How one writes ultimately depends on one's predispositions and abilities. I prefer a loose structure to my writing. I may be and, in fact, am guilty of overthink but I never overplan. That destroys spontaneity and, to me, being creative in the moment defines the practice of meaningful storytelling. I could comprehensively outline a competent story with a valuable moral but, then, in writing it I would be filling in the blanks. Some writers can pull that off with style. I cannot. I like to turn the English language loose and go where it leads me. That results in elegant sentences that say something and that is my concept of excellence.
Next week I will detail how I plan a work to maximize my creativity.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
A Work in Progress
Seven years ago I gave up writing seriously for a time, producing in those years only a short story, 'The Railers'. I felt at the time that, given my morbid fear of writing without saying anything, I did not know enough within the framework of current thought to write even a forgettable contemporary novel. So I delved deep into current thought, starting with 'middlebrow' compendiums and moving to source documents such as journal reports and original works. I completed that major task about two years ago and, while still filling gaps in my knowledge base, I began, as Carnap put it, 'thinking the world' with this new information. I began integrating all of this material into a coherent world view.
As I proceeded in this project, I blogged this integration as I accomplished it. The record exists in my old blogs of that integration. I am now confident enough in my intellectual processes to begin to write a science fiction adventure set in the near future, acknowledgements to Philip K. Dick's 'Blade Runner' which was written over fifty years ago.
My Work in Progress, tentatively titled 'Out of Paradiso', is scratching and clawing its way through the crystallizing but chaotic web of information in my brain and into existence. It is a slow go and I intend to keep interested readers informed of its progress.
http://www.amazon.com/author/johnfrazier
As I proceeded in this project, I blogged this integration as I accomplished it. The record exists in my old blogs of that integration. I am now confident enough in my intellectual processes to begin to write a science fiction adventure set in the near future, acknowledgements to Philip K. Dick's 'Blade Runner' which was written over fifty years ago.
My Work in Progress, tentatively titled 'Out of Paradiso', is scratching and clawing its way through the crystallizing but chaotic web of information in my brain and into existence. It is a slow go and I intend to keep interested readers informed of its progress.
http://www.amazon.com/author/johnfrazier
Saturday, March 14, 2015
An Appreciation of a Postmodern Political Economy
What differentiates a postmodern political economy from a modern one? The modern political economy is defined by fixed geopolitical borders, an autonomous legal system, a societal narrative, and the evolved institutions necessary to secure these elements. The postmodern political economy is defined as a functional unit of human material existence engaged in rational optimization as expressed in a market and its purview which encompasses all products and services whose relative value is directly established by that market and is the effective range of its value calculus or currency/currencies and the narratives, conventions, and institutions necessary to ensure contract performance.
The actual result of each of these political economies resemble each other but the orientation of each differs enormously. Modern orientation is irrational and ad hoc. Postmodern orientation is rational, inscrutable, and systematic. They are different intellectual universes and they are in coincidence which causes much confusion. Even as the theoretical basis of the postmodern political economy comes into being, the narratives of the modern political economy are shown to be insufficient to conserve humankind and the universe in a satisfactory manner.
The essential difference between these two systems is their view of markets. Modern political economies consider markets incidental and temporary necessary evils to the good of the Triumph of Reason. Postmodern political economies consider markets the demiurge that creates order out of chaos. People who engage in market behavior do so in a manner of rational optimization to some end. That does not mean markets are rational. As any market maven will tell you, they do not always behave rationally. They are inscrutable.
Certain research points out that there appears to be deterministic chaos in the behavior of markets. That is no reason to write them off. That would be as hallucinatory to the human condition as considering the Invisible Hand of the market to be the hand of God. The reality is that existence is a shifting dynamic of order and chaos. Sometimes markets are models of rationality. Sometimes they're not.
