Debt & Penance : Hannah Arendt

From my latest book “Debt en Penance”.

To me as a psycho~sopher Hannah Arendt is one of the most interesting persons in this book, especially by the term “Animal Laborans”. Originally the word “animal” is a being with a spirit.

Although “Animal Laborans” implies a working human being from a higher purpose politics are part of that. Most philosophers talk about the “reason” that arises the human mind. Perhaps “reason” is one of the 3 mental dimensions or constructures, introduced by Jean Gebser by using language regarding Descartes’ triptych “1-perceptions~ 2-mental experiences~ 3-realizing perceptions (reasoning)”.

In association with Marx’ “sub- & supra” classes I recognize here an analogous structure. At first the division between individuals who think they have to work day-in-day-out ~ the sub class ~ and those who think they don’t in a certain way ~ supra class. Does the image of a hard working individual really originate from the Church ~ regarding e.g. the Dutch Calvinist culture ? Where Protestantism is more a self-manifesting attitude and the Calvinism is strongly based upon sober life and hardworking, both as a response against the wealthy Catholic Church.

The other division is where Arendt talks about striving for a mystical experience with a higher power with intellectual love and a philosophical reconciliation there exists a small group of individuals who can and lots of people who won’t be capable to achieve this state of mind, as a transcendental process. They deal with the religion as preached here on earth. The second division implies to me that we talk about some kind of intelligences. The word “intelligence” actually means “actualizing of a potential” as I composed it from the Greek language. I talk about a spectre of lots of intelligences. “Reasoning” is one of them. The words “intelligence, integrity and integrality” are within the same energy spectre that implies that they (can) interfere with each other. While the term “integer” means or implies “undamaged/unhurt/healed entity” the intelligence has an important role in this process, so a lack of some intelligence makes the integral result of this integrity incomplete. The individual is not integer for that moment.

Today reasoning is often confused with logical dialogues. Logical dialogues are about the content of causality and possible determinism; the world of facts & figures, rules & control. Talking about reasoning when someone enters the public domain like civil servants do without controlling their reasoning, then they won’t be able to deal with the facts and reality that is desired ~ pragmatically speaking like Voltaire meant. Hannah Arendt proposes that individuals who do anyway, survive and make small or even huge mistakes are not accountable for their decisions. These deeds are only banalities.

She mainly pointed with this remark to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s during her job as a reporter in “The New Yorker”, phrased by her quote “The greatest evils in this world are committed by nobody’s” ~ referring to her defensive reports about Adolf Eichmann. About Eichmann she said : ”The alarming to the person Eichmann was surely this man was neither perverse nor sadistic. This normality that was worse than all the horrors of WW-II together”. The banality of the evil caused an enormous controversy among her audience and the Jewish society. Is this a kind of “Anger-History” (see also Max Weber)?

How can we deal with this views of points of Arendt during this crisis ? Isn’t there a kind of invisible hand from the financial world that makes Ministers follow, in return they make their civil servants follow them ? Can we really make the Ministers, civil servants and small bankers responsible for all activations that emerges from this crisis ? That the recovering of the economic system now is done based upon facts & figures and ignores all what has to do with human values ?

Are “animalia laborantes” nonchalant or “mentally lazy” in a way while they do not choose to compete in the debates with civil servants and ministers anymore ? Is this an evolutionary “easy-lay-down” or an tricky “comfortably-numb” state of mind created by smooth talking people ? So if all banalities are evil and are attained by nobodies, are these nobodies not simply yourselves ? Is this state of comfortably-numb a restriction of mankind within decisiveness or a limited use of intelligence in order to create higher consciousness and the will to identify yourselves ? Now that others have tried and done can they be blamed they did it their way ? Isn’t it so that the leader you become, is the leader you deserve ?

