Some clowns, who know damned well who they are, deserve more blame than others, nevertheless, they shall remain nameless! I take full responsibility for "Ignorant Wisdom" which is my own made up, “Rainbow Warrior Philosophy of Ignorance!” Although it uses humor to combine Socratic wisdom with that of Pragmatic Taoism and modern physics, the practice of producing humorous philosophies originated with primitive tribes and is still popular today amongst those of us who just appreciate the timeless slapstick of crap rolling downhill and prefer that, whenever possible, it be as realistic as it is humorous. That's because this particular genre of primitive philosophy, jokes, and poetry relies on fuzzy logic making everything I write all the more dependent upon observations of nature to say anything meaningful. In fact, many of the jokes, themes, and caricatures I use are literally older than monuments and the ones I present here are merely popular modern variations. However, to the best of my knowledge, it still represents my own unique agnostic spin on the topic heavy on the physics, philosophy, and artwork, which I began writing down as one of the few remaining avenues for me to explore my personal philosophy in greater detail. The TV game show, “Let's Make a Deal” provides a good example of fuzzy logic and Contextualism. On the show Monty Hall, the host, has contestants choose between door number one, two, or three and, then, proceeds to show them a booby prize behind one of the two doors they did not choose and offers them a last chance to swap between the two remaining doors. According to classic logic and probability the odds are merely fifty-fifty and there is no advantage in trading, however, fuzzy logic suggests that, since your first choice was between three doors, it was even more likely wrong then now choosing to swap between the two remaining doors. Accounting for more of what we do not know, fuzzy logic can do an end run around the classic law of identity by associating the properties of any content with the greater context or evolving situation and, for example, it is commonly used in games such as backgammon and to prevent high speed elevators from throwing people around. But, what is more personally gratifying, as well as outrageously useful, is fuzzy logic's ability to lend entirely new meaning to what is funny and what makes sense in any given situation. Single-handedly Socrates changed the course of western civilization by establishing fundamental principles of democracy and shifting the foundations of philosophy from metaphysics to ethics using the humor of fuzzy logic. Normally as quiet as a church mouse, when rampant corruption and materialism overtook his much beloved Athens he rose to the challenge of his times championing the simple life, personal integrity, the peasantry, and democratic principles. Playing the drunken fool, he would meander around town schmoozing, repeating the same lame jokes and asking innocent sounding questions that made pillars of society appear foolish, while claiming all along that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. The Taoists were more subtle, but also leveraged the power of humor to teach peasants how to defend themselves using Tai Chi, or the humble and downright infantile cartoonish harmony of yin-yang dynamics, which were eventually integrated into most of the major schools of thought in Asia. Both, originated with tribal traditions, however, the Taoists developed an elaborate written tradition and could publish their work anonymously, while Socrates had inherited an oral tradition that didn't translate easily into a written one and, eventually, the wealthier Athenians killed him for his questionable sense of humor that dared to mock them in public and teach peasants how to organize and think for themselves. For centuries, throughout Europe, peasants celebrated the death of Socrates by drinking toasts to him in bars and inventing new Socratic jokes while, today, the Tao Te Ching has become perhaps the third or fifth most published book of all time and the most popular comic book in Asia renowned for its gentle kid friendly sense of humor. Twenty-five hundred years ago those living in big cities like Athens were much more familiar with the formidable humor of primitives who can tell jokes that can make a porn star blush and walk away although, admittedly, their wives tend to strongly discourage them to say the least. Down to earth tribal folk have often noted that for all the impressive knowledge, wealth, and technology that civilization has to offer, like the smallest of children, the simplest jokes tend to go right over the heads of civilized people who also have a bizarre tendency to surreptitiously flash mischievous grins and guilty looks even when they are good people who never do anything wrong! In stark contrast to ancient times, those of us living in civilization today share far less in common with our primitive ancestors frequently treating God, nature, the truth, and each other more like complete abstractions. Things have gotten so bad in recent years that mental diseases like anorexia are now spreading into developing countries along with protests against such common industry practices as magazines retouching photographs of already stick thin models and against toys such as Barbie dolls which can be so grossly disproportioned that, in real life, they would have to be seven foot tall for their internal organs to function properly. Hippies, and countless others, believe that modern civilization could benefit from sharing