On Wrong

There's nothing wrong with being wrong. Must I by needs elaborate? Fascinating words, right and wrong. Fine examples of the imprecision inherent in the English language. Not to mention linguistic perversion.

Right is nifty. A state of correctness, a direction, due to that and the history of parliaments a term for conservatism, the verb in 'upright' (I meant the physical sense but see how definitions bleed), an entitlement, what am I missing? It's fun to be right, turn right, listen to the right, have rights and walk upright. But I'm no expert in any of that. I am rather more proficient at being wrong.

Why I hope to be forgiven for doing so precious little. You may call me lazy, I maintain I'm doing my best not to do wrong. It ain't easy outside the monastery. O the tangents. What is wrong with subsistence? What is wrong with austerity? What is so important about 'progress'? People are still starving. Jesus and Mohamed, along with a few other 'prophets' said that was uncool varying thousands of years ago. I don't see much wrong with the core corpus of judeochrislamic teaching. The big problems seem to arise when rich people want to rationalize it really. Money co-opts, absolutely. The transmogrification of the Roman Empire into the Catholic Church. The conflation of the 'American Dream' and bible-thumping. Osama Billionaire Laden. What is that Dream, really? You need another Ferrari? Unreal; why o why did I live and work where I did. Maybe learned a little about right living by doing so much wrong. Look at Wall Street. Really look at it. Anything wrong?

If you like simple solutions here's one. A flat tax. The right should like that, eh? Maybe not, flat is in capped. Thanks to Borlaugh and the once and future GMO we have more than enough to eat for all of us, really we do. For the foreseeable future. Run the numbers. 2000 calories not enough for you? Listen bud, 2000 calories will almost certainly give you a longer and healthier life than getting 'Super-Sized'. My point is the scarcity theory is wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. But until we fix the distribution infrastructure to something remotely resembling equity there is no reason anyone needs to make over a million American dollars (busily abandoning their place as a 'standard' currency but we can still use use them in our example) a year. You need more? I remind you at least one person has starved to death in the time it took you to read this far. Something about rewards? Nobody needs that level of reward. Enough yachts already, didn't your mom teach you to share? Something about the carrot that drives capitalism? Greed is greed. Do not mistake it for good. It is narcissism at its most obvious.

We cannot be where we are without having been where we came from. Clear? Arguable? I don't know, I think it so it might be wrong. Can we get comfortable with that? It is not possible to know everything. Life requires some guesswork. If later evidence contradicts passionately held guesses how do we change? We're alive, it's our duty to change. I try to explain it to my wife just about daily. I'm prepared to accept that Allah is all and everything else is wrong when the evidence presents itself. Ditto Brahma, Ra, YHWH and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Until then I hope not to engage in activities that directly or indirectly harm sentient beings based on possible misinterpretations of teachings that are probably wrapped in narcissistic fictions. Well, not for any reason but be honest, such motivations loom large in history and current events. And as a leather wearing meat eating mosquito slapper I have to watch where I draw that line. But I maintain all humans are sentient.

We are very close to enlightenment, Age of Aquarius, Last Wave, Messiach, Rapture, Rudra, whatever turns you on. Human sacrifice is down, brotherly love may well be up. We are also the same savage bloodthirsty bald apes that we have been for tens of thousands of years. Any excuse for mass murder, excuse me, war. Ancient Egyptians well may have had electricity, Ancient Greeks certainly had natural gas. But we probably have a lower ratio of slavery. Re-quoth Darby -Evolution is a process to slow to save my soul. See blogster, if you didn't arbitrarily take away my ability to edit 'Aphorisms' would have become a large and many splendoured thing. Well, large anyway.

I love data. I don't know if I love information so much. What is pertinent? Who defines pertinence? How does it differ from framing? Facts are awesome. Too many of them? Feeling paralyzed? I am privileged to have the time to drink from the firehose currently. DP has useful jargon for thinking about this. Based on the dictionary but who cares anyway, we can use language wrongly if it suits us. Here it's fun for contrasts. 'Information Overload'? Dissecting that will be another essay but in short by definition it can't exist. You cannot know too much. Perhaps we can only know so much but I try to relax about forgetfulness, we may get the ego investment out of right and wrong yet. And it seems to me that paralysis is preferable to wrong action. Think about it. I do little else.

Pretty soon I'll dredge all my in-line links to the front page. In the meantime I'm hiding more, here's some information I did not know.

The White Rabbit has some facts about Blackwater. The Terrorism Experts have a few about 'freedom fighters'. The more I read about Juckes and Moberg the less I know about global warming. Well, I know Bangkok's going for a swim soon but it's pretty clearly sinking faster than the oceans are rising. The downside of paralysis? Isn't it clear we need to do something? My friends, doing so much is how we got into this mess. Ill-considered action hardly ever turns out well. Life is noisy. Rarely does the degree of precision outweigh the margin of error. Greedy people have always had a vested interest in the improper allocation of resources. We will be manipulated. By sex, by politics and yes, by religion. The more we know the more we know that we don't know. Slow down, take a breath. Do what makes you happy. But first do no harm. What could be wrong with that?