Daemonic polarities

Money is freedom, but the only way to get money is to give up freedom.

Wage-slavery destroys happiness, but we are convinced that happiness is still possible so that we keep wage-slaving in attempt to consume. Consumption is the modern form of compensation for the death of happiness.

The idea of nation-states imposes a false categorical equivalence among peoples and cultures. Supposedly there is a sense in which any culture or people or society is "equal to others" on the simple basis of the fact that we have this idea of the sovereign nation-state, and regardless of the actual content and real conditions of those cultures, peoples or societies.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,
And nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free,

Kris Kristofferson


A Buddhist might say that freedom is a life without attachments.


But I think I grasp what you are saying.

We are brain-washed into thinking that we deserve stuff by people willing to lend us money (at a cost) so that we can buy what we deserve. That will bring us freedom and happiness. Really?


Nation-states earn revenue from people spending money. Of course they are going to promote the spending of money. And they even tax your wealth if you don't spend your money.


Regarding wage=slavery: I have mentioned other places that a person should find a job doing something they would do as a hobby if they were self-sufficient. That way they can do what gives them enjoyment and they even earn money from doing it.

Most people don't have money. If you don't have money then you're forced to sell yourself into wage-slavery which is tantamount to death, philosophically speaking. Money is freedom to have the basic desperate needs of life taken care of and to therefore have a possibility of actually having... a life, which without money is impossible.

I'm at the point where prolonged poverty is effectively slowly dissolving my personality. I've noticed it for a long time now. Emotions wear away under the crushing weight of living in a supposedly civilized self-conscious species yet being unable to even have the most basic physical and metal needs of life met without selling oneself into slavery, oppression, pain and all the bullshit that comes with "working". The only people who can actually value work are those who get paid enough money to live a decent life not on the edge of poverty, but most people don't have that luxury, and even the people who do are stuck in slave jobs where they basically sell out the best parts of their lives and themselves for the luxury of having some excess money.

So even that kind of money is still slavery. It's an Orwellian nightmare: Freedom is Slavery, literally this is the reality that the modern economy has brought us. Through money, freedom becomes slavery and only the false promise of slavery becoming freedom sustains the empty gesture of the false self stuck in delusions forever about its eventually earning its freedom from chains, which of course it never will do.

It's an absolute fucking cosmic joke what this human species calls "civilization". No wonder no aliens have bothered stopping over to say hey.

Yeah, aliens would surely avoid us.

I understand what you are saying. I've been there and done that. I lived many years of my life chained to a job because there was a need for money in order to live an acceptable life away from the job.

But I made it through and reached the age to retire and had enough financial stability to retire without financial worries.

I realize that many people don't ever get there. That's sad. And I agree, it is our civilized society that treats the eldery with such disregard.

I demand respect. No respect? You don't see me any more. And you don't get any more of my money.

And it's true, most people are in financial debt to someone. And as you stated, this limits their freedom.

But I still do not support the idea of full socialism. That's my philosophical root belief.

I speak about "fairness" often and suggest that we (America) are far from that. Seems to me we need a different economic system in order to make life a little more fair for all Americans.

I don't know if there are any good answers or solutions to the problem. IMO, a flat tax on all income over the poverty level would be a start but even something as simple as that likely will never happen. Of course, if we would stop gettig involved in wars that would help greatly too. But I don't wee that happening any time soon.

Yeah "socialism" is a meaningless buzz word, I don't advocate that either. Capitalism is the best system and in any case isn't going anywhere; so we must reform capitalism toward sane ends. But this will only come at a kind of phase-transition point where a threshold of understanding is reached. Marx was one such threshold, the American Constitution was another, now global neoliberal capitalism is pushing toward another. Nothing ever happens unless it was necessary all along for it to happen like that. Progress is literally the exhaustion of all other (worse, less useful) alternatives.

Normally I don't like to complain so openly about my finances, but I'm going to break it down anyway. This is what America looks like now for "young people":

I make around $40,000 a year. Not too bad, you might say. Well with subtracting out social security, Medicare, state and federal taxes, and paying for my health insurance  that drops to $23,000 a year. So if you count health insurance as a "tax" (apparently it is, according to the supreme idiots on the Supreme Court) my actual real tax rate is around 42%, higher than the highest tax bracket.

Then you factor in my roughly $6000 a year in student loan payments and it drops to $17,000 a year.

