Excellent observation, however, like my posts, your musing is beyond the intellectual reach of most public schooled people. They can't grasp it, they just can't. If its not something shiny, or flashing dangling in their faces they can't factor it. Now if its something that requires actual critical mental processing, something that requires pragmatic deduction, then they are lost. They shut down. Nothing currently plaguing society would be possible if not for the dummies of academia, and its disciples of public school, who parrot the academic mantras. Even on this platform. There is a small cadre of intellectuals, but most are satisfied to repeat the popular topics of the day, never grinding down into the reality of it all, or the root causes of their torment.
"With slavery, we shipped the labor here, but with colonialism, we can just ship the work there." Most people don't grasp the fact that "slavery" was not imported Africans, but rather American Negro Indians who were already here. The first "slaves" in colonies were Pre-Colonial Whites and American Negro Indians. The colonies supported themselves by enslaving the local populations of Indians captured in Wars (King Phillips War). It was rinse and repeat, all over New England. Only a total of 92000 "Africans" were brought here in 400 years. In fact, there was so many Negro Indians that they were captured and shipped out. They were shipped to the Islands, Europe and they even sent them to Africa (Liberia), any place to lower the populations. The ones who remained were re-classified, over generations, via census records, from Indians, to Indians not taxed, free people of color, mulatto, octroon, quadroon, creole, negro, black and now "african." (They tried that with my family, but we had the documents) From Ben Franklin onward the plan has always been to get rid of us, steal our estates, steal our land and change us from aboriginal Indians into foreign Africans. Slavery as espoused by academia is a lie. The "out of africa" theory was created by a Eastern European, Melville Herkovitz, who taught the lies to academia. "Roots" was a fraud, a book stolen by Alex Haley from a White author. He was sued and he settled, the judge calling it a "hoax." History is a lie, agreed upon. Regards.
That all could very well be true, given just how deep the bullshit is piled. The problem isn't enlightening people, but simply steering them in a more positive direction.
I spent my life around more race horses and cattle, both dairy and beef, than people, so I don't have anything against people as herds. While our culture is all about the individual, the fact is that people are at the top of the food chain entirely because we work as groups, not individuals. The lions, tigers and bears are bigger and meaner than us. We are just the packs of ground apes that learned to throw sticks, not just swing from branches. The only time people will face facts and not just run back to their tribes, religions, ideologies, etc, is only when they have no alternative. Individualism is really only about climbing to the top of the hierarchy, not surviving alone out in the wild.
I also posted another article on Substack, that I'd put up on Medium about a year ago, that is a good example of how group think prevails over logic, no matter how bright the people are. In it, I point out that cosmology tries to use the premise of spacetime to argue that space can expand, but they totally ignore that in General Relativity, the basis for spacetime, the speed of light is a constant in any frame, so if space would expand, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, yet that would negate it causing redshift. I've argued professional cosmologists on this and they only drop the discussion, because they can't argue it. So I said the James Webb Space Telescope would keep finding ever older and further galaxies, which it has, but the Big Bang Theory cannot be falsified, only patched.
So that's why I don't bother trying to argue history or politics with most people. Just figure out the realities and try to help them come to terms with it, when they run out of other options.
As I say, people want answers, not truths. That's why there are so many priests and politicians, while the philosophers are intellectually neutered and confined to the back alleys of academia, to beat the same old ideas over and over.
I'LL MAKE TWO POSTS. ONE GENERAL, AND ONE FOCUSED ON OUR CONVERSATION.
Purpose
Some say that there is no purpose to life, Others swear by supporting their religion as their main purpose. I am sure there are rewards from both ways of looking at it. But I think that we can impute a purpose for everyone.
1. I want to start with some very broad generalizations, to see where they lead. So please don't bother looking for exceptions.
Mankind's "doing" is purposed to support his needs. Therefore man's thinking and talking are also purposed to fulfill his needs. My needs might already be fulfilled. Then my thinking and talking, (and doing) are to ensure that nobody moves to erode this fulfillment.
The big problem comes when my needs have been fulfilled at the expense of somebody else. Then my thinking and talking are to deny this with all of my possible might. This group has many topics which are considered "no-go-zones", which is a major part of their denial. So we have two major groups, (see Marx), those that are underprivileged, who's thinking and talking are all about justice and righting these wrongs. And those who are already well-off (or medium well-off), who think the status quo is good for everyone, (if you just apply yourself). They want to talk about endless diversions. They have thousands of interests that they will try to engage with you, and yes, they are interesting.
2. Many people might not understand what I am inferring, so I'll make a few definitions. Ancient man first raided, (stole surpluses), then they traded. I am sure Asian people traded, but I don't know about them, so I will talk about the West. Europeans were early traders (and raiders), after the Crusades. Surpluses of wealth came out of this trade, and out of that developed the "reasoning behind capital". Basically it is simple; "Don't spend it, but make it grow". This is the origin of today's capitalism. Europe is a land of light skinned peoples, so we can call this commercialism the "white man's heritage".
A good portion of these Europeans, "white men", built their capital by any means deemed legal at the time, and on through the ages. This included trading, stealing, colonialism, enslavement of non-whites, and any kind of oppression or genocide that they could conceive of for outsiders. Their prime means were the high investments in the technology of weapons, so they could easily dominate the world.
If you live in the west, or work with western corporations, you live under white-man's privilege, no matter what the color of your skin. (Probably everyone reading this blog.) You might say that was yesterday, and today it is different. I'll just give one example:
The west believes in free trade. For those countries that have import duties, the US will force their markets open. That means the west will sell all of its surplus product, and the importer will be denied the opportunity to make those products for themselves, (or grow that food). The net effect is that the west exports primarily its unemployment, and in the second priority, some products. The importer suffers the same unemployment that the west has avoided, and maybe more.
