The first Milestone & The Meaning of Life

 How to improve your common sense? To make sure your common sense is working, is the first major step you need to take before embarking on other important tasks.

 The philosophy of life is about acquiring wisdom (the word philosophy comes from 

the Greek word philo- meaning friendship or love and sophos meaning wisdom. A 

philosopher is thus a friend of wisdom).

 If you study the history of mankind, you might agree with Axel Oxenstierna (1583 - 

1654) telling his son:

 If you knew, my son, how rare it is that  the world is governed by wisdom.

 Humanity has not only proved itself to be very inventive, but also lacking wisdom.

Thus, today we have nuclear weapons that can destroy our entire civilization and 

individuals who may one day use these life-threatening weapons. Therefore, it is 

urgent to educate more people in ways to think like philosophers of life do.

(= improve judgment and ability to make sensible decisions).

 We cannot blindly rely on our modern materialistic science and engineering. 

Materialistic science has not managed to understand the human mind or explain what 

consciousness is.

 The philosophy of life does not merely study objective phenomena, but also 

subjective experiences (the individual own experiences). It gives the philosophy of 

life the opportunity to improve the judgement of individuals and the ability to make 

the right decision.

 Science often fails to adopt a holistic perspective when it loses itself in endless 

details and completely forgets what the purpose of knowing really is. If we study 

biology (the word bio from the Greek bios means life and the root word of -logy is 

indo-European -leg meaning collecting - the subject of biology then means the 

gathering of knowledge of life). So originally the subject of biology had the purpose

to gather knowledge of life. But when people who were not true philosophers started 

researching the subject of biology, the basic purpose of the subject was forgotten. 

Instead, science (biology) came to be about collecting lots of different data and details

about different life forms, without the scientists bothering to study life as a whole, which 

should include searching for the answer to the question What is the meaning of Life?

 Other sciences similarly walk the same route. They forget to keep the overall perspective 

and lose themselves in details and their volumes of data. This means that the sciences 

lose the holistic perspective and what the purpose of science really is (to gather 

knowledge that leads to wisdom).

 Science should be an adventure that brings wisdom to civilization. Wisdom is 

(according to Socrates) to have realisations on the ideas behind the phenomena.

 When you learn to know the ideas behind the phenomena, you have reached a

holistic perspektive.

 Example (from Socrates in Plato's dialogues): The one who grasped the idea behind 

sofas has a much better understanding of different sofas than the one who lost 

himself in all the details and differences of different sofas.

All knowledge of ideas (Socrates believed) exists in the soul before birth (and the soul "enters" into the body when we are born, just as it leaves the body when we die, just to move into another newborn body). Since the knowledge is in the soul, but we are initially unaware of it, it must be attracted by remembrance. It can be done by a clever philosopher like Socrates, who poses the right questions, which evokes (breeds = Socrates midwifery method), the knowledge that one did not know that one had.  
Our philosophy of life includes (through its definition) all knowledge. The philosophy of life is a study of wisdom. The philosophy of life is not primarily about giving therapy. But a trained philosopher of life uses the modern Socratic midwifery method, to improve the judgment of individuals and the ability to find wisdom. The philosophy of life contains axioms and a subjective scientific method. The philosophy of life deals primarily with the knowledge and wisdom that can be used practically to improve the quality of life.

 Your Perfect Computer  

Do you know that you have access to the most perfect computer ever designed? Your human mind is such a computer! But it has accumulated a lot of junk (= spam and/or incorrect ideas) that makes your mind no longer work as a perfect computer.

When we try to teach the axioms, methods, goals, and purposes of the philosophy of life to ordinary people, we encounter problems, because the human
mind (your computer that could work perfectly) is filled with erroneous and unimportant ideas and data.  Therefore, we use a therapy (the modern Socratic method) in our philosophy of life. We do this to get the human mind to approach its original ability to function perfectly (if the mind has acess to
accurate data). While mankind through the philosophy of life has the opportunity to acquire true wisdom and ability to act for the greatest good of the greater number (sumum bonum according to the Roman Empire's stoics).
Meanwhile our politicians and leading statesmen sit and discuss how, with nuclear weapons, they could wipe out our civilization. How crazy can it get?
 Another question is What is common sense and good judgment? The answer is that if you were able to restore your computer (your mind) to a fully functional state, then you would be considered a genius by your fellow human beings. In fact, it would just mean getting your computer up and running. With such a well-functioning computer you would appear to be superhuman. You would understand information faster and better.  Ordinary people do not realize how inhibited they are to use their perfect computer (mind) as long as it is not
working properly.