That is why this new Youthful Election System ~ YES* ~ is so valuable; from a younger age mankind is stimulated to reflect and identify him/herself in the community, enlarging this “area” while growing up. The results can be transposed in choosing the right individuals with whose ambitions and ethical values you can cope with ~ identify with. Everybody can according to Hannah Arendt. This election system implies also that individually s-electing “soulmates” can be done every moment of the year. The cycle of 4 years is bypassed with this dynamic election possibility. What do you think about the duration of 4 years ?

Note afterwards : Is it strange that there are so many followers and only a few leaders ? Regarding it in an esoteric way ~ “as huge as tiny” ~ where the milky ways and solar systems represent nations and communities and they present some spiral dimensions like we know in our DNA. How many galaxies exist with how many leading more or less concentric stars and with how many planets and moons in their orbits around these stars and act like human “animalia laborantes”?

Debt & Penance : Benedictus Spinoza

From my latest book “Debt & Penance”.

“All excellent things are difficult as they are rare as well.”

“How else than possible it is that salvation could be accepted in the most easy way without too much effort, and anyhow it is neglected by so many people ?”

That’s what Spinoza said at the end of his “Ethica”. The public disquiet Spinoza caused was mainly based upon his view of God. His visions were more based upon a neutral monistic conception of some God. God was no Creator of the world, the world was part of a divine creation. Miracles are no proof of the existence of a divine power; it is the nescience of mankind. He based it upon the duality of religions dealing with “good and evil”. In the way Thomas de Acquino interpreted it that evil was the absence of the Go(o)d.

Regarding Hannah Arendt I discover lots of similarities with her points of view. In her quote “The greatest evils in this world are committed by nobody’s” there is this analogy as Spinoza and De Acquino meant. As we don’t know the causes of our actions, then we deal with free will, for Spinoza however the effects were the results of nescience. Nescience is the biggest obstacle for the ambition of a virtuous life ~ non-egoism. The transition from passivity into activity is always overwhelming, liberating and joyful.

For Spinoza the virtue is not avoiding evil actions based upon fear because of some penance or because of hope for its reward. Happiness is no reward of the virtue; the virtue it is itself ~ Aristotle. By living that way we experience joy. If mankind acknowledges its being as a part of nature, of the universe and consequently subjected to the relevant laws, then (s)he would stop trying to explain the world in human terms and views ~ the so-called “anthropo-centrism”. “Ethics” ~ “Ethos” (Gr) ~ “Etheos” ~ ”E-Theos” – (out of the) manner or habit of God ~ has a scathing criticism of all forms of anthropo-centrism and finalism, which implies that nature services mankind. So “Ethica” truly is about morality, ethics and behaviorism and the way to gain happiness.

He is convinced this routing exists, but for mankind hard to go. Mostly it has to do with the unilateral way of life nowadays; the world of data, facts and figures. All based upon the 5 senses ~ physio-biological or physio-mechanical. The world of dissonance while the 6^th sense ~ intuition ~ is about the resonance ~ energetically speaking. The analytical world with its 2 perculations within Autism; Paranoia and Schizophrenia ~ not willing or capable dealing with and integrating the information from the associative world. Enforced by the drive for power & control as an example of 2 mental mechanisms.

Who imagines to be unable to achieve something, won’t do it and that results into inability ~ “trying = doing”. Not the objects determine the power of passion, it’s the experience, the transition into the subjectivity ~ Spinoza’s “de imaginatio” – “Ethica”. Imagination is a necessary and indispensable part of the acknowledge-process, but only produces chaotic and coincidental and therefore confused knowledge for the individual itself. So “de imaginatio” is restricted, partial and subjective. As Carl Jung told us in his “Red Book” (a quote) : “For Jung, the initial irruption of psychic disturbances that he later came to describe as a result of a process of “active imagination” were more traumatic than constructive.”

To me imagination is ~ like dreams are as well ~ an important process in the way of supporting and empowering one’s intuition; it carries personal value in it ~ empathy & sympathy. Like a new and free born baby that doesn’t know good or evil as dual terms. Every duality is based upon subjectivity, upon a general point of view ~ let’s say in a democratic way a point of acceptance. Especially these processes of generalization makes that people are not stimulated to think, imagine and reflect for themselves, and more specific concerning money and morality, “debt and penance”.

