[Mind's Eye] Re: Machines Of Loving Grace

"machines"...

I'd suggest thermodynamic "systems"... closed, open, adiabatic...
and "processes" constant pressure, constant volume...

They actually correspond to individual, community, environment,
universal change, energy considerations of all kinds, properties or
nature / behaviour / happenings ... and even history, the kind that
overwhelmed Hegel !

On Oct 29, 10:51 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The current crisis is not one of banking or economics, but something
> much more basic.  One might say this is our attitude towards 'machines
> of loving grace'.  In short, we live in the fantasy that "the machine"
> will put things right, returning to an equilibrium as our
> interventions are little more than 'of mice and men'. The real world
> of the environment and the exchange world of economics return to
> equilibrium after fluctuations.  It's very tempting to believe this -
> one might see Gaia as a case in point - the planet and other species
> flourishing after we've crazed ourselves to extinction through
> consumption and wars.
>
> You can pick up the ideas of 'all watched over by machines of loving
> grace' here -http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2160186460/All-Watched-Over-By-M...
>
> A review with an economic twist can be found here -http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/the-natural-chaos-of-markets.html
>
> My own work has often focused on the difference between espoused
> theories and theories-in-action.  In some subjects like chemistry the
> relationship between theory and practice is good - if you follow the
> rules and recipes you get what you intended and the explanations make
> sense if you study enough.  There is a working core, you can trust or
> check the work of others and speculation can eventually be tested on
> what is not accepted as 'settled'.  In the human sciences this is much
> more difficult, not least because we do not exclude much in human
> society that prevents science.  Few of us have much aptitude for
> science, perhaps especially for its negation of ideology soaked up
> from community.
>
> I always noted as a teacher that I was more comfortable saying 'you
> just can't handle the maths' (unlikely for me as I'd teach people like
> that without the stuff), than in saying 'you just don't get argument
> because you can't let go of any prejudice'.  Teaching people to think
> for themselves contains a paradox.  One finds much one is expected to
> teach based on dross.  I know of no country in which history is taught
> without gross ideological distortion.  We hear the Japanese rip out
> pages in textbooks on the 'rape of Nanking' yet it's rare to find
> Brits who know much of our squalid imperialism and involvement in much
> similar.  In the middle east you will find a more accurate picture of
> the Crusades than we get, but the Jihad that is the mirror image is
> revered.
>
> Most people like to imagine themselves as individual, but if we're
> honest we are subjects of machines of loving grace.  One makes one's
> way in an economy (machine) on a planet (environmental machine).  I
> think these are only "machines" because we don't examine them.
> Examination often ends in paradox - logical positivism eventually
> conceded its own quest to extirpate metaphysics was - oops -
> metaphysical.  My own guess is that rigorous thinking seeks to
> discover and eliminate dross - this involves a great deal of courage
> in accepting you are likely made of same oneself!
>
> I'm a maverick systems theorist and conceive of our social-political
> arguments (and the systems themselves) as houses of cards.  one looks
> for the soft spots that can bring the lot down or as places to put in
> effort to keep the ball rolling.  No argument survives this process
> more than twenty seconds with such soft spots arising.  Most don't
> have either the energy or tools to keep going and run to the 'bliss'
> of the machine (religion, patriotism, left and right etc.).  We are
> thus robots of one 'machine' or another, not individuals, hardly
> people if we're not careful.

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