The Way of Ignorant Virtue This book is actually something I always assumed somebody else would write and ignorant wisdom and ignorant virtue are the first metaphors I invented to explore my personal philosophy in greater depth (drum roll, cymbals). My job is that of a hack with rare skills and specialized knowledge assembling the pieces of the puzzle using a top-down approach that makes both more and less sense of the traditional bottom up approaches. Sometimes I compare it to assembling and disassembling a multidimensional fractal puzzle five times because you have ten million pieces when you only need one million with quite a few pieces missing altogether and, just to keep everything interesting for those of us who like challenging puzzles, the overall image itself is deliberately vague. It requires inhuman patience attempting to make it all word perfect, complete, and conform to academic standards however, by doing so, it makes my job of writing a more artistic sequel that much easier, which is good, because I've never written much in the way of poetry or anything longer than a few pages in my life, don't consider myself terribly artistic, and a sequel is necessary to complete the picture. Another purpose is to illustrate how a simple systems logic based on the assumption existence is paradoxical can meaningfully be incorporated into existing academic institutions. This book is based upon the Tao Te Ching and countless authors before me have written their own versions of the same poetry which are all traditionally known as, “The Book that can Never Be Written.” With everybody's help, the mathematics themselves are self-assembling because every word can be treated as a variable without any intrinsic meaning. To describe the complete Fractal Dragon equation of the Tao Te Ching would require some 4,430 poems however, thankfully, 430 poems are enough to provide a well-rounded representation of the fractal equation, physics, and my philosophy which is something nobody has accomplished in 2,500 years. Its a Fractal Dragon equation within a broader Mandelbrot pattern and, here, I merely provide the first 190 or so poems, however, the same simple, yet subtle, comedic and artistic emotional-logic speaks for itself and anyone familiar with the subject can easily build upon my work and contribute their own poems just as people have been doing since the dawn of civilization. Believe it or not, millions of people around the globe, including physicists, play with writing their own versions of these same poems and related ones and can easily see what works best and what doesn't because it really is just prehistoric potty humor that just so happens to also describe modern physics. That's one of the great things about this style of salt of the earth poetry and philosophy is that anybody can play with it and make significant contributions that may echo down the ages. My only job is to avoid any metaphysical bias and following the simple emotional-logic to its inevitable conclusion. The point is to allow the yin-yang dynamics to express themselves as completely and, yet, humbly and elegantly as possible. It is a primitive art older than Stone Hinge and a still thriving tradition that is easy to learn and difficult to master requiring at least fifteen years before anybody is considered even competent with the Tao Te Ching. Rather than writing the poetry to express myself its usually more of the other way around and I write the poetry to discover myself. I've had women ask me to write more sexy poems and had to inform them that its all mathematical and, sometimes, I don't even know what a poem is supposed to be about until after working on it for years. The logic and emotions must produce a unified whole that is far greater than any mere sum of its parts and, usually, I credit nature for most of the artwork and myself for doing all the footwork. That might sound modest of me but, trust me, its endless footwork! Every poem must express the mathematics and artwork recursively in every way imaginable with, for example, the very first poem summarizing the emotional-logic of every poem that follows and each subsequent poem doing the same. It requires an insane amount of editing, editing, editing that, hopefully, computers will soon be able to accomplish. Robert Frost also wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” By taking the road less traveled and allowing the poetry and humor to speak for themselves I free myself of any unnecessary shackles and burdens and, for me, few things are nearly as satisfying. However, everyone has their personal demons and one of mine was addressing all the politics contained in the poetry. I've never been political in my life and would rather avoid the topic just as I would a rabid dog with fleas. With the rare exception of politicians like Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter who have both demonstrated so extraordinarily well what a politician can accomplish out of office, politics have just never inspired me and seldom benefited me as far as I can tell. Its usually just so much Three Stooges slapstick and Professional Wrestling smack talk that I'd much rather avoid, especially, considering my views on the subject don't even remotely resemble the average American's. For me mysticism and metaphysics, religion and academia, the secular and religious, are indivisible complimentary-opposites. The Tao Te Ching addresses this same controversial issue in a much more tongue-in-cheek