Power: The Castle of Illusions

Preferably this would have been a mock-up of M.C. Escher's abstract geometry-breaking style, but the above will suffice for lack of skill in this endeavour.

This blog is overdue another description of a policy (Environment + Brexit) via focused and detailed description of a subject of substance!! Going in the opposite direction, hence at the risk of adding to the cacophony... but noticing the current headline topics in politics at the moment and noticing a high quality blog post by Pete North:-

Back To Square One ~ Pete North

"If I have learned one thing from my dabbling in politics it is that knowledge is not prized. Conformity is. The rules of political progression are thus:

Firstly one must declare publicly an allegiance to an orthodoxy. One must praise it and denounce followers of opposing ideals. One must never deviate because the narrative is a closely guarded continuum. Each tribe has a leader but in each tribe there are cells. There are acolytes who are permitted a certain degree of status so long as they never challenge or contradict the high priest of the tribal orthodoxy. Dissent is punished, conformity is rewarded. 

This is so engrained in our political culture that debate has now become a form of entertainment rather than a means to an end [editor's note: Distraction Activity could substitute here also]. This explains London political culture.

Not for nothing do we call them the chattering classes. It is reflected in London based political publications where we see in full flow the dynamic of prestige and conformity over substance. What we see is the popularised mantras of the leading tribes which attract the most prestige.

We often speak of "the establishment" but there have been very few credible attempts to define what that actually means. To the left, the establishment is the banks, bosses and the "neoliberals", but this is a wholly teenage interpretation of the establishment.

The establishment is difficult to define specifically because it is an amorphous mass of competing influences. It is neither right wing nor left wing. It is simply that which cannot be removed by way of voting.

The purpose of an election is notionally to refresh the powers that be. In reality all we are doing is sending more fresh meat into the grinder into an ancient system whereby the system takes malleable and naive politicians and uses them to gain influence, be it the media, privately funded think tanks or direct political donations.

In modern times the media and think tanks are interchangeable. The media does very little thinking of its own and so there is a nexus between the media and the thinks tanks whereby old money ensures that the orthodox narratives are never challenged. Through either bribery, bullying, ridicule or sabotage, there are no limits to the lengths they will go to to suppress ideas that they themselves do not endorse or did not originate."

I highly recommend reading the full blog (certainly up to the paragraph on Fascism and for further on that subject re-read my previous blog: Politics & Power: The Power of "Will Power"). One thing I feel confident in stating: Much of the discussion of politics has poor foundations. Often the data group "tags" used to assort large groups of people into such as "left, right, libertarianism or any of the other more established labels", are extremely limited and self-limiting by the current system of politics: Reds vs Blues, as the traditional football match goes. One tribe of supporters ritualistically against another and fair enough some of the quality of football is brilliant entertainment in my opinion - but it's football of course.

Coming back to the news, today there's some highlights of "Trump vs Clinton": Go watch it and it's much easier to see the suggested above, the wider schism between rhetoric and reason; between illusion and reality. In our present debate about Brexit, it's perhaps less obvious, but as usual Dr. RAE North provides enormously helpful assistance:-

Brexit: confusion reigns	20/10/2016
Brexit: mutual recognition of standards	19/10/2016
Brexit: off the edge of a cliff	18/10/2016
see previous blogs......
see previous blogs......
see previous blogs......
see previous blogs......

There is "a kind of order within the above apparent chaotic pattern" in all the above, which go into great detail and depth, the latest concerning the predictable conflation between Customs Union (of the EU), The Single Market (including EEA) and variations on "Free Trade, Sovereignty and Supranationalism, " presumably when "the shit hits the fan" (illusion hits reality), and the parameters of Brexit as understood within the limits of Article 50. To provide an example, just read the beginning summary of news-media coverage of the politicians "positions" concerning the "progress" of Brexit in the above "Brexit: Confusion reigns":-

David Jones, Minister of State for Brexit, has told a House of Lords committee the UK's negotiating position may not be "totally crystallised" by next spring. The government was "at an early stage of the process", he said, and thinking was "developing".

But then, if this recent report in the Guardian (and a parallel report in the Mail) is any guide, this should not come as a surprise. The debate seems to be going backwards, sowing confusion in place of clarity, adding needless complications to an already complex issue.

For a start, these two newspapers don't seem to know whether they are coming or going. Both apparently report on work submitted to the Cabinet by the Treasury, the think-tank NIESR, and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, but both seem to have a different idea of what it involves.

The Mail, on the one hand, has the work focusing on "a Norway-style model where the UK exits the single market but stays inside the customs union", whereas the Guardian has it that we remain "inside the single market but outside the customs union".

