Tag: Thought-as-a-System

“It Doesn’t Describe Them, it Infects Them”: Quick Comment on “Barry’s Economics” Episode

negativegeographyLeave a comment

I just watched another excellent “Barry’s Economics” episode from today (31/5/26) — “What Banksy Shows Us About Power”.

Barry has a great gift for making essential “negative insights” (as I insist on calling them) entertaining and clear. Subscribing to his channel is a brilliant idea.

By “negative insights” I mean unlearning the damaging lessons that have led us to this apocalypse.

One of these damaging lessons is “the tragedy of the commons”, which was (as he notes) disproven (negated) by Elinor Ostrom, earning her the Nobel Prize in 2009.

I’m going to assume you’ve watched his episode, so I don’t have to summarize everything he said. I’ll only summarize the lesson the video provides:

Even though the “tragedy” of common ownership of land and resources has been disproven, it’s still being taught widely in schools — particularly in graduate business schools. And this teaching boils down to convincing students that “human nature is selfish.”

The reason I want to call attention to this episode in particular is because he is beautifully illustrating things I keep going on about in my own less entertaining manner. So, in this scribbled note, I just want to say — Looky there! That’s what I mean when I say “everything is a story” — we act according to how we tell the story of ourselves and the “nature” of the world. We can’t hide behind the excuse of nature. Nature is not causing our problems. The way we imagine the world and ourselves is doing that.

The theory that we are selfish teaches us to be selfish. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that benefits a hierarchical system of control. And these “hierarchical systems of control” are also not written into the genes as “human nature.” There have been many cultures that operated without hierarchical control quite beautifully.

This excuse of human nature is an enchantment that numbs us into accepting a yoke and corrals us into behaving in predictable ways, which can be converted into profit-generating algorithms.

This is what my previous essay was also going on about (long and complicated as it was, I apologize, but I needed to dig into this as precisely as possible for my own sanity).

In fact, this entire website has focused on negating the story of natural human selfishness — a story which is like a mental virus that consumes our unfathomable potential; or, a kind of witchery or predatorial trick that dumbs us down and makes us susceptible to manipulation. My general point has been that if we are aware of Thought as a Story — as a helpful fiction, at best — then we can use thought without being blinded by it. Then thought becomes open-ended, metaphoric and prismatic, rather than literal, dogmatic and conclusive. And this would make us immune to positive conclusions, which can only put an end to learning and leave us with a final idea of “human nature”, which is self-fulfillig prophecy.

Or, as Barry said in the video, when referring to the selfish behavior of economics students who are taught the fake “tragedy of the commons” (or the fake (but self-fuilfilling) story of human selfishness): “The theory created the actions, not the other way around. You might think, right? Well, maybe selfish people are just drawn to economics. Maybe it’s just who applies. Well, actually, other researchers have tested that, too. They measured students before and after taking economics classes, right? The same students. And what they found was that taking economics classes, specifically learning that humans are self-interested by nature, made students measurably less generous and less interested in contributing to shared goals. Because the humans are selfish theory, it doesn’t describe them, it infects them.”

Aphorisms (or Short Notes to Clear the Attic), Volume 1

negativegeography4 Comments
Photo by Yashasvi Nagda on Pexels.com

  • I wonder if bad eyesight is caused by a disinclination to see the look on other people’s faces. We blur sight and retreat to senses which are less susceptible to duplicitous signals. So, the eyes atrophy or wear out with misuse.

  • When I take off my glasses, I end up listening more closely. Then the Other listens more closely too. And all they can see in my own blissfully blurred face is a good-natured ignoramus, which tends to awaken a spirit of charity, if not downright pity. Thus, we both become transfigured so long as at least one of us remains blurry.

  • The centrality of myself remains stubbornly pre-Galilean. *

  • What I “know” of another person is only my story of the story they tell about themselves.

  • Our personalities are merely characters in imaginary dramas. When the drama shifts, the personality shifts. If the drama ends, “we” end. Hence, we cling to dramas.

