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Progress

#77: Dec. - Jan. 2010 (Non-Fiction)
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Joe Kelley
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Re: Progress

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Mark Cool,

It may be that book reading is statistically less popular among the current living examples of our species compared to the past. What about those of us who do read, are we less important because we may have dropped down into minoriity status? I may not understand your reply.
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Re: Progress

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Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for capitalism. His concepts such as secular genesis and messianic capitalism are intended to confront conventional thinking through a positive and practical cosmology.
Robert Tulip,

I had hoped that the work intended to help move people's thoughts toward a more accurate and productive perspective and away from one that was false and destructive. I may not have understood the quoted words above.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Progress

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Joe Kelley wrote:
Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for capitalism. His concepts such as secular genesis and messianic capitalism are intended to confront conventional thinking through a positive and practical cosmology.
Robert Tulip,

I had hoped that the work intended to help move people's thoughts toward a more accurate and productive perspective and away from one that was false and destructive. I may not have understood the quoted words above.
Hi Joe.

Thanks very much for this thread, it has been interesting. I agree with your comment on Bloom's intentions. How do you see my comment above as differing from it? Is it about what counts as conventional thinking? I was using this term to refer to the widespread view that capitalism is evil. Do you view conventional thinking as the idea that capitalism will solve everything? That convention seems to have fallen into some disrepute recently, but I take your point to indicate there are conflicting conventions. I have mentioned some themes Bloom raises on this score in the thread on the Prologue to Genius of the Beast. A big question is that there are conventions within capitalism which are false and destructive, such as the CEO pay scandals and environmental destruction, but Bloom is suggesting these are not sustainable, and that capitalism has inner resources to renew itself as a source of world salvation.

Robert
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Re: Progress

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The ideas prevalent today have a provenance from earlier ideas, and have not sprung forth from nothing.
This isn't exactly true. Some ideas are novel observations of empirical phenomena. Evolution, the Big Bang, Special Relativity are examples of some earlier ideas which arose from observation. Blooms assessment of the process of expansion and consolidation and how it applies to capitalism may have its roots in other sources, I'm not sure. However, his perspective doesn't need other ideas to build upon. Observation seems to be all that's required.

It seems his vision is meant in part to apply an evolutionary perspective to capitalism. Through that vision, depressions aren't seen as 'bad', but simply part of the process. Conventional thinking is that such things as depressions and corporate immorality are the 'bad' of capitalism and that we may need another less 'evil' system. However, seen through Bloom's perspective, these are the tendrils of the secular genesis machine going through it's cycle. Corporate immorality is a bit different than depressions. But you touched on that in saying that such practices aren't sustainable. During the 'consolidation' or 'repurposing' phases of the cycle, such acts will be purged as new systems are put into place.
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Re: Progress

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Interbane wrote:
The ideas prevalent today have a provenance from earlier ideas, and have not sprung forth from nothing.
This isn't exactly true. Some ideas are novel observations of empirical phenomena. Evolution, the Big Bang, Special Relativity are examples of some earlier ideas which arose from observation. Blooms assessment of the process of expansion and consolidation and how it applies to capitalism may have its roots in other sources, I'm not sure. However, his perspective doesn't need other ideas to build upon. Observation seems to be all that's required.
Hi Interbane. Thanks. I don't agree with your comment. Take your examples of the Big Bang and relativity. These are ideas with a memetic provenance, dependent on the earlier work of Newton etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_o ... _of_giants is a very interesting and relevant wiki page, citing Isaac Newton's famous statement to Hooke: "What Descartes did was a good step... If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." By analogy, the giants are the memes, while the dwarf on their shoulders is the mutation. The mutation, as I said, does not come from nothing, but depends on the meme, just as the dwarf depends on the giant to see further. Observation does not occur in a memetic vacuum. The memetic provenance does not contain the new idea in utero, in as much as our bacterial ancestors did not contain us in utero, but it does provide the necessary conditions for the new idea to evolve. Of course there is a difference with biology, in that different memetic phylla can mix. However, this difference does not affect the fact that ideas evolve by similar causal processes as biological evolution.
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Joe Kelley
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Re: Progress