a few more popular organic metaphors for what it really means to be human. Combining Socratic wisdom with the harmony of the Taoists by personifying Mother Nature and Father Truth in our poetry is how some of us enjoy making the subjects all that much more pointedly personal for even nonbelievers, for we are all the children of nature and the truth. Civilized people tend to think of tribals as backwards and superstitious yet, according to forty years of surveys commissioned by the National Science Foundation, one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth. The irony is that, while academics have been increasingly complaining that Three Stooges slapstick and high tech just don't mix, academics themselves have also been insisting all along that everyone should learn how to ignore their own sense of humor by dogmatically pounding away at the excluded middle, as if, more elaborate Three Stooges slapstick is the solution to humanity's problems. The excluded middle is the dualistic western idea that, although some things might be gray areas or whatever, overall everything imaginable must either be true or false because anything that is equally true and false, or appears to be neither one, is just total nonsense usually best ignored or even suppressed. Regardless of the strength of anyone's convictions, the growing successful application of theories, like fuzzy logic and quantum mechanics, suggest that, obviously, the law of the excluded middle is merely a rough approximation, or good rule of thumb, that isn't always the easiest or most useful approach to problem solving and can become counterproductive by suppressing creativity. Apparently, more dualistic western civilization has risen to its present lofty heights by becoming early adopters of a more inflexible-but-subtle systematic forceful approach to problem solving that favors abstractions over humor providing the wealthy better control over the peasantry by focusing on truth and beauty to the exclusion of a great deal of salt of the earth humor that favors the peasants. Asian cultures attempted to do much the same with, for example, the civilized Chinese transforming the humorous pragmatic philosophy of the tribes into more romantic religious mysticism but, having much larger tribal and peasant populations, they were not nearly as successful at suppressing their sense of humor. However, thanks to the continuing advancement of modern technology, all of that now appears ready to change dramatically within the very near future and, as far as I'm concerned, the next scientific revolution just can't come soon enough because the current one is destroying the entire planet making it increasingly difficult to see how the punch lines could get much worse. According to the latest estimates, within twenty years there won't be enough wild fish left in any oceans for commercial fishing and, within fifty years, every wild land animal much larger than a dog will either be extinct or only exist in zoos. At the rate we're going, by the end of the century, some eighty percent of the surface of the earth will become desert and these shocking figures merely represent the tip of the iceberg of all the bad news our overpopulated, and all too often dysfunctional, modern civilization confronts. While I believe humanity and mother nature are both perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, in recent years, it has become obvious they could still use all the help they can get! So, against my better judgment, I foolishly decided to write this book. Foolishly, because I've never written anything longer than a few pages in my life, have no formal training whatsoever in any of these subjects, only have a high school education, have never attempted to extrapolate poetry from the Tao Te Ching, and never considered myself especially funny, artistic, or even literate (unless you count science fiction.) But, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I've been waiting half my life for somebody else to write this book only to realize its contents are anathema to mystical Taoists, academics, and the mainstream in general requiring a truly brain damaged mentally deranged hippie dippy like myself to help break the ice and explore the possibilities. Thankfully, from beginning to end, the entire book is merely composed of metaphorical bullshit and the only requirement for writing a book like this one is you have to be masochistic enough to shuffle the relevant concepts and metaphors around for decades on end searching for any humble and elegant simplicity. Its what the supposedly inscrutable Chinese call, "The Book that Can Never be Written" and, if nothing else, it teaches patience and beats banging your head against the wall but, believe it or not, its also a popular collaborative artform, mathematics, and natural philosophy that predates Stone Hinge by about six thousand years and is practiced by millions around the globe today. Last time I checked, there was a three volume set of potty humor published for anyone who happens to be a particular glutton for punishment, however, what distinguishes this genre of so-called "Oneness" poetry is that it includes what I refer to as "adult" potty humor, but can always treat every word as a mathematical variable, with no intrinsic meaning or value. It speaks to both the adult and the little kid in all of us with over half the poems being capable of being interpreted somewhat differently by children and adults. Those of us who read and write these poems sometimes affectionately refer to them as, "Our stupid