  • The imaginary voice is speaking to an imaginary person. The “I” and the “self” that are being addressed are both part of the imaginary performance.

  • Yes, it’s an inquiry into myself, but it’s not about “me”, as in my personal history or problems. It’s about the common momentum of thought that runs “me.”
  • If we make this conscious distinction between thought and being, then we are able to move in and out of the shapes imposed on perception by thought and language. This allows us to remain somewhat aloof from who we think we are.
  • Whatever we are, we’re not found in passing thoughts. They are merely the traces of our passing.

  • I learn from everything that goes wrong, and everything is always going wrong. *

  • I don’t write because I know something. I write because I don’t. *

  • But it’s not like I’m trying to do something. It’s more like something else is trying to do something and “I” keep getting in the way. And all this tripping over myself to avoid what it wants looks like “effort.” It’s a seductive pretense.

  • Writing happens when effort fails.

  • The only light the “I” produces is the light of its own combustive friction. This friction is produced by trying to avoid the revealing light of awareness. This friction is the cause of Hellfire. Hellfire is the light of heaven burning away.

  • Self-discovery is the discovery of nothing.

  • Self-discovery is the exploration of the cosmos, because the discovery of my absence is the discovery of everything else. But we turn our backs on this larger Being merely because it disturbs the small image of who we thought we were.

  • Writing is neither a means to an end, nor an end in itself. There is a third possibility. Writing is merely what happens when I’m learning. It’s a necessary corollary of the process, but neither a means nor an end.

  • If a necessary corollary to something larger is repressed, then the larger thing also can’t form. But we still can’t focus on the corollary as a means towards the larger thing.
  • I say things after I already know them. I know things silently prior to speaking. I speak in order to hold the surface image steady against a barrage of anomalous information.
Read More »

Preface to “Aphorisms”

negativegeography3 Comments
Photo by Ku00e1ssia Melo on Pexels.com

I’m a little embarrassed to title something “Aphorisms”, because it seems a little too pretentious and presumptuous. But I recently overheard 30 seconds of a book review of some philosopher’s book of aphorisms as I was walking past a radio. And the reviewer noted that aphorisms tend towards concision (obviously) and humor. And that’s the combination I need.

And when I started scanning through what I already wrote, I realized that I might be able to distill the essence of all these words to a nub, or many little nubs. And when I started throwing them in a list, I noticed that there’s a natural ebb and flow to the nubs. And with a little rough tweaking here and there, and the addition of a few new nubs, the ebbs and flows take on a certain rhythm and direction, without the need for a unifying voice or any tiresomely self-conscious Self, such as the one who is speaking now.

Admittedly, these nubs, ebbs and flows still came out to 37 pages, which doesn’t seem too concise after all. But that’s 6,129 fewer pages than the essays in total. So, count yourselves lucky.

I broke them into three “volumes” (so far). And I’ll post one every few days. I allowed some similar observations to sneak into each volume, because the different contexts add enough nuance to justify the repetition.

So, the whole thing ends up forming something in between an essay and a disjointed list of one-liners. They were fun to compile, tweak and expand. So, I hope they are fun to read.

I’m not sure this ends up “better” or “worse”, but it’s different. And as a different “approach” (an almost headless approach, trusting the connective tissue to form on its own, trusting it to make more sense than the sum of individual observations) it cuts out the middleman (“me”), and hones in on some of the essential insights that might otherwise get lost in the verbose flow of narrative. (I mean, I can’t picture too many people who actually read all this stuff. So, this is like digging up a few of the potatoes that probably got lost in the bed).

So, maybe it’s both better and worse, because these “nubs” also miss more subtle narrative themes that are only possible within the more long-winded essays (which includes this preface).

And now there’s the possibility of a hybrid form of essay, which I might try later.

I should note that any hyperlinked asterisks lead to the essay where the aphorism (or something similar) can be found in its natural habitat.