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The victory of corporatism represents a watershed. First articulated by Mussolini in the 30's, it has reversed the political changes of the 50's and 60's, and the apparent victory of WWII. in the 70's corporatism began turning the clock back two hundred years, to the start of the 'democratic experiment' in the USA, or one thousand years, to the military industrial complex of the Roman Republic. Surprisingly, this silent revolution has brought not just socio-political transformation but, through the evolution of virtuality, something far deeper.

, or perhaps a thousand years, to the time of the military industrial complex of the Roman Republic. transformation brought corporatism began Surprisingly, this silent revolution has brought not just but, through the evolution, something far deeper. First articulated by Mussolini in the 30's, corporatism, despite the apparent victory of WWII, began in the 70's to aggressively reverse the political changes that had been made in the 50's and 60's, turning the clock back two hundred years to the start of the American 'democratic experiment'. The victory represents a socio-political watershed yet set within that of virtuality

thousands of years ago,, virtuality began with the making of 3D and 2D simulacra. Text then abstracted these figurative models, . Disconnected from actuality, these themselves have now in turn been abstracted through hypertext to substitute actuality itself.

Private and government organizations have exploited virtuality to replace the actuality of their societal connections and services with automated and proceduralized systems. Education has been channeled into training and infotainment, while broadcasting has exploited the mob and the tragedy of the commons to smother consumer democracy. Oligarchs, real and virtual, retain governments and presidents, both foreign and domestic.

The evolutionary watershed of virtuality began in the 1980's, first driven by the Pied Piper and then by the internet. Its current cultural transformation is combining with the increasing resource conflicts that climate change and space exhaustion are bringing.

The change that virtuality is developing can be understood as a metatransition, changing human behaviours in a way analogous to acrasins changing the behaviors of social amoebae — Life and semiosis are coextensive.

There is still hope, we have choice so can change, but ontogeny blindly flows on.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. John Stuart Mill, 1867.

the corporate coup d'etat

In 2010, a U.S. Court ruling overturned centuries of campaign finance laws that restricted specific financial support of a specific candidate. The ruling said, in effect, that a corporation has the same 1st Amendment political speech rights as an individual.

We are now in the midst of a coup d'etat in slow motion. Democracy is weakening... corporatism is strengthening. John Ralston Saul, 1995.

corporatism

the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.

the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.

corporative

of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.

of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.

of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

Mussolini imposed corporatism on the domestic population by force. Today in the US it's enforced by mainstream media and propaganda. Fred Peabody, 2019, "The Corporate Coup D'Etat".

science fiction and fact

The change virtuality is now developing was envisioned in the 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash.

In his 1999 essay "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line", he explained how the title of the book came about:

When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set - a 'snow crash'".

Wikipedia summarises the book's plot:

"in the 21st century, an unspecified number of years after a worldwide economic collapse. Los Angeles is no longer part of the United States since the federal government has ceded most of its power and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs. Franchising, individual sovereignty, and private vehicles reign supreme. Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts, while private security guards preserve the peace in sovereign gated housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads, and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds, where they do tedious make-work that is, by and large, irrelevant to the society around them. Much of the world's territory has been carved up into sovereign enclaves known as Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities (FOQNEs), each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong", or the corporatized American Mafia), or various residential burbclaves (quasi-sovereign gated communities). ..a for-profit organization, the CIC, has evolved from the CIA's merger with the Library of Congress.

In 2022 Neal Stephenson founded a company called "Lamina1" to support the creation of virtual worlds using blockchain technology. Generally, the book has had significant influence in Silicon Valley.

We have fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare, More Substance in our enmities Than in our love.

LAMINA1 is the fabric of the open metaverse - a blockchain providing builders and creators a usable framework to create a better online future.Is-the-metaverse-dead?

Lamina1 is a new Layer-1 blockchain technology designed by futurist Neal Stephenson and crypto pioneer Peter Vessenes to fulfill the vision of the Metaverse. The company aims to create an open and expansive virtual universe with Web3 principles.Is-the-metaverse-dead?

