Beauty: Vive La Différence!

Beauty: Vive La Différence!

A table, simple objects on top, 

Commemorating love fate took away…

We think because we hurt,

Doesn’t matter what, it’s deep and touching,

Made all the difference.

A little glass container,

Small little roses in it: a touch of scarlet color,

Symbolizing how small, yet drastically everything,

That love was.

Volunteers are cleaning

 

A tall fat guy, sure of himself,

Orders to behead it all: this is old, let’s clear it!

He wants to throw away the innocent tiny flowers,

Which depict what used to mean so much!

No, please don’t,

See how pretty, the touch of color

Yes, dessicated, sure, precisely: they will last.

The big guy is sure of himself: no, too old,

Enough scatter brains,

I clean it, and irresistibly,

Down into a garbage pail,

Full of a terrible milky chemical liquid,

He throws them irreversibly, 

A killing of memories left after death.

Death squared.

 

Outrageous

Why can’t all humans enjoy,

Enjoin, and celebrate when hope 

Showing up as tiny, stubborn flowers,

Refuses to die? 

Why the need for Nemesis,

Destroying all in the way,

All that was dear?

 

Why not appreciate how important beauty is?

The brute stands, formidable: this is my job and I do it well,

Destroying hope and beauty,

As needed.

One feels like crying:

There is another sort of humanity there,

An anti-human humanity, and it’s deliberate.

 

Deserts left after beauty is gone,

Those, too, are neat.

Indeed, what’s neater and cleaner than death?

The evil side of humanity,

Puts order into things,

Whether necessary, or not.

 

In these desolate times

When maniacal tyrants 

Know best how many bombs,

Will get the job done, 

To impose themselves,

Maybe at the cost of everything else.

Appreciating beauty is a refuge,

For reason itself.

 

Venerating a few precious flowers

Dessicated or not, a touch of color, a love that was

A love we respect and commemorate

This we need

To remind us

That we humans,

Mostly live by hope,

And beauty

 

So what does a sense of beauty bring?

The difference which protects us,

From fury and nothingness,

Signifying Nothing,

Told by madmen

 

Beauty is what ignores and dominates all,

Luring us with the appreciation of difference,

Or how it all makes sense.

So children, ladies, and gentlemen,

Let’s drink beauty,

While we can,

Because we should,

Try to be human,

As well as we can.

Let love for beauty reign over us.

Patrice Ayme

Beauty makes difference attractive, hence is at the foundation of thinking, the human essence

DARK MATTER-ENERGY, Or How Inquiry Proceeds

How to find really new knowledge? How do you find really new science? Not by knowing the result: this is what we don’t have yet. Any really new science will not be deduced from pre-existing science. Any really new knowledge will come out of the blue. Poetical, and, or, emotional logic will help before linear logic does.

A top lawyer, admitted to the US Supreme Court, and several countries. told me that the best judges know, emotionally, where they want to go, and then build a logical case for it.

The case of Dark Matter is telling: this increasingly irritating elephant in the bathroom has been in evidence for 80 years, lumbering about, smashing the most basic concepts of physics. As the encumbering beast did not fit existing science, it was long religiously ignored by the faithful of the church of standard physics, as a subject not worthy of deep inquiry by very serious physicists. Now Dark Matter, five times more massive than Standard Model matter, is clearly sitting heavily outside of the Standard Model, threatening to crush it into irrelevance. Dark matter obscures the lofty pretense of known physics to explain everything (remember the grandly named TOE, the so-called “Theory Of Everything“? That TOE was a fraud, snake oil, because mainstream physics celebrities crowed about TOE, while knowing perfectly well that Dark Matter dwarfed standard matter, and while being completely outside of the Standard Model).

Physicists are presently looking for Dark Matter, knowing what they know, namely that nature has offered them a vast zoo of particles, many of them without rhyme or reason. or symmetries to “explain” (indeed, some have rhyme, a symmetry, a mathematical group such as SU3 acting upon them; symmetries have revealed new particles, sometimes). 

Bullet Cluster, 100 Million Years Old. Two Galaxies Colliding. The Dark Matter, In Blue, Is Physically Separated From the Hot, Standard Matter Gas, in Red. This BULLET CLUSTER shows that Dark Matter really exists, and is not just an effect of modifying gravity.

