Mental Blocks & Seizures

Mental Blocks & Seizures:
Introduction:
Because acting is constant, there is a constant, unceasing, stressful battle or struggle between the force of going against self and the force of self-preservation that are usually finely matched but on occasions one or the other gain momentary ascendancy with manifestations that those astute can detect.

Sometimes the force of self-preservation gains the upper hand or is ascendant, resulting in episodes of mental blocks wherein actors forget what they are doing or saying in their acted ways that is harmful but they think is being themselves and they must embarrassingly reactivate their force of going against themselves to retrace the complicated devious thread of going against themselves.

On other occasions, the force of going against self that has become very potent with years of practice betrays early signs of malignancy or autonomy, it becomes momentarily ascendant or unopposed by self resistance to seize the mind and muscles of the body or face in a vice like or forceful spasm.

The force of self preservation is fighting an ultimately and inevitably losing battle, a lost cause that will end in self tragedy so long as an actor remains acting and slowly but steadily, after lifelong acting, the force of going against self becomes more ascendant, the actor’s suffering and torment increases to levels that cause irrational violent thoughts and actions, restlessness and depression. Most actors foolishly think they will escape the ravages of old age (madness, restlessness and depression) but they have a certain appointment or reckoning with them. If they die before their minds ultimately shatter after lifelong emotional abuse, they will then suffer on the other side in propitiation.

Because actors are constantly applying force (sometimes disguised or deceptive sometimes blatant) on their minds by acting (acting is always forceful), all actors must experience occasions when their minds (and body eg their facial or forearm muscles helplessly tense up at a certain thought) are helplessly seized by force or become tensed up against their wishes. These episodes are the opposite of mental blocks when actors forget what they are going to say or do when briefly the force of self resistance against acting overwhelms the force of going against self, stopping the acted speech or deed dead in its track. Mental seizures are when the force of going against self to act temporarily escapes the control of self-resistance to seize the mind and possibly also body with force. The actor may be sitting quietly reflecting and suddenly, disconcertingly, his mind seizes up like a vice tightening up and with it his facial muscles may also tense up. Like minor tremors forewarning future earthquakes, these are early warning signs of future mad loss of control of one’s acting which actors usually shrug off or do not realize the significance.

Every moment spent in anger, stress, restlessness, fear or sadness is every moment’s reinforcement of its future ease of arising, intensity and persistence just like every time a tennis player plays tennis, he improves his tennis. Professional tennis players are so good because they practice frequently obsessively their tennis. Hence, even if you think your facial and bodily expressions are genuine or beneficial, every time you express yourself (eg smile, grimace, scowl, smirk), you are improving your expression you do not realize wil seize you painfully later.
The reason why adult actors are so slick and consistent in their expressions is because they have practiced them so often so well so long that they now do not have to force themselves to express anymore but they are now forced by powerful urges, even explosive impulse that cannot be denied once triggered to express themselves. What they do not realize, even though they suffer severe stress expressing themselves that there will be further progression for the worse. If they keep practicing their expressions, they will become even easier to trigger (trigger happy) or increasingly hard to control and in old age or a severe emotional crisis, they may lose total control temporarily or permanently to express madly in torment. Hence, insist unrepentant that your expressions are charming, beneficial for you and others, genuine but when you finally lose control of your expressions, you can say that again.

Similarly, every moment’s spent in emotion eg anger or sadness is every moment’s reinforcement that you will pay dearly later. The reason why people are so easily and intensely angered or saddened is because they have been practicing these emotions so long; they even fake anger or sadness. What they do not realize is that if they keep going, their anger or sadness will ultimately get out of control and they may be seized by mad rages or depression either acutely or in old age. Hence the wise person will reject anger or sadness every time they experience it, will not create anger or sadness (eg by appreciating sad music) but will instead strive to dwell constantly with a calm clearly thinking unemotional mind until this state is second nature, easy to arouse and hard to lose, the opposite of actor’s default stressed/aggressive state that is easily aroused and hard to shake off.

Force is dangerous because it deforms and erodes its target. Mental forces deform and erode the mind that permits forces to use it as a playground. All emotions (anger, hate, fear, pride, shame, greed, sadness) & stress are forceful and every time the mind experiences them, it is being deformed or warped and eroded or weakened. Because actors are constantly emotional, constantly stressed, they are constantly subjecting their minds to deformity that becomes more severe and permanent, erosion that becomes more severe and permanent. Expressions are always forceful. Force has to be applied on the mind to express facially and bodily. Hence even if you insist your expressions are real, they progressively deform and degrade the mind until it will finally become permanently or madly deformed and degraded.