The first milestone

 How do you turn your mind into a perfect computer?  Even if you fixed your mind so that it works like a perfect computer, you live in a world where there is a tremendous amount of other malfunctioning similar
computers like your mind. Then maybe it is not enough that your mind works perfectly. It may be necessary that you join other perfectly functioning minds,
if you are to achieve truly essential things.  Then you will find out that you need
to get friends who have improved their computer's functions.  Together we can
accomplish great things. Together, we can help each other improve our judgments,
by reminding ourselves of the wisdom we forgot.  Science cannot explain to us
where man has come from? Our genetic background does not give us any answers
to what humanity's goals and purposes are all about. Some people pretend to
know the answers to these fundamental questions. Others choose to believe in
sacred writings. But the sensible answers to the essential questions are hidden in
darkness. What is the meaning of human life? What goals and purposes does humanity have to fulfill?
 With our modern philosophical method of life philosophy, the individual himself
can reclaim his own answers to the essential questions and acquire good judgment. The one who does it has passed the first milestone!

The other important milstones  

All individuals in our civilization have the answers to the essential questions within themselves. Then, it seems as if they do not want to reclaim their answers. Why? Could it be because of a reluctance to accept responsibility for their own greatness?  Once you have passed the first big milestone, you can finally make sensible
decisions yourself using your own judgment. Unfortunately, before passing the first
big milestone, individuals often fails to make right decisions. Therefore, it is your duty to yourself and others to ensure that you make sure to pass the first big milestone as soon as possible. Only when you have done so can you begin to feel free and know that you have ability.

 Todde May 2019

To learn more about The Philosophy of Life go to  www.duga.se (and use google translate)

Also check:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/philosophybuddhism-truth-and.html

 Quote from Ludwig Feuerbach:

 To religion only that which is Holy is True.
 To philosophy only that which is True is Holy

 Check the foundation for the usa of "The Modern Socratic Method" (dialectics) at:

https://www.duga.se/ - Use google translate

Money, Banking, Banks, Finance, Government, Interest, Interest, Bonds, Central Bank, Inflation, Gold, Silver, Currency, Value, Credit, Debt, Budget Deficit, Budget Balance

I just saw a very informative and explanatory program on how we are running straight into a financial crisis, as the systems of the bankers and governments to rob citizens of our modern societies primarily through demands that we have to pay interest on the money the financial banking system creates out of thin air.  The association DUGA ( www.duga.se ) teaches these things in three different philosophy lectures:

1. History of Money, 2. History of Finance, 3. A 5000-year history of loans

 If you by reading this will get interested (e.g. by watching the program below) and get curious about getting involved in these philosophy lectures - contact us at www.duga.se

A remarkable "small detail" (really not so small) "forgotten" in this context is that the historically effective balancing force, which is called CANCELLATION OF DEBT is not mentioned in the program. Nevertheless, it is through debt write-offs that Fiat money has been corrected all the time throughout history. It is the laws of life that make themselves right. In fact, in the Bible, people are given the advice to carry out debt cancellation every seven years. And every 49 years, a complete debt cancellation (according to the Bible) should be varried out.  Since the program is a few years old, it may be interesting to point out that the gold price has gone up and down in recent years. But the trend is still UP. Whoever bought gold in the year 2018 can today rejoice in the rise of the gold price.  Although it is true that all Fiat money (such as "paper money") has historically become worthless, a Fiat monetary system has sooner or later always been replaced by another.

NOTE! It is (I think) quite right that we will run into a serious disturbance in the financial system when "the bubble bursts". But when this change occurs or how difficult it becomes, is written in the stars.

 We have never had a financial system with so many people involved in creating. We therefore have no historical experience to fall back on, in order to predict the coming financial crisis. However, we know that the more (greater number = quantity) people are involved in creating the trust that all monetary systems basically rely on, the more stable the system becomes.

 On the other hand, we can be sure that the crisis will come. The tip to prepare for the coming crash is (as they say in the program and as we say in our philosophy lectures)

1)    education and

2)     2) Obtain a buffer in the form of gold and silver.

 Check out this 30 minute program that easily decribes the entire scam device:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0 

 Among other things, The following quotes are conveyed:

 John Maynard Keynes: By this means government may secretly and unobserved confiscate the wealth of the people. And not one man in a million will detect the theft.

 George Washington: No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence

Todde

Also check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2017/10/do-elites-have-responsibility-for.html

PHILOSOPHY, BUDDHISM, TRUTH and ENLIGHTENMENT

 It seems that most people do not care for the greatest treasure they own - their own TRUTH.

 WHY?

 Don’t they realize that when they let others make them believe in what is written or said, they prevent themselves from KNOWING. If they instead constantly had applied skepticism, they could have protected themselves (their treasure) against false beliefs and instead allow their own truth to grow.

 Even if the truth you yourself choose as your own truth, does not happen to be absolute truth, it is your own truth. You can then always chose to change that truth if or when your own expriences or realizations make you change your mind (truth).

 To change your own truths when you reach new insights or cognitions is the same as walking on the road to truth or the road to enlightenment – which is what Gautama called the road to Buddha.

 Or as the philosopher Ludvig Feuerbach wrote:

 To Religion only that which is HOLY is TRUE!

 To Philosophy only that which is TRUE is HOLY!

 The text below is from Livsfilosofiska föreningen Duga’s (earlier) home page at: www.duga.se  

 Vhat makes buddhism different from other religions?

 If there is anything that is different about Buddhism compared to other religions, it is that in Buddhism you believe that the truth exists within you and that you therefore  do not need to find out from others what is true.