This sort of picture above is most of what we presently have to guess what Dark Matter could be; the physical separation of DM and SM is most telling to me: it seems to indicate that SM and DM do not respond to the same forces, something that my Quantum theory predicts; it’s known that Dark Matter causes gravitational lensing, as one would expect, as it was first found by its gravitational effects, in the 1930s…

However, remember: a truly completely new (piece of) science cannot be deduced from pre-existing paradigm. Thus, if Dark Matter was really about finding a new particle type (a “WIMP“), it would be interesting, but not as interesting as it would be, if it were not, after all, a new particle type, but instead, a consequence from a completely new law in physics (as I believe possible).

This is the quandary about finding truly completely new science. It can never be deduced from ruling paradigms, and may actually overthrow them. What should then be the method to use? Can Descartes and Sherlock Holmes help? The paradigm presented by Quantum Physics helps. The Quantum looks everywhere in space to find solutions: this is where its (“weird”) nonlocality comes in. Nonlocality is crucial for interference patterns and for finding lowest energy solutions, as in the chlorophyll molecule. This suggests that our minds should go nonlocal too, and we should look outside of a more extensive particle zoo to find what Dark Matter is.

In general, searching for new science should be by looking everywhere, not hesitating to possibly contradict what is more traditional than well established.

An obvious possibility to explain Dark Matter is, precisely, that Quantum Physics is itself incomplete, and generating Dark Matter, and Dark Energy, in places where said incompleteness (of the present Quantum theory) would be most blatant: large cosmic distances.

More precisely, Quantum processes, stretched over cosmic distances, instead of being perfectly efficient and nonlocal over gigantically cosmic locales, could leave a Quantum mass-energy residue, precisely in the places where extravagant cosmic stretching of Quanta occurs (before “collapse”, aka “decoherence”). (I call this theory of mine SQPR, Sub Quantum Patrice Reality.)

This would happen if what one should call the “Quantum Interaction” proceeds at a finite speed (much faster than c, by a factor of at least 10^23…). These two hypotheses of SQPR are enough.

The more one does find a conventional explanation (namely a new type of particle) for Dark Matter, the more likely my style of explanation is likely. How could one demonstrate it? Not by looking for new particles, but by conducting new and more refined experiments in the foundations of Quantum Physics.

If this guess is correct, whatever is found askew in the axioms of present Quantum Physics could actually help future Quantum Computer technology (because the latter works with Quantum foundations directly, whereas conventional high energy physics tend to eschew the wave aspects, due to the high frequencies involved).

Going on a tangent is what happens when the central, attractive force, is let go. A direct effect of freedom. Free thinking is tangential. We have to learn to produce tangential thinking.

René Descartes tried to doubt the truth of all his beliefs to determine which beliefs he could be certain were true. However, at the end of “The Meditations” he hastily conclude that we can distinguish between dream and reality. It is not that simple. The logic found in dreams is all too similar to the logic used by full-grown individuals in society.

Proof? Back to Quantum Physics. On the face of it, the axioms of Quantum Physics have a dream like quality (there is no “here”, nor “there”, “now” is everywhere, and, mysteriously, the experiment is Quantum, whereas the “apparatus” is “classical”). Still, most physicists, after insinuating they have figured out the universe, eschew the subject carefully.  The specialists of Foundations are thoroughly confused: see Sean Carroll, http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most-embarrassing-graph-in-modern-physics/

However unbelievable Quantum Physics, however dream-like it is, physicists believe in it, and don’t question it anymore than cardinals would Jesus. Actually, it’s this dream-like nature which, shared by all, defines the community of physicists. Cartesian doubt, pushed further than Descartes did, will question not just the facts, the allegations, but the logic itself. And even the mood behind it.

Certainly, in the case of Dark Matter, some of the questions civilization has to ask should be:

1. How sure are we of the Foundations of Quantum Physics? Answer: very sure, all too sure!
2. Could not it be that Dark Matter is a cosmic size experiment in the Foundations of Quantum Physics?

Physics, properly done, does not just question the nature of nature. Physics, properly done, questions the nature of how we find out the nature of anything. Physics, properly done, even questions the nature of why we feel the way we do. And the way we did. About anything, even poetry. In the end, indeed, even the toughest logic is a form of poetry, hanging out there, justified by its own beauty, and nothing else. Don’t underestimate moods: they call what beauty is.

Patrice Ayme’

Classical Nihilism: Shakespeare & Qur’an

Is life a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing? Shakespeare evoked the idea. He created a mood. Out of it Bush, massacring all the Natives? Shakespeare, the Master Thinker is much admired in the Anglo-Saxon world, and beyond (perhaps in the hope of seducing Anglo-Saxons by loving where they come from?) The Bard was gifted with words, but some of the terrible ideas he lent to his characters have seeped into the world consciousness, as we must approve of them. Maybe it was no accident, not all Islam, when a Jihadist from London executed many, for the camera, in the name of the Islamist State. (That assassin was executed by an American drone, a good usage of the technology… for a change!)