The defining difference between these two lies in their intellectual cultures. The Grand Narrative of Western Civilization is in abeyance, having been found wanting in World War 1. It is inadequate to modern technology. The science that has replaced it is heuristic and ad hoc and unsatisfactory to the nature of the universe that it is in the process of uncovering. The intellectual culture of postmodern political economies holds narratives to be incidental strategies in game play. To repeat myself, these are different universes.
To engage in postmodern economics is to deny the Triumph of Reason as a human possibility and to accept the inscrutable nature of a reality forged from chaos. It is to consider society a system of individuals engaged in such tasks through the magic of markets and, like all federalist systems, subject to checks and balances.
This is a Great Age of Transition and while it is likely that we will lose our way, it is important that we keep our eyes on the prize of the greater good for the greater number while respecting human life and liberty,
The actual result of each of these political economies resemble each other but the orientation of each differs enormously. Modern orientation is irrational and ad hoc. Postmodern orientation is rational, inscrutable, and systematic. They are different intellectual universes and they are in coincidence which causes much confusion. Even as the theoretical basis of the postmodern political economy comes into being, the narratives of the modern political economy are shown to be insufficient to conserve humankind and the universe in a satisfactory manner.
The essential difference between these two systems is their view of markets. Modern political economies consider markets incidental and temporary necessary evils to the good of the Triumph of Reason. Postmodern political economies consider markets the demiurge that creates order out of chaos. People who engage in market behavior do so in a manner of rational optimization to some end. That does not mean markets are rational. As any market maven will tell you, they do not always behave rationally. They are inscrutable.
Certain research points out that there appears to be deterministic chaos in the behavior of markets. That is no reason to write them off. That would be as hallucinatory to the human condition as considering the Invisible Hand of the market to be the hand of God. The reality is that existence is a shifting dynamic of order and chaos. Sometimes markets are models of rationality. Sometimes they're not.
The defining difference between these two lies in their intellectual cultures. The Grand Narrative of Western Civilization is in abeyance, having been found wanting in World War 1. It is inadequate to modern technology. The science that has replaced it is heuristic and ad hoc and unsatisfactory to the nature of the universe that it is in the process of uncovering. The intellectual culture of postmodern political economies holds narratives to be incidental strategies in game play. To repeat myself, these are different universes.
To engage in postmodern economics is to deny the Triumph of Reason as a human possibility and to accept the inscrutable nature of a reality forged from chaos. It is to consider society a system of individuals engaged in such tasks through the magic of markets and, like all federalist systems, subject to checks and balances.
This is a Great Age of Transition and while it is likely that we will lose our way, it is important that we keep our eyes on the prize of the greater good for the greater number while respecting human life and liberty,
Saturday, January 24, 2015
A Living Wage and Rational Material Existence
First, two tenets of rational material existence:
1. Markets exist as an expression of human social existence. They are absurd in any other context.
2. Human social existence, although bounded by scarcity including a lack of meaning, is by definition humane, concerned with human values.
This being said, no market based economy can be inhumane except as an expression of the madness of crowds. Economies can be insane. This economy of the United States is by analysis and anecdote a little mad and getting worse. There is one obvious problem that is driving this maniac market.
People working 40 hours a week who cannot afford the necessities of life is lunacy. I do not care what profit margins are cited or what competition exists, this is crazy. We knew in the late 19th century that innovation and economic dislocation go hand in hand. We knew that progress has a price. We knew that a living wage defined rational material existence.
Have we gotten so technologically delirious that we have forgotten the hard lessons so dearly earned? The numbers the market is generating are funny numbers. They are so because we have no reliable gauge of real employment, the kind where the employed person can eat, can adjust to changing conditions, can afford decent housing.
Without a humane bottom to a market based economy, that economy is inhumane, that economy is absurd, that economy is insane. Funny numbers make investors do funny things. We do not need that happening in an age of innovation. It costs too much in human capital, the very measure of an inhumane economy.