 The purpose of buddhist philosophy thus is to uncover this inner truth of your own in order to make you more wise. This is possible if you apply sceptisism and your own judgment and try to determine what is true for you.

 Truth is something relative according to buddhism. Every individual has his own truth. Thus every individual needs to determine what is true for her/him. And every individual has to accept responsibilíty to change his truths as he experiences new realisations. 

 Or as Gautama Siddharta (the Buddha) said: You should not believe anything as true because somebody said it is true. You should not believe that something is true just because tradition says so. And you shall not believe that something is true because a rumour says so. And you shall not believe that something is true because it is written. And even if men of great learning tell you that something is true, you shall not consider that it must be true. And do not believe it is true just because an authority or your best friend and teacher says it is true. But if you yourself can acknowledge that what is written or spoken is true by using your own common sense and judgement, then you can believe it is true (for you). And when you can believe something and become aware that it is true for you, then you can believe it is your own truth that you can believe in. Because I do not teach you to believe in what I am teaching you just because I said so. I teach you to believe in what you can see is true and what you can make yourself aware of. And that which you yourself regard as true, that is what you shall accept responsibility for and act upon.

 Thus Buddhism has no holy sacred writings. The Buddha can only help other people find truth within themselves. Almost all other religions have sacred writings (holy scriptures) that may not be questioned. Buddhism, on the other hand, recognizes the truth of every Buddha, if it can be understood by the disciple. If an individual who has met Buddha can help others find their truths, he is a Bodhisattva. This gives each person a responsibility for their own salvation. One cannot blame others if one cannot walk on the road to truth. You cannot eliminate responsibility by saying that you have not had any chance to find truth. For one of the greatest truths one can learn in Buddhism is that if you seek truth you will find it. And when you find your own truth, you become free (salvaged) from the slavery of ignorance.

 Another great truth in Buddhism is: You will reap what you sow, which is called the law of karma. This means that the person who is in great difficulty has himself contributed to his being in that situation. Therefore, each individual must contribute to getting out of the difficulties he gets into.  At the same time, Gautama (the Buddha) teaches that one should help his neighbor by doing good deeds. Through the good deeds you give yourself better karma in the future, while giving others a chance to give help back when they have come out of their difficulties.  The philosophy of life that we teach in Duga is a modern, Buddhist philosophy of life, which helps the student to find the truth within himself, by a modern socratic method. You are welcome to try and find out if it can help you.

 Also check:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2018/08/whatis-karma-west-there-are-great.html

 and 

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2019/01/history-of-buddhism-by-todde-salen1.html

 The stubborn myth of intelligent machines

 The opinion that computers will become more intelligent than man and even take command of us is neither technically nor philosophically likely, so why are so many of us frightened by these science fiction speculations? If there is something to worry about, it is rather the moral consequences of this superstition about technology.

 In 1936, 24-year-old mathematician Alan Turing published the thesis entitled "Computable numbers and the problem of decisiveness". It aimed at trying to find a logical method to determine whether an arbitrary mathematical statement was true or false. Touring's conclusion was: There is no such universal procedure. In order to prove this, he in theory designed a "universal machine", later known as the "Turing machine". It is today seen as the theoretical foundation of the computer science.

 In the next decade, development took tremendous steps. Turing himself was recruited to the secret Bletchley Park project that built the machine that broke the Germans' Enigma code. Already in 1948, mathematician John von Neumann proclaimed that computers would soon surpass human intelligence. Two years later, Turing published an article in which he claimed that machines would soon think like humans. To determine when this happens, he imagined an "imitation game" - later known as the "Turing Test" - where a man may communicate with a machine and a human being without knowing who is who. When it is no longer possible for him to determine the difference, the machine is intelligent. A few years later John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence". The course was now set for a project of cosmic dimensions: Man was about to recreate the ability that through the millennia of philosophy and theology was regarded as his most unique feature and even the bond to God: The intellect of humanity.

 
This also raised the question: What does this discovery mean for the future of man? The literary and artistic answers arrived instantaneously. Yes, in fact, the answers had already been prepared for a long time. In modern literature, it became Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) who captured the fascination and horror of the technological era facing artificial life. Victorian author Samuel Butler's book "Erewhon" (1872) describes how a new breed of machinery in Darwin's spirit achieves consciousness and takes over the world. But it was the Czech writer Karol Capek who in his play "R.U.R" from 1920 came to mint the term "robot" as the name of a machine creature who revolts against his masters (from a slavic word for serfs workers).

 The technical breakthroughs from the 40s and onwards gave the fantasies new momentum, also among the researchers themselves. A fascinating person is Irving John Good, colleague of Turing in Bletchley Park. In 1965 he published an article in The New Scientist where he imagined the emergence of an "ultra intelligent machine" that could generate new machines. In each machine generation, it would expand its abilities, which would quickly result in an "intelligence explosion," an event that von Neumann already referred to as the "singularity".

 When Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke together created the film "Year 2001 - a space adventure" (1968), they used Good as scientific advisor. The movie’s (and the book's) supercomputer Hal 9000 came to be the paradigmatic design of a machine intelligence that, at a crucial moment, does not obey man but turns against him.