The Ten Fetters:
The Buddha: There are these ten fetters.
There are five lower & five higher fetters.
And which are the five lower fetters?
Self-identity views (emotional attachment to a false self), uncertainty (confusion and doubting), grasping at precepts & practices (rituals), sensual desire (desire is emotional lust or greed for sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touch) & ill will (dislike, hate, malice).
(The five lower fetters are harmful to self and others and therefore detain a being in states of suffering)
And which are the five higher fetters?
Passion for form, passion for what is formless, conceit, restlessness & ignorance. (Conceit is different from self identity views which are emotional or forceful and false or delusional. You can be passively infatuated or fascinated with your own existence in heaven or the formless planes without delusions, unattached to your physical body, emotions, ritualized behavior. Without conceit, there is no desire to exist further, it is a higher fetter because it does not harm others, it is exalting one’s own existence without forcefully disparaging others. With the cessation of all restlessness, the being ceases to exist because all agitations are false. With the cessation of all ignorance, with enlightenment, the being is freed from all desires and ceases to exist. Change is an essential characteristic of all existence and restlessness is a motive force requisite for change. If you are not restless, do not desire for change, you will have no basis for existence. Hence restlessness is a fetter to continued existence in higher realms. Once ignorance about the true nature of all existence is dispelled, seeing the nature of existence as suffering and dissatisfactory, the being passively ceases existing)
(Existence does not necessarily have to be suffering. You can exist without suffering in heaven. The five higher fetters do not harm others or self but are fetters to continued existence as individuals in the higher realms eg as angels or loftier brahmas. When a being loses his fascination with these fetters, when his passive ignorance, not forceful emotional delusion is cleared by enlightenment, he no longer has any desires and ceases to exist which is ultimately restrictive and unsatisfactory)
An ordinary person has not broken through the first three fetters (personality-view, doubt, attachment to rites and precepts), has not yet "entered the stream" and is destined for states of woe. Once he has abandoned these three fetters, he is not liable to states of woe (hell, animal, hungry shades, ghost and human existence).
Mahali, in one case a monk, having abandoned three fetters, becomes a Stream-Winner, not liable to states of woe, firmly set on the path to enlightenment. Again, a monk who has abandoned the three fetters, and has reduced his greed, hatred (ill will) and delusion (emotional belief in what is false) becomes a Once-Returner who, having returned to this world once more, will make an end of suffering. Again, a monk who has abandoned the five lower fetters takes a spontaneous rebirth 6 (in a higher sphere or heaven) and without returning, gains enlightenment.
Self Identity Views: Those who think they are selfless may be underestimating their self-identity views. People identify themselves overtly or covertly as of a certain race, a doctor, a male, a Christian, a father, stupid, humorous, fat and successful. It is because they have self-identity views that they feather their nests here, care about what they shall eat or wear, how they look, keep fit, eat health foods and pamper themselves. The person unattached to himself does not think of himself as Chinese, a doctor, affiliated to a certain religion, smart or stupid, etc.
Anyone who is an actor must have significant self-identity views otherwise you would not go against yourself to exaggerate and fake to deceive, impress, please or intimidate.
Because self-identity views are ultimately false, your body and all your intellectual characteristics are restrictive characteristics that are destroyed with death, if you cling to the false, you are deluded.
Uncertainty & Doubt: Many people are suspicious and cannot be reassured. Even after they are told something, they still ask, keep asking are you sure, is that so, really? They question themselves and others. Uncertainty and doubt are actually emotional vacillating states of a mind shrouded in falsity.
Again anyone who is an actor must be wracked by uncertainty and doubt because he is constantly going against himself creating stress by faking and exaggerating. Not only do actors falsely fake and exaggerate, they are unable to see they do so and even believe what they act is true. Anyone who lives in falsity, cannot see they are false but think they are genuine must entertain doubt and uncertainty that is inconsolable.
Faith In Rites & Precepts: Again many do not realize they have significant faith in rites and precepts. They keep talismans in their cars to ward off evil, they do things in a stiff inflexible ritualized ways, they believe certain incantations eg Om Mani Padme Hum or ceaseless beading of rosaries are efficacious.
Not Just Stressing But Mind Warping:

Ordinary people are intimidated by reputation but I unemotionally see truth and am not intimidated falsely by reputation to champion niceness as goodness.
Even if he wanted, it is unlikely that he can desist from fabricating this sparkling smile (that is intended to falsely impress) when provoked unless he can see that it is the source of mind warping stress not meritorious and make conscientious attentive effort to efface it. But it is likely he sees nothing wrong and the force of habit that he is still honing every time he smiles is too strong to overcome. As a result, anyone confronted by his ‘infectious’ smile is provoked to stressfully respond and it may be karma not merit to provoke others.
