Last time I wrote about this, I demonstrated the existence of a kind of non-contingent being on which all other contingent being was contingent, what is traditionally called "God" in most religions (sometimes, as in Taoism "The King of Heaven"). What I did not attempt at that time was the Moral Character or Unity of God leaving at least two avenues wide-open possibilities:
a) that G is morally decrepit or indifferent (e.g. the God of Spinoza)
b) That G is multiple-beings (e.g. the God of the Hindus or ancient greeks)
In this note I want to address (b) that G must be unique.
The argument takes the form of a reductio absurdum of the opposing possibility viz:
There are many things that satisfy the predicate "is non-contingent being upon which all other contingent beings are contingent".
At first glance this seems possible and even likely - why should all contingent things have exactly the one single explanation? There are many kinds of contingent things, why shouldn't there be many kinds of non-contingent things that cause them?
For this we need first an argument for the unity of other kinds of abstract objects, just to show -what it is- to be a unified non-concrete object. For instance, the number "1".
Obviously the number 1 has many different names and properties - it is known as "uno" in spanish, and the result of "3-2" in base-10 decimal arithmetic. It is the identity element for a monoid (under the standard interpretation), etc. We say of these different descriptions that they describe "the same thing" because we think that, for instance, uno = 3 - 2 = the identity field of a monoid = 1.
That is, we think they describe the same thing. Now, for those of you who didn't know that 1 is the identity monoid, this can come as a surprise when you learn it as most people do effectively in 3rd grade nowadays. Nevertheless, it is. If it were not, then there would be some other number which also was a multiplicative identity element on the natural numbers, but since it can be demonstrated that no other element on the natural numbers could be that (since any x 1 will yield a different result than 1 * x and it will not be x for all elements of N which you could prove by induction.)
Thus, we know that there is a proof that 1 = the identity element for multiplication. Any language in which standard mathematics is described that has a multiplication operator and has an identity element in it will have 1 and it will be that element and there will be a proof of that matter.
Thus it is possible for there to be unique abstract objects with different properties and names, that is, ways of describing them or accessing them, which nevertheless refer to exactly one thing - the same thing. Let us call these things "abstract objects" and we will differentiate them from "abstract properties" on the basis that abstract objects can have properties and share them with other objects (both abstract and non-abstract) whereas abstract properties can be descriptions or properties of other objects (while themselves being objects) AND have properties and alternative descriptions.
So to the particulars - we defined G as
An object upon which all contingent objects are contingent and which is not itself contingent.
So there is a property, according to us "being the contingency on which all contingent things are based, but not itself being contingent" (call it "O", the "God property" if you will).
And we supposed that there may be a group of things with that property D = (G1, G2, G3, ...) such that Ax:D (Ox) (D is the set of "deities").
Let P be the property "is contingent" and PG1x (where 1 is a subscript) be the property "being contingent on G1", and PG2x be the property "being contingent on G2".
Suppose Ex PG1x && PG2x && G1 G2 (our basic assumption).
That is, x is contingent on G1 and x is contingent on G2 and G1 is not G2.
Here's where our problem arises, by definition above, G1 is sufficient for x (since G1 is the sufficient condition for all contingent beings) and necessary for x (since without G1 no other contingent being is possible).
If G1 is sufficient and necessary for x and G2 is sufficient and necessary for x but not identical, then there arises the possibility that G2 & !G1 & x (since G2 is supposedly sufficient for x). But obviously there is a contradiction if Nec(!G1 -> !x) & G1 & x.
Hence if G1 is actually sufficient and necessary for the x in question (and that x is the totality of contingent beings) then G2 if it is also sufficient and necessary must be identical with G1.
As a result, there must be only one being which is sufficient and necessary for the existence of all contingent beings (even if this being is in-itself "multiple" - that is has multiple aspects) - the whole of it must be exactly one thing.
There is a further question, namely, what is the "structure" or "character" of the thing - is it simple or complex, good or evil, etc. This will be the topic of a proof to follow.
ALOHA!
Thursday, April 4, 2013
I read recently in Nous a review of a variety of Cosmological argument that says:
God exists because Something had to create the Heavens and the Earth and whatever created the Heavens and the Earth is what we call God.
The author broke this down symbolically as follows:
(1) If E(heavens and earth) -> Ex: !x -> !E(heavens and earth)
(2) if (x -> E(heavens and earth) && !Ex -> !E(heavens and earth) ) -> x = God
Thus quickly displaying the metaphysical nature of logic itself plainly for us.
The author went on to point out that the argument in (1) needs some more "explaining" before it can be allowed to go through, in particular an explanation of what constitutes "heaven and earth" and why we would expect that the existence of Heaven and Earth would entail the existence of something without which it would not exist.
The author considers a few options for the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" - the totality of events, the totality of facts, the totality of objects - but seems to think that there's a problem with sufficiently well restricting whatever totality we choose so that it seems plausible that it must have an explanation, cause or reason.
Secondly, the author objects that the force of "->" above is unclear - that the necessity of the necessitated object is not given as a "reason" or a "cause" or a "condition", where cause would be interpreted materially, reason interpreted epistemically and "condition" interpreted abstractly (e.g. logically).
Lastly the author objected that any suggested use of "->" that made it required for the existence of the Heavens and Earth would also apply to God, since the question "why is there any such thing as God" would seem to arise just as it does in the case of the Heavens and the Earth.
I - THE TOTALITY OF CONTINGENT FACTS: U
Unfortunately, the author did not consider the actual argument as usually given here, viz that the "Heavens and Earth" is constituted by the totality of Contingent Facts - facts that could have been otherwise but just happen to be the way they are.
That is, the set of true facts satisfying the condition:
U: (AF: F & Pos(!F))
If the author had considered THAT definition it would have been clear how to adequately demarcate the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" as everything that might not have been the way it is in fact.
It would also be clear from that definition why the the existence of that totality, U, stands in need of a "reason", what kind of "reason" it stands in need of, and why whatever would fit the bill would not itself also stand in need of the same kind of reason.
TWO KINDS OF WHY
In particular, it seems that the Contingent world stands in need of explanation for there arises the question "why is this the case, rather than that" or "how did this come to be at all?" both of which are varieties of the general question "why F?". But it's important to note that there are two different questions and that for contingent questions it is not always necessary that we have both, but only rather that we have an answer to the second kind of why.
This is easy to see in general:
We can very often say why we, in our own cases, are doing something - e.g. that we decided to do it. But when asked why we are doing that particular thing rather than any other possible thing we might have done, there's no reason to expect that there's a particular answer. That is, in our own cases we know that we can be a sufficient condition for a thing taking place without thereby also making it necessary that thing had taken place rather than all the other things that might have taken place.
Furthermore, we know that in some cases while there are explanations for why something came to be at all (why it exists) there may not even be the need to explain why the thing is the way it is as a result - for instance, we know that if a woman is pregnant and survives a normal pregnancy in general it will determine that a baby will be born, but that these facts alone will not necessitate the character of the baby born.
And we know this not just because there may be intervening facts - the application of thalidamyde for instance drastically alters the character of the born-child - but also because we know that some facts need not be determinate AT ALL in the intervening steps in the process. That is, we have a quantum theory of unobservables that allows that states of things be indeterminate until observed and that the closing of an event chain does not necessarily close all the possible event chains in between observations. That is, while we know that every step along the way must be in -some state- observed or unobserved, we also know that the unobserved ones may well be in an indeterminate state - a superposition of states as they say - whos character is not determined either by the initialization of the process nor the conclusion of it.
Nevertheless, though, we know that the contingent character of the baby at birth REQUIRES that the intervening states, be they determined or indeterminate, must exist in order for the baby to have been born normally. If there were simply NOTHING AT ALL along any path in the time-line of the baby, then the baby would not be born. We would regard this "nothing at all" as a complete and inexplicable mystery, and even the believe that it might happen we regard as a bizarre kind of superstition.
So we have two kinds of "Why" - one which inquires into why something is at all, and one that inquires into why something is the exact way that it is and not some other possible way.
We'll call the first kind of why "Causal Explanation" and the second kind of why "Deterministic Explanation".
WHICH WHY - WHY NOT DETERMINISM
As I've said before, we don't believe that everything has a deterministic explanation (at least not everyone does), and there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that everything does have such an explanation since it would imply not only determinism, but that all facts tout court are necessary facts since, at every step along the way in every process, all the aspects of that process would have to be completely determined by previous events along that path. Thus the distinction between contingent and necessary fact is removed and all and only necessary facts remain.
