As Above, So Below
"I'm not trying to copy Nature, I'm trying to find the principles she's using."
R. Buckminster Fuller
All human ideas invariably get pushed to the zero or infinite limit. Here are a few more examples.
Economics:
1) Capitalism assigns infinite value to the top capitalists. There is nothing in principle to prevent one man owning the world - an idea that features prominently in The Last Bling King. If one person (or a few) are of infinite value then everyone else is of zero value in comparison. This is the world we live in.
2) In Communism, everyone is assigned (theoretically) equal value i.e. there is zero difference between people. There is no possibility of anyone being assigned a value different from everyone else, and the notion of any person having infinite value in relation to others is unthinkable. Hence Communism is the absolute opposite of Capitalism. Communism, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, was the only serious challenger to Capitalism.
3) Meritocracy does not reduce everyone to artificial total equality (in contrast to Communism). Nor does it permit anyone unlimited (to infinity) opportunities to increase their financial value over others (in contrast to Capitalism). Instead, Meritocracy says that everyone is potentially of infinite value because they can all become as good as they can be. It aspires towards infinite equality of opportunity (i.e. to reduce the influence of privilege to zero), but it does not endorse equality of outcome. The more meritorious will be rewarded more than the less meritorious, but not to an extent where the resultant economic imbalance can ever be used as weapon (as in Capitalism). Meritocracy is the Middle Way between Capitalism and Communism, and vastly superior to both. It takes what is best of each and discards what is worst. Meritocracy is dialectically guaranteed to replace Capitalism since it is a higher synthesis.The Tea Party seek to reduce government and the state to zero. No one, they believe, should be allowed to interfere with their lives in any way. A senior member of the Tea Party openly advocated that a white businessman should not have to serve a black customer if he did not want to i.e. this places infinite value on the businessman and reduces the black customer to zero. This is an absolutely horrific and obscene concept that has no place in any civilised nation, and is exactly why there is a need for strong government and a powerful state. If the Tea Party ever came to power, a second Civil War would follow within days. The Tea Party are just the Confederates in a new guise. The Confederates - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) - actually went to war to uphold slavery. Has any army in history ever fought for such an ignoble, disgusting cause? Yet Confederate flags are still regularly flown all over America!
The Old World Order assign infinite value to themselves and zero to everyone else. Bankers, hedge fund managers, top CEOs, top sportspeople, top celebrities, top actors…they all partake of the ideology that they are of infinite value and everyone else is worthless. If they didn't then they would never ask for so much more money than the average person receives. They would never pay themselves ludicrously high bonuses.
Slavery reduces the slave to zero and raises the master to infinite value. Airbrushed supermodels and Hollywood actresses are regarded as infinitely beautiful; everyone else has zero attractiveness in comparison.
The fast food industry seeks to be the infinitely fast food industry. Any delay at all is too much.
The advertising industry seeks to use infinitely seductive images to manipulate the zeroes - the masses - to buy their products. This industry seeks to promote the message that the consumer is nothing without their product, and becomes infinitely valuable if they buy it. People are terrified of not having the latest gadgets because their peers might mock them (i.e. treat them as if they have zero value).In the Hindu caste system, the Untouchables are given a value of zero. Humanity has a horrific predisposition towards the assigning of infinite value to the few and a zero value to the many. The few are elevated to god-like status, and the rest to their slaves.
We live in a society of those with names (the famous) upon whom infinite value is conferred, while the rest of us - the foot soldiers, the cannon fodder, worker drones, the masses, the common herd - are faceless and nameless, easy to replace and assigned zero value. In The Last Bling King, the group agitating for freedom was specifically called The League for the Liberation of Nobodies.
When you analyze any situation, just look for the "zero" angle and the "infinite" angle and pray you are not on the zero side (you almost certainly will be in this world of the damned that we inhabit). In the workplace, your boss is on the side of the infinite while you are zero. If a policeman stops you, he is on the side of the infinite while you are zero. If a serial killer abducts you, he is on the side of the infinite while you are zero. If you fall in unrequited love, the object of your desire is on the side of the infinite while you are zero.