poetry" and never cease to be amazed at how many complete idiots the stupidest poems and jokes can inspire to make a real difference in this world. Anybody can use whatever metaphors they happen to prefer, but those of us who share these poems with one another shamelessly plagiarize all of the more off-the-wall characters, plots, prose, and song lyrics from popular culture and, believe it or not, everyone usually recognizes immediately what works best precisely because the poetry is so mathematical and is constantly growing and evolving along with popular culture, while still conserving its primitive tribal origins. Normally, people tend to think of poetry and jokes as being able to say anything anybody wants however, due to the mathematics, this particular genre literally has a mind of its own. Many of us treat our poems more like a beloved family pet that can provide endless comfort and personal growth, but also happens to be perfectly capable of defending itself from anybody foolish enough to attempt to tease or abuse it. Due to the intrinsic yin-yang dynamics, the poems perform a sort of mental judo, much like Socrates with his questions, where the harder you attempt to make them say anything specific the harder they will throw your own bullshit back in your face, not to mention that nobody who enjoys reading and writing this style of poetry will ever take your poems seriously. With our poetry, virtue is its own reward and vice its own punishment and I frequently compare writing them to attempting to assemble a giant table top jig-saw puzzle when you don't have anywhere near all the pieces and no real idea what the puzzle is supposed to look like when fully assembled. Ironically, I've had women beg me to write more sexy poems only to explain to them that the poetry is all mathematical and, sometimes, even I don't know what a particular poem is supposed to be about until after working on it for years. Anybody is free to interpret any poem however they prefer or write their own poems but, personally, I would describe our poetry as illustrating how the greater self-evident truth and beauty in life justify themselves by unconditionally lending meaning to everything in existence including whatever we might consider complete bullshit. Our very existence and awareness itself can be said to require faith and these poems nurture faith in ourselves and our personal journey by remaining as purely descriptive as possible and several poems being famous for normally appearing quite beautiful but, when read in specific contexts, equally capable of being appreciated as humorous. Seeing the humor within the beauty and vice versa we see both in a new light. Whether anybody else cares to admit it or not, as far as I'm concerned, we are all both flaming geniuses and drooling idiots and if anybody owns the copyrights on ignorance they have not been forthcoming. Therefore, for all these reasons, and any outrageously stupid comments from the peanut gallery, these poems are public domain, like any other mathematics and philosophies, and any damned fool should feel perfectly free to reproduce the poetry or write their own and, like me, sometimes spout really stupid crap you live to regret. Whenever the shit hits the fan, ducking is anyone's natural first response, however with entire ecologies steadily collapsing and weapons being the single largest manufactured export of the wealthiest country in the world, in my humble opinion, merely ducking is no longer a viable option. Due to a prolonged drought, a mass migration has ensued from Africa into Europe and, over the next century, migrations just like it are projected to occur around the globe. When confronted with the sheer magnitude of the world's current problems it becomes glaringly obvious that what the world needs now, more than ever before, is truly creative thinking entirely outside of the box which is something poems like these can elicit since no individual can actually tell any of the poems what to say. These poems are so far outside the proverbial box and conventional thinking that they literally take on a life of their own assembling and organizing themselves, while we idiots who write them merely do all the footwork of weeding and cultivating by endlessly shuffling all the metaphors around for any humble and elegant simplicity. What makes my personal poetry and philosophy somewhat unique is I've developed my own homegrown version of Contextual linguistic analysis that empowers me to connect all the dots in a self-consistent, nontrivial, and demonstrable fashion which, even with their rather grim sense of humor, academics can grasp in their own traditionally awkward, rigorous, determined fashion. In technobabble, I utilize a Functionalist approach that emphasizes authenticity over knowledge, and the greater context over any specific content, to expand upon the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stephen Pepper by extrapolating poetry from the Tao Te Ching and comparing any metaphors generated against the physical evidence for any intrinsic yin-yang dynamics. Which might sound really impressive to some, but is just so much obtuse technobabble for how I endlessly search for the humble simplicity of crap rolling downhill and the elegant simplicity of poetry in motion on the assumption that both the smallest pile of crap and smallest of puddles can be the busiest place that sheds light upon the Big Picture or, as Mr Spock famously said on Star Trek: "Fascinating". As insane as it might sound for me to be joking and carrying on here about