Considering I pay around $600 a month in rent, that drop income to less than $10,000 a year. Then you got all the other bills like car insurance, heat, water, electric, phone and Internet... also apparently I'm supposed to eat sometimes, get new clothes every now and then. Can't say I have any kind of savings or retirement at all.

I would happily go back for an advanced degree of some kind, maybe in something science related or law school, but that would run me up probably $100,000 in more debt. Maybe worth it in the long run if I could double my income, but the time commitment plus the expense of debt and lost income while I'm in school for a few more years is just too much for me. Poverty isn't just about not having money, it's about the psychological drain on people and their energy reserves. Without cigarettes and alcohol for example I wouldn't be able to function during the week. So called vices are the highest necessity for the poor, of course that adds way more expense since most of the cost of alcohol and tobacco is taxes.

Capitalism defines your value by what you create that can be and is translated into monetary gain. Longer term projects such as learning or writing, art, or traveling and building up something subjectively meaningful than can later become monetizable is usually out of the question. Public school is a joke, we should scrap grades 11 and 12 and just let 16 year olds take free college classes across the board, also cut out a lot of the required courses that college kids are forced to take. A one percent tax increase on people making over a million dollars a year would yield plenty of money to start really funding higher education, then if you use the money currently spent on grades 11 and 12 in public schooling things would be just fine.. but then of course the banks wouldn't be able to take in the trillions of dollars in student debt payments they get from us. Basic reform could just start at counting net income minus student debt payments, for taxes and other purposes. Try to get a real picture of the economic situation of people today.

We have a consumption society, the US consumes over a billion dollars a day net from the rest of the world, effectively sustaining these other economies. Yet young people today have next to no disposable income, so that game is going to come to a crashing halt soon enough.

This is America, in terms of the next generation. So I pay 42% real tax rate and I'm supposed to not ask for an additional 1% increase on top income earners, many of whom use tax loopholes like what Trump does for example, to pay next to no tax at all? Lol.

I should really be pissed off about all this, but I have a pack of cigarettes here that says otherwise. Anyway it's a good thing that I discovered philosophy, so I can at least translate much of this bullshit into something meaningful.

Capable wrote:

Yeah "socialism" is a meaningless buzz word, I don't advocate that either. Capitalism is the best system and in any case isn't going anywhere; so we must reform capitalism toward sane ends. But this will only come at a kind of phase-transition point where a threshold of understanding is reached. Marx was one such threshold, the American Constitution was another, now global neoliberal capitalism is pushing toward another. Nothing ever happens unless it was necessary all along for it to happen like that. Progress is literally the exhaustion of all other (worse, less useful) alternatives.

I really don't have a problem with capitalism either. I would like to see a fairer distribution of the wealth though. No more near-slave labor. I would also like to see more opportunities for those in need. I never did like America's welfare system. It is very corrupt and a great waste of resources.

But you are right, we don't see changes until after the chaos has begun and the final results might be worse that what was being replaced. We have seen that over and over again.

What we need is a benevolent dictator. Mother Teresa has passed on. Maybe there'll be another.

Capable wrote:

Normally I don't like to complain so openly about my finances, but I'm going to break it down anyway. This is what America looks like now for "young people":

It wasn't too many years ago I would complain about the youth in America not putting enough effort into keeping America strong. But after being scolded a couple times I had to look at the reality of today's youth and not from what the conditions were when I was young.

Most wealthy people who have most of their wealth in investments of almost any kind pay half the tax rate that I do. Yes, I still have to pay income tax on my Army retirement pay. The government says that it is because I didn't contribute to the system. What the hell was I doing for twenty years if not contributing? But I really don't complain too much about that.

You actually have a higher gross income than I do. But my net is higher because I don't have the liabilities that you have.

I often complain about the education system in America. The cost of higher education needed to become upper middle class financially is way too expensive for most people. Therefore they never make it out of the hole they were born into. There are many countries that have much better educational systems than we do. Sure, our higher education is better than most but again, that takes lots of dollars.

And yes, IMO our health care system now sucks worse than it did before ObamaCare. And the costs keep increasing at a really disgusting rate.

I guess America will just go down the same road Rome did. We will if we don't make changes.

Capable wrote:

I should really be pissed off about all this, but I have a pack of cigarettes here that says otherwise. Anyway it's a good thing that I discovered philosophy, so I can at least translate much of this bullshit into something meaningful.

Yes, being able to talk about what we perceive as problems helps quiet the monkey mind. Hehehe. And yes, smokes help too.