True love may be the greatest feeling of all because you assign your lover infinite value and they do the same back. You both feel like gods.
When you support a sports team, you assign your team infinite value. If you are a true "fan" (fanatic), you will enjoy infinite pleasure when they win, and infinite despair when they lose (in particular to their main rival).Racism is about placing infinite value on one race and zero on others.
Nationalism/Patriotism is about placing infinite value on one nation and zero on others.
Xenophobia is all about placing zero value on the "stranger", the "outsider", the "alien". The Chosen People - of infinite value. The Non-chosen people - zero value.
The Master Race - of infinite value. The non-master race (subhuman) - zero value.
Them and Us. Them - zero value. Us - infinite value."We" - infinite value. The "Other" - zero value.
The Family - infinite value. Everyone else - zero value.The Community - everyone has equality before the law, equality of opportunity and is given equal consideration. No nepotism, cronyism and privilege.
Nepotism, cronyism and privilege - the "insiders" have infinite value; the "outsiders" have zero value.
Why is the dialectic the supreme philosophical principle? Because it is all about systematically moving any process to its omega point of perfection where it can be refined no more. It combines two things: infinity and excellence. It doesn't move towards any old infinity, but the best possible infinity, the infinity associated with God. It is a law of human thinking that any argument will eventually arrive at a position that can be described in terms of zero and infinity. In philosophy, idealism reduces materialism to zero, and materialism reduces idealism to zero. In philosophy, it is extraordinary the number of times that one person asserts one position and then another argues the precise opposite. The Middle Way is rarely pursued. Arguments are always pushed to the limit. When Nietzsche says things such as: "There are no facts, only interpretations", and "What, ultimately, are man's truths, merely his irrefutable errors" he has arrived at a position beyond which it is impossible to go.
The Death of Art, the End of History, the Death of the Author, The Death of Reality, the Death of the Grand Narrative, the Death of the Subject…ideas are always taken to the extremest extent. In fact, this is frequently highly useful because it provides total clarity and it reveals a thought in its purest form.
Capitalism never says that it places infinite value on some and zero value on everyone else (because it knows that this would provoke a revolution), but the conduct of capitalists makes that conclusion inescapable. It would help to clarify the issue for people if the infinite and zero aspects of Capitalism were presented. Instead, the masses are in denial, desperate not to confront the fact that they are regarded as utterly dispensable. When you get laid off, your boss is telling you that you have zero value. But even before you get laid off, you are still of zero value. Unless you are one of the bosses (those of infinite value) then you have no value. You are just one of "them".*****
The ancient wisdom of Hermeticism As above, so below says that we, humanity, are a microcosm of the macrocosm, and exactly the same rules apply to us as apply everywhere else. God does not use a special "divine" logic, but exactly the same logic that we do. The only difference is that he's much better at it. Aliens would use the same logic too.When Abrahamists say things such as "God works in mysterious ways" and "How can our finite minds understand the infinite mind of God?", they are establishing a false dichotomy. They are suggesting that different rules apply in different parts of the universe; that gods and aliens have access to things that we can never know. They are saying that we can never understand God's plan, hence must resort to nothing but faith. Knowledge is always futile in such a system because it can never shed any light on what is really going on (which only God knows). Reason, as Luther put it, is indeed the "Devil's whore" since it can never reveal God's mind, hence can only be about deception, delusion and the Devil's lies. To subscribe to As above, so below is to say that our knowledge, if we are skilful and wise enough, is the same as God's. He does not work in mysterious ways. Although his mind is infinite, it nevertheless works in a way that finite minds can comprehend.
So, which view is healthier and more optimistic? As usual, the Abrahamists are on the crazy side of the fence. The Hermetic wisdom is so much more glorious and enlightened. In every single way, Abrahamism fails. It is astounding how this grim, stupid system of faith has conquered half the world, a sure testimony to how idiotic most people are.
