TheFatefulNextStep

TheFatefulNextStep

BeatingTheCall                                                                                                                                

Termism                                                                SucksLongTermDown                                                             ShortTermToASecond’s                                                                                             SplitDownToABillionthNow                                                                                            TimeOut

 

             “Time out” could be what the Brits will face by the time their current, curious Monty Python reprise season, drags its way to trick or ‘treat Halloween night’ on October 31st.

 

I was wondering late this past weekend how many other people saw the English Conservative Party campaign to choose a new Prime Minister to be deeply weird: and for me, like reliving some of my 1950’s childhood.  

 

As part of my slightly post-colonial pre-sixties teen period, a saintly godmother gave me annual subscriptions to such classic British/English comics, like Film Fun, “Roy of the Rover’s” Tiger comics, Beano, Dandy, Knockout and such like.

 

These were supplemented by a diet of ‘good, children’s books’; supplied by the same much beloved godmother. She was always anxious that I should grow up with some ‘memory’, she said, of a foreign [to me as a child] place, where I had been born; and from which I had been “brutally removed, by my [relatively] ignorant parents to some unpleasant place in Afrika… Far from civility:” she added, when I asked once, while staying briefly with her in Keresley: near Coventry.

 

So these “good children’s books ran the gamut of Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton and the rest: from Big Ears & Noddy; to Famous Five, Secret Seven, Billy Bunter’ schooldays at Greyfriers school, Richmal Crompton’s Just William and other works that reflected either school or daily life in England…

 

These past weeks; as a confused world watched these wannabe’s clamoring around microphones howling siren like: ‘pick me’ pleas, at some ancient town criers event… in Bedlam.

 

Then it all wound down to the two finalists for ‘Head BOY’ selected from amongst the legion of shiny young “Lower sixth chaps”.

 

Technically, one woman started, realized she already had the required A Levels and was out. We the befuddled public were left with, what some claim, is the “AmiableRotter” character, from those old comic stories…The so-called BoJo … And a second fellow with an ungainly fifties style, short back n sides haircut, above curiously fanatical enraged eyes.

 

This wannabe, a person called Jeremy Hunt, is playing: ‘the confidently polished, “RoyOfTheRover’s”, clean- cut, Mr.‘NiceGuy’. And is a relatively unknown player, apparently…

 

As a bizarre sideshow, taking absurdity to the ridiculous, some TV commentators were heard, expressing embarrassment, about inappropriately, mistakenly, mispronouncing Jeremy’s surname. [He shares his personal name with the present leader of the main Opposition party: a fellow called Jeremy Corbyn.]. I love it when a meme comes together: Hee hee.

 

To cap the whole Monty Python replay script: There was even a sprightly, young, geeky type Kleva… “That Gove chappie from the lower fourth, who got dammed close to the finish line; and had to be disposed of, in some dastardly way: still unplumbed.”  Wow… Who could have written such a marvel: that reprised the Goon Show and Monty Python in one deluxe Reality Show…. And still continues in our next…

 

And so we were left with:

 

Aggressive, self-promoting, hugely impatient and filled with mock urgency: Master: “CrispNKleen versus the Indolent games playing: “AmiableIdleUpperClassDammedIntelligentLout”: the aforementioned -BoJo.

 

It is a  story that even, the now apparently despised Enid Blyton, could not have scripted more elegantly… Albeit: I am hanging on for some Agatha Christie.

 

I did find the entire exercise almost “brotesque” [sic] in its comic possibilities: was it not so epically serious. And I wondered if I was being silly.

 

Then at one of the later stages of what I saw as the whole comedy, I heard a young millennial level mommy being interviewed by SkyTV, on a park bench, where she was sitting with her toddler. She asserted that they [the cacophonous contenders as some called them] were like a clutch of public schoolboys all striving noisily for the head boy post: before the Easter break… Snap… And more than squared too, I suspect.

 

Puzzlingly in most other country’s Public schools are State schools while in England for odd reasons Private schools are called Public. No wonder George Orwell could disingenuously invent NewSpeak.

 

Nonetheless: I was affirmed; and I reveled in the absurdity of the whole drawn-out Brexit farce. It is obvious that sensible people want to see it vanquished and, to call upon another wonderful regular old comic strip meme: can see an end game to this. Visualize the successful PM contender tied like the ancient heroine to a railway line: and the bridge is down. The train puffs into view. October 31st. Who can save the day?  

 

No more delay…. Cancel that NO…Inevitable?

 

Or will they all go?

 

A break perhaps for a general election: and a ‘slowdown at dawn’ with the remainers and the leavers, allegedly Britain’s “new tribes” [London economist 23 June 2019] breaking ranks with the past: to build a new multiparty State.  Who dreams of that?  Or….

 

Better a stultified Oligopolistic system: two deeply divided parties dominant in a stagnant political pond… looking with great care: to the interests of their demanding mortgages.

 

Again, this is the stuff of high drama and of huge concern to many parts of the populace. And to date there has been little to cheer those hoping to find some form of plan; as to what shall be the game to be played on November 1st, this year… Saying the word plan often is not the same as saying what the purpose, strategy and key objectives of the plan should be.

 

Most certainly a planning mindset is something absent: as one of the more ‘bottom of the alphabet’ young sprogs, pointed out. He who dared challenge the “It will be alright on the night” philosophy during an acrimonious, pandemonium laced mass debate.

 

He was soon culled. 

 

If there is a plan it is a deadly secret. Evidence of planning other than hints that the civil service has contingency actions prepared is so far not noted from anyone at all… And Cinderella is close to Time Out without a pumpkin.

 

So far, everything has been about what happens in the next Tweet… Decisions taken one-way one minute: then another way a few minutes later… Pure, reactive behavior… Playing reactively: and by instinct.

 

The truth is that the pace of change is on accelerating curve dealing with unknown unknowns: and then pretending afterwards that they were known all along.  Little evidence of the “Deep thought” called for by the BBC the weekend of the climax.

 

And as if to give scary emphasis to the pace at which the real world is evolving. While the Brits play around with their ‘long term we’re all dead’ fantasy destiny; Facebook’s Mr. Zuckerberg set a cat amongst the clustered pigeons. He announced that he intended to introduce a new, competitive digital global currency called Libre….

 

While it may turnout to be bluster it is potentially an intervention that could change everything: Altogether… And in slightly more time than the billionth of a second before the train arrives.

 

Have fun

 

Loves Ya awl

 

!NiK

Brexit’s Final Nail: Pass the Parcel.

Remember the old parlour game: Pass the Parcel”?   It has morphed back into fashion: now rebranded as a Parliamentary Parlour Game called: “Reframe Brexit”.

 

The “LEAVE” majority parcel has been passed about in frenzy because many know that “the Prize” could be a “booby”! Not what you wanted… As if you had any idea before… And then, how would you be remembered: with Pride or Shame.



So let it be: with Brexit… a word that, itself, is transformed into a ‘booby prize’.

A local newspaper columnist, Ben Travato, asserted recently that “Referendum” is Latin for: “Let the morons decide.” Similar statements have recently been made about Democracy itself; albeit in Democracies it would seem the “moron” element are those already chosen: as the random socmed stuff that’s trending routinely in one’s In- basket spaces suggests.


So it seems, when one looks at the curious antics of British legislators, over a past series of debates and votes, about whether it is better to submit to generational servitude as a vassal state, appended to the European venture… Or crash off a cliff into a void, for which the country is about as well equipped as say…. “Pass the parcel”….

 

OK. One can’t really say. There are no real precedents for a modern developed nation state, deciding on some seemingly mercurial whim, to cut intimate ties with its biggest market; in fact the world’s biggest market: in order to…..  “Pass the Parcel!”

So again: one can’t really say… All we’ve heard, by way of preparation, are odd random slogans that have a weird sameness to the desperate slogans of the late Soviet era or the late Saddam’s late voice meister.

The latest slogan indicating that desperation measures are up, to avoid being the last schmuck standing. This sees opposing [English not British} teams  joining in the latest `MANTRA”: National Unity… paraded with desperate conviction that the country could survive being abruptly plunged into a ravening sharkpool.


