Note 98

It seems that the world operates as a single mind, so recognizing this, and having an awareness of the form of alignment with this, is needed.

Globalizing States

States serve as the foundational final arbiter of control over institutional networked flows, whether ideational, social, economic or cultural, that happen within and between borders. Therefore, despite being undermined in scope of action due to the autonomy of the control centers of these networked flows - key agents, nodal points - thereby leading to necessary convergence among states - states, by providing the legal framework for world order, remain crucially sovereign, as the key aspect of this order, thereby anchoring identities to geographical boundaries.

What is interesting to observe is the dynamic of gradual regionalism, it's coming together and coming apart. It seems that the state remains a nation-state; that it's function to preserve culture retains the vote. Cultures are not sacred; they come and go, but the conservatism of a people will shape (though is unlikely in the long run, to reverse) the turns that globalisation makes, as well as the inevitably cosmopolitan cultures that result.

Note 97

The world as a series of revolutions, the dialectical self-overcoming of power, and the re-formation of the constellation of institutions around the evolution of the core institutions of power. At the macro level then, the dynamics of a will to power.

***
What is the greatest good also contains within it the greatest evil. What is the greatest joy also contains within it the greatest suffering. That is the lesson that Nietzsche learned.

Hegel 3

"Now" as a way of characterizing change relationships as particulars of a universal object now. This is dialectical - ie, not logical - the negation of its negation is not it. It particularizes the universal through the role of the observing subject within the language game. Similarly for other identifiers.

***

The existing object referred to particularizes the universal. But the context of the object constitutes the meaning through which the universal is made particular in thought. In the case of concept, the universalized form of the object is itself the means through which the universal is particularized in thought. So a mental object is really a universal holding a mirror up to itself in order to be thought.

Note 96

The discreteness of social and political reality; the dissolution of personality.

Hegel 2

Hegel

1. Consciousness is subjective (criterion is for-itself)
2. But the criterion references the in-itself.

Contra Hegel, truth does not reference the agent of truth. Subjectivity as contingent, because the form within which it is is not given within the criteria of the in-itself. Truths for us reference the agent, for example those in social studies or quantum mechanics, but these are contingent facts which are not generalizable relations between truth and subject. The criterion for truth for consciousness is for-itself, but this does not free the truth for consciousness from the criteria of the truth in-itself.

Reply: Perspectivism vs subjectivity. Irreducible epistemic perspectivism. Subjectivity as the agent of perspectival truth. But contra that, truth is constituted by the underlying content within which something is framed. Truth lies behind the conscious framed perspectival truth. The act of framing is the act of standing outside of the truth to represent it to the mind, so it can be used, verified etc.

So what constitutes the criteria of for-itself is not for-itself per se. And what is the for-itself is framed truth which is not itself the truth to which it refers; therefore, learning is the reverse act of coverting the for-itself of framed truth into the in-itself of truth. In this way, the in-itself of truth can be repurposed into other contexts of the for-itself of framed truth.

In fact, the concept of knowledge rests on this distinction. Hence it cannot be that a fact can bridge a conceptual distinction.

Gift

Your gift to the world is to spread your love of a thing, to express and share it.

Note 95

Freedom is negation, a constant stepping outside of the frame of meaning of an activity. Thought is one of the products of freedom, of which the source is a nothingness which holds something before it, but which lies beyond it. The thought may be used to bring forward the dialectic, or to negate it. In bringing the dialectic forward, the source of freedom, the negation itself, is incorporated into the process and it's actuality.

Hegel 1

Hegel's task is the reconciliation of substance and subject, and being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Teleology is the thread through which the for-itself overcomes its necessary subjectivity and unites with the in-itself by being contained within the moments of the in-itself. This applies to objects, as well as the reflexive individual.

But by providing an account of truth as an event, he answers not the question of what is truth, but of what truth is. This is properly the realm of meta-history, or science, not philosophy.

***
In existence, the field of othering, which is the field in which something is said to exist, is itself created by the subject identifying itself as content, that is to say, self-identical determinateness.

***
There are two kinds of negation: internal self-othering and external negation.

***
Concept incorporating Being, and Being incorporating Concept, in a logical necessity, as the world. In incorporating the specific content of the world into forms of knowledge, the Notion is grasped.

Two World Trends

Two world trends: Convergence and multipolarity

Materialism drives industrialisation, which drives education, which drives value convergence. Every country is now subordinate to the global commons because of this value convergence within their electorates. States which do not follow this necessity eventually become irrelevant to the global order. Trade and Technology-driven power necessitates the primacy of the influence of this developmental dynamic. Convergence also implies that the technological gap between emerging and advanced economies will narrow in the long run.

Multipolarity is driven by the desire of emerging countries to free-ride on the developed countries for global public good provision until the latter can no longer afford them. World leadership will then evolve into multipolarity and regionalism as US cost-benefit calculation tilts in favour of self-interest, and its position subsides, without equivalent replacements. Strategic allocation of resources by the US would matter, but the ability of the polity to do so is in doubt. Perhaps some form of fee for safety and protection will be provided, as the US commercialises it's military advantage to serve as global policeman.