But this conclusion is absurd since we have within our own wills the ability to refute such a claim simply by doing something on purpose ourselves that wasn't in our own immediately prior plans - e.g. something spontaneous like suddenly whistling a new song. But worse, the idea that it was Absolutely Necessary that I happen to be sitting at my desk after midnight on a wednesday writing this email be a fact in the same way that it being necessary that 2+2=4 is preposterous. Clearly I might not even have existed. At least, anyway, the only reason for supposing that me writing this was absolutely necessary would be a rigid and axiomatic belief in Absolute Determinism.
Now it will be beyond the scope of this email to refute determinism of that kind since, as we know, all kinds of things have been said in favor of absurd propositions before, but we can say that if Determinism is true then Quantum Mechanics is strictly speaking false and that we have good Empirical Evidence of our current Quantum Mechanical model so, at the very least, such a belief in Determinism is anti-scientific.
Therefore, coming back to our original topic, the kind of explanation we're looking for when looking to interpret our (1) above is Causal Explanation - a cause is a reason that something is at all, but not necessarily is the way that it is. It is itself a Fact, for only Facts can be the causes of other Facts - and it is therefore not a purely mental explanation nor a purely abstract "reason". Facts are external, "real" things with real being in a real world.
A CAUSAL EXPLANATION
We are, as a result, looking for a Causal explanation for the existence of the totality of Contingent Facts. We know that that totality has such a thing because each of its members do and that that totality itself could therefore be different. We don't know, given that, that it has a deterministic explanation since, as we just admitted, each of the members of U could have been other than what they were in fact - so we don't expect to necessarily know why every fact is the way it is, only that the existence of these contingent facts as a whole itself must have a Causal explanation, otherwise, there would be a "nothing" in our chain of causal explanation which would appear to us worse than miraculous, but outright absurd ("nothing" can not be causally related to any real thing, obviously).
That is, the suggestion that there might not be at least a causal explanation for any set of contingent facts is equivalent to the suggestion that there is "nothing" in the causal chain of those facts, which is equivalent to the suggestion that "nothingness exists" for how else could it be related to the contingent facts, and which is a manifest absurdity.
Let's call that causal explanation for U, "G".
We can also therefore see that whatever the causal explanation of U is, it can not itself be a contingent fact, and so must therefore find itself among the necessary facts - it must be. Because it must be, that is, because it is a necessary fact, there simply is no question of inquiring into its causes - it can not be caused to be or not-be - just as it is absurd to inquire into why 2+2=4 in a causal way.
This does not preclude us from inquiring into its character or further into exploring its relations with other necessary objects! For we can, of course, give an argument that has as its conclusion 2+2=4, and just in the same way, we can give an argument that has as its conclusion the existence of G. That is, we can give an explanation to someone who doesn't believe that G exists in the form of a proof or reasons, but those reasons are NOT the same kind of Causal Reasons that lead us to find the relationship between U and G. That is, G explains the existence and contingency of U whereas G itself needs no explanation of its existence because it is not contingent, but necessary, but only a demonstration of its necessity, which we have just done - viz by demonstrating its necessity relative to the existence of a totality of Contingent Facts.
But what if there were no totality of Contingent Facts. It seems, if we follow the argument above, that we've proved G's existence Contingently on the basis of the existence of any Contingent facts. But said basis is not necessary, and so neither is the inference from U to G.
But is it necessary that there be contingent facts? I think the answer is clearly yes.
THE NECESSITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF CONTINGENT FACTS
We can clearly imagine there being lots of different varieties of Worlds - worlds with only shrimp in them, worlds of fire, earth and snow. But what we can't imagine is a world with NOTHING AT ALL in it - that is, a world in which there are no facts. For suppose there were no contingent facts in that world, it would remain a contingent fact that there was nothing in that world - contradicting the supposition that there were no contingent facts. That is, the supposition of the possibility of the existence of a non-existent contingent world is self-contradictory (and that can't be regarded as surprising).
As a result, we know that there must be contingent facts, but as before we don't know that this fact entails WHICH contingent facts there must be. To the contrary, if it did, they wouldn't be contingent!
THE CHARACTER OF CAUSALITY
Lastly a word about the nature of Causal Determination.
We gave two examples above of the way in which a cause may effect the necessitation of its effect without determining the character of the effect, but I'd like to elucidate further.
I can make a law "There will be baseball games on sundays" - and I may be able to enforce the law by conscripting players. Nevertheless, unless I have absolute control over the players I can not determine the quality or character of the game itself. That will still be determined by the decisions of the players. Now I can choose good players, but even good players can play badly if they so choose. Thus, any time I involve myself in a causal stream with something that can choose, while I may be able to guarantee that -something- happen, I likely can not guarantee WHAT happens.
The creation of the world must be roughly analogous to this - that in virtue of being "The necessary thing that must create some contingent world" the world which that thing creates must itself be actually contingent - that is, it can not be completely determined beforehand by the being what the content of the world created is. Thus, in a way, God must allow a world in which there is a significant amount of what we call Chaos or Randomness. Otherwise, if it contained no randomness, the world would be wholly Necessary, contradicting the supposition that it needed a Cause in the first place.
CONSIDERATIONS OF OBSERVATION
Importantly, this coincides obviously with our observed world, where people choose their own destinies and which, at the smallest level of particles and at the largest level of stellar systems, we observe large amounts of Randomness.
We also observe large amounts of Willfulness. Willfulness is the other primary case in which -some- outcome is guaranteed, but WHICH outcome is not. For instance, by our wills we can become married, but we can not guarantee the success or quality of that marriage beforehand no matter how hard we try. Similarly, we can enter a war and thereby guarantee some amount of violence, but we can not guarantee what the outcome or intervening states of the war are. NEVERTHELESS, the choosing of the initial step is a sign of Willfulness and is a case where clearly Randomness is not the appropriate explanation for the nature of what ensues.
Willfulness is to be defined, therefore, as the beginning of a chain of events which itself is not random, but which contains random resulting events. This willfulness we observe in ourselves but also in the relation between U and G. Seeing that G can not determine the complete character of U, but G must initially and non-randomly be the cause of U, we can see that U must be effectively Temporal in that a world in which only one thing happened that was the result of G's action could not be Contingent since that one thing would be necessitated by G's action. Thus G must set in motion the sequence of random events in U. G, therefore, is willful by analogy to the character of our own willfulness. Thus U must also be Temporal in character since there must be elements of U which are not necessitated by G's initial (or subsequent necessary) effects on U.
A WRONGHEADED OBJECTION - AN ORDERLY CHAOTIC PROCESSION IN TIME
I have heard it objected that the character of a necessary thing is that it always must have all its properties at all times and that if G is as I explain here, then G must always be having the same effect on U as it does at any time. Thus, goes the object, G can not be the creator of the universe since the universe has already been created only once, and G would have to be continually creating them.
I hope the explanation given above gives a clue about how this objection is wrong-headed. G's effect on U is NOT deterministic, what is necessary is that G continue to have an effect on U - that is it is G's character to have a non-deterministic effect on U. Thus while it's true that we should expect G to continue to have an effect on U, we shouldn't expect it always to be the Exact Same effect on U since that would, again, make U deterministic. Secondly, it is of course possible that G would continue to create new U's ad infinitum - to always be creating new worlds, and that again would be an explanation of the existence of the observed phenomenon of Time. Time, to us, looks like the constant addition of new factors to the character of the universe as a whole. That effect, globally observed, appears simultaneously random (watching sunspots) and carefully planned (watching the rotation of the planets), and this is just as we would expect from the character of U described. U is willful and so attempts to do specific things, but is non-deterministic, and so produces effects that are radically chaotic.
CONCLUSION
It seems to me, therefore, that the standard cosmological argument for the existence of God as the ultimate Cause of all Contingent Beings (that is, created things) stands, and that this basic argument is obvious and demands the rational assent of anyone willing to consider the matter thoroughly. At the same time, I have not described here the proof of the Unity of G nor the Moral Character of G though I have provided clues that should lead an interested party to the right answers.
God exists because Something had to create the Heavens and the Earth and whatever created the Heavens and the Earth is what we call God.
The author broke this down symbolically as follows:
(1) If E(heavens and earth) -> Ex: !x -> !E(heavens and earth)
(2) if (x -> E(heavens and earth) && !Ex -> !E(heavens and earth) ) -> x = God
Thus quickly displaying the metaphysical nature of logic itself plainly for us.
