Saturday, January 22, 2011
No connection between me and the Jews, despite the analogy with Moses.
There is no doubt in my mind that what I did for the community in the nursing home where I live at this writing was something eligible to be called a miracle. I am myself at a loss to explain the particular acts I took, except for the ones related to the line-ups here, which are more simple in conception even though they too were very difficult under the conditions that existed at the time. What I said in the dining room I doubt I will ever find a way to explain. It was said in such utter turmoil, was so at pains to improve the situation, and drew from such an extreme ramp-up of understanding toward the creation of a positive effect, that explaining it will forever be a less useful and because of that a less likely action. It appears the effect is permanent, and done with such finality that my own fate is less tied to the mentally ill now than Moses's fate was tied to the Jews after he worked his magic at the Red Sea. My reading of this is that all of the mentally ill here have a greatly expanded field in which to seek their fortunes, and my fate is to seek my fortunes like the rest of them. Thankfully, I have no role in serving the mentally ill any more. I am at work on my personal understanding of mental illness and if I am successful in it I expect to benefit personally and not share my understanding with others, others having completely rejected the initial stages of development of my work.
Such is the path of logistical division between myself and H. sapiens.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Islam today.
First, there is the matter of my advice to certain bodies of power in the United States, given at some time in the past--perhaps a few years ago. It was a time of great feelings of instability between the motives due to a sense of violation, on the one hand, and the motives of historic compassion among peoples of the Christian faith, on the other. I sensed at that time that the real danger was not in the actual forces at play, but in these feelings of instability. With that sense in my forethoughts, I issued an advisory to certain powers which had been following my work and progress, to the effect that it was my view that those with the responsibility of defining policy at a high level of authority needed to make a decision of whether they would stand as opponents to Islam in an absolute way because of its association with the new global terrorist threats, even though this association did not necessarily justify identifying the one with the other, or, rather than that, taking some other stance. I intended no hint of personal favoratism in such a decision, and I believe none was taken. As a result, certain powers moved quietly toward a more robust position of opposition to all of Islam than had been given serious consideration before my advice was given. I have no position on whether this position of opposition is valid or invalid. I consider it a religious matter and I am not devoted to any religious partisanship so such matters strike far from my most fervent desires.
I have instead of a position on the relationship between Islam and Christianity a position on the relationship between religion and science. It is that, in my view, science yields results which have greater validity than any results of religious endeavor. The sphere of human life, as that of all life, is greater than any religious crystalization of principles can ever gather together. Instead, religious principles are crafted so that the considerations which science takes as necessary, that of proof and consistency, can be safely discounted and belief substituted for them, with what has been historically a fairly good improvement over what went on before any of the religions were conceived. Such a method, that of religion, is suitable for promulgation and reflective consideration of broadly based principles which go beyond what science can currently provide on a more objective basis, and this is helpful. But I would suggest that there is merit in applying what Jesus said, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Render unto God what is God's." to science and religion. This would disengage religion from the question of evolution, an incendiary suggestion admittedly, but something which I think Jesus might have found to have great practicality were he living today. It would also tend to allow all religions to stabilize their growth against other developments, including other religions, and take some satisfaction in being allowed some significant credit for their beneficence, while at the same time take some humility to heart in the face of such massive blessings from science that have accompanied the gradual loosening of the hold of religion on the universal scope of mankind's enterprises.
Let this be read as the thought of a deeply modest scientist who formerly engaged one or two religions as an adherent, to one or other degree of faithfulness.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Taking the scientific approach.
There is nothing set in stone that says the Moses factor, by virtue of my having seen on a building the same fire Moses saw on a bush, requires that my enemy be my father and his supporters. It is up to me to determine who my enemy is. Once I have done that, I can then begin to relate it to why I saw the burning building. Fear is not a superior weapon. It is basically confusion, and not to be applied to a scientific enterprise. Though I have not been true to this view, and dealt out vague threats based on the connection to Moses, those are part of the learning curve. Not all of the effects of having a predecessor a few thousand years ago are inherently good. It is not easy for any successor to a role of much acclaim, including mantles that pass within the same generation. I hope that the way I have used the role of Moses does not prevent me from amending it. The fact that so little commitment has been made by me or others, with regard to the mantle of Moses, is certainly helpful in this regard. With science driving my interpretation of facts, there is some chance of success for me, and for my enterprises joined in, in some cases, by others who may also be reassured by the role I give to science.