Who wants to be blamed?

On one hand there is the great historical heritage: on the old slippery slope. On the other hand there is a humongous burden of care.

So… “Pass the Parcel”… quickly: before the bell rings to clock time out.

What they are proposing is at heart a Revolution…  A “tide of times taken at the flood” that might just possibly lead on to Fortune…  But while they played Parcels the tide went out…

So. What will it be? … Quick: “Pass the Parcel!”

Again… No One knows. The world is faced with the enigma of the whole insane business… And that is somehow scarily close to what moronic was originally defined to mean.

As the old cliché goes… When you fail to plan then you plan to fail … Has Mrs. May opted for a form of masochistic, vengeful- self-immolation… disguised as free choice. “My choice” or the Highway….

Or could there be a more simple truth: separation anxiety rules.

Quick… “Pass the Parcel.”

To be continued.

Meanwhile diarise:  #Data must share rent.

.

Liberalism’s Endgame…


December 18th2019


What destiny liberalism

<P>
The British entanglement with themselves over whether or not they should leave the European Union with a seriously bad arrangement or with no post-membership arrangement at all, is proving close to intractable currently.


The present furor seems odd; certainly to the rest of us who don’t live there.  They apparently had an issue that most of us don’t understand, with being members of the world’s most exclusive Trillion-dollar club… one to which many would like to belong, including me.


Admittedly the majority who voted to leave was a fairly slender one… but nonetheless it was a majority: and those rules imposed on the world by the advances of Liberalism over the past cluster of centuries since the beginning of the modern era, say that you have to live with it.  

<P>

The losers, i.e. the Remainers want a rerun. The Leavers see the whole idea of a re run as a scandalous violation of democratic freedom. Freedom is the world of Adult decisions and Ultimately, People were free to choose and the lies that politicians use to achieve their, whatever, ends: are as old as the whole idea of politics itself:  to confuse. If you voted for the lies then live with it… or should we


Basically: If there are leavers who were too disinterested to find out what they were voting for, well tough; that’s their problem. Live with it… that is the Liberalist vision.

<P>

In his 1985 publication: “How Wars End”, the British Historian, A.J.P. Taylor makes a cruelly fascinating point referring to a decision by the British government in 1822 that finally killed off the Congress of Vienna attempts to build a mediating process to end wars. He says. “Not for the first time the British government took the line that if there was a liberal government out of hand somewhere it should be allowed to lead its country to destruction.”

<P>

So let it be two centuries later as Britain slides almost inexorably towards a suicide cliff suggesting that National suicide is an option to protect the liberal vision.

<P>

So. Regarding BREXIT and Liberalism: Does Theresa May represent the endgame of the liberal ethic turned strictly Ideological Determinism with suicide an option? 

<P>

<P>

Or


What?


Having lived cheek by jowl with ideologically determined crazies my whole life I don’t really see Mrs. May as such a person. I see her as a person who wanted, and voted, to Remain in the Union and in the interests of full disclosure; were I a voter there, I too would have voted to remain in that wonderfully comfortable snug Trillion dollar club, where all I had to do was count my chickens, and think  GREEN.


I have a ghastly vision of the residents of a luxurious, if not the Best comfort care home in town waking up after 40 years of almost smothering care, to the horror of being tossed out onto the Common: and having to rush off in their respective dotages, to sing for their supper… I.o.w. I see it as ‘national suicide’…  


In fact if it were anything but, then the obstreperous loud-mouthed BREXITEERS who supported and promoted the whole idea would not have rushed post-haste to resign their roles within hours of the shock decision being made. They couldn’t move fast enough to duck the blame that is now being leveled at the “nice” lady: who was the only person with the balls to take on the desperately unwanted job.  Even the leader of the main Opposition Party has carefully avoided accidentally being elected, so he could avoid being blamed for the pending catastrophe.


None had  any idea of how to turn the place into a thriving, freely operating union, outside the European one… And two years later have still failed to present any plan other than the famed “muddling through” axiom in defense of what currently promises to be an apocalyptic event.




So the task of negotiating an exit fell on the most unlikely person; and the core implicit element that appears to be missing is trust… And given how little trust is apparent  with the back-stop open-ended condition, with which a desperate Mrs. May played cat and mouse [badly]…  the country is placed in an invidious position.


It is caught between the reluctance of the EU leaders to see the country leave their warm embrace and the actual divorce. And as most people know afterwards, Divorce is rarely anything less than messy and loaded with recrimination. And Mrs. May has not helped matters with her fudging efforts to appear reasonable and willing. >

<P>

There is also something about the back-stop arrangement she is attempting to sell that seems unsavoury to this observer.

<P>

The key argument in favour of leaving according to the deeply elusive BREXITEERS is the issue of Sovereignty. If Britain wanted to leave NATO, for instance, or even the United Nations, then she could just resign and leave; That would be an expression of Sovereignty

<P>

However the backstop has a provision apparently that excludes any unilateral behaviour by Britain to escape from their proposed retention inside a customs union to protect Northern Ireland [a part of the United Kingdom] from fractious dealings with their neighbour, the Irish Republic.  So as I wrote before, the country is preparing to be neither in, nor out, of the EU.

<P>

In fact should Britain decide a few years down the line that they will exit the Custom arrangement and become properly free this can only be done by mutual agreement.

<P>

<P>

This has resulted in irate rumblings from the BREXITEERS who mumble on about ‘Vassalage’: a valid point given that remaining in the Customs Union would dramatically, apparently, restrict The UK’s ability to deal with the rest of the planet unilaterally, while still having to pay dues and having zero voting rights… a distinctly dodgy deal.

<P>

Something that seems, however, to have been missed in the argument over the Back-Stop arrangement’s focus on Ireland is the understanding of the word MUTUAL in the phrase ‘agreement to leave’. One almost suspects careful misdirection is in order.

<P>

Certainly the focus is so intensely on Ireland by British commentators that no English media seem to have noted that mutual refers to a potentially destructive game that can emerge between 27 remaining members of the Union and the Leaver [UK]. The EU has 28 members remember. Mutual, in the agreement, surely means that 27 members must unanimously agree that the 28th can go. What if some don’t? Certainly I have heard no comment by the English on this.

<P>


For instance a cynic like myself could argue that Gibraltar emerges from that package called “THE DEAL”, as a prime “Queen’s pawn to a checkmate”: suggested by [again, for instance] a reasonably obdurate Spain; still rankling at being forced under duress to cede the place away under the Treaty of Utrecht, more than three hundred years ago…

<P>

Utrecht was a treaty from which Britain benefitted more than any ally or other contestant. Spain is in fact still negotiating with the descendants of the Jewish community expelled from the country in 1492… Such matters continue to press on after the mob has forgotten their rage. One hardly imagines they [the Spanish] would forget being forced to give up Gibraltar.

<P>

It is difficult for this observer to decide which message Mrs. May has chosen, to matter most in her frantic determination to serve the nation with her unwanted task. There was “Strong and stable” then “Global Britain” …  Or the latest tell: that what she does is “In the national Interest.” 

<P>

Perhaps Gibraltar is not in the National interest. 

<P>

So since that interesting arrangement sees Gibraltar as the potential sacrificial pawn in the game; She could be bartering away her country’s access to the Mediterranean at exactly the moment she was frantically dancing around with children in my country claiming to become “Global Britain”. Presumably the Falklands could be next…  And then what about those delicious tax haven islands. Plenty to barter away: to achieve the mandate of the people.

<P>

So as I said at the start; their position has become intractable and my own view would be, that since the actual ‘run for the hills’ barking dog Brexiteers have made a minimal to zero contribution to the reality that Mrs. May faces: the most sensible thing the Parliament can do is to dump the Deal and call for a re- vote based on a more realistic evaluation of the reasoning for the furore.

<P>

If a second vote says leave then no one can claim ignorance of reality.

<P>

I wish you all a glorious festive day or twelve

<P>

Loves ya all

<P>

Nicholas

<P>

signing off.

