Selfishness and the Art of Living

Selfishness and living. Some of us seem better at one than the other but I believe they they are inextricably linked. One cannot exist without the other. Selfishness is at the core of everything. It’s chemistry, it’s energy. It’s at the very base of existence. Competition is selfishness but it’s also the way of things. The difference between humans and pure energy is that we believe we have some choice. Generally, we chose to live with others. Why?Think of anything that you do from day to day. You can chose anything, from the most apparently inconsequential right up to the path you have chosen in education, work and relationships and at its very centre you can trace the driving force down to selfishness. The need for us do do things which satisfy our own needs above the needs of any other entity in the universe. Even this text serves my own purposes. Anything that someone else might gain from it is, unfortunately, just a happy coincidence.

Selfishness. The term itself brings up negative connotations. Selfishness opposes selflessness, an goal toward which surely all good people head. Yet understanding the natural selfish inclinations we have can help us to direct it in a way that is beneficial to those other than the self. To try to suppress our selfishness is possibly a futile goal and could be sapping the motivation and drive to take action. I will attempt to describe how the two are actually different paths to the one. How selfishness is actually the driving motivation for all human action and interaction. In order to grasp this concept it might be useful to look at an example of a common action which might be construed normally as selflessness. We will start with a simple example. One which doesn’t delve to deeply into moral motivations. Making a cup of tea for your partner in the morning. What is the possible motivation for this act. It seems fairly simple. One possible one could be simply doing something nice for a person who you care about. Another might be that to wait for your partner to make their own tea could slow you down and take time away from the ‘important’ things that you have to do that day. Both motivations lead to the same result. The tea is made and everyone is happy. Lets take on the latter reasoning first as this would seem to have a much closer correlation to selfishness. I could not agree more. When taking into consideration the tasks that need to be completed in the day, one has to make a decision about priorities. What is the best order of events which suit my greater needs. If the coming events take place at work then there is nothing I can do to complete the allotted tasks until I arrive at work. The doors don’t open until x o’clock, therefore at this moment it is a lesser priority. I desire a cup of coffee and I am aware that my partner will desire a cup of tea. We both need to get ready and it will add only the smallest amount of energy to make a cup of tea at the same time so as to facilitate both a speedier exit to complete the subsequent tasks and will also invoke a pleasurable outcome from my partner which will make me feel better, more comfortable. If I make myself a cup of coffee and no tea for my partner, there will be time added the partner makes theirs plus the negative consequences of the displeasure of my partner. Therefore the choice is easy. Make the tea and relax. In the earlier scenario, the person makes the tea purely out of ’selflessness’. Here the motivation is more complex. What would drive someone to commit this selfless act. I would argue that the basic principal is the same. On possibly a less conscious level the person wishes to gain from the act. What could the person possibly be looking to gain from this. Probably some of the same things as the first person. The ’selfless’ person does it for the love of the other. Here we have a gain. Love. The feeling of safety that comes in numbers. The ’selfless’ person might do it because they know that they would do it for them. So there is a reciprocal understanding whereby each works for the other and each’s needs are met with the least amount of effort. This is a different slant on what one might usually associate with selfishness. Normally we would say that a selfish person would just make themselves a cup of coffee in spite of the needs or desires of the other. I believe that this is a distortion of the meaning of the word. This is a case where the individual feels that they need no other’s assistance or approval to get things done. The selfish person uses the assistance of others to get things done and takes into consideration the implications of their action to get the best possible outcomes for themselves in any particular situation, while priming the way for an easier path when the next event takes place.

The selfless person has developed the art of selfishness to the point where these are not conscious decisions but ones which facilitate personal needs with the least possible emotional effort. One might ask, if people are all so selfish, then why aren’t people just out killing each other. Well, in answer to that, they are. All over the world they are. People give a myriad of reasons for this from personal grievances right through to religion but kill each other they do and for the same reason that causes people to love. Selfishness. This is the key. The thing is that selfishness is our primal drive. It is the thing that is at the base of every decision we make.

But there is a mechanism whereby we can get what we want without killing each other. Compromise. Compromise is the tool of the most skilled artisan of selfishness. When wielded with care it is the tool that returns the most net gain in the majority of situations. How does compromise fit into this scenario when it seems to fly in the face of selfishness? Again you need to come back to the fact that the prime goal of humans is to fulfill their needs. Facilitation of those needs can often be achieved by coming to a compromise with another person. Perhaps the task can be done quicker and easier with two people. Perhaps you are incapable of completing the task at all on your own. This is where the art of compromise comes in. Fulfilling your own needs with the least possible effort. Certain compromises may seem to not be an even balance of gain over loss. One might agree to something where they seem to be doing more work or giving up more than the other person. Not to worry, the imbalance won’t last for long. There are not many situations where the balance isn’t forthcoming. That doesn’t mean that both parties are necessarily happy about it. Each party involved in the compromising contract is looking for something. If not a gain at least an even trade. Usually, in the case of the even trade, the balance is swayed in the direction of one of the parties, at least in perception, in the form of emotional debt or in ‘credit’ built with a third party. The credit of which I speak is the belief of the third party that I am a person of worth, who might justify a good deed sometime in the future. Of course, the third party succumbs to the same rules as the others and undoubtedly will be looking for a return in the future. These compromises are a transaction where perception can be the loose change at the bottom of the couch that makes everything worth it. It’s like playing the stock market, pride forcing up the value of your commodities. This is the fundamental basis of human relationships. The compromise is just an expansion of the basic unit of selfishness. The power of two. Working together, each looking for the greatest gain for the least possible work. The good work throwing in that extra credit for good measure. Nothing is for free. We may not feel it but it is there, the money is in the meter and I don’t plan on going anywhere until it’s run out even if I have to stand here for an hour doing absolutely nothing. Nothing. That is the goal, to get as close to doing nothing as possible.

Questions and Answers

I am getting this down because I need to. This is the beginnings of my writing. I have put it off for long enough. I began thinking about life and other things, I don’t know when. I suppose it was only seven or so years ago. Before that I think I just went through life or life went through me. Maybe I had the beginnings of it before then, but I can’t be sure. I never really applied myself to it until then. Now I can’t stop. My mind is constantly filled with notions, possibilities. A free flowing exchange of ideas, like a chemical reaction. Ideas of the way the world, the universe is, should be. I have my own ideas. I have been too lazy to really study the ideas of others. It seems easier to get together my own ideas then try to prove them later by taking what I want from those that have already been accepted by the public. I think that this has served me well up until now. Sometimes learning too much, I think, can stop one from thinking for themselves. This is why I think I have chosen now. I was just watching a documentary on Satre. I’ve heard his name and knew he was a philosopher. I had also heard of existentialism before but never really knew what it meant. That is why I am here. I think some if those ideas may tie in with my own. What is so amazing about these ideas? They are ones which have floated around my feeble brain for years. The idea that we are selfish beings. This is just one of my concepts. Yes mine. Maybe I am a philosopher. I need to write this down to find out if I really am. Whether my thoughts have any meaning. Are my thoughts worth anything to anyone else? Who knows. What a powerful thing they are to me. They drive me insane from day to day.

I was just called to duty. A duty that I love but just one of the many duties of existence which breaks the flow of my thoughts. The ones which I have trouble grasping, holding onto. My son is a driving force in my life. Why? That seems obvious and it is. The thing is I want to know what drives us to think the way we do. Why do we love? What drives me to even want to know. The mind, the world, the universe is so complex. It would be easier to let it just happen. Many do. Go through it without even a thought about why. The questions, the possibilities are the things which drive me insane. Insane in short bursts. The thing which drives me to habitually blurt out unfinished questions and affirmations then struggle to think about the subject, any subject which might flow from that inspiration. My mind is a trap. A trap from which there is no escape. I don’t want to. I want to live forever in the hope that one day I might understand……something. Not the sort of understanding that comes from hearing a recitation of how an internal combustion engine works. The sort of understanding that comes from knowing. Just knowing something. Intangible, but truly understanding something as fact without knowing the details. I think that this is the key for me. I want to know and I want to know it all. I don’t need wealth, although it would be nice. It would be nice because maybe it would allow me the time to get to understand why I am here. Whether we are just meaningless. I think I am going mad. Maybe writing all of this down will fend off the inevitable. I can see myself huddled in a corner with just tiny sparks of the meanings of everything flashing off constantly in my head. Everything in the universe passing through my thoughts at once and unable to hold onto any of it. Maybe this is something that I almost wish for myself sometimes. To know for a certainty even a tiny bit the way things are. To know that what I know is not the misunderstandings of someone else just spinning around and repeated in my imaginings, but the truth. That is what I am here for. The truth. That is what I want to know. Why? Not how. When, is a fact. Who, is a fact. How, can be known, even if difficult, but why? That is something that we could ask forever with no answer. To know for yourself is the only way. You cannot know by reading this or anything else but I think that that is what I want. Yes I think so. Ultimately. But I hope that understanding even a part of those other questions might help. Maybe they will just help me to understand what my question is. But I start here. Yes, here.

On The Iraq War

copied and pasted from my posts on PhysicsForums)

Ahhh, mmmmmm, errrrr. I have a hard time dealing with the hardcore, pro-war stance.

“A world court, world government or any international body restricting the activities of the USA in protecting its citizens and interests is a complete anathema to me.”

I don’t think that anyone believes otherwise. The debatable point is whether Iraq posed a direct threat to US citizens to protect against.

“In all matters, the USA will try to proceed in a manner agreeable to the 45 nations who supported us in the war.”

I know Australia’s one but the vast majority of the population of Oz wouldn’t agree. The US also has unilateral agreements with other nations which effectively exempt them from being accused of war crimes. Who is manipulating the UN and does the US really care if they do things which are agreeable? (I also marched in a 100,000 protest)

“The Palestinians must have a secure and economically viable homeland. Israel must help economically and be much less rigid in its policies. An economic partnership of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel would be a wonderful thing.”

Agreed.

“N. Korea is not an immediate threat to the USA. It is an immediate threat to its neighbors, who must act in their own self-interest to avoid preemptive action by the USA.”

Huh???

“Iran, with some covert help from the USA, is likely to align itself with the USA once it achieves a totally secular government.”

What the…???

“Well Zero, I would like to agree with you. Other peoples, however, have interests in violent opposition to our interests. What course of action do we follow when peaceful means fail?”

I’m in shock and awe???

I don’t usually resort to this and I know that this is not an argument which holds much water, but you are obviously on drugs. Or maybe it’s me and your post is all just an hallucination. Seriously, wake up and smell the public opinion.

In answer to the original questions

Will the Iraqi people be free to decide the fate of their oil?

Of course not. The majority of oil will go to the US under rules set down by the US. After they put US contractors in, they will probably change the food for oil program into a oil for rebuilding program.

“Do they have the right to have it traded in EU Dollars after the ‘rebuild’?”

Seems like a fair question. Why anyone should think they they should trade in US dollars is beyond me. The US does not own the world, even though they might hold them to ransom

“Who should be the ones deciding?”

After the disaster of the war, that’s a difficult question to answer. Iraq will probably be split into a whole heap of political factions, but should free elections be held then it would be logical that the new Iraqi government do it.

——–

I was actually saying that saying he was on drugs wasn’t an argument, but the drug induced reference was based on the quotes I posted. Have a look at them again. You mustn’t have read them the first time. The comments range from extreme fantasy to completely missed irony.

I don’t agree with terrorism. It is a horrible thing. The US government is out and proud about it though under the guise of a war against it. It is a frustrating and all too real joke. If the US directed the money they are putting into this war into more helpful programs, maybe we wouldn’t have come to this. We could have won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people long ago. Maybe they would have had the courage to overthrow the government themselves. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the US is flexing it’s muscles to make the rest of the world terrified. What ever you do don’t cross the US decision makers. They are nuts. If I was a conspiricy theorist I would almost say that the US government is deliberately putting the US at risk in order to justify it’s gradual taking over of the rest of the world. But I’m not, so I won’t

——–

It’s very unlike me to resort to name calling. This situation unfortunately reduces me to a childlike state. I sit in complete wonderment at how this situation has arisen for any other reason than American financial interests.

