Thursday, November 22, 2012

High Hopes for Horse With No Name

What exactly is this thing I come up against every time I have an insight, an understanding but the explanation of it comes up against a barrier, a block, an obstacle that I can't get over, around, under or through?

It happened again in the the previous post.  The going around in a circle with a static point that is stopped by this block until I feel that I am going around in circles but can't explain or understand why.  The conflict, if there is one between feeling and thinking.  Feeling one thing, like being unable to explain something but not knowing on the thinking side of things exactly what it is and being able to express that as a product of thought, not feeling.  Maybe feeling does not have the the conceptual logic structure to support it that is the "given" logic structure in the thinking world?

I try to come to grips with the logic structure of money and every time it slips away like smoke through my fingers.  Like it was not even there.  Perhaps the conclusion is that it really is not there?  Money has no substance being.  It is a horse with not name so we give it a name, call it money and simply because we name it then it exists.  A conceptual existence not tied to a physical presence.  It used to have a physical presence in the form of a paper dollar bill on which it hang a name.  It no longer has that.  The dollars are digital and figments of the imagination that we can only enumerate to say how many of nothing there are.

Is money then nothing?  Money equals nothing?  Money equals debt therefore debt is nothing?  Debt equals nothing?  Some thing equals the non-presence state of being of that very same thing?  Is that a true statement?  Yes, it is because we can build logic structures based on that idea.  The physical presence of an object with characteristics and the non-presence, the absolute non existence of that very same thing are binary states of being (like on and off).  Simple presence means something as well as non-presence can mean something as well.  Acknowledge the presence of a thing as well as the non presence being two different states of being to which we can attach meaning and I guess the result is:...................................a conceptual logic structure frame work.  One of the simplest that can be devised.

Back to my basic fundamental belief.  A thing cannot exist without relationship to another thing.  If there is not other thing to relate to then the  only relationship that it can have in order to exist is a relationship to itself.  A recursive relationship.  A recursive relationship by my definition and thinking is unity.  There is only one thing.  In absence of all other things to relate to. The last thing a thing relates to at the real world level is time.  Where the ultimate last thing in the world that can't relate to any thing else because there is nothing else to relate to except where that same thing was at a point in time and that made it a different thing.  When there is no time, when time does not exist then unity is absolute.  There is absolutely nothing left for it to relate to.  Absolute unity.

Though thing to get my mind around but in a way I just did.  I can't deal with the idea that conceptually money is nothing.  It is not.  It is something with a conceptual existence.  At the unit level of existence I must give each unit of money a unique identity.  A unique identity is what makes the unit exist and usable as the medium in a medium of exchange conceptual logic system.

The conceptual balancing out of money as an positive asset equal to a negative liability to nothing is a concept that I simply refuse to accept as a foundation upon which to build an entire conceptual structure.  That is the barrier that I can't get by.  It is the wrong foundation for building a system.

On the other hand the binary existence or non-existence of an state of an electric charge is the fundamental bi-polar idea on which a computer is built.  When a flow of electricity current that changes the electrical state of an object from plus to minus can be harnessed to create a logic state of on or off that has meaning in a structural order of assembly of sequenced on and off states within a designated segment of bits and bytes, then the door was open to computing.

My introduction to computing was long ago and at a very simple level.  IBM cards.  At that time the essence of bi-polar on and off actually was magnetic.  At the heart of the computer were two micro size wires crossing at right angles on a matrix board of many wires.  At each intersection of wires on this X/Y grid was a metal band.  Electric charges were sent through selected wire addresses to intersecting wire points and depending on the charge it changed (a write action) the magnetic polarity of the circle at that point.  The wires could also read the state of polarity at a specific point in the grid without changing the polarity.  That is how the computer worked.   The Principal on which it worked is still the same today: Some form of binary difference at the lowest possible granular level. Physically that lowest level has grown smaller and smaller through a progression of selecting ever smaller physical things to use in order to represent the binary logic.  Now we are down to the nano level.  That is much smaller than the magnetic circle that could be seen with a magnifying glass in the computer I used in the 1960's.  Recording of information on an 80 column punch card is equally archaic but equally binary.  A punch hole was either there at a certain point in the card grid or it was not.