Revelations 501…

Note: You may have to deal with unexpected spelling differences. How you deal with them presents you with a chance to measure yourself. It represents what was said of Nietzsche: someone I once had the privilege to play, in a live stage performance in the year 2000, primarily for the world `Nietzsche Konference”. “It could be said that the job of the philosopher is to unsettle our fixed certainties and challenge our Konviktions.”


In my previous blog I was exploring an idea that is being bandied about kurrently, regarding the [so-called} “Retreat of Liberalism”. This means that I am investigating further why the spirit of liberalism [whatever it is] is running out of relevance for so many people.


In the process the word “Revelation” sneaked unexpektedly into my range of thought this past week. I was looking for a synonym for “suddenly”, a word I despise using and always go in search for more interesting options, notwithstanding that some things are simply: ‘suddenly’, like the neighbour’s tree crashing into my garden in a ferocious storm three nights ago, and along with “unexpektedly”. So Revelations was, surprisingly, an option for a choice.


So this had me thinking about Revelations, the word. The word it self… not the denotative idea that it relates to a chapter in a book, otherwise described as a collage of apocryphal histories. ‘The Revelation” was a future that, according to many, has already arrived.


Somehow I automatically associated the word Revelation with this particular closing chapter and such ideas as apocalypse, prophecy and illumination… Perhaps for a reason that follows shortly… So it was odd to find the word connotatively associated with words like: truth, suddenly, discovery, inexpectation, and disclosure… in addition to prediction.

It also confirmed for me that the issue affecting Liberalism… also fell into the category of revelation.


So such a truth in ‘revelatory’ [sic] format was that liberals, it would seem, have become alienated from their kore society, through an obsession with ‘others’ and being ‘nice’ to them. And hence it seems, have learned/chosen to despise those now called the “left behind”. They are also not able to see why; because they are, like others of other ideological pursuasion, in a memic cage around which they tramp frantically.


The more specifically, standard view of the word “Revelation”, as the key word referencing the future, was forcefully introduced to me on an historical [for me] occasion, many dekades back, when, in the company of some others: we were harangued at gunpoint, for a number of hours, by a man calling himself a ‘Krusader for Truth’.


And “Revelations” [the book of one, John the Divine] was the subject of that hostage period declamation. That and some THEY type fellows who were participating in what has now become an almost stereotypical, devious ‘conspiracy to take over the world thing’; enslave people, or do something more elusively presented: and forcefully tested: to check that we were listening.


Chiefly we [who were being harangued] were impressed with some idea that he [the Krusader] was ‘chosen’ and would soon ‘vanish’ in some kind of alleged “Rapturous awakening” with destiny… And we in the room presumably would be left in the shit


Fortunately violence was/still is such a normal part of our lives that calmness prevailed. One should always avoid arguing with a man holding a gun in his hand… Especially when everyone else in the room has got a few of their own, available: at a hand’s breadth distance from their bodies… [It was the old days remember].


So the fellow eventually, ran out of rant and buggered off… and we finished drinking the beer he’d interrupted.


I fictionalized a more satisfactory version of that small event in my life, and gave the nub of the scene as a back-story to one of my favorite characters in the Buffalo Hunters: which you can obtain at Amazon.com.http://amzn.to/2FSOgwq
[Hint there are about forty books on Amazon with that title. Only one looks like mine … a different kind of ‘buffalo’: It is an Urban Thriller.]


Nonetheless; over the years that followed, I travelled on business to many, many parts; far away and usually by the end of my time there, which was invariably three to five days, I had caught up my notes and run out of stuff to read. Mobiles weren’t invented yet; and an airplane usually had to be caught at about 3 am. … And I didn’t need to be caught out napping, for a flight from some vanishing point to another.


So there was often a book called Gideon, always lying somewhere in most of the rooms, I inhabited briefly… And there was always this crazy chapter: Revelations that I would read, against the background of that memorable afternoon. Never made much sense to be honest but it was always puzzling enough, to keep me awake until the call that the taxi had arrived for the airport. I could also never really pin down all his ranting references.


Nonetheless after my own personal apocalypse a quarter century or so ago; what I call a ‘Zen Konspiracy’ took hold of me; and became my personal Revelation: discovery and truth.


I gradually decided that had to write to write about those who remained, in that “Krusader’s” world of the unchosen. That krusader chappie ranted about being part of the chosen that would vaporize somehow: and be rescued from what had to come. Apparently only enough people to fill a handful of football stadia were to be “chosen”… The rest of us were left behind.


Based on some odd things that are associated with that experience, I decided that the UNCHOSEN’…. That is All of us, who read this … assuming [I write fiction remember] that the prophesied apocalypse has actually begun…. were the ‘Nicer’ people… And I would describe the world in which they would live, when the other lot vanished one day…. And in hope there was no prophesied apocalypse… in the same way that 2012 came and went I would simply evaluate the world that is emerging.


And so I invented my own trigger for the apocalypse… What I called the “Nuclear triple double tap” that produced an harmonic dissonance in the Planet’s rhythm, that I called the Ringing… In other words: where the planet lost its tune and went into dischord. So much for Revelations… What was of course more interesting were the other meanings that I serendipitously encountered.


For instance another more recent “Revelation” for me this week, was the idea that a group of Pomeranian [UK] Cabinet Ministers could, at command of their leader Theresa May, speed-read on steroids, like mad.


They apparently demonstrated that skill by receiving, reading, digesting and formulating comment, on a 585 page document that was to be the separation agreement to achieve the idea called BREXIT. [Note that while each page may only have had one word on it, most legal documents have at least 300… Meaning: as much as 175,000 words]


Apparently to limit leakages to the ‘norty’ press, the cabinet were allegedly handed this 585 odd page copy of the proposal, some three minutes before going into a five-hour cabinet harangue on the subject…


The realization that a coherent explanation of the withdrawal agreement [in the 585 pages] could be grasped in less than 3 minutes; and was accepted by all offical kommentators on all channels as realistic, was revelationary [sic].


The time apparently allocated, 3 minutes, was also dramatically Revelationary in another way. For much of my life in the country where I live it was common cause that a person could be tried, found guilty, sentenced and sent away for life… for what was called a “pass” offence, in approximately three minutes. That idea was considered so justifiably heinous that the world united to help rid us of our bad government. We’re busy again right now again dealing with another bit of bad government. That one can decide the legal future of a country, in roughly the same time was to say the least, a mind blowing thought. Presumably the Pom Parliament will not be so easily gulled… at least two Cabinet members demonstrated a measure of resilience.


Another interpretive view of ‘revelation’ was the idea of discovery. In The Jonker Memorandum, [the podcast series associated with this web site,] listeners would remember that the ‘End of the World’ hypothesis, forming the back-story, to the main story, began with a sequence of underground nuclear detonations, that kolektively were referred to [by me] as a “Nuclear triple double tap”. 1998 was the year that I chose for a sequence of events [that actually occurred] during that year, in order, to “end the world” in a fictional sense.


I did this solely so that I could justify introducing Universal Basic Income into the world and working out how it could be paid for … And knowing now [i.e. what I didn’t ‘know’ then] that the payment source already exists; and has been unilaterally discounted to zero without thought or konsideration … That was another version of Revelation recently… Discovery again.


Disclosure: [Another version of revelation] I always understood that it was standard for writers embarked on futuristic fiction to describe how people in the future lived on “Credits”… But the teenage children with whom I exchanged classroom views on matters involving accounting, business and economics for the past quarter century, would challenge me with: What does ‘credit’ mean? How does it happen? and further: WHY WHY WHY… as was their responsibility.


All as ways of avoiding the really hard stuff like remembering what was in the textbook… Not my curriculum preferred/ determined stuff: unless you are explaining Adam Smith’s idea of “Economic Rent”… So you got UBI and as soon as my personal Revelation this year relevant to the vexing issue of how it should be paid for arrived, I shared it with you all on BLOGS: Invisible friend, Kolonisation of the Mind, And Exchange Value. [I did it quickly in case the evildoers, whoever they might be, returned to stop the rot.]


It is my konsideration that eventually the idea presented being so logical and so “THERE” and “AHA!!!” it will be shared by a million or more people. The momentum will bring it about by organic Revelation. Not to mention that as a free market proselytizer by choice: I don’t see this solution as being necessarily State sponsored… where Mr Luce’s faultline has its home. But for that you will have to follow the stories.


