RL: Wisdom is attributed to some old people, never to the young or only rarely to people in power, since old people have lived through the follies of man, whose solutions to problems turn out badly. All the solutions are used up, which is why we are flailing about to thresh out something else, with little hope, wise men say, and conservatives argue, to find something better than what has failed.
Me: “Wisdom is attributed to some old people, never to the young or only rarely to people in power”
Yes, yet the young often have insight due to not having fully ingrained the burden of orthodoxy and the unconsciousness of current paradigms. But it takes the integrative proclivities of wisdom to truly drop the arrogance of ideologies and combine only the truths in opposing perspectives. Such insight without wisdom IMO characterized “the Woodstock generation” when they sang ”and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” of an adult leisure economy. It’s taken an additional 45-50 years of failing to finally consider a thirdness greater oneness and so something actually different from 5000 years of the neurotic hypnosis of private finance and its dominating paradigm of Debt Only. Let us end it with both youthful hope and hard and fast temporal universe policy effects.
RL: The founding fathers agreed that power corrupts, that is why, they adopted a constitution with checks and balances. But this kind of government is not good at problem solving as we have learned. The average person is screwed by the system, the rich minorities thrive on their abilities to dominate through checks and balances. A solution: strong elites, properly educated to look after the general as well as particular welfare. Our educational system as reformed after WWII fails the American nation in this respect. It seeks solutions through economics, when economics, in its takeover of US higher education, is the problem if the education of a leadership class concerned with the general welfare is a solution.
KZ: Robert, is this akin to the notion of a benevolent aristocracy supported by many in the 18th century? Including many of the founders of the US. If so, this is not that much different from the notion of professional government bureaucrats proposed by many in the Progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century. John Dewey describes in detail how to select, train, and support such an “elite” of government professionals. In either case the main issue in creating a government of benevolent aristocrats or scientific professionals is counteracting corruption.
JB: Ken, that’s what I came up with also, but “scientific professionals” are normally seduced by awards & job advancement, the latter meaning both money & enhanced social standing.
KZ: James, Dewey was described as a “philosopher who combined the stubborn perseverance of a New England farmer with the zeal of a reckless liberal.” He was a progressive and far-sighted thinker with a distinctly American sensibility, espousing the virtues of pragmatism and experience over absolute and metaphysical truths and who advanced a social and political philosophy perhaps more thoroughly democratic than any that has been formulated before — or since. (PS, in an historical sense William James and John Dewey are my mentors.) The two sides of making democracy and government work are for Dewey, liberal passion and pragmatism. Both it seems are out of style today.
JB: Ken, in my undergraduate course on American philosophy Dewey was the person whom I felt closest to, although most of us lovef theThoreau of Walden Ponda as well.
Robert, so where does a society turn to guidance?
Me: Ken, James, Robert,
Folklore is the proverbial/common sense aspect of Wisdom. Self awareness and ultimately simply consciousness itself is its direct knowledge aspect. Deweyism’s mixture of moralism and pragmatism is admirable but eventually, as Robert and all of you point out, it is incomplete and corruptible…..unless it is accompanied by the underlying ethical experience of self awareness, and we’re seeing this occur in the present moment in our politics. Trumpists mistake the witty but vile demagoguery, corrupt rakishness and errant orthodoxy of “fourth turnings” of Trump for Wisdom.
Without direct knowledge of the natural existential experience of consciousness which all of the world’s wisdom traditions affirm is love, and its active temporal universe expression grace-graciousness, the vitality of proverbs diminishes….and the many aspects of the concept of grace as applied to economics, to everyone’s detriment, is not perceived.
HS: I just lost a short piece on this very issue, but I shall endeavour to rewrite it again.
Any potential double crossing is my fault alone.
In the previous post, I asked colleagues to read more, quoting a brief extract from Tolstoy’s wonderful masterpiece called Anna Karenin’s conclusionary remarks. Please look it up for a wonderful analysis of everything refereed to above and much more. It is only a few pages long and sums up all scientific knowledge and its use and misuse. I should be obvious to us all that Tolstoy was not an Economist! And that he is one of many writers whose wisdom we must teach ourselves and our students to surpass.
“Can those hundreds of millions of human beings be deprived of that greatest of blessings without which life has no meaning? Knowledge, sure, unattainable by reason, has been revealed to me, to my heart, and here I am, obstinately trying to express that knowledge in words and by means of reason…”
Me: Yes, “standing in the light” of the natural experience of self awareness, consciousness-love-grace is the thing all people, and especially scientists and economists, finally need to integrate into their lives…to complete it and FULLY understand all of the data, theoretics and philosophy they have accumulated before it.
An aspect or aspects of grace has always been the operant force behind every paradigm change in human history.
KZ: Craig, humans and human experience are always and forever incomplete and corruptible. That’s what makes human existence. Achilles replied when asked how the gods viewed humans – the gods envy humans. Because unlike the gods, human life and experience may end at any moment. That uncertainty makes human existence exhilarating and challenging. On the other hand, the gods have no exhilaration or challenge.
Me: “Craig, humans and human experience are always and forever incomplete and corruptible.”
As is both the static and exterior concept of God.
“That’s what makes human existence.”
Human existence EXISTS within the temporal/time-space universe which by definition and reality is in continual process. Continual action-process is an aspect of grace. In fact the most concise definition of grace is love in action. Life IS grace…un or incompletely realized. Although time flows, life consciously experienced as a continual flow of new moments is pointed at by all of the world’s major wisdom traditions as the ideal and conscious awareness of grace as in the present time newness of nowness of love in action. If one wants to experience grace they simply need to experience every moment thusly….and if we want the economy which is embedded within the temporal universe to flow freely our philosophy and relevant monetary policies should reflect grace as in abundance instead of austerity and scarcity….as are currently ENFORCED by the paradigm of Debt Only/Burden/Additional cost post retail sale.