If more people talked about the problems more people would pay attention and maybe the politicians would actually start listening to the people.

Yeah, I don't like to play the "generation war" things at all, I want barriers between generations broken down and more mutual understanding for instance between young and older people. But it's true that generally speaking the middle age to older people right now are totally clueless the severity of the situation they have imposed upon anyone 35 or younger today (so called Millennials or younger).

Thanks for the words of encouragement too, by the way.

It's also another reason to vote for Trump, he is the only candidate I've heard seriously talk about crushing student debt. Hillary just pays lip service, it's so obvious she doesn't give a shit at all. Democrats are fucking full of hot air. Fuck Bernie Sanders too, I never saw authenticity in him either, just a bunch of talking points very well polished until they shine in the eyes of naive young people. It's obvious by now that Sanders never cared about real change, he is supporting the person who wants to perpetuate the system and who deliberately fucked over Bernie himself. What a goddamn tool.

Capable wrote:

Yeah, I don't like to play the "generation war" things at all, I want barriers between generations broken down and more mutual understanding for instance between young and older people. But it's true that generally speaking the middle age to older people right now are totally clueless the severity of the situation they have imposed upon anyone 35 or younger today (so called Millennials or younger).

Thanks for the words of encouragement too, by the way.

You're welcome.

Agree, it's almost like different planets for people my age and those between their teens and late twenties.

I can't take any of the blame though because I have always been against the changes that have made living the American Dream so difficult for so many today.

Capable wrote:

It's also another reason to vote for Trump, he is the only candidate I've heard seriously talk about crushing student debt. Hillary just pays lip service, it's so obvious she doesn't give a shit at all. Democrats are fucking full of hot air. Fuck Bernie Sanders too, I never saw authenticity in him either, just a bunch of talking points very well polished until they shine in the eyes of naive young people. It's obvious by now that Sanders never cared about real change, he is supporting the person who wants to perpetuate the system and who deliberately fucked over Bernie himself. What a goddamn tool.

I have to agree with you regarding Clinton and Sanders.

I will find it very difficult to vote for Trump instead of Jill Stein though. Besides her faults, she would stop the USA getting in wars overseas and bring most of the troops home to defend the USA. And she is against the Big Banks and Big Industry running the government.

Capable wrote:

It's also another reason to vote for Trump, he is the only candidate I've heard seriously talk about crushing student debt. Hillary just pays lip service, it's so obvious she doesn't give a shit at all. Democrats are fucking full of hot air. Fuck Bernie Sanders too, I never saw authenticity in him either, just a bunch of talking points very well polished until they shine in the eyes of naive young people. It's obvious by now that Sanders never cared about real change, he is supporting the person who wants to perpetuate the system and who deliberately fucked over Bernie himself. What a goddamn tool.

But really.
I actually had started liking him a bit, when the bird came to sit with him during that speech I got the idea he was maybe a good guy of sorts. Then he goes and back Clinton. The ultimately perfect negation of all the value of democracy. But what do you expect from a Socialist. Theyre scum. The value of fairness is not something they actually uphold.

Capable wrote:

Money is freedom, but the only way to get money is to give up freedom.

Yeah - there are different unfreedoms one can put oneself through - wage slavery is the most accessible one, but we must be tied down to make the money to be free. I found my path twice now and had some luck with it - I now have as my only worldly goal to make all my philosopher friends attain financial freedom. A kingdom of philosophy. You, Capable, are its central man, for one thing because you are the man that got together this forum. Since 2 years I live by only respecting factual values produced by the philosophical for the philosophical, - building, dwelling, thinking.

Quote :

Wage-slavery destroys happiness, but we are convinced that happiness is still possible so that we keep wage-slaving in attempt to consume. Consumption is the modern form of compensation for the death of happiness.

Absolutely true.

Quote :

The idea of nation-states imposes a false categorical equivalence among peoples and cultures. Supposedly there is a sense in which any culture or people or society is "equal to others" on the simple basis of the fact that we have this idea of the sovereign nation-state, and regardless of the actual content and real conditions of those cultures, peoples or societies.