Notwithstanding this cluster of variables on the theme ‘Revelation’; there was another, far more scary discovery ‘revelation’, associated with the more traditional ‘prediction type ‘revelation’. Wikipedia [a source, subject to normal caveats and possible ‘fake news’ info] informs me that as many as 53% of all major Hiroshima and bigger scale seismic events over the past 2500 years have occurred since 1998. Not a Revelation I relish.


For the record as at last December the total number recorded that fitted the criteria [6 or more on the Richter scale] over some 2500 years was, as at start 1998: 413. In other words about 11 every decade… less than 2 per year, on a gently escalating upward curve. Since 1998 however; there had, by last December, been 414. More specifically, roughly 20 per year


And they keep happening.


Now I accept that I am arriving at this conclusion from a possibly slightly inaccurate source, to the extent that we count some, and not others, from the past; that either were not measured and/or unknown. But of the known’s: 53 % and rising is an uncool Revelation in the empirical discovery category. [Nonetheless: until it becomes official, I shall continue to practice the writing of fiction: by definition imaginary… Ergo: some random bloggist’s rambling on a favored theme is simply self-serving and not of any relevance… perhaps… In my fictional world things get bad for places on the coast… And I don’t live near a coast.]


So to summarize: a smattering of Revelationary empirics and how do they relate to the liberal idea:


My first revelationary experience relevant to liberalism [whatever it is supposed to be] came via the indefatigable Mr. T. who as we know is President of the Firmian Union. Like the rest of the world I watched his 90-minute session with the media on the morning after his Republican Party lost the House of Representatives. How would he react? Was the pressing question…. Would he bluster and prevaricate or what?


One of the ‘implacable rules’ of my classroom over many decades was/is the dictum that there is no such thing as failure, only opportunities to recharge and get it right. Pres T…. took the road sometimes travelled; and once he had heaped praise on his winners and disparaged, brutally in the case of one vanishing rep, the losers; especially those who had been his enemies, he presented the prospect of an amazing bargain deal: that could be just what the people need. In fact he was almost “liberal”.


In response we listened to a quorum of the best that the broadly unsympathetik media could offer. They who questioned Mr.T were, for the most part, dancing with such frenzy on their kollektive memes, it was its own revelation. No one actually demonstrated that they even marginally grasped the significance of what he offered; they were so intent on digging up their own bones… they simply discounted it and heard NO thing.


I was deliciously surprised by his approach… and instantly grasped its significance to one who plays the “Long game”. And the nature of the risk that he spelled out. We have routinely viewed ideologues at work where we live. Liberals, assuming any of those kolektion of press corps persons would be called Liberals [whatever they weren’t] demonstrated a response so ideologically defined it completely cancelled the name… Liberal. As ‘Bones” would have put it they were operating on “Outmoded preconceptions”. They were unable to grasp the inherent pragmatism; and lost the moment to share in the idea that ‘the people’… whom Liberals apparently adore… Do not have to come second.


A reinforcing but ultimately equally convincing revelation regarding what has become the ‘Achilles heel’ of this [so-called] Liberalism ethic, came from a different source. An English journalist called Edmund Luce has published a heavily praised book, setting out the case for “the Retreat from Liberalism” [Abacus edition: Retreat from Liberalism]. And up to page 196 it was a solid and thoroughly absorbing read, with some stunningly memorable observations.

And then the wheels came off in one line… and revealed his passion, as just a ‘nicer’ form of ideological dékolleté. He also revealed implicitly why a contemporary version of Liberalism is running on empty. In the next few paragraphs we shall explore why.


The ‘Rent Seekers’, or Rentier class, as economist Steve Keen korektly kalls the parasitic elements, that feed on the globalised casino market economy… The only game in town really. These ‘Rentiers’ have, through their greed and indulgence, sucked the relevance from the lives of the ordinary folk left behind.

Their orgy of self-enrichment over the past few decades has been good, for the rent konfirmers [they who got rich]; and their friends. However the entire system is pretty well running on empty. This is a reason for the growing global economic slowdown that no one wants to discuss. Simply the businesses of the world are running out of kustomers… More and more reports of robot takeovers are being noted even as I write this.

I hear right now a local Trades Union group called NEHAWU making a radio appeal for its members to have their jobs guaranteed after some form of automation is introduced into their world. The AM Live phone-in host, a well-known local “liberal” journalist and radio kommentator, simply acknowledged the kall and refused to diskuss the worker’s kolektive terror… simply moved on the next kaller.


The “gig” economy sucks and is grossly overrated and for many is already a place of desperation. A point interestingly and lucidly made be the same Mr. Luce: who simply has missed how the dots should join up



For this ‘service based’ system to be sustained: it is necessary to keep nourishing the base. Watering the garden, as it were. Too great a disparity between top and middle to lower … is fundamentally bad for sales… and will be the core trigger for the next almost pending recession, which may well persist for longer than considered normal given the massive impetus fuelled by the era of Quantitative Easing [QE]: and assuming we resist large scale warfare.



Enter UBI [Universal Basic Income]. What Mr. Luce and thus most so-called Liberals [whatever they are] missed was that QE was no more than UBI for the “Betters” [if I may use a slang feudal term]



And thus UBI is not some concession for the working poor… and the universal ‘Dalits’ of society, as such a worthy liberal thought defender as young Edmund Luce, piously intones on page 196 to top paragraph page 197. Then to kompound his broad indifference to ‘our’ working poor he kontinues with the sentence: “We must think more radically than that…”

What kan be a more radical notion than that DATA provides the foundation for the complete transformation of society in a way that only such writers as Heinlein, Asimov and Herbert grasped?



They did not spell it out though. Similarly our author, then changes the subject: leaving us with his ‘inexpektation’… An unfulfilled stillborn revelation; revealing that like all other kommentators currently: he has missed the Revolution it went past so fast. No wonder Liberalism is in retreat… Are they in fact: Left Behind?.



After all, I recently heard Christine Lagarde of the IMF having to point out to a serried group of ‘experts’, on a Bloomberg interview, that they needed to remember that the Fintech variation, that has come to dominate financial activity world–wide today is not yet eight years old… The financial services industry itself, goes back at least five thousand years… And in its present ‘market capitalist’ format, about five hundred years… Until the past few decades their contribution tho GDP was fairly nominal. Now it supercedes many other more traditional sources,. And that is [partially] a result of an eight year old industry FINTECh.



Where I live people call traffic lights: “Robots”, a meme that has survived for the century or so when the first one in the country was heralded in headlines the “Arrival of the ROBOTS”… thanks to Karel Capek’s play RossumsUniversalRobots: a hit of that era in our turf. Luce produces a similar old meme as reflexive response to the helping hand conceptualized through UBI… and as I’ve pointed out, carelessly ignores Quantitative Easing… That for the benefit of those who may be confused was a process whereby, in simple terms, TWENTY odd TRILLION US [Firmian] dollars of imaginary money was given to the “BIG” people so they wouldn’t crash due to their bad lending practices. Interest rates basically ZERO. Robots for traffic lights is in every way an outmoded preconception,or more simply, a bad habit. Believing that basic pay would be bad for worker morale takes outmoded to a new dimension.



So. No. Universal Basic Income is not a handout for the poor… As Salinas piously observed 2500 years ago: “The best thing for the poor is that they were never born…” No. UBI is totally production based AND IS EARNED.



It is simply not Accounted for, like in the income statement of the receivers. And WHY ISN’T IT? Should be the question. There is plenty of whining I note regarding the “curious distortion” that the new techno revolution has produced so little additional productivity… Naturally, when many billions of billions of Bytes a year of data are produced at zero value: and are therefore not accounted for… By definition the creators of data… people: are going to become poorer… They/we are in a formal sense slave workers: something that is supposed to be illegal. Our world has almost instantly become a DATA driven world.



So #DATA must share RENT.