The author went on to point out that the argument in (1) needs some more "explaining" before it can be allowed to go through, in particular an explanation of what constitutes "heaven and earth" and why we would expect that the existence of Heaven and Earth would entail the existence of something without which it would not exist.
The author considers a few options for the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" - the totality of events, the totality of facts, the totality of objects - but seems to think that there's a problem with sufficiently well restricting whatever totality we choose so that it seems plausible that it must have an explanation, cause or reason.
Secondly, the author objects that the force of "->" above is unclear - that the necessity of the necessitated object is not given as a "reason" or a "cause" or a "condition", where cause would be interpreted materially, reason interpreted epistemically and "condition" interpreted abstractly (e.g. logically).
Lastly the author objected that any suggested use of "->" that made it required for the existence of the Heavens and Earth would also apply to God, since the question "why is there any such thing as God" would seem to arise just as it does in the case of the Heavens and the Earth.
I - THE TOTALITY OF CONTINGENT FACTS: U
Unfortunately, the author did not consider the actual argument as usually given here, viz that the "Heavens and Earth" is constituted by the totality of Contingent Facts - facts that could have been otherwise but just happen to be the way they are.
That is, the set of true facts satisfying the condition:
U: (AF: F & Pos(!F))
If the author had considered THAT definition it would have been clear how to adequately demarcate the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" as everything that might not have been the way it is in fact.
It would also be clear from that definition why the the existence of that totality, U, stands in need of a "reason", what kind of "reason" it stands in need of, and why whatever would fit the bill would not itself also stand in need of the same kind of reason.
TWO KINDS OF WHY
In particular, it seems that the Contingent world stands in need of explanation for there arises the question "why is this the case, rather than that" or "how did this come to be at all?" both of which are varieties of the general question "why F?". But it's important to note that there are two different questions and that for contingent questions it is not always necessary that we have both, but only rather that we have an answer to the second kind of why.
This is easy to see in general:
We can very often say why we, in our own cases, are doing something - e.g. that we decided to do it. But when asked why we are doing that particular thing rather than any other possible thing we might have done, there's no reason to expect that there's a particular answer. That is, in our own cases we know that we can be a sufficient condition for a thing taking place without thereby also making it necessary that thing had taken place rather than all the other things that might have taken place.
Furthermore, we know that in some cases while there are explanations for why something came to be at all (why it exists) there may not even be the need to explain why the thing is the way it is as a result - for instance, we know that if a woman is pregnant and survives a normal pregnancy in general it will determine that a baby will be born, but that these facts alone will not necessitate the character of the baby born.
And we know this not just because there may be intervening facts - the application of thalidamyde for instance drastically alters the character of the born-child - but also because we know that some facts need not be determinate AT ALL in the intervening steps in the process. That is, we have a quantum theory of unobservables that allows that states of things be indeterminate until observed and that the closing of an event chain does not necessarily close all the possible event chains in between observations. That is, while we know that every step along the way must be in -some state- observed or unobserved, we also know that the unobserved ones may well be in an indeterminate state - a superposition of states as they say - whos character is not determined either by the initialization of the process nor the conclusion of it.
Nevertheless, though, we know that the contingent character of the baby at birth REQUIRES that the intervening states, be they determined or indeterminate, must exist in order for the baby to have been born normally. If there were simply NOTHING AT ALL along any path in the time-line of the baby, then the baby would not be born. We would regard this "nothing at all" as a complete and inexplicable mystery, and even the believe that it might happen we regard as a bizarre kind of superstition.
So we have two kinds of "Why" - one which inquires into why something is at all, and one that inquires into why something is the exact way that it is and not some other possible way.
We'll call the first kind of why "Causal Explanation" and the second kind of why "Deterministic Explanation".
WHICH WHY - WHY NOT DETERMINISM
As I've said before, we don't believe that everything has a deterministic explanation (at least not everyone does), and there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that everything does have such an explanation since it would imply not only determinism, but that all facts tout court are necessary facts since, at every step along the way in every process, all the aspects of that process would have to be completely determined by previous events along that path. Thus the distinction between contingent and necessary fact is removed and all and only necessary facts remain.
But this conclusion is absurd since we have within our own wills the ability to refute such a claim simply by doing something on purpose ourselves that wasn't in our own immediately prior plans - e.g. something spontaneous like suddenly whistling a new song. But worse, the idea that it was Absolutely Necessary that I happen to be sitting at my desk after midnight on a wednesday writing this email be a fact in the same way that it being necessary that 2+2=4 is preposterous. Clearly I might not even have existed. At least, anyway, the only reason for supposing that me writing this was absolutely necessary would be a rigid and axiomatic belief in Absolute Determinism.
Now it will be beyond the scope of this email to refute determinism of that kind since, as we know, all kinds of things have been said in favor of absurd propositions before, but we can say that if Determinism is true then Quantum Mechanics is strictly speaking false and that we have good Empirical Evidence of our current Quantum Mechanical model so, at the very least, such a belief in Determinism is anti-scientific.
Therefore, coming back to our original topic, the kind of explanation we're looking for when looking to interpret our (1) above is Causal Explanation - a cause is a reason that something is at all, but not necessarily is the way that it is. It is itself a Fact, for only Facts can be the causes of other Facts - and it is therefore not a purely mental explanation nor a purely abstract "reason". Facts are external, "real" things with real being in a real world.
A CAUSAL EXPLANATION
We are, as a result, looking for a Causal explanation for the existence of the totality of Contingent Facts. We know that that totality has such a thing because each of its members do and that that totality itself could therefore be different. We don't know, given that, that it has a deterministic explanation since, as we just admitted, each of the members of U could have been other than what they were in fact - so we don't expect to necessarily know why every fact is the way it is, only that the existence of these contingent facts as a whole itself must have a Causal explanation, otherwise, there would be a "nothing" in our chain of causal explanation which would appear to us worse than miraculous, but outright absurd ("nothing" can not be causally related to any real thing, obviously).
That is, the suggestion that there might not be at least a causal explanation for any set of contingent facts is equivalent to the suggestion that there is "nothing" in the causal chain of those facts, which is equivalent to the suggestion that "nothingness exists" for how else could it be related to the contingent facts, and which is a manifest absurdity.
Let's call that causal explanation for U, "G".
We can also therefore see that whatever the causal explanation of U is, it can not itself be a contingent fact, and so must therefore find itself among the necessary facts - it must be. Because it must be, that is, because it is a necessary fact, there simply is no question of inquiring into its causes - it can not be caused to be or not-be - just as it is absurd to inquire into why 2+2=4 in a causal way.
This does not preclude us from inquiring into its character or further into exploring its relations with other necessary objects! For we can, of course, give an argument that has as its conclusion 2+2=4, and just in the same way, we can give an argument that has as its conclusion the existence of G. That is, we can give an explanation to someone who doesn't believe that G exists in the form of a proof or reasons, but those reasons are NOT the same kind of Causal Reasons that lead us to find the relationship between U and G. That is, G explains the existence and contingency of U whereas G itself needs no explanation of its existence because it is not contingent, but necessary, but only a demonstration of its necessity, which we have just done - viz by demonstrating its necessity relative to the existence of a totality of Contingent Facts.
But what if there were no totality of Contingent Facts. It seems, if we follow the argument above, that we've proved G's existence Contingently on the basis of the existence of any Contingent facts. But said basis is not necessary, and so neither is the inference from U to G.
But is it necessary that there be contingent facts? I think the answer is clearly yes.
THE NECESSITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF CONTINGENT FACTS
We can clearly imagine there being lots of different varieties of Worlds - worlds with only shrimp in them, worlds of fire, earth and snow. But what we can't imagine is a world with NOTHING AT ALL in it - that is, a world in which there are no facts. For suppose there were no contingent facts in that world, it would remain a contingent fact that there was nothing in that world - contradicting the supposition that there were no contingent facts. That is, the supposition of the possibility of the existence of a non-existent contingent world is self-contradictory (and that can't be regarded as surprising).
As a result, we know that there must be contingent facts, but as before we don't know that this fact entails WHICH contingent facts there must be. To the contrary, if it did, they wouldn't be contingent!
THE CHARACTER OF CAUSALITY
Lastly a word about the nature of Causal Determination.
We gave two examples above of the way in which a cause may effect the necessitation of its effect without determining the character of the effect, but I'd like to elucidate further.
I can make a law "There will be baseball games on sundays" - and I may be able to enforce the law by conscripting players. Nevertheless, unless I have absolute control over the players I can not determine the quality or character of the game itself. That will still be determined by the decisions of the players. Now I can choose good players, but even good players can play badly if they so choose. Thus, any time I involve myself in a causal stream with something that can choose, while I may be able to guarantee that -something- happen, I likely can not guarantee WHAT happens.