Note 94

The transcendence of space is possible if you understand that we are information, not things. Perception is just a process in which information is being used to interpret other information. Experience is determined by the way you perceive and interpret information, by the ways in which information interacts with other information.

Note 93

One of the most important issues in applied social science is understanding the correct level of analysis. Academics tend to speak in dangerously misleading generalities. This means that what they do is tangentially useful to the real world. The practitioner's job is to connect the many tangents within the current context. It is about identifying the appropriate level of analysis to the situation, and weighing the factors. This is an exercise in judgement, which is the ability to piece together key facts in a roughly right way in the presence of incomplete information.

Note 92

As the productivity of production grows while the productivity of consumption remains stagnant, and working hours remain fixed, demand lags production, and deflation ensues.

So what we need as a society is a flexible work schedule. Unemployment is an ineffective adjustment mechanism that occurs due the fundamental inability of society to develop work processes and structures that work around employment frictions. That is the task that economists, management scientist and unions have failed to set themselves. Adapting the efficiencies promoted by the gig economy while preventing the downsides is a useful step forward that policymakers at present can pursue.

Note 91

If you feel naked, weak and exposed in the shifting sea of men and ideas, that is exactly where you should be, not the dull comforting conformity of a cog in a machine.

Note 90

It is the specific characteristic of human development that negative freedom co-evolves with positive freedom. Negative freedom enables positive freedom to develop, which creates transcendence of a greater set of conditions, generating greater negative freedoms and more positive ones, and so on. More specifically, this happens not just in the physical dimension, but in the mental realm of ideas. So one could imagine a new utopia of transcendence through awareness- a radical incorporation of consciousness into the hard facts of life.

The strange miracle of existence

The reason why people feel lost is that they are looking for meaning in life which doesn't exist.

Life is like a spinning top; let it go round. When it drops, you wouldn't even know it was possible.

How do we enjoy life, when we have pressed ourselves into so many trellises of it, and are trapped in the infinite munificence of this maze?

Time is not real, it is just a way of identifying linearity in our perceptions of change. Because of this, we understand change, and know that life must end.

So we dance in this vast sea, mites in the universe, allotted our share of wonder, to witness the strange unknowable miracle of existence.

Bach

What does Bach teach us? To never give up on the soul.

Note 89

Consciousness is meta awareness - awareness of awareness. This is a kind, not a fact.

Solipsism

Solipsism is the form of mental constructs. The mind creates the world within which truths are assessed. Truths are only as real as the mind which creates them. Without mind, there is no truth. Mind constitutes the forms within which subcategories of truths are externalised and assessed. So what we mean by "God" is really an implicit recognition of the constitution of the forms of being by mind.

In other words, there has to be a coherence of principles within a framework for correspondence of objects to each other within that framework to be possible, which gives rise to what we might call "truth". A principle has to be applied within a field outside of itself in order to generate truth conditions.

In the case of existence, that framework is constituted by the coherence of being and mind, which is solipsistic in form. Hence mind and being are closely intertwined.

***
Subjective and objective are pairs within a frame. When there is no objectivity to compare subjectivity to, or when what we refer to as subjective is an experience and objective as an idea, then our talk becomes meaningless, for the question becomes whether there are objective experiences or subjective ideas.

Why Singapore feels/is sterile

Singapore is a top down country, where the state determines the forms that interactions between state and society, and state and economy takes. The state determines the parameters of society. Society does not know what it is; its functioning and purposes is interfered with by the state; there is an absence of the art of living; and without the ability to determine the forms that societal interactions take, there is no collective sense of the space of possibilities for the evolution of society. Without empowerment, there is no possibility of the development of institutional forms and principles for the energy of its people to latch onto, or to apply itself upon; no spirit; sterile.

Democracy is a continuous meta conversation, not just of the role of government, but the scope of government, within the space of interaction between state, society, and market mechanisms.

This is not to say that the system as it has evolved into its current state is not the best under the circumstances, although it is too early to tell ex ante what the best form is, involving a good deal of unknowables and luck. Good in such cases is so conditional as to be meaningless. The key question is if the combination of mechanisms and characteristics are optimising the energies and capabilities of a people at any point in time, as well as creating the incentives to do so across time, and if existing institutions are generating the balance between stability and discovery in the right ways. And if the essentially totalitarian system is antifragile.

There are 3 goals of government: law and order; empowerment of citizens to change state and society; risk pooling and intergenerational contracting.

***

Society consists of the building blocks of institutions and the ideologies that underlie them.

The life of a society is the embodiment of the continual philosophical conversations that it engages in to determine ends and means.

Sterility is the absence of philosophy due to the predetermination of values and actions and the institutions used to achieve them - namely, wealth creation.

That is the weakness of ossified societies - the predetermination, rather than the dynamic flux, of values.

In short, Singapore is a society of Last Men.