China and East Asia

The region is for China to own as a benign hegemon. Two obstacles stand in the way: entrenched American presence, and norms of interstate relations in the region. Hence, Chinese actions are caught between a rock and a hard place. The Chinese are caught in a Chinese finger trap. To sidestep this: China needs to evolve a liberal Confucianism, and to become an American "partner". Second, it needs to gain buy-in from countries in the region. Third, it needs to become the key facilitating node in the service economy in Asia, with its associated economic, socio-cultural, and people-to-people flows. This is not easy.

It's hegemony will not be absolute. This is not how the region works and it knows this.

China must avoid conflict at all costs. This would upend everything it should seek in the region. America's presence in the region would probably scale down over the long term, if its currency loses reserve status. But it's influence will not be critically predicated on American military presence, but on Chinese political, economic, institutional and cultural evolution and it's corresponding soft power in the region. This will legitimate its structural power. In short, Chinese diplomacy is best served by focusing on internal development. That is the only way out of its finger trap.

***

Of course, China would probably find it easier to work within existing systems and institutions, such as international law and UN, while gradually tilting them, alongside other multilateral frameworks, to its interests.

Note 80

Why something not nothing is a question nothing asks of something. The answer cannot be found in something, but within nothing itself. But something cannot come out of nothing. The answer cannot be thought, but is implied in the question; but even though it is implied in the question, it cannot be answered.

Why something not nothing, and why nothing not something to begin with, arise from the same problem of defining the relation between something and nothing.

Note 79

Sadhguru in a sentence: to hell with externalizations!

Note 78

The self is of no relevance. It is the form of humanity, or the transcendence of it, that avails the significance of existence. Dharma is hence the expression of universal form.

Quotes 12

"Central banking can be successful only if central bankers know how the institutional structure behaves and correctly assess how changes affect the system. Central bankers have to steer the evolution of the financial structure." - Hyman Minsky

The same could be said of policymakers more generally.

Also of note is the constant cycle of reform, restructuring, growth, and fragility.

Note 77

Understanding:
Understanding capacities, not resolutions. Principles not facts.

Economic policy:
Conditions (demographic, cultural, capacities) - structures (profit models, institutions) - processes (policy, relationships between variables)

Note 76

The self is the totality of the relation to the cosmos. If you see that, then you see that you do not have full ownership of the self, that it belongs to the cosmos too.

Note 75

Globalisation is stuck, but not in reverse. This should be noted upfront.

But why so? Because the liberal elites driving globalisation failed at the start to develop a cosmopolitan liberalism which is essentially complementary to existing national cultures which continue to dominate political and social life. They mistakenly saw them as opposed, and were undone by the belief in that opposition which meant that they ignored it, rather than incorporated it.

Once again, philosophical oppositions do not entail political polarity and the inability of western political culture to separate philosophy from politics has undone their work. Over historical time, means do not define ends because they can change the conditions in which ends can be achieved.

Singapore, which has done so by sublimating this opposition into pragmatic ideology, presents an alternative to western politics. Of course there are institutional vulnerabilities and disruptive regime change due politics being unable to incorporate ideological positions at a deeper level, but it represents a smarter form of politics, a wider range of the possible to incorporate oppositions.

Note 74

For Nietzsche, the inadequacy of metaphysics lies in its inability to incorporate life. Hence his metaphysics is fundamentally aimed at the breaking down the categorical barriers that distinguish and separate the two; that is, being in its totality, and idea.

Note 73

No social systems are perfect. Therefore it is incumbent on good leadership to identify and understand the blind spots of any system and to provide discretionary measures to moderate its excesses. Here, ideological blinders are dangerous. Ideology is the business of the intellectual and institutional design, and good sense the business of the agent. By placing ideology over judgement through partisan politics, democracy trades off good judgement and representativeness of values. The severity of this tradeoff is path-dependent, and relies heavily on generations of responsible stewardship to preserve.

