changes

Well, about 10 months down the line, and I have very little to show for it. At least with teaching a bunch of kids, they had learned some maths, a bit about themselves and each other. With adults, it seems to be a matter of repeating patterns, dissipation of attention and energies, very little change, and not much in the order of production, or progress.

However much we may complain about democracy and capitalism, at least we are free to think and talk about things, and companies actually get things done. Bridges are built, food gets into mouths, it all seems to work. The power of money and a system ordered by position. I have found a more fluid engagement is more difficult to... manage, but only because people don't have sufficient self-discipline.... a learning experience for sure.

I have been playing around with changing my direction, for the final push, as it were, before the opportunity for 2020worldpeace disappears without a trace. Funnily enough, after a few weeks of dispondency or complete disengagement triggered by an onslaught of mindless behaviour, I came back with an invigorated attempt to reprise the Tron potential. Despite my best attempt to formulate a new economic model using old economic methodologies, I don't hold a huge amount of hope for its success. However, I shall pursue till the end of the year, in one way or another, no matter the number of knock-backs.

On another tack, I had a new thought regarding global self-organising: earthtimezero.com, or globaltimezero.com. Since 2020worldpeace seems too... I don't know... big, or threatening, or unrealistic, or far-fetched, this version is more open ended, depends what people think immediately. I thought that I might devote myself to this. I played around with the notion of being homeless, but I think it may be possible to attempt a shift into dependency, from the state, into the hands of people who see it's benefit, whether one wealthy individual or a collective of micro-patrons. I shall set that up.

For the first time in a long time I decided to meditate. This was a very nice experience. I intend to do more. I wish to do so not to concentrate, or focus the mind, but to let it go, to relax it. Many dynamics have contributed to my mind coming up with not particularly pleasant thoughts about people, or bringing our aspects in my behaviour that I would rather not be. I certainly need to change my environment, where I live. But it is also to do with the many thoughts I have come up with this year. There is only so much one can come up with, without it being tested. And not enough has been tested. And so, I need to give up on these thoughts, to let them go, however valuable I may believe them to be. To do so, I need to park them, put them into formats that are accessible, so that should anyone actually be following similar paths they may find some use in my explorations to assist them on their way.

I really like the idea of being dependent. I don't think I can hack being homeless. Too much, too risky, with my allergies, my skin condition, my lack of validations from others, I could enter into a negative spiral. I am not strong enough for that. I know that. However, if I could seek alms directly, on the street and perhaps with organisations, this might be a source of comfort for me and be of benefit for drawing attention to the potentials. I'd like to use the opportunity to send out a signal to the universe, the universe of monkey-minds that we swim in that is. I sent out a kind of psychic sonar when I was 28, and it met with very strange and powerful resonance. Like that.

It is not a call that can be put into words. It is a deep-seated church-bell kind of call. And those who are resonant will find me, in what-ever way makes sense. Either to explore XQ, 2020worldpeace, or the alternative economic system, via the confluence consultancy, through my practice. This sounds very grandiose, I am sure. But it is actually a silent affair.

Finally, I got an insight into the mind-drop solution. I have been attempting to engage people as I have with kids. I didn't do so through control. The best description I have seen of it was described by a conductor chap on ted talks. Incredible. I have been attempting to collaborate in a way which does not have a control issue. It's a matter of reaching higher levels of consciousness, about knowing our part to play. So... given that it hasn't worked the higher I go, I shall go lower.

And it is interesting that the lower end of the mind-drop solution, towards the dissolution of mind into the preconscious processes, is slightly more risky. It's a matter of becoming more grounded, into the emotions and the reception of sensation, into the multiplicity of what is, into the nerve-delta of the body as it were. Keeping one's centre of balance, is tricky. It's not like keeping the dynamic equilibrium of being on a tight-rope, of walking, but ensuring one doesn't sink into one or other mainstream of sensation or feeling; it's like keeping the overal colour white, while embracing all the colours that come along. Or, to maintain one single metaphor, it's not about following a particular melody in the music, but to dissolve into it all so there is not just one channel, one continuity, risking innundation by noise with the hope it all makes harmonic sense. May all sound a bit odd, but it's a different direction for me. Not what I am used to. At all. I am used to laser concentration with my attention.