This stance is broad. Many paths come to mind, but better to allow the land to settle.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Islam is retardative to progress.
Monday, August 24, 2009
a biography of James Batek
However, I will go ahead and publish these two articles, already written, here on this blog, by my usual method with scholarly work of first publishing to scribd.com and then embedding the scribd.com document here. I will place this introduction, from the beginning to here, at the head of both articles.
This is the second article, a biography of myself, James Batek.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19040742/James-Batek
Thursday, August 20, 2009
On Religion
I consider religion an early system of incorporating extreme experiences into civilization, formed by those who have such experiences in an attempt to harvest them for mankind rather than have them discounted as irrelevant to day to day existence. This is a valid motive. It produced a strong civilization out of what were unorganized bands of humans.
However, this strong civilization has continued to evolve and now we have a population largely equipped with a scientifically valid cosmological perspective, principally that the Earth is not the center of the universe. The stability generated by such a perspective seems to be greater than the stability that was generated by religion. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly acceptable to discredit religion and rely on the cosmological perspective alone for one's orientation to the world. This is not an ideal situation. Discrediting religion is destructive to many people who are not yet to the point where the cosmological perspective has thoroughly saturated their worlds. Religion arose out of an inchoate abyss and that abyss has not vanished, even with the expansion of the cosmological perspective. Most likely it will never be entirely supplanted. In this abyss there will always be a role in many people's lives for religion. If history were more transparent it would be easier for scientists to grant to the masses their obsession with religion. I certainly do not wish to make history more obscure by promoting unorthodox concepts, but neither do I wish to allow the existing obscurity to cause mankind to founder.
It is this view on my part that makes me quite forgiving of radical Islam for making America its spiritual enemy. America has done nothing for Islam. It is consumed with its role as champion of freedom and is unable to enlarge its agenda. It was hoped that freedom would take the world to its next stage of development, but that has not happened. World events have advanced in parallel with America's championing of freedom, not really with any sort of resonance, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. It is America's larger nature that keeps us among the world's leaders, not our self-image.
You, by way of the Italian Mafia, have made me your First Citizen. I have taken this honor and responsibility to heart and made every effort to develop it in intellectual terms, as I consider that its greatest worth, rather than an opportunity to enforce my persuasions upon the people, though I certainly have embraced a cause or two.
The results of this intellectual sojourn have been in a sort of exploration of the limiting values of my own ability to set out on a new course as a possible first generation of a different civilization than America, the Western World, or Homo sapiens. I do not have unlimited ability in this respect. However my limits are somewhat determined by my own decisions and efforts. I was not made First of anything in particular. I was just made First. I took that fact to imply that it was up to me just how far my being First extended.
I have a major protection here. I do my work in my own language, whose characters I created, and I do not share this language with anyone but my mate apparent and when we have children with them. I can do this because I am proving able to establish an income independently without taking employment. In the past those who have been driven by exigence to create a new character set have been unable to survive without enlisting the cooperation of the people, and so have had to share their characters with their nonblood contemporaries.
This leaves me in a favorable position. I can satisfy the Italian Mafia that I am providing leadership by blogging in English. I can generate income with English transformation art. Everyone goes home happy.