It is rather their/our universal share of the bounty that has resulted from the previously unobtainable access, to all planetary knowledge… at the touch of a finger… and the bundling of all of that information into so-called DATA… something else like fintech that formalized and demokratized a previously inackcessible resource that was the exclusive territory of multiple circles of diminishing “Innies”. This DATA that has, a moment ago really [Specifically, since the past 10% of my life began] transformed the daily running of our lives, is the bounty: to nourish the planet’s progress to the next level of transformation.



Not doing this will fuel the growing rage represented by the shift to right and left of centre parties [assuming such an anomalous pair of descriptions have any form of currency anymore and aren’t simply a pair of obsolete memes] For we are now in an age when the difference is between those people who are okay and keeping up: and those… the majority… left behind. The ElBies. [May include me… I feel deeply left behind]


SHIFT SCENE:



‘That is an idea above your pay station Sir.” She said.

“ There are Data givers and Data takers he replied.” If you are ‘online’, and your data is accessible then a percentage of the value generated is due to the givers.

Hurrah.



SHIFT ENDS



Takeaway.



You have just read/heard brief exchange from my new cluster of novellas [Part four of the Azanian Quartet] I shall present snippets of these in a new marketing thrust for Nicholas Jakari… in the New Year [2019].


NOTE: [Should you be puzzled by this idea ABOUT THE REVENUE SOURCE FOR UBI: please refer to my blog: Kolonisation of the Mind: nicholasjakari.com]



So it has been a time of Revelation: at many levels. Stressful, with major upsets and some glorious highs; and the gift of a life explored: a wonderful gift for a Stanislavskian writer. Time to reflect on each character and where in me they come from.



Eventually the freedom to choose, to appropriate data rents in an equitable manner, may be replaced by the further inequities of present, increasingly, perhaps inevitably, kurrupt practices; as the realization dawns that the world, in our historical understanding of that word: is undergoing a strangely destructive change…. And a good plan may involve taking to the hills: quite literally.

I look forward to sharing more of them with you in a new cluster of stories.



Cheers



!NiK[‘18]

Note: You may have to deal with unexpected spelling differences. How you deal with them presents you with a chance to measure yourself. It represents what was said of Nietzsche: someone I once had the privilege to play, in a live stage performance in the year 2000, primarily for the world `Nietzsche Konference”. “It could be said that the job of the philosopher is to unsettle our fixed certainties and challenge our Konviktions.”


In my previous blog I was exploring an idea that is being bandied about kurrently, regarding the [so-called} “Retreat of Liberalism”. This means that I am investigating further why the spirit of liberalism [whatever it is] is running out of relevance for so many people.


In the process the word “Revelation” sneaked unexpektedly into my range of thought this past week. I was looking for a synonym for “suddenly”, a word I despise using and always go in search for more interesting options, notwithstanding that some things are simply: ‘suddenly’, like the neighbour’s tree crashing into my garden in a ferocious storm three nights ago, and along with “unexpektedly”. So Revelations was, surprisingly, an option for a choice.


So this had me thinking about Revelations, the word. The word it self… not the denotative idea that it relates to a chapter in a book, otherwise described as a collage of apocryphal histories. ‘The Revelation” was a future that, according to many, has already arrived.


Somehow I automatically associated the word Revelation with this particular closing chapter and such ideas as apocalypse, prophecy and illumination… Perhaps for a reason that follows shortly… So it was odd to find the word connotatively associated with words like: truth, suddenly, discovery, inexpectation, and disclosure… in addition to prediction.

It also confirmed for me that the issue affecting Liberalism… also fell into the category of revelation.


So such a truth in ‘revelatory’ [sic] format was that liberals, it would seem, have become alienated from their kore society, through an obsession with ‘others’ and being ‘nice’ to them. And hence it seems, have learned/chosen to despise those now called the “left behind”. They are also not able to see why; because they are, like others of other ideological pursuasion, in a memic cage around which they tramp frantically.


The more specifically, standard view of the word “Revelation”, as the key word referencing the future, was forcefully introduced to me on an historical [for me] occasion, many dekades back, when, in the company of some others: we were harangued at gunpoint, for a number of hours, by a man calling himself a ‘Krusader for Truth’.


And “Revelations” [the book of one, John the Divine] was the subject of that hostage period declamation. That and some THEY type fellows who were participating in what has now become an almost stereotypical, devious ‘conspiracy to take over the world thing’; enslave people, or do something more elusively presented: and forcefully tested: to check that we were listening.


Chiefly we [who were being harangued] were impressed with some idea that he [the Krusader] was ‘chosen’ and would soon ‘vanish’ in some kind of alleged “Rapturous awakening” with destiny… And we in the room presumably would be left in the shit


Fortunately violence was/still is such a normal part of our lives that calmness prevailed. One should always avoid arguing with a man holding a gun in his hand… Especially when everyone else in the room has got a few of their own, available: at a hand’s breadth distance from their bodies… [It was the old days remember].


So the fellow eventually, ran out of rant and buggered off… and we finished drinking the beer he’d interrupted.


I fictionalized a more satisfactory version of that small event in my life, and gave the nub of the scene as a back-story to one of my favorite characters in the Buffalo Hunters: which you can obtain at Amazon.com.http://amzn.to/2FSOgwq
[Hint there are about forty books on Amazon with that title. Only one looks like mine … a different kind of ‘buffalo’: It is an Urban Thriller.]


Nonetheless; over the years that followed, I travelled on business to many, many parts; far away and usually by the end of my time there, which was invariably three to five days, I had caught up my notes and run out of stuff to read. Mobiles weren’t invented yet; and an airplane usually had to be caught at about 3 am. … And I didn’t need to be caught out napping, for a flight from some vanishing point to another.


So there was often a book called Gideon, always lying somewhere in most of the rooms, I inhabited briefly… And there was always this crazy chapter: Revelations that I would read, against the background of that memorable afternoon. Never made much sense to be honest but it was always puzzling enough, to keep me awake until the call that the taxi had arrived for the airport. I could also never really pin down all his ranting references.


Nonetheless after my own personal apocalypse a quarter century or so ago; what I call a ‘Zen Konspiracy’ took hold of me; and became my personal Revelation: discovery and truth.


I gradually decided that had to write to write about those who remained, in that “Krusader’s” world of the unchosen. That krusader chappie ranted about being part of the chosen that would vaporize somehow: and be rescued from what had to come. Apparently only enough people to fill a handful of football stadia were to be “chosen”… The rest of us were left behind.


Based on some odd things that are associated with that experience, I decided that the UNCHOSEN’…. That is All of us, who read this … assuming [I write fiction remember] that the prophesied apocalypse has actually begun…. were the ‘Nicer’ people… And I would describe the world in which they would live, when the other lot vanished one day…. And in hope there was no prophesied apocalypse… in the same way that 2012 came and went I would simply evaluate the world that is emerging.


And so I invented my own trigger for the apocalypse… What I called the “Nuclear triple double tap” that produced an harmonic dissonance in the Planet’s rhythm, that I called the Ringing… In other words: where the planet lost its tune and went into dischord. So much for Revelations… What was of course more interesting were the other meanings that I serendipitously encountered.


For instance another more recent “Revelation” for me this week, was the idea that a group of Pomeranian [UK] Cabinet Ministers could, at command of their leader Theresa May, speed-read on steroids, like mad.


They apparently demonstrated that skill by receiving, reading, digesting and formulating comment, on a 585 page document that was to be the separation agreement to achieve the idea called BREXIT. [Note that while each page may only have had one word on it, most legal documents have at least 300… Meaning: as much as 175,000 words]


Apparently to limit leakages to the ‘norty’ press, the cabinet were allegedly handed this 585 odd page copy of the proposal, some three minutes before going into a five-hour cabinet harangue on the subject…


The realization that a coherent explanation of the withdrawal agreement [in the 585 pages] could be grasped in less than 3 minutes; and was accepted by all offical kommentators on all channels as realistic, was revelationary [sic].