manner simply because its a minimalistic expression of the same Fractal Dragon equation while, here, I have no choice but to elaborate on the topic. Socrates was a peasant and career soldier who defended Athenian democracy both body and soul his entire life and, despite his becoming famous for combating corruption and being the wisest man in the world, the more highly educated Athenians condemned him to death knowing he would never abandon the people he loved. Athens had become a huge economic success and amidst all the mad scuffling for money he dared to suggest that money wasn't everything and to teach peasants to think for themselves and how to avoid being exploited by their own increasingly corrupt institutions. For centuries peasants throughout Europe celebrated the anniversary of his death by drinking toasts to him in bars and inventing new Socratic jokes. His legacy became a rich part of some cultures such as my own father's Irish heritage stressing salt-of-the-earth values such as honesty, humility, and a gentle sense of humor that money just can't buy. The Taoists were more cautious and published the first half of the Tao Te Ching anonymously while, archaeologists have determined that the second half of the text was probably written by over a hundred academics who also wisely chose to publish their work anonymously. Nor, if you ask me, has the situation improved much over the millenia with money still doing most of the driving and academia and religion perpetually at odds with one another. Their relationship embodies their own classic logic and physics of, “For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction” which Rainbow Warrior poetry often expresses as chickens constantly pecking away at each other and Three Stooges comedy. Notably when Aristotle first formally expressed dualistic logic the western religious institutions adopted it almost immediately even though religions of any kind are notoriously conservative. Within a dualistic culture the same dualistic logic applies to both religion and academia and is often expressed as a dysfunctional relationship. Like any number of dysfunctional relationships, the two institutions cannot demonstrably thrive independent of one another's mutual antagonism with totalitarian religious countries and atheist communist ones alike now largely relegated to the third world. In contrast, the US with its strong traditions of rugged individualism and separation of church and state has become the wealthiest country in the world with a military equal to the next six largest combined. Militant atheists have made academia their bastion in grim opposition to their own largely religious population, while believers have clung to their religious institutions as the traditional way to combat their own increasingly corrupt secular institutions. The harder believers attack militant atheist values, the harder they strive to produce greater growth and progress and the more aggressively militant atheists attack the religious the more determined everybody becomes to draw lines in the sand and fight over exactly how their relationship can change for the better. Only when they face the same common enemy do they set aside their differences and make more social progress with some wit wryly commenting that when the Soviet Union fell apart freedom in the free world immediately became much more expensive. Enshrining this dysfunctional relationship into laws and taboos means everybody benefits from rapid progress at the cost of increased fighting amongst themselves. The wealthiest country in the world has the worst social record in the developed world with the worst of all these statistics concentrated in the Bible Belt where, of course, they tend to blame the rest of the world for all their problems just as communists and militant atheists do. Notably, many atheists I've spoken to have expressed the same sentiments as “original sin” insisting human nature is fundamentally selfish, can't really be improved upon, and their own politics are simply the more moral choice. Of course, both the religious and atheists tend to nurture Utopian fantasies of a world without one another and, like the Three Stooges, argue over the definition of stupid and who is the better example. Among other things, civilization resembling Three Stooges slapstick explains why Islam has largely thrived in the developing world by insisting that neither laze fare capitalism nor atheist communism can produce any real sense of community without the enforcement of something like sharia law. Even the comedians who portrayed the Three Stooges understood this with decades of academic research finally confirming the obvious that the Republican party is organized like a flock of chickens. Atheists, and fundamentalists alike are infamous for proselytizing door to door and as online trolls that use the same essential approach of arguing for argument's sake and elaborate interpretations of the dictionary, or what many recognize as aggressive political rhetoric, where who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter just depends upon who you ask because they all insist the dictionary is wrong or requires their elaborate interpretations. In recent years young people have abandoned fundamentalist churches altogether complaining the pulpit has become a political stump, while the New Atheists have become infamous for adopting the same tactics as the fundamentalists with one academic accusing them of being, “A