It is always stressful inducing restlessness to smile like this, not joyful as he is falsely expressing. Further the mind must be warped or distorted to produce such a smile. To have a warped or distorted mind is tormenting on top of the stress of smiling thus.
Why Liking & Disliking Is Always Suffering:
There is no such thing as a person who likes and dislike who is free from suffering. The reason is because both like and dislike requires mental force (attraction & repulsion) and whatever requires mental force, like acting or pretending always stresses and even warps the mind creating suffering. This is an universal law and you are a fool to cling to likes and dislikes.
Further, because like and dislike is emotional, forceful it is addictive. Every incidence of like and dislike reinforces the urge or tendency and is transferred to other targets such that the person given to like and dislike soon develops like and dislike that is increasingly intense or potent and is inundated by many targets for like and dislike that he may then have to stressfully hide from others and even himself for the sake of social lubrication. Like acting that may be exciting in an instance but becomes an unbearable burden when one cannot stop acting, like and dislike may be pleasant in instances but when one helplessly feels increasingly intense likes and dislikes for increasing number of targets, it becomes maddening.
When you like something, you must also dislike others, you cannot possibly like everything. Liking in itself is suffering not unadulterated pleasure but to have objects of dislike to be avoided is even more suffering.
Craving, unknowing, the liked and the disliked, delighting in forms and pleasing feelings too, dear pleasures of the senses -- all have been vomited:
never to that vomit can I make myself return.
Seeing Why:
The Buddha said: A being who has not been your mother at one time in the past is not easy to find...A being who has not been your father...your brother...your sister...your son...your daughter at one time in the past is not easy to find.
"Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries -- enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released.
Seeing that as simple as let your yes be yes only may appear to be and it is the only way out of insurmountable stress but ordinary people can never let their yes be yes only but much more, I can see why the Buddha is correct that we have transmigrated for so long.
Seeing that as simple as not acting, not stretching syllables, not smiling may be and it is the only way out of insoluble stress that leads to restlessness, madness, violent impulses and depression, yet ordinary people all act, stretch their syllables and smile even after they have been told even those who are supposed to be good and intelligent, I can see why the Buddha is correct that a being who has not been your mother at one time in the past is not easy to find...A being who has not been your father...your brother...your sister...your son...your daughter at one time in the past is not easy to find. It seems passion driven delusion is something very hard to cure in ordinary people.
A Demonstration Of The Noble Eightfold Path:
Many dismiss the Noble Eightfold Path as ho hum or anachronistic in this scientific know all age where we know better but instead they, including top Buddhists fail (miserably) to grasp and therefore do justice to its profound message in its entirety. They have remembered by rote and are pleased to regurgitate it out (a forceful act) to impress themselves and others without understanding what it meant and therefore they do not derive benefit or derive honor for showing the way to others..
The reason people are absent minded, they sometimes (as a result of momentary act failure or disruption) embarrassingly ask others, “What was I talking about or doing just now?” is because they do not pay attention to what they say or do; they do not have right mindfulness, a factor in the path.
When you smile whilst you speak, the smile (or grimace or scowl) detracts and distracts from what you want to say and you cannot be mindfully speaking or speaking letting your yes be yes only.
If your true intention is to speak, why do you smile (or grimace or scowl)? If your true intention is to smile, why do you speak? As a result, you are doing neither sincerely, truly but you are doing both (smiling and speaking) somnolently, approximately or acting. If you insist (defiance is always emotional & forceful) that you can nevertheless speak and smile mindfully at the same time and it turns out to be false, then you are deluded, forcefully believing and practicing what is false is true and there are two destinations for wrong view, hell or the animal womb. It is always stressful to juggle, hence if you must juggle speaking and smiling at the same time, you must go against yourself or suffer and that by definition is acting.
When you speak with style, eg with subtly or outrageously stretched syllables you cannot be concentrating on what you say because your style distracts and detract from what you say. If you mean what you say, why do you distract yourself, waste time and effort stretching your syllables?
If you pay attention or right mindfulness to what you are saying, it is impossible for you to forget what you just said or make a mistake in what you say.
To see that being absent minded in what you say or do is not blameless or harmless but it is suffering, sinful and a sign of future danger (from madness) is your right view, another factor of the path. To see absent mindedness as inconsequential, a blameless fact of existence when it is in truth a blameworthy, avoidable manifestation of sin is your wrong view and wrong view leads to hell or the animal womb, according to the Buddha. As a result of heedlessness, you become more frequently absent minded, tormented and even go mad, you will be in hell.