No matter what sector your work in the west, your business benefits by the vibrant economy of (a more) full employment.
3. So now we have two groups and two ranges of topics. Both these groups use humor. The Have-Not's use humor as irony, and relief from what is not working in their lives. They say that there can be a comical nature of something, or word pictures can provide amusement, appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous, or a sudden unpredictable, or unreasoning inclination, an incongruous quality causing amusement.
I would have to write another post to analyze what is humor, but basically if our government leaders do something that even a high-schooler knows will not work, we can laugh at them for being so stupid.
BUT REALLY THEY ARE NOT STUPID, WE ARE THE STUPID ONES. Because we expect that they should be doing something for our benefit (for society), when they work only for the oligarchs that pay them and put them into office.
The other group, the "Have's", uses humor both to denigrate the Have-Not's, when talking among themselves, and to divert the have-not's attention from the inequality that is growing like a tidal-wave.
4. So if we are to engage together here in a dialog, which ranges of topics should we consider? Should we talk about that part of the world that doesn't favor peoples needs and lifestyles, and why? Should we talk about all the myriad of diversions and interests, and justify that they are beautiful scientific discussion (which they no doubt are)? Or should we just stick with humor and see if we can spend the rest of our days laughing among ourselves, and at everyone else who are too dumb to laugh like we do?
I suggest that whatever we talk about, we need to make judgments about the parameters that we come up with. Those judgements (or choice points), need to have a benchmark of comparison. We may not agree on our topics, nor on our conclusions, but it would be a head start if we could agree on some benchmarks of judgement.
Most people use the benchmark of "the truth". But of course we won't agree on that, so let's find something else. Again, my suggestion; but let's say that the human lives in a society, so whatever is good for me, but not damaging for society, (nor nature), could be our choice points.
In other words we examine the pretty-clear trajectory that a certain belief will put us on, and imagine what ends will result from behaving in that way. Please notice that I did not say we should "fix the world", but I only said we shouldn't damage society (or nature), nor be sucking someone else's blood.
CAN WE AGREE ON THIS STANDARD? That will make a big difference in our conclusions.
5. Notice in 4., I have moved away from asserting what is the "truth", (for me). All the truths down through the ages are now the basis of jokes. I think that our truths will suffer the same hilarious fate.
So I suggest the same process we discovered in #4. That in lieu of the truth, we always use our probable future trajectory, (whether personal or collective), for adopting beliefs or making decisions. We do have stated objectives, or we do know where we want to go, so is that trajectory (based on our truth) counterproductive to these objectives? If so, DON'T ADOPT IT.
6. I have said that false-cause always undermines the situation to be worse, or that there are ample unintended side-effects. False cause comes from our imperfect understanding of the circumstances, and from our distorted points of view. Humans have a limited window of observation, even with instrumentation, because we have evolved the tools for our survival in simpler times.
One of our distortions is our erroneous view of time and time-lines. Probably most people will admit that there is no place called yesterday, nor no place where the future is now residing and is on its way to join our present time. Both these concepts are based on our memory capacity, the past directly on memory, (and written histories), and the future as a projection of the past trajectories, again from our memory. But yet we are fully immersed in talking through the shorthand of past and future, like they are the essence of progression and change.
Past - Present - and Future seems linear. Hence we search each sequence for a linear cause and effect, which may be the furthest thing from reality. One alternative might be that related things arise together. Then there is no cause and there is no effect. People want a "beginning" to everything imaginable. What does that search (or invention) give to you? I say, only false cause, and all the resulting problems that we are now living through.
ALLOW MYSTERY into you life.
7. So with our hyper-resolve to find cause and effect, with all the possible misconceptions, of course everything seems very, very complicated.
In fact, with very little research into the conventional wisdom about problems, you can list reams of factors that have to be considered. It is the mal-working of mathematical models. At first they don't fully describe the situation. So they need a patch. A patch is another side formula that takes care of that perceived extra movement. That side formula requires more variables (unknowns to solve for), which are considered as additional "degrees of freedom".
Wow, it gets complicated fast. But with "super-computers" you can solve for dozens of variables in some reasonable time. Most typically you get dozens of solutions too, but then you can choose the ones that make the most sense, (or those that make the most money for your benefactors).
If many related things were seen as arising together, in a greater matrix of relationships, perhaps many things could be simplified. That is only one way that I propose, but I don't know the greater workings of the universe. We could seek to:
SIMPLIFY EVERYTHING THAT WE TALK ABOUT. At least to the best of our ability, and leave mystery where it seems going toward the intractable.
8. That brings us to our two groups, Haves, and Have-Not's. I propose that the Have's, in order to avoid any concrete action that will denigrate their privilege, will always try to complicate everything. If really forced into action, they may choose one of the inconsequential factors to work on, and then say, "see, we spent all that money trying to do some good, but it just doesn't work. What we have now is the best that we can do."
AT LEAST THOSE ARE MOTIVES TO WATCH FOR IN OUR ARGUMENTATION.
Let's do a survey of our conversation so far. We might as well start at the beginning, with the original post. In it you wrote about 42 paragraphs, depending on how you count them. (And I certainly do appreciate this about your writing style, to divide subjects with appropriate spacing.)
Of course I cannot quickly come to grips with 42 ideas, and maintain a coherent argument that arrives at a point of action. I will make some quick and arbitrary categorizations about your original written ideas to make my point. (And of course I agree with a lot of them or otherwise I would not be conversing with you.)
Categories:
Humor 2, Intractable Complications 2, Societal Malfunction 4, Neutral Statements 8, Truths 17 (quite a few need clarification), Things I Disagree (untruths) 5, Added complexity, non-sequitur example 1, Paradox 3.