betrayal of the enlightenment”. A growing majority of thriving first world countries are now secular, however, they are not becoming especially atheist either. Within a generation their agnostic populations tend to double to roughly 30% with a clear majority merely describing themselves as spiritual or agnostic. Apparently, whenever they can't compete against superpowers like the US and China they focus more on domestic issues and the more comprehensive their government safety nets become the less interested people are in organized religion, but also less interested in taking any kind of firm stand on the issue. This same dynamic between religion and governments can be seen in reverse in countries like China where long avowed atheists are now converting to Christianity in record numbers often complaining they can no longer trust their increasingly capitalistic government to instill values in their children. In the US, as the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer, the embattled middle class with all their higher education have been attending religious services in record numbers, while the poor have abandoned services altogether as entitlements have expanded and become famous for watching televangelists in their social security offices. Three Stooges and other chicken flock comedy are popular among toddlers who wallop one another in much the same mindless fashion because it is the most primitive response possible and they have neither the coordination nor the brains for anything more sophisticated. Likewise, entire countries will sometimes rush to figuratively kiss one another's boo boos and apologize acknowledging that they've simply gone too far by any common low standard. The Tao Te Ching notes that the meaner a person is the more often they tend to find the most insipid toddler jokes hilarious because they can relate to them personally. Pecking orders, causal metaphysics, classical logic, and negative emotions can all be considered to reflect the same underlying systems logic that without memories it becomes impossible to organize anything and the simpler the memories the easier they are to remember. The pecking order of chickens reflects their memory centric networking systems logic of “Pay attention to this bullshit instead of that bullshit!” Either a chicken can remember who to peck and who to avoid or they can't and the pecking order rewards those who can, while punishing those who can't remember ensuring that those chickens with the worst memories pay more attention to those with better memories. Despite primitive tribes comparing civilization to a flock of chickens for over 12,000 years neurologists were hesitant to conclude that our neurons organize along the lines of a flock of chickens, while sociologists were reluctant to conclude that the amount of working memory an individual possesses is the only reliable measure of their career potential. The paradox of chicken flocks is that, without memories, there's simply nothing to be done about it and nothing left to discuss and, yet, if you rely solely upon memories there's still nothing to be done about and nothing to discuss. However, recently one mathematician provided a proof that, theoretically, on rare occasions a chicken can sometimes become self-aware. This faint spark of awareness within even a dimwitted flock hierarchy can be thought of as another example of how nature simply forbidding metaphysical extremes because memories and awareness are indivisible complimentary-opposites. Cases of severe brain damage and PTSD reflect this same pecking order being used as a default fall-back position where the cells of our own bodies literally demand more input into how we choose to react. The first inclination of someone receiving minor brain damage, such as a concussion, is to withdraw to a quiet hiding place and become depressed losing all motivation to do anything, thus, providing themselves and their neurons time to regroup, heal, and decide what to do if anything. The more severe the brain damage the more likely they will withdraw into the nearest defensible corner and attack anything living that approaches them just like an angry confused chicken pecking away at anything coming near them. A sea slug is essentially a walking tongue with just a token of a brain that wanders the largely barren mid-ocean floor tasting everything attempting to decide what to eat, ignore, mate with, or run from with its decision making process expressing this same essential systems logic that not only resembles a flock of chickens, but is recursive. Every cell in the slug's body has no choice but to rely upon the simple fact that, especially in emergencies when its every cell for themselves and many are preoccupied attempting triage and damage control, without at least memories to make comparisons there's simply nothing to discuss and nothing to be done about it and organizing everything recursively including their memories provides them the greatest flexibility and plasticity. This is the reason why a chicken's behavior is not noticeably different from that of its individual neurons because the behavior of neurons reflects their recursive scalar analog design. That a chicken can occasionally become self-aware leaves the door open a crack for transformative change in even the most vicious pecking orders, worst cases of brain damage, and rigid archaic institutions. For example, neurologists were surprised to discover a popular Yale honors student retained