The reality is this. We can work out everything about the macrocosm by studying our own world (the microcosm) and ourselves. We need no extra information. We can literally work out the thoughts of God because he thinks in the same way that we do, just at a much higher, better informed and more accurate level. But it's simply a difference of degree, not of kind. All of the secrets of existence are all around us in our own world. A scientific Grand Unified Theory of Everything would apply to the whole universe, not just to our local galaxy. Logic is universal, not restricted to our planet. Mathematics is universal: it is the same everywhere. Evolution operates in the same way everywhere. The dialectic is a universal principle. There is nothing that is beyond our knowledge. There is never any need for faith. Everything is a matter of knowledge. Every problem will yield to humanity. Look how far we have come in the last five thousand years. Look at the astounding amount of knowledge we have accumulated. Think of the knowledge we will have acquired in five million rather than five thousand years. Will we not be gods?
Closely related to As above, so below is As inside, so outside. This asserts that the outer world is a reflection of what is inside our minds. If the world is evil it is because evil predominates in the minds of humanity. If the world is trivial and childish, it is because most of us are trivial and childish. If the world is seen to be spoiled, self-indulgent and always seeking instant gratification, it's because we are all of those things. The world merely externalises the inner traits of humanity. The institutions we create that shape our world are in turn shaped by the contents of our minds. If we were godlike, the world would be perfect, and our institutions flawless. The only way to make the world better is to improve the quality of the human race. And that means everyone on the planet. That means a New World Order.
We, the human race, naturally create external things that reflect our inner workings, albeit often subconsciously. In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the protagonist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) obsessively creates the shape of a particular mountain: he has made the content of his mind into a real object, and that real object reflects a real mountain (to which the protagonist will finally go to encounter aliens).Now consider the biggest revolution in human history. We are experiencing it right now. It's the internet.
The internet is the ultimate "meme" machine. An unimaginably large number of websites compete for attention. Virtually all the knowledge of the human race is available on the internet. It can be accessed instantly from anywhere in the world. New ideas can be spread around the globe just as quickly, but most wither and die. There is a savage competition between ideas, and those that succeed tend to be of certain types, reflecting the human mentality.
The changes the internet will bring about in the human condition can either accelerate us towards divinity by bringing to the fore everything that's best in us and sharing it worldwide instantly, or they can massively magnify our flaws and instantly contaminate the whole world with all of our worst aspects. The internet exhibits both the best and worst of humanity, and the worst seems to be winning.
There is a film called Idiocracy
where the IQ of the human race has suffered a catastrophic decline and
complete idiots are running the planet. Let's face it, the world is
already run by idiots, but things could get even worse. The internet is
certainly capable of giving birth to a real Idiocracy. If
you ever glance at internet lists of "what's trending?" you will never
see anything remotely inspirational, philosophical, scientific,
intellectual, spiritual, creative or artistic. Invariably, top ten lists
reflect celebrity culture. We are obsessed with the latest snippets
regarding top pop stars, actors and sports stars.
Anything Lady Gaga does soars immediately to number one in the list. Her words and deeds have, seemingly, infinite importance to her legions of fans. Have they really got nothing better to do with their time than read a pop star's tweets on Twitter? What is Twitter other than "literature" for retards - for people with zero attention span, and zero intelligence? How many of the myriad of tweets have real content? If Twitter were turning people into experts in aphorisms - into reflecting the world in a few perfectly chosen words like the best of poetry or philosophy - it would be fantastic. Instead, it is nothing but bland, banal, dumb observations reflecting the first thought that comes into someone's head. There's no quality control. The instant nature of the medium, its immediacy, its unmediated rawness - these are all applauded by its fans. But these are not unambiguous "good" things. Where is the pause for self-reflection, for perfecting the message, for working out something profound that you want to say? What's the point of splurging out random thoughts? What's that going to achieve? For sad, lonely people (extraverts in particular who hate their own company), it gives them the illusion that they are in contact with others, that they are part of something exciting, something that never sleeps. Yet 99.9% of it is worthless. A Latin epigram of one of the sayings of Pythagoras is: "Aut tace aut loquere meliora silentio", meaning "Either be silent or say something better than silence." What would happen if they put that on the front page of Twitter? Would the cyber world fall silent? If only…
Facebook too is almost entirely devoid of worth. Hundreds of millions of people stare at pictures and exchange bad jokes and gossip. Is that the best humanity can do? Where is the Facebook for philosophical exchange, for sharing the latest scientific breakthroughs, for political activism, for changing the government, for analysing the economy, for discussing techniques for the psychological transformation of society? Where is the religious Facebook, the spiritual Facebook, the intellectual and cultural Facebook? Sure, someone starts a campaign about something serious every now and again but the essence of Facebook is shallow narcissism, mindless chatter, inane preening and posturing. The culture of Facebook is "too cool for school". Too dumb, more like.