Former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer J Allard and former Xbox Live Development Manager Boyd Multerer claimed to have been heavily inspired by Snow Crash in the development of Xbox Live, and that it was a mandatory read for the Xbox development team.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin called Snow Crash one of his favorite novels.

Software developer Michael Abrash was inspired by Snow Crash's Metaverse and its networked 3D world. He left Microsoft for Id Software to write something in that direction, the result being Quake.

The online virtual worlds Active Worlds and Second Life were both directly inspired by the Metaverse in Snow Crash.

Louis Rosenberg, Ph.D., (CEO and chief scientist at Unanimous AI) has been working toward a vision of immersive computing since 1991, when he was developing one of the first mixed reality systems at Stanford.

The U.S. Air Force predicts we will not be talking about our digital lives and our physical lives as separate things. "We will just think about one life, one reality, and it will be a combined world of the real and the virtual," Rosenberg said. "That is the metaverse. The only thing that changed is the language used to describe our immersive future."

Facebook changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021. Rosenberg said that Zuckerberg and Meta brought into the mainstream the idea of a persistent world in which we'd spend a good part of our digital lives shopping, socializing and working.

See: techtarget Is-the-metaverse-dead?

from: The Stare's Nest by My Window, 1922, by William Butler Yeats; the seventh in the poem: Meditations In Time Of Civil War, which he wrote responding to the Irish Civil War of 1922-23.

biophysicality

If it is accepted that descriptions of the ineffable are unavoidably metaphorical, and creationist, and anthropocentric teleologies and their concepts of the soul are set aside, then BEINGS can be defined simply as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.

Rather than being merely 'wet' physical entities, BEINGS are BIOPHYSICAL, organized and animated by the interpretations that their BIOSEMIOTIC systems render of their internal and external environments.

To choose actions that ensure its survival, every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate, and in order to exist every psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate. In actuality, psychology refers to METABIOPHYSICAL systems.

Those attributes of BIOSEMIOTIC systems, which in humans are referred to as awareness, consciousness, EGO and mind, are PERCEPTIONS, generated from the information that the SENSES of a BEING provide of NOUMENA that it encounters — in the same way as the PERCEPTION of colour is.

wellness

In an individual, the development of wellness and illness, is a function of the interaction of their BIOPHYSICAL actuality with their environment. This system then is impacted as a whole by any medical or psychological interventions and any social support and care they receive or are privated of.

Research into cancer and other diseases has identified the existence and primacy of METABIOPHYSICAL systems and the need to address them as a whole; however, despite the work of the WHO, modern societies and their BROADCASTING systems appear obdurate, discounting 'holism' and increasingly promoting reductionist models.

MEANING, is that which a BEING PERCEIVES of an EXPRESSION. It is inherited, encoded and developed through the reference-frame of the individual's ONTOGENY. Different reference-frames then inevitably arise.

Those BEINGS less able to recognize and reconcile differing reference-frames are at greater risk in social groups of being misinformed and deceived.

Whether or not there is free-will, we choose whenever we can.

Ultimately, short term success is an insufficient guide for future action. Locusts are successful but find themselves unable to escape developing from their peaceful co-existance as individuals into the cannibalistic wars of their swarms.

virtuality refers to abstractions of actuality that pre-process experience.

We recognize what we see; this is our perception, inherited and learnt from experience.

Seeing what we expect to see we then construct and integrate accordingly the data that our eyes and other senses are capable of registering.

The term BEINGS, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or the MODULAR societies of slime molds, jellyfish, ants, humans, deer, etc.

Bioemiosis proceeds through recognition — through current sense-data that a being perceives then being recognized by it as being the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something the being has sensed or perceived before. This then is a recursive process, its first iteration (or 'base case') generating meaning by matching current sense-data and perceptions to those that have previously been recognized, recorded, embodied, and inherited.

Here embodiment refers both to the biophysical expression of semiosis and to the semiosis that biophysical expression represents. EMBODIED COGNITION is then simply a description of biosemiosis.

