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Strange Days

Magic or Superstition

Living in Thailand means being surrounded by ghosts, magic incantations, and spiritual seers. The longer one lives here the more the beliefs and their apparent reality prey upon the mind.

Lord Ganesh

Good Luck, Bad Luck

Good luck is not just about avoiding the bad, but mitigating the bad. Only extreme religions think in terms of the war of good against evil, and an actual winning of that war. This is what plagues Judaism, Christianity and Islam to a large degree, as well as, or especially, the superstitions of the religious fundamentalists of each of these and other religions.

A bus, sweeping out of a side-street … caught a cyclist, knocked him off and crushed his machine … the bus driver rushed over to congratulate the cyclist on his lucky escape. Both men were delighted and left smiling. – Norman Lewis, A Dragon Apparent, Indochina, 1950

Narrow escapes are good luck, not bad luck.

Buddhism

Buddhism on the other hand–as it currently exists in Southeast Asia–is certainly ceremonial and intertwined with various animist beliefs and practices. At the same time, it is the worship of a man’s wisdom, that is the ultimate reality of the world and life.

Oneness

Syncretic – Animism, Ancestor Worship

In Southeast Asia one finds a bewildering array of practices, syncretic to the bone. I for one hope it is never all sorted out. That would be a tyranny akin to the mad vision of countless missionaries in the desire to convert, and thereby conquer yet again, in the name of a misbegotten god.

And so…

My own strange, small events are certainly no evidence, but I will say this: Two days, separated by a third, the first is a single buddha offering of 10 Baht, and then a day of immediate success (as well as the wizened, enigmatic smile of the ancient hawker of the offering). The next day, the same offering attached firmly to the motorbike, I promptly run over a cat (which clearly was not a cat, as how could it have continued its dash across the street and down the soi if it was run over by yours truly), and didn’t crash, amazingly. And then cross a road in a very naughty way with the same motorbike, directly in front of an officer of the law who clearly saw me. But he also saw the prophylactic karmic device which indicated I had already made sufficient offerings. I was not pursued.

Strange days in a strange part of the world. I hope the adventure never ends.

yellow gaze

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February 17, 2010 • Tags:  • Posted in: culture • No Comments

Time Horizon

Definition of Time Horizon

A time horizon is understood here as a cognitive structure in which planning and thinking about the future (and the past) can be effectively accomplished. The idea is that there is no intuition regarding an arbitrary time frame, but that we can make sense of things in approximate range groupings.

Time horizon past events

1,000 years ago

Longest-living human empires and institutions, some species; organizations and organisms

200 years ago

Stunning differences in human knowledge, social organization, and technological advancements

40 years ago

Working career length; two human generations; legal and social values horizon

8 years ago

2 years ago

4 months ago

1 month ago

1 week ago

Medium-term memory

2 days ago

Recent past; dream horizon

Now

The present time in hours and minutes; a 10 hour time band; one work day

Time horizon future events

2 days from now

48 hours; two sleep cycles; today and tomorrow (today and yesterday)

1 week from now

Workweek cycle

1 month from now

Rent and lease payments due

4 months from now

Financial reporting quarter; school semester length; season

2 years from now

How long you will have a new cell phone or computer, if bought today; years to get an Associates degree, a Bachelors degree (after Associates), or a Masters degree (after Bachelors)

8 years from now

40 years from now

200 years from now

1,000 years from now

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February 14, 2010 • Posted in: future • No Comments

The Next 40 Years

Tiger Feet......
This is the sort of post that generally makes me laugh out loud. No one can predict anything like 40 years out. I myself routinely mock anyone who tries to do such a thing. However…

However, it is possible to draw out trend lines, even though we can be certain they will shift. And in these trend lines, like so many fate lines creased within our palms, like so many tea leaves, we can see a vision of a changed future. It is this act of imagination, along certain known trajectories, which can bring insight.