The time apparently allocated, 3 minutes, was also dramatically Revelationary in another way. For much of my life in the country where I live it was common cause that a person could be tried, found guilty, sentenced and sent away for life… for what was called a “pass” offence, in approximately three minutes. That idea was considered so justifiably heinous that the world united to help rid us of our bad government. We’re busy again right now again dealing with another bit of bad government. That one can decide the legal future of a country, in roughly the same time was to say the least, a mind blowing thought. Presumably the Pom Parliament will not be so easily gulled… at least two Cabinet members demonstrated a measure of resilience.


Another interpretive view of ‘revelation’ was the idea of discovery. In The Jonker Memorandum, [the podcast series associated with this web site,] listeners would remember that the ‘End of the World’ hypothesis, forming the back-story, to the main story, began with a sequence of underground nuclear detonations, that kolektively were referred to [by me] as a “Nuclear triple double tap”. 1998 was the year that I chose for a sequence of events [that actually occurred] during that year, in order, to “end the world” in a fictional sense.


I did this solely so that I could justify introducing Universal Basic Income into the world and working out how it could be paid for … And knowing now [i.e. what I didn’t ‘know’ then] that the payment source already exists; and has been unilaterally discounted to zero without thought or konsideration … That was another version of Revelation recently… Discovery again.


Disclosure: [Another version of revelation] I always understood that it was standard for writers embarked on futuristic fiction to describe how people in the future lived on “Credits”… But the teenage children with whom I exchanged classroom views on matters involving accounting, business and economics for the past quarter century, would challenge me with: What does ‘credit’ mean? How does it happen? and further: WHY WHY WHY… as was their responsibility.


All as ways of avoiding the really hard stuff like remembering what was in the textbook… Not my curriculum preferred/ determined stuff: unless you are explaining Adam Smith’s idea of “Economic Rent”… So you got UBI and as soon as my personal Revelation this year relevant to the vexing issue of how it should be paid for arrived, I shared it with you all on BLOGS: Invisible friend, Kolonisation of the Mind, And Exchange Value. [I did it quickly in case the evildoers, whoever they might be, returned to stop the rot.]


It is my konsideration that eventually the idea presented being so logical and so “THERE” and “AHA!!!” it will be shared by a million or more people. The momentum will bring it about by organic Revelation. Not to mention that as a free market proselytizer by choice: I don’t see this solution as being necessarily State sponsored… where Mr Luce’s faultline has its home. But for that you will have to follow the stories.


Notwithstanding this cluster of variables on the theme ‘Revelation’; there was another, far more scary discovery ‘revelation’, associated with the more traditional ‘prediction type ‘revelation’. Wikipedia [a source, subject to normal caveats and possible ‘fake news’ info] informs me that as many as 53% of all major Hiroshima and bigger scale seismic events over the past 2500 years have occurred since 1998. Not a Revelation I relish.


For the record as at last December the total number recorded that fitted the criteria [6 or more on the Richter scale] over some 2500 years was, as at start 1998: 413. In other words about 11 every decade… less than 2 per year, on a gently escalating upward curve. Since 1998 however; there had, by last December, been 414. More specifically, roughly 20 per year


And they keep happening.


Now I accept that I am arriving at this conclusion from a possibly slightly inaccurate source, to the extent that we count some, and not others, from the past; that either were not measured and/or unknown. But of the known’s: 53 % and rising is an uncool Revelation in the empirical discovery category. [Nonetheless: until it becomes official, I shall continue to practice the writing of fiction: by definition imaginary… Ergo: some random bloggist’s rambling on a favored theme is simply self-serving and not of any relevance… perhaps… In my fictional world things get bad for places on the coast… And I don’t live near a coast.]


So to summarize: a smattering of Revelationary empirics and how do they relate to the liberal idea:


My first revelationary experience relevant to liberalism [whatever it is supposed to be] came via the indefatigable Mr. T. who as we know is President of the Firmian Union. Like the rest of the world I watched his 90-minute session with the media on the morning after his Republican Party lost the House of Representatives. How would he react? Was the pressing question…. Would he bluster and prevaricate or what?


One of the ‘implacable rules’ of my classroom over many decades was/is the dictum that there is no such thing as failure, only opportunities to recharge and get it right. Pres T…. took the road sometimes travelled; and once he had heaped praise on his winners and disparaged, brutally in the case of one vanishing rep, the losers; especially those who had been his enemies, he presented the prospect of an amazing bargain deal: that could be just what the people need. In fact he was almost “liberal”.


In response we listened to a quorum of the best that the broadly unsympathetik media could offer. They who questioned Mr.T were, for the most part, dancing with such frenzy on their kollektive memes, it was its own revelation. No one actually demonstrated that they even marginally grasped the significance of what he offered; they were so intent on digging up their own bones… they simply discounted it and heard NO thing.


I was deliciously surprised by his approach… and instantly grasped its significance to one who plays the “Long game”. And the nature of the risk that he spelled out. We have routinely viewed ideologues at work where we live. Liberals, assuming any of those kolektion of press corps persons would be called Liberals [whatever they weren’t] demonstrated a response so ideologically defined it completely cancelled the name… Liberal. As ‘Bones” would have put it they were operating on “Outmoded preconceptions”. They were unable to grasp the inherent pragmatism; and lost the moment to share in the idea that ‘the people’… whom Liberals apparently adore… Do not have to come second.


A reinforcing but ultimately equally convincing revelation regarding what has become the ‘Achilles heel’ of this [so-called] Liberalism ethic, came from a different source. An English journalist called Edmund Luce has published a heavily praised book, setting out the case for “the Retreat from Liberalism” [Abacus edition: Retreat from Liberalism]. And up to page 196 it was a solid and thoroughly absorbing read, with some stunningly memorable observations.

And then the wheels came off in one line… and revealed his passion, as just a ‘nicer’ form of ideological dékolleté. He also revealed implicitly why a contemporary version of Liberalism is running on empty. In the next few paragraphs we shall explore why.


The ‘Rent Seekers’, or Rentier class, as economist Steve Keen korektly kalls the parasitic elements, that feed on the globalised casino market economy… The only game in town really. These ‘Rentiers’ have, through their greed and indulgence, sucked the relevance from the lives of the ordinary folk left behind.

Their orgy of self-enrichment over the past few decades has been good, for the rent konfirmers [they who got rich]; and their friends. However the entire system is pretty well running on empty. This is a reason for the growing global economic slowdown that no one wants to discuss. Simply the businesses of the world are running out of kustomers… More and more reports of robot takeovers are being noted even as I write this.

I hear right now a local Trades Union group called NEHAWU making a radio appeal for its members to have their jobs guaranteed after some form of automation is introduced into their world. The AM Live phone-in host, a well-known local “liberal” journalist and radio kommentator, simply acknowledged the kall and refused to diskuss the worker’s kolektive terror… simply moved on the next kaller.


The “gig” economy sucks and is grossly overrated and for many is already a place of desperation. A point interestingly and lucidly made be the same Mr. Luce: who simply has missed how the dots should join up



For this ‘service based’ system to be sustained: it is necessary to keep nourishing the base. Watering the garden, as it were. Too great a disparity between top and middle to lower … is fundamentally bad for sales… and will be the core trigger for the next almost pending recession, which may well persist for longer than considered normal given the massive impetus fuelled by the era of Quantitative Easing [QE]: and assuming we resist large scale warfare.



Enter UBI [Universal Basic Income]. What Mr. Luce and thus most so-called Liberals [whatever they are] missed was that QE was no more than UBI for the “Betters” [if I may use a slang feudal term]



And thus UBI is not some concession for the working poor… and the universal ‘Dalits’ of society, as such a worthy liberal thought defender as young Edmund Luce, piously intones on page 196 to top paragraph page 197. Then to kompound his broad indifference to ‘our’ working poor he kontinues with the sentence: “We must think more radically than that…”

What kan be a more radical notion than that DATA provides the foundation for the complete transformation of society in a way that only such writers as Heinlein, Asimov and Herbert grasped?



They did not spell it out though. Similarly our author, then changes the subject: leaving us with his ‘inexpektation’… An unfulfilled stillborn revelation; revealing that like all other kommentators currently: he has missed the Revolution it went past so fast. No wonder Liberalism is in retreat… Are they in fact: Left Behind?.