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Thanks very much for this thread, it has been interesting. I agree with your comment on Bloom's intentions. How do you see my comment above as differing from it? Is it about what counts as conventional thinking?
Robert,

The use of the words “myth” and “capitalism’ in the following sentences may offer a way to convey an accurate answer to the question asked:
Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for capitalism. His concepts such as secular genesis and messianic capitalism are intended to confront conventional thinking through a positive and practical cosmology.
How can something be “for” (or against) capitalism? Capitalism is not a being, a person, a responsible entity, and something that can accept something, gain something, use something, and employ it, like a tool or a “myth” for construction or destruction.

I have the same problem when reading Blooms work; where ideas are “said” to have taken on human being capabilities.

It may just be a “way with words”, and I may just be misunderstanding the use of the words as they are intended to be used.

Thank you too for the topic, without human beings offering text driven by their ideas, or their interests, this would be a monolog, and much less powerful, as a tool to employ in the work of thinking – perceiving.

I’m going to ramble on at the risk of being unreadable, with the intent of hashing out a more detailed, or more accurate, answer to the question asked – concerning my confusion on the two expressed viewpoints:

A. Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for capitalism. His concepts such as secular genesis and messianic capitalism are intended to confront conventional thinking through a positive and practical cosmology

B. I had hoped that the work intended to help move people's thoughts toward a more accurate and productive perspective and away from one that was false and destructive.

If there was a “thing” that helps “capitalism” be more productive (something capitalism is incapable of doing, but I’m assuming that the words are stylish or “meant to stand in place of more accurate words”), then that thing would be some-thing called “competition”.

How do our two perspectives compete?

What do our two expressions intend to accomplish?

Do our two communications accomplish the same thing; do they mean the same thing?

A more competitive myth could conceivably out-do a less competitive myth within a social connection where the people consider themselves “capitalists” and then the less competitive myth withers while the new competitive myth thrives?

And I see my own words wandering from what I am used to perceiving. People thrive. Living beings thrive. Myths are tools used by people who create them, and people who maintain them, and people who employ them, for the things that people want to accomplish with them.

Will the new myth be used by the people who use myths to accomplish something worth accomplishing?

If your viewpoint, with your use of words, ends up asking that question above, then our viewpoints are the same, arriving at the same place from different places.

If everyone thought this way, there would be a natural monopoly. One built upon a natural tendency for ectropy – and that may be difficult to understand if you didn’t get here along my path.

I can elaborate in much greater detail.

Anyway, the question asked may or may not now be answered sufficiently – I am not often successful holding up my end of written conversations – often things degenerate into arguments.

I am roughly 50% responsible for what happens in a conversation – it seems to me.
A big question is that there are conventions within capitalism which are false and destructive, such as the CEO pay scandals and environmental destruction, but Bloom is suggesting these are not sustainable, and that capitalism has inner resources to renew itself as a source of world salvation.
I am much more inclined to simplify my perspective in such a way as to allow any thinking person, even a child of perhaps 5 years old (I helped raise two children), to understand what I see when I look at what I call “The Problem”, and the problem can’t be blamed on capitalism, or socialism – not even Hegelism (thesis – anti-thesis = synthesis).

People are responsible – isms are not responsible.

A. Criminals
B. Not A

That is a simple way to look at the people who are responsible for the problem. The simple viewpoint is complicated when introducing innocent victims into the reality of the physical world.

If the criminals call themselves capitalist or socialists, communists, fascists, etc. and in reality they are criminals, easily seen as criminals, by what they do, not what they say, so obviously criminal are these criminals that a child could see that they are criminals, then the ism involved is perhaps false-ism, or deception-ism, or plain old lying.

Capitalism, as far as I’ve uncovered to date, is (at its core) a pricing method. The pricing method isn’t responsible for torture and mass murder, no more than the pricing method is responsible for all the good in the western world (whatever “western” means).

