Chapter 1: The Finale

As already noted knowledge creation, storage and use has led us to an era where knowledge is now the main value generator. We believe knowledge generates value supplanting any need for exclusivity in territory, land or property.

At one time, like other animals, we relied on the planet’s bounty for survival. We protected our territory but did not war over it. Respect for the space of other’s and one’s own lives created fluid boundaries, territory, similar to that of other species.

With farming, land becomes the key resource. This needs more than respect for territory. It requires active protection. To support our independence from the planet’s bounty we had to develop the institution of a state to support our position as landowners. The state defended us against those seeking to take our property.

Efficient farming requires stability and social harmony so such states were based on communally induced stability. The masters of this were the Han Chinese guided by Confucian and Taoist philosophy. It was we believe no accident that communal China was the richest country in the world well into the 18^th Century.

However disruptive individual creativity overturned the social evolutionary advantages of this communality. The chaos generated in the West by the pursuit of individual self-interest embracing private exclusivity in property did spawn conflict but also the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism.

In the 19th Century the UK became the First Industrial Nation. In 1800 over 95% of its population earned their livelihood from agriculture by 1900 less than 6% did. By then most earned their living using machinery, i.e. capital. It should be noted that farmers did not become poorer only less powerful.

Knowledge not capital now generates more and more of North American and European wealth. We would suggest capitalistic production in the 21^st Century is in a similar position to agriculture in the 19^th it will slowly become less significant as knowledge creation and distribution on the Internet becomes more so.

This book addresses the processes driving to this. These create then intensify the patterns of human connectivity that represent an evolving brain for Gaia, our living planet. Fortunately as we hope to demonstrate the development of the collective human consciousness to effect this does not depend on well meaning admonitions for humans to do so. While historically, rational or emotionally derived pleas as to what we should, or ought not to, do have had an impact they have not been the principal means by which real big change in human affairs has been brought about. What does bring about real big change is creative adaptive evolution driven by people’s perception of their interest.

Chapter 1 Continued: Humans War, Why?

Without the social welfare of modern society to be outlawed by loved ones was a death sentence. Even in modern society rejection is feared more often than violence. In traditional societies social rejection meant certain death.

To stake out and defend territory or create new kinds of exclusiveness, property, is a threat to human at-one-ment. Overwhelming it restores at-one-ment. War does this. Interestingly it is a key factor differentiating humans from other species. It has prevented humanity becoming many species and enabled humans to be the only multi-cellular organism occupying the whole planet.

In war, victory leads to the genetic and social penetration of the vanquished by the victor. It is conceivable as inter-social rape. Its key consequence is a new society as an offspring incorporating the genetic and social material of both winners and losers. Wooing others to unite through trade or reciprocal exchange is more defensible, and a lot cheaper but in the face of stubborn exclusivity war may be the only way to achieve atonement.

In other animals rape is difficult. Practically intercourse, social or physical, generally has to be voluntary. The result is that territory tends to be respected and local in-breading can be a consequence. This can create new species. Humans do not back off so while others have split into separate species we have not.

Thus humanity has not evolved into distinct species filling different environmental niches but a highly adaptable single species capable of fitting, or altering, its environment to its interest using its adaptive brain to learn how to. Human’s have evolved brain capacity that uses experience to form expectations and plans that set them aside from most other animals. This we would argue puts humanity in a very special position respecting the evolution of planetary thought.

Responsible Corporate Society:Corporate Behaviour and National Security

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as usually considered rarely touches on national security. It pressures corporate bodies to use their resources to pursue wider social concerns about workforce exploitation, women’s issues, child labour, the natural environment, etc. Corporate bodies generally already respect locally mandated demands. CSR expects more. It hopes to persuade corporations to be the champions of their cause in places beyond their own ambit or reach. Modern responsible corporate society (RCS) has a global reach far beyond that of states or local activists. Asking it to be used on behalf of others outside the corporation’s view of its own interest or the legitimate ambit set for its officers is unlikely to get a positive response. This is highly pertinent to current approaches to national security. The global reach of corporate society facilitates globally based insurgency. National security agencies want to access corporate society to effect their responsibilities. What may be considered reasonable in this in Washington may not be in Beijing or vice versa? What should be done?