The creation of the world must be roughly analogous to this - that in virtue of being "The necessary thing that must create some contingent world" the world which that thing creates must itself be actually contingent - that is, it can not be completely determined beforehand by the being what the content of the world created is. Thus, in a way, God must allow a world in which there is a significant amount of what we call Chaos or Randomness. Otherwise, if it contained no randomness, the world would be wholly Necessary, contradicting the supposition that it needed a Cause in the first place.
CONSIDERATIONS OF OBSERVATION
Importantly, this coincides obviously with our observed world, where people choose their own destinies and which, at the smallest level of particles and at the largest level of stellar systems, we observe large amounts of Randomness.
We also observe large amounts of Willfulness. Willfulness is the other primary case in which -some- outcome is guaranteed, but WHICH outcome is not. For instance, by our wills we can become married, but we can not guarantee the success or quality of that marriage beforehand no matter how hard we try. Similarly, we can enter a war and thereby guarantee some amount of violence, but we can not guarantee what the outcome or intervening states of the war are. NEVERTHELESS, the choosing of the initial step is a sign of Willfulness and is a case where clearly Randomness is not the appropriate explanation for the nature of what ensues.
Willfulness is to be defined, therefore, as the beginning of a chain of events which itself is not random, but which contains random resulting events. This willfulness we observe in ourselves but also in the relation between U and G. Seeing that G can not determine the complete character of U, but G must initially and non-randomly be the cause of U, we can see that U must be effectively Temporal in that a world in which only one thing happened that was the result of G's action could not be Contingent since that one thing would be necessitated by G's action. Thus G must set in motion the sequence of random events in U. G, therefore, is willful by analogy to the character of our own willfulness. Thus U must also be Temporal in character since there must be elements of U which are not necessitated by G's initial (or subsequent necessary) effects on U.
A WRONGHEADED OBJECTION - AN ORDERLY CHAOTIC PROCESSION IN TIME
I have heard it objected that the character of a necessary thing is that it always must have all its properties at all times and that if G is as I explain here, then G must always be having the same effect on U as it does at any time. Thus, goes the object, G can not be the creator of the universe since the universe has already been created only once, and G would have to be continually creating them.
I hope the explanation given above gives a clue about how this objection is wrong-headed. G's effect on U is NOT deterministic, what is necessary is that G continue to have an effect on U - that is it is G's character to have a non-deterministic effect on U. Thus while it's true that we should expect G to continue to have an effect on U, we shouldn't expect it always to be the Exact Same effect on U since that would, again, make U deterministic. Secondly, it is of course possible that G would continue to create new U's ad infinitum - to always be creating new worlds, and that again would be an explanation of the existence of the observed phenomenon of Time. Time, to us, looks like the constant addition of new factors to the character of the universe as a whole. That effect, globally observed, appears simultaneously random (watching sunspots) and carefully planned (watching the rotation of the planets), and this is just as we would expect from the character of U described. U is willful and so attempts to do specific things, but is non-deterministic, and so produces effects that are radically chaotic.
CONCLUSION
It seems to me, therefore, that the standard cosmological argument for the existence of God as the ultimate Cause of all Contingent Beings (that is, created things) stands, and that this basic argument is obvious and demands the rational assent of anyone willing to consider the matter thoroughly. At the same time, I have not described here the proof of the Unity of G nor the Moral Character of G though I have provided clues that should lead an interested party to the right answers.
Monday, November 21, 2011
So you just realized you live in a police state.
Lots of people have been telling you this for years, that the freedoms we american's have are not as guaranteed as you think, etc. But you didn't really think that much of it.
But then you started seeing policemen on television shooting pepper spray and shoving batons into peaceful protesters who are asking the big banks to get out of our government, that is, who are asking for justice and peace.
Whoa, you thought, they must be evil protesters.
But then you found out that no, they were from "Veterans for peace" or "Students for Peace" or "The Peace and Justice Club" or just standing there as bystanders watching.
Whoa, you thought, how can that be happening here?
Well, let's face it, it's not the first time.
Another time was in 1963, when the Civil Rights Protesters were -peacefully- asking for the right to be treated as fully human persons and citizens. The police set the dogs on them. Many were beaten and even killed. But the war was one by the peaceful protesters there by patient consistent advocacy for their position.
You remember, it was on TV. Then there were the anti-vietnam war protesters that wanted us to stop killing asians indiscriminately (yes, we were in Laos and Cambodia too...) and for no obvious -good- reason.
But now you're wondering, where is the federal government in this. During the civil rights movement, the federal government ended up trying and convicting many people on violations of civil rights - the right to freely assemble, to speak freely and to petition the government for redress of grievances, you know, OUR GUARANTEED RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.
Hey, that's a good question. The answer right now is, the federal government is coordinating with city governments to quash the occupy movement.
This will likely fail, and those who stood on the wrong side of it will be brought to light.
In fact, what we're finding is that more people are sympathetic to the Occupy Movement's peaceful agenda for justice and economic equality - people who weren't interested before, like probably you.
While the approval rating of congress is dipping below 9%, and the president below 20%, Occupy Wall Street's approval ratings remain high.
What can you do?
First, make sure that you voice your opinion and please take a look at the Occupy Washington's statement of economic solutions found here:
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/99-s-deficit-proposal-how-create-jobs-reduce-wealth-divide-and-control-spending
But then you started seeing policemen on television shooting pepper spray and shoving batons into peaceful protesters who are asking the big banks to get out of our government, that is, who are asking for justice and peace.
Whoa, you thought, they must be evil protesters.
But then you found out that no, they were from "Veterans for peace" or "Students for Peace" or "The Peace and Justice Club" or just standing there as bystanders watching.
Whoa, you thought, how can that be happening here?
Well, let's face it, it's not the first time.
Another time was in 1963, when the Civil Rights Protesters were -peacefully- asking for the right to be treated as fully human persons and citizens. The police set the dogs on them. Many were beaten and even killed. But the war was one by the peaceful protesters there by patient consistent advocacy for their position.
You remember, it was on TV. Then there were the anti-vietnam war protesters that wanted us to stop killing asians indiscriminately (yes, we were in Laos and Cambodia too...) and for no obvious -good- reason.
But now you're wondering, where is the federal government in this. During the civil rights movement, the federal government ended up trying and convicting many people on violations of civil rights - the right to freely assemble, to speak freely and to petition the government for redress of grievances, you know, OUR GUARANTEED RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.
Hey, that's a good question. The answer right now is, the federal government is coordinating with city governments to quash the occupy movement.
This will likely fail, and those who stood on the wrong side of it will be brought to light.
In fact, what we're finding is that more people are sympathetic to the Occupy Movement's peaceful agenda for justice and economic equality - people who weren't interested before, like probably you.
While the approval rating of congress is dipping below 9%, and the president below 20%, Occupy Wall Street's approval ratings remain high.
What can you do?
First, make sure that you voice your opinion and please take a look at the Occupy Washington's statement of economic solutions found here:
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/99-s-deficit-proposal-how-create-jobs-reduce-wealth-divide-and-control-spending
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Taking the Banks to Task - A way forward for Occupy
Taking the Big Banks to Task
By: Robbie Lindauer
Why Big Banks?
The largest banks in the United States, those deemed "Too Big To Fail" have a monetary advantage over the rest of us. Their ability to borrow money directly from the Federal Reserve Bank at special rates not available to every citizen makes them a government-subsidized privileged class. Their special position as insurance beneficiaries of the FDIC, NCUA and FSLIC makes them "too big to fail". The special tax break for mortgage interest is an effective tax incentive to be in debt to them and giving them an unfair business advantage thereby. The government backed mortgage banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provide liquidity for intermediate mortgage banks by assuring them that these mortgages are going to be re-sellable. These several Federal Subsidies for the Banking Industry combine to give the industry as a whole, and the largest most powerful banks in particular, a gigantic government sponsored economic advantage.
They've used this advantage to become primary holders of almost every major publicly traded corporation worldwide and many, many privately held corporations, and they've done this at the expense of the American Tax Payer, especially the Middle Class and the Poor. Their symbiotic relationship with the Federal Government via their constant and well funded Lobbying and Political Action Groups gives them effective control over both the economy and the government of the United States and by extension the world by using the US Military. This power they use worldwide to continue to consolidate their power without regard for human or environmental well-being, resulting in Wars, Famines, Oil-dependency, Globalization, "economic downturns", the lack of a social safety net, etc.