So I have to ask: Is this a conversation to get somewhere, for a result? (small or large). Or is this a conversation to obfuscate, and prove that there is no possible improvement? Of course I don't mean to level any kind of accusations, but more to caution that a message can be crafted to encourage an action point of view. Actually you had some statements of simplification for the whole thing like:
"Various forms of public commons and public works would be a useful method of establishing a healthy society."
There were a couple of these "like-statements". Then the next step would be to propose some possibilities how they maybe could (legally) be put into action. Legally means within the current framework, and not necessitating a revolution nor a coup.
Other topics could be discussed in new posts, for instance; "Hurt is a signal, like pleasure. It has to be kept in context. Lessons learned are those connected to the context. Stories are best kept in context, if you want to learn from them and not be controlled by them." Do you just mean the circumstances where they occurred? New post please. I use the word "context" a lot, but in a certain definition.
Another is contradiction (in language): where you say; "The field is not divided, but there are always counter effects. No up without down, no good without bad, no attraction without repulsion." I suggested before to write a post about Yin and Yang.
Thank you for the effort put into understand where I seem to be coming from.
While you do raise a lot of issues and questions, you seem to close with a final question of where I might being going with this, or am I really going anywhere.
Which I suppose I have stated, but maybe not so clearly.
The fact is that human civilization is an enormous process and has overwhelming momentum. Even those riding the very top of this wave don't control it, they simply are most effective at managing and manipulating it.
Yet it should also be evident that this wave, especially what is referred to as the West, that is the US and Canada, as well as much of Europe and various other countries pulled into this orbit, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, are about to stumble and fall. Knowing enough about debt since I was 20, when Reagan was elected in 80, I understood that while the party might be monumental, the hangover will equally unforgettable.
We have hollowed out our society, socially, educationally, politically, economically, financially, internationally, to the point the problems are starting to go parabolic.
The problem with bullshitting is that once you start using it to avoid the basic problems and up and downs of life, the willpower to recover quickly evaporates. Especially when it is an entire society and not just an individual, or a small group, where those outside serve as a counter-example.
Consequently I have spent my life trying to figure out what reality is, if you prefer that term over truth.
It's like sitting up in the cheap seats. You might not be down close to the action, but you can better see the whole field.
As such, I'm not out to literally "save the world." I laugh at people who freak out about being banned and cancelled, because I've been banned and canceled my whole life. Before the internet, there wasn't anyone I knew who was interested in the things I found fascinating and on the internet, even the radicals seem to find me obnoxious, aka, too far out. Yet as I say in the second line of this essay, the cracks go to the foundations. Most likely when it crashes, more patches will be applied to the culture and we will go back to some sort of feudalism.
But I'm going to just keep pointing why our anthropomorphization of our reality seriously overlooks a lot of basic, foundational issues. From the basic nature of time, to the basic nature of money.
I'm not going to yell and pound my fist on the table, or my head on the wall, nor am I going to quit my day job, (currently repairing old farm machinery, but most of my life, working with race horses and a fair amount of farming) and go try to be a professional writer or other form of social influencer. My tolerance for aggravation is just not that great. So I spend my free time reading and occasionally writing.
Hello John, and thanks for all this conversation. Yes, I like writing, but not necessarily for the other. Surely it's for me. Bouncing ideas off of another is a discovery process that is deeper than individual inspirations. In other words, I am not trying to be an influencer, but merely to grow in my own understanding. Of course I suggest that you write more, just to see where it takes you. Engagement can open many unanticipated doors. We don't know what will come of it.
I have never found you obnoxious nor "too far out". Have you mellowed in these years? I actually think you are very respectful. (I often worry that I am not always coming from respect, but I do try.)
I must be skeptical of so-called authority. From all fields. Authorities have a career path, to be so intensely into their field. Thus they have a job and are paid. Who pays them and what does that company or institution believe in? That says it all to me. Only you and I, amateurs, can be honest.
For the most part I do not tell others what to believe or how to solve personal or communal problems. Why should they believe me, since I am not an authority? So my thrust is to investigate what limits people in making their own discoveries. (like unneeded complications). If anything I could be a coach on how to see deeper into your own circumstances. As your vision penetrates, alternative actions will become apparent, then I could coach on how to have the courage to try one. That's easy, just hold it as an experiment, and measure the results.
This kind of life is incremental. The only benchmark is a little bit more understanding than yesterday.
I think this thread is pretty well wrapped up. We could talk about horses or my study of music. But not here. I hope that we get into another discussion. Regards
I do write, but mostly as comments on others pages, since there is more feedback possible on more popular and frequently updated sites, than my own occasional postings.
Which will eventually converge, as current political convulsions give way to the after effects.
As for being banned, I seem to push Overton windows. Naked Capitalism has banned me for questioning modern monetary theory. That it was just another name for monetizing everything. Yves called me a troll.
Moon of Alabama banned me, though I'm not quite sure. It seemed to be about my tendency to look big picture and B didn't approve. He's German, so maybe a control issue.
Obviously I've been banned by a lot of science sites, though I have to give a shout out to https://tritonstation.com. Stacy has tolerated my questioning of BBT in various posts relating to the larger cosmological picture.
I would also say I seem to be on Wordpress's list of undesirables, going back to various philosophy related sites, because it usually just won't let me through. I had to email Stacy directly, to be able to post in Triton Station and even then, it won't keep me signed in and I get referred back to a sign in page every time.
Well I would describe myself as more a horse listener, than a horse whisperer, but my musical talents are shriveled from lack of use.
I like to say, my appreciation for physics comes from not getting too hurt, too often. Rather than classrooms and books.
As for formal schooling, I avoided it with a passion. The last high school I went to, they gave me 3 and a half credits for work experience, to let me graduate.
Life may be complicated, (many factors interconnected or arising together), but we want the simple (synthetic) answers. Dealing with problems through false cause is likely to make them worse. And most people can’t change the situation even if they knew the real reasons. And those who have the power prefer it the way things are, since it's their power that has set these parameters.