I agree that the Nation is insufficient as a Value to group people underneath. In cases, it is indestructible (Russia, England, Italy) and in cases it is only an obstruction (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Chad, Somalia, Algeria, North Korea - the list is long) - and in some cases it can go either way. The USA is the primary example of this, the Netherlands is a good example, and France is also an example, even though it is the strongest nationalism in the world, it has afforded the strongest universalism - it truly manages to press people into its fold out of sheer erotic status, evolutionary prospect. French cool is the most reliable cool. It speaks even in North and West Africa and the Levant, where French is a leading language. Therre is no way to speak or think in French while not being cool. It will thus prevail, even over English, ultimately - as Spanish overtakes English in the Americas, French will gain back a lot of ground. But back to the point - the US, and how its nationalism now functions as a splitter rather than a uniter.

A few months ago, each half of the country is mortally ashamed of what the other half is proud of. But the country has been united as a fundamental division - north and south, cold and warm, rational and instinctive, moral and traditional, trade and crop, word and deed, head and heart, Democrat and Republican. Very roughly of course, along these lines I see the nature of the division. The ethical dualism of the past has pervaded the earthy logos of wealth and made scarcity of it.

To us who grasp the nature of Value, is naturally given the work of restoring the idea of Wealth into the American constitution (sound-state) ; and to begin with we need a multi party system. Trump wins: Next elections, we move to create conditions for a minimum of three real candidates. The one after that we go for a full spectrum. This is the proposal as it occurs to me now, I guess it is realistic in that case, my intuitions tend to play out. The prospects from within a chaos of privileged forms (yes, the burden has enriched us, by forcing us to exalt ourselves above what is expected) are highly favorable for independent initiatives. The whole apparatus is paralyzed in over-extension, and cramp is what it will be going through the next years - we need to approach the State with this in the focus of the minds eye. It is not going to be reasoned with - it is going to slowly disengage itself from its extension and any outside stimulus will slow down this process.

What we are going to build is just the extension of what we have built. An internet society.
Laws will be on the program - to redraft the constitution.





I dont really see a reason to delay this any longer. Ive quite ILP, I have time to do this. The self-valuing principle is no doubt its guide - but it also commands that the draft be put in motion by American citizens. Taste demands this - taste simply for adequacy.




The American legal system is by far the most complex one that has existed on this planet. Beyond Capitalism, this system stands as the true innovation of man.






It can be reduced, honed back into a polished form, because it is law, not commerce - yang, straight lines, not yin, that which always comes back to itself ---> mythical image ---> Sagittarius: Centaur Chiron, teacher of Heroes dies for Prometheus gift to man and is raised to godhood as the Acher -Philosopher who makes laws under the Auspices of Jupiter.

Man as Storm is the limit of the law -
the violence that is given, which the law is forged to justify.

Capable wrote:

It's an absolute fucking cosmic joke what this human species calls "civilization". No wonder no aliens have bothered stopping over to say hey.

lol Oh, but they have. They just blended in. Didn't stay long though and when they returned to their own space and time, they left "No More Visits to Earth" signs to be strewn all over the Universe.
We're on our own - the Prime Directive has won out...and that can only be Good.

I really do see that dialectics ultimately bows to daemonics. The real stuff doesn’t work in averagings, not even the few billion bits of data our brains filter out of consciousness every second are working by averages, but by clear formulas and logical commands of selection. Yeah some averaging occurs, naturally, but it is always subservient to meaning just as quantity is always subservient to quality.

True, meaningful polarities, differences, entities, end up establishing lines between each other and these lines come to constitute what those entities are and mean, to each other and to themselves. Within the parameters of such ‘lines’ the excess pools and takes shape, forcing pressures outward and inward upon every tectonic vantage.

If two different entities, daemons, happen to have similar enough onto-psycho-epistemologistical structures then they can form meta relations between and as their respective line-limits. Then the daemonics can start to get really interesting.

Dialectics occur least where things make the most sense. There, dialectical process is like the slow erosion of rock or topsoil, just a weathering. Nothing but the principle of Time itself, outside the scope of the daemon (outside of ‘entities’, beings). So yeah, obviously Hegel and Marx and all the rest idealized the End of Time in the Perfection of History, or some such nonsensical thing. Lolzkekz.

I don't think everybody hates their jobs like you do. Maybe it's an office job? That does sound soul draining. But good physichal jobs are apt for warriors and philosophies, because they allow for zen meditation. I found this in the kitchen (hat tip to FC), peeling potatoes for four hours, constantly seeking the optimal peeling mechanisms, peering into the whatever-the-opposite-of-nature-or-core is of the potato.

Then there was coleslaw.

But I won't get into it. It was satisfying.

Then I used my free time to smoke too much weed and reach for the dreams of a dying soul, which death I also am grateful to FC for helping. But I'm sure I could now invest it in more profitable things, like the stock market, which I dare a philosopher to say is not fun to follow and get to know and play.