Response to Rhizome Network Defense Strategies

Rhizome Network Defense Strategies
Network Defense, Rhizome Society, The Way
I find this all fascinating.

I believe it to be very important.

First it speaks the name, describes and then advocates anew something that is very ancient indeed and very important.

Despite having such a past it nevertheless has always, with good reason, remained seen but unseen. It is the time I feel to speak its name. It can no longer be blocked. This blog is doing this. Jeff Vail's book is the manifesto for doing it as effectively as possible.

Till now it has been very much like what Isaac Azimov called Seldon's Second Foundation, unseen and at the other end of the universe. However it is there and visible just not seen.

Its significance and the approach to it was set out very clearly 2500 years ago by Lao Tzu's in the "Tao Te Ching":-

Acting Simply
True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them those they despise.

To give no trust
is to get no trust

When the work's done right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.

Secondly I believe that the rhizome society advocated is coming into being naturally. It can do with the nurturing it is getting in this place. It is still quite young but I think now robust enough to mature seen.

Blogging is a key element of this. Blogging becomes even more significant when automatic translation becomes the norm - it is already important. Connectivity is then possible at very great cultural distances, Hofstede would say "psychic distances".

Multi-lingual blogs mean people at their own level in their own area of interest and in their own way can decide who to connect with. They are. Their is even a kid's site to facilitate this for the very young.

I myself like to consider such connectivities as "social wormholes" by analogy with astrophysics. They provide a very short fast route between people who are otherwise far apart nationally, culturally, geographically and temporally.

Related to this but separate was a study I was involved in shortly after 9/11 on commercial intra-networking in financial institutions in the City of London. This had nothing to do with resilience post terrorist attack.

This showed that for economic reasons ever fewer staff were allocated office space in their corporations downtown City HQ offices - too expensive. Instead they hot desked, one desk for every ten staff.

Staff were given laptops and told to work from wherever they were, home, travelling whatever. This meant that if Al Qu'aeda were to strike any of these corporations they could not destroy more than 10% of their human or knowledge base of capability.

This was done for bottom line reasons totally unconnected with resilience against terror.
25 years ago I myself ran across a brokerage firm on Wall Street who had a typing pool in Cork in Southern Ireland simply because the per square foot cost of a secretary there was 1/50th of that in Manhattan.

In addition a trained, high quality, totally happy, unflustered by commuter travel, well educated, Southern Irish, typist came in at 40% of a New York typists wage.

Finally that supreme test of robust command and control in the face of horrendous attrition is war. The military despite modern technology still use "orders groups".

In these orders are given verbally to everyone. If this is done and it is nowadays within the framework of what is called "mission command". Everyone knows the ultimate mission so the fight can continue effectively despite huge attrition in the apparent command hierarchy.

What does still stop such intellectually sophisticated armies is a lack of physical re-supply. This could in the end be the nemesis of the knowledge age without a rhizome culture.

If we do run out of physical resources this probably spells the end of human existence on this planet. I think not. We are already beginning to adopt the rhizome model advocated here.

Learning: Life Work Balance and Dealing with Fear

I sat in Tilley’s today.

It was a summer autumn day.

I was reading the wonderfully useful “Exceeding Expectations” by Susan Kovalik and Karen Olsen. Chapter 2 on “The Bodybrain Partnership – Emotion and Movement”.

This is a very effective book of instruction for those interested in helping others learn.

I mused on meeting its author's Susan and Karen with Sally on a similar sunny day 3 years ago in Seattle.

Tilley’s is a true Canberra, Australian delight.

One sits on the sidewalk in that all encompassing way of being familiar to visitors and patrons of the Cafés of Vienna, Paris, New York, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Melbourne and oh so occasionally London. One is simply comfortable.

The sun gentle caressed all in perfect balance with the slightest of breezes. Around I heard the clink of spoons on saucers and the murmur of humanity at ease. The sound system played Ella and Piaf. Across the street, a tree, draped in its yellow golden autumn bloom, held firm to its leaves. A grey haired man on monocycle flitted past on his own path to “The Way”.