 Among philosophers, however, there were voices that questioned not only the concrete predictions, but also the very idea of ​​intelligence within AI. One pioneer was Martin Heidegger, who was early interested in cybernetics. In an influential essay from 1953, "The essence of technology", he argued for how our understanding of technology leads to a technical understanding of ourselves. When everything is transformed into "information", we no longer see what it means to exist in the world as finite historical beings. His way of reasoning was partly the basis of the American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus "What computers can't do" from 1972, which shows how AI research rests on an narrow image of intelligence that it is merely abstract symbolism, without connection to body and life context.

 However, it was not Dreyfus, but his colleague at Berkeley 

John Searle who, above all, was associated with the 

philosophical criticism of AI. In explicit polemics against

Turing's criterion, he meant that there is no reason to 

attribute human characteristics to machines, other than 

in metaphorical terms. A computer may perform fantastic 

chess moves, accurate translations, or sensible responses

in a conversation, but ultimately no one knows (There is

no one there) who is involved in any of these activities.

 Searle's criticism was about the basis on which we can 

define someone or something as intelligent. For the 

majority of practically minded engineers and computer 

scientists, these issues were irrelevant. When it comes

to designing a machine that can do one or the other, 

translate, diagnose, drive or play chess, it is about 

delivering results. That the criticism nevertheless 

provoked AI research shows that many of its representatives 

wanted to feel that they were close to understanding

human intelligence, sometimes for genuine intellectual 

reasons but probably also for economic reasons. To claim 

that AI has a philosophical relevance for our 

self-understanding or that it is about to produce a new 

higher silicon-based life-style creates attention and 

attracts money. That Ray Kurzweil, development manager 

at Google, in his acclaimed book from 2004, "The Singularity

is Near", devotes several pages to trying to refute 

Searle's arguments testifying to what is at stake.

 During the 1980s, new models were tried to improve the function of the machines, especially so-called neural networks, which one thought better imitated the function of the human brain. But even if the machine's performance increased, the major breakthroughs and commercial successes did not materialize. In retrospect, the 80s and 90s appear as two decades of no progress for AI. The process is described in detail in the excellent overview book that was compiled last year by the New Scientist magazine, entitled "Machines that think: Everything you need to know about the coming age of artificial intelligence".

 When IBM's Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in 1997, it was certainly daunting for the chess world and it helped to draw attention to research again. But no one could claim that the program was "intelligent" in any significant sense. It lacked strategy and ability to learn or draw conclusions and it was inconvenient for all other activities than to calculate chess moves.

 Today, everyone  is again talking about AI. It has its prophets, evangelists as well as doomesday preachers. Designs of mutually benevolent, sometimes threatening, intelligent robots are repeated in literature and film. The commercial interest is hot.

 What happened? The explanation holds a philosophical screw. As long as AI was believed to recreate or explain human intelligence, it arrived nowhere. The real breakthrough came when we gave up the idea of ​​building models of human thinking and instead invested in creating machines that could "learn themselves" by statistically processing huge amounts of growing data via simpler algorithms.

 The idea is perhaps best illustrated by the translation programs. They were promised already in the 50's and great efforts have been made to create algorithms for how an ideal human translator works, but in vain. Instead, the breakthrough came in the 21st century through the creation of programs that, based on a huge and ever-growing text database, generate a statistically calculated probability that a certain construction in the target language corresponds to that in the source language. These programs testify to the impressive intelligence of their creators. But no one can reasonably argue that these machines understand the languages ​​they handle or that they would be intelligent.

 Nevertheless, dramatic scenarios of how intelligent machines

are about to take over the world are repeated. Among the 

most renowned researchers in the genre, are two Swedes, 

the philosopher Nick Bostrom and the physicist and 

mathematician Max Tegmark. Their best-selling "Super 

Intelligence" (2014) and "Life 3.0" (2017) both assume 

that today's self-learning machines can generate an 

"intelligence explosion" in the near future. By referring 

to the brain's extremely complex structure of neurons and 

synapses, they mean that super intelligence is only a matter

of when the machines approach a comparable complexity in 

computational capacity. But how and why today's highly 

specialized programs according to some kind of evolutionary 

logic would generate a super brain with its own intentions 

remains to be shown. Based on the technology we have today, 

it is neither technically nor philosophically likely. It is 

one of many "esoteric possibilities" to quote The New 

Scientist, who believes that the whole field is in great 

need of a "reality check". It does not prevent the threats 

from having a deep aesthetic and religious sigh, which 

probably explains their impact.

 The apocalyptic 50's visions are now dusted off in the 

light of new technological successes that ultimately risk 

diverting attention from more urgent issues. One of them 

is the political and ethical consequences of the imminent 

robotisation of both work and private life. Another is 

the control of the technology.

 The country that focuses most on AI right now is China,

a communist dictatorship that obviously also sees it as 

an instrument of economic and political governance.

 Finally, it is important to also keep the issue alive 

that Heidegger once posed, namely what the origin of 

mechanical intelligence does to man's self-understanding.