The problem of a living wage is technical. What number works? Set too high, there will be excessive interference with entrepreneurs and excessive inflation. This is a solvable problem. Increase the minimum wage gradually and watch the rate of inflation and listen to struggling entrepreneurs.
We need to relearn the difficult lessons of the introduction of the locomotive and the automobile. We need to revisit the psychological space of a human value economy and set a Living Wage.
1. Markets exist as an expression of human social existence. They are absurd in any other context.
2. Human social existence, although bounded by scarcity including a lack of meaning, is by definition humane, concerned with human values.
This being said, no market based economy can be inhumane except as an expression of the madness of crowds. Economies can be insane. This economy of the United States is by analysis and anecdote a little mad and getting worse. There is one obvious problem that is driving this maniac market.
People working 40 hours a week who cannot afford the necessities of life is lunacy. I do not care what profit margins are cited or what competition exists, this is crazy. We knew in the late 19th century that innovation and economic dislocation go hand in hand. We knew that progress has a price. We knew that a living wage defined rational material existence.
Have we gotten so technologically delirious that we have forgotten the hard lessons so dearly earned? The numbers the market is generating are funny numbers. They are so because we have no reliable gauge of real employment, the kind where the employed person can eat, can adjust to changing conditions, can afford decent housing.
Without a humane bottom to a market based economy, that economy is inhumane, that economy is absurd, that economy is insane. Funny numbers make investors do funny things. We do not need that happening in an age of innovation. It costs too much in human capital, the very measure of an inhumane economy.
The problem of a living wage is technical. What number works? Set too high, there will be excessive interference with entrepreneurs and excessive inflation. This is a solvable problem. Increase the minimum wage gradually and watch the rate of inflation and listen to struggling entrepreneurs.
We need to relearn the difficult lessons of the introduction of the locomotive and the automobile. We need to revisit the psychological space of a human value economy and set a Living Wage.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Referent and Non-Referent Language
Wittgenstein once implied that the meaning of a word lies in its usage. Plato once implied that the meaning of a word lies in the object it represented. Benjamin Lee Whorf once implied that language, thought and reality were three interconnected things. How can one reconcile these disparate arguments?
If the meaning of a word lies in its usage, it is non-referent, language as language. If the meaning of a word lies in an idea, it is thought referent, language as thought. If the meaning of a word lies in an object, it is reality referent, language as reality. The constraint upon both of the possible mental universes of idea and object is the usage of words. Language is a constant and a variable that both limits and adjusts to the relation of object to idea, symbol to canon, sign to significance. Like all currencies in all markets it exists per se, as word, and also in relation to the products, as object and idea, it values and orders.
What is the nature of non-referent language? It is the trial and error attempt to adjust the usage of words to object and idea and to other words as well. At this point, the secret of language may be somewhere in the mirror neuron circuitry and it may be this circuitry that is modified in non-referent linguistic operations.
If the meaning of a word lies in its usage, it is non-referent, language as language. If the meaning of a word lies in an idea, it is thought referent, language as thought. If the meaning of a word lies in an object, it is reality referent, language as reality. The constraint upon both of the possible mental universes of idea and object is the usage of words. Language is a constant and a variable that both limits and adjusts to the relation of object to idea, symbol to canon, sign to significance. Like all currencies in all markets it exists per se, as word, and also in relation to the products, as object and idea, it values and orders.
What is the nature of non-referent language? It is the trial and error attempt to adjust the usage of words to object and idea and to other words as well. At this point, the secret of language may be somewhere in the mirror neuron circuitry and it may be this circuitry that is modified in non-referent linguistic operations.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Pirate Dispatches and Disordered Minds
A pirate dispatch is simply non-ordained behavior into a narrative vacuum, doing something because it is contextually important that it be done but nobody qualified or credentialed is doing it. The classic example of a pirate dispatch is John Nash, the mathematician, going after what we now know as String Theory because no one else was doing it even though he was not a physicist. The process apparently disordered an already disordered mind into institutional insanity, the classic pattern of a pirate dispatch which is by its very nature insane. Just seeing the opportunity for a pirate dispatch is an exercise in alienation as psychiatrists use the term.