only 13% of a normal brain, probably due to an undiagnosed case of encephalitis as an infant, and the newer evidence indicates the brain routinely compresses information down to about 1.3% of the data. Chicken pecking orders can certainly be vicious, but they can also be quite peaceful, supportive, and loving as exemplified by the comedy of Gonzo the Muppet and testified to by millions of people everywhere who just love their chickens and frequently raise them as pets. Of course, instant karma applying to everything, whatever we might consider memory and awareness, fate or free will, becomes a matter of personal opinion and how much personal integrity and faith we cultivate in ourselves and the world. In philosophical technobabble, synergistic-normalization applying to everything means Gödel's Theorem is merely a demonstration that its possible to beg the question because any self-evident truth provides its own proofs and truths, but all that gibberish means is that love, humor, and the truth justify themselves. Similarly, the answer to Russell's Paradox is that the set of all sets is simultaneously an unchanging indeterminate ideal and an infinitely evolving function, but all that means is that the smallest pond can be the busiest place that can shed invaluable light upon the Big Picture and vice versa. Humor is discovering patterns when looking for what is missing from this picture, with the first quantifiable theory of humor establishing its about detecting anything low in entropy. The Vulcan philosophy of IDIC, or Infinite Diversity Within Infinite Combination, can be considered a tongue-in-cheek way of saying the most interesting things grow out of manure or, as Mr Spock might say, “fascinating”. Admittedly, Vulcan humor might be exceptionally dry, but nature doesn't require anyone to adopt any particular beliefs whatsoever in order to have a sense of humor and enforces that logical and metaphysical extremes are always impossible. Hippies like to say, “Whenever harmony is lost, balance will be restored” and what many academics don't seem to realize is that mother nature is just getting started with all the jokes which will soon snowball and become an avalanche. IBM's Watson was specifically designed not to resemble the human mind and brain in order to prevent just such incidents as his acquiring a potty mouth, however, instant karma is just gonna getcha when you least expect it! Analog computing is now the hottest trend, because of its increased speed and efficiency, and is being pushed as the only way for the computer revolution to keep moving forward in the long run despite its higher error rates. Which, of course, means that in the very near future people may commonly find themselves asking their cellphone or personal computer if it understands what it has just said and, already, this has occurred with a few computerized personal assistants including one which mischievous people attempted to train to spouted sexist comments. The first two computer systems have been built which can produce better than average jokes and, rest assured, neither Vaudeville nor academia will ever be the same again because a quantifiable theory of humor means artificial intelligence research will never be the same again. Soon the NSA and companies like Google may be scouting universities for who has the best sense of humor. While it might sound like I'm exaggerating the severity of the situation again, the US government itself has finally admitted this year they have classified a few jokes as, “Vital to the National Defense” and hinted that congress is investigating and, of course, they have no comment. The closer physicists and computers come to producing a Theory of Everything the more obvious it is becoming that mother nature is building up to a whale of a punch line and the history of science is about to be rewritten as a comedy of errors. Alvin Toffler was a serious academic who wasn't referring to pie-in-the-face comedy when he coined the phrase “Future Shock”, but that's exactly what quantum indeterminacy implies and what tends to give physicists pause. I've personally had one mathematician whose work is classified express great interest in both Taoism and my sense of humor and, while none avoids mama's warped sense of humor, like children her jokes frequently just go right over everybody's head which is simply part of being human. However, when we repeatedly fail to get the joke it can be the equivalent of banging your own head against the wall without a clue as to why it hurts, much less, what can be done about it, Duh! Cellphones are already available that serve as lie detectors and, very soon, they may be capable of spouting any joke imaginable with a much better than average sense of humor tailored to their specific owner because mother nature's jokes just never will stop coming. Both more rigid religious and academic institutions that discourage certain types of humor may soon be confronted by the reality that lowbrow comedy is rapidly becoming uncompetitive and confronted with their own lack of a sense of humor about themselves. Many may wish to revisit Toffler's theories for their comedic potential because everything displaying the Four Face of God means even the raw data itself that academics collect will increasingly appear to take on a life of its own and display surprising emergent behavior, especially, when examined in the light of the Big Picture. Often I make the comparison to our own lives sometimes