physics, philosophy, neurology, linguistics, and other subjects I've never had any formal training in, these are the kinds of things my friends and countless others have frequently discussed into the wee hours of the morning. Likewise, as much fun as I poke at academics, I'm proud to say I consider several physicists, philosophers, and other academics good friends who have seldom failed to make me think but, of course, you never heard that from me. Still, like I said, I've waited half my life for somebody with formal training to write about these things only to remain disappointed to this very day and, sadly, I've never come across another philosophy I liked better than my own which stresses the creativity, humor, and wonder in life every bit as much as any truth and beauty. Even if you happen to master the fuzzy logic of the Tao Te Ching and already know a lot of the relevant research, philosophy, and linguistics its the kind of insanely tedious editing job that would make almost anybody alive climb the walls and dream about computers powerful enough to do the work for them. Unfortunately, supercomputers that can do the job may not be available for another twenty years and, then, there's the additional problem of someone having to program the computer when, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has written anything remotely like my own philosophy. Part of the problem is that the version of Taoism everybody has become familiar with are the modern mystical versions written by the civilized Chinese, while what I am writing here is a throwback to the primitive tribes who first began collectively formulating the Pakua as a useful tool and meditative practice in its how rite. Only in the last half century, have archaeologists discovered the original pragmatic versions of the Tao Te Ching, in the isolated southern mountains of China, and begun to compare the two. "Philosophical Taoism" and "Chuang Taoism" are two of the more popular known schools of thought which are closely related to my own philosophy "but, even so-called "Philosophical Taoism" is actually a form of mysticism that resembles a psychology more than any recognized philosophy. The civilized Chinese incorporated the mystical concept of wu-wei-wu (do without doing) into their version of the Tao Te Ching and I replace it here with the much more explicit statement that whenever an individual is content just to be themselves, making fewer distinctions between who they are and what they are doing, they express greater personal integrity and embody poetry in motion in the present moment. Some might protest that "poetry in motion", or "ignorant bliss", is mysticism but, all I can say is you don't know what you've been missing. In recent years, the AMA has recommended meditation as a mentally and physically beneficial practice and fMRI brain imaging has been used to quantify happiness based on measurable physical processes in the brain and, specifically, used to establish that meditating Buddhist monks are happier and more content than your average Joe with brains that are even structurally different. Anyway, its a subtle, but crucial, distinction that delineates my philosophy from the much more popular mystical Taoism and Zen Buddhism and, among other things, empowers me to more fully explore the humor of the Tao Te Ching without being constrained to the obscure dry tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that the civilized Taoists and academic Socratic philosophers have traditionally been forced to rely upon in order to avoid persecution and censorship by the mainstream establishment. For over two thousand years mysticism appears to have worked pretty well for countless civilized Chinese and, today, Taoist mysticism is still very much alive and well in Malaysia in particular, but what I'm writing about here is a much more primitive collaborative artform and pragmatic philosophy that people around the world still enjoy practicing to this day and that has never required any mysticism, metaphysics, or enlightened masters to interpret anything. Using the gentle humor of the Tao Te Ching it can incorporate comedy from the likes of Yogi Berra, Yoda, and Stephen Wright and be explained so simply even a five year old can comprehend the basic idea. As much as anything else, the poems can be said to describe the mathematics of nature and existence itself and anyone of any age can make significant contributions to this genre. In fact, the poem "Shit Happens" is the first nursery rhyme taught to me by other children who all agreed the poem was somehow magical. What it expresses is the five fold supersymmetry of the fractal dragon equation of the Tao Te Ching, similar to the last five notes in one of Beethoven's songs progressively slamming home the symmetry of the collective notes in the song, and in ten or twenty years computers should be powerful enough to spit out poems just like it by the tens of thousands and powerful enough to illuminate the mathematical foundations of a Metaphorical Theory of Everything and Nothing. Whilst I wax poetic, crack stupid jokes, and spout a fair amount of technobabble, I try to keep it all as simple as possible and to explain as much as I can as I go along. However, you won't find my definition of "syntropy" in any dictionary and, here, it refers to the tendency of anything to become more efficient or creative the more humble or complex it becomes in any given context with, for example, both a black hole and the neurons of our brains conveying any mass, energy, and information with the highest possible