Failure to address this core problem is failure to address any of the resultant problems - as long as the power to control our economy and political process remains in the hands of a very small number of people there can be no justice, no peace, no prosperity and no sustainable freedom for Americans or any other citizens of the world.
What to do about it?
That much, you probably already know, and if you're sympathetic with the 99% of people in the world who aren't in control of the government and economy of the World, you may be interested in finding out how to stop this Injustice. Now is a time of increased awareness of these problems and increased willingness to do something about it. Bank Transfer Day proved that we can act together as a group to change our system. But it didn't -work-. How, then, should we direct this energy and awareness?
That's the question I hope to answer in this short essay - How can we break the power of the American Banks over our Political Process?
How Can We Win?
This is not going to be easy. The people that have that much power didn't get it overnight and don't have any desire to give it up and have demonstrated their willingness to use force to preserve their power. They've used that symbiotic relationship to make the possibility of even introducing legislation to control it odious by artificially inflating the price and complicating the process of running for office; as a result those seats of power are now effectively bought and paid for. In Oregon, for instance, you can't even get onto a ballot without a year's advance notice and a significant outlay of cash. The result is a two party system where both sides are "the lesser of two evils" from one point of view or another - and rampant political cronyism in "both" parties.
But we can win, with Solidarity and Concerted Action.
Understanding the Problem - An Economic Path
The best way to understand the scope of the problem is to look at Mortgage Lending since the pain from the last sting on that topic has not subsided and it is the core income system for the industry. The availability of easy credit effectively defines the ability of people to buy houses. When there is abundant credit, more people can buy houses, when more people can buy houses, the prices of real estate goes up and the demand for new building goes up. Demand for new building sparks economic activity in construction, advertising, human resources, etc. driving the whole economy into perceived "prosperity" - everyone has a job and a house and things are looking up.
On the other hand, when credit is tight fewer people can afford to buy houses, prices of housing goes lower, demand for new homes goes down, people lose their jobs and the whole economy goes into a slump, a recession. Sound familiar? This is exactly what happened in 2006 when the Federal Reserve Bank raised the prime interest rate from .5% to 5% over the course of 17 adjustments in a single year. The result has been catastrophic and culminated in two enormous taxpayer funded bailouts for the country's largest banks - TARP 1 and TARP 2, together "The Bailout". But without ending the credit squeeze, the market for housing is still slow, economic activity is low and the recession continues. This contraction of credit is decided unilaterally by the Federal Reserve Board, which is made up of members chosen by the country's largest banks (Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) and independently of the elected government of the United States. The Bailouts, first authorized by a Republican - George Bush - and second by a Democrat - Barack Obama -, have only had the tendency to further benefit those large banks. Chase, for instance, used the money to show a 94 Billion-Dollar Profit in the same year that they received their bailout under the category "extraordinary gain" - a bailout that they now say that they didn't even want. (Of course they could simply return the money if they didn't want it.) The stated intention of the bailout was to loosen the credit market to stimulate economic activity but instead many of these banks put that money back into the Federal Bonds market - easy money - rather than into the job-starved US economy. Why risk money when the US government could be on the hook for it?
That leads us to how banks make money. Banks make money on the difference between the cost of having money (interest paid out) and the cost of loaning money (interest received). As long as their cost of money is low and the rate of interest they charge on their loans is high, they make money. The more loans they have and the higher the interest on those loans, the more money they make. It's that simple. This is why we receive the constant barrage of offers of credit and why they solicit your savings business.
The Move Your Money project was a good first step. Consumer Savings provides an abundant source of cheap money (the .05% you earn on your savings is consistently less than the overnight rate the banks get from the Federal Reserve Bank and less than the interest they charge on their consumer loans by far). Taking away that source of very cheap money is a great idea. It slims the profit margins available to banks by increasing the cost of the money to them. But it does not solve the problem because the Federal Reserve Bank can provide as much cheap money as necessary to the member banks as they want. Yes, that's exactly right; banks are encouraged to borrow from each other to cover short-term expenses but can borrow as much money as they want from the FED to cover their expenses as long as the FED agrees. But since these giant banks run the FED independently that amount is effectively unlimited. This subsidy will be very hard to change without legislative action and as we've seen, this is unlikely given the current status of national politics, but more on this later.
This leaves one other way we can affect the business of the largest banks - the margin. We need to cut off their ability to make a margin on their loans. This means lowering the interest paid on loans and/or their overall return on those loans. What is needed is a method for accomplishing that goal.
In fact, banks take losses on a small percentage of their loans all the time and write them off as bad debt. This happens when someone goes bankrupt or just decides not to pay them back. They also occasionally rewrite interest rates on specific loans rather than taking a complete loss on them. Typically the bigger and less secure the debt, the more likely they are to be interested in renegotiating the matter. Thus if it's a mortgage, they're much less interested in renegotiating terms because they believe that people will not want to lose their homes. For credit cards, they're likely to renegotiate more readily. Debt Relief firms try to do this for individuals at a price with varying degrees of success. But that's a limited number of people who go through the debt relief process and the amount lost through this process is part of the business plan of these banks - they know that some of their debt is going to be bad. On the other hand, what if LOTS of their debt was bad, or even ALL of their debt was bad. If that happened, the bank would suffer losses, driving down their stock price and leaving less for executive bonuses and lobbying efforts.
Group Action
The potential for Group Action here is tremendous. If a lender sees that a very large segment of their debt is at risk, they're going to want to mitigate that risk. If the cost of recovering some of those at-risk assets is large they're even more likely to be willing to negotiate them. Individual debtors seldom have enough debt to make negotiating with them useful but large groups clearly do and would. If there were a powerful Debtors Union this problem could be solved by pure economics. For instance, if all 48 Million Mortgage Holders simply stopped paying their mortgages the banks would have no ability to respond because they would have no cash flow to pay their lawyers to initiate and complete the foreclosure process. And if that union were well organized they would be able to defend themselves legally further driving up the cost of trying to collect on those loans.
In most states a Demand for the Original Note is sufficient to initiate the process and suspend payments to the bank until they are able to produce the original signed mortgage document that states that they own the debt on the property in question. Parallel processes exist for credit cards, auto loans and other kinds of debt.
This leads me to my first conclusion - we need a Debtors Union with divisions for Educational, Home, Credit Card and Auto debt armed with the ability to make group negotiation of terms easy and for the exclusive benefit of the buyers.
A Political Path
The other side of this problem is political. At this point the largest banking conglomerates have managed to gain tremendous influence in congress, in the white house and in the judicial branch - so much so that they're able to leverage that influence to their advantage in many, many ways. They will surely continue to do this, perhaps even making the idea of Debtors Unions illegal, for instance. We can't let this happen either. This means putting an end to 'business as usual politics' by interrupting that process.
At local levels where city politicians are required to be more responsive to their constituency this is possible. City recalls of city governments are more often effective and the numbers of people likely to agree on single subject in specific localities are high.
This means running candidates and generating referendum legislation for local issues in order to put in place laws at the city level to protect people from the predatory behavior of the big lenders. A great example is the Oakland County Foreclosure Prevention Initiative, which punishes banks in a variety of ways for foreclosing or holding foreclosures after the date of the foreclosure. If every jurisdiction in the country adopted this law banks would have much more incentive to negotiate with homeowners rather than foreclosing on them. More aggressive measures could clearly be adopted, e.g. insisting that all foreclosed properties be sold immediately at auction to the highest bidder, or by putting more stringent laws into effect for initiating foreclosure processes and for finalizing them.
Similar measures can be taken for Student Debt, Unsecured Credit Card Debt, Car Loans, Small Business Loans, etc.
This leads me to my political conclusion - we have to stop looking to Washington to solve these problems - it's not on their agenda. But we can solve them at home - right in our backyards - by effecting city-level policy that is beneficial to the 99% of Americans who aren't benefitting from the Debt system to which we are as a country currently enslaved. This means Occupying the City Councils of small cities throughout the country and Ashland is as ripe as any for some change.