 An increasing expert and consulting culture is already 

contributing to a weakening of the individual's ethical 

and professional responsibility. If man believes himself 

to be in the process of being replaced by machines that 

are more intelligent than he himself, he risks more 

easily renouncing responsibility and judgment.

 Rather than worrying about "super-intelligence", we might 

have to worry about the "super-stupidity" that threatens 

when man no longer thinks he needs to think because he 

believes his tools does it for him.

Todde

Also check:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2017/08/stupidity-ignorance-supremacy-courage.html

 A Brief History of Buddhism

 By Todde Salén1 , Sweden

 THERE ARE MANY misunderstoods about Buddhism. In the Western world the generally known data might be summarised as follows: There was a man in India (Gautama Siddhartha) who founded a new religion and today the religion of Buddhism has entered the Western Hemisphere. It has even been quite successful in this.

 The Dalai Lama once said that before Buddhism could really seriously enter the Western world, the West had to develop its own form of Buddhism.

 Old Buddhist tradition is very clear about the fact that the religion that Gautama launched in India was not at all a new religion. Instead Gautama reformed the old religion (Brahmaism, which later developed into Hinduism) by introducing the idea that each individual himself can reach enlightenment through meditation. It was real news in those days that the Dharma (the Teaching) was only a form of assistance on the road to enlightenment for the ignorant being who had lost contact with his true self.

 What is Enlightenment?

 It is quite well known in the West that the word “Buddha” means “Enlightened One”. But very few know what you are supposed to be enlightened about. What kind of knowledge should you strive for, in order to reach and turn into real enlightenment (Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control)? The idea is that you should get yourself enlightened – finding truth that you yourself consider to be true by using your own judgement on “Dharma”, which is the teaching of the laws of life and the meaning of life. But old Buddhist tradition does not at all consider Gautama Siddhartha to be the only great Buddha or the last great Buddha. If you go to China, you will find in almost every place where they worship the Lord Buddha, that they have three different great Buddhas: The Amitaba Buddha, the Gautama Buddha and the Buddha Maitreya. However, in Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, there are supposed to be five great Buddhas, and not one of the five great Buddhas are human beings. Gautama Buddha was very clear about that. He said very clearly that he was not Buddha, but only a human being who had reached Enlightenment. By doing so he “became Buddha” or “met Buddha”. By meeting Buddha (reaching insights or cogniting), you assist Buddha to grow. Buddha means Enlightenment, and for every cognition that any human (or other kind of) being has on Earth (or elsewhere), the Buddha grows (Ref: Buddhadasa Bikku: Handbook for Mankind, The Buddhadasa Foundation. The Sublime Life Mission, 68/4 Trok Sathien, Tanio Road, Bankok , 10200, Thailand.)

 Buddhism and Writing

 The Buddhist tradition says there was a first great Buddha long before the art of writing was developed. So there is no written record available to describe the first great Buddha. But there are traces of the first great Buddha in our spoken languages. Whenever you use words with spiritual meaning that stem from Indo-European root words, look the words up in the American Heritage Dictionary, where the Indo-European etymology is referenced.

 These spiritual words help human beings to communicate on spiritual matters and are the traces left by the first great Buddha. When you learn Indo-European root words, you will often blow charge and feel relieved as you get realisations on the original meaning of the words. If you look up the word “meditation” in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find that the IndoEuropean root word for “meditation” is med- which means to take appropriate measures. You will also find that the same root word also appears in words like medicine and remedy. The logical conclusion is that medicine implies taking appropriate measures to cure the body, and meditation means taking the appropriate measures to make the spirit whole (holy) again. The Indo-European root word for -tion means “condition”. Thus meditation originally meant to reach a condition where you can take appropriate measure.

 If you were to do Wordclearing (define words) and clear all words that have Indo-European roots by looking up the Indo-European root word and its meaning, you would find that you would reach a much better understanding of words, than if you had not done etymological wordclearing. We [in Duga] have learned that word clearing by studying the etymology of words does greatly enhance the ability to reach better reality of the meaning of words.

 Etymological wordclearing is superior to just studying the present meaning of words in modern dictionaries. May I add that the American Heritage Dictionary has the best “appendix on Indo-European root words” that I have ever seen.

 The second great Buddha

 There is also the second great Buddha. It (not a human being, so do not use he or she), also appeared on this planet before any writing was available. Supposedly, the second great Buddha tried to teach human beings the subject of religion. The root word for religion is leig- and means to bind together. The same root word has formed words like LIEN, ALLY and RELY. The word religion is composed of re- and leig- and thus means to reunite or bind together again. The natural question then is: “What is supposed to be bound together with what?”

 May I suggest that it is your human nature that is supposed to be connected again (or obtain stronger ties) with the true self or Buddha-nature. If you say that leig- means contract and that religion is the study and learning about what this contract is all about, you could call religion the study of wisdom or the study of Dharma.

 But what is wisdom? The old Greek philosophers (Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates and many others) said that wisdom is true knowledge (referring to the unlimited spiritual world). Practical knowledge is knowledge about the limited physical universe in itself. However, there is also wisdom in the physical universe, but it exists behind the phenomena.

