Just caught your interview on The Jimmy Dore Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOZcln2MwbU. Though I come from a different background (philosophy of science and education, applied linguistics, former token foreigner in Japanese institutions), I immediately picked up on some observations and conclusions we both share. To avoid a TLDR , off the top of my head ...
— the increasingly granular quantification of everything and everyone by a small ruling class exempt from their own provisional constructs,
— the nature of those in the ruling class is that their only unifying philosophy is the imposition of their will upon others; and their psychology dominated by "dark-triad" personality traits ... the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us (see the Ponerology substack).
— The instinct to "quantify" (as opposed to "qualify") is largely left hemisphere neural processes ... and a necessary part of what makes us human. T.S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" uses the history of physics to show "progress" as provisionally defined quantification, and even in the hard sciences, any current paradigm is largely the result of social dynamics.
But without quantification, we would not have personal boundaries ("us" vs. "them"), the distinction between future and past, and we would have neither language nor logic. Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk is a good intro, and Ian McGilchrest's "The Emissary and His Master" appears to be pursuing the values championed by Dr. Taylor. My first "pop culture" dig into this was back in undergrad (early to mid 70's), through Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
— Yet, the two mentioned above are ironically (and necessarily) using left brain processes to call for a personal and society-wide re-calibration back towards right-brain processes ("spirituality" as self awareness of one with nature, a greater appreciation for creative processes, and so on).
My minor hedges with your post are semantic, but core values are similar (hence the follow and message). I might be predisposed to think in terms of small groups because of my personal circumstances — born in Germany, raised and educated in the U.S. (citizen), now 42 consecutive years in Japan, and never having married or had children of my own ... one implication of the aforementioned is that despite my citizenship or passport status, I do not have the opportunity to define my identity according to any particular culture or corporate nation-state.
Margaret Thatcher once famously said that there is no such thing as "society" ... only individuals and families. By my personal circumstances as stated above, I have to sail a slightly different tact in first grounding my identity as a social primate — "the individual" being closer to a provisional construct, and our immediate group more fundamental — either a family or a small community, small enough to be under Dunbar's number.
For example, the Japanese language did not even have the word for individual (koujin) until a translator of the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau needed to coin the word. Until then, Japanese language had only defined the 'unique individual' in terms of social relationships. Even now, while there is a word for 'sibling' (kyoudai), there are no words for "sister" or "brother", only words for younger or older sisters or brothers. Similarly, the Japanese language did not have a word for "citizen" (shakaijin) until the consolidation of the modern corporate nation-state (the Meiji era, roughly from about 1868).
I see you have the eye of a linguist in picking up the catch-word of "tokenization". I also see the trendy "Public Private Partnerships" as a euphemism for "Totalitarian - Fascist".
Will break for now, anticipating some good reads of your substack.
The neo-malthusians, tirelessly scheming in the shadows to establish a global government under a technocratic elite, kneel daily in prayer...
Our Technocrat, who art in Cyberspace,
Hallowed be thy Blockchain,
Thy CBDC come,
Thy will be done,
In digital wallets and ATMS.
Give us this day our daily UBI tokens,
And ‘forgive‘ us our cash transactions,
As we 'forgive‘ those who use them.
Lead us not into financial freedom,
But deliver us from privacy.
For thine is the algorithm, the power, and the control,
Forever and ever,
AWEF
Nice to "meet" you Paul.
Just caught your interview on The Jimmy Dore Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOZcln2MwbU. Though I come from a different background (philosophy of science and education, applied linguistics, former token foreigner in Japanese institutions), I immediately picked up on some observations and conclusions we both share. To avoid a TLDR , off the top of my head ...
— the increasingly granular quantification of everything and everyone by a small ruling class exempt from their own provisional constructs,
— the nature of those in the ruling class is that their only unifying philosophy is the imposition of their will upon others; and their psychology dominated by "dark-triad" personality traits ... the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us (see the Ponerology substack).
— The instinct to "quantify" (as opposed to "qualify") is largely left hemisphere neural processes ... and a necessary part of what makes us human. T.S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" uses the history of physics to show "progress" as provisionally defined quantification, and even in the hard sciences, any current paradigm is largely the result of social dynamics.
But without quantification, we would not have personal boundaries ("us" vs. "them"), the distinction between future and past, and we would have neither language nor logic. Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk is a good intro, and Ian McGilchrest's "The Emissary and His Master" appears to be pursuing the values championed by Dr. Taylor. My first "pop culture" dig into this was back in undergrad (early to mid 70's), through Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
— Yet, the two mentioned above are ironically (and necessarily) using left brain processes to call for a personal and society-wide re-calibration back towards right-brain processes ("spirituality" as self awareness of one with nature, a greater appreciation for creative processes, and so on).
My minor hedges with your post are semantic, but core values are similar (hence the follow and message). I might be predisposed to think in terms of small groups because of my personal circumstances — born in Germany, raised and educated in the U.S. (citizen), now 42 consecutive years in Japan, and never having married or had children of my own ... one implication of the aforementioned is that despite my citizenship or passport status, I do not have the opportunity to define my identity according to any particular culture or corporate nation-state.
Margaret Thatcher once famously said that there is no such thing as "society" ... only individuals and families. By my personal circumstances as stated above, I have to sail a slightly different tact in first grounding my identity as a social primate — "the individual" being closer to a provisional construct, and our immediate group more fundamental — either a family or a small community, small enough to be under Dunbar's number.
For example, the Japanese language did not even have the word for individual (koujin) until a translator of the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau needed to coin the word. Until then, Japanese language had only defined the 'unique individual' in terms of social relationships. Even now, while there is a word for 'sibling' (kyoudai), there are no words for "sister" or "brother", only words for younger or older sisters or brothers. Similarly, the Japanese language did not have a word for "citizen" (shakaijin) until the consolidation of the modern corporate nation-state (the Meiji era, roughly from about 1868).
I see you have the eye of a linguist in picking up the catch-word of "tokenization". I also see the trendy "Public Private Partnerships" as a euphemism for "Totalitarian - Fascist".
Will break for now, anticipating some good reads of your substack.
Cheers from Japan
Steve