A Final Word on Solidarity
America has changed a lot since I was a child. When I was 5 and 6 my family lived in Burlington, Kansas, population approximately 1000 people total. It was a community of farmers and Native Americans. One family's farm had a bad year and the mortgage they'd taken out on their farm to finance the feed was too much for them to pay, and the bank initiated a foreclosure process on them. The judge ordered the family's possessions and house auctioned to the highest bidder on a certain date. On the auction day, the sheriff set up on the highway and redirected traffic away from the foreclosure sale location, and so only people who knew exactly where it was were able to attend. Those in attendance, the neighbors who knew where the auction was, all bid a dollar for every piece up for auction including the farm itself. The total won at auction by the bank that day was around $300. The family now destitute left the auction heartbroken. But then something miraculous happened. Outside the auction, every person who'd bought something at the auction offered to sell the items back to the family, including the farm, for the dollar that they'd paid for it. The family, as you've guessed, didn't even have the three hundred dollars to pay for their own stuff at the auction price. The judge who ordered the foreclosure proceeding then lent the family the $300 required to buy back all of their things and said they could pay him back whenever they got around to it.
I don't know what happened to THAT America of my childhood. I loved THAT America. I hope that this America can be THAT America one day.
In conclusion - if we want to solve our country's problems, it's got to start locally with group actions aimed at removing the Debt by whatever means possible. I've made an attempt to start such a union on Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/groups/moveyourdebt/) but I could use your help, please help - with solidarity we can make this work by identifying the mortgage, credit card, student loan and auto-loan holders able and willing to take group action to stand up to the Banks holding our country hostage.
Thanks for your patience and attention
In Solidarity,
Robbie Lindauer
By: Robbie Lindauer
Why Big Banks?
The largest banks in the United States, those deemed "Too Big To Fail" have a monetary advantage over the rest of us. Their ability to borrow money directly from the Federal Reserve Bank at special rates not available to every citizen makes them a government-subsidized privileged class. Their special position as insurance beneficiaries of the FDIC, NCUA and FSLIC makes them "too big to fail". The special tax break for mortgage interest is an effective tax incentive to be in debt to them and giving them an unfair business advantage thereby. The government backed mortgage banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provide liquidity for intermediate mortgage banks by assuring them that these mortgages are going to be re-sellable. These several Federal Subsidies for the Banking Industry combine to give the industry as a whole, and the largest most powerful banks in particular, a gigantic government sponsored economic advantage.
They've used this advantage to become primary holders of almost every major publicly traded corporation worldwide and many, many privately held corporations, and they've done this at the expense of the American Tax Payer, especially the Middle Class and the Poor. Their symbiotic relationship with the Federal Government via their constant and well funded Lobbying and Political Action Groups gives them effective control over both the economy and the government of the United States and by extension the world by using the US Military. This power they use worldwide to continue to consolidate their power without regard for human or environmental well-being, resulting in Wars, Famines, Oil-dependency, Globalization, "economic downturns", the lack of a social safety net, etc.
Failure to address this core problem is failure to address any of the resultant problems - as long as the power to control our economy and political process remains in the hands of a very small number of people there can be no justice, no peace, no prosperity and no sustainable freedom for Americans or any other citizens of the world.
What to do about it?
That much, you probably already know, and if you're sympathetic with the 99% of people in the world who aren't in control of the government and economy of the World, you may be interested in finding out how to stop this Injustice. Now is a time of increased awareness of these problems and increased willingness to do something about it. Bank Transfer Day proved that we can act together as a group to change our system. But it didn't -work-. How, then, should we direct this energy and awareness?
That's the question I hope to answer in this short essay - How can we break the power of the American Banks over our Political Process?
How Can We Win?
This is not going to be easy. The people that have that much power didn't get it overnight and don't have any desire to give it up and have demonstrated their willingness to use force to preserve their power. They've used that symbiotic relationship to make the possibility of even introducing legislation to control it odious by artificially inflating the price and complicating the process of running for office; as a result those seats of power are now effectively bought and paid for. In Oregon, for instance, you can't even get onto a ballot without a year's advance notice and a significant outlay of cash. The result is a two party system where both sides are "the lesser of two evils" from one point of view or another - and rampant political cronyism in "both" parties.
But we can win, with Solidarity and Concerted Action.
Understanding the Problem - An Economic Path
The best way to understand the scope of the problem is to look at Mortgage Lending since the pain from the last sting on that topic has not subsided and it is the core income system for the industry. The availability of easy credit effectively defines the ability of people to buy houses. When there is abundant credit, more people can buy houses, when more people can buy houses, the prices of real estate goes up and the demand for new building goes up. Demand for new building sparks economic activity in construction, advertising, human resources, etc. driving the whole economy into perceived "prosperity" - everyone has a job and a house and things are looking up.
On the other hand, when credit is tight fewer people can afford to buy houses, prices of housing goes lower, demand for new homes goes down, people lose their jobs and the whole economy goes into a slump, a recession. Sound familiar? This is exactly what happened in 2006 when the Federal Reserve Bank raised the prime interest rate from .5% to 5% over the course of 17 adjustments in a single year. The result has been catastrophic and culminated in two enormous taxpayer funded bailouts for the country's largest banks - TARP 1 and TARP 2, together "The Bailout". But without ending the credit squeeze, the market for housing is still slow, economic activity is low and the recession continues. This contraction of credit is decided unilaterally by the Federal Reserve Board, which is made up of members chosen by the country's largest banks (Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) and independently of the elected government of the United States. The Bailouts, first authorized by a Republican - George Bush - and second by a Democrat - Barack Obama -, have only had the tendency to further benefit those large banks. Chase, for instance, used the money to show a 94 Billion-Dollar Profit in the same year that they received their bailout under the category "extraordinary gain" - a bailout that they now say that they didn't even want. (Of course they could simply return the money if they didn't want it.) The stated intention of the bailout was to loosen the credit market to stimulate economic activity but instead many of these banks put that money back into the Federal Bonds market - easy money - rather than into the job-starved US economy. Why risk money when the US government could be on the hook for it?
That leads us to how banks make money. Banks make money on the difference between the cost of having money (interest paid out) and the cost of loaning money (interest received). As long as their cost of money is low and the rate of interest they charge on their loans is high, they make money. The more loans they have and the higher the interest on those loans, the more money they make. It's that simple. This is why we receive the constant barrage of offers of credit and why they solicit your savings business.
The Move Your Money project was a good first step. Consumer Savings provides an abundant source of cheap money (the .05% you earn on your savings is consistently less than the overnight rate the banks get from the Federal Reserve Bank and less than the interest they charge on their consumer loans by far). Taking away that source of very cheap money is a great idea. It slims the profit margins available to banks by increasing the cost of the money to them. But it does not solve the problem because the Federal Reserve Bank can provide as much cheap money as necessary to the member banks as they want. Yes, that's exactly right; banks are encouraged to borrow from each other to cover short-term expenses but can borrow as much money as they want from the FED to cover their expenses as long as the FED agrees. But since these giant banks run the FED independently that amount is effectively unlimited. This subsidy will be very hard to change without legislative action and as we've seen, this is unlikely given the current status of national politics, but more on this later.
This leaves one other way we can affect the business of the largest banks - the margin. We need to cut off their ability to make a margin on their loans. This means lowering the interest paid on loans and/or their overall return on those loans. What is needed is a method for accomplishing that goal.
In fact, banks take losses on a small percentage of their loans all the time and write them off as bad debt. This happens when someone goes bankrupt or just decides not to pay them back. They also occasionally rewrite interest rates on specific loans rather than taking a complete loss on them. Typically the bigger and less secure the debt, the more likely they are to be interested in renegotiating the matter. Thus if it's a mortgage, they're much less interested in renegotiating terms because they believe that people will not want to lose their homes. For credit cards, they're likely to renegotiate more readily. Debt Relief firms try to do this for individuals at a price with varying degrees of success. But that's a limited number of people who go through the debt relief process and the amount lost through this process is part of the business plan of these banks - they know that some of their debt is going to be bad. On the other hand, what if LOTS of their debt was bad, or even ALL of their debt was bad. If that happened, the bank would suffer losses, driving down their stock price and leaving less for executive bonuses and lobbying efforts.
Group Action
The potential for Group Action here is tremendous. If a lender sees that a very large segment of their debt is at risk, they're going to want to mitigate that risk. If the cost of recovering some of those at-risk assets is large they're even more likely to be willing to negotiate them. Individual debtors seldom have enough debt to make negotiating with them useful but large groups clearly do and would. If there were a powerful Debtors Union this problem could be solved by pure economics. For instance, if all 48 Million Mortgage Holders simply stopped paying their mortgages the banks would have no ability to respond because they would have no cash flow to pay their lawyers to initiate and complete the foreclosure process. And if that union were well organized they would be able to defend themselves legally further driving up the cost of trying to collect on those loans.