NB. The definitions used here may vary considerably, both in degree and specificity, to those used elsewhere; nonetheless, they also overlap with them considerably.

A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

NB. The labels, 'more complex', 'simpler', 'transitory' and 'permanent', here refer to relative positions on subjectively defined axis, not to any objective measure.

Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.

Please see: here for a summary and references.

functioning, disability and health

First drafted by the WHO in 1980, the International Classification of Functioning (the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), is an holistic overview of wellness and illness. Despite its publication, and the fact that today biopsychosocial models are taught in medical schools, the significance and impact on social organization and its institutions of these models might appear to citizens to have been relatively minimal — perhaps because of the powerful lobbies that work to promote a fundamentalist belief in scientific reductionism.

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ... by WHO to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease. ... Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

When people originally believed that the earth was flat, if that had not been questioned, science wouldn't have advanced this far. ..saying the biopsychosocial model has no value, and that it is "woo", is very similar to that. Sandyshore - university researcher and wikipedian.

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.

footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.

my translation

Ein Mensch ist ein räumlich und zeitlich beschränktes Stück des Ganzen, was wir „Universum“ nennen. Er erlebt sich und sein Fühlen als abgetrennt gegenüber dem Rest, eine optische Täuschung seines Bewusstseins. Das Streben nach Befreiung von dieser Täuschung ist der einzige Gegenstand wirklicher Religion. Nicht das Nähren der Illusion sondern nur ihre Überwindung gibt uns das erreichbare Maß inneren Friedens. Albert Einstein, 1950.

Einstein wrote the above words, in ink (bold emphasis added), in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The translation I have made of them, and quoted from, is made in light of the translation that appears underneath them on the note and written in another hand.

There seem to me several reasons to make another translation: to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of both the word delusion and illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument — carried in the brevity of the original German yet somehow stunted in the translation on the note itself in English.

The translation I offer here then, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is based on that written in pencil on the original note:—

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. The striving to be free of this delusion is the only object of real religion. It is not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it which gives that measure of inner peace which is attainable. Albert Einstein, 1950.

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of pure religion, not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.

This translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.

delusions and illusions

Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.

The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion'.

Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".

Technically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".

On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.

Although I believe the translations that I have found are faithful, quotations, stripped of their context can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality of an original.

Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference that I felt detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence and, although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are both faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit. Original texts are provided for readers to draw their own conclusions.

Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.

..as free-spirited and anti-bourgeois as Einstein may have appeared to be all his life, his language remained the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum of his time, a language he mastered with virtuosity.

from a 2008 essay by Barbara Wolff, Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The prefix "meta-" is used here as in the term meta-language — metalanguage: a system of symbols or signs (a language) used to describe or contextualize another language.

I'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.

David Spiegel, MD, Stanford University Medical Center.Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression, Stanford Medicine News Center, 2003.

The article, from which the above quote was taken, although apparently accessible in 2024, has now been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2004/02/link-between-sleep-cancer-progression-explored-by-stanford-researcher.html) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now seems, intentionally or otherwise, to downplay the research and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.

family inheritance

Life is the state of being. Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is a descendant of a BEING.

I am a BEING.

It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms in different reference frames.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is used the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.

Kant referred to the recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception, but here PERCEPTION is used to label one of four stages bootstrapped by RECOGNITION in the process of BIOSEMIOSIS.

Communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.

Language: a system of arbitrary signals used to communicate information.

Meaning: the sense or reference of an expression.

Recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.

Semantic: of or relating to meaning.

The definitions above, apart from those for meaning and recognize which are after those in the Collins English Dictionary, are after those in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Hydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.

Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..

Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.

anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism is the narcissistic belief that the human species is the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values.

Ribeiroia in herons, fungi on beetles, or the staph in our guts, win minds and hearts over to serve other gods. Shut outside our doors of reason, flocking crows and horses, otters, gorillas, chimps and geese, play follow the leader. What makes us special. Or more so than dogs.

science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.

from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.