argument, why interrupt when the other side is making a fool of themselves? It's impolite, for one thing. The other half is to be prepared for your turn.
Here are some thoughts I put together on the subject of where to go after the fall;
Taking Back the Money
While we may still like to think in terms of absolutes, the fact is that reality and the economy are relativistic. Wealth is not an absolute. It is a percentage of the larger whole. The only viable goal is how to make this larger whole grow. Otherwise nothing works because everyone is just fighting over what there is and it gets smaller due to the damage done.
The economy is a convective cycle, with energy in the form of labor, materials and ideas rising up, while wealth, civil order and social security precipitate down. Supply side theory has created a situation where far more has been rising then is effectively used or precipitating down and the results are huge storm clouds of surplus wealth boiling over a parched economy. For reference, consider where the money the government borrows would go, if it were not being recycled through the public sector. The investment and asset markets are awash in cash and debt, so additional spending would just increase the inflationary effect. Government borrowing is effectively a nationalization of surplus wealth, but rather than actually taking it, the revenue stream of the government is being transferred to those with surplus wealth in the first place, which only adds to the problem.
I first started questioning economic pronouncements when trying to figure out how Paul Volcker cured inflation by raising interest rates. Inflation is surplus money in the economy. According to the law of supply and demand, you increase demand. Inflation is started by loose money, but reverse engineering is not always so simple. By raising interest rates, his solution for the oversupply of money also raised the cost of using it. The economy slowed. How do you absorb surplus currency in circulation by slowing the economy? Government borrowing is the most logical explanation for how inflation was brought under control. After supply side economics squeezed it out of the general economy, the government skimmed it off the top and then spent it. As public spending supports private investment, rather then competing with it, the effect was compounded. This surplus was effectively absorbed by October of 1987. At which point, Greenspan opened the gates wide.
In 1996, Bob Dole had a campaign slogan, "We want you to keep more of your money in your pocket." My first thought was, Well thank God it isn't my money, or it would be worthless." The logic of this is that as a medium of exchange, money is actually a form of public commons, much like the highway system. The tokens in your pocket are just tokens of public faith in the government which issued them. To use the roads as an analogy, if every time a new road was built, everyone tried to claim as much as possible. The eventual result would be that everything would be paved over and no one would be able to get anywhere. We are close to reaching that situation with our monetary system, as every aspect of life is judged according to the bottom line and the economy is still about to seize up.
The fact that Social Security is a direct transfer from those generating wealth to those using it, with a public guarantee of return, is one of the primary reasons it is so efficient. Only as much money can be saved as can be effectively invested, otherwise it causes asset inflation. There are hardly enough investment vehicles in the current situation to support the cash out there. It is a situation similar to the electric industry. As it would be prohibitively expensive to build the battery storage for the amounts in question, electricity has to be used as it is generated. Creating the investment vehicles necessary to store private accounts would be like storage batteries for the electric industry.
Government budgeting is a mess and the problem with the line item veto is that it would place most of the power of the purse in the hands of the president, but a way around this would be to break the bills into their constituent items and have each legislator assign a percentage value to each one. Then re-assemble them in order of preference and have the president draw the line at what is to be funded. Not only would this break up the budgetary log jams which make over spending irresistible, but it would take away a lot of the power this process gives to the legislative leadership and parties and returns it to the level of the individual legislators. While the buck really would stop with the president. Democracy is a bottom up process and the Republic is a top down entity. This would clarify that relationship. It is the congealing of power in the legislative branch which is the source of much current corruption.(This was the idea I submitted.)
Money and government are two sides of the same coin. One is rights, the other is responsibilities. Money is like processed sugar, so if we were to learn to maintain a more organic, wholistic society and maintain wealth and value within every aspect of our lives and not continually drain reductionistic units out to put in some bank, then government would be forced to organize itself along similar lines. given the complexity of society, this seems overly idealistic, but when consumer debt peaks out and triggers a meltdown of public and business debt, as well as the derivatives market, do we just fight amongst the rubble, or do we use it as a huge lesson?
I see liberalism as social expansion and conservatism as civil consolidation. Those institutions which expand knowledge/power, such as education, media, sciences, tend to be inherently liberal. Those which consolidate this energy, such as business and government, tend to be inherently conservative. The government social programs of the last century, created, a form of conservative liberalism, often referred to as PC. The reaction to this was a liberal conservatism, otherwise known as libertarianism, which sought to redistribute civil control back to the presumably more culturally conservative local level. Having been originally based on a simplistic rejection of government, now this movement has matured and coalesced, it is in trouble because it lacks any core civil philosophy, leaving its social conservatives and economic conservatives little more than a toxic coalition of greed and cultural rigor mortis.
What we need to understand is that the absolute isn't some extreme, but the medium, so when the pendulum is pushed as far as it can go in any one direction, it isn't going to burst forth into some other dimension of political/religious/spiritual purity, but will only have that much more force as it breaks free and swings back toward the center and beyond.
Like a heart monitor, we don't want just a flat line down the middle, but nor do we want it swinging too wildly.
Regards,
John Brodix Merryman Jr.
Sparks, Maryland
November 14, 2005 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink