Wisdom is the retention of innocence through adversity.

I have been planning to write a quickie post noting how capitalism is an extension of our ego minds, which repress natural chaos, diversity, quantum/psychic, etc., and creates definitions and categories. In our heads, these quantities are somewhat recombined in synesthetic processes. But, expanding into capitalism, they result in competition for zero-sum gain, the prisoners dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, Xeno's paradox (inflation), the left-right paradigm, us-vs-them, divide-and-conquer, the division of rich and poor, and the great sucking sound of capital being abstracted into a few unseen hands, who think they shape the ONE AND ONLY FUTURE for us all - which inevitably turns out to be a massively LOSING BET, and ends up in us all getting into war, just to sustain this elite's relative power. Virtual scarcity is a concept of mine which I stress often in my economics ideas. Look at how Enron forced the delusion of SCARCE ENERGY on people in California, so to raise their rates, and reap their dollars. And, heh, where does the apparent scarcity of resources always end up? In a scarcity of our spirits, our wills and our humanity.

So - it was nice to see bobby1933 posting this: "Sacred Economics," by Charles Eisenstein: http://renesch.com/2013/sacred-economics-a-radical-idea-whos-time-has-come/ ....

"Eisenstein starts by pointing out how the existing economic system is based on a foundational paradigm of separation and that within this ideology lies an assumption of scarcity. Furthermore, within this assumption, greed makes sense. The cards are stacked so people who own things get more and more of the pie and people who have to rent things get less and less. It is systemic and it is unsustainable.

Another idea Eisenstein puts forth is the systematic commodification of the commons, turning things we used to get for free into products we must now pay for. God-given things like natural resources, ideas, creativity, community, mutual support and even DNA are being converted to private property. To quote the author, “Things we never dreamed of paying for, we must pay for today.” How does this happen? “For something to become an object of commerce, it must be made scarce first,” he writes. The system is converting things that were once free to private property, contributing to the gap between the haves and have-nots – so those who have get more and the have nots get even less. Aha! So greed can feed off the assumption that some things are scarce, and this assumption is allowed to perpetuate because the whole system is founded on separation as opposed to interconnectedness." (read more via the link above)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs

MTE!...
virtual scarcity - http://madman101.livejournal.com/tag/economics%20-%20virtual%20scarcity
money - http://madman101.livejournal.com/tag/economics%20-%20money%20series
decline of empire - http://radman101.livejournal.com/

I've got many untagged econ entries, and many about the commons, privatisation, etc., which should be tagged, or tagged better. See also o_c_c_u_p_y and economic_sanity and transcend_money


My fermenting chocolate is coming along very tastilly. I think this will be a drink on its own, or a nice addition to home-brewed beer. There is really no taste of alcohol (yet) except for a nice bitter bite, with a bit of sweet still there. What's been surprising has bee the uneventfulness of the process so far. Only now is there some separation occurring near the bottom of the bottle. Note that there is fermented milk, and other yeasts in this mix. I am going to expand it into a larger bottle, add more chocolate bars, and also add some lecithin and rice pasta water soon. [Later]: Boiled up more chocolate, cooled, added. Also mixed 10 lbs of corn flour w/ 10 lbs of corn meal, both organic, stored away. Woozy and exhausted. Nethers are acting up again. Yes - N-Guy is still there!