To make a resolution to exit absent mindedness and gravitate towards present mindedness is your right resolve, another factor of the path. Before you can change, you must resolve what and how to change. Without resolve, there is no meaningful change. Hence right resolve is the father of right change.
To then make consistent effort to banish absent mindedness as soon as it occurs or you detect it, to cultivate and sustain present mindedness in what you say or do is your right effort, another factor on the path. Without persistent right effort to efface bad habits and develop good habits, there can be no change. The reason why people have explosive anger is because they have practiced anger so well so frequently for so long and the only way they can exit, not control anger is to gradually efface or rub off anger every time it arises whilst practicing goodwill as the default state.
To speak without smiling or style (stretched syllables, dramatic explosiveness and silences), to abstain from frivolous speech (idle chatter and gossip are forms of telling lies) is your right speech, another factor of the path that promote present mindedness. Right speech is not telling lies (people not only tell lies but the entire way of what and how they speak is fabricated or false), no harsh speech (loud, abusive speech).
Refraining from smiling or emotional gesticulating whilst speaking that detracts and distracts promoting absent mindedness is his right action, another factor on the path. (Not to steal, take without asking or being given, not to kill or harm, not to indulge in illicit sex, intoxication)
To refrain from activities that promote heedlessness that leads to absent mindedness eg frequenting disco, pubs, salesmen talk to sell things to others is his right livelihood. Be careful of advice you give others as a doctor or stock broker. If you give tips that are false or lead to ruin (even winning stock tips promote greed and is bad, not good), you have karma due, not merit.
To dwell calmly and clearly thinking in the present, able to access the first absorption (rapture from withdrawal with discursive thinking), second absorption (rapture from withdrawal without thinking), third absorption (equanimity, mindful & alert, physically sensitive to pleasure) and the fourth absorption (purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither-pleasure-nor-pain) is his right concentration, another factor on the path.
Anyone endowed with these eight factors has a pleasant abiding here, a pleasant abiding in the future, is secure from future woes.
Many fail to grasp the eightfold path, let alone that they should propound it. No fake or madman can speak like the Buddha says. Fakes and madmen do not dwell on such matters.
WHOEVER YOU ARE, CHRISTIAN, BUDDHIST OR ATHEIST YOU ARE SUBJECT TO STRESS, MENTAL AND BODILY TORMENT. BECAUSE ORDINARY PEOPLE ARE ALL ACTORS, FAKES AND EXAGGERATORS, THE ONLY WAY OUT OF SUFFERING IS TO EXIT ACTING AND LIVE APPLYING THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH. CALL A SPADE WHATEVER FANCIFUL NAME YOU LIKE BUT IF YOU NEED A SPADE TO DIG A HOLE, YOU MUST USE IT AND IT IS ONLY TO YOUR MERIT THAT YOU PAY HOMAGE AND GIVE HONOR WHERE HONOR IS DUE, TO PAY HOMAGE TO THE BUDDHA AS I DO.
Mental Seizures Versus Mental Blocks:
Usually stressful forceful going against self to act has to be and is counterbalanced by stressful forceful self preservation but occasionally either one is ascendant.
When actors are seized to scream (ala Howard Dean’s I had a scream) or bang the table or screw up their faces, cough, grunt or sneeze provoked by a thought, forceful going against self has temporarily escaped the attention or control of forceful self preservation. Actors have strong dislikes and when they see something that irks them eg two men holding hands or a couple fornicating publicly, they are seized violently to look away, driven by their forceful pretense.
Entertaining helplessly silly, mad, violent thoughts is again forceful going against self temporarily running out of control.
What actors do not realize is that these are early tremors of a final reckoning with escalating madness that will end in torment if they do not exit acting that is constantly digging a deeper future hell hole for themselves.
Collective Economic Delusion:
What Stephen Roach is saying below is similar to what I have said before. The world may be engaged in collective or mutual economic deception living well beyond its means that will surely have repercussions or karma that will not be pleasant.
You do not need to be a Greenspan or Nobel Prize Economist to read economic tea leaves but you need an independent eye for the truth that can separate plentiful chaff from the scant grains of wheat.
Both America and the East Asian economies (China, Japan, Korea, Singapore) that support the US may be spending illusory money they presumptuously think they have but don’t and when the day of reckoning comes it may be disastrous.