I saw today that the coalition troops had found a store of chemicals. If the footage they showed was this store, it was basically a shed with 20 or so 44 gallon drums. The soldiers wore gas masks but not chemical suits. How bad could it actually be.

The WOMD are simply not there. Even if they were, it would seem that there is no way that the Iraqis could deliver them. The Al Samoud missiles that were destroyed before the beginning of the conflict had a range, from memory, 13kms beyond the maximum allowed under the UN charter.

I saw some footage this morning of Basra, where locals were cheering on the coalition troops. Thank god someone is happy.

I am no supporter of dictatorships. Especially tyrranical dictatorships, but that is not the reason this war has been waged. It has been waged because the US government is not interested in working with Islamic states to become self sustaining without having control over them, so they need to set up a base within the middle east. The fact that they are weak, that Saddam was not particularly liked by his neighbours, and that they have heaps of oil, is a huge bonus as well.

If American people want to believe that they are not complicit in an empire building project, or recognise it and think it’s a good idea, that is a sad thing. It is also of grave concern to anyone who actually values freedom.

Like I said before, don’t cross the US.

Socialism Seven

I don’t agree. Needs and wants are different I admit but somewhere in there lies the majority of things that, as far as material possessions and services go, I think you can fit most in. Like I said, some things you need to compromise on. We already supply and administer most of these things to an extent just the need stuff isn’t enough and the want stuff is owned by capitalists.

About the other bit. I’ve read the Tao Te Ching too. Like most things of philosophical/religious I find some stuff that is good and some stuff that is bad. The bible, the Koran, different buddhist texts, all suffer from the same affliction. This one I don’t agree with, unless it is meant to be sarcastic.

Here is another translation

Not praising the worthy prevents contention,
Not esteeming the valuable prevents theft,
Not displaying the beautiful prevents desire.

In this manner the sage governs people:
Emptying their minds,
Filling their bellies,
Weakening their ambitions,
And strengthening their bones.

If people lack knowledge and desire
Then they can not act;
If no action is taken
Harmony remains.

…just for interests sake.

It actually reminds me of a bit of a part in the Koran when one of Mohammeds desciples (is that the term??) says that their women are going off tap and mohammed says that they should go home and sort them out. Maybe if Mohammed hadn’t given women their rights, to not be treated like the slaves of men, to have the right of inheritance and start women thinking like they had any rights at all, there wouldn’t have been any problem in the first place. But he gave them something that was rightfully theirs and the women felt like they had some control. Mohammed probably, wasn’t trying to take back what he had given them, or say that it was OK to beat women. It could be interpreted that he wanted peace and the result of what he had done was unexpected. That’s how people work though. You can’t keep people in ignorance just so they don’t desire. You have to put all old texts in the context of the time. I’m an athiest, but if Mohammed was really the prophet of god and saw that some people had not progressed any further in creating peace and equality in the world, I’m sure he’d be pissed. I’m sure the same could probably be said of Lao Tse. Siddhartha Gautama, being a spoiled rich kid that abandoned his wife and child ’cause life got a bit too real and never lifted a finger for the rest of his life, I’m not so sure about.

This one’s probably applicable to the Anarchic topic

Let your community be small, with only a few people;
Keep tools in abundance, but do not depend upon them;

Appreciate your life and be content with your home;
Sail boats and ride horses, but don’t go too far;
Keep weapons and armour, but do not employ them;
Let everyone read and write,
Eat well and make beautiful things.

Live peacefully and delight in your own society;
Dwell within cock-crow of your neighbours,
But maintain your independence from them.

and this to the socialist

Honest people use no rhetoric;
Rhetoric is not honesty.
Enlightened people are not cultured;
Culture is not enlightenment.
Content people are not wealthy;
Wealth is not contentment.

