books which helped me understand the feudal life, and why it was so bad

terry pratchett - interesting times

barry hughart - master li and number 10 ox (any of the three, specifically 1 & 2)

david graeber - debt

the feudal world is nice from the top down, but is sh!t bottom up

in the  best of times,  it wards off death by murder,  and starvation

in the worst of times, it is exactly the same as in the wild

 the feudal lords turn predator to a captive prey

the premise of the 'kingdom' series is that the feudals squeeze the vassals so much that they resort to cannibalism

also, from '7 samurai'

What do you think of farmers? You think they're saints? Hah! They're foxy beasts! They say, "We've got no rice, we've no wheat. We've got nothing!" But they have! They have everything! Dig under the floors! Or search the barns! You'll find plenty! Beans, salt, rice, sake! Look in the valleys, they've got hidden warehouses! They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They're nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy, and mean! God damn it all! But then who made them such beasts? You did! You samurai did it! You burn their villages! Destroy their farms! Steal their food! Force them to labor! Take their women! And kill them if they resist! So what should farmers do? (begins crying) Damn...

Bangalore is a good place to be stranded in life, as any. Better than most , in fact. You might actually believe you are part of something larger.

There's a finality to a train leaving a station, an untouchability to the separation that it spews as every bogie clanksnpast. a new thread of life starting for the departed, while yours skeins back to the familiar almost immediately.

Tears well up when I realize I am enjoying the clackety clack by myself. That one soul who shared the glee with me is not around any longer

 the female spider rips the male's head off after mating

only the female mosquito sucks blood*

natures sends so many clear messages

yet, the males don't learn

 when working with others, it's not usual to expect to one's standard

best you can get is 'ok'

coz everyone has different standards

path back to fitness - a hypothesis

 1. build a minimum level of cardio and flexibility and strength for following steps

2. do any exercise activity that takes your pulse into the 120-130 range. check via wrist HR monitor watch taken from wife. Do this for 5 minutes. take a rest of 1 minute or so, sitting down, until HR falls back below 100

in my case, on-the-spot walking is enough for me to raise HR to above 120. sad but true. this is what i am struggling against

3.  do the previous step, including run and rest, for 4 to 5 times. track in a sheet

this should help heart capacity to grow. 

combine daily with hybrid calisthenics for flexibility and strength , or with 5bx , for basic, getting-off-the-ground level of fitness

every 2 or 3 days, do eight-brocade and/or the taichi-zidong exercises for activating, energising and strengthening parts of the body untouched by the above.

from videos, once a week, max out for 2 minutes, rest, repeat, stop. this is HIIT.

update 25sep : doing on-the-spot walking for 5/10 minutes, instead of for 100-count, seems to work better. Or maybe, I seem to have progressed to that level.

Ots10min (was 5 until yday) is good enough to push the body into the weak-need-rest zone but also not strenous enough to cause it to crash/collapse, and make me binge-eat-drink-coffee just to stay awake.

chanting the mahamantra for outrageous (to myself) counts seems to help move me into some sort of pranayama-by-side-effect, and I notice Kumbaka happening.

morning yogasanas help loosen the back, which scrunched back into place when I was carrying short-round at the bus stop.

can I do zazen daily ? can I do sanskrit daily ? sicp ? toymatic ?

 maybe the n-back skill is the same in having a stack of tasks in your head and 

being able to pop, process, push without losing data

 fate and chance are not mutually exclusive

everything is connected

the 90 dollar bottle of wine

 tastes better

because you paid more for it

so why not work harder for the same things that you get today

and feel happier, 

making payment  in attention, effort, and care

.... ?

 underneath the varied layers of life, 

there lies an indestructible & undeniable core 

that is Sisyphean  and nihilistic 

the stream of life 

runs forever 

and without bedrock

every time you sink into it 

you emerge in another stream

there is no river

 hot on the heels of the rat-race post, today morning's unplanned reading of derek sivers' book notes brings explosive flashes of epiphany(s)

* about Dubai   - not the oil-rich scions' decadent dance with wealth and opulence - there's more. lot of business savvy,  political manipulation, pirate attitude (ftw)  

aligns with the strong-leader hypothesis of Samo Burja

* Israel  while not a happy rags to riches story , exposes in stark relief  the dark side of religion and large groups of people. Ties in neatly with the next book