The progress of the information age is a progression logic concepts built on prior concepts coupled with a physical structures that accommodate and support the logic structures.  As a result we are so far away from the fundamental idea of binary computing that still supports the structure of entire system that those that know about it and how implements itself if the information systems we have today had to go to school for a long time to thoroughly know simply a small segment of the system today and how it operates.  The rest of us are simple users of the system, a system that we do not understand but which works for us but still in essence works based on a simple idea of something that is either on or off in relation to whatever media is used to write (change) that condition or read it (not change it, just find existing condition and relate the on/off to true and false.  True and false being existence/non-existence.  Existence = True.  Non-existence = false.  Binary computing at its finest.

This is not a primer on how computers work.  I only have the relatively vaguest idea but maybe more than most.  What I do not know I accept on faith because the system does work and if I care to know and want to spend the time (and have the intelligence) I could know exactly how it works because it is all documented in excruciating detail down to the electronic schematic level as well as the arcane intricacies of computer programming.

"Progress" is moving our established logical structures down to to the lowest granular level of conceptual decomposition possible in relation to our ability to do that using our minds and the logic machines that our minds produce.    Progress enables us to structure our conceptual and physical world to better serve our needs and its needs.

Progress in evolving the concept of money to serve us stopped long ago.  We are stuck at that "balance sheet" point of conceptual design which established "account" as the most granular conceptual binary object of the system which still bears the name "Accounting System".  Money management using modern computer technology goes far beyond that point but we have not we have not restructured the basic legacy thinking in terms of accounting with balance sheet accounts. The failure to do that hands us the current fiscal crises to deal with.  The real crises is that we have not applied our progress to decompose problems to lower fundamental conceptual levels where they can be reorganized in a constructive assembly that changes the existing system as well as the logic that supports it.

If there is a cliff it has been built up to astronomical heights by our failure to restructure the entire monetary system that plagues us today.  We are a victim of special interest in maintaining that system as much as we were a victim of the feudal system that perpetuated to serve the few until it was revised by decomposition of rights as an attribute to the lowest granular level: every person.

My entire structural concept of money in assignment of unique identity to each and every dollar.  Modern computer systems are fully capable of doing that.  Our minds, even my mind is so set in the established frame and its framework of concepts that it is extremely difficult to break out of that frame into a radically new conceptual system framework.

It seems that in assembling and expressing the system that I see I really have to start from the ground up.  It is as if we were still operating with adding machines today and I have a concept for adding machines operating over a network bringing us movies, Facebook and access to spending our money.  It is a long ways between there and here.  We, the 99% still have adding machine mentality when it comes to money.  1% has a great vested interest in conserving the old way.

With this insight I will go back and continue to but against the dam with High Hopes.

Next time your found, with your chin on the ground,
There a lot to be learned, so look around.

Just what makes that little old ant
Think he'll move that rubber tree plant?
Anyone knows an ant can't move a rubber tree plant,
But he's got high hopes, he's got high hopes,
He's got high apple pie, in the sky hopes.
So any time your gettin' low, 'stead of lettin' go,
Just remember that ant -
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.

When troubles call, and your back's to the wall,
There a lot to be learned, that wall could fall.

Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he'd punch a hole in a dam;
No one could make that ram scram - he kept buttin' that dam,
'Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes,
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes.
So any time your feelin' bad,'stead of feelin' sad,
Just remember that ram -
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam.

(Instrumental Interlude - First Five Lines of Verse)

All problems just a toy balloon;
They'll be bursted soon - they're just bound to go pop.
Oops there goes another problem ker- 
Oops there goes another problem ker-
Oops there goes another problem kerplop, kerplop?





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