In most states a Demand for the Original Note is sufficient to initiate the process and suspend payments to the bank until they are able to produce the original signed mortgage document that states that they own the debt on the property in question. Parallel processes exist for credit cards, auto loans and other kinds of debt.
This leads me to my first conclusion - we need a Debtors Union with divisions for Educational, Home, Credit Card and Auto debt armed with the ability to make group negotiation of terms easy and for the exclusive benefit of the buyers.
A Political Path
The other side of this problem is political. At this point the largest banking conglomerates have managed to gain tremendous influence in congress, in the white house and in the judicial branch - so much so that they're able to leverage that influence to their advantage in many, many ways. They will surely continue to do this, perhaps even making the idea of Debtors Unions illegal, for instance. We can't let this happen either. This means putting an end to 'business as usual politics' by interrupting that process.
At local levels where city politicians are required to be more responsive to their constituency this is possible. City recalls of city governments are more often effective and the numbers of people likely to agree on single subject in specific localities are high.
This means running candidates and generating referendum legislation for local issues in order to put in place laws at the city level to protect people from the predatory behavior of the big lenders. A great example is the Oakland County Foreclosure Prevention Initiative, which punishes banks in a variety of ways for foreclosing or holding foreclosures after the date of the foreclosure. If every jurisdiction in the country adopted this law banks would have much more incentive to negotiate with homeowners rather than foreclosing on them. More aggressive measures could clearly be adopted, e.g. insisting that all foreclosed properties be sold immediately at auction to the highest bidder, or by putting more stringent laws into effect for initiating foreclosure processes and for finalizing them.
Similar measures can be taken for Student Debt, Unsecured Credit Card Debt, Car Loans, Small Business Loans, etc.
This leads me to my political conclusion - we have to stop looking to Washington to solve these problems - it's not on their agenda. But we can solve them at home - right in our backyards - by effecting city-level policy that is beneficial to the 99% of Americans who aren't benefitting from the Debt system to which we are as a country currently enslaved. This means Occupying the City Councils of small cities throughout the country and Ashland is as ripe as any for some change.
A Final Word on Solidarity
America has changed a lot since I was a child. When I was 5 and 6 my family lived in Burlington, Kansas, population approximately 1000 people total. It was a community of farmers and Native Americans. One family's farm had a bad year and the mortgage they'd taken out on their farm to finance the feed was too much for them to pay, and the bank initiated a foreclosure process on them. The judge ordered the family's possessions and house auctioned to the highest bidder on a certain date. On the auction day, the sheriff set up on the highway and redirected traffic away from the foreclosure sale location, and so only people who knew exactly where it was were able to attend. Those in attendance, the neighbors who knew where the auction was, all bid a dollar for every piece up for auction including the farm itself. The total won at auction by the bank that day was around $300. The family now destitute left the auction heartbroken. But then something miraculous happened. Outside the auction, every person who'd bought something at the auction offered to sell the items back to the family, including the farm, for the dollar that they'd paid for it. The family, as you've guessed, didn't even have the three hundred dollars to pay for their own stuff at the auction price. The judge who ordered the foreclosure proceeding then lent the family the $300 required to buy back all of their things and said they could pay him back whenever they got around to it.
I don't know what happened to THAT America of my childhood. I loved THAT America. I hope that this America can be THAT America one day.
In conclusion - if we want to solve our country's problems, it's got to start locally with group actions aimed at removing the Debt by whatever means possible. I've made an attempt to start such a union on Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/groups/moveyourdebt/) but I could use your help, please help - with solidarity we can make this work by identifying the mortgage, credit card, student loan and auto-loan holders able and willing to take group action to stand up to the Banks holding our country hostage.
Thanks for your patience and attention
In Solidarity,
Robbie Lindauer
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Money
700 Billion or 700 Trillion no longer sound like the large amounts of money they did in years past.
In 1916, less than 100 years ago, there was exactly one billionaire, JD Rockefeller. Now a billion dollars flows out of the US mint like it was so much cow manure.
That it may be. Money is easy to find and products harder to come-by, we're in for inflation. That can be good and bad; but if our economy needs constant inflation to survive we have a problem - and looking at the growth in the money supply since 1970 versus the population growth compared to the same period in 1870 - 1910 we've got a major problem on our hands - US money is becoming worthless.
Part of me says HURRAY - money is the root of much evil, if it becomes worthless then people will stop pursuing it. Part of me, like many of you, may be scared by this.
Whatever is of fear is sin.
Don't be afraid. What power does the world hold over you but death? Of what value would you be to the powers of this world dead?
If the answer to this is lots, then don't be surprised when it comes, but be blessed, remember that Zechariah was killed in the temple.
If the answer to this is none, then don't worry. But pray to become like Zechariah whom the prince would have killed.
In 1916, less than 100 years ago, there was exactly one billionaire, JD Rockefeller. Now a billion dollars flows out of the US mint like it was so much cow manure.
That it may be. Money is easy to find and products harder to come-by, we're in for inflation. That can be good and bad; but if our economy needs constant inflation to survive we have a problem - and looking at the growth in the money supply since 1970 versus the population growth compared to the same period in 1870 - 1910 we've got a major problem on our hands - US money is becoming worthless.
Part of me says HURRAY - money is the root of much evil, if it becomes worthless then people will stop pursuing it. Part of me, like many of you, may be scared by this.
Whatever is of fear is sin.
Don't be afraid. What power does the world hold over you but death? Of what value would you be to the powers of this world dead?
If the answer to this is lots, then don't be surprised when it comes, but be blessed, remember that Zechariah was killed in the temple.
If the answer to this is none, then don't worry. But pray to become like Zechariah whom the prince would have killed.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Axiomity
Continuing the discussion of Logic without Axioms
A big question sitting out there in the minds of the anti-historical is "what does logic without axioms look like?"
As no surprise to many, no doubt, it looks like rhetoric for that is the disdainful name given to it by our pseudo-culture. But it takes many forms, and starting with a list is sometimes a good thing.
Law - The laws of people ("You may not bring an elephant into a licensed bar") is a reasoning system without axioms. There are different laws in different lands, and the enforcement of laws and the standards of enforcement and the methods of interpretation, etc., differ from people to people, from land to land, from time to time. In the United States we have a "highest law" - the constitution - but that too is fungible. We have treaties and amendments that occasionally change the substance of the "highest law" and court rulings that fail to change the wording of said laws, but succeed in changing their meaning daily. We are, in that sense, Oligarchical Collectivists in that we can change the meaning of words willy-nilly. 2+2 sometimes equals 5 and sometimes equals 4.
The force of law is literal violence - failure to accord with the law results in torture, imprisonment, fines, injunctions and sometimes death. This law is then normative in a relative sense, normative in the sense that if you don't obey it the enforcers of the law will come and get you. "In the day that you eat of it you will surely die."
Capital - In capitalist society, the practice of getting a good deal is extremely important - you need to pay as little as possible in order to get as much as you can in order to sell it for as much as possible in order to have a profit left-over. This rule, the rule of capitalism I call it, requires cunning and the practice of that cunning is the skill called negotiation. If two people know the rule, the negotiation is harder. Understanding the universal application of the rule is the skill of a good negotiator - someone who can give and take information with the right grains of sand in order to come out "ahead".
The force of the law of capitalism is loss. Failure to living in accord with it makes one poor, downtrodden, sometimes destitute and dead. The extent of this law is limited by the first group of laws - the literal laws of the state. This law, then, is also normative in the sense that if you don't obey it, the enforcers of the law will come and get you, that is, they will make you destitute or make you conform.
In an oligarchist society, the need for "progress" as a rhetorical tool for negotiation is critical. In negotiations there are, generally, winners and losers according to the law of capitalism. Ishmaelites might think of them as "Takers" and "Leavers". However, the destitution of the destitute can become a problem - it must be solved. For if the destitute fail to continue to lose at their negotiations, from whom will the winners gain their profit? There are two answers to this question and they are our other two rhetorical tools in use today.
War - when the losers need an explanation for their losses, they can either look at the winner across the table or they can be directed to look elsewhere. Simultaneously, when the loser-class becomes better at negotiations, the opportunity for winning becomes diminished. Both rhetorical needs are served by War. War expands the class of losers ad-hoc - whenever there is a need for more losers, one conquers them, kills them and subjects them to losing. At the same time, the "losers-at-home" can regard themselves as becoming winners, reaping the rewards of the conquered nation(s). Lastly, the losers are willing to continue to make sacrifices for "the war" because they are led to believe (by negotiation) that winning it will lead them to becoming the winners themselves.