In 1984, a program of reintroduction of Golden Lion Tamarins brought nine of these heart melting primates from the Washington Zoo to a reserve to Brazil’s Mata Atlantica. At the time no more than 200 were left in the wild. However, Western zoos had their own populations, some dating several centuries (the cuties were popular at the French court).

If Shakespeare Feels Life Is An Idiocy That Signifies Nothing, Does It Mean We Have To Die? Oder Arbeit Macht Frei?

The Washington tamarins had been specially trained, for months to life outside. Logically enough, within weeks eight were dead. So much for Anglo-Saxon training (too much Shakespeare?). Subsequently, the Brazilians trained the tamarins themselves, with great success. (Now there are 2,000 in the “wild”. A “wilderness” full of freeways and high tension lines…)

The brutality, witchcraft, lethal ambition, and madness of a play such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth leaves images, and phrases, ideas and moods which pervade the Anglo-Saxon universe, and what it influences, namely the rest of the world from New Delhi to Beijing, Tokyo, even Moscow.

Who does not know “To be or not to be?”. It’s the opening sentence in Hamlet. The character is pondering suicide.

A new commenter on this site, Robin, subscribes to the Shakespeare cult, and quotes The Bard as an authority on my own idiocy. First Robin quoted the very last sentence of the following passage in MacBeth Act V scene 5::

LIFE’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Robin kindly explains that I am the idiot, by quoting me: “So on the eve of yet another disastrous day of tragedies, to read: “The more powerful we humans become, the more perfect our government has to be. Thus, the more We the Citizens have to be perfect. Thus, the keener we will have to be to find the truth, and impose it, when lives, or the future, are at stake.” made my blood curdle.

Yet another clarion call to humanity composed of rhetoric, but absent of meaningful content.”

Robin took a sentence from The Bard, and made it into an aphorism. I have several disagreements here, both with the method (Shakespeare did not talk about me, but about life), and with the aphorism itself.

Shakespeare seems to believe that a tale told by an idiot signifies nothing. Quite the opposite. Idiots and madmen have much to tell, that’s the all idea of Shakespeare, come to think of it.

I replied that Shakespeare here is in total contradiction, not just with humanism, but humanity itself. Humanity’s task is to give meaning to life. Shakespeare may have been an idiot full of sound and fury, like Hitler. As, indeed, the Nazis agreed fully with Shakespeare’s preceding quote. So they were destroyed by those who give meaning to life. May reciting Shakespeare literally be quite a bit like reciting the Qur’an literally?

Reading Robin, one see analogies: “As for Shakespeare, well, he pretty much stands alone – a man who invented 27% of our language… It is the ACTIONS, not the form, which produce results of good or evil.” Similarly, some doctors of the Islamist faith will say the Qur’an invented Arabic. And they would be mostly correct about the written form! As far as English and Shakespeare in concerned, it’s pretty grotesque to say he invented English. 85% of English is mispronounced Franco-Latino-Greek, and of the remaining 15% much is in common with Old Dutch, the language of the Franks…

So Shakespeare obsessed about “form”, and “Action” (see extract of Hamlet below). What happened to thinking? Is thinking in Shakespeare? Yes, “Conscience does make Cowards of us all”. (Hamlet below, again.)

Modern law has started to discover that THOUGHT CRIME is a real problem (notwithstanding that it was made fun of by the fashionable Sci-Fi author, George Orwell).

French and German law punish Nazi holocaust denial with prison. They have been imitated with a number of countries (including Hungary after 2010, where a would-be Nazi was since condemned to several years in prison suspended when he agreed to visit a number of sites where Nazis perpetrated holocausts, and to write a reports about what he learned after each visit).

Here is the beginning of Hamlet; we can either suffer, or commit suicide. Forget about political change:

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep

No more; and by a sleep, to say we end

The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks

That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes Calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,

The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely, [F: poor]

The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay, [F: disprized]

The insolence of Office, and the Spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his Quietus make

With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, [F: these Fardels]

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn

No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.

Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,

And thus the Native hue of Resolution

Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment, [F: pith]

With this regard their Currents turn awry, [F: away]

And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons.”

Be all my sins remembered

The fact remains that believing that “LIFE’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing…”

Is as bad as nihilism goes. For people like that why does killing children mean anything? Is it what they mean?