The Guardian then confuses the issue still further by suggesting that a customs union sets common external tariffs – which is fair enough – but then, bizarrely, asserts it "does not require customs checks".

If you read Pete North's blog, I think he lays out a useful basis as to why, that is actually very useful before then using the language of established conventions in our politics and hence the confusion that usually engenders. And if you accept some of the suppositions, it might then make more sense why for example Westminster politics deals and trades in so much that defies reason, that breaks the rules of reason - and yet ends up holding a most perverse logic of it's own! What is that? I think one way to perhaps describe it, and not exclusively, is to compare it to what M.C Escher does with his depictions of "rule-breaking geometry": There is order in understanding which rules are being broken and only displaying the consequence of those broken rules: Of course such an 'echo or reversal' thus holds onto it's inherited "reason" but in a most convoluted and captivating and strange and bizarre outcome: Much like watching politics in Westminster: The centralization of power at work, even? Why if we begin to assume we glimpse some of "how"?

 M.C. Escher: "Waterfall" - Our modern politics: But does such a picture serve a purposeful function for present people? "Almost certainly".

This is perhaps a fantastical way of suggesting: Perhaps people need to start learning more about possible rules of power itself, if we want to progress our politics and it's productive work as opposed to it's "distraction activity" usage which consumes the former; the greater the disconnect between those in power and those not, that also seems to be some sort of rule operating? That's an enigma. But for the moment, it seems to me to be more pleasing to view these illustrations than it is to listen to the illusions of politicians (passport colours a lazy eg, a more appropriate one: Scotland in the Single Market, rUK out – what would it take? - a strong exercise in catering to current illusions from a "think tank" etc).

Our Once And Future Sovereignty

People Are "Doomed" To Forget Original Meaning

"The demarcation between a positive or negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences... in the case of everyday experiences, if there are certain types of events that you do not desire, then the best method of ensuring that that event does not take place is to make sure that the causal conditions that normally give rise to that event no longer arise. Similarly if you want a particular event or experience to occur, then the logical thing to do is to seek and accumulate the causes and conditions that give rise to it." ~ Dalai Lama; The Art of Happiness

Parliament: Popular for tourist photos; meanwhile down the road...

I took the above picture yesterday after attending EU Referendum: The Leave Alliance launch. I have a very wide range of personal reactions to the event which I've not fully been able to apprehend or understand entirely. That is not to say there were not some extraordinary positive outcomes: To attend an event of very high quality which will aid in the continuous learning process personally; and the political process eventually; if that finally starts on June 24th or 10 years later...

 Dreamlike: I could not help feel as if the enormous Houses of Parliament were a political dessert and the small group meeting down the road, a tiny, unseen and unsung source; full of vitality and a well-spring to learning: Where did real power flow from?

Lost Leonardo provides a summary of the schedule of the meeting, The Leave Alliance Launch – Part I including the speakers and their contribution or representation of what they were able to offer from their own area of understanding and interest. Here is another extreme of the reaction I had to the event, not with the speakers, but with the failure of some of the listeners present. It's highly noticeable that certain modes of thinking repeat themselves via many different people; invariably each person unaware of this. There's a couple of examples that I can recall to provide a mere few of the numerous forms it takes, a couple of faces with which we can use for the purpose of making an abstract into a temporarily useful example:-

• To use moderate language to persuade "more people" to vote "our way" (leave); particularly in the media and Parliament then we will "break-through".
• How can we overcome the problem of marketing FLEXCIT to more people... to again persuade "more people" to vote "our way"?

I want to be sure, these examples are temporary variations of the central mode of thinking; which itself repeats in numerous derived forms over and over and over again. I noticed that Dr. RAE North is mistakenly the object of such subject's and the effective "verb" "To Convert".

Let's be clear, the true irony of Dominic Cummings' accusation that "followers of FLEXCIT" are a cult. And we can kill several birds with one stone here: I don't believe for a second that the group that gathered yesterday is in the business of "converting":-