So the sage does not serve himself;
The more he does for others, the more he is satisfied;
The more he gives, the more he receives.
Nature flourishes at the expense of no one;
So the sage benefits all men and contends with none.

On the town

Going out to the Corner to see Pitch Black tonight.

Socialism One

(cut and pasted from my Physics forum posts)

To think that Anarchism can work in a large, condensed industrial society is naive to say the least. As has been said time and time again, people are just not like that. There are too many greedy people. I’m not talking really evil people, but people who can’t be bothered doing good for others or not getting that extra peice of the pie when they can. Communism hasn’t worked not just because of poor economic management but because the countries generally started out poor and had no goods nor the infrastructure to distribute goods and services. There are apparently parts of China that have no idea they are under communism to this day.

Marxism is a paranoid form of socialism. It implies a conspiracy on behalf of the rich against the poor. The reality is that your economic status or ethnicity has nothing to do with how much of a knob you are. Get 100 people from any demographic and I will guarantee that you will find the same amount of bad to good (no particular benchmark used).

I consider myself a socialist. I believe in state ownership of major industry. I also believe in democracy. Why democracy is always associated with capitalism is beyond me. We should be able to chose what it is we need and have the government supply it. At the same time, people need to realise that we all need to spend some time working in a job that we don’t particularly enjoy, for the greater good. The pay off is knowing that when I’m shovelling sh*t, my bills are getting payed, I have housing and healthcare, my kids have a good education etc. In a capitalist society your pay is scaled by the stuff you are shoveling. Shovelin’ sh*t, sh*t pay. I don’t necesarrily believe in entirely equal pay. Some jobs I think require a different level of stress or hard manual labour. Restricting hours of work might be ok to equalise wages in this case but some jobs require continuity. It’s not easy.

To answer the inital question. I would love to work on a project to develop a system which provides adequate goods and services to people, probably based on socialist concepts but with small scale capitalistic, highly taxed, enterprises to fill niche markets which are impracticle to cover with goverment industry and allow some creativity in employment. Capitalism works with the idea that everybody can be a millionaire. Clearly they can’t, but an ideal socialist system started in a resource, infrastructure rich country could possibly feed the consumerist society so they lived like millionaires, only everyone would have to work.

Why the Cartesian Coordinate System

One of the main factors I believe is holding back some advances in physics is the inability of the human race to accept the possibility that space is not what it appears to be. We are all stuck on a 3D universe. When we talk about hyper dimensionality, dimensions above 3 are seen as being bound up so that we can’t see them but are still extensions of the 3D space. This belief is entrenched in the Cartesian coordinate system. What’s wrong with the Cartesian coordinate system? My feeling is that it’s unnatural and clumsy. Here’s an example.

Let’s say we want to plot a tetrahedron on a 3D plane. We need 4 points, therefore we need 12 coordinates to plot these points. These are pure independent points with no relationship to one another. In order to relate them we apply various formulas to calculate the distances between them. In certain cases the relationships are not seen as important and the points are used in isolation. The question is, does nature work things out this way? Is there a more natural way?

Consider this option. We take the four points without defining a position for them, and then apply the distance relationship directly between them. This time we achieve the same shape while retaining the relationships and without being constrained by the dimensional limits or orientation of the plane.

We would not be able to draw shapes beyond 3D but using this system I believe that it would be much simpler to represent them. Consider again the tetrahedron. What would one look like in 4 spatial dimensions? If we consider the rules for a tetrahedron we have 4 equidistant points. I’m not sure what a 4D hyper tetrahedron is but lets assume 5 points at equal distances. Much more easily represented, at least verbally, using a relational coordinate system. Relativity itself is based on these relationships. That’s where the word comes from, this thing relative to that thing.

The concept of a relational coordinate system will become relevant later on in the piece. For now I’ll let you ponder the logic of it and go onto the next section.