Note on power

The core drivers of power in the race for global dominance:

1. Economic power - consumers, skills, organizational know-how, innovation
2. Political power - military strength/reach/capacity, security cooperation frameworks, Authority/Legitimacy
3. Ideas/cultural/soft power - universality of ideals/values, Use, manipulation of institutions/images/communications, connectivity
4. Financial power - capital, networks, reputation/trust

Note on Trump

Trump is the symptom of 2 trends: The decay of public morality (which is the dialectic frame within which for and against are set); and the disruption of the nation state as a political and cultural layer of unity within a world where economic and information flows polarise different community of values.

The breakdown of public morality is due to the monoculture of neoliberalism as the dominant essential principle governing social and political relations, and the overextension of market morality to social domains. In particular, the loss of concepts of political virtue and stewardship, the breakdown of collective social institutions highlighted by Putnam, skewed incentive structures to capitalise on market structures, and individualism without individual wisdom or responsibility, has led to a failing public life.

On the disruption of the nation state, what is required in the long term is a structural review of the functions of the nation state and the terms which define its boundaries. What is needed in the short term is an institutional mechanism of pooling sovereignty over issue areas where global management is required without infringing on the areas where sovereignty is to be retained. This is a delicate task as communities are bound by total value systems as issue area bears consequences on another which may require sovereign control to preserve them. However the key mistake was that policymakers were unable to foresee the dislocations caused by globalised flows and to create global coordination tools to manage them. This was due in part to lack of convergence which makes common goals difficult, however tools of compromise was not created as they might have been. The goal for the medium term is to facilitate convergence in social conditions that enable global norms over a wider set of issue areas.

Note 72

The paradox of identity: to be and not to be.

Notes from Minsky 2

The high and pro-cyclical elasticity of money supply means that the financial markets for investment are non-equilibrating. Interest rates do not adjust to enable market equilibriums between capitalized expected profit and supply costs of investment. Hence financial markets are dominated by positive, disequilibrating feedbacks between asset prices and balance sheets, and money supply and demand.

This elasticity arises from 3 factors: the intangible nature of credit, the money multiplier, and the expectational climate of bankers and businessmen, which is procyclical, contains biases and moral hazards, and is short term.

Note 71: On Time

Past, present, future is an illusion. There is only present, and the structures that relate them to each other.

***

What is time?

One, it is a frame of experience, within which change is experienced.

There is no flow of time, just as there is no objective right.

Our determination of its flow as a forward movement from past to future is a result of our experience of change, and the causal characteristics associated with it, which enables us to attribute properties to the relations between different points in time.

However, this is not inherent to the frame of time itself. Time as a frame of experience does not determine the qualities of its contents, hence it is false to speak of past/present/future, for this is a function of process, which is change and causation; not time, which is structure.

Halloween

What is Halloween?

A microcosm of life: fun, scary, and ephemeral.

Note 70

Underlying property-derived interpretations, facts.

One, underlying all possible interpretations.

Two, underlying the relations between observer and observed that give rise to coherence of interpretive frameworks.

Facts cannot be given within frameworks. Or it would not be a fact, but an interpretation.

Note 69

Power is the ability to allocate the functions, and define the interactions, of various political mechanisms in society. The relation of various political mechanisms define the power complex of a society, which in turn determines the evolution of the dynamics of these political mechanisms, in relation to the interplay of its substantive contents, in relation to the themes, issues, agents, values, preferences, ideologies and technological contexts in that society.

Note 68

Love on the surface
Embracing a
Category I could not reach
As I stepped towards the
Precipice
And fell into a dream
Of a world occupied
With its own embrace
Upon itself enslaved
And upon itself made free
To fall into enslavement again
In search
Of the transcendence pie.

Note 67

What the consideration of mind leads to is not property materialism or dualism but multimodalism, the presence of intermediate epistemic frames between material and mind which are discontinuous with both.

Discontinuity exists because the properties cannot be broken down into constituents which link up with others. The frames do not match. What is required is a third frame which reconcieves of what matter and mind is, and yet encapsulates both aspects and properties of matter and mind to understand their interaction. That is, one has to speak outside of matter or of mind to reconcile them.

Note 66

Qualities govern interactions. Emergent properties create new kinds of interactions and hence new principles governing interactions. New systems are constituted by the interaction of the properties relating to the system, as well as those relating to their constituent systems, which govern their interaction.

Does this mean that properties are ontic units? And contingent?

Note 65

Nothingness is the unity in which everything is. It is the vessel.