By the way, I endorse the objectives of the United States government to bring democratic rule in Iraq and Afghanistan. I offer radical Islam the pen. I will deny them their swords.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
lack of philosophy in a nursing home
That being accepted, it is to be noted that persons within and without an institution, beyond expecting better rules and regulations, will cultivate certain bench markers to judge the state of the institution in its mean between better and worse. Rare or unknown is a philosophy of such bench markers. Consequently, judgment degenerates into an assortment of gross specifications which institutions, as a result, are expected to exhibit or run the risk of dissent, possibly venomous dissent. Foremost, for many people, of these specifications is that of consistency. It is foremost because it works in many cases, that is, it enables dissent to be informed by clear and simple illustration of why certain forms are better and certain forms are worse than the mean penetrating throughout the institution. Without this bench marker conditions would easily slip into incomprehensibility for even the most cogent of analytical observers, both within and without the institution.
But consistency is only a gross specification. It cannot accompany the mean everywhere. It is limited in breadth and depth of import throughout the footprint of an institution within itself and without itself. For breadth and depth of import everywhere, admittedly a distant standard for humanity, it is necessary to move in the direction of science, and for this civilization the result in both popular and professional orientation to passage upon the thoroughfares, into byways, and advancing upon frontiers, that has produced philosophy, whose primitive manifestations have included religion and folk tales, and whose recent improvements have led to the general availability of a liberal education. Application of philosophy to life is not easy but it certainly is better than religion and folk tales, and it tends to do better within and without institutions than mere gross specifications as a demand upon judgment of rules and regulations as being better or worse than the mean throughout the institution.
Science, in the ideal case being mathematically formulated natural philosophy, does not accompany men's judgment everywhere they go. For the best of men such accompaniment is limited to simple, non mathematical philosophy, and this structural foundation of civilization's advance has been pursued vigorously for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, with occasional major advances by persons who have consequently acquired legendary status--persons such as Pythagoras, Buddha, and Fu Hsi. I am not so optimistic as this makes me sound. What of war? Poverty? Abuse of one or more persons by one or more persons whether its obscurity is found in small or large degrees of authority? These will only pass away when the accompaniment of men on all paths is science. Certainly the attainment of such a state is not guaranteed to any species, even homo sapiens in all his trust in his progress's inevitability and non reduction to a limiting sum of an infinite, or perhaps finite, series of species-wide steps.
Philosophy therefore being preferred over gross specification, it is to be considered greatly arguable whether a certain rule at the nursing home where I live is better or worse than the mean which penetrates throughout that home, that rule being that residents are to be always accompanied , supervised, assisted, and even stood in for, when getting hot water out of the hot water outlet on the food line, by staff. I think anyone who has read much of this blog will see how absurd this will be when it is applied to me, as it was this morning (August 5, 2009).
But is it a rule that is worse than the mean? Here is where the great argument will commence.
I have observed something else in the kitchen that also irritates me, and I see it practiced widely everywhere. Someone getting food in a group of equals gets his plate and then tells the server to give him more of one item than the server gave to him as his equal share with everyone else. The server accedes.
Now maybe the server first refuses, but the person gets more forceful. This may go back and forth at length, but eventually, more often than not, the server gives in and puts another spoonful on the person's plate. When I observe this happen I am always on the verge of bursting out, "You get more and the rest of us have to accept what we're given because we're not rude like you are. What justice is there in that?"
Anyone who does this would undoubtedly read this post with a different sense than anyone who sees what I'm talking about.
So while they are bending over backwards to stop me from pouring my own hot water, they are putting an extra helping on the plate of the guy ahead of me because he is rude enough to make a scene, and this in full view of others in line who will be met with less conformity if they should say, "Hey. You let him have more. Why can't I too?" It's the same employee who does both, literally.
So here is where most analysts would argue from consistency against the simultaneous execution of both practices.
But for me it is not so simple. Consistency, as I said, is not able to go everywhere in breadth and depth with rules and regulations. In this case, we could say that while here you are being strict, there you are being lenient, and that's not consistent.