“Achilles replied when asked how the gods viewed humans – the gods envy humans. Because unlike the gods, human life and experience may end at any moment. That uncertainty makes human existence exhilarating and challenging. On the other hand, the gods have no exhilaration or challenge.”
Again that is the static and exterior from human consciousness concept of God. Realizing that we are each of us an expression and experience of God/the cosmos inverts the situation and makes the challenge increased awareness of both the temporal universe-science and self awareness-consciousness….which is the beginning of an ultimate integration that a civilization dominated by the paradigm of inquiry of Science Only….now almost desperately needs to realize…..and that both the new economic paradigm of Monetary Gifting and a scientific study of wisdom and its highest concept grace are logically aligned with.
KZ: Craig, my view is humans create grace as part of the reality they choose. And they use grace to create maps. Sometimes useful. Sometimes not.
Me: I think that grace is a perception-perspective problem not a reality one. Grace is natural we just have to come sufficiently into the present moment to perceive it.
There ARE levels of consciousness, and the temporal-physical universe perspective generally hypnotizes us into thinking that its space, time and seeming chaos are ultimate reality when they are actually simply the almost utter integrative quantum perspective…with enough space, time and randomness tossed in….to confuse the situation. The Hindu perspective refers to this as Maya-delusion, I would say that the delusion was in thinking of the temporal-physical as the ONLY ultimate reality.
All realities are real, even insane ones to the insane, but ultimate reality is understanding that ultimate reality is the integration of the realities of the temporal-physical universe and consciousness to the the point of the perception and experience of grace:
[ (temporal-physical universe x consciousness) grace ]
or also what I have referred to as The Cosmic Code described as:
a thoroughly integrated duality within an integrative trinity-unity-oneness-consciousness-process.
PB: Better to focus on the fact that labor’s share of output goes increasingly to the banking and finance sector. Technology and capital equipment plus human capital do not flow elastically across borders. There is great hysteresis meaning such things, once lost, are not as easily regained. Steel plants shipped to China do not return just because of a few tariffs.
Me: Precisely, and the best way to not only resolve individual monetary scarcity and the hysteresis of plants sent to China is not tariffs but a universal dividend wed to a discount/rebate policy at the point of sale throughout the entire length of the productive/economic cycle. If you don’t have to worry about unemployment or lack of demand you could rapidly re-industrialize the US in as technologically productive and ecologically sensitive way possible. Just one of many “knock on” benefits of the new monetary paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.
Besides being terminally orthodox about finance and economics Trump being the likely poster boy for Russian money laundering would likely not be interested in a new paradigm.
Anyone here interested enough to ask a few questions about how the above policies would fit into the economy etc. ??? Or are you all still caught up in the inevitability of inflation according to current orthodoxies? Almost no one seems the least bit curious or willing to examine my claims. Hate to say it but it makes one wonder who supports Real World Economic Review Blog.
KZ: Craig, humans only have their own experience and consciousness. They do not have the experience and consciousness of God; however, humans determine what that is. As Achilles notes, humans have a limited life in every respect. Makes human life exciting but also unknown.
Me: “humans only have their own experience and consciousness. They do not have the experience and consciousness of God;
They have both. Normal garden variety incomplete partially out of present time consciousness and (gradiently) the much more intensely present self aware Consciousness.
Some wisdom traditions claim the latter as attributable to themselves and some to god as an exterior concept and experience. Either way the genuine experience is ecstatically now and new in each perceived unit of time.
Have you ever studied the world’s major wisdom traditions?
KZ: Craig, I worked with the Aborigines during the 80s and several religious communities in the US (e.g., Amish) during the 70s. Part of that work was considering their spirituality. But as an anthropologist I never internalized that spirituality. I’m a scientist.
JB: Ken, ditto for me when working with West African & Upper Amazon tribes.
Craig, yes, but within the study of religions during my senior year in college. However with two parts of my family in psychiatry or tech, I had to move on to see how I would handle the two as a basis for my life.
Me: You can have both Cartesian coordinate and unitary experience within the cosmic code formulation of a thoroughly integrated duality within an integrative trinity-unity-oneness-consciousness-process.
The sages of history were the scientists of their time….and probably of all time. When the zen masters refer to getting past “the breath on the mirror” they’re talking about dropping any semblance of ego identity in pursuit of the experience of consciousness itself. Now that is a thorough integration of the scientific and wisdom modes of mind-experience.
The paradigm of inquiry, of Science Only, has become a subtle and resistant bias over the last 500 years or so and needs to relent and be integrated with the more inclusive paradigm of Wisdom…. in order to aid perception of the 5000 year old paradigm of Debt/Burden/Additional Cost Post Retail Sale and thereby enlighten and facilitate the new paradigm of grace as in Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.
Integrate the truths in opposites. Make that your ethic and you’ll be the wisest and best scientist around.
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FS: Very good!… Kudos to Dean Baker.
In that vein, and as a sarcastic aside, I have always wondered if those proponents/defenders of «intelectual property rights» («no matter what»…) have ever considered paying just a small fee to the Incas for the development of potatotes…
More serioulsy, Knowledge (as a «commodity»…) has this peculiar characteristic that, the more you share it, the more it grows… Funny, isn’t it?
Me: F-S,
Yes, sharing denotes a duality to integrate which is the process of wisdom and continual and thorough integrating of a duality results in a thirdness greater oneness which is the signature of grace. And greater abundance is an aspect of grace as well.