So, big changes afoot.

non-duality maths

OMG

that's about all i am going to say at the moment

i'll come back and edit this sometime...

it's in my leaves google.doc
continuing thought which i explored in thailand with XQ
regarding negative numbers

basically
we have conflated positive and negative with opposites
the mind's capacity to think of opposites
including such things are true and false
whereas
imagine a maths that does not adopt the historical convention we are used to
ie starting with -2 as being not 2
ie just came up with an interpretation of indices as subjective dimensions
(eg what you think of what i think)
could this radical line of questioning reveal an alternative system of maths
just like non-euclidean geometry did

several possible benefits of exploring this:
1
greater understanding on how we as human being evolved numbers
subjectively speaking
the formation of abstract thought
not just derived empirically from notches on bones
but intuitively/deductively from first principles
2
should correlate to early consciousness formation
and the learning of numbers in school
ie does it make more sense to a kid
3
a set of conventions that more accurately maths social phenomena
eg networking gossip chinese whispers retweeting meme flow
4
explain how carl popper's third world of imaginary objects of thought evolved
5
sensibly comprehend the answer to the question:
is π both an exact and not exact number?
or is π neither an exact and not exact number?
6
derive a proof of subjective maths
7
how my friend when i was in primary seven could multiply two three digit numbers together

i just noticed the way i used maths as a verb
:)

man
i gotta get myself into a monastery

would be nice if some other peeps could also pursue this
so we can compare our thinking as we go along...
gotta find some buddhists who happen to contemplate maths

all this sparked from a book i began to read called
e
the story of a number
what a ride :)

endless talk

Played GO last night at the South London Club. One game, against the same chap I played the week before, Phillip. Very interesting game to start with, throughout the middle-game, but the last hour turned out to be a long-drawn out, bloody affair. I lost it in the end-game, mostly because I got sucked into thinking that I was losing. I don't mind losing a game on the details, since I feel I believe end-game tactics etc will come with age. The experience was valuable, in that aggravating kind of way.

This is indicative of many things in my life, and seems to be against how most people are learning. Those who apply themselves often do so to be the best. And because of this contrasting methodology, I am not respected. If I was brilliant at GO, I would at least command the respect of my fellow players. Same goes for Tango, Tron, mathematics, tai-chi, meditation, teaching too, swimming... and collaboration. I am not the best in any field, no-where near actually, and yet I can give people a reasonably good time. There's something here about range.

With respect to life, I feel as if I have played a good middle game, but I have been slack with the details. I have let myself be cornered by lesser concerns, the constant demand on my character to work on tactics, techniques, on moves and words words words. The war is being lost, and in global concerns that makes us all losers, and all people want to do is win the local battles, often rooted in small-mind ego.

To be fair, my mood has not been brought on through any particular belittling engagement with anyone. The game experience had obviously been working on me throughout the night. I woke up listening to endless talk. The world seems full of endless talk. Endless. One vast endless blogosphere, one huge open sewer of opinion, and here I am adding to it. Tut. I have only felt confident that words are useful when dealing with kids... most educated adults seem inured to their power and effect. We suffer from the equivalent of shell shock in a semantically explosive world.

I have invested deeply of my time in things that get better with age. Makes sense, if that's the direction we are all going in. I do not concern myself with being a better GO player, or tango dancer, or tron player, or mathematician, or teacher or collaborator. I do not study the details. Presumably they will come in good time, despite a malingering sense that I shall not live long. I guess I'd just like a little more attention to the important things in life. Breath, food, the warmth we feel towards one another, and respect to those who draw our attention well.

There are even experts on world peace. Imagine. I am happy being an upper-intermediate.

I guess I had better come up with a better way to monetise my skills, without being an expert, otherwise I may have to impale myself upon the teeth of social machinery once more. Hmmm...

philosophical coding

This guy I met at Tuttle last week by the name of Geoff, real sparkly guy, reminds me of Mike. Very alert, quick-minded, has a good dynamic range, from playful to serious. Anyway, he asked me what I do, and luckily Julio attempted to describe what I do, and then Geoff neatly packaged it as Philosophical Coder. Something like that. (Hopefully he'll write a comment below to correct me if I am wrong :)

Today, after spending all last night playing around with tent prototype, I came across some interesting correspondences between coding and social self-organisation. Potentially very interesting indeed. Completely redefines the way I think about social organisation. Or at least, gives it a pervasive language set. How to explain...

http://tent.espians.com/.search?q=%3C%7E%2Fdayplan%3E+%3C%21definition%3E+conditions

[16:00]happyseaurchin:the content of that message looks like the kind of thing that could be programmed... that is, once 5 people have responded before a date, send out a "we have critical mass" message; if not, send out "we didn't get critical mass... what should we do now?" kind of thing

From IRC. If you click on the link, you may get some inkling. The alpha version of tent should have this coding capacity. I believe Tav is thinking of applications that are mostly virtual, whereas I am thinking of them as being real. That is, when we define a project, we are coding a type or a class. The more people invest in it, copy instances of it as it were, the more real the project becomes.