For many, it is not that easy to keep their own little shell in order. Others are busy making a "room-addition" on it. Public servants get a salary, let them do their job and fix the world, at least fix the community, (for me).
To be alive, we count on our "conscious contact" as our connection to our surroundings, to navigate our world, gathering resources and avoid dangers. The vital part if this navigation is based on that part of mind called our memory, which is the basis of recognition, (recognizing the resources and the dangers). Memory is also the way that we recognize the sequence of time. Something is there in memory, but it is not present now? Or it had a duration, and then it stopped. Where did it go, into the past? (Well really I don't know the "stuff of the past", so I will just say that it is there in the memory, and then we surmise something we call the past.) Not all living beings have a memory, so not all living beings live in time.
That is about the human perception of time. I am not saying that is all there is to time. If there is matter, there must be energy, because, (as far as I know), matter is always in motion, with vibration). To have motion you must have time, and of course you must have space to move from here to there.
If there is a "Spirit World" not made of matter, there is no motion, no space, and no time. It is inert. Probably it is only made of "Principles". To me, those principles seem to be a human creation, or at least a human interpretation, and an anthropomorphism. Anyway it is inert, until we proscribe another principle to it. Having no time, there is no hurry to get there. (In other words, don't worry that you'll be late, you'll get there with plenty of time to spare.)
Causality comes through the adoption of time and it is also dependent upon memory. Without memory, events arise and fall, but they are not tied to any other thing. Energy creates patterns that coalesce and dissolve. The important thing to acknowledge is that human perception easily gets cluttered. So we have to focus; we parse the geosphere and we focus on the signal and reject what we call the noise. But it is all reality.
Therefore Human perception is for the most part linear, one important thing at a time, and that is (for the most part) the basis of our science. Causality starts out as linear, our concept of past to present. We may add a few sideways arrivals as patches. So energy patterns that coalesce and dissolve may well be part of a giant network that is arising and cohabitating together, unknown to our linear way of perceiving. Ignoring that possibility takes us right into false cause. We live in a limited window of perceptual ability, and that seems to serve us, but a dash of humility about our knowledge of "truth" is a good spice to add to our recipe.
Some say that consciousness flows from past to future and thoughts and emotions give it form and content. I would define consciousness not as a "thing" that can move in space and time. It is an inert perceptual realm-of-possibility, that can be filled and emptied, and the contents are perceptions, thoughts and emotions, really just memories composed of words. There may be raw images and sequences, but by now they all have words attached to them. At least for everyone reading this.
Consciousness is an empty boxcar. It is filled with worded memories.
I said that our limited window serves us, so scientists, politicians, (everyone) focuses on different shorthand explanations that skip over what seems intractable. They even go into the abstract , but avoid the middle, where life is. Good vs Evil is one of most widely accepted shorthands. It is really probably pretty simple, and it's based on conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is a polite way to say corruption. Scientists and thinkers have paid jobs. That is enough reason to ignore the obvious.
Desire is just about strip-mining society, to steal from the collective. Nobody will mind and everyone is doing it. (Even through tax avoidance.) How long can it last? Just get while the getting is good. What sets people against each other is not race or religion. It is the lack of prosperity. We live in a system that equates my prosperity with your subservience. I can be very clear about that, (in another discussion). I am not going to tell you what would be a better system. That is your life-time work. Own it.
Keep in mind that when events dissolve, they shed the constituent energy off in all directions, becoming part of succeeding events. There is no one line, but endless networking.
I understand the idea of consciousness as beyond physical, thus form and energy, but like energy, it is only known by the forms it expresses. You say the main aspect is memory, but how is the memory sustained/recorded? If there is no physical aspect.
(Do you know what "floaters" are?)
Like energy, consciousness is always pushing its bounds, which is curiosity, which is a form of desire, to know. Obviously desire run amok is greed, but it is the function of thought to understand when the good turns to bad, to pass judgement. Moderation. Set limits, definitions.
We have become obsessed with the competition over the cooperation, but that's a consequence of viewing ideals as absolutes. One point I didn't make in this essay is that a spiritual absolute would logically be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it. To the Ancients, monotheism was monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Family as godhead. The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion, as the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic, to validate The Big Guy Rules. When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics.
The problem left is the long shadow of God has come to define Western thought. That the ideal is absolute. Consequently every village totem has to be universal, or it is dismissed as relativistic. There can be no balance, no yin and yang. It can only be about the Big Guy who sets the rules. There are multitudes of ideals; truth, beauty, platonic forms. When every school of thought insists its brand is the only, the result is endless conflict and no healing.
The fact is that everything between the absolute and the infinite is relational and morality is obviously not an absolute, given how little there often seems to be. It has to be learned the hard way. Karma, The Golden Rule, what goes round, comes round. More yin and yang, than God Almighty.
We can discuss things on many levels. I like when you look at the basics (human perception and such). Lots of limitations could be (are) hidden there.
I want to explore some of your many metaphors which I find helpful for understanding. So I hope it is OK to ask some questions. One way to ask questions is to propose some alternatives. I am not married to any of these alternatives, but I would like to hold them up to the light.
(First, I think to go off subject, so I will get it out of the way now, the floaters I know about are loose black things that move around in my eye.)
____________
1. Things dissolve, but their elements are still here, (the energy component is off somewhere, and probably just heat). So we are in the habit of saying they constitute succeeding events. Eventually, but not in our lifetime. For now they are just tiny elemental particles, or fertilizer, and not the ready raw materials for something on the human scale.
It is memory that makes us human, the ability to recognize, communicate, and act accordingly. Where memory resides is a curiosity, but not an essential to get on with life. If I can conceive of a question, (where's memory?), someone is tempted to make up an answer. I can conceive of a lot of dumb (inconsequential) questions. Does that mean we should rely on the wide panoply of made up answers? The point is, there is the unknown, and we should honor it.