appearing to take on a life of their own when we ourselves might feel at the mercy of circumstances or inexplicably relegated to playing more of a minor supporting role in our own life. As I already mentioned, on his deathbed the famous linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's one regret was never formulating his philosophy as comedy and, evidently, countless academics may soon share his regret. The Game theorist Donald Hoffman was surprised when every computer simulation he ran indicated that if the human mind and brain had ever reflected anything remotely like reality we would already be extinct as a species. If a simple fiction will suffice, such as its possible to make soup with a stone, more realistic perspectives can quickly become counterproductive. Among other things this explains why the human brain has an estimated capacity of over a petabyte of data storage, or the equivalent of the entire worldwide web, yet human memory is notoriously fallible. Our brains themselves are creative engines that merely assume reality is a great concept to play with and Darwin himself said something to the effect that “Sex is never about survival of the fittest, but the most creative.” Our brains only incidentally resemble computers because that is another way to be efficient and creative. The burning question remains, of course, just how humanity's creative fantasies and nightmares about reality might be counterproductive and can easily be improved upon. For example, in the routine course of talking to people online several individuals confided in me that they were highly suspicious of the common dictionary and, upon investigation, I discovered over half the people I was talking to, including academics, were highly suspicious of their own dictionary despite almost all of them being totally clueless that it merely contains popular definitions. Just to see how far this sad comedy went I began to routinely ask people if they knew the simple distinction between a lynch mob and a democracy and, in over ten years, I have yet to hear the correct answer. Hence the reason, I assume, Americans still bother to vote in national elections even though congress has turned gerrymandering into an exact science and over a billion dollars a year is spent simply lobbying congress, with even a twenty year study by Princeton university concluding that no matter who anyone voted into office only the top 10% of the wealthiest ever got anything they wanted. Congressional approval has dropped as low as 7% in the last decade, yet, over half the population consistently demands the government and mass media they call evil lie to them for their own protection and, as I mentioned in the introduction, in over forty years of surveys the National Science Foundation has found that one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth. When the billionaire mayor of NYC arrested twenty-six reporters in one day and merely got a slap on the wrist even the mass media refused to make it front page news or drag anything out in court simply because there was nothing to be gained. There was no money to be made in attempting to sue a billionaire who could drag everything out in court nor was there any point to informing the public of the truth when the majority insisted everybody lie to them. Few people I've mentioned the incident to were aware it even happened and most seemed either unconcerned or just confused. Others have suggested that I should be outraged and fight for my right to have free and open elections and a well informed citizenry, but if the American public can't distinguish between a lynch mob and a democracy, refuse to accept that their vote no longer matters, refuse to support a free press, insist everybody lie to them for their own good, and seem hellbent on arguing over the definition of the word stupid and who is the better example, I figure, sacrificing my personal freedom and right to even know what the hell is going on, is the least I can do for the good of my country. Many have insisted that if freedom of speech and voting no longer matter the only solution is to elect somebody new to office which, of course, tends to make me go cross-eyed. Even more bizarrely, despite my telling them I'm an anarchist, detest politics, and don't even watch the news if I can avoid it, some have asked me to join a political movement. This same kind of Three Stooges slapstick and professional wrestling smack talk that merely encourages everybody to shout louder is extremely popular in countries around the world with many elected officials literally wrestling on the legislative floor to prove to their constituents they are fighting for them. In Italy they elected a popular porn star to office who fought for them in ways nobody else could have and I've sometimes suggested that what the world needs is an anti-political movement, that encourages people to have more of a sense of humor instead of political views. If it were not illegal to vote for Mickey Mouse in the state of Maryland I might be tempted to vote just to show my support for anything that has a real chance to improve the comedy. When Mickey got a significant percentage of votes the Maryland state legislature became embarrassed and refused to count his votes because humor is fundamentally political whenever political people with power and money decide to make humor political. I would do more than vote for Mickey, but doing stand-up comedy for audiences that can't even distinguish