In this way, we avoid the classic traditional problems of groups, companies, trust issues, legal weights, etc. We simply align, contribute, and realise. This is nothing new if you know how the confluence model is defined. What is new, at least for me, is the correspondence of coding and social self-organisation. And if there is any validity in this insight, then the potential power of nerd mentality may actually be realised since it is the same language they use to code.

And I have been doing this philosophical coding in a sandbox: schools. I'm pretty good at it. The adults around me... aren't. But the young adults should be better at picking this up...

education error

I remember being in primary seven and deciding not to put my hand up. More correctly, I remember looking at other kids putting up their hands and guessing the answers the teacher wanted, and I noticed that I did not put up my hand much. I waited until everyone had their guess, then I would stick up my hand, when the teacher really needed help to move the class along.

Whenever I took a class with some bright kids who kept shouting out the answers or putting up their hands all the time, I would remark that if they knew they should have the patience to wait for their fellow students. The question-answer session was less to do with showing how well you did as an individual, but how the class did as a whole. If you really don't know, guess; if you do, just wait until it is genuinely asked.

This works if there is a teacher who has the right answer, or who is capable of drawing attention to interesting questions. We do not have this situation in our adult world. We have a simulation of it, where some people are anointed experts relative to a specific field, but with regard to the very real danger we re putting ourselves in as a species, and the troubles we cause environmentally, we are headless.

Which is why, in my classes, I attempted to nest all explorations within the framework that there was no authority making absolute decisions, but that individuals in the class had to generate their own best answers for the community. That is, the emergence of genuine positive behaviour, genuine rigourous exploration, and genuine communication and collective decisioning. For example, whenever a class deserved twenty minutes for games or activities because they had done the 'proper work' in doubletime, quite often the full twenty minutes was taken up in discussion and coming up with a fair way of deciding (not just the loud people determining events) -- which was a game in itself, of course.

It is no surprise that adults can't do this very well. We still rely on judgement and trusting positions, rather than the genuine consideration of an idea for the betterment of us all.

minimal money

Had a really nice engagement with Luke and Alan on the night before Luke disappeared off to Chile to be with his fiance Aurora. We almost came to a spiritual nexus, a coming together, a fusing, a commitment, a mutual verification of existence and purpose.

When Sara tried out a technique in tango, her experience verified my own. There is something enlightening about the experience. When tutoring kids one-on-one, I remember the same kind of liberation when they were released from what they thought and found their experience was simpler, cleaner, easier. Something like this happens with classes too, which is what I have been attempting to translate into the adult world of economics and business.

I began doing a future projection of various paths available to me, regarding where to live and how to enable it wrt money flow. Below are the bare minimum, livable, and comfortable amounts to live per month in different parts of the world. (It may be possible to live for less, of course, but I am still thinking of eating ok, and a place that offers a non-disturbing living environment.)

• thailand: £100, £200, £300
• portugal: £300, £500, £800
• uk: £700, £1000, £1500

I then did a simple calculation in terms of different hourly incomes: £1/hour, £10/hour, £100/hour. If I was teaching in the uk, it means I need to work around 18-38 hours per week to cover the range of living conditions above. That is, fulltime teaching will allow me to live comfortably. This is very reasonable, of course. But it is definitely part of the current economic cycle, and it makes us mechanised. So I started to think about the £100/hour.

What could I do that would be worth £100/hour? Of course, for an individual to pay me this amount, I must produce something that is very valuable. If I could ensure that I sell just one of these, I could live for a whole month in a place like thailand, perhaps longer in bhurma. Of course, the chances of generating that money there would be small. And since I can only think of such value being related to teaching in person, the options are non-existent. However...

If I conducted one class with 100 people each paying £1, I would only need that one hour.

Realistically, if I was living in a small place in some corner of the planet, perhaps portugal, perhaps cabo verde, all I'd need is 3 to 8 of these classes a month. That's still some trick. But it does reveal that it's not about a matter of producing something of £100 value, but simply £1 of value for one hundred people.

So, this led me to the insight that what I need to do is stop communicating. Stop promoting. Stop giving people things, pointers, info, whatever. People seem to think that I am selling them something since they are in market-mentality. I am meant to brand myself... something which I have tried to do in a playful manner, but just can't bring myself to think it a serious game. People want to be sold, to get buy in. Well, if what I have come across is as valuable as I believe it is, with respect to the need in the world for certain qualities of solutions, then... it makes sense to keep them to myself.