So God is the paradox of everything out of nothing.

Work

Work is the way of linking production to consumption. This depends on technology, capacity, and preferences. These change through time, and so work also changes. Because of this, work will not be displaced by machines. Only some kinds of work will.

Note 64

The flaw of modern philosophy - existence vs non-existence.

Note 63

What is time? Subjective and scientific time.

Time only exists insofar as it is used. It is the frame through which the progression of events is measured.

In science, it is a dimension of physical theory. It underlies the conception of physical systems as intelligible, time bound systems. It is both frame (as flow) and object (the relative speed of its flow).

In subjective thinking, time does not exist, but is inferred. It is the essence of the situational meaning of the concept of change itself. That is, there is no way of framing change except through time, at least in our imagination, and in our experience. Time just is a way of representing change.

Hence the idea of constant, whether identities, or substance, etc, depends on the kind of change that is envisioned. Identities are built as ways to conceive of change, and are constituted alongside the change which it is possible to envision them as underlying.

The specific forms which identity and change (time, mathematical operations) takes are mirror constructs, and the form which identities take are limited to what doesn't change, which is a negation of what changes, and hence can be envisioned to change. In other words, meaning lies in the change nexus, not the identity and its forms.

Note 62

Tractatus: Intelligible negation is the test of sense of a proposition.

Only propositions with sense should be discussed.

Propositions without intelligible negation should not be discussed.

Picture theory: both the proposition and its negation are supposed to describe a possibility, otherwise the status of a proposition is other than that of a significant.

The difference between incomplete and insignificant propositions. Is it possible to negate possibilities which cannot be conceived, but which are not insignificant when negated?

The relational, as opposed to the substantive content of propositions, and the role of negative propositions within value networks of meaning.

Multiple negation? Comparative negation: coffee without milk vs coffee without cream.

Circular reasoning: the picture is not meaningful because I am unable to picture it.

Picture as content. What is content? It cannot be picture because content is what the picture is of, not the picture itself.

Note 61

Culture as semiotic systems that regulate the internal and external forms of communication. I understand the references of culture because I can identify the markers that arise out of collective lived experience within spatial or interactive boundaries, and because I am identified with the features of these experiences.

Note 60

It is precisely the nothingness of subjectivity that makes negation possible, which gives rise to the possibility of identity, and from identity applied to a myriad of frames, meaning.

Pat Metheny Quote

What I have learned is that all you really know is what you love—and that can be the only compass that one should use to guide oneself. As soon as you give the aesthetic reins of power to an audience, other musicians, a critic, the guy sitting in the third row, your girlfriend, your boss—you have crossed a line that is difficult to recover from. This is not to say that you remain stubborn and isolated in your "vision" because your vision has to be pliable and malleable to the reality of the conditions that you are actively participating in at a given moment.

Hive Mind

What if the self is the enabling mode through which the hive mind perceives itself?

What if reality itself is the imagining of the hive mind?

So in the Matrix, there is a scene in which Neo pulls himself free from the glass tank in which he is encased, and recognises his true condition. From the perspective of the individual, he is plugged into hive mind against his will. But from the perspective of hive mind, that realisation is self-realisation. Going out of one level of hive mind, he finds himself encased in another level of reality constituted by hive mind.

The locus of subjectivity of space and time then rests not in the individual mind, but the hive mind. Individualized subjectivity is the enabling perspective which identifies a thing within space and time, and provides a reference outside of space and time from which to point to it as it seems. However, the hive mind is the constituent of individualized subjectivity, just as the totality of individualized subjectivity constitutes hive mind.

Subjectivity, then is the specific modality of negation, or the vessel, through which the hive mind identifies itself. In perception, it represents itself in an external way. In meaning, it is the ability to think logically. In action, it manifests in volition, which gives rise to ethics.

Note 59

Negation of what it is not is the primary relationship in ontological being.

Insofar as being is being within relationships, it is defined as the negation of what it is not, as the constitutive aspect of its identity.

But because it is constituted by that negation, it contains within what it is, what it is not. Hence it is at the same time a specific form of what it is not.

Hence the definition of what it is is limitless. Or rather, it is limited by the specific frames which we apply to it.