There will always be the unknown, except for those people who think there is an edge to the universe. Society is proof positive that what we know now, DOES NOT WORK. The myth is that we are not practicing what we know "hard enough". Double down. Where then is the probable solution to our collective hurt?
It is in the unknown. And were is that? Where we haven't been looking before. Why didn't we look there? Because our world view and our human instrument doesn't seem to contain that realm of possibility.
2. Last time I proposed that the human focus gets easily cluttered. There are multi-tasker's out there, but how many things can they concentrate on, and how does it befuddle the other things they are supposed to be doing. (Multi-tasking is for robotic level tasks.) Everything a robot does is repetition.
I am not a scientist, so I could ask many things to scientists. I suggested that focusing on one thing at a time creates a time-line, which reinforce the idea of past - present - and future. P.P.&F. create cause and effect. Without time there is no sequence. Our concept of time is pretty well linear. We prefer the synthetic quick answers, so hopefully cause and effect is linear also. That is, one cause creates that one effect, (with some variations). That is constantly where we are looking, and any other model is mostly beyond our conception.
3. To understand the technique of looking into the unknown, you have to investigate the basic protective measures of the human instrument. Events or circumstances don't cause our feeling of uneasiness (fear), but our explanations are the cause of our emotions. (Please don't try to look for the exceptions, they are probably numerous and they are meaningless for my point.) The proof is in all the (millions of) world views and creation stories throughout history that have eased people's fear. We have had a good laugh at every one of them, EXCEPT OUR OWN. About that we are true believers.
Hence the fervent drive to explain everything, because without that explanation we are uneasy. It is a built-in protective mechanism. It is a robotic neural pattern that has served us. We can't explain everything away, but just our knowing (whatever we invent) is enough comforting. But now at a different level of rationality, we know that we don't have to follow those primal feelings. I am not saying that rationality will discover the unknown. I am saying that rationality will envision the trajectory that each belief structure will force upon us. If that trajectory leads where we do not want to go, I will override that emotional response.
4. One of your metaphors is that a spiritual absolute would logically be the essence of sentience, from which we rise; and not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
The former makes a lot more sense that the latter, because its trajectory is open for discovery. Going back to my point #3., it is also an explanation that eases the feeling of unknowing. Do we need it? True openness could also consider no spiritual absolute and no essence of sentience. That's not a denial. I am not discarding essence, but I am not adopting it either. I am open to have the direct experience.
I think that I WILL have a direct experience, but only when it comes, and it's not that I can make-it-up or force it.
5. Where does that leave us?
Memory creates the human experience of time and space, (no matter where that memory resides).
Time and space equates to cause and effect. The vast majority considers it is for the most part linear.
Some questions are not well thought out and best not addressed.
Quick truisms, like the recycling of the material world, are often not within our life-span, (so they're irrelevant)
All of the old is well tested and found deficient. Even bibles have not changed the world, (enough).
The new resides in the unknown. It is uncomfortable and we are not used to looking into it.
If we make a reasonable explanation for what is now a mystery, we may think we got something.
Maybe that explanation traps us into the conventional, and it's better left open.
Most desire to know is synthetic, just a patchwork on emotional upsurges.
(Some desire could also be more authentic).
At a certain point we don't have to follow feelings, but we can trump them to further our objectives.
If you have reservations about any of these points, please let me know. Maybe this is not the best way to look at it?
Topics like Yin and Yang are very big - OTHER - discussions, and I hope to be able to consider them with you some day. (Write a new post.) THANKS for these considerations.
The mind experiences. Yet what is the line, the distinction between the experience and what is doing the experiencing? As I point out, the consciousness goes one way as the events go the other way.
Think of it in terms of a plant. The growth ring of a tree expands out, pushing the bark out, as it generated rings. Or just the seed breaking through its husk. Or think of one generation as the husk of the next generation. Each peeling away, leaving the next to expand out. The growth goes to the future, as the husks of the previous go to the past.
Now put this in terms of the mind. Normally the ideas that we hang onto and remember are the ones we keep building on and patching where there are gaps. Rather than letting new ideas bubble up through the gaps, like grass through the concrete.
So sit back even further and just let the mind sense.
Remember, reality is energy. Mass/matter is an effect of interacting forces. There is no tiniest atom or string. So ideas are like mass or matter. They are interactions of forces. Yet our reality is this material world we live in. Can it really be a big Truman Show? What if your mind sensed the energy and not just the patterns expressed?
Those little flat devices in our pockets can transmit a lot of information in a little bit of radio waves, but we have been evolving in a sea of electromagnetic energy for billions of years. Can we look into the wiring?
Which gets to the floaters.
Once when I was a child, I was laying on the porch, watching this ant. When it stopped, like it sensed something. Then I saw this tiny cone of awareness, waving around with its antennae. That's how I first noticed floaters. As projections of consciousness. It's gotten a lot more complex since.
For one thing, as you say, they are disruptions in our vision. Some are internal expressions and nodes in fields and planes of perception. Like when a batch of them will move like they are stuck on a surface, yet that surface was like a plane of glass you were looking through, until the floaters on it made it separate from your consciousness. Like that husk peeling away, or a layer of skin peeling away, with the fresh growing up and pushing it away, like grass pushing up through the concrete.
The floaters are an endless topic, but you really have to delve into those parts of your mind. Driving is when they are most apparent to me, as everyone is focused on the road in front of them. It becomes a bit of a dance, as their awareness attracts and repels, the directions they are going and the things they want to miss, as yours navigate through, finding patterns in the situation reflective of those layers in your mind, such that you begin to understand how there is no real line between what's inside and that's outside. That you are a kaleidoscope of views, when not focused on the one view you take to get you through. There are waves and layering and all sorts of other patterns to the energy.