Do you have debts and do you feel you are to be punished for now ?

This chapter was written by me as a tribute to Spinoza and the book itself.

Debt & Penance : Ayn Rand

From my latest book “Debt en Penance”.

A first impression ~ reading Ayn Rand ~ might be that she was a victim of the Communistic system, the system where free thinking and acting were forbidden for the average civilian according to this dictatorship. Everything was pointed out and settled ~ dictated ~ by the Government. The controlling power was even harder. Although this kind of Socialism would imply equality for every civilian it didn’t work afterwards. You may consider it as a closed morality, where values and cultural expressions are not tolerated than that they represent the mind-set of the authorities of the dictatorship.

The motor of the economics does also move as a way of speaking, it is statically a machine with one speed without any excessive ac- or de-celerations. Any enterprising individual with some ambition is to be overruled, because that may be successful and therefore a risk to the system. So we deal with a strong social dependence without any authenticity or self-reliance. Everything has been taken care of by the Government so that implies obligations backwards, namely unconditional ad-diction. What we see is the obstructed way of self-development, to gain one’s own identity by free research. life and expressions. So the Government is selfish, so its civilians are as a reflect on it.

Because you can’t read it from the faces who can be trusted Rand tells us that selfishness arises above all, rationally speaking. That’s what she means with self-reliance. The meaning of selfishness is close to egoism ~ I do agree ~ although it indeed has a lot to do with integrity and intelligence as Rand claims too. As long as selfishness is based upon integrity that can be controlled by reason, then it is alright and the right way to live your life. That is what freedom is to her and thereby free interactions and communications between individuals are not to be disturbed but only guaranteed by the Government.

It is in a way a little peculiar that although the social system as the Communism equalizes all people Ayn Rand assumes that all people are capable to do so ~ self-development ~ which means that all people are more or less equal and have the same talent and competences to achieve this. Despite the fact that it isn’t of course so she doesn’t want the Government to interfere with no one at all. As I consider it that way then the selfishness of Rand is an egoism in the way we commonly use the term in our society.

Is self-identification part of the process Rand is pointing at and is rational selfishness synonymous to self-consciousness ? Reading Nicolaas van Cusa he suggested that there is a higher state of mind above the common sense of mankind. According to him it was “reason”, while the process is called “reasoning”. Of course reasoning is more than debating. Interactions with the environments facilitates this process and may even empower that. The product is “rationality” ~ Aristotle ~ where the individual has found an inner balance between cognitive and intuitive skills. As long this balance can be disturbed by its environment, there is no integrity within the inner and with the outer dimensions.

These processes of identifying is of course dangerous for some Governments. Unskilled ~ read self-unidentified individuals ~ can be easily influenced and seduced by some comfort. The ability for influence implies dependence and dependent people are sensitive to “debt & penance”. As long a diversity of mankind is guaranteed in this world these phenomena like a financial crisis exist. Advocating for self-identification by Rand is too simple in expecting that it really is going to happen.

Almost half the amount of all people live in or relate life to a passed mode, about a third of the amount do that concerning the present mode and a small amount has a progressive or future temperament of thinking. The first mentioned group ~ “Animalia laborantes” ? ~ is the one of uncertainty, you may say. Their passed is the most certain aspect. They even prefer a bad certain future as long is it is as certain as their passed life periods. It’s like preferring bad sympathy above no sympathy, that’s part of human nature, captured by uncertainty.

Even in that way ignoring people and exploiting them in an evil way like cheating and manipulating them imply egoism, it has nothing to do with solidarity, integrity and altruism. Self-reliance is important to Rand and that is a hard job because self-empowerment is applicable when you finished your identification. Where self-reliance implies integrity in the activities of actualizing; egoism has always been (too) easy.