Writing a novel is a type of pirate dispatch. Writers rarely have subject matter expert credentials in their content although a few exceptions come to mind. Neither Steinbeck nor Fitzgerald was formally qualified to speak of mental illness yet both did, 'Of Mice and Men' and 'Tender is the Night', and both to good effect. Writers traditionally cultivate disordered minds by drink and drugs to clear debris from their neural circuits and allow clarity of artistic vision. This is not a flirtation with dementia as writers characterize it; it is a recipe for it.
We are in an epochal period of Western Civilization in which the intellectual landscape is littered with failed narratives and opportunities for pirate dispatches abound. This window of opportunity, and it is a window, the scientific surround of new narratives is largely in place, is the author of our present intellectual anarchy and such painful process will continue until the cultural equivalent of Kuhn's scientific revolution is created, made common currency, and subsequently ordains legitimate, credentialed dispatches.
Such process, for all its cost, cannot be hurried. It must be allowed to happen, fostered but not rushed. This is a difficult task when pirate dispatches characterize the intellectual life of a society yet the future of civilization and, indeed, the planet and the solar system depend on it.
(This blog is a pirate dispatch.)
Writing a novel is a type of pirate dispatch. Writers rarely have subject matter expert credentials in their content although a few exceptions come to mind. Neither Steinbeck nor Fitzgerald was formally qualified to speak of mental illness yet both did, 'Of Mice and Men' and 'Tender is the Night', and both to good effect. Writers traditionally cultivate disordered minds by drink and drugs to clear debris from their neural circuits and allow clarity of artistic vision. This is not a flirtation with dementia as writers characterize it; it is a recipe for it.
We are in an epochal period of Western Civilization in which the intellectual landscape is littered with failed narratives and opportunities for pirate dispatches abound. This window of opportunity, and it is a window, the scientific surround of new narratives is largely in place, is the author of our present intellectual anarchy and such painful process will continue until the cultural equivalent of Kuhn's scientific revolution is created, made common currency, and subsequently ordains legitimate, credentialed dispatches.
Such process, for all its cost, cannot be hurried. It must be allowed to happen, fostered but not rushed. This is a difficult task when pirate dispatches characterize the intellectual life of a society yet the future of civilization and, indeed, the planet and the solar system depend on it.
(This blog is a pirate dispatch.)
Monday, April 14, 2014
'Games People Play' An Essay in Three Parts Part 3
Part 3
It has become useful in these times of creative destruction to speak of Grand Narratives or metanarratives when speaking of civilization [Lyotard, 1979]. We study the past to predict the future. The wisdom achieved in the study of history becomes the Grand Narrative of prescriptive myth. That is the process of civilization. It is a quest for Truth and has little to do with science and the evolution of truth which is a contingent petite narrative and nothing to do with technology which is ad hoc and amoral.
One does not cast History as Narrative without both context and intent. These attempts to rationalize a chronology are useful and worthy of study in the process of myth creation. They are not the Truth. Such narratives are approximate and almost certainly in error. That being said, an approximate historical narrative and the mythos implied by it are valuable hypotheses in that quest for Truth. In these times, it is politic to speak of personal myth. However any such myth must be drawn from chronology, history, and narrative to have meaning. There must be a shared vocabulary even if one is dealing in personal contingent truth for it to be social behavior. Here is the vocabulary, chronology, of this piece which composes a narrative that informs it. It is simply my interpretation of events and a prediction of what could be, small 't' true. It is a contention of this narrative that the Grand Narrative of Western Civilization reached its zenith in the year 1776 and was replaced by 1929 by a Grand Design which is no more than a technological set created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying efficient technology which is the end result of what could be called Utopian Anarchy. The final result of this process is a stable technological set defining a new narrative civilization and making the Grand Design incidental to social existence.