Two Phenomena

Today we can discuss two phenomena, and connect them in a tenuous relationship known as cause-and-effect. But it is not the clear-cut cause-and-effect which we are used to. Rather it is ground of the possibility cause and potentia effect we are dealing with. Two phenomena:

Education vs. Research

Recently Mark Taylor, one of the foremost Moral philosophers of the United States, took on US Higher Education calling graduate programs the “Detroit of higher learning”. His incisive diagnosis of the problem was unfortunately not matched by a suggested course of treatment which was yet again a “reorganization” of the faculty.

Don Tapscott also noted the demise of the University, for different reasons, pedagogical. Interestingly the very institution which legitimates itself through the unholy science can be easily demolished scientifically by that very science, namely that learning is not taking place and more importantly, need not.

Unaccountability

The fact of the matter is that the faculty themselves, if the meaning of the word can be used in such a distorted and perverse way, do their own “reorganization”, which is yet again a gridlocked, politically charged, interminable process where the education mission is largely subverted by the desires for research and the powerless scholarly, non-research mission is sacrificed yet again. This of course is likely the fated outcome in any case, with one of the founding twins murdering the other again and again.

Batur Volcano and Lake

Seven Years within the Beast

There once was a professor who learned how to get grants, and to publish papers. And this is what that professor did. Of course it was graduate students, paid at below living wage rates who did the work. But at the end of all those tax dollars, all those papers, all those frequent flyer miles, what was accomplished? A resounding nothing. Certainly some activity was undertaken, calories burned, but approximately 99% of the resources were truly wasted. This professor is celebrated as a success because of the ability to publish papers and to divert public tax dollars into the coffers of the university. This is how the university defines success. Did education take place? Well yes, to some degree which the professors’ students learned how to do the same thing, divert public monies and produce nothing.

21st Century Dialectics

As we know from Rüdiger Bittner’s critique (much less global warming), the lovely progression of the Hegelian spirit never quite makes it to self-understanding as there is a defect along the pathways of thought. Arguably this is good for the species in terms of survival, and bad for the planet and many other species (not including the ones who have and can adapt to modern human “civilization” such as domesticated animals and cockroaches).

With the Aufhebung a quizzical and remote improbability, what we are really faced with is entrenched rebellion or “mere” revolution. Perhaps it is really a triumphant revolution which best sows the seeds of its own dissolution, though of course the time involved would have to be considered inhumane in many cases.

Research, the Enemy Within

In any case, what we can see is that Research has overturned Education and is indeed perceived as the engine (expensive though it may be) for a given segment of economic growth. Impoverished education is trotted out as an important need for funding, while those funds are funneled quickly enough to the research enterprise. Who can argue with these new inventions that crop up every so often? After all, don’t the students get an education, get a degree, and then become qualified for work of some sort? Plus, there is the need to keep these people at the annoying ages of 18-22 somewhere, if not the military, is there not?

Hatley Castle

Western Education in the East

The East has not missed the point that these trappings of civilization need to be adopted, if only to deprive the predatory West of a cultural rationale for invasion and colonization. As well, the population is led to believe that education as derived in the rarefied walls of such institutions has advantages both moral and economic. Cultural philistines are simply few and far between in a credulous culture which sees imitation as the means for reaching economic parity.

The Point

If this discussion appears a bit abstruse, allow me to slip into uncharacteristic clarity. It is the internal corruption of higher education, of research and its vampiric relationship to the educational enterprise itself, which provides the exact pathways to the overthrow of the West by the East and the return, after a brief (though spectacular) interlude preceded by the same dominance of East over West.

The East understands the ceremonial necessities, and higher education is one of them. Let us hope they don’t grow to actually believe it, and thereby sow the seeds of their own, future overthrow, sometime in the 22nd century.

2025 and 2050

Five years ago I plotted out the differential growth rates of the US and China and determined that with those rates that the Chinese economy would reach the size of the US economy around 2025. Hans Rosling has done a projection based on convergence of average income and health indicators and sees 2048 as the date at which both India and China will have reached parity and the shift in dominance will then be back with the East over the West in terms of wealth (and therefore power).

Hans is unfortunately under the illusion that it is education which is the saving grace of civilization, rather than the slingshot to get us off the ground and begin to learn beyond the confines of the medieval institution which has long become corrupted and is now a leading cause of the downfall of whatever civilization might mean.

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