Note 88

The most important decisions are made not at the moment of conscious choice, but through the unintended effects of previous unconscious actions. Choice is just the surface culmination of these factors, which have been sedimented over time. Defining freedom through choice is hence empirically erroneous. Real freedom lies in the interstice of habits and tendencies.

Note 87

Existence is an infinite question. Laws govern laws. Do we lack the faculty for understanding the origin of laws? The problem is the limits in this form of thought.

Freedom

Freedom is set within an unfree world. The interplay gives rise to the fabric of life.

The only source of freedom is freedom from desires. But without desire, freedom has no value.

East or West

East or West:

Do you want to live in a culture where ideas are an instrument to well-being, or where life is instrumental to ideas, for only that can make life meaningful?

At the level of values, the trade off is between social freedom and individual well-being. But the mode of valuation differs, between valuing an idea and valuing an experience.

This is why "pragmatism" comes much more easily to policymakers in Asia, which is not for want of the ability of those in the liberal west to distinguish the proper place of ends and means (to have values and then to find the most effective means of achieving them), but because the idea itself constitutes the experience.

Millenials

Humans in society are but animals in a farm. What Millennials essentially demand is this: a new lifestyle that recognises the need for freedom; greater room for creative expression within a new form of work and life. The job hopping and drifting is a reflection of this search for optimal form, not optimal content.

This requires a new social contract, one based generationally less on the values of accumulation and tilted towards the search for autonomy and authenticity.

Sanders is a manifestation of that demand, and the rest of the politicians are conservatives. However, the US is unlikely to be the vanguard, because the state is insolvent. Also because of the distrust toward the state, forged in a context of a contest between different modes of production many years ago.

Note 86

Inauthenticity is the hallmark of a decadent society. Cynicism is its corollary, a revolution in embryo.

Note 85

Is knowledge contextual in form or expression? Depends on whether the relation in the language game constitutes knowledge, or the criteria underlying the use of the knowledge game constitute knowledge.

Language games do not identify contexts, but determine their form. The application of a language game requires a criteria outside of the game itself.

Note 84

The relation between policy, biology and culture must be studied for a full understanding of the development of societies.

This can only be done without repercussions if researchers (as well as society at large) understand and step outside their value frameworks and normative assumptions which define what the good life and the goals of social development (both at the collective and individual level) are. Similarly, society has to be pluralistic and robust enough to incorporate diversities of value frameworks without breaking down under the weight of contradictions and conflicts.

The potential of this is there; but it may take many decades, or centuries to reach this point. Perhaps when AI has rendered the scarcity value of intelligence to 0 can we have a matured and balanced conversation on human values (much like the history of the spice trade).

Intellectuals

Intellectuals are dangerous because they privilege the evolution and development of ideas through society above all other governmental or societal objectives. Because of this, they are the representatives of progress through sacrifice, and must be put down by society, for the sake of a stable inertia.

Note 83

What is the regulative principle through which the virtues of states are addressed? Warfare is no longer the force of creative destruction of obsolete or suboptimal processes, because the benefits of military power are no longer the source of a good life. Utilitarianism is the death of war.

What can secure the good life? It is the combination of wants and needs, identity, utility, material goods, social and spiritual needs, and freedom to choose one's course in life. The state can no longer secure the multiplicity of wants within the current framework, because it is itself a politicization of a sense of identity which is becoming increasingly fluid, as well as the guarantor, the source, and the outdated kernel of the notion of identity that exists at a previous point in time, that sets the parameters for the evolution of the operations that will render them redundant. In short, state mechanisms can no longer contain the tensions which have been drawn out by circumstances between national and transnational identities.

In response to conditions, identities form, ossify, institutionalise, generate regulative principles which affect their internal and external relations, affect a change in values and behaviours, create contradictions, adapt or collapse, depending on the relation to the regulative principles, and repeat the identities through the new set of conditions and actions which arise, endlessly.

Note 82

1. Existence is constituted by relation.
2. Relation cannot be to nothing but something.
3. Relation of the totality of existence has to be to itself.
4. Subject-object is the form of the relation of the totality of existence to itself.
5. Divinity is the embodiment of the entire scope of possibilities within the subject-object relation.

Note 81

The chief problem in the actuality of forms is not perspectivism, which is a way of constructing knowledge atop these principles, but the ontology of forms, and their relation to the necessary contingency of reality.

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.