The classic heart shape is a floater that's glowing slightly red, with a line running directly through it, pulling it toward you. The line presumably Cupid's arrow.
When you really get lost in it, things like having a floater will go through that surface and become a bug flying away on the outside.
The fact is, we are these beings on the surface of this orb and we are just one little ripple in the ocean. But we are still part of the ocean.
Life is like a sentence. The end is just punctuation. What matters is how well you tie the rest of the story together and how well you are tied into the story.
In general I do like to consider the basics, at least for a moment to see what may be hiding there. But if as you say, all the ideas that I have written below are an "interaction of forces", that is the great equalizer. Now every distinction becomes that one interaction; and thus they are all nothing. It is relaxing though, because now there is nowhere to go with them, no possible duty implied.
Sometimes you say "Lots of angles", "Lots of points to consider". Please don't worry about it, I will always try to summarize, and land on a point at the end. I do try to focus, but it often gets away from me. (I quote some of your phrases to relate to what you said.) Please see if I quote them out of context?
1. We live in a human network. There may be two major topics for discussion:
One is to investigate the "Collective Hurt", those parts of life which are not working for everyone.
The other topic range is to divert ourselves from thinking about the collective hurt, and thus ignore its injustice, (it feels better). Or we concentrate only on improving our own lives, often to the detriment of the rest of the world. But we don't consider if our "exported hurt" rebounds back onto us, and is the basic cause of our intractability.
An example of exported hurt is like the markets forced open, whereby we can sell all of our surplus products ensuring our full employment. While the receiving entity is denied the employment opportunity to make those "toasters" for themselves. They remain unemployed. The idea that everybody sells what they are best at making and we're all happy, is complete and utter nonsense.
2. A third topic for discussion could be those floaters that pop through the glass ceiling and posit a new conjecture, (if it is not quickly repressed). Watching that dismissal mechanism is vital, "the things that they want to miss", so you really have to delve into those parts of your mind with an openness.
So by floaters you must refer to those "tiny cones of awareness that project consciousness". Where do they project it to? They project it through the glass ceiling of your present verbal context, of your current realm of possibilities. They project it beyond your present conventional wisdom. Nothing about that can be a new creation, it is only a breakthrough into an arena that you haven't allowed yourself to consider. The ant expanded its boundaries past its instinctive to-do list, and sensed a field of external observation.
3. Many people are devoted to exploring the distinction between the experience and who or what is doing the experiencing. They are called "Spiritual Seekers". After the concentration of decades, they determine that what is experiencing is not an entity, but a field of perception. They are merely the possibility to experience, but not an individual apart from that possibility. Their personal being was a construct, not a reality, it's not existential. Therefore the field is a wholeness, and not divided into a you and a me.
They claim that now they honor the apparent-parts more, because they know it is really oneness. But yet there is no-one there. So there is no actor that can confront the collective hurt, (that in society, which doesn't work). The opt-out is that the "I" is not real, so the collective hurt is not real either. I see it as an inert place to stand, designed only to avoid my personal automatic emotional response. There are better was to do it. It is kind of like the new sex crazes, where they cut off their most important tool to live a non-human experience.
Usually we try to master our emotions to become more empowered actors, to have an uninterrupted focus and to get productive things done. These seeker people only want personal comfort without emotional upsets, and to be relieved of all responsibility for the collective, on which they nurse continually.
I don't see them as a contribution. I see knowing more about who is experiencing as inconsequential. Or in the very least it is highly misused.
4. One factor that seems to bode ill for the collective hurt is that these days the one generation is not much of the husk of the next generation. There is a growing separation (I think) where the young are moving further and further away from their roots. ("Who needs roots"? "I am free.") True they keep building, patching and verifying their pre-existing mental constructs, but it is all authored from some other, far removed center, far from their original origin, and certainly not from themselves. Orderly progression has been overridden.
I am saying that you can experience floaters every week or every day, if you keep one part of your attention on your verbal context around each situation. "What am I telling myself about this today?" I call it self-talk, and it never ceases. Well, you can call it waves and patterns of energy, or just raw energy before any patterns. That completely mystifies it and makes it useless. I'd say keep one eye on the content, the story that you're telling yourself. We're all tied into that story and definitely limited by it. What may matter the most is to expand that story to let more of the world into it. (It is a day by day process.)
5. So where does that leave us?
Before I had said that it is memory that makes us human. (However and wherever it may work).
I said that memory allows the human perception of time, and also that time is real and a part of matter/energy.
I said that our experience of the progression of time makes us interpret many things as a linear progression. I had zero ideas of getting humans to give up the idea of progression.
But still I do not say, "that a thing recedes into the past and this other is projected into the future". That is not time. Time is real, and past and future may be a shorthand, but they are not existential. It's memory in the present tense in both directions.
That false shorthand is a very big part of our blinders. That is my sense, without a huge experience of the rewards from avoiding this misconception. I am no expert, but I just don't indulge it.
____________
I am quite convinced that all of us are directed by automatic emotional responses. Some people's drive is to coast through life with only positive emotions. What a zig-zag path avoiding all upset. Lots of no-go zones.
Emotions are the result of a difference between our explanations, and our perceived circumstances. (Please don't busy yourself looking for exceptions.) My statement will make a huge difference in your life.
While we often cannot control our circumstance, we can always author our explanation. Therefore we can definitely tame emotions, and find equanimity.
Perhaps most people think equanimity is inert, a la-la land, but it is the perfect balance that can best react to any surprise. It depends on if you seek equanimity through repression, or through insight. The repression route makes you a dullard. But when you have it through insight you can let anything run, because you know the home address of peace of mind.
True openness (seeing all the floaters), is in the space equanimity.