Thoughts on Brexit

Brexit should trigger soul searching within Britain, however unlikely it is to do so. It is the culmination of a broken economy and broken society that is unable to cope with the pressures of globalisation. In that world, systems are strained and the weakest buckles.

This is partly due to the arrogance and incompetence of EU bureaucrats and UK politicians, in their failure to understand the effects of immigration on wages of the low skilled. But this begs the question of the existing structure of the economy. Years of socialism, followed by Thatcherism, hollowed out the manufacturing economy and created an underclass of low wage service workers. This was ripe for disruption by an influx of migrant workers that brought real wages in this sector down. And it will continue to be ripe for disruption by automation and other technological developments.

Brexit was also the result of a contentious political culture that could no longer generate a national consensus partly as a result of the accumulation of economic mismanagement over decades. This polarisation is supported by a toxic class culture which normalizes inequalities, not just economic but social and between communities, which would be unacceptable elsewhere in Europe. The breakdown of social trust and the political centre is evident, and is a repeat of the 1930s.

In this case, democracy has become a destabilising force which reflects the polarisation of society - south vs north, rich vs poor. Political groups have been talking past each other for decades. This is not new, and similar problems occurred in the 1930s. Yet only monetary economics has seemed to learn much from that episode, and no new policy innovations, in Britain or elsewhere, have been made in the last 20 years to deal with the distributional effects of globalisation on individuals and communities which theory clearly predicts. Hence the only solution is to limit migration. This is partly due to the failure of supranational institutions and the state of international policy coordination, which are inadequate to the tasks at hand.

At the more immediate level, Brexit was the result of an alliance of centre right and far right British nationalists, who are unable or unwilling to define a British cosmopolitanism that includes a role for European foreigners. Some believe that the gains from policy flexibility and sovereignty outweigh the loss of access to Europe, brain drains and the diminished reach of its institutions. This has a long history in a culture which defines itself against Europe. However, in the Darwinian race, culture itself is a shackle, and Britain will pay for its inflexibility in dollars and influence.

Note 58

"Because they cannot be known, they can only be described." - Lao Zu

Just as the content of music must be given in its relation to silences, so the meaning of statements must be given in relation to the unspoken meaning behind it, pertaining to both the possibilities within which it is conceived, as well as the contexts though which it is understood.

***

So the content and structure of meaning is given through expressing it's relation to the totality of what it is not, as well as what is not thinkable. By thinking the unthinkable, we can understand thought.

Less pessimistically, our use of thought contains within it an understanding of the unthinkable.

***

A finite conception of the totality of these possibilities is contained within culture, which expresses a view of what these might consist. Hence paradigm shifts may occur that rejig the notion of these possibilities.

From a philosophical standpoint, culture constitutes a way of contextualising epistemic possibilities in relation to our current understanding of the world.

Note 57

The essence of meaning are the relations between concepts which it picks out. It picks out both context (what is implied, both about the world and about the relation to it) and representation (the specific thing to which it refers).

By picking out specific contexts, it embodies assumptions about underlying structures governing context, within which contextualization is posssible. The way it organizes information is itself information, but which cannot be given in terms of representation. 

By picking out representations, it also embodies assumptions about the structural content of representations, and about possible relations between representation and context.

***

When we say we mean something, what we mean is how the objects relate to other objects within contexts, or represented contexts relating to other contexts.

***

Relationships require limits. Limits are not real. Or rather, they are only as real as they are taken as such from within the network of relationships.

Hence the absolute, or that which is not relatedness, cannot be thought.

Note 56

The greatest cultures are those which articulate and advance the frontiers of the human condition, in their unique ways. They are divorced from the ethnicity from which they originate,  and seed ideas in other cultures in ways which extend their influence beyond the survival of the civilisation itself.

Note 55

Subjectivity is composed of two parts, relativity and representativeness.

By asserting relativity, the argument from representativeness at the meta-level breaks down. This is due to the hierarchies of truth being maintained at that level. Hence there is no argued basis for relativity due to representativeness.

Hence, it either asserts non-representativeness at the meta-level, or denies representativeness as the basis for relativity.

Frame-coherantism is one such alternative. This epistemic notion may be paired with an ontological reality-pluralism which asserts that there are multiple frames of truth, none of which invalidates or overrides the other.