I was relaxed, happily invigorated by my bicycle journey to this special place in the world. I bathed in thoughtful joy from the evening before, Balboa then Battlefield 2 till late. Dancing and computerised war fighting, movement and human connection, actual and virtual, combined in one lovely evening.

Balboa is the ultimate partner dance a conversation in gravity with the comfort, security and proximity of the opposite sex sweetly bound by fear of rejection. This is in stark contrast to Battlefield’s simulation of the discomfort and insecurity born of the havoc, and brutally loud sounds, of war with all the possibility of death and mutalation only modulated by wonderful comradeship with no fear that it will ever be lost. Partners who have been in each others arms move on and do. Soldiers who have been in arms together move on and do not.

These feelings flitting into thoughts were confirmed, denied and were, all at the same time, there in what I read and felt

Women know the real human pay-off to comfort and feelings of security. Tilly Devine, a Melbourne prostitute, was well respected with good reason. She knew where she was on, “The Way”. She truly “got it”. She did not try to name it. She merely was on it.

Tilley’s is such a place now. It was conceived exclusively for gay women. It now embraces that delightful lie of inclusivity women alone orchestrate to maintain their exclusivity, the home. My “Divine Caesar Salad” was all that. More. The caringly chosen wooded Chardonnay I drank harmonised well with the female chef’s use of her available palette to satisfy my eye and pallet with texture, flavour and piquancy. Piaf sang “Au Coin de La Rue”. Unstated pleasure, being.

There is no doubt in my mind that life without movement and change is not life but Kovick and Olsen’s words of instruction hung in the afternoon air true, false and validated by what I saw, felt, tasted, thought and remembered.

Human reality on “The Way” cannot evolve in an atmosphere free of physical fear of havoc, death, rape or abuse. Ask the men and women of Banda Aceh, Pucket, Pakistani Kashmir, New Orleans, Rwanda, West Africa or the Balkans? Humanity has to manage fear. It cannot be avoided. Making humanity more humane, if we could or should, would only make half the above go away. This could be a good thing but there remains a need to know how to handle reality and the fear in it. It cannot be ignored, avoided or managed away. Much of it is in our souls. Fear and insecurity, we do not learn to manage, will obliterate our capacity to think calmly when we need to for our own, and other’s, life sake.

Insecurity in our physical well being is no worse or better to us emotionally than our fear of rejection by the Universe or those we hope love us The lie of security we will all buy whither it is offered by a Master Drill Sergeant in the US Marine Corp or a prostitute in a well appointed brothel in Melbourne. The first prepares us for reality the other to find our dreams.

Few of us deal with such extreme manifestations of our human condition. “The Way” and the Universe do not give us choice in this however. Susan and Karen rightly tell us that as teacher’s, especially of the young we should offer our pupils choices in a secure environment. True but will we then be able to make the right choice in a very insecure environment. If we have the choice I am sure we would all choose Tilly Devine’s path on, “The Way” however the Marine Corp Sergeant’s path offers a real life skill, managing fear, that hopefully we will rarely need but when we do will matters to us greatly.

China and the US: Taiwan

This is a big issue and I felt could well do with being re-visited.

Since Tuesday the balance of power in Italy lies with their ex-patriot senators. They are cultural Italian but nationals of other countries. Italy has thus established for itself a cultural, as distinct for a national political, identity on our planet.

The reality of our increasingly evident global village is that it is one of cultures not nations. It is perhaps best seen so. This avoids one kind of war.

Culturally Taiwan is Chinese. It is increasingly so economically as in Ohmae's

"The Emergence of the United States of Chunghwa" (2003)

He predicted (wrongly?) that by 2005 Taiwan would politically integrate with China in the so-called "United States of Chunghwa". My own observation is that Fujian Province is already an economic Taiwanese colony on main land China as perhaps Taiwan is of America.

Taiwan is increasingly economically integrated with China and with it the world. Culturally it is Chinese. This is all conflict free. However its nationhood is pregnant with the seeds of Sino-US war. This is the only big potential war left on our planet. Let it not be.