1. In my previous blog The Leave Alliance: Synthesis of Arguments I asserted this group's organizational principle has a foundation in "knowledge-driven" argument" (To grasp this meaning in a simple form refer to the Dalai Lama's quote above).
2. The people involved in these groups are very ordinary, dare to go further, "normal" people. see: We are go for launch!. Compare this to the politicians EU Referendum: the race to the bottom who's behaviour is so often so extraordinarily perverse. You could invite some of your friends to form their judgement of people discussing here and they'd say it sounds just like any old pub chat about politics except if you are well-informed on the given subject you'll realize there's some really knowledgeable people present.
3. Despite so many repeated calls and attempts by so many different people to distort the strategy EU Referendum: countdown to launch and the values of these groups "to gain more followers" or even to adopt and become proponents of propaganda, they are always always rejected.
4. It has to be said, that many of the people who make this type of argument are themselves so used to the present form of politics that they take this deception as "that's how things work". This is indeed how Parliament works, Pete North: Time for yellow belly Tories to wake up: Anyone who gets in either gets converted, their ideals corrupted supposedly under the pragmatic process of "compromise" or else they are not selected or elevated via the system.
5. Finally, for such people they are in need of "remedial learning" of the above and considering the possibility of an "alternative way of organizing" political power. I hope if anyone feels as if they've made this mistake (I did when I first started reading EUReferendum.com - yes) then to consider not from their own subjective filters but to consider from the point of view of Dr. RAE North and how his limited time would be more productively and POSITIVELY spent on more people if allowed to be given the benefit of the doubt and trusted more in knowing what he is doing!
6. If on the other hand you feel you know more, then please write up your Brexit Plan and submit to the public forum of real democracy to be considered by anyone of any position in life:-

 Trust: "It does what it says on the tin!"

Point Six was made at the meeting with respect to the neglect of FLEXCIT: The Market Solution by the media and my Parliament at the same time as their neglect to call out the LIES of our Prime Minister in Office: David Cameron. How to convey this comparison effectively?

Nīþ:- 

 Functional Scolding/Insulting: Secret misdeeds and deception: The Breaking of Trust and hence The Oaths of Office

The Decay in Politics and Language; something George Orwell noted as especially dangerous:-

Look at the size of that thing! The British Prime Ministers and hence The Houses of Parliament: Guilty of the Greatest oath-breaking of the nation by order of magnitude of their respective office of state. And hence warranting the most sever of insults against their lies.

An oath of office is an oath or affirmation a person takes before undertaking the duties of an office, usually a position in government or within a religious body, although such oaths are sometimes required of officers of other organizations. Such oaths are often required by the laws of the state, religious body, or other organization before the person may actually exercise the powers of the office or any religious body. It may be administered at an inauguration, coronation, enthronement, or other ceremony connected with the taking up of office itself, or it may be administered privately. In some cases it may be administered privately and then repeated during a public ceremony.

I tried to establish that the quality of arguments is very important for the dynamic of knowledge systems which in turn is reliant on TRUST. Those arguments forming two sides from which a third choice is finally made by people in a Popular Referendum requires knowledge of both sides of the argument Leave Alliance: Synthesis of Arguments to be available in a form that allows people to interpret in a combination from their values as a people, their self-interests as individuals and their inherited learning from people who are experts in various areas from which they can believe to be true and representative of other people's perspectives to add their own (collective and individual).

Cascade Method by The Leave Alliance: Distribution of Knowledge is inverse to Argument Construction but still relies on consistency of true inheritance from their source of origin

There is only one fair way of doing this. And that is if people agree to the SAME RULES for following such a process. In a team sport, the two "teams" must agree to abide by the same rules and often the players either don't know the rules very well or else their own self-motivation or adrenaline effectively disrepairs their regard for consistently upholding the rules and the temptation to cheat enters in occassionally, and more so if they assume they can "get away with it". The same applies to who governs us. However in this Referendum, We The People are the referee: Do we agree with David Cameron's New Deal and his promises of new knowledge: Do we trust him? Or do we find out for ourselves, hold our own future ("Destiny") in our own hands?

 There were some very funny moments and comments at The Leave Alliance launch; notably Anthony Scolefield's comparison of the NATO treaty size (a couple of sides of paper) to the EU's (see Lisbon Treaty above).

 Accessible to anyone.

Big Ben: The Four-Faced Liar

It's a beautiful sight to pass by the Palace of Westminster with it's "Clock (Elizabeth) Tower" also known as "Big Ben" (actually the name of the bell). It's one of the sights I always enjoy in London. Let's imagine there's something wrong with the clock's mechanism in Big Ben and each of it's four clock-faces still manages to tell the time but each face is now telling a different time of the day, depending upon which face you can see. Now imagine that this was not a malfunction at all but a deliberate and subtle manipulation of the clock to produce different times in each direction as if the people in those directions all disagreed on what time it was and insisted on their own time of day!

"What's the time, Mr. Cameron?"