But real consistency demands that two situations have a common framework or foundation, and this is not true here. In one case, there is a safety issue with special relevance because of the large number of functionally challenged residents living here. In the other, the issue is one of authority. Does the server have the authority to deviate from nominal equality? If he does, then I will have to accept it if he decides for his own reasons that he will honor a rude request. If he does not, then we have a roguery completely legitimized, merely by isolation of the point of service in the setting of the institution. This roguery is spread from the serving line to the server. But which is it? Does he have the authority to decide himself, or do regulations leave him no tolerance? One condition, the one where regulations leave the server no tolerance, requires a lengthy discussion between the philosophically endowed observer, who is also a paying resident, and the staff hierarchy. Most likely such hierarchy will not have the patience with a resident, none of whom are recognized as philosophers in any true sense, to reach a satisfactory conclusion with the resident who brings the matter up. The other condition, the one where the server has all the authority he needs to give out more food as he sees fit, may be poor organization, but it cannot be faulted on its command logic. My initial question to staff hierarchy will be simply whether servers have authority or do not have authority to give larger portions as they see fit.
Returning to the first case, of hot water pouring, the critical factor is to what extent is it practical for staff to become familiar enough with different residents that a decision of whom to stop from pouring hot water and whom not to can be made easily, which means without having to create a "no pour" list, and also faithful enough to residents' own view of their own functionality that arguments will not erupt over hot water.
As can be seen from these examples psychiatric nursing homes are fraught with delicate bureaucratic ensnarements, some commonly encountered and some particular to nursing homes.
What allows institutions to function is as much the frequency of philosophically adept observers in society as it is good rote analysts who usually make up the rules in the first place. It is the patience and continuing reflection of the first that gives the second time to eventually make the right decisions. Where the frequency of philosophers is low, thing tend to get mired or maybe just mediocre. Where fortune smiles and the frequency is high, much good will follow.
Friday, November 21, 2008
a world where the pinion is lifted
Having so posited a course given positive appreciation of the pinion, we need to comment on the plausibility of a positive position, from the simple anticipation that it might be argued that claiming to have had a hand in causing the crisis is patently negative and to offer to remove it for a fee is patently extortive. I will argue that the pinion is also a claim that the world economy can be made better by me than it was before the crisis occurred, not just returned to regularity. I will not be able to clarify the decision to cause harm in order to get the world's attention. It is easy to anticipate that a claim that I had the ability to improve the world economy and would anyone like to deposit into an escrow to that end, would not be taken seriously no matter how much authority was behind it, or rather one must say that that kind of authority does not exist at present. Given that no escrow, lacking evidence, is realizable, a demonstration is unavoidable. Given a demonstration, a positive demonstration is not sustainable as it tends to disassociate boundaries of personal volition, whereas a negative demonstration is more sustainable as it has distinct quasi-national qualities that a positive demonstration does not have. These affectations, as they alight here more or perhaps less persuasively, just happen to correspond to the emerging codes which engendered the pinion, and were utterly surprising to me i might add.
This correspondence lends credibility to the enterprise of the pinion for my position. Whether it lends credibility to it for the other position, that of those who deposit into the escrow if this happens, is anyone's guess.
All these deliberations weigh on the choice of small happiness for me by someone and the claimed consequence of return to regularity of the world economy. They establish a base on which to approach the seemingly imaginary enterprise of the choice of large happiness for me by someone to the tune of $7 billion and the claimed consequence of a higher global standard of living, one might say in ignorance of the many dangers of distributive inequalities already pervasive. by for now.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
the nature of the pinion
There is in the obelisk at left (update: obelisk removed because it is in doubt.) an implication that to derive this explanation of mental illness some science is necessary. No one will venture to ask what such science might be unless they find the explanation credible. I am not going to reveal the science, but the explanation might be found reasonable and some may wonder what the science is. I will say that it is sufficient to describe all life in terms of physics.
So being mentally ill, needing to figure it out, and succeeding, I am the sole Homo sapiens keeper of a physical description of life sufficient to begin or end a global financial crisis. I didn't actually decide to cause it. I decided to cause a negative result for life of unpredictable magnitude, a cause which I can reverse or worsen at my option, which decision on my part is communicated to Homo sapiens and they allowed to do as they please toward me, which to now is as a draftee into mental illness with all the misery there attached. Now, however, there is the matter of my decision to act one way or the alternate way which may or may not relate to global financial conditions.