However, the determination of what constitutes a frame is itself a search for a founding principle, a foundational frame. Hence it transcendentally presupposes that which it categorically denies. 

Alternatively, one might be left with a radical undecidability between opposing frames for the sake of meta-consistency, which cannot even be said. This Wittgensteinian anti-theory would deny the validity of the question within which it is framed. Frame just is use.

Note 54

A characteristic of modernity, and Asian modernity in particular, is the determination of social structures and institutions by economic values. 

Hence by altering economic imperatives, the changing operative modality of technologically embedded living will disrupt existing social arrangements. The means of change rests on the question of the flexibility of institutions to adapt.

In particular, the shift to large scale automation will require a lifestyle and social welfare alteration towards pursuit of creative comparative advantages. 

The success in generating potential growth, as well as preventing violent change, rests on the speed of cultural change.

Note 53

Societies function in a general equilibrium within evolutionary stable sets of mutually reciprocating factor conditions. The combination of norms, institutions and ideology, as well as the interaction of the emergent properties and the relationships themselves, constitutes that which Hegel idealizes and calls Geist.

Linkages between components of Geist evolve over time, according to the hierarchy of principles which order the collective decisions of society. Being humans, these principles are embodied in actual historical events and actions, rather than implemented from the top-down.

Use

Use is frame. Meaning is not use. Use is the way in which meaning is used.

So form does not precondition content, but is given in the relation of content to other content.

Expressed through content, it exists in a categorical relation to content.

Use is not the precondition of meaning, but arises out of the condition of meaning  through its content. The necessity of its content is called form. It's necessity is contingent on the kind of content that is evoked.

Quotes 11

"What differentiates a leader from a manager, research tells us, is the ability to figure out where to go and to enlist the people and groups necessary to get there. Recruiting stakeholders, lining up allies and sympathizers, diagnosing the political landscape, and brokering conversations among unconnected parties are all part of a leader’s job. As they step up to the leadership transition, some managers accept their growing dependence on others and seek to transform it into mutual influence. Others dismiss such work as “political” and, as a result, undermine their ability to advance their goals.

The key to a good strategic network is leverage: the ability to marshal information, support, and resources from one sector of a network to achieve results in another. Strategic networkers use indirect influence, convincing one person in the network to get someone else, who is not in the network, to take a needed action. Moreover, strategic networkers don’t just influence their relational environment; they shape it in their own image by moving and hiring subordinates, changing suppliers and sources of financing, lobbying to place allies in peer positions, and even restructuring their boards to create networks favorable to their business goals."

Ibarra and Hunter at HBR

Note 52

The relative is understood within the frame of the absolute. The absolute functions as the frame (or category) and object (to which the relative is the negation).

Absoluteness functions both as frame and possibility in the discussion on the Absoluteness of truth. The nature of the assertion is a contingent one, set within an absolute frame.

The refutation of absolute truth is a contingent refutation of a possibility. But a contingent refutation cannot refute an absolute. It can only refute the possibility of an absolute. On the other hand, if it was an absolute refutation, it would be an absolute truth. It then becomes that which it refutes. It is a meta Paradox. It remains a necessity at the level of the transcendental possibility.

So it is with god. It's existence is given through its non-existence. It is the necessary frame through which it's non-existence is made god again. At the transcendental level, it is the negation of the concept of the existence of god.

Note 51

The primary function of society is to harness the energies of the individual for collective ends. 

The philosophies through which they point back to the individual, and the way that individuals acquiesce to it, determines the social compact, and the social features that flow from it. 

Insofar as the individual identifies with the collective ends, he is imbued with a notion of purpose and progress. Ideology is primarily a means of generating identifications and hence teleological constructs that align self with society. However, the loss of identification generates alienation. 

Modern progress is thus a means of generating ideological legitimacy through inclusion. The terms by which inclusion is measured is generated within the ideology itself. 

But legitimacy referred to here is short term legitimacy, not long term legitimacy. That must be provided through philosophical incorporation, the evolution of ideology.

This applies not only to modern institutions, but also to development as such. For example, the religious tolerance of Ottomans as examples of development of a civilization.