So integrity doesn’t know and won’t pander to a financial crisis. A financial crisis only exists for them who deal with money, who need to use money for happiness, where Aristotle suggested that for happiness “reasoning” and “virtue” are the 2 necessary components for happiness. How happy are you ? 

Debt & Penance : Voltaire

From my latest book “Debt en Penance”.

Voltaire is indeed well-known by the Enlightenment. Of course peace is part of it. Enlightenment is getting integer, loosen personal matter, convictions and all pre-judgments. Gaining peace implies that there’s a (potential) quarrel, a fight or even a war. The battle for the world was very topical then in a way of global trade ~ e.g. the Dutch V.O.C. ~ Vereenigd Oost-Indische Compagnie” ~ with their fleet. It may be that Amsterdam had world’s first trade center in those days. I do not know if Voltaire based his quote upon the battles for matter as we know at South America. Lots of natives were murdered because of the invasion, whether for the Christian religion whether for the greed for gold. This plundering ~ of course ~ had nothing to do with fair trade.

During the life of Voltaire the battle of religions had been ended within Europe. So the evaluation of religion was the most important topic within the new world of philosophy. While religions appear to be incapable to deal with respect regarding cultures Voltaire saw that trade could. It is like “Homo Ludens”. What happens that happens. It is based upon “Égalité & Fraternité”. No need for power and-or control during that game. So every means or intermediary has the same state of the game, meaning money has no overvalue considering the game, it is part of that game. Small debates and quarrels are part of that game.

While the interests grew and so their responsibilities and accountabilities money became a higher value. As long as we deal with physical and concrete products and services during a short time, then the problems were not serious than within that context. As simple it was that when the salary wasn’t to be paid, the work wasn’t done. That is of course in exclusive situations as we already saw it during the Medieval and the building of lots of cathedrals by mainly the Freemasonry through Europe in that period. Experience has to be paid for.

So when trading had still physical dimensions ~ multiplicity ~ so had money. The change was when money became a trade product of itself. Not as long as it concerned just an interest rate. Because an interest rate could be as physical as possible, even as a natural product. The problems started when promises were made which couldn’t be fulfilled. It is like a self-producing system. Regard it as a MEI-constructure from the Chaos Theory; it needs Matter, Energy and Information. “Ancient” or original trade consisted of those 3, nowadays money mostly is based upon energy and information. Numbers & figures and big accounts that are stored in computers, that tell that the value of money will grow based upon expectations. Do you really get what you see ?

Making money is now based upon expectations, based upon statistics, chances and promises. What about the probability ? It may be that your chances grow but the current situation of our systems make it improbable. That’s the subjective aspect of making money. All other aspects are based upon objective aspects, facts & numbers created by computers. So is it right that we have peace by trade ? Voltaire was right then. Nowadays trade means paranoia, suspicion, fights and even war talking about basic elements for life like food and (fossil) energy. Even trade itself means war, indeed trade means income nowadays. The way multinationals supported by Governments deal with trade is only focused on making more money or grasping for it. And when it is not available, they invent debt constructures, which create dependence. Dependence means control in a situation that control is more preferred that penance.

So trade used to guarantee peace then, does it still today ?

Debt & Penance : Stanley Milgram

From my latest book "Debt en Penance”.

“If man should decide to erect a Nazi concentration camp in today’s America, then the deployment would be no problem at all.”

Why this appendix ? If you just had the opportunity to read Hannah Arendt, it is not so strange that Stanley Milgram popped up. Milgram was just like Skinner famous because of his social experiments concerning the human behavings under extreme circumstances. One of these experiments concerns the obedience of a leader and his or her follower. How far ~ under how much psychological pressure ~ will individuals go to obey, no matter how much harm and damage (s)he causes at other individuals as a part of the task of this obedience process ?

These individuals were questioned, wrong answers were punished by putting an electric shock to other individuals starting with lower ~ non-lethal ~ levels that was told to them at the start. The respondents experienced ~ heard ~ the pain that these shocks generated by the victims in the other room although the victims were actually acting and feigning these pain expressions.