The Chronology
Foundations of the Grand Design-
Empiricism The Scientific Revolution
Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Social Contract The Rational Society
Market Games and Adam Smith Utopian Anarchy
Innate Behavior and Immanuel Kant 'Whereof we cannot know'
Utopian Anarchy-
American Revolution and Constitution The Rational Government
French Revolution Utopian Anarchy in Becoming
Andrew Jackson Chaos Formalized
Grand Design in Becoming-
Steam Locomotive Technological Ecosystem
Transcendentalists Grand Design Reaction
American Civil War Creative Destruction
La Belle Epoque PostIndustrialism
The End of the Grand Narrative-
First World War Grand Narrative Bankrupt
Jazz Age Chaos Culture
Technological Ecosystem in Becoming-
Great Depression and World War II Grand Design at Work
Postwar Era The Economic Bar Raised
Systems Theory and Game Theory
Information Theory The Vacuum Filled
Lyndon Johnson Counter Chaos
Postmodernism A New World Being Born
From IBM 360 to 2060+/- as pure guess.
Civilization is the highest form of social existence. It is a destination of social development and a journey to the Truth. As social existence it is a game of market contracts however vague those contracts are and however volatile the currency that scores them.
The End
It has become useful in these times of creative destruction to speak of Grand Narratives or metanarratives when speaking of civilization [Lyotard, 1979]. We study the past to predict the future. The wisdom achieved in the study of history becomes the Grand Narrative of prescriptive myth. That is the process of civilization. It is a quest for Truth and has little to do with science and the evolution of truth which is a contingent petite narrative and nothing to do with technology which is ad hoc and amoral.
One does not cast History as Narrative without both context and intent. These attempts to rationalize a chronology are useful and worthy of study in the process of myth creation. They are not the Truth. Such narratives are approximate and almost certainly in error. That being said, an approximate historical narrative and the mythos implied by it are valuable hypotheses in that quest for Truth. In these times, it is politic to speak of personal myth. However any such myth must be drawn from chronology, history, and narrative to have meaning. There must be a shared vocabulary even if one is dealing in personal contingent truth for it to be social behavior. Here is the vocabulary, chronology, of this piece which composes a narrative that informs it. It is simply my interpretation of events and a prediction of what could be, small 't' true. It is a contention of this narrative that the Grand Narrative of Western Civilization reached its zenith in the year 1776 and was replaced by 1929 by a Grand Design which is no more than a technological set created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying efficient technology which is the end result of what could be called Utopian Anarchy. The final result of this process is a stable technological set defining a new narrative civilization and making the Grand Design incidental to social existence.
The Chronology
Foundations of the Grand Design-
Empiricism The Scientific Revolution
Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Social Contract The Rational Society
Market Games and Adam Smith Utopian Anarchy
Innate Behavior and Immanuel Kant 'Whereof we cannot know'
Utopian Anarchy-
American Revolution and Constitution The Rational Government
French Revolution Utopian Anarchy in Becoming
Andrew Jackson Chaos Formalized
Grand Design in Becoming-
Steam Locomotive Technological Ecosystem
Transcendentalists Grand Design Reaction
American Civil War Creative Destruction
La Belle Epoque PostIndustrialism
The End of the Grand Narrative-
First World War Grand Narrative Bankrupt
Jazz Age Chaos Culture
Technological Ecosystem in Becoming-
Great Depression and World War II Grand Design at Work
Postwar Era The Economic Bar Raised
Systems Theory and Game Theory
Information Theory The Vacuum Filled
Lyndon Johnson Counter Chaos
Postmodernism A New World Being Born
From IBM 360 to 2060+/- as pure guess.
Civilization is the highest form of social existence. It is a destination of social development and a journey to the Truth. As social existence it is a game of market contracts however vague those contracts are and however volatile the currency that scores them.
The End
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