In the end, I am actually giving all this stuff free... it's just an illusion that people think they need to pay for it. Until that world comes, I will play the game, but not by entering the market, per se, but by leaving it. Sound odd? It is.

Luke tried to pin me down by asking me how much I needed to bugger off to live in a warm country. He said I was avoiding the question when I did not come up with a figure, since I was talking about moneyflow and sustainability. Clearly, he has had an impact.

If I am going to be part of the market, in other people's eyes that is, can I sell a number of courses for a year? Most of which are only £1 a lesson, one a month. I only need five such courses to live ok. With classes of 100, that's only £12 for the year. And perhaps I can have all the classes running over a month, or over a week or so? What can I teach that demands close proximity in time, and what can be spread out over months? hmm...

Of course, there are people who are enjoying this kind of living, but from what I can understand, they want to live excessively. If you had hundreds of people reading your stuff, or wanting you, would you have the self-discipline to turn them down?

I wonder if we will ever see anything like Ghandi's hunger-strikes but distributed through the net? That is, instead of Ghandi having to go around to different parts of india to conduct his satyagraha, he could stay on his little commune and let the attention of the world come to him? That is, imagine 1000 going on hunger strike across the world to uphold specific human wrongs. That is, india scaled up to the world, the local politics to global environmental issues, from civil disobedience to human integrity. Sounds like psy-fi to me...

insecurity

Tango is such a strange business... but then again it is probably down to how I approach it. I danced three times over the last weekend, thursday friday and sunday. On thursday in the open air at Spittalfields. Luckily I had one or two nice partners and despite the overcrowding, managed to flow through very easily. Hazel was a joy, rekindling a joy in milonga, and Kayleigh agreed to be swept off her feet.

Thus, decided to go to the over-crowded Negracha on friday. First few partners made me feel all automatic and disconnected and after one dance with a woman who had only been dancing for 8 months, I suggested a simple technique that might induce a better connection. She readily agreed, with that open-minded kind of response, and we immediately felt closer and together. At the end of the dance her face was all lit up, and she reflected my own feeling. She described it as an enlightening experience, which it was -- for the both of us. From then on, my evening went well. Sara had verified the truth of that way of dancing, and I felt better about introducing it once again to the more experienced dancers, who often have the mistaken understanding that they know what tango is.

Then sunday at 33 portland place. Had a lovely dance with Hazel; I could actually feel her movement so well... like treacle... very rare. And then a whole bunch of dances that didn't go that well mostly because of the chaotic movement on the floor, and culminating in a crash where an older woman demanded to be led. Luckily, I was picked up by some sensitive dancers.Summer who normally danced in bristol whose movement was like honey, again very rare. Marvellous time with Kayleigh, who laughed so much at our mistakes which was enough to turn them to our advantage. And finally a couple of dances with Naomi who runs the night, who was as light as a feather, so sensitive, another completely different quality. Wow.

So, there you have it. Insecurity. And necessarily because of the nature of the dance. If I was a better dancer, if I identified myself with techniques, on my own abilities without care of the other, then I would be a more confident tango dancer. Or if I danced only with those who were good, surrounded myself with the best as it were, I'd be fine. But nope. I dance with those who don't know. I dance with those who think they know, and don't. I am one of the dancers who doesn't know. It most definitely takes two. The insecurity is there, always, because it is a consequence of trust... or the lack of it.

• inviting kids to realise their collective potential
• introducing maths to buddhists
• showing alternative economics to entrepreneurs
• inviting real-world games into the armagetron gaming community
• positing GO as an exercise in collective strategy to fellow players
• addressing world peace to friends and family and partners
• finding hidden attractors on the tango dancefloor

I have met with success only in the first and last -- and both of these are dependent on the specific people and the specific contexts they are in. No objective set of rules to follow, nothing that can be imposed. Only inspired. Only enabled by genuine self-discipline. I thank all the students I have taught who were willing to try different things in their lessons, and those dance partners who were generous enough to forgive our mistakes and had the courage to trust completely.

I am looking for adults who are willing to play similar games of trust in other fields, other than relationships. So far, and especially over the last eight months or so, I haven't. Last night I slept badly, with thoughts of incompetence floating around my head, my inability to communicate the deep potentials we possess at this precarious time in history, and my own dislike of my own manner and mind. Deeply insecure feeling and thinking when you wake up after a night fighting your own mind. I am tempted to pack it all in, seek simple pleasures and leave the complexities and complexes to crab-culture.

And let people on the other side of the planet die needlessly. And let my friends and family, my colleagues and partners, cultivate their own suffering. I have not contributed to alleviating either.

In fact, I contribute to both.

We all do.