America, being the conceited glutton it is, is quite happy to issue IOUs (greenbacks) that the rest of the world is quite happy to receive and stash. In theory America has paid for its imports but in practice, so long as the Arab sheikhs and East Asian Tigers continue to keep their money in the US, it has not truly paid. Should the imbalances that are now rising to unsustainable levels aimed not for productive but consumptive purposes unravel, America will find it is much poorer than it likes to pretend and East Asian economies may find they have much less in depreciated US assets than they think. In other words, the goods they now export so eagerly to the US to support their otherwise moribund economies may be worth much less than they think. It is foolish to keep extending to a customer that has already built colossal debts but because Japan, China & Korea’s domestic economies would otherwise be moribund they are quite foolishly happy to keep exporting to the US to maintain employment.
Apart from this trade deficit, 600 billion USD is circulating in physical paper around the globe, an interest free loan to Uncle Sam. If you lose your money (by fire or flood), Uncle Sam’s obligations to you is permanently discharged. Further, many individuals, institutions and governments keep considerable assets in US denomination that are de facto loans to fuel American consumption and domination of the world. But an apparently virtuous cycle can turn into a vicious cycle and a day of reckoning for America may be looming.
If fund managers who dominate the world stock markets were investing their own money, the world stock markets may have crashed and remained crashed long ago. But because they are investing other people’s money and they are rewarded for performing or rising stocks, the onus is on them to prop and keep propping the market until a final reckoning. If & when stock markets return to realistic valuations, many people will find they are much less rich as they not only imagined themselves to be but spent on borrowed money. If bankers were lending their own money, they would be more scrupulous who they lent to but because they are paid for profits, they lend as much as they possibly can and leave problems to those who come later.
Just as humans severely underestimate the faking and exaggerating they are guilty of (like the tip of the iceberg), they may also severely underestimate how dire the existing economic and environmental conditions are and disaster may strike much sooner than somnolent people imagine.
Mankind may like to think that collectively they are smarter than Bush and his cabal of neocons who thought Iraq will be a cakewalk or cinch when it is a hell hole. If Bush knew what is happening now, would he have second thoughts? Do you think mankind knows what is in store for it?
Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself (deny himself the sins of acting men) and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? (Men foolishly secure their lives by acting and being nice to each other to gain material wealth and status but they will forfeit their lives) Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father and then he will repay every man for what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." (There are some who by their virtue will be born in heaven there to remain till the end of the Age)
World economy coming apart
America's burgeoning current account deficit financed by China's red-hot economy is a deadly combination, says STEPHEN S ROACH
THE world economy is on a collision course. The United States - long the main engine of global growth and finance - has squandered its domestic saving and is now drawing freely on the rest of the world's saving pool.
East Asian central banks, especially those in Japan and China, have become America's financiers of last resort. But in doing so, they are subjecting their own economies to increasingly serious risk. Breaking points are always tough to pinpoint. But I suspect that the trigger is now close at hand. Like everything else in the world today, it could well be made in China.
The case for mounting US imbalances is all too familiar. An extraordinary shortfall in national saving has led to a record and ever-widening current-account deficit. But there is an important twist: Unlike the latter half of the 1990s, when the US was running 'good' external deficits to fund an investment-led growth dynamic, today's shortfall is 'bad' because it is financing open-ended government budget deficits and the excess spending of American consumers. And these deficits have had a corrosive impact over time: In 1980, the United States was the world's largest creditor, with a US$360 billion surplus in its net international investment position. Courtesy of ever-widening current-account deficits, by the end of 2003, that surplus had morphed into foreign debt of US$2.7 trillion, or 24 per cent of US GDP. America's current-account deficit is now so large that it has put US foreign indebtedness on an increasingly explosive path. America is rapidly taking on 'banana republic' status.
But this is only half the story. For every debtor there is always a creditor. Popular folklore speaks of a return-starved world that has an insatiable demand for dollar-denominated assets as a claim on America's productivity-led miracles. That's largely a myth. Private demand for most major classes of dollar-based assets has been on the wane. Foreign direct investment into the US has fallen off sharply in recent years, as has foreign buying of US equities. In addition, there is even a case that can now be made for a slowing of US productivity growth in the years ahead.
By default, that leaves foreign demand for US fixed income securities (bonds) as the principal conduit of external financing. Contrary to widespread belief, this is not an open-ended 'buy American bonds' campaign by enthusiastic private investors from abroad. Instead, it is increasingly a conscious policy decision by foreign officials (governments). Over the 11 months ending in July 2004, foreign official buying of US securities accounted for 35 per cent of net inflows into dollars - more than double the longer-term norm and 4.5 times the 7.6 per cent share of 2000-02.