I grew up on a farm, as a younger child and found more room on the nature side of the equation, than the culture side. So I would fight the voice in my head and make it go run circles while I did something else. It would slow the connections between sense and action. I had lots of help. My siblings would ignore my little voice as well. I found the less connected you are to the focal point in the center, the broader the range of vision otherwise. More the network, than the node.
Hurt is a signal, like pleasure. It has to be kept in context. Lessons learned are those connected to context. Stories are best kept in context, if you want to learn from them and not be controlled by them.
My knowledge of physics comes from trying not to get too hurt, too often. Much trial and error and few abstractions.
Think of time like a movie. The light goes from one frame to the next, past to future, as it is present, while the frames flash up and are gone, future to past. As consciousness goes from one thought to the next, as the thoughts come and go. It has to be both directions, not just one. It doesn't make sense as one, because there would be nothing to relate it too. If both consciousness and a thought always moved together, there would only be one thought and nothing to relate it to.
The young often think they are free, but after they have been around a while, they realize that freedom was just a lack of knowledge of the world and it they don't understand the world, they find themselves very unfree, because there are so many out there, just looking for the young and dumb.
Freedom is knowing how to look for the holes in the walls and stories, that are meant to bind them. The youth of this generation will find they were more pawns in some larger game. Some is seed, the rest is fertilizer. Trial and error.
The field is not divided, but there are always counter effects. No up without down, no good without bad, no attraction without repulsion. One and oneness are not the same. One is a node, while oneness is the connectivity of the network. Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields, galaxies and space. Synchronization spirals in, toward the black hole in the middle. Harmonization radiates out, across infinity, as black body radiation.
Space is equilibrium and infinity. The frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the unmoving void of absolute zero. Like the number line, from zero to infinity.
Three dimensions are just a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude.
Equanimity is surfing the wave. Ups and downs. Being part of your world. One in the oneness. Energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Motor and steering. Desire and judgement.
Good morning John, I still think that there is life in this discussion thread. I am just taking a break. If you have anything further to add, please do. I will consider all, when I come back with comments.
Excellent observation, however, like my posts, your musing is beyond the intellectual reach of most public schooled people. They can't grasp it, they just can't. If its not something shiny, or flashing dangling in their faces they can't factor it. Now if its something that requires actual critical mental processing, something that requires pragmatic deduction, then they are lost. They shut down. Nothing currently plaguing society would be possible if not for the dummies of academia, and its disciples of public school, who parrot the academic mantras. Even on this platform. There is a small cadre of intellectuals, but most are satisfied to repeat the popular topics of the day, never grinding down into the reality of it all, or the root causes of their torment.
"With slavery, we shipped the labor here, but with colonialism, we can just ship the work there." Most people don't grasp the fact that "slavery" was not imported Africans, but rather American Negro Indians who were already here. The first "slaves" in colonies were Pre-Colonial Whites and American Negro Indians. The colonies supported themselves by enslaving the local populations of Indians captured in Wars (King Phillips War). It was rinse and repeat, all over New England. Only a total of 92000 "Africans" were brought here in 400 years. In fact, there was so many Negro Indians that they were captured and shipped out. They were shipped to the Islands, Europe and they even sent them to Africa (Liberia), any place to lower the populations. The ones who remained were re-classified, over generations, via census records, from Indians, to Indians not taxed, free people of color, mulatto, octroon, quadroon, creole, negro, black and now "african." (They tried that with my family, but we had the documents) From Ben Franklin onward the plan has always been to get rid of us, steal our estates, steal our land and change us from aboriginal Indians into foreign Africans. Slavery as espoused by academia is a lie. The "out of africa" theory was created by a Eastern European, Melville Herkovitz, who taught the lies to academia. "Roots" was a fraud, a book stolen by Alex Haley from a White author. He was sued and he settled, the judge calling it a "hoax." History is a lie, agreed upon. Regards.
That all could very well be true, given just how deep the bullshit is piled. The problem isn't enlightening people, but simply steering them in a more positive direction.
I spent my life around more race horses and cattle, both dairy and beef, than people, so I don't have anything against people as herds. While our culture is all about the individual, the fact is that people are at the top of the food chain entirely because we work as groups, not individuals. The lions, tigers and bears are bigger and meaner than us. We are just the packs of ground apes that learned to throw sticks, not just swing from branches. The only time people will face facts and not just run back to their tribes, religions, ideologies, etc, is only when they have no alternative. Individualism is really only about climbing to the top of the hierarchy, not surviving alone out in the wild.
I also posted another article on Substack, that I'd put up on Medium about a year ago, that is a good example of how group think prevails over logic, no matter how bright the people are. In it, I point out that cosmology tries to use the premise of spacetime to argue that space can expand, but they totally ignore that in General Relativity, the basis for spacetime, the speed of light is a constant in any frame, so if space would expand, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, yet that would negate it causing redshift. I've argued professional cosmologists on this and they only drop the discussion, because they can't argue it. So I said the James Webb Space Telescope would keep finding ever older and further galaxies, which it has, but the Big Bang Theory cannot be falsified, only patched.
So that's why I don't bother trying to argue history or politics with most people. Just figure out the realities and try to help them come to terms with it, when they run out of other options.
As I say, people want answers, not truths. That's why there are so many priests and politicians, while the philosophers are intellectually neutered and confined to the back alleys of academia, to beat the same old ideas over and over.
I'LL MAKE TWO POSTS. ONE GENERAL, AND ONE FOCUSED ON OUR CONVERSATION.
Purpose
Some say that there is no purpose to life, Others swear by supporting their religion as their main purpose. I am sure there are rewards from both ways of looking at it. But I think that we can impute a purpose for everyone.
1. I want to start with some very broad generalizations, to see where they lead. So please don't bother looking for exceptions.
Mankind's "doing" is purposed to support his needs. Therefore man's thinking and talking are also purposed to fulfill his needs. My needs might already be fulfilled. Then my thinking and talking, (and doing) are to ensure that nobody moves to erode this fulfillment.