The research was about authority and influence of the so-called leader or master and the level the psychological restrictions of the follower concerning obedience combined with the ethical values. His conclusion was pretty shocking to him; about 80 % of the respondents followed and obeyed their master till the lethal level of the victim.

Another experiment was about 4 groups of one hundred already addressed letters, which he lost by purpose. The potential recipients were 2 famous institutes, the other 2 were addressed as “Friends of the Nazi Party" and "Friends of the Communist Party”. About a quarter of the last 2 groups were posted afterwards ~ all to his own postal box. Of course it is obvious that it is important that the circumstances are known as well. What is the demographic composition, what are the cultures and subcultures and what was the mind-set at that time ?

Last aspects influent and determine also the results of such experiments. However Milgram demonstrated that while the observer is not observed or perceived by the “to-be-observed” the answers are more representative than when anyone would have asked such questions in case of face-2-face interviews. Think about “the cat of Erwin Schrödinger”.

The content of these 2 chapters ~ Hannah Arendt & Stanley Milgram ~ empower each other. They show us that ethical restrictions can and will be crossed when it is about individual benefit; a kind of unconditional sympathy for a leader no matter what the damage is that was caused by the decision being a follower or not. That’s Arendt’s story about Adolf Eichmann. It’s again about acknowledging bad sympathy to the one you know and no sympathy for someone you don’t. While ~ as mentioned ~ the psychological pressure was enormous for making that choice during the first experiment.

Self-survival ~ “élan vital” arises all and crosses almost all barricades and-or restrictions. Call it mass-hysteria dealing with the big names in history, where the dependent and histrionic aspects of mankind were activated till the level of hysteria as described. Where love and affection turned into hatred and evil.

Does true altruism allow you to prevent you to reach that stage of mind-set like the Christian world knows in the personification of Jesus ?

Maxwell's daemon (2)

Irreversable energies or another power ? 

"How is it possible that we approach these dimensions of energy in our way as we do it now as I described above ? The energies that we can practice in a deductive way as given in the examples ?”

As a matter of fact every kind of warmth may have its own dimension and so are not congruent to each other. Warmth that has been generated by a magnetron is of some other order  than warmth produced by the flame of gas. In both examples the 1^st Law of Thermo Dynamics is applicable in the way of the conservation of energy. The 2nd Law tells us that energy will return to its maximum entropy or the highest grade of disorder. You might ask yourself the question which state that is; ist that for sure an what the temperature would be in that case. What order of the chaos would that possibly be ?

Does that imply a complete stagnation in full random order like maximum disorder by extracting all (warmth) energy or does the complete stagnation around the absolute zero point ~ 0 Kelvin ~ imply the lowest possible order and possibly destinated cristallization at solid matter based upon the Forms of Plato ? What if the highest order of entropy is achieved by feeding energies until the highest possibly achievable temperatures, so that the warmth energy and entropy are maimal (plasmatic state) ? Is there a difference by Thermo Dynamics in talking about hot fires, while the Esotery also talks about the 7 fires of human ~ Héléna Blavatsky), where human being was emerged out the cold version of fire, “the Divine Spark” ? What is it exactly ?

What is it again what makes this warmth extracts from this emptiness and her unspoken and undefined energies or is this synonymous to the universal expansion from the Big Bang ? Does the Big Bang represent a certain warmth of energy, that is capable to achieve the dynamics in life, because we as human beings cross the dynamics of the Big Bang in a random and unique personal way ? The moment that dualities emerge and because of that they represent a higher level of order of entropy until the moment we blow out our final breath ?

Suppose we consider the expansion of the Universe from the Big Bang as a specific dimensional dynamics, then you might say that apparently no human being is able to follow these dynamics. The real life can be considered as a power or potential symbolized as vector “1”, connected to the vector “Zero”. These 2 vectors create together a certain “effectivity” or “rate of target” symbolized by cosinus φ. The other part of your life, the reactive or imaginary one, what can be symbolized by sinus φ in respect to vector “Zero”. Every aberration within your life ~ represented by the part symbolized with sinus φ is your unconscious part of your authenticity, that needs to be cleared.