There's a phenomenon on the internet whereby the more popular something is the more popular it becomes in a kind of snowball effect. Items in a trending list get looked at more precisely because they are on the list, so it gets harder and harder for anything not on the list to get any hits. The internet is a winner-takes-all medium. Some memes are infinitely more successful than others. If you make it onto a trending list, you're going viral. If you're not on the trending list you're going nowhere. Advertisers love celebrities because they instantly get onto the trending lists and get enormous numbers of hits. It's guaranteed. 100% reliable. If Lady Gaga said she'd come across a really cool website called the Armageddon Conspiracy, we'd get on the trending list instantly and within hours we'd have a million hits. That's the way the system works. It has nothing to do with quality or importance. It could be the greatest and most profound idea in human history but so what? If it doesn't have the endorsement of a celebrity then it is zero, nothing, zilch. Lady Gaga featuring in a video with a dog walking on its hind legs could easily get a billion times more hits than the million words of the Armageddon site about the secret workings of the world. That's the human race for you. If Abraxas himself created a webpage specifying the answer to "life, the universe and everything," it would be completely ignored while the human race went about its usual routine of inane Twittering, watching the latest Katy Perry video, dreaming of Megan Fox and George Clooney, posting pictures of the latest drunken parties on Facebook, checking out porn videos, finding out more about the X-Factor contestants…and all the other nonsense that occupies most people. There is no mechanism for finding gold on the internet but there are plenty of mechanisms pushing you towards garbage. The internet is, paradoxically, a great place for maintaining secrets. There are webpages that have barely ever been looked at. The number of "hidden" pages will keep growing.
Someone like Noam Chomsky would say that the point of most internet activity is to keep the masses distracted while the movers and shakers get on with the real action.
The internet is a winner-takes-all platform, and celebrities are the winners. The effect is more magnified on the internet than anywhere else, hence is much more dangerous. Celebrity culture is actually capable of lowering humanity's collective IQ. Infinite attention is paid to celebrities, and zero to everything else. It takes a miracle to divert attention away from celebrity tittle-tattle. The merest update in the life of a celebrity is the cause of an immediate feeding frenzy. The sharks are always circling, and they're always looking for that single drop of blood that lights up the ocean to every predator.
Celebrity culture is a common reference point for everyone. It allows everyone to take part in a Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) exchange of opinions. You don't need to know anything to take part in celebrity culture; you just need opinions. All the issues of the day can be discussed via one celebrity or another. Gays in the army? - let's discuss Lady Gaga. Drug abuse - let' discuss Lindsay Lohan. Lesbianism - Lohan again. Gay mid-life crisis - George Michael. Suicidal depression - Curt Cobain. Scientology - John Travolta and Tom Cruise. Aliens - Robbie Williams. Female attitudes towards sex - the Sex and the City girls. Friendship - the cast of Friends. And so on. Celebrity is the way in to any LCD discussion. Advanced philosophy, science or theology are incapable of being LCD. With anything complex you actually have to be well informed. Not all people are equally well informed. It's impossible for the well informed to have an "equal" discussion with the ill informed. There's a fundamental asymmetry that creates tension. But when it comes to celebrity culture, everyone is equal. It is the great leveller. It's also the great enemy of any high-level thought.