Nor is there any deep secret as to the identity of the Great Enabler - Asian central banks. The rationale is clear: Lacking in domestic demand, Asia needs cheap currencies in order to subsidise its export-led economies (Asians need to export to keep their economies afloat but in exchange for pieces of paper that may collapse in value instead of gold). Given the massive overhang of excess dollars that have arisen from America's ever-widening current account deficits, Asian central banks must recycle their equally massive accumulation of foreign exchange reserves back into dollar-denominated assets. If they don't do that, the dollar will fall and their currencies will appreciate.
Asian central banks currently hold about US$2.2 trillion, or 80 per cent of the world's official foreign exchange reserves. As of year-end 2003, dollar-denominated assets made up about 70 per cent of these reserves. Needless to say, should the dollar ever fall in the face of such a massive overhang of dollar holdings, portfolio losses - the functional equivalent of an enormous welfare decline of Asian creditors - would be staggering. (When Asian governments want their money back, they may get much less than they imagine)
America's role as the world's reserve currency offers no special dispensation from dollar depreciation or the staggering portfolio losses that Asian central banks would face in the event of such an outcome. That was the case in the latter half of the 1980s and is likely to be the case in the not-so-distant future as well. It has become fashionable to believe that these trends are the manifestation of a new world order. At work is the presumed emergence of a new 'dollar bloc' zone that includes the dollar-pegged countries of China, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, along with 'soft-pegged' economies such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The argument is based on the premise that it is in Asia's best interest to keep funding America's current account imbalance. To do otherwise would run the risk of Asian currency appreciation - tantamount to economic suicide for these export-led economies. There is an added twist of an increasingly China-centric Asia: As long as the renminbi peg remains unchanged, other Asian economies, including Japan, can be expected to follow suit with pegs of their own. That makes China the linchpin of the pan-Asian campaign of funding America's gaping imbalances.
There is a huge flaw in this theory, in my view. Just as America is putting itself in grave danger by squandering its national saving, Asian financiers are running equally reckless policies in providing open-ended funding for these imbalances. China is a leading case in point. I have been a diehard optimist on China for over seven years. But now I am worried that China is at risk of making a series of major policy blunders that could lead to the demise of the new Asian way. This represents a change in my own thinking about China that I do not take lightly.
It was one thing for China to maintain a currency peg in the face of mounting world pressures to do otherwise in recent years. I still feel this was the right thing to do on a stop-gap basis - in effect, providing China's undeveloped financial system with an anchor during a critical phase of its integration into the global economy and world financial markets. But now China is digging in its heels on interest rate policy, refusing to deploy the conventional policy instrument that is widely accepted as the principal means to restrain an overheated economy. China, instead, prefers to use the administrative edicts of its central planning heritage - controlling the quantity of credit and project finance rather than its price.
China can't have it both ways. An increasingly market-based economy is relying on the micro mindset of central planning to cope with macro problems. There are worrisome consequences of this disconnect. Due to the sheer size of the build-up of Chinese foreign exchange reserves, China's central bank is having an increasingly difficult time in sterilising its currency intervention; that runs the serious risk of undermining its control over the domestic money supply. At the same time, by holding its interest rates down, China is further exacerbating the excesses of its overheated economy. The combination of currency and interest rate pegs could well be compounding the pressures that are already apparent in this overheated economy - accelerating inflation, a massive investment overhang, and mounting property bubbles in several important coastal markets.
In the end, unintended consequences of macro developments always seem to pose the greatest risks. Several such concerns trouble me with respect to the growing belief in 'sustainable imbalances'. First, there is the mounting possibility of politically-inspired protectionism in the US. A saving-short economy will continue to suffer from large current-account and trade deficits, putting unrelenting pressure on job creation. The risk is that Washington will pin the blame on Asian scapegoats. Second, China is now hurtling down an increasingly unstable path. The greater the risks to inflation - both in the real economy and in asset markets - the greater the risks of the dreaded Chinese hard landing. Third, Asia's dollar pegs mean that the euro would have to bear a disproportionate share of any further dollar depreciation. Continued Asian currency pegging could raise the likelihood of European protectionism - especially towards Asia.
In contrast with the claims of the new-paradigm crowd, the stresses and strains of an unbalanced world are growing worse by the moment. These imbalances can be sustained only if the major nations of the world all march to the same beat. But the odds are growing short that such an increasingly tenuous arrangement can be sustained. America's indebtedness is in the danger zone, as is China's ability to finance it (China’s has limits to it’s ability to finance). China is probably the weakest link in this chain - its current macro policy mix is simply unsustainable. If China doesn't back away from the potentially lethal combination of currency and interest rate pegs, global rebalancing could then move into a far more dangerous phase.