Afterwards the result of this process of consciousness is life that is 100 per cent aligned with vector “Zero”, symbolized by cosinus φ = 1, When the results of your life vectors are completely aligned with vector “Zero”, then you do not have to anything anymore, you go with the flow, the “Panta Rhei” of Life. Do realize that your vector of life is no straight line ~think about my illustration of the Riemann spiral ~ while vector “Zero” represents “nothing-and-all”.

Finally in this part about Maxwell you might have the question if manifesting is synonymous to “living your life”, and the 2^nd question may be if the “effectivity” or “rate of target” represent the competition between  human beings or does it represent the monadic aspect, gaining the state of “only-to-be”?

Maxwell's daemon (1)

Irreversable energies or another power ?

The daemon has a lot to do with the 1^st and 2^nd Law of the Thermo Dynamics ? At 1 hand I recognize James Maxwell of his 4 equations within the phenomenn of Electro-Magnetism ~ EM. Besides of that it remembers me of Laplace. Like Immanuel Kant did Pierre-Simon Laplace mentioned the word “dae-mon” and meant with that a higher mythical intelligence concerning the constructures of the Universe. Laplace’s “Nebular Hypothesis”. Originally the meaning of the word “dae-mon” in Greek is a neutral goddess, who simply represents a higher intelligence. Laplace only emphasized that any human wouldn't be capable to create such a macro structure like the cosmos or Universe.

At that time Maxwell was besides these EM phenomena also dealing with research of Thermo Dynamics. He suggested there was something that could measure the speed of molecules, based upon their absorpted warmth or heating power. This something was capable ~ “supplied labor” ~ to separate these molecules that differed in speed. This resulted in 1 room with a higher ~ the high-speed molecules ~ and another room with a lower temperature ~ the low-speed molecules. William Thomson 0r Lord Kelvin named Maxwell’s “something” for the first time “a dae-mon”, because what happened was the contrary of what the 2^nd Law of Thermo Dynamics claimed. Indeed this law tells us that warmth can be transisted into labor. In a way here happened the opposite process.

When we consider our energy conform earthal understandings, then we find out that about 40 per cent is really labor. Horse Power ~ HP ~ or mechanical power, named ex-ergy. All residual energy is called “an-ergy”, what low-valued warmth represents. These specific ratios we find back in e.g. Combined Heat Power (CHP). It is almost impossible to gain more labor out of the anergy. With an added system called “Organic Ranking Cycle” ~ ORC ~ it is possible to gain about 25 per cent of dispersed labor out of the warmth. Totally the efficiency of labor will be 7 till 8 per cent higher out of energy.

This approach within the Energy Techology is analogue to the names that are given to these powers. The input energy is called “Apparent Power”, labor is called “Real Power” and the warmth is called “Reactive Power”. I consider this in relationship with the electro-magnetical phenomena. Within the Control Technology the Laplace transformations are used to deal with these components in a mathematical way, such as “real & imaginary aspects”. These 2 components can be considered as 2 vectors, which have an included angle of 90 degrees in between. Within the Mechanics and Electronics the ratio between these 2 vectors is called “effectivity” or “rate of target” symbolized by cosinus φ. Our reality with respect to the phenomenon.

As far as it concerns the transition between labor and warmth a irrational transition appears to be in a similar way at potential and kinetic energy. What makes that the transition between the 2 energies with separate kind of dimensions  to each other and back to its original ? The potential energy is represented by Ep = m.g and the kinetic energy is represented by Ek = ½ m.v². It all looks so straightforward this transition, so logical and simple, that 1 kind of energy transists into another kind of energy, based upon the 1^st Law of Thermo Dynamics regarding “The conservation of Energy”. Is this really true ? Is there some daemon here that forces this all ?

~~~ end of part 1~~~