When truth is old it is still true

November 14, 2011 – 10:06 pm

From James 5:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.  Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.  Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.  You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.  You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.  Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.  You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

The bloke who wrote this nearly 2000 years ago was probably one of Jesus’ younger brothers. He saw what it is to be true and faithful and patient. Truth is patient.

He has a lot of other interesting things to say. I expect he saw a lot of interesting things.

By mike | Posted in 101010, hard bits, shared bits, table bits | Comments (1)

one percent of everything

November 7, 2011 – 11:37 am

In response to this:

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests have aimed their message at the income disparity between the 1% richest Americans and the rest of the country. But what happens when you expand that and look at the 1% richest of the entire world? Some really interesting numbers emerge. If there were a global Occupy Wall Street protest, people as well off as Linda Frakes might actually be the target.

In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?

$34,000.

Why stop there? Why not go further?

Every human on the planet is no doubt part of the top 1% of privilege compared to the other 99% of life on our planet. And even pond slime has its privileged position as part of the minuscule proportion of matter manifesting life as compared to inanimate matter on our planet. And perhaps our whole life bearing planet is in turn part of an even smaller proportion of privileged happenstance in a vast beautiful but barren universe.

But where does that get us? Very far from the point.

Probably less than 1% of the occupy movement are actually motivated by base envy.

The point is that with privilege comes responsibility. The old word for it is stewardship.

From those to whom much has been given, much will be required.

If it is very clear that the 1% are fucking it up (and it is!) then it is not wrong – in fact we have a duty – to remind them (us) that they (we) are answerable for what is being done with what has been given. And it is in the nature of things that we are always answerable downwards as well as upwards. If the cry from below is not responded to, then the thunder from above will have to be.

They is we, but let that not be a means of diluting responsibility. There might be a certain nobility in that on the part of those who have less, but it would be utterly despicable cowardice and worse on the part of those who have more. From those to whom most has been given. most IS required.

By mike | Posted in 101010, pointy bits, shared bits, table bits | Comments (0)

Artifice Wrecks

October 16, 2011 – 1:23 pm

Some thoughts prompted by this post… Thought Gadgets: A brief history of how you stopped being human

Tweaking a photo with Instagram does not make it artistic. Selective redefinition of terms like ‘creativity’ and ‘intelligence’ makes for category errors rather than creativity.

So – come to think of it – maybe iPhones DO enable artificial intelligence. (In which case we should stop playing with our digital appendages: even though its makes the logo bigger we really only need that because we’re going blind?) Forgive my grim wit please – but there IS something about AI coming which is self-deluding, profoundly unsatisfying, and a little narcissistic – not just a surplus of cognitive shallowness.

So there is more to us than what we think. Yep. Thank God. We are not men without chests – even though we have tried.

So we can be caught in our own traps. Yep. That has always been true too – thank God.

So the solution to the problem of making our own singular god which we then have to cringe before is to keep it pocket sized? Or eat it before it eats us? Become it before it becomes us?

With apology to Woody Allen and our mother who is the source of the dust from which we and our gadgets are born – ‘Artifice Wrecks’ might be the name of this story.

Which reminds me that we are children – not robots. Men – not mannequins. Children with a father – an artist who creates beyond our wildest imaginings – who gives us a hand in his creating.

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will,–

By mike | Posted in 101010, pointy bits, shared bits, table bits | Comments (0)