* religion - how religion evolves and furthers civilization. YN Harari said this ,  that modern cutting edge anything is because of religion, but I slowly stopped believing him over time, cos .... well I thought he was an apologist for the this-is-the-best-of-worlds theory, and that plays into the hands of the incumbents

however, my view of the incumbents as inhabiting a place of low-energy, forcing things to fall to them, like a strange attractor - is being challenged, contnuously

talking of 'civilization', there isn't one, but many groups which come and go, flourishing on one dimension, rotting on another, until their usefulness dries up and that which they didn't allow becomes the 'new solution' packaged in new semantique.

the british came and went and changed borders, rearranged wealth massively, armed groups disproportionately ... so did the spanish the portuguese, the americans the dutch the belgians, and before them the turks the umayyads the persians etc etc

each patch of land and its people, catch these socio-politico-cultural winds , and some of them build a sail and or surf their way out on the future, some remain in the doldrums

other source 

 * seaflooding  this old link on seaflooding that I have been keeping open on my tabs, also shows how much progress and modernization is being made in that area

 why the rat race ?

the rat race is the swarm's solution-generation mechanism 

while diversity generators exist freely , except in stratified ecosystems where the uniformity enforcers regulars police and purge them, not all diversity generation leads to solutions

hence, the rat race is the arena for the solvers  to fight for resources  

in tight, stratified ecosystems, they are congruent with growth

whereas in less stratified ecosystems, they are akin to play

those who don't compete better find work as uniformity enforcers, or drones, or unit producers of swarm product

swarm product is either intra or export, one is cost, the other is possibly profitable

hence , for eg farmers , essential workers are paid the least and have the worst work conditions

- because they are essential they are never invisible

- because their services cannot stop, they are not allowed to go on strikes

- because their service cannot stop, anyone can threaten to go on strike ,threatening  to affect exports , to get them to lower rates. this is why hick uneducated rednecks whose death wouldn't be missed by any , can force educated life-saving nurses into more risk, just by protesting 

- usually central bodies control their rates

swarm activity is of two types. procedure-running, and solving

both need intelligence, the former needs no imagination, in fact, is hampered by imagination

the former works within boundaries, but solving needs to relook boundaries as a first step

one very important thing a rat-race  competition grounds give the individual is some data on their skill, like , how many did better,  who, and how, and what they did different, etc

awareness of ones' own skill is vital to stop people from making large and costly mistakes

(see the rockingly hilarious legendary wallstreetbets yolos )

sources: howard bloom, graeber  -bs jobs, 

this benjamin pirate video brought a very refreshing feeling. pirates are just economic agents. playing slightly outside the boxwalls built by steve jobs' enemies. just slightly. very refreshing to know. freedom.

real estate is the cost multiplier. in this day and age of electronic nets covering the universe,  we still have real estate going up. why ?

what would it take to destroy real estate forever ?

from Dr K (healthygamergg) : your remembering the past, actually creates a simulation or video, that overwrites what actually happened in the past.

also, watching a video many times, renders the content abstracted out and hence sucked dry and dead
see inside-out's abstract chamber .This is actually high grade information posing as a children's cartoon

 he's a cheapskate and a bum

he's also a clerk in the court, 

and a priest at the temple

bathing the deity

and chanting scripture

and reading classics

he bows with dignity

but will not invite you to stay

as is customary

in his grand hall

suffering from disregard

falling into disrepair

weeds growing among

the planted blossoms

a slightly older man

neither young enough 

to have a master

nor commanding a squad

grey hair but young eyes

man is the most dangerous animal

because he can concoct a rational, morally acceptable, believable story 

which is often accepted

for the most depraved of actions

and he and others can live with it

Kant notwithstanding, the human life isn't worth much

 in the vast majority of movies, aliens or genies or magicians come to earth and witness life and say 

"mankind is capable of much cruelty, but is also capable for great beauty" .... etc etc

i call bullshit

the vast majority of mankind is a termite hill with a runaway neuro-cortex, and is long overdue for a visit from the exterminator

calling a spade a spade (always attack the center of the problem)

there is no real engagement

when you approach the enemy civilly, they ignore you, all the while pretending to co-operate,

so that you don't pull the trigger

and when you report outrage at their subversiveness to the table, 

you get hit with manufactured outrage 

at no point is there a true connection

ö

 yes yes, that famous quantum physicist Arvind Schrödinger

yes, yes, his name seems surprised, aghast even

 the mass of people choose peace when they are tired of war and fighting

in peace times, people spend time with each other, 

 the mass of people then choose war again

the devil didn't need to create fiery pits of lava

the devil just created others

 

 dirk gently  books are good

dirk gently the tv series is psycho, but the characters are also lame, and the plot watered down with horse-piss by making dirk gently a "CIA project"

why take a wonderous and fanciful story, that people will be delighted to find out about,  and then water it down to the mundane  