However China cannot, like Italy, elect Taiwanese senators. It does not have an elected legislature to appoint them to. The CCP does consult Taiwanese people. It does so all over China. However the electivity of such representation is the true line in the sand between Taiwan and China. The issue for Taiwan cannot be representation nor independence but electively expressed choice. If this was in place China would not be split now and the US might still be in the British commonwealth rather than the British in its. For China and the CCP not Taiwan, the issue is sedition through cessation. Without declared cessation there is no declared CCP threat.

Iraq, Africa, the Koreas, Indonesia etc are non-cultural entities derived from colonial cultural splitting. This left the residue of conflict now dealt with.

Cultural melting pots have also arisen from this past, the USA, Canada, Australia and parts of South America. These do have socio-economic problems but do not seek war. For democracy they choose to police the global commons, thank god.

I am forever grateful for the sacrifices made to this end. The USAAF graveyards at Cambridge and Runnymede, of Magna Carta fame, stand testament to this with 20year olds American lives. Do such lives need to be given for a situation that cultural, economic, social and political evolution can solve?

A way has been found for Macau and Hong Kong. China and the CCP can gain, and are gaining, a great deal from the know how on social, economic and political evolution being generated in Taiwan. The CCP has far more to lose than gain from a war over Taiwan provided it is not asked to sacrifice face with a threat to the integrity of China. If the Middle Kingdom stays intact within cultural humanly defined apolitical bounds no problem seems to exist. Should anyone create one?

Sedition is Curved by Giles Pickford

The universe is curved and so is endless time.
The Earth’s road is curved and all creatures walk this way.
There is something in it which hates a dead straight line.
So nature’s lovely, curly, random shapes hold sway.

But there is one deadly straight unnatural force
Which shows its hatred for the universal curve.
Tyranny drives with great speed in a linear course,
Piercing the rib cage of freedom. It does not swerve.

Sedition bows humbly to unnatural power.
Appearing bent, recalcitrant, with curled lip; it would
Resist tyranny at every turn, hour by hour
Until the universal arc of all that’s good

Bends arrow, spear, sword, cannon, each linear thing
Into a rounder shape. Thus the great circle of time
Completes its perennial quest, eradicating
Cruelest tyranny, the most unnatural crime.

The Asia Fellows

The Asia Fellows

Taiwan Italy the Planet: Comment on The Asia Fellows

I feel obliged to comment.

To accept an existence for Taiwan separate from China is to abjure Taiwan's right to be.

Politically and spiritually it cannot be distinct. The political and religious beliefs of most Chinese who live in Taiwan must reject this.

Both major political parties in Taiwan agree with the one Party in China on the at-one-ness of China. For religious Taiwanese, Taoist, Confucian or Buddhist separateness is apostasy.

Taiwan was created by those, the Kuomintang, who refused to accept any division of China. In the early days the only parliament in Taiwan WAS their's, one for China as a whole.The issue then, and now, is about how China inclusive of Taiwan should be governed not the independence of Taiwan from China.

Today Italy demonstrated to the world an important aspect of global reality. They effected a new democratic process reflecting a fundamental human reality. They incorporated overseas cultural Italians into the government of their country.

This recognises the significance to us, as human beings, of our cultural distinctiveness. Nations are created by them never us. Much conflict has its source in this: Iraq, Sierra Leone, Rwanda in fact Africa as a whole, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, etc. all came into being as they are in the interests of others not the peoples effected.

Modern Germany and Israel have always given their Diaspora the right of citizenship if they wished to exercise it. However Italian style cultural democracy is truly de novo.

Increasingly we live, where I now write, in cyberspace in which this is the reality not artificially created "national" boundaries.

The Global Way: Part 3, Peace Love and Conflict

The Global Way
Chapter 1
Part 3

It is to be observed that many of mankind’s great cultural and spiritual leaders felt that foregoing judgement and feeling forgiveness was the Way to peace This is a message from the Tao Te Ching , from the Lord Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, etc.