 For instance, you have practical knowledge on how to make shoes. Shoes can be made of a vast number of different materials, and there are very many practical details on how to improve the quality of shoes. Hence, the amount of practical knowledge about shoes is vast. The wise man, however, is not so much concerned about all that practical knowledge. The wise man wants to learn as much as possible about the idea behind all shoes, That is wisdom about shoes. The more wisdom about shoes you have, the easier it is for you to gain practical knowledge about shoes. Thus the human being who wants to produce shoes and make money by doing so, should try to gain as much knowledge about the idea behind shoes (which is not physical and does not exist in the physical universe, even if it interiorizes into our normal world, just as you yourself (your true self) also have interiorized into our world and thus became a human being (a false I).

 Practical versus spiritual wisdom

 Ancient greek philosophers frowned on practical wisdom and insisted that only the beautiful wisdom of the spirit (knowledge about the ideas behind the phenomena) was worthwhile. The word philosophy comes from the Greek philos, which means love or friendship and sophia, which means wisdom. According to tradition the word philosophy was coined when someone asked Pythagoras: Are you wise? and he answered: I am not wise, but I am a friend (philos) of wisdom (sophia).

 Not very many religions today live up to being a study of wisdom. Even Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism) have deteriorated and have become misunderstood subjects filled with rites and rituals whose significance is no longer understood. Considering the tremendous number of wise women and men who have been around teaching wisdom to their fellow human beings, the lack of such true religions, may make you ask yourself, What went wrong? or Why do the original words of wisdom get lost? Could it be that the teachers of wisdom had it all wrong, or is there something in human nature that prevents wisdom from spreading among humans? Regardless of the answer to these questions, the effort of the first two great Buddhas was clearly to assist human beings on planet Earth to reach out of the material (limited) world and into the spiritual (unlimited) world.

 Third and fourth great Buddhas

 Then there was a third great Buddha (again not a human being, but a spiritual principle,) and we even have his name in many Indo-European languages. It is named Dharma, which stems from the Indo-European root word dher-², which means to hold firmly, support.

 The idea of Dharma is that a being lost in the swamp of ignorance (on spiritual matters) needs support to get out of the trap, as a human lifetime is too short to make it possible to get anywhere on the road to enlightenment without support. So there are many Dharmas around on the planet, but not as many as there are religions.

 The fourth great Buddha (which Gautama tried to show us), realised that the trapped human being had no use of a Dharma that did not make him think the thoughts/ideas he needed to get out of the trap. Only by becoming enlightened through your own realisations (cognitions), could you get out of the trap of believing that you are only a limited human-nature being with only a short (some 80 years) lifetime. In the Eastern world they had the idea that you would succeed better in becoming enlightened if you withdrew from the world and sat down to meditate in a tranquil place. Some of the old Greek philosophers had a different idea. Socrates launched the idea that it is only through dialogue that you can lift yourself out of the trap you are in. It is through dialogue, that the individuals involved ask each other questions and come to realisations that improve their awareness of the unlimited (spiritual) world. But the religion of the East that delivered already four great Buddhas to us has not given up on us yet.

 The Fifth great Buddha

 There is the Buddhist prophecy that there will be a fifth great Buddha, when the East meets the West, and true friendship among races and nations starts to develop. This fifth great Buddha is the Buddha Maitreya, and this great Buddha hopefully will give birth to a new and better civilisation. Maitreya (or Sangha) means friend. Sangha means association or group from Indo-European root word gwhen-¹,  meaning to press together).

 Future of Buddhism and a New Civilization

 If you consider the era of the five great Buddhas (which will last for another almost 2000 years), and the idea behind this very, very old subject of religion, you should be able to see that the Buddhism that we learn about today, where monks and nuns cloister themselves in monasteries is not enough to deliver the message of the fifth great Buddha. There is a need for a much more vital and causative religion, if the new civilisation is going to be a significant improvement of the civilisation we are already living in.

 The new civilisation will not be created in a single moment. It will only be created individual by individual. With every individual that gets enlightened (on the priciples of Dharma) and then joins a group of true friends a new part of the new civilisation gets created. One step at a time. One individual at a time.  

 Nostradamus predicted that a new religion would appear and replace Christianity before the 1000-year Kingdom could be established. He also said that the new religion would refine itself and develop as it was disseminated to more and more people who were not the effect of fame, wealth or death.

 There can be a bright future on this planet if we work for it, but hiding without reaching for our fellow human beings will accomplish nothing. The problems of this world will not be solved by people who remove themselves from the worka-day world. Philosophers who have taken responsibility for the political situation on this planet during certain periods of our history, have done immensely more to improve conditions on this planet than those who have barricaded themselves within the walls of convents and monasteries and lived from the handouts of those who do produce and work for their living. If you reach out into the world, you will not only reach out into the spaces of nice people, but also into areas where not-so-nice beings work to oppress their fellow men. So there is a need to confront evil for the job to get done.