After all, I recently heard Christine Lagarde of the IMF having to point out to a serried group of ‘experts’, on a Bloomberg interview, that they needed to remember that the Fintech variation, that has come to dominate financial activity world–wide today is not yet eight years old… The financial services industry itself, goes back at least five thousand years… And in its present ‘market capitalist’ format, about five hundred years… Until the past few decades their contribution tho GDP was fairly nominal. Now it supercedes many other more traditional sources,. And that is [partially] a result of an eight year old industry FINTECh.



Where I live people call traffic lights: “Robots”, a meme that has survived for the century or so when the first one in the country was heralded in headlines the “Arrival of the ROBOTS”… thanks to Karel Capek’s play RossumsUniversalRobots: a hit of that era in our turf. Luce produces a similar old meme as reflexive response to the helping hand conceptualized through UBI… and as I’ve pointed out, carelessly ignores Quantitative Easing… That for the benefit of those who may be confused was a process whereby, in simple terms, TWENTY odd TRILLION US [Firmian] dollars of imaginary money was given to the “BIG” people so they wouldn’t crash due to their bad lending practices. Interest rates basically ZERO. Robots for traffic lights is in every way an outmoded preconception,or more simply, a bad habit. Believing that basic pay would be bad for worker morale takes outmoded to a new dimension.



So. No. Universal Basic Income is not a handout for the poor… As Salinas piously observed 2500 years ago: “The best thing for the poor is that they were never born…” No. UBI is totally production based AND IS EARNED.



It is simply not Accounted for, like in the income statement of the receivers. And WHY ISN’T IT? Should be the question. There is plenty of whining I note regarding the “curious distortion” that the new techno revolution has produced so little additional productivity… Naturally, when many billions of billions of Bytes a year of data are produced at zero value: and are therefore not accounted for… By definition the creators of data… people: are going to become poorer… They/we are in a formal sense slave workers: something that is supposed to be illegal. Our world has almost instantly become a DATA driven world.



So #DATA must share RENT.


It is rather their/our universal share of the bounty that has resulted from the previously unobtainable access, to all planetary knowledge… at the touch of a finger… and the bundling of all of that information into so-called DATA… something else like fintech that formalized and demokratized a previously inackcessible resource that was the exclusive territory of multiple circles of diminishing “Innies”. This DATA that has, a moment ago really [Specifically, since the past 10% of my life began] transformed the daily running of our lives, is the bounty: to nourish the planet’s progress to the next level of transformation.



Not doing this will fuel the growing rage represented by the shift to right and left of centre parties [assuming such an anomalous pair of descriptions have any form of currency anymore and aren’t simply a pair of obsolete memes] For we are now in an age when the difference is between those people who are okay and keeping up: and those… the majority… left behind. The ElBies. [May include me… I feel deeply left behind]


SHIFT SCENE:



‘That is an idea above your pay station Sir.” She said.

“ There are Data givers and Data takers he replied.” If you are ‘online’, and your data is accessible then a percentage of the value generated is due to the givers.

Hurrah.



SHIFT ENDS



Takeaway.



You have just read/heard brief exchange from my new cluster of novellas [Part four of the Azanian Quartet] I shall present snippets of these in a new marketing thrust for Nicholas Jakari… in the New Year [2019].


NOTE: [Should you be puzzled by this idea ABOUT THE REVENUE SOURCE FOR UBI: please refer to my blog: Kolonisation of the Mind: nicholasjakari.com]



So it has been a time of Revelation: at many levels. Stressful, with major upsets and some glorious highs; and the gift of a life explored: a wonderful gift for a Stanislavskian writer. Time to reflect on each character and where in me they come from.



Eventually the freedom to choose, to appropriate data rents in an equitable manner, may be replaced by the further inequities of present, increasingly, perhaps inevitably, kurrupt practices; as the realization dawns that the world, in our historical understanding of that word: is undergoing a strangely destructive change…. And a good plan may involve taking to the hills: quite literally.

I look forward to sharing more of them with you in a new cluster of stories.



Cheers



!NiK[‘18]

Ruminations on Basic Pay

Also known as the inevitability of Universal Income.

“ In the 21st Century we might witness the creation of a new massive class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society.”
Homo Deus p325.
Yuval Noah Harari


This statement by the author: Harari comes at the climax of what could be the most brilliant sustained piece of writing that this bloggist has encountered in years. The writing is more brilliant for being extended over two masterpieces of modern writing: Sapiens and Homo Deus: for which I would recommend the author for a Nobel Prize in literature. For the “times, that were changing” reported by a recent, past winner, Bob Dylan have sneaked up and abruptly arrived: on steroids.


The veracity of Harari’s premise is thus well timed. It arrived at precisely that moment in history that the exponential pace of technological development, has so outpaced the capacity of humans to keep up with the changes, taking place in the macro world, that the possibility of an accident kicking off something that is fast running, means we could once again be on the edge of a cataclysm, the likes of which we have not experienced since the last one a century ago… when progress went into steep decline: and put us all through a century of violent disruption: Stalling time.


A while back I came across some thing published, that I had written, as the closing paragraph, to an editorial piece at a different time in the past: The op/ed piece was broadly a comment on Mr. Alvin Toffler’s book: ‘Future Shock’…. I finished with the following comment on Toffler’s vision: “The alternatives are clear: either we train people to adapt to the future, or, in Toffler’s words, ‘we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.’”


And what could be a greater “adaptational breakdown” than that represented by the “New Lefties” i.e. those now referred to as the “Left Behind” … what Hannah Arendt referred to as “The Mob”…. And for whom George Orwell, less politely, coined “Proles”. Such a phenomenon apparently elected to BREXIT, in the trending from formerly Great Britain to global britain; and put America’s first ever [perhaps] ‘Working Class’ President into power in that ‘Firmian’ Republic. Tsunami, is a “brash Blu Hawk real estate developer”; as said by a Republican Grandee on Bloomberg a moment ago as I wrote this … he spoke as if describing a Martian alien, who had just walked uninvited into the men’s room.


And then of course Le Bleu’s did the same thing; voting for the least disliked option rather than someone who could do them any good… They all promise to do that, don’t they?


And the ‘Left Behind’ are obviously in the majority… and in case you are confusing them with “New Left”: many are, in effect, new ‘Right’ [whatever that is]. They are an inter and intra class phenomenon, notwithstanding that the Brash Blu Hawker… a man who hustled buildings for a living, will not be permitted [they think] to implement his agenda, even though his agenda does not really lack any more purpose, than the agenda’s of all those others, who promised things: and then [often sensibly] compromised on the delivery: and then struggled to deliver, in the face of ferociously frantic; furiously factional vested interest groupings.


Further on into the article, that I happened upon serendipitously last year, in the midst of Mzansi’s # FeesMustFall: University ‘disrupting season’, I wrote:
“The future shock problem is viewed in many Western circles with such seriousness that a number of influential bodies, among them the ‘Club of Rome’ have gone so far as to recommend a moratorium on technological developments while the human race catches up, and gets it breath back”.


Well it never happened did it…: In fact during this past month listening to the radio local news and opinion discussions on day to day events I have lost count of the frequency with which the ‘approved’ spokespersons, on a range of topics, cite, improving education: as a solution to the problem of ‘ADAPTATIONAL BREAKDOWN”S.



Yet Mzansi, for instance, spends a huge percentage of GDP, relative to most of its chosen peers, for, apparently, as little gain as those Brexiting, President Tsunami/Le Bleu’s stricken peers have apparently gained, in the time since I wrote the piece from which I have quoted. It was published in August of 1978… [i.e:39 years ago this past month] In a magazine that no longer exists: in a country that, likewise, no longer exists.*


So we didn’t put the tech’ development process aside; and by the well known Moore’s Law dictum whereby processing power doubles every 18 months that means that the tech world has taken 26 steps, during the time that we more Linear thinking human beings have moved 39 steps… and that is only referring to those that have been moving forward.


Unfortunately the message attributable to the New Lefties, is, that they seemingly moved, more or less one step: 39 times. Meanwhile 26 steps in exponential language, [What was called Geometric Progression in high school mathematics] in the expanding macro environment is [assume each step to be a meter] more than Thirty Three Million meters. No wonder the poor NL’s feel left behind. Almost everyone is left behind.