The author is chief US economist of Morgan Stanley and Co. This article is excerpted from the Sept 27 issue of US Investment Perspectives, a Morgan Stanley publication.
Planet under pressure
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

We are a successful breed. Our advance from our hominid origins has brought us near-dominance of the world, and a rapidly accelerating understanding of it.
Scientists now say we are in a new stage of the Earth's history, the Anthropocene Epoch, when we ourselves have become the globe's principal force. (Jesus said the ruler of the earth will be judged)
But several eminent scientists are concerned that we have become too successful - that the unprecedented human pressure on the Earth's ecosystems threatens our future as a species.
We confront problems more intractable than any previous generation, some of them at the moment apparently insoluble.

Where most experts agree that a crisis is brewing:
 Food: An estimated 1 in 6 people suffer from hunger and malnutrition while attempts to grow food are damaging swathes of productive land.
 Water: By 2025, two thirds of the world's people are likely to be living in areas of acute water stress.
 Energy: Oil production could peak and supplies start to decline by 2010
 Climate change: The world's greatest environmental challenge with increased storms, floods, drought and species losses predicted.
 Biodiversity: Many scientists think the Earth is now entering its sixth great extinction phase.
 Pollution: Hazardous chemicals are now found in the bodies of all new-born babies, and an estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants.
All six problems are linked and urgent, so a list of priorities is little help.
It is pointless to preserve species and habitats if climate change will destroy them anyway, or to develop novel crops if the water they need is not there.
And underlying all these pressures is a seventh - human population.
There are already more than six billion of us, we shall probably number about 8.9bn by 2050.
Population growth means the absolute number living in poverty goes on rising.
Poverty leaves many people no choice but to exploit the environment.
Difficult dilemmas
Planet under pressure is more about questions than answers. What sort of lifestyle can the Earth sustain?
How many of us can live at northern consumption levels, and what level should everyone else be expected to settle for?
How can we expect poor people to respect the environment when they need to use it to survive?
Are eco-friendly lives a luxury for the rich or a necessity for everyone?
And how can we act when sizeable and sincere parts of society say we are already overcoming the problems, not being overwhelmed by them?
Survival
As many see it, we are not doing too badly.
The challenge we face is not about feeling guilty for our consumption or virtuous for being "green" - it is about the growing recognition that, as the human race, we stand or fall together.
A Whimper:
When John Kerry decried Bush’s broad coalition as consisting only of the US, UK & Australia, Bush retorted foolishly, “You forgot Poland”. Silence may be a preferable response. Does it matter if Kerry forgot Poland or Spain or Italy except to be pettily petulant? It reflects America’s nature that he is still popular and people think it wise to elect him. What he is said dovetail with his sitting pretending to read a story book for seven minutes when told of the 9/11 attacks.
Delight & Disappointment Is Like & Dislike:
To be delighted by certain things and disappointed by certain things too is a form of liking and disliking and the stronger or more prolonged your delight and disappointment, the more you suffer.
Disappointment is never pleasure but always suffering. Delight is more deceptive because the initial excitement is emotional and forceful and gives a false sense of wellbeing or gain but as soon as the initial euphoria is exhausted or inevitably fades and reality sets in there is disappointment apart from disagreeable exhaustion from being roused by excitement. Further, delight in actors is never matter of fact, passive but always forcefully acted, exaggerated, even faked consuming great energy generating stress that impacts once the excitement passes.
You can be passively delighted (if you are not an actor) and that is less suffering than active acted delight because it is forceless. You can be passively disappointed and that is less suffering than active, forceful disappointment but it is in the nature of actors that they can never be passively disappointed but they must get emotionally worked up. The more energy and force you foolishly invest in your delights and disappointments, the more you suffer. That is the universal law.
The person who is truly freed even of passive delight and disappointment, who is without any delight or disappointment in this world is the person truly freed of suffering.
The Bull In A China Shop:
Stress and emotions (anger, likes and dislikes, fear, anxiety, pride and shame, greed, lust, jealousy, emotional doubt and uncertainty, fear, hate, malice) are like the bull in the China shop (your mind). Every time it bellows and moves, it breaks some china and the wise person will learn to recognize emotions immediately as they arise and shove them out of the door as soon as he can. The longer anyone allows the bull to stay in the china shop, the more reluctant it is to leave.
The only way anyone can eradicate emotions and stress is by effacement or right effort, as the Buddha said. You cannot transform yourself from a goat to a sheep, from untamed to tamed without effort, without effacement, without doing what the Buddha exhorts, whatever your religious affiliation.