Capitalism evolved significantly (as a pricing method) at around the same time that socialism evolved significantly (as a social science) around the mid 1800’s, when people like Karl Menger and Karl Marx were offering their perspectives in competition to anyone who would listen.

Criminals listened to both new ideas, and they ran with them, used them, morphed them, and gained at the expense of their hapless victims.

I have more than one source to back up my viewpoint on that history.

If a CEO plans on and then executes the plan to injure innocent people by deception, by fraud (legalese), then the CEO label is inaccurate. Why not call a criminal by the accurate label?

Are the victims held responsible for their victimization?

A. Roughly 50% responsible
B. 100% responsible the second time around (no longer innocent)

Complicated crimes are complicated for a reason and the reasoning isn’t often confessed by the inventive criminals who employ their minds in the work of satisfying their interests.

Why call a criminal by the false label: CEO?

Why dilute the meaning of the perspective, who does it serve to disguise the responsible people?

Have I wandered well off the subject?

If the next thing to happen, as a statistical measure, after many people read Howard’s book is a decline in crime and an increase in producing all the things people must have to ensure survival of the species, more food to feed people, more power to survive, and that trend catapults our species out onto other planets, colonizing them, because our power was no longer wasted on efforts to destroy each other, profit at each other’s expense, then my guess is that Howard’s goal will have been realized.

If not, then his efforts may either fail or even back-fire.

I don’t particularly like the way the book appears to apologize for crimes committed by criminals, as if “capitalism” made them do it. That may be my miss-reading and my misperception of the book, and I’ve put the book down for awhile, while I unravel some of the confusions I have in my head since I began reading the book.

I’m also reading an unabridged version of Don Quixote, and that one is also opening doors for me to step into and wander around, looking for a new, and better path out.

Some books are to be chewed on.
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Re: Progress

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During the 'consolidation' or 'repurposing' phases of the cycle, such acts will be purged as new systems are put into place.
Thanks for that (and the effort to get there),

A very good illustration of what that quote above may actually mean, in real physical terms, is something called The Federal Reserve System.

If that “System” is going through a cycle itself (not being used to engineer cycles, not causing them) and it is (as Donald Trump might say) being “fired” (“you’re fired”), then what is going to be the newer, and better version of it?

What is going to be the measure of its improvement?

My understanding is such that the power to monopolize legal money is shifting to China, where capital flight is flying toward, and the newer and better “system” will be a Chinese design.

That is unless the people here in this land are inventive enough to resume control over our own power to produce – legal money or anything else.
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Re: Progress

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The memetic provenance does not contain the new idea in utero, in as much as our bacterial ancestors did not contain us in utero, but it does provide the necessary conditions for the new idea to evolve.
I agree with you. Checking my previous thoughts, I think the part where I had a problem was on the weighting between observation and previous ideas. Our understanding of things may be held up by the scaffolding of previous ideas, but it is novel observation that catalyzes the emergence of new ideas. Evolution, for example, required a basic understanding of reproduction and classifications of species in order for the theory to emerge. But it was Darwin's observations that caused the new idea to emerge, and not a recombination of the old ideas.
How can something be “for” (or against) capitalism? Capitalism is not a being, a person, a responsible entity, and something that can accept something, gain something, use something, and employ it, like a tool or a “myth” for construction or destruction.
Perhaps the sentence would be better read as "Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for [understanding] capitalism."

But that's Robert's sentence to disambiguate.

Capitalism may not have it's evil's as we know the word. I think as a system people use in transferring power, it should be weighted against other systems in it's ability to minimize crime while maximizing benefits for those under the umbrella of the system. Though individuals are responsible for crimes committed, we can't sit back and simply expect people to behave morally. That's not how people work. Whatever system of commerce we have, there should be penalties for immoral behavior. Detection of crime and scandal may very well need to be a part of any such system to catch people attempting to fly under the radar.