efficiency of anything their size. The universe can be described as both creatively and efficiently expanding ever outward from the initial impetus of the Big Bang towards ever greater maximum entropy production or creativity and, paradoxically, also towards the humble anonymity and irresistible finale of a Big Crunch. Its what physicists call yin-yang push-me-pull-you dynamics with the cartoon characters of Tom and Jerry chasing one another being a classic example of Contextual vagueness when you can no longer tell what the hell is going on if anything. Creativity is transformed into greater efficiencies and vice versa as the universe organizes itself, with the overall process reflecting both a Goldilocks Principle and Murphy's Law which I elaborate upon in later chapters, but which can be expressed in terms of both flow dynamics and juxtapositions, integrals and differentials, as the identity of everything including space and time themselves goes down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference on any given occasion. Synergy is the only other word which I define differently which I explain later on is due to dictionaries sometimes being lobbied like congress as people declare war on each other's minds and souls. Anyway, other than those two words, every definition for every word is straight out of any common dictionary however, more often than not, I use the second or third most popular definitions which are just more vague making them better suited for expressing the topic. As much as possible, I limit the technobabble to basic concepts that anyone can easily look up online for more information, however, my personal experience is that if people cannot sit down and calmly discuss their ignorance and agree upon the definitions of even the simplest two syllable words they are usually better off not talking at all. Cartoons and caricatures are often developed for the express purpose of promoting networking systems logic as a way to address whatever might trouble or confuse anyone and some primitive tribes and tribal hippies recommend exploring their thoughts and feelings using the humor of cockroaches and chickens. The characters of Groucho Marx and Oscar the Grouch portray classic cockroaches, or raging egomaniacs, while the Three Stooges and Gonzo the Muppet are timeless examples of chicken flock humor with all of these simple characters highlighting the central role of memory in basic networking systems logic and, more personally, in the rudiments of toddler potty humor. English speaking cultures don't have this tradition, nevertheless, we have our own amazing comedians who perform the exact same styles of comedy and, not having inherited any cultural traditions, just means I am all that much freer to mix and match comedic styles anyway I prefer. Jim Henson and Dr Seuss where both geniuses as far as many of us are concerned and Big Bird is NOT an evil commie plot! Its the same essentially infantile left leaning Yogi Berra and Will Rogers style humor, however, tribals don't require complex explanations, much less, complex institutions and, with fewer taboos about such things, feel freer to express views that civilization tends to suppress. Among primitive tribes lightly salty adult potty humor that covers every aspect of life can be considered family entertainment and seldom, if ever, thought of as particularly political, rather, its the only material any wannabe comedians among them have to work with. In recent decades, even a few physicists have begun performing amateur stand-up comedy, holding contests, and waxing poetic in this sometimes infantile fashion with some of them, perhaps, entirely unaware that they are embracing a popular tribal pastime and repeating potty humor jokes literally older than monuments still enjoyed by billions around the globe. At times, it can be difficult for any of us to see the forest through the trees and making it easier to do so is what gentle potty humor, poetry, and philosophy are really all about in my opinion. Contributing whatever can be observed in the world around us, including abstract physics, empowers me to expand upon the jokes, and vice versa, producing a virtuous circle or vicious cycle depending upon your personal taste. Countless wannabe comedians and truly brain damaged mentally deranged hippie dippies like myself can easily adopt the position that how much sense anything makes or how funny anything is, including abstract logic and physics, just depends upon the specific context. One trade-off in abandoning the law of the excluded middle is that everything imaginable becomes much more context dependent requiring somewhat less beautiful and more humorous models of everything observable. The more we can treat the principle of the excluded middle as just another tool in our tool box, rather than insisting it is the only worthwhile tool for every job, the more often we can catch a glimpse of the forest through the trees by taking into account, whether humorously or otherwise, more of what we do not and cannot know in any given situation. Those familiar with academic philosophy might be tempted to compare mine to epistemic Contextualism or even so-called "Strong Contextualism" however, as far as I'm concerned, these are merely categories invented by academics for treating Contextualism as just another analytical tool in their toolbox, rather than, a subject that has a life of its own. Likewise, some might be tempted to call this an ordinary language philosophy, but all the technobabble it includes makes that a stretch to say the