History suggests that no matter how noble the cause judging it good relative to others produces conflict. God’s word in the Holy Koran as given to Mohammed saw conflict as impossible in a world directed by the one all-powerful God. On this view conflict must be in man’s mind not the Universe’s or God’s. If conflict appears it must be in our perception not actuality. War must then be a form we see not a process that is.

Looking to the form of things often obscures. Observable diversity in form is huge. Thus form appears complex. However the process creating it is often simple. Plant use energy to grow and survive. They use two sources the sun and nutrients in soil. In struggling to exist and grow each plant has to accept existing users of both. It has no choice but to adapt to their existence and find its own way to the sun and the soil’s nutrients. Adaptive co-operation works confrontation not.

In biology apart from man fights to the death within species are in frequent. Killing for food is co-operative symbiosis not competition. To destroy one’s prey is to destroy oneself. The genius of man’s evolution is that what is seen as human aggression can be seen as constructive social evolutionary at-one-ment.

Friendship Maintenance and Care: Mia Culpa

Karen,

You wrote rightly admonishing me on my lack of attention.

We are supposed to be friends, you said.

We are friends but where have I been in relation to you?

I have no excuse. I hopefully have not lost your care. You would not have felt able to write to me thus if you did not feel able to. That smacks of friendship to me means that you do care whither I find time for you. I recently wrote here that we, as human beings, fear rejection above all else. I argued that the abuse of rejection, is to most of us, far more of a fear than the possibility or even the actuality of physical abuse. In war the military exploit this. Soldiers fear far more not being with and for their comrades than they fear death.

I am on record at my website that I believe firmly in "life work balance". I state that roughly w0rk should get 25% of your life, sleep/rest 25%%, self 25% and ones relationships with others 25%. Recently I have been working on 80% self and work and only 2% for relationships and *% for sleep. Most of my life I have acted thus. This lost me my marriage

For the last two months since I returned to Canberra. I have not touched based with you, Marcelo, Stephen the Jumptown Lindy Hop crew, and Annette Burki and Phone.

Now there is a joy in this wonderful country - a Brazilian, a very British person of Chinese origin, a crowd from every country you can imagine, a Swiss and a Laotian. What a wonderful lucky country Australia is indeed. Nowhere else in the world could you meet and strike up acquaitance with such a rich variety of backgrounds. I also have a British, Australian Polish friend, Jim Pollard ( Polkowski) and his friend and partner Isobel who is Portuguese.

I live and work for a coming together of the human family but a coming together that positively supports, nay indulges, in our wonderful diversity in our oneness.

For fun you sent me the following in English????????????????????

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55% fo plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

I made it. I could read it quite fluently. I am not sure what that proves about me particularly but it does show how wonderfully adaptabe the human mind is.

I am told that in fully declined langauges, such as Russian, where the order of words is irrelevant careless or ill educated people can speak without declining yet are understood. Chinese is interesting. It deliberately maintains a written language that is disconnected from the language as spoken. It is an ideographic written language. There is no reason why you cannot not write English or any other langauge in Chinese characters. Arabic is interesting too because as the Koran is written in Arabic all Muslims learn the written scholarly Arabic of 1500 year ago. This is only distantly related in style to the Arabic spoken today in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, etc.

In deed our capacity to deal with such conundrums makes perceived barriers to human communication of doubtful validity especially when so so much of life, eating, drinking, feeling and making love can be carried out in a well co-ordinated way wihtout words at all and dancing, which I love, says everything in movement, WOW! Are we not wonderful we humans.

Thank you Karen for reminding me of this. I am sometimes an inhuman human being. I will see you for you very soon.

Your dear and grateful friend

Brian

Living to be

Blogging the Way

No time
Much to do
Lets be

Weight, the Way
Gravity not grave
Change it, find joy

Ball change
Not thought
Speaks to stars

Skiing
Biking bliss
Frankie Manning all this

Conciousness The Way
Blog the planet to be
It tells the stars

For the spirit
Everlasting
Find the Way

It does not die
Unending
Let it be

Muslim World's Human Rights: Globalization and Islam can help the world's poor

Muslim World's Human Rights: Globalization and Islam can help the world's poor