The big problem comes when my needs have been fulfilled at the expense of somebody else. Then my thinking and talking are to deny this with all of my possible might. This group has many topics which are considered "no-go-zones", which is a major part of their denial. So we have two major groups, (see Marx), those that are underprivileged, who's thinking and talking are all about justice and righting these wrongs. And those who are already well-off (or medium well-off), who think the status quo is good for everyone, (if you just apply yourself). They want to talk about endless diversions. They have thousands of interests that they will try to engage with you, and yes, they are interesting.
2. Many people might not understand what I am inferring, so I'll make a few definitions. Ancient man first raided, (stole surpluses), then they traded. I am sure Asian people traded, but I don't know about them, so I will talk about the West. Europeans were early traders (and raiders), after the Crusades. Surpluses of wealth came out of this trade, and out of that developed the "reasoning behind capital". Basically it is simple; "Don't spend it, but make it grow". This is the origin of today's capitalism. Europe is a land of light skinned peoples, so we can call this commercialism the "white man's heritage".
A good portion of these Europeans, "white men", built their capital by any means deemed legal at the time, and on through the ages. This included trading, stealing, colonialism, enslavement of non-whites, and any kind of oppression or genocide that they could conceive of for outsiders. Their prime means were the high investments in the technology of weapons, so they could easily dominate the world.
If you live in the west, or work with western corporations, you live under white-man's privilege, no matter what the color of your skin. (Probably everyone reading this blog.) You might say that was yesterday, and today it is different. I'll just give one example:
The west believes in free trade. For those countries that have import duties, the US will force their markets open. That means the west will sell all of its surplus product, and the importer will be denied the opportunity to make those products for themselves, (or grow that food). The net effect is that the west exports primarily its unemployment, and in the second priority, some products. The importer suffers the same unemployment that the west has avoided, and maybe more.
No matter what sector your work in the west, your business benefits by the vibrant economy of (a more) full employment.
3. So now we have two groups and two ranges of topics. Both these groups use humor. The Have-Not's use humor as irony, and relief from what is not working in their lives. They say that there can be a comical nature of something, or word pictures can provide amusement, appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous, or a sudden unpredictable, or unreasoning inclination, an incongruous quality causing amusement.
I would have to write another post to analyze what is humor, but basically if our government leaders do something that even a high-schooler knows will not work, we can laugh at them for being so stupid.
BUT REALLY THEY ARE NOT STUPID, WE ARE THE STUPID ONES. Because we expect that they should be doing something for our benefit (for society), when they work only for the oligarchs that pay them and put them into office.
The other group, the "Have's", uses humor both to denigrate the Have-Not's, when talking among themselves, and to divert the have-not's attention from the inequality that is growing like a tidal-wave.
4. So if we are to engage together here in a dialog, which ranges of topics should we consider? Should we talk about that part of the world that doesn't favor peoples needs and lifestyles, and why? Should we talk about all the myriad of diversions and interests, and justify that they are beautiful scientific discussion (which they no doubt are)? Or should we just stick with humor and see if we can spend the rest of our days laughing among ourselves, and at everyone else who are too dumb to laugh like we do?
I suggest that whatever we talk about, we need to make judgments about the parameters that we come up with. Those judgements (or choice points), need to have a benchmark of comparison. We may not agree on our topics, nor on our conclusions, but it would be a head start if we could agree on some benchmarks of judgement.
Most people use the benchmark of "the truth". But of course we won't agree on that, so let's find something else. Again, my suggestion; but let's say that the human lives in a society, so whatever is good for me, but not damaging for society, (nor nature), could be our choice points.
In other words we examine the pretty-clear trajectory that a certain belief will put us on, and imagine what ends will result from behaving in that way. Please notice that I did not say we should "fix the world", but I only said we shouldn't damage society (or nature), nor be sucking someone else's blood.
CAN WE AGREE ON THIS STANDARD? That will make a big difference in our conclusions.
5. Notice in 4., I have moved away from asserting what is the "truth", (for me). All the truths down through the ages are now the basis of jokes. I think that our truths will suffer the same hilarious fate.
So I suggest the same process we discovered in #4. That in lieu of the truth, we always use our probable future trajectory, (whether personal or collective), for adopting beliefs or making decisions. We do have stated objectives, or we do know where we want to go, so is that trajectory (based on our truth) counterproductive to these objectives? If so, DON'T ADOPT IT.
6. I have said that false-cause always undermines the situation to be worse, or that there are ample unintended side-effects. False cause comes from our imperfect understanding of the circumstances, and from our distorted points of view. Humans have a limited window of observation, even with instrumentation, because we have evolved the tools for our survival in simpler times.
One of our distortions is our erroneous view of time and time-lines. Probably most people will admit that there is no place called yesterday, nor no place where the future is now residing and is on its way to join our present time. Both these concepts are based on our memory capacity, the past directly on memory, (and written histories), and the future as a projection of the past trajectories, again from our memory. But yet we are fully immersed in talking through the shorthand of past and future, like they are the essence of progression and change.
Past - Present - and Future seems linear. Hence we search each sequence for a linear cause and effect, which may be the furthest thing from reality. One alternative might be that related things arise together. Then there is no cause and there is no effect. People want a "beginning" to everything imaginable. What does that search (or invention) give to you? I say, only false cause, and all the resulting problems that we are now living through.
ALLOW MYSTERY into you life.
7. So with our hyper-resolve to find cause and effect, with all the possible misconceptions, of course everything seems very, very complicated.
In fact, with very little research into the conventional wisdom about problems, you can list reams of factors that have to be considered. It is the mal-working of mathematical models. At first they don't fully describe the situation. So they need a patch. A patch is another side formula that takes care of that perceived extra movement. That side formula requires more variables (unknowns to solve for), which are considered as additional "degrees