 Written by Todde in the year 2007

 References: Buddhadasa Bikku:. Handbook for Mankind. The Buddhadasa Foundation, The Sublime Life Mission, 68/4 Trok Sathien, Tanao Road, Bankok, 10200 Thailand.

 Todde has, together with his wife, Renée, founded and runs the centre DUGA in Göteborg. He has written a book in Swedish on Buddhism with the title Buddhas Dharma (= the Dharma of Buddha).

 You can find out more on DUGA at www.duga.se

 The DUGA foundation is using a Modern Socratic Method and it's Philosophy of Life is inspired by Modern Western Buddhistic and Socratic Philosophy

Also check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2016/09/acknowledgement-from-science-regarding.html

Also check the application of a "Modern Socratic Method" at

https://www.duga.se/ - Use google translate

Matter Space Energy Time, Weight, Length, 

Electricity, Theme Nature, Physics, Chemistry,

Astronomy

How did our ability to measure our environment evolve? From time,

weight, mass, electricity, length, temperature and molecules as long as we have

been humans, we have been obsessed with the measurable.

 How has it affected the course of history, our science and our world view?

 The science, trade and humanity's everyday life have been

substantiated by our ability to measure.

 NOTE! Be sure to contemplate the fact that it is Europeans (or their descendants)

who are pushing this progress into the modern world. How come?

 SVT Play shows three (3) programs about our measurable world.

 The programs are in English with Swedish subtitles

 The programs can (on the link below) be seen until 17 maj 2019.

 One important lesson from studying the development of system for measuring,

is how much has happened in the last 30+0 years - and especially in the

last hundred years

 Learn more about history and how humanity created our everyday life by

checking out the programs at - Alas the program is no longer available 

at SVTplay?:

 https://www.svtplay.se/var-matbara-varld

 Kolla även:

 http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2016/09/acknowledgement-from-science-regarding.html

Todde

A sandwich table decorated for the filthy rich

 In the early 1960s, a financial revolution was initiated which, through loopholes, created today's paradise for the corrupt and the criminal. In his book "Moneyland", Oliver Bullough shows how money laundering in Estonia, trafficing in Asia, forest wreckage at Borneo and foundations in the Netherlands are parts of the same ecosystem.

 Probably, few readers of this article have heard of Siegmund Warburg. Nevertheless, he has more than most of us contributed to shaping the world during the post-war era. This and much more you can learn from reading Oliver Bullough's book "Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule The World & How to Take It Back" (Profile Books). As the subtitle indicates, it is about a global shift of power, where the big winners are players of doubtful background.

 Bullough is a freelance journalist and author who has mostly reported from the former Soviet Union. "Moneyland", his third book, released in the autumn of 2018, has received brilliant reviews in English-language media. Recently the Sunday Times appointed it as the Business Book of the Year. And for those who want to understand the world beyond President Trump's twittering and what is happening with the Swedish Academy and the Nobel price, "Moneyland" is a must.

 According to the author, the idea of ​​the book was born in a toilet after the Majdan insurgency in Ukraine 2014. Exclusive television screens in comfortable seating height made him realize why things went wrong in many of the former Soviet states. The answer was unrestrained corruption. The plant was owned by a Ukrainian company owned by a British, owned by a foundation in Lichtenstein - nowhere was the president's name specified. The ownership structure is a standard template for how corrupt individuals all over the world hide illegal assets.

 Yanukovych was not so much president as he was the leader of a criminal consortium plundering the assets of the Ukrainian people as a business idea. He tumbled in vulgar luxery that seems inevitable when doubtful taste meets abnormal wealth. But Ukraine is just the first stop on a journey that takes us farther and beyond into what Bullough describes as a virtual country where national borders, laws, taxes and morals are overshadowed. A country where only the richest can aspire to citizenship. Welcome to Moneyland! - the dark backyard of globalization.

 In July 1944, the Allies negotiated a new financial system in Bretton Woods, USA. According to the architects of the system, unregulated financial markets caused the instability that preceded the takeover of Nazis and led to war. If future wars were to be avoided and the democratic order is protected, capital must be regulated and free trade encouraged, was their conclusion. The restrictions of Bretton Woods on capital movements set limits to how rational it was to steal for corrupt individuals - too much money was simply difficult to handle and spend.

 However, in the early 1960s, a financial revolution began to open the ports of Eldorado for the corrupt and criminal. At the heart of this process, was Sigmund Warburg, owner of the bank S G Warburg & Co. in the City of London (mentioned in the introduction). He was one of actors in the intergovernmental bond market during the interwar period. He saw the potential of the considerable amount of unproductive dollars, known as euro banknotes or eurodollars, on accounts outside the United States, mainly in Switzerland and City of London. The only problem was that the United States had sole right to issue bonds in dollars under the Bretton Woods agreement.