Institutions are the embodiment of the interactions between the trinity of culture, ideology, and political ideas. The ability to judge the relative importance of different frames in the assessment of events is crucial to understanding the world.

Note 50

Meaning is contextual; context is specific to a perspective; perspective is grounded in categorical frames; categorical frames are given to a species; hence meaning is sited within a form of life.

Underlying this is the assumption of representation constituting the ground of meaning on the basis of its appearing to. But in what sense?

But what is referred to is represented meaning; which by definition requires representation. 

But the ground of represented meaning, by inaccessibility, cannot be represented. Hence it cannot be constituted by representation. And represented meaning cannot be groundless.

Note 49

Naturalism is the reductionism of moral categories to natural categories. This is absurd, categories are not reducible to another, for if it were, it is not a category. Categories are the terms which define the frames in which they are understood, which cannot be re-framed into another, because they cannot be said.

Gardner argues that the analytic philosophy is naturalistic, and that it denies the reality of moral and spiritual categories, hence is fundamentally irreconcilable with Hegel. This is incorrect. There is no reality of categories. This conflates reality with meaningfulness. Verificationists deny the meaningfulness of these categories because they cannot be parsed in terms of empirically verifiable statements. But that is not to say that they are not real. In fact the naturalistic philosophy would have to deny abstract reality, as it is meaningless in that sense.

Note 48

Dharma as general equilibrium over states of the world. Dharma can punish, and it can bring abundance. But it is essentially pragmatic, not ideal in character. There is no absolute dharma.

Does form imply essence?

The objects of a frame are given within a frame, but are not implied within it. Frame is form, so the constellation of frames, or a particular arrangement of the relationships between frames, defines the context. The object itself, and the verbs, adjectives etc. are then use: the particularities to cohere and orientate the relations within a context.

A universal description of anything is by definition self-referential and paradoxical. Hence it is not representation, or cannot be said.

Notes from Minsky 1

Wage market equilibrium w/p=MPL
Investment savings equilibrium r=mec
Money markets equilibrium M/p=L(I,O)

Supply side determined by equilibrium in supply side markets which determine output.

Output feeds into IS-LM, giving interest rates. But the economy can also attain higher investment rates and an hence higher output through lower interest rates and higher price, and hence higher output, lower productivity supply side equilibriums.

Bifurcation of short and long run. Cyclical accelerators work when y in quantity of money equation is unfixed. In the long run they affect prices only.

"In the IS-LM model with a Keynesian labour market, income and the interest rate are determined by the dominant simultaneous satisfaction of the equilibrium conditions in the commodity and money markets, the income so determined yields the amount of labour employed [via the employment function], and given the productivity of labour and the wage rate, yields the price level."

Money has an unemployment rate. The employment rate of money serves to equilibrate the marginal efficiency of capital with the implicit returns to holding money - which is also the discount rate on future consumption. The lower the MEC, the higher the uncertainty, or the higher the deflation rate, the higher the unemployment rate of money.

Return= yield - carrying cost + liquidity premium

Velocity of money determines changes in liquidity premiums, which determine the relative price of liquid and non liquid assets.

In booms, liquidity premiums are low, so less liquid assets eg, property price increase. In contracting credit, liquidity premiums rise, so cash (deflation) and gold increase in price, while stocks and property face sudden reversals.

Of course, credit fueled investment changes the real yield on assets over the longer term, and the yields reflected in prices are expected yields. Hence the beneficiaries of a boom are mostly the investors during the subsequent bust, with the liquidity premium reversals, or 'reverse yield arbitrages'.

3 slips and spreads between lip (printing money) and cup (higher investment): 1) liquidity and interest rates due to liquidity traps 2) Debt interest rates and the marginal efficiency of capital due to fluctuating capitalization factor, or equity risk premiums 3) the marginal efficiency of capital, or required earnings yield, and the prospective yield on capital assets.

In booms, net demand for liquidity increases, while net return in capital falls, which creates an inherently unstable dynamic. Interaction effects with the real economy, and monetary policy to manage liquidity conditions, may sustain the boom.

In busts, negative feedback between tightening credit and liquidity conditions, asset prices, demand for investment, consumption and employment. Recursive debt-income deflationary process could be triggered, including unemployment, depression and deflation.