Then who knows? Freedom may arrive some day, freedom to pursue shit that only not having to make money allows one to pursue.

I have written here before that evolution works like that. Every stage must be both self sufficent and able to transition eventually.

In the past 7 or so years I have grown mounting respect for thosr you call slaves. Maybe the Venezuelan ones I've met are happier (well not these days, there is famine afoot), maybe because they weren't bred to believe everybody can be middle class or pampered so much as kids. That's cruel, to raise someone to be an aristocrat and then give them a working man's life.

It's the masons' fault, of course, it was their idea that everybody should be raised as an aristocrat. Still, they abolished slavery.

If you want to change the world, so that the trully privileged can get more privilege and the working man can be left to happily work, you have to become a man that can be both and more.

https://youtu.be/t-HLGcTGWSY

Not everyone hates their jobs.

"Slaves" (people stuck in dead end jobs or crushed under massive debt or bad economic conditions) can be people we can have respect for.

Physical, repetitive, simple jobs can be nice and satisfying.

Venezuelan people are cool because they are born knowing they are going to be poor.



Just trying to get my mind around what you are saying here. And trying to discern any connection or meaning behind it, with regard to the topic, anything I have already written here, or anything else.

Pezer wrote:

Then there was coleslaw.

LOL
Good memories.
The time of death-valley alley.
around the back of the Dep

I agree that manual labor is better for the soul than administrative labor.
I had an office job once, for a month I could do it, then I broke literal fevers 5 minutes in, until I received a mercy-firing.

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But I won't get into it. It was satisfying.

Then I used my free time to smoke too much weed and reach for the dreams of a dying soul, which death I also am grateful to FC for helping. But I'm sure I could now invest it in more profitable things, like the stock market, which I dare a philosopher to say is not fun to follow and get to know and play.

Thats what Im saying. Its looking at valuing, how people are going to be valuing the next day. It requires keen psychology, as well as a lot of practical fact knowledge about events in the world. And there are more angles. It is not trivial, it is connected to everything.
Nor is manual labor often trivial.

Quote :

Then who knows? Freedom may arrive some day, freedom to pursue shit that only not having to make money allows one to pursue.

I have written here before that evolution works like that. Every stage must be both self sufficent and able to transition eventually.

I guess one state can only transition to a higher state when it is satisfied, saturated, completed, when it starts to produce excesses and comes in risk of decadence. At that point it must move on or collapse.

Quote :

In the past 7 or so years I have grown mounting respect for thosr you call slaves. Maybe the Venezuelan ones I've met are happier (well not these days, there is famine afoot), maybe because they weren't bred to believe everybody can be middle class or pampered so much as kids.

Slaves like the ones Capable and I suffer of are strictly first-world phenomena:

"That's cruel, to raise someone to be an aristocrat and then give them a working man's life."

Well said man. That, exactly, is what went wrong in the first world. This is exactly what led to the unfathomable ugliness of spirit in most of my generation.

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It's the masons' fault, of course, it was their idea that everybody should be raised as an aristocrat. Still, they abolished slavery.

Montreal revealed Mason nature to me. Very fucking lofty. But over-optimistic, indeed, if it concerns the general populace - but accurate as it concerns ... well, me. The statue, the office across.... life=myth, once you start making it.

Quote :

If you want to change the world, so that the trully privileged can get more privilege and the working man can be left to happily work, you have to become a man that can be both and more.

https://youtu.be/t-HLGcTGWSY

No matter what it takes my crickets.

LOL

yes.
T - to connect this to the OP -
what is freedom? The power to act toward a goal that one has set oneself - therefore freedom begins with the power to set goals.
"Strength sets goals." - N

So also financial strength. Once capital is acquired, the capital will become a medium to communicate "the world" (a becoming) to the self-valuing mind, in such as way as for the world to become a medium for the self-valuing, manifested in this capital finding its paths and bedding rivers. Making history before it happens.

A further question is how to arrive at this capital. How to exit debt. This is a moral question, as debt is insidious, a psychological depressant, which is why it has been proliferated across the educated.

Freedom as a conception creates a further need than what biology imposes on the animal.
The Daemonism here is Capitalism.

Capital as Ontos,
Wealth is Excess.

Humanity is a fertile soil. It is (thus) very dirty.

Meanwhile in Russia

I guess I'm just saying, you have options.