 However, Warburg employees succeeded in identifying a number of loopholes in the regulatory framework, and in 1962 the first dollar bond was issued outside the United States. These became known as eurobonds, today the world largest financial product in terms of turnover. The holding was anonymous as it was not registered and the certificate was a piece of paper that could easily be transferred from one country to another. The international capital had blown their shackles and the basic foundation for Moneyland was made. It meant a crack in Bretton Woods, which eventually undermined the US's ability to maintain the system as its guarantor. 1973 definitely put an end to it. Since then, tha banking system of various countries have competed in deregulations to attract the capital, that is increasingly ripping across the world, in pursuit of returns - usually they show very little interest in the origins of that capital.

 Bretton Woods was bypassed by the fact that the transactions in the bonds - despite being registered on the London Stock Exchange - were transferred to a legally undefined site, offshore as it was called. The Bank of England understood that a gold mine was in progress and decided to overlook the actions of the procedure. City's bankers then took on the concept and created the modern offshore industry, the best ever tool for money laundering and tax evasion. Offshore usually points to the Channel Islands, Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man, as well as England's ancient crown colonies, Nevis, the Cayman Islands, whose legislation was tailored to managing capital that for various reasons fled from its homelands. Moneyland had found its structure.

 Bulluogh is an initiated and educational ciceron into the gloomy world of legal loopholes that makes the planet a smorgasbord for the truly rich. In Moneyland, they can buy citizenship and diplomatic status, register their ownership where they do not get taxed and hide their assets from governments and transparency.

 Bullough describes the luxury consumption of corrupt authorities, which can not be described as anything less than pathological, not least in contrast to the situation in their home countries. Creativity knows no limits when Moneyland's financial engineers serve their clients. A piquant example is the rich Chinese who pick up eggs from their wives and allow paid surrogate mothers in Japan to become pregnant with these - all to have children who are Japanese citizens who then can act as anchors for capital and investment.

 Globalization has made capital transnational while laws remain national, according to Bullough, this asymmetry represents the engine of the global "kleptomania economy". This relationship also makes this crime almost untouchable - it may take months or years before an investigator gets an answer to a simple ownership question from another jurisdiction and then the reviewed assets have often moved elsewhere. It is no coincidence that the great revelations in recent years have been made by activists and journalists who through networks can coordinate their efforts globally.

 Moneyland, however, also offers protection against unwelcome scrutiny. An individual who gets his business inspected can make use of Britain's notoriously hard injunction laws relating to offenses, which reach far beyond the country's borders. Bullough himself has been forced to renounce publications after legal threats. But most vulnerable are the activists and journalists who find themselves closest to the source of corruption - abuse, prison and murder are common means when Moneyland protects their own.

 The illegitimate capital each year leaving Africa is estimated to amount to three times the total aid to the continent. Every year about 3 billion dollars from developing countries are embezzeled. 50 per cent of Russia's total wealth, is estimated to be located abroad. These money could have gone to healthcare, education and development. Instead, the greater part is sucked up by the financial system of the West, which therby assists the industrial robbery. Bullough's hometown of London is in many ways the capital citiy of Moneyland. There, illegitimate capital transforms into real estate in the luxury segment. There are lawyers and auditors who know everything about money and money laundering. It is from the City of London that the  major parts of the offshore systems are controlled.

 There is, however, an actor who strikes hard when irregularities in the financial world are discovered, namely the United States. At the time of the financial crisis in 2008, the US Department of Justice forced the Swiss banks to open their client registers, which ended the country's infamous banking secrecy and its leading position as a trustee of dirty capital. But the United States does not make the same demands on its own states. This means that, among other things, Nevada and South Dakota, with their purposeful (tax excempt) foundations, attract the money forced away from traditional tax havens when the United States is increasing the pressure. The US is thus well on its way to becoming the world's largest tax haven and hideout for stolen property.

 Bullough is very clear to point out that Moneyland is the result of pack behavior, driven by mutual interests, and not by any conspiracy. On the one hand, we have the individuals who systematically rob their homelands and constantly seek ways to escape, hide and spend "their" money. On the other hand, we have those who get rich by showing how to do. Together they constitute the world's most profitable interest groups and they have billions of reasons to ensure the existence of Moneyland.

 The grip of "Moneyland" as an allegory for the complex of seemingly autonomous structures that allow for corruption is brilliant. Money laundering in Estonia, trafficking in Asia, illegal logging on Borneo and foundations in the Netherlands are seen as isolated phenomena, but Bullough shows that they are parts of the same ecosystem and how Moneyland is the point of intersection of the destiny of the world today. As long as its fi nancial structures delivers, environmental crime and drug trafficking will be an extremely profitable business. As long as corruption is growing, the flow of refugees and asylum seekers will grow and terrorist organizations have a safe recruitment base of bitter young men. The institutionalized corruption erodes democracy and the rule of law throughout the world, especially as kleptocracy needs the protection of an authoritarian regime. And the capital accumulated in Moneyland is used to buy influence and affect the political development of democratic countries.

 "Moneyland explains so much," writes Bullough and refers to the concept. But it also applies to the book. Let us hope that some publisher will ensure that even Swedish readers get to know one of the most important publications of the year.

      

Gunnar Wiman Freelance writer understrecket@svd.se

Todde

Also check:  http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2018/12/greed-fraud-banks-accountants-attorneys.html