To put the problem of corporate scandal into Bloom's perspective; I think such scandals should be seen as an inevitable result of the cosmic search engine. If it's possible, people will do it. Such scandals are 'failed' strategies(bees that have returned from an unproductive pollen trip). The behavior is then discouraged(restricted). We can react to this failed strategy by putting better systems of checks and balances into place. In this sense, I wouldn't say these actions are apologized for, but merely explained in the context of the system.
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Re: Progress

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Interbane wrote:
The memetic provenance does not contain the new idea in utero, in as much as our bacterial ancestors did not contain us in utero, but it does provide the necessary conditions for the new idea to evolve.
I agree with you. Checking my previous thoughts, I think the part where I had a problem was on the weighting between observation and previous ideas. Our understanding of things may be held up by the scaffolding of previous ideas, but it is novel observation that catalyzes the emergence of new ideas. Evolution, for example, required a basic understanding of reproduction and classifications of species in order for the theory to emerge. But it was Darwin's observations that caused the new idea to emerge, and not a recombination of the old ideas.
Thanks Interbane. I think it is fair to say that Darwin's theory of evolution was a memetic evolutionary step in human thought. In memetic terms, his rejection of Paley's Watchmaker and Lamarck's theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics involved a new mutation, not just a synthesis of existing memes. Of course, the meme of Genesis sat as an awkward elephant in the room, giving rise to creationism, fundamentalism and other strategies for continuity of pre-existing Christian doctrine. The catalytic book itself, the Origin of Species, is like the dwarf on the giant's shoulders, and in time it has grown to be a giant today with wide shoulders of its own, enabling memetic influence on later thought.
How can something be “for” (or against) capitalism? Capitalism is not a being, a person, a responsible entity, and something that can accept something, gain something, use something, and employ it, like a tool or a “myth” for construction or destruction.
Perhaps the sentence would be better read as "Bloom is inventing new memes to establish a constructive myth for [understanding] capitalism." But that's Robert's sentence to disambiguate.
Myths are stories that give meaning to our lives. Within capitalism, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations contains a wealth of parables which contribute to the mythic meaning of the capitalist world view, as does Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For example, Smith observes that the butcher, baker and brewer (or was that the candlestick maker) slaughter meat, bake bread and mash hops (not rotten potatos) for sale to serve their own interest in making a living, not as a benevolent act, although the benefit of the customer provides the driving incentive for commercial success. As well, in the pin factory Smith shows the dramatic productivity of capitalist economies of scale and division of labour. We are not accustomed to thinking of these stories as parables or myths, although they do have a similar didactic intent as mythic stories from Jesus such as the talents and the mustard seed. Bloom's concern is not to understand capitalism by mythic methods, but rather to identify the stories which make capitalism meaningful as a narrative for progress and redemption. These stories are the myths of capitalism. Hence his idolising of JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller, seeking to say that America has buried assets in its culture.
To put the problem of corporate scandal into Bloom's perspective; I think such scandals should be seen as an inevitable result of the cosmic search engine. If it's possible, people will do it. Such scandals are 'failed' strategies(bees that have returned from an unproductive pollen trip). The behavior is then discouraged(restricted). We can react to this failed strategy by putting better systems of checks and balances into place. In this sense, I wouldn't say these actions are apologized for, but merely explained in the context of the system.
Yes, here we see Bloom's main myth of the cosmic search engine in practice. This cosmology of expansion and contraction is a central idea for Bloom, from the evolution of stars to the lives of bees to the global financial crisis. I love his story about how cells put out feelers and only the successful survive, turning from pioneers into homesteaders. His approach is to use the central ideas of science as a framework for meaning.

Just wondering, does it almost make Murphy's Law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong, into a real scientific statement about the nature of the evolution in the universe? If things haven't gone wrong is that evidence that they can't? And similarly, given that mutation occurs at a statistically predictable rate (or did), we know what can go wrong (in this case the replicative infidelity of genes) will continue to go wrong at a predictable rate. But, all genes suddenly mutating is an example of something that cannot go wrong and won't go wrong. Following Murphy, miracles can't happen - they involve things that can't go wrong.
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Re: Progress

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We can react to this failed strategy by putting better systems of checks and balances into place. In this sense, I wouldn't say these actions are apologized for, but merely explained in the context of the system.