It could be persuasively argued that celebrity culture has taken over from religion as the defining battleground of human existence. Humanity, in the West, managed to escape from enslavement to the Abrahamic religions through science and technology. Enormous numbers of Westerners now openly scorn the Abrahamic faiths. Unfortunately a new type of religion has arisen in place of the old - the worship of celebrities instead of gods, or, rather, celebrities ARE gods.
The next great dialectical antithesis standing in the way of progress is celebrity culture. There's only one way to beat it - to raise the minds of the people to higher levels, to give them more psychological understanding, to give them better opportunities in life, to give them enormously more satisfying, fulfilling and full lives so that they are much more concerned about what they are doing in life rather than what celebrities are doing. Celebrities, like the gods of Olympus, vanish when they are ignored.Why is any new idea on the internet instantly dumbed down to the lowest common denominator - celebrity culture, narcissism, trying to be "cool and popular", pictures of parties (because if you ain't partying then there's something wrong with you), pictures of pets, pictures of the weird and wonderful? As inside, so outside. Humanity is literally spewing forth into cyberspace all of the garbage that lurks in human minds. It is vomiting out endless trivial nonsense. It is infantile and infinitely egotistical. Is that the best we have to offer?
Yet the internet itself is something truly remarkable because its infrastructure may reflect the way in which the human race will evolve.
The evolution of computer technology should, if we accept the principles of As above, so below and As inside, so outside in some way tell us about ourselves and the way we work. So, modern computing began with enormous mainframe computers used by enormous corporations. This might be called the "Vatican" model of computing. Ordinary people had no access to computers, just as ordinary Catholics in the Middle Ages had no access to the Bible. The Bible was in Latin, which ordinary people didn't speak or understand - indeed most people hadn't learned to read - and prior to the invention of the printing press there were few books in any case. Only experts - monks, priests and the Catholic hierarchy - had the opportunity to read and study the Bible. Similarly, only an elite group of software engineers understood mainframe computers, and only big corporations (the equivalent of the Church) could afford them. They were a complete mystery to ordinary people.
Then came personal computers. At first only a few had them but now, in the West, most people have one. This is the equivalent of the Protestant Reformation where the Bible was translated from Latin into the national languages of the ordinary people, and where printing presses churned out enormous numbers of Bibles so that at last ordinary people could have one. The power of the Church suffered accordingly as it could no longer control the flow of information.
Personal computers were initially "standalone" (in religious terms this was the equivalent of a believer studying the Bible on their own). Then along came the internet and it became possible to link all of the PCs in the world (in religious terms, believers could link up with all the other believers and exchange their thoughts, and clarify things they hadn't understood). In other words, the internet allowed individual minds to become nodes of some kind of Mass Mind. Religion is also a kind of Mass Mind, with all the followers of a particular religion subscribing to a collective rather than individual worldview.Our religions, our technology, everything we do, are external reflections of our inner selves. They are mirrors in which we see our inner natures. A book is simply an externalised mind: an organized store of knowledge. Books are the precursors of the internet: knowledge stores, externalised minds, passed around from one person to another and shared globally.
So, is it possible that with the internet we get a more accurate reflection in the mirror than we have ever had before? The mind has both structure (form) and content. So, obviously, does the internet: it has a physical infrastructure (the equivalent of the physical brain), a set of communication protocols without which it would be impossible to exchange any information (the protocols correspond to the form of the mind; the mind's protocols for shaping everything it experiences into a comprehensible, standardized, consistent whole), and it has content such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc (reflecting the content of our minds).
We can learn about our minds from rationally reflecting on our minds and also from studying the output of our minds - the things we create in the external world: the objects, institutions, technologies, the art, science, philosophies and religions. Some people might say that the internet represents our best clue yet to the true way in which our minds operate.