Why not engage in various inanities and murders, then, to give life some spice, more meaning? Was then G.W. Bush’s presidency straight out of Shakespeare, fretting on a stage, heard of it no more,  “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”… In other words, was G. W. Bush’s presidency straight out of Shakespeare, something classical, natural, a normal way of behaving?

It obviously was.

Shakespeare is a double edge sword, and the handle itself is a blade too. By grabbing it, as if it were a well of wisdom, one cuts all tendrils of wisdom.

Kudos to Obama for crying at the White House when evoking small children cut down by automatic weapons’ fire. And why were those small children killed inhumanely, tortured to death? Just because idiots telling furious tales, full of sound and madness, have decided life means nothing as long as it cannot be cut down by automatic fire.

Reading Shakespeare, just as reading the Qur’an, should be done very carefully, under advanced philosophical supervision. Lest it feeds the idiots with the mood that life signifies nothing, and thus may as well be welcome as a tale told by an idiot (Hitler, or some other “Prophet”?), full of sound and fury.

Wisdom is not just blossoming with sophisticated ideas, it also avoids reeking of foul, dangerous, sadistic, cruel, nihilistic, vicious moods.

Patrice Ayme’

Solstice Song

So this is the Solstice,

And what have we done,

We, the civilization of Humanity,

The only one there is,

Our Earth, her Moon, our biosphere,

Once more around the Sun: another year over, a new one just begun.

In this dark universe, we have brought our lights, our lonely lights,

Gentler than all others, peering through the night,

Dark Universe, Enlightening Humanity. Light of Moon, Enlightenment of Thinking, Throwing Light On A Fragile Future That Better Be Human

To our Moon, we may owe our life, the Enlightenment of Humanity, the snows of temperate climate, which helped.

Merry Christmas, Roman Saturnials, Celtic Yule,

Our northern ancestors celebrated that birth of the year, ever since they created edible plants, and took care of them,

Eons ago,

Well before their words could come to us.

I hope you have fun,

The far and the dear one, the old and the young,

A very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year,

Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear,

To use your minds as much as,

This civilization needs to keep on going,

Minimizing pain, maximixing love.

And so this is Christmas,

Verily We are the Anointed Ones.

For weak and for strong, for rich poor alike

The world is so wrong, yet so right.

No doubt a heavy, confusing, exhilarating,

Cross for us to bear,

No need to go the gym,

Exercising our minds is plenty.

And so happy Christmas,

For black and for white, for yellow and red ones,

Let’s stop all the fighting, which brought nothing good

And start those Jihads we really need,

Smartly discarding those we don’t.

A Happy New Year, let’s hope it’s a good one

Without any fear, to assume what we are,

Anointed to pursue,

Thought in the universe.

We hope you have fun

The near and the dear one, the old and the young,

A very Merry Christmas, a happy new year, let’s hope it’s a good one.

Those wars we don’t need are over, if you want it,

New wars have begun, which we really need,

Just to save our biosphere, our sanity, our civilization.

Merry Christmas:

It’s not a question of never more wars over the horizon,

It’s a question of how we fight, and why.

Humanity never rests,

Thinking is a debate,

Debate is combat,

Humanity means ever more dashing,

Incomprehensible, yet enlightening thoughts,

Where gods never threaded before,

Made obvious for all to see.

Humanity means ever more science, and fiction,

Humanity means going to Mars,

And well beyond, Plus Oultre, as Charles V put it,

Humanity means going thermonuclear,

Humanity means never aging,

Humanity means ever anew,

Thinking through everything.

Humanity means never any return of the same,

Humanity means there is no horizon,

But for the next one,

And the one after that.

Humanity means love for us shall lead us,

Ever after.

So enjoy,

Enjoy your Earth and her Moon, ever rotating around their Sun.

Life has been an ever-changing journey,

Ever since it started to evolve, more than four billion years ago,

Ever faster,

Ever more potent,

The greatest change is upon us now,

Life, thought,

Will blossom across the galaxy,

They have to, just to survive,

And we are in charge,

So happy Solstice,

We are going to need ever more happiness,

To conquer all,

Starting with ourselves.

Patrice Ayme’

Science, Mars, Or Moral Bust

In the first democratic debate, Hillary Clinton said she was “a progressive who likes to get things done.” Let’s hope they will be less plutocratic than the “things” done by her husband. Meanwhile the question came up from others that going to Mars, or similar colossal techno-scientific progress had no humanitarian value. Before a more organized rebuttal, here goes my poetical opinion:

***

Science, Mars, Or Moral Bust

Many are the passions

Many are the tragedies

Against tragedies goodness,

All too often contend in vain.