Interbane,

To say that specific actions are not apologized for, and they are merely explained in context of the system, and to be specific about those published events, in print, are two different things.

To be less than exact (not using quotes) in illustrating my viewpoint on apologies for crime, I point toward The Federal Reserve System, and the cycles of boom and bust that have occurred since the people who invented that system, produced that system, employ that system, maintain that system, protect that system, and perpetuate that system, have done so.

If I take my reading of Howard’s book on that system to be true, then it is merely a natural occurrence that booms and busts occur under that system – despite every possible effort to avoid booms and busts, to the dismay of the caring efforts made by the operators of the system.

That is one of the apologies I read into the book, conveyed without quotes. I’m not being as specific as possible.

It seems to me that our current lack of power (power to purchase, power to defend ourselves against crime, power to prosper, power to be innocent of accessory to crime, power to be at liberty to think, act, and be caring human beings, etc.) is an inverse measure of someone else’s power, criminal power. I may be wrong, but I’ve been looking for data that can control my hypothesis, to sway it, to challenge it, to refute it, etc., without success.

The data I get, so far, is either inconclusive (like “global warming”, “peak oil”, finding the guilty one’s responsible for 911, and other contentious flows of data) or the data is supportive of the perspective where our (non criminals) power is inversely proportional to the power wielded by criminals, and from such a hypothetical perspective (a part of it) the book appears to apologize for things that are well proven as factual crimes - more power swings in favor of crime.

That all appears to steer things back to The Federal Reserve System, as a focal point, and I would prefer to avoid such myopic focus since the perspective misses the mark.

I prefer to point to a more obvious focal point, that being falsehood, and its rival – the competition.

The competition, it seems to me, is accurate currency. If capitalism has something worth anything, it is an ability to convey the benefits found in competition. If something is much worse, why use it? If two things are on the shelf and one is much better than the other, why use the poor version?

The answer may not be readily confessed, and that is an answer.

Why use such things (one of many examples) as The Federal Reserve System?

Why use aggressive wars for profit, if the idea is to “spread democracy”?

What is the point? Why apologize for such bad choices, mal-investments, and bungled economic and political enterprises?

Perhaps they aren’t bungled at all?

My guess is that Howard Bloom is isolated within a social network whereby certain things are not questioned, not dared to be questioned, and hence they are not questioned, rather they are ignored, deliberately.

Such a way of perceiving is not accurate and to expect products that flow from such a perspective to be shining examples of accurate currency is, perhaps, expecting too much. And then there are words written within the whole of it where my mind is sent reeling, as if the brilliance and simplicity of the idea transferring to me contained the power to upset my entire stack of symbols, or some less ambiguous occurrence in time and space, as I read the book.

Perhaps I am the one trapped in a bubble of preferred ignorance? I don’t apologize for torture and mass murder, and I said as much when I ran for congress back in 1996. I ran on the “it isn’t right to torture and murder for profit” ticket. It was common for people to pull me aside and say “I agree with you, but….” – and when I challenged the “buts” the conversation ended. That was before I spent day after day trying to challenge my own conclusions on what I call “The Problem” – since then – and even before then, before “running” for congress.

I offer that to aid in seeing where I am coming from, I’m no “tea-bagger”, I am an individual, someone responsible for specific thoughts, ideas, and the choices, and the actions that naturally follow.

I can state again, on topic, that Howard’s work (three books I have now), to me, is much like being a player in the middle board during 3 way chess and having a teammate hand me a second queen.

It has become rare for anything I read where my interpretation challenges my thinking on political economy. I’ve done my homework.
We can react to this failed strategy by putting better systems of checks and balances into place.
If the system in place happens to cause injuries to innocent victims on a regular basis, it may not be a failure of the system, and the people who happen to benefit from injuries to the innocent victims may not readily confess their interest in preserving that specific system for that specific reason.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and if it works really, really good, don't let anyone fix it, absolutely not.
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