The law of war is obviously also the law of force. If you fail to obey it, you will become conquered, enslaved and possibly killed. We see all around us the activity of the law of war today.
Science - The law of war is limited by the physics of our planet. There are just these continents, just this arable land, just this water, just this coal, just this oil, just this air. There is a lot of it, no doubt, but as the number of winners and losers increase and the losers continue their learning-to-be-winners-at-negotiation the need for Progress is inevitable. Progress takes many forms for science. First is improving the ability for the winners to win and maintain their winning position. Second is the ability for losers to lose more gracefully and come back more quickly. Third is the ability to wage war more effectively.
These logics - Law, Capital, Science, War - are the eternal logics of civilization. We have seen them since the time that Cain killed Abel or that the Inuits made their trek north to escape the onslaught of it (civilization).
There are, perhaps, pre-existing laws, the laws of God so to speak. These are the basic laws that may have, in a sense, been formative in the development of our human laws - at least that's a story we like to tell now. Everyone to live must eat and excrete, be kept reasonably warm and procreate. These human characteristics were handed to us by evolution or God, however you like to think of it. We can imagine, I expect, different kinds of life-forms - that have no need of eating, reproducing or being warm. We imagine, I suspect, rocks being eternally "alive" in some sense. (No, we don't know what life is without food and reproduction, I think.) Humans eat other (the remains of, in general) living things. Not so with all living things. Some living things can metabolize non-living things. Perhaps we could alter ourselves to do this, I don't know.
In any case, the penalty for breaking the laws of evolution or God is death, clearly enough. To live we must eat. To eat we must kill. Our situation is, in that sense, pre-destined. We can't help but be what we are - we don't choose our births. Although we can imagine developing different laws altogether - different laws of human society, different laws of science, different laws of war, our situation is vampiric.
The notion of "Logical Law" does not appear here, except perhaps as a footnote to the law of negotiation, as a precursor to war and science. But if there are logical laws, then, they were not given to us, as it were, by God or evolution. God never said "Thou shalt deduce p from q in these circumstances." That would no doubt have been interesting. Instead we have been given choices - we choose how to deduce, what to deduce when, etc. And these laws of logic which we have created are idolized, and rightly so, by the minions of civilization. For as a negotiation tactic, it's important to be able to control the language of the conversation which are the terms under which the negotiation can happen at all. If these terms are idolized - made into Gods themselves - they become unquestionable in the mind of the minion.
But do the makers of idols believe in the Gods? There's a story that Abram's father was an idol-seller. Abram destroyed the idols in his father's shop and blamed it on one of them in it. His father rightly noted that idols can't do that, they're made of stone, not alive. "Why do you worship them, then?" said Abram. Platonism is this kind of idol-worship, really. We make laws and pretend they were given to us from eternity by the Gods themselves. But we know them to be powerless, smash them and watch what their fathers do.
A big question sitting out there in the minds of the anti-historical is "what does logic without axioms look like?"
As no surprise to many, no doubt, it looks like rhetoric for that is the disdainful name given to it by our pseudo-culture. But it takes many forms, and starting with a list is sometimes a good thing.
Law - The laws of people ("You may not bring an elephant into a licensed bar") is a reasoning system without axioms. There are different laws in different lands, and the enforcement of laws and the standards of enforcement and the methods of interpretation, etc., differ from people to people, from land to land, from time to time. In the United States we have a "highest law" - the constitution - but that too is fungible. We have treaties and amendments that occasionally change the substance of the "highest law" and court rulings that fail to change the wording of said laws, but succeed in changing their meaning daily. We are, in that sense, Oligarchical Collectivists in that we can change the meaning of words willy-nilly. 2+2 sometimes equals 5 and sometimes equals 4.
The force of law is literal violence - failure to accord with the law results in torture, imprisonment, fines, injunctions and sometimes death. This law is then normative in a relative sense, normative in the sense that if you don't obey it the enforcers of the law will come and get you. "In the day that you eat of it you will surely die."
Capital - In capitalist society, the practice of getting a good deal is extremely important - you need to pay as little as possible in order to get as much as you can in order to sell it for as much as possible in order to have a profit left-over. This rule, the rule of capitalism I call it, requires cunning and the practice of that cunning is the skill called negotiation. If two people know the rule, the negotiation is harder. Understanding the universal application of the rule is the skill of a good negotiator - someone who can give and take information with the right grains of sand in order to come out "ahead".
The force of the law of capitalism is loss. Failure to living in accord with it makes one poor, downtrodden, sometimes destitute and dead. The extent of this law is limited by the first group of laws - the literal laws of the state. This law, then, is also normative in the sense that if you don't obey it, the enforcers of the law will come and get you, that is, they will make you destitute or make you conform.
In an oligarchist society, the need for "progress" as a rhetorical tool for negotiation is critical. In negotiations there are, generally, winners and losers according to the law of capitalism. Ishmaelites might think of them as "Takers" and "Leavers". However, the destitution of the destitute can become a problem - it must be solved. For if the destitute fail to continue to lose at their negotiations, from whom will the winners gain their profit? There are two answers to this question and they are our other two rhetorical tools in use today.
War - when the losers need an explanation for their losses, they can either look at the winner across the table or they can be directed to look elsewhere. Simultaneously, when the loser-class becomes better at negotiations, the opportunity for winning becomes diminished. Both rhetorical needs are served by War. War expands the class of losers ad-hoc - whenever there is a need for more losers, one conquers them, kills them and subjects them to losing. At the same time, the "losers-at-home" can regard themselves as becoming winners, reaping the rewards of the conquered nation(s). Lastly, the losers are willing to continue to make sacrifices for "the war" because they are led to believe (by negotiation) that winning it will lead them to becoming the winners themselves.
The law of war is obviously also the law of force. If you fail to obey it, you will become conquered, enslaved and possibly killed. We see all around us the activity of the law of war today.
Science - The law of war is limited by the physics of our planet. There are just these continents, just this arable land, just this water, just this coal, just this oil, just this air. There is a lot of it, no doubt, but as the number of winners and losers increase and the losers continue their learning-to-be-winners-at-negotiation the need for Progress is inevitable. Progress takes many forms for science. First is improving the ability for the winners to win and maintain their winning position. Second is the ability for losers to lose more gracefully and come back more quickly. Third is the ability to wage war more effectively.
These logics - Law, Capital, Science, War - are the eternal logics of civilization. We have seen them since the time that Cain killed Abel or that the Inuits made their trek north to escape the onslaught of it (civilization).
There are, perhaps, pre-existing laws, the laws of God so to speak. These are the basic laws that may have, in a sense, been formative in the development of our human laws - at least that's a story we like to tell now. Everyone to live must eat and excrete, be kept reasonably warm and procreate. These human characteristics were handed to us by evolution or God, however you like to think of it. We can imagine, I expect, different kinds of life-forms - that have no need of eating, reproducing or being warm. We imagine, I suspect, rocks being eternally "alive" in some sense. (No, we don't know what life is without food and reproduction, I think.) Humans eat other (the remains of, in general) living things. Not so with all living things. Some living things can metabolize non-living things. Perhaps we could alter ourselves to do this, I don't know.
In any case, the penalty for breaking the laws of evolution or God is death, clearly enough. To live we must eat. To eat we must kill. Our situation is, in that sense, pre-destined. We can't help but be what we are - we don't choose our births. Although we can imagine developing different laws altogether - different laws of human society, different laws of science, different laws of war, our situation is vampiric.
The notion of "Logical Law" does not appear here, except perhaps as a footnote to the law of negotiation, as a precursor to war and science. But if there are logical laws, then, they were not given to us, as it were, by God or evolution. God never said "Thou shalt deduce p from q in these circumstances." That would no doubt have been interesting. Instead we have been given choices - we choose how to deduce, what to deduce when, etc. And these laws of logic which we have created are idolized, and rightly so, by the minions of civilization. For as a negotiation tactic, it's important to be able to control the language of the conversation which are the terms under which the negotiation can happen at all. If these terms are idolized - made into Gods themselves - they become unquestionable in the mind of the minion.
But do the makers of idols believe in the Gods? There's a story that Abram's father was an idol-seller. Abram destroyed the idols in his father's shop and blamed it on one of them in it. His father rightly noted that idols can't do that, they're made of stone, not alive. "Why do you worship them, then?" said Abram. Platonism is this kind of idol-worship, really. We make laws and pretend they were given to us from eternity by the Gods themselves. But we know them to be powerless, smash them and watch what their fathers do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