least and, rather than such constraining labels, I prefer to just call it Pragmatic, Metaphoric, or Taoist Contextualism or even my own personal "Bullshit Philosophy". Here, the only assumption is that the mental and physical, abstract and personal, rational and irrational, philosophical and comedic, beautiful and humorous are all yin and yang and, therefore, must all be equally expressed in order to better grasp their individual contributions to the Big Picture. As much drudgery as it requires to write a book like this, relying upon metaphors and the greater context alone I allow my words to rise up with those of all my countless brothers and sisters who came before me who also chose to allow their words to speak for themselves in the collective voice of humanity, mother nature, and the greater truth. Using this maddeningly infantile and, simultaneously, outrageously tedious pattern matching approach, I throw caution to the wind and allow my words to speak for themselves merely by treating every word as a mathematical variable. To have even the slightest chance of ever completing a book like this within your lifetime requires first studying the Tao Te Ching for at least fifteen years, absorbing its convoluted fuzzy logic by osmosis. The text can be said to assemble itself and we who write it merely shuffle all the metaphors without having to think too much about what has to say and stay focused on what it does not say instead. Ironically, having no intrinsic meaning themselves, our words can lend everything more meaning including distinctions such as what is the truth or bullshit, physical or mental, beautiful or humorous, existent or nonexistent which will always transform into one another in extreme situations. A trivial example is that the human mind and brain have been documented as substituting for one another's role at the most fundamental level of their organization with the assumption here being that what we consider mental and physical is ultimately context dependent. Using the 12,000 year old metaphoric logic of the Pakua I can incorporate any arbitrary number of metaphors into my pattern matching efforts and free my words to rearrange themselves in as egalitarian a fashion as possible reflecting the four fold supersymmetry of a universal recursion in the law of identity. In spite of all the obtuse technobabble, ironically, it's usually much easier for me to just tell people that I'm a Contextualist rather than attempting to explain what Pragmatic Taoism is or even what being a hippie means anymore. Pragmatic Taoism is virtually unknown even among conventional Taoists and is about as esoteric as the subject gets while, these days, calling yourself a hippie can refer to almost anything. Its just much easier for me to describe myself as a Contextualist, rather than attempt to address stereotypes of hippies as drug crazed commies hugging trees and running through the woods naked babbling about free love or whatever or all Taoists as quiet ascetic mystics contemplating their navels. For me, Contextualism merely refers to surrendering to the greater context or unfolding truth of our lives which, ultimately, gives everything meaning including, for example, any of our words only having demonstrable meaning in specific contexts. Along with other descriptions of my philosophy, that last bit might be difficult to wrap your head around, however, that's as straightforward an explanation as I can possibly give in plain English other than to say its all about acceptance or surrender. Any difficulty in understanding it can usually be ascribed to the concept being extremely foreign and, hopefully, as I go along it will all make more sense anybody should feel free to ignore most of the technobabble if they want and just play around with all the concepts and absorb the book through osmosis which, of course, is a crucial aspect of how I'm writing it! All of my friends tend to agree with me that if you can't explain something so a five year old can understand than you really don't understand it yourself and I consider the jokes and poetry in this book to be much more important than all the technobabble which, strange as it might sound, is included here merely to help me write more poems and jokes so I can figure out what all the technobabble is actually referring to! Some claim Contextualism is merely a new axiom of logic, however, this specific axiom appears likely to soon be declared a law of nature, meaning, that a new scientific revolution is now upon us. While traditional metaphysical approaches have repeatedly failed to produce the next scientific revolution, over the last half century, Contextualism has made steady advances in almost every branch of the sciences and is poised to assume a more central role with the advent of the next generation of computers capable of crunching enormous numbers that the human brain manages routinely. The ongoing global impact of the continuing rise of the Contextual sciences, such as quantum mechanics and Fractal Geometry, can hardly be overstated, however, this book is about the broader philosophical and comedic implications and not any specific trends which so many others have already written about extensively. This is a book about primitive potty humor and philosophy first, and only incorporates all the technobabble wherever it might be helpful by bringing something meaty to the table for people to chew on or to expand upon the central theme of human ignorance and crap randomly falling from sky, yet, inexorably rolling downhill in an extremely predictable manner.