And so it is likely that many are working on the edge of the new economy. The characteristic of the old economy, that replaced the frugal subsistence of the previous 70,000 plus years, was “Nasty brutish and short”. It was and often still is, a condition in which workers were treated like machines; and conditions were inhumane. The early behaviourist: B. F. Skinner observed then, apparently in all seriousness, that: “The real problem is not whether machines think; but whether humans do.”


Eventually the cost and legalities of fixing the horror of mass employment raised the cost of production, above what the corresponding, mass consumer market sought out: absolute rock bottom price points. So there was a clash thus, between the people who wanted to be wonderfully well rewarded, for doing something mundane: [me for instance] while simultaneously wanting as much blood as could conceivably be extracted from every stone.


And so tech has solved the inhumane aspect of mass production, to desired scales, through replacing humans with real machines that are rapidly, apparently, taking on tasks that require far more than simple manual dexterity.


True ‘thinking machines’ are evolving; and part of the world … even many of the [so-called] Globalists themselves, stare at prospektive superfluity. This as the emerging trend to kwantum komputing takes tech’s exponential journey Kwantum simultaneously, to more than a billion meters in only 5 more steps. Truly; to be left behind in such a maelstrom of evolutionary expansion is almost… normal.


In the meantime in our own part of the world I was shocked recently, to read, as part of an opinion piece published in the Jozi Star on the eve of the “Youth Day” weekend this year, a piece of information that took the idea of “Left Behind” to an unprecedented level… for me.


The piece carried the byline of a Mr. Jeff Radebe, the 5000:1 outsider for the job of President of the ruling party; and later the country, should the present ruling party win the next election again: Something within reasonable probability. As a rule politicians tend to be pretty close to the 39 step by step linear process, which is still a way ahead of NL’s trend, you’ll gather..


Radebe’s piece was broadly one of the most powerful evaluations of the idea of ‘Future to shock’ that one has come across from a sitting politician in many years. He laid out a blueprint for what had to happen, for Mzansi’s and more broadly Afrika’s emerging transformation; in order to marginally keep pace with the techno/economically evolving 21st century. The piece certainly revealed the thoughtful appreciation of someone who perhaps had covered a few hundred meters over the 39 steps…


In fact when one evaluates the alleged negative behaviour of the all the allegedly naughty President’s persons, routinely reported in a broadly unsympathetik media environment, in the kontext of what Minister Radebe presents as the stark reality of Afrika’s dilemma, then one kan understand the instinctive desire to grab the money and run, when the opportunity presents, for opportunity comes only meagerly.


So what was the shock that triggered this response?


In that part of the op/ed piece where he deals with the relevance of FIR * to Mzansi in particular, Mr. Radebe makes an astounding assertion. [* FIR = the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution a name given to this historical period which is to be characterized by the evolution of [AI] Artificial Intelligence].


Mr. Radebe asserts, that in a continent of some 880 million people more than 600 million, live presently, in a pre-electric world… a world essentially before “steps” were even considered.


To put that into perspective… Electricity represents the second industrial revolution…. [The one everyone learns about at school was based on steam, you’ll remember.] I don’t know how valid Minister Radebe’s statement is, in a world typified by ‘fake’ news lately. No references are identified in support of the assertion: I am simply assuming, rightly or wrongly, that the Minister is using staff resources to establish accurate information.


In other words nearly 70% of the people on the entire Kontinent have not yet encountered the 2nd Industrial Revolution in any meaningful way… Now that is what you kan validly call “Left Behind”. How does one contemplate developing a place that has to cover more than a billion steps just to catch up: with no idea how to do so? [unless somebody else has a betta plan]


A recent piece in the Economist raised questions regarding how an Afrika emerging from a pre-industrial era … [Mr. Radebe’s point regarding those most truly ‘Left Behind’] can progress in a world where machines that work for capital redemption, are superseding well paid cost centres, called manual workers [and those in routine clerical, for that matter]. They suggest that Afrika will have to find a new way… They were unable to suggest one however.


There is one solution, as a palliative to what is impending. I would not suggest thjat it is the only one it is however the one most likely to prevail eventually. It is the combination of VBasic Pay aka A Universal Income… linked to a levy on transactions in specific new areas of activity. I have as many of you know, promoted the idea of Basic Pay for years now. What else will there be other than Basic Pay for an increasing mass of overwhelming humanity… aka Universal Income [U.I.]. There are experiments in U I taking place in parts of Groland, currently, and of course in Mzansi, where i eke out my own pittance, there are presently 17,000,000 people living on a meager dose of basic pay… with close to zero chance of ever finding anything else.


So what does this mean
For the future
Of everything…?
Logically:
The Monetisation of
Humanity
Through data derived
Micropayments.


!NiK[17]

Breaking Plates

On the night Great Britain decided to choose a path no one had thought through to a logical conclusion; we went to the theatre on the Square … the square being Nelson Mandela square in Sandton City, the power quarter of Greater Jozi.
 
We went to the opening night of Renos Spanoudes’ play: ‘Breaking Plates’, a one person show: written and played by himself. It was deeply into a current genre representing that part of Jozi’s historical population, that is relatively evaporating: and operates in a world of those who are highly taxed but with limited political input; and is known conveniently as Retrospective.
 
And for Spanoudes? And the performance: a well worn cliché that never truly understands itself to be a cliché… A ‘Tour de Force’ with capitals.
 
For non germane reasons I have great difficulty with sitting anywhere for more than ten to fifteen minutes before the combination loss of mobility and sheer pain distract me from what I’m doing. Usually when we go to the movies or the theatre I choose the seat on the aisle on the right of the facility, so that I can stretch a leg or, if not available, the front row, which usually is: at the movie houses.
&nbsp
On this occasion our tickets led us to a prime position in the middle of the back row. [It is a wonderfully Intimate theatre]from which i had an excellent view of the performance.
 
I would commend this information presented in the preceding two paragraphs as a testimaony to the power of Spanoude’s presentation: that it was so compelling that all conciousness of pain was absorbed by the text… That through humour and its pain made mine more bearable perhaps… I was only occasionally aware that the performance is a long single sitting… and that does not happen often.
 
In a series of five vignettes Spanoudes reprises several roles, one of which bore a haunting memory of a famous picture routinely used as a perception measuring tool, from the world of Psychiatry: a picture that from one angle or, point of view, is of a young woman: and from another, an aged crone. His performance here as the hauntingly aged crone was superb… bordering occasionally toward an edge of ruinous bathos and then drawing back delicately at the same instant… paced with aching anxiety: as he relates the woman’s empathically sad loss of purpose.
 
The irony he presents throughout in an un-missable [sic] performance, was crucifyingly apparent hours later, when we woke, on our side of the planet to the news regarding the now infamous BREXIT. We know now that the populace of that curious island called Geat Britain, from which I am spawned, had chose an act of seeming National Suicide: that has thrown the world into complete disarray.
 
They chose to step off a cliff during the darkest part of night, without any understanding of what lay ahead; whether some life-preserving trampoline affair… ish thingy would be waiting, at somewhere below ground level to catch them, bounce them into unprecedented prosperity: and keep them warm at night.
 
They, seemingly sleepwalked themselves to the voting booth/or not, in what was not a particularly tensely fought referendum, in which less than three quarters of the prospective voting populace actually troubled to go and vote … like many didn’t really care, either way… The union of which they had been a member for all of the country’s under 40s existence was so taken for granted that many never knew who they were, apparently, for there were reports on the Friday following the outcome, that “European Union” was the top trending item on Google that day… Talk about catching an ‘after action’ ‘wake up’….
 
And that form of news was what Renou Spanoudes set out to explore as, with a delicate series of brushstrokes he evaluates what is lost, about where we’ve been: when we can no longer go there… And hence dwell on, in Retrospection.
 
Bravo Renos.
 
P.S. he said it was on till July 9th so should you be in Sandton to inspect the late President’s monumental statue don’t miss ‘Breaking Plates’.