First you must address emotions and stress at its source. It is acting that is the renewing fountain of stress and emotion. Unless a person exits acting, it is fruitless vexation bringing more stress and thence emotions. So long as a person continues to stretch his syllables and smile, he will never get rid of his stress and emotions.
Simultaneously, the person effaces emotions eg anger that has arisen by banishing it as rapidly as he can. Initially it might take him 10 minutes but if he is persistent, it takes him progressively shorter time to banish anger until he can nip it at the bud the moment it arises. A person who effaces his emotions and stress automatically reduces the fuel that feeds acting. Just as he effaces unwholesome states that have arisen, he fosters wholesome states (goodwill, calm clarity) that have not arisen and nurtures them until he is permanently calm, clearly thinking in goodwill.
If he has been persistent and applied himself correctly, he will imbue himself with permanent calm clarity, will have a pleasant abiding now, pleasant abiding later and headed for safety not woe.
The Secret Of All Oratory:
The secret ingredient of oratory is fakery.
If you recollect how you felt when you were truly angry or fearful, eg when you were engaged in a heated argument with someone, if I told you then to smile or laugh, it would be most difficult if not impossible for you to smile or laugh because you are seized by your fight or flight emotions.
Yet orators can be fiery one moment, whispering gently the next only to smile in delight the next and then be as if down in the dumps.
This can only happen if it is entirely faked to impress. There are no true emotions (eg anger or fear) behind the florid expressions but it is all very dramatically faked to convince mesmerized fellow actors it is real.
Even when there is true anger underlying the expression of anger, it is acted out to impress or intimidate.
Why Telling Jokes Is Not Harmless:
If you watch people telling jokes, they seldom stop at one joke but their emotions stirred, they think of and continue telling jokes until the stress builds up to force them to stop. This is because telling jokes is always emotional or forceful and therefore it has momentum and is addictive. The reason why people have irresistible urge to tell or appreciate jokes is that the urge is so strong after lifelong practice.
Like everything that is forceful and addictive, the foolish person does not realize that urge may become uncontrollable, mad. If telling jokes was truly pleasurable, then people shouldn’t stop but they should spend all their time telling jokes. Instead joking is an acquired taste to please or impress others, mirth leads to restlessness and mental daze that forces the joker to desist after awhile. Because jokes are false, have to be fabricated and the appreciation too is forcefully fabricated that has become so real jokers think they are really appreciating, it warps the mind apart from assaulting it with stress and the joker is headed for an appointment with madness.
Faith In Rituals & A Helpless Automaton:
I noticed a few of my shirt collars are showing advanced signs of premature wear as a predictable result of my servant’s brutal scrubbing that is unpleasantly audible every morning as I sit meditating. Anyone who makes noises that distresses others eg by scrubbing harshly creates karma that may be more serious than people concede.
In truth my collars were never badly stained to warrant such brutal scrubbing that is also unnecessarily abusing her arms but it is mindless ingrained brutality that drives her to do so, despite me having told her not to scrub it so hard. It is a waste of time telling her because forceful actors are no more in control over their forcefulness anymore than they can determine when they will pass away.
Yet she is religious in a way that would impress fellow actors. I happened to see her one day all draped in white robes, facing presumably Mecca, standing on a mat, holding her arms folded across her chest in silent prayer. What is the use of pious prayers when you treat articles in a harsh manner (Jesus what you did to the least of me, you did it to me), when you always speak in a loud, explosive way with outrageously stretched syllables except that is a faith in rites and precepts that is not meritorious as foolish fellow actors are moved to appreciate but leads to states of woe as the Buddha said. Hence if you are impressed (only actors who strive to impress others can be impressed by others) when you see her dramatically dressed in robes in prayers, you may share a similar delusional faith in rites and precepts that leads not to heaven but woe.
IT MAY BE AN ABIDING DELUSION THAT THERE IS GOOD AND BAD IN EVERYBODY, SO SHUT UP & TRY TO APPRECIATE OTHERS. I SHIT YOU SHIT SO SHUT UP AND LET’S SHIT TOGETHER. WHAT PEOPLE SEE AS THE GOOD IN OTHERS IS THE ACTED GOOD TO GET ALONG AND IMPRESS. A PERSON IS A GOAT OR A GOAT IN SHEEPSKIN UNTIL THE DAY HE TRULY REFORMS TO BECOME A SHEEP. THERE ARE NO PART TIME ACTORS AND A PERSON IS AN ACTOR DRIVEN BY ILL WILL THAT MAY BE SO CAREFULLY DISGUISED THE ACTOR THINKS HE HAS GOODWILL, UNTIL THE DAY IF EVER HE EXITS ACTING.