"let's do something totally different, that's exactly like everything that we've done before !!!" - some studio executive

civilisation has jumped the shark, needs to be reset

do you know the island of roke ? and the monastery there , of mages ?

and the island next to it, with a fortress and a moat and a dock ?

and behind these two, almost invisible, is a much smaller island, almost entirely mountaneous, and heavily wooded where not, and on top of the second highest peak, an old, dilapidated hall with a stone fireplace with an altar set onto it, with runes

and some suspiciously life like  statues, of beasts

 anyone who has hit any sort of ball with a bat knows that the ball goes straighter with a little spin imparted to it.

it is the same with all human endeavours involving other people

 what is we replace the word politics with humanics, cos this is what humans do ish

 reading Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs"

the opening page is so delightfully refreshing.

 whenever I wonder if I should listen to the experts, 

whenever I find myself asking if the current-day experts are honest, 

whether they will hesitate in presence of data contrary to their vocation

I remember the case of Semmelweis

debunking malthus, link from ranprieur page

haven't read one of these in a while - a piece of writing that hits so hard ,  makes for elated reading. 

Jared Diamond tapped mass agriculture as the start of 'his-story', and it was just as exhilarating to read (although Graeber doesn't seem to agree with him on this )

the central idea is that the 'tragedy of the commons ' is a myth, and that the commons were well protected and maintained under earlier folk law, and that Malthus and Hardin pushed their 'theories' in order to facilitate a takeover of commons by the private sector - a virus that has spread much more than Jared's agriculture, or IBM's open PC architecture.

Today, no community living off of it's own resources and land is safe, because it's just a matter of time before a GDP gang soft-infiltrates and sets up revenue producing 'enterprise' , throwing money at first in the form of wages, that destroy all local enterprise, then pare down those wages until no one can make a living decently, and then BOOM! cheap land to acquire and cheap labour, and a joyless deathless lifeless drudgery from then on for the original residents .

The GDP gang could be BIG industry, or even the startup hordes, throwing seemingly infinite amounts of cash on a local economy whose fragile bonds cannot stand the mindless deluge

I say GDP gang, but it could just as easily be called the Malthus-Gardin-Adamsmith gang

As more and more decisions get taken by the Capital, and not those with direct connection to the land, as McLuhan says, the numbness sets in and spreads to all those within the system.  It follows, as an example, that a large number of 'modern' people consider packed items as food, when it only cursorily adheres to that description.

And here we come to the crux of the matter, the flaw in the system - the abstraction. A culture that spans worlds is possible only because all share the same abstractions, but this also results in diabetes-cancer-crohns causative agents being disguised as food. If food were people, modern food would be criminals.  

another story that illustrates this disconnect  

my mother had bad headaches. the doctor in the swanky sophisticated modern hospital prescribed paracetamol and said if they didn't work she'd start my mother off on migraine meds.

a foaf family traditional doctor recommended neck and head massage as a solution, and it seems to be working

why this apathy in the former case ?  One could say they have to push pills after all where did the money for the swanky sophisticated hospital come from ? and my answer is that this is economic fascism, and must be dealt with with all possible means at our disposal

also see greenspun's post on how ancient germanic law protected commons and commoners ( para 2 titled Government Regulation Protecting You' )

 chemical psychiatry, to me , is fitting clamps and shorts in the printed-circuit-board so that the computer doesn't run certain parts of certain programs

 flavour of the bi-month

Toffler

David Graeber  (yes, I came to graebER after tofflER because the german name(s) ending in ER stereotype)

Graeber's "Debt" is eye-opening, and throws a lot of light on the history I've read, from various scrapbook of sources.  

Christopher Hitchens

Apparently Joe Rogan is not "right-wing". But my left wing friends call him "right-wing".  

oh yes, also , Goggins. Famous from the Elon-to-mars expedition cartoon.

Goggins is like Dr Sheehan, only more savage. Funny, the ruts we keep running in and never seem to leave, even if it looks like I've hopped past these ruts, a gust of wind comes and shakes the veil off my new fancies ,and lo! the old ruts show themselves....

Let's face it, Joe Rogan, like our own Ranveer, is a modern day Prometheus, bringing down fire from the gods . 57 Crores doesn't seem like a an eagle eating out your liver every day, does it ?

I seem to have above average financial instincts, specifically equity markets. Maybe capitalise on it ?

( above-average in a population of 1.4 B is very very low indeed. Still, there's always room for a new Prometheus)

latest miracle-cure - hard work !!