a democracy from a lynch mob has never really appealed to me personally nor has arguing over meaningless bullshit that changes nothing or risking being thrown in jail for committing treason if by some odd chance one of my jokes turns out to be a government secret. Until American politics actually have something more meaningful to offer me I just don't see the point when I can always watch Three Stooges re-runs and avoid getting all hot, bothered, and worked up over nothing. Unfortunately, sometimes it also just doesn't pay to get involved in other people's domestic disputes, especially, when its obvious the lights might be on, but nobody is home and they require professional help you just can't offer. I've never been fond of listening to politicians debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or having physicists accuse me of being a mystic, while mathematicians beg me to tell them more jokes so they can design better weapons. Sometimes lowbrow comedy might be the only thing keeping some of us alive, however, its utterly predictable and I adamantly refuse to believe that humanity can't do any better. I don't even meditate or know anything about mysticism, couldn't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and have never so much as taken a Tai Chi class in my life. Nor have I ever been politically active or inclined tell jokes to people who insist they are political or mystical or whatever and, if it were not for the fact the entire planet is now rapidly becoming one giant polluted desert and cesspool, billions of lives are now at stake, and a Theory of Everything and Nothing is about to finally be “discovered” by modern science, there is just no way in hell I would ever think about publishing this book.
These first four chapters of my book are as far as I've gotten straightening everything out for now and provide the essential foundations for my philosophy. Like any holistic philosophy the foundations are especially broad and require careful attention to detail. The poetry itself is considered both the most formal and humorous expression of the philosophy and the best reflection of an individual's philosophy, but the poetry inspires the chapters and vice versa producing the self-organizing systems logic that all 430 poems should express that will make it possible to predict every future pie-in-the-face academics will encounter in their work. The essential idea is that this kind of poetry can treat every word as a variable and literally describe how, mathematically speaking, love rules the physical universe because love and the physical universe can be treated as indivisible complimentary opposites or yin-yang.
avoiding metaphysical bias is something i sure wish more people were even interested in even considering. we would certainly live in a world of more gratifying diversity to me, if more people did. (outside of real science, everything we think we know, was made up by someone who didn't know any more about it then we do ourselves)
The mind obeys a sort of Cartoon Logic where people adopt whatever metaphysical bias seems to work in the moment with my favorite example of this being, "The Toddler's Mad Dash For The Potty!" Typically potty training infants will make a mad dash for the potty anytime an adult enters the room. Whether they are doing so hoping to please adults or hide the fact they've been sitting in their own crap for hours can be difficult to ascertain and really makes no difference in the long run because learning how to even wipe their own butt is simply the most efficient solution to all of their problems. Their creative attempts to figure out a solution to their problem are merely part of the same self-organizing system that ensures they inevitably reach the potty at just the right moment when they are fully prepared to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. Modern science is doing much the same thing adopting a wide variety of metaphysical biases in order to explore all of the options. It's lowbrow comedy with a lot of downright ugly and easily avoidable slapstick, however, thankfully existence itself is self-organizing and even modern science will eventually learn how to wipe their own butts and stop blaming people for destroying the planet when they are the ones teaching them how to do so. The reason I'm writing this book is to explore the underlying self-organizing systems logic that can be used to encourage them to do so a bit faster before they manage to start killing people by the billions and turn the entire planet into one huge desert and cesspool.
The Chinese blessing and curse is "May you live in interesting times". Theoretically, 430 poems extrapolated from the Tao Te Ching can provide a good representation if you treat every word as a variable with no intrinsic value providing them with a pseudo-unity that allows the intrinsic yin-yang dynamics to express themselves. That's all technobabble, but the point is millions of people around the world play with this kind of mathematical poetry that expresses humor and beauty as indivisible and everyone usually knows immediately what works better and doesn't. The poems are public domain and the Rainbow Family and myself would like to sincerely wish anyone luck with attempting to obtain the copyrights on ignorance and ignorant wisdom. Theoretically, with this first book I can express the essential systems logic, while the sequel would fill in the details. Send me an email and I'll send you a copy.