Lest emotions move men and fate

Out of complacency, indifference,

Careers, self-admiring seriousness,

And obey the call of love for mind, sentience..

Yet, even when passions move us,

Towards the noblest goals, with the best intentions

All too often we find there is nothing

We can do at all, against pain and suffering:

When our magic, our science, come short..

To feel right and think right,

Does not mean we can do right.

For enabling goodness we need the powers,

The very powers which feed from,

By, and with, the Dark Side.

Power itself is dark.

Yet noble, and fundamentally us.

So yes, by any means,

Go to Mars.

It will nurture new emotions,

Wealth of transcendent emotions,

Not just lofty and intricate thoughts,

Humanity define.

We have always gone to Mars,

Ever since we left leafy trees.

We will stop,

Only when our fundamental lust,

What defines us,

Progress,

Dies with us.

 

Poetic Philosophy Defended

… Against Analytic Philosophy:

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Either learned, or applied. One would be naïve to believe that it emerges, at the most crucial points, in an “analytic” way. That error is all too common in the Anglosphere, and this is why most English speaking philosophers tend to be mostly famous because they repeat, rather poorly some ideas they picked up on the continent.

(The mediocrity of English speaking philosophers is directly related to the stronger plutocracy of the Anglosphere. Locke was a slave master, Hobbes repeated the Romans, Smith parroted the French physiocrats, etc. The mediocrity has labelled itself “analytic” philosophy… As if there were philosophers who were not “analytic”…)

The most innovative philosophers used poetry. They had to.

Not Just a Poet. Also A Breakthrough Philosopher, From Love To Hell

Gotlob Frege founded analytic philosophy. However his system contained a contradiction, as Bertrand Russell informed him. He corrected that with an even worse mistake.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/neurons-axons-axioms/

Analysis is not easy. Too much depends upon too little. It is a form of intellectual fascism: useful sometimes, dangerous always.

Nietzsche knew this, and he smartly abandoned the idea of making a system. Instead he did what one should call “local philosophy”: take an issue, and fire a few wisdom torpedoes.

Nietzsche used poetry. Most philosophers had to use poetry. Those who were too serious all the time end down in the abyss, with Kant, supporting authorities and thus, as Kant did, the slave trade, or the contemporaneous equivalent of it.

What is poetry?

It is the technique of imparting mental images, by appealing to emotions, evocations, half concocted logical assemblages.

This is always how new thinking starts: fuzzy, in pieces, a will to an evocation. Certainly wisdom is part of thinking.

Rabelais explained, five centuries ago, that the thinking of We the People was quite different from the official, hyper-religious one. Rabelais explained that, to help both thinking, per se, and the thinking of We The People, one should speak plainly and also explore, delve, and blossom in the sort of preoccupations, and appeals to the fantastic, that appealed to the People.

Dante had done this two centuries earlier. He was a very serious person: see his representation above, a statue in Firenze. He got exiled from his birthplace, Florence, in reward for thinking correctly about many things (and being one of the leaders of the moderate party).

When il Sommo Poeta (“the Supreme Poet”) put various celebrities, including a pope, in various circles of hell, he was making certainly an impression on wisdom. Why not a Pope in hell, indeed? Is it not what the Cathars had spoken about, earlier?

Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called “the three fountains” and “the three crowns”. Fountains and crowns of wisdom.

Petrach climbed Mont Ventoux in Provence (at the time, a very rare exploit), a few years after Buridan did it (showing that influences were circulating).

Rabelais’ point was that the official philosophy, the Catholic religion, was not believed by We The People, who was much more secular, pragmatic, and aware that the dumbed down official philosophy, aka the Catholic Religion, was just an instrument of oppression. So he wrote fantastic tales, which positively enraged the doctors of theology at the Sorbonne (the University). In the end, three philosophers associated to Rabelais were burned alive. Rabelais, a very popular writer, who also a lawyer, a cleric, and a famous professor of medicine, could not be touched.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/god-here-dog-there/

Mentalities come from systems of thoughts entangled with systems of emotions. A wise mentality has to be wise in both ways. The emotional calculus is less precise than a digital logos, but it is even more powerful, because it is the one which e-motes the other (makes it move).

We cannot think well, if we do not emote well.

A fortiori for wisdom, which is superior thinking, where thinking is unclear.

Sometimes, to improve thinking, one has to quit official thinking. One has to change many things, from causality, to semantics. If one sticks faithfully to official semantics, causality, and “facts”, and one abandons poetry, one is implicitly sticking to established philosophy. One is just a parrot. Parrots are rarely contributing to philosophy.

Patrice Ayme’