Just as with the allegory of The Goldfinch and the Gilded Cage. Let's now imagine that "Big Ben" represents David Cameron himself and his position on the EU: He says different things to different people according to what he believes they want to hear. David Cameron as Prime Minister and politician and leader of the Conservative Party is not in the business of working out what the actual GMT really is: He's in the business of selling the most "popular time" according to a deception of what the "actual time" is. This "popular time" is known to not be particularly accurate or consistent but that is now accepted, what concerns the media is the competition between the different faces, now to which Lost Leonardo observed also: 2-Track Debate .

Pete North in his blog The task at hand... (see blogroll) also highlights this central focus of the flaws in the "eurosceptic" side of the argument stemming from David Cameron's "Four-Face Liar" warping influence on the arguments as per the Politicians and then the Media reporting the Politicians which we saw in You know, we're just not reaching that guy. effectively the arguments are on another track from the Public: It's not about finding out a universal time-keeping for all people to benefit from, it's about controlling the "Clock Tower"/Big Ben for political reasons. Interestingly this process is replicated by the EU as well in comparison with the Global Stage: Little Europe is retreating from the world.

If anything it is the banks who are leading the way because they like regulation, they like standardisation and they like global networks without technical barriers. In many respects they are way ahead of downstream lawmakers like the EU in terms of creating a global single market in banking. But that's never good enough for the EU. The EU always attempts to claim such initiatives as their own. In any other sphere it would be considered plagiarism. It is born of this myopic little Europe mentality, where Europe breaks away from the global effort to focus on its own back yard, further complicating what is already fairly good regulation.

Consequently, by creating a technical barrier to trade with the rest of the world, it means is that the rest of the world will suffer "the Brussels effect" whereby any nation that trades with Europe will adopt the EU standard by default because compliance with the most stringent is usually the cheaper option in the long run and less hassle than running two concurrent regimes. But that's only for the big boys who can afford it. Smaller operations and start-ups will simply ignore Europe and seek investment opportunities with less developed states who use the global default standards. Rather than being free market, once again we see "little Europe" putting its head in the sand and protecting its own internal economy at the expense of doing business with the evolving global markets.

The EU's first priority is always the taking of more powers by means of the beneficial crisis doctrine - and its supranational ambitions always take priority over what is in the common good.

 As above, the strategy being employed in some genres is known as "Camping or holding onto the high ground on the battlefield". And it's as per the above blogs to control the debate. And how has David Cameron and the Conservative Party achieved this? By the adoption of lower quality arguments on the "eurosceptic side" Camping side via:-

 The above is an example of the bread and butter of the poor ability of the News-Media to cover Politics and the results are invariably:-

Media Politics: The Rat In The Room

The arguments will effectively crystallize (as per Aldous Huxley) around David Cameron's False Choice Referendum framing of the debate to include as many people as possible (telling them the time they want to hear). How it works is where the select few participants have already established their own counterfeit version of "World Disclosure" what we've been referring to ever since from Dr. RAE North's quote as Media: lacking the intellectual architecture noted in the Inteview with Owen Paterson on the BBC previously via "example in action".

via predominantly Business For Britain:-

The underlying assumption that is negated as "a given" is even within their book's title: "Change Or Go" s having framed the debate as a "business case" the economic arguments will please the media (See Calvin arguing with Suzie above) and retain control via being so nebulous that the painfully important political decision of providing a Popular Referendum to the people will be perfectly pitched as:-

David Cameron's False Choice Catch-22 "Economic Brexit"

We saw a similar dishonesty at work in the Scottish Referendum: Five Important Lessons Learned From The Scottish Referendum and fortunately with "20/20 Hindsight" we can learn some very important lessons from that referendum:-

5 Lessons of Referendums:

1. Global Elites Greatly Fear Secession and Decentralization
2. Secession Movements Will Demand a Vote
3. American Ideas about Secession Are Unsophisticated and Parochial
4. Secession is a good way to bargain 
5. Centralization is Unnecessary for Economic Success

And here's a 6th and all-important lesson for "Brexiteers" to learn: If we do not understand how to argue correctly, and this means we do not develop an intellectual case for Brexit, which means creating an "Intellectual Architecture" or "World Disclosure" ( Erschlossenheit) then we cannot structure our arguments and the result is the ability of the Establishment and David Cameron to set the trap above as depicted in Gary Larson's imagining of the "Catch-22" argument. This point was made right at the very beginning: "Beginning to begin": How do you become a "eurosceptic" Brexiteer?

Without beginning in the right way, we end up with almost everyone setting their watch by Mr. Cameron's "Popular Time". But wouldn't you like to know what the "Actual Time", really is and wouldn't that be much more universally useful to the people?