Another View of Entropy

Another element of the theory is a reworking of the concept of entropy. The current understanding is that the universe is progressing from a state of organisation to a more disorganised state. This theory says just the opposite. It says that all matter in the universe is working its way to a state of equilibrium which would bring all matter basically, in ideal circumstances, to cancel out all waves and bring them to a state of rest. In less ideal circumstances we have a state of perpetual motion where matter would be organised to a state from which it could go no further and, still in motion, would continue fairly unchanged on a grand scale. Perhaps we are already not far off. If this idea of entropy is correct it has interesting implications in regards to life. In systems with no life, matter would seem to obey all of physics laws. While one might say that we do the same in regards to energy conservation and the like, the reality is that we strive to not come to rest.

On Gravitation

Now here’s the fun part. How does this theory tie in with gravitation? Let’s consider again what we have previously discussed about the wave theory of distance. Take an ideal system with only a few particles. Each has an associated element of their wave function which denotes the ratio of perceived distance between each particle. Let’s say that the positional wave acts like interference on the waves of the other particles and that they are out of phase. The waves interact with each other and try to cancel each other out. As they do this the ‘value’ of the wave decreases and with it the perceived distance also decreases. If two of the particles are closer, their wave functions are already closer in phase and act constructively to create a more powerful combined wave. The single wave is pulled into phase with the combined wave. This is the basic idea anyway. I need to tighten this up considerably. There seems to me to be a problem in that it would seem that two particles would eventually come completely into phase and be occupying the same perceived position which doesn’t happen under normal conditions. The wave must behave in a more complicated fashion. The other implication of the parallel between the light and distance waves is the ability to extrapolate the idea to the graviton. If light could be perceived as displaying particle behavior in observable space then might we be able to see a graviton working. I don’t think so. I would imagine that any influence that a ‘graviton’ under this model would have would result in a change in position invisibly. Not sure if that in itself would be what you would expect from a graviton or not but that’s my feeling. The theory doesn’t really support the idea that photons and ‘gravitons’ are anything like real particles any more than we would say that light waves are like water waves. They might follow similar rules but are entirely different entities.

 Another View of Entropy

On Light

How does light fit into the picture? This is another interesting one. Relating light to waves is hardly a stretch. We all know that light has wave properties. The question is how do they propagate? Common theory says that light propagates in a vacuum. Using our everyday experience this point is hard to argue. The idea of an aether has long been made redundant (more out of a lack of necessity than anything else, Occum’s razor doing it’d work). In my theory, light propagation does neither.

As you have read, the fundamental core of the theory is that perceived distance between matter is an element of its wave function and that there is in reality no separation. A true vacuum in this model is purely a perceived distance between matter created by the wave function with literally ‘nothing’ in between. Therefore light does not travel through a vacuum as the vacuum does not actually exist. Light is another wave function and its transfer to other ‘connected’ particles is conditional on the function of the receiving wave. These conditions result in the effect, that light appears to move from emitter to receive at a speed in direct correlation with perceived distance, regardless of the frame of reference. In a ‘vacuum’, the wave travels from matter on one side directly to matter on the other. Should we place a detector in between, the same rules apply from emitter to detector. You may need to be reminded that this ‘distance’ is not real it is a perception of distance in ‘our’ space.

Here’s a model. Imagine three standing waves (these are the ‘particles’), overlapping at slightly different frequencies. The frequencies denote the distances from each other in ’space’. A harmonic sub wave starts on one of the waves (for simplicity, we won’t at present ask how it started). It might bounce back and forth from end to end not interacting with the other waves. As ‘time’ passes the sub wave changes. So that we are not losing anything, let’s say it is losing amplitude and gaining frequency. At some point it reaches the same frequency, or some harmonic, of one of the other waves and passes some of it on to the other wave. A bit later the wave has died down again and reaches the frequency of the third wave, passing on to it. The amplitude passed to the one ‘further’ away is less than the amplitude passed to the first tying in with the inverse square law. This is a very basic analogy and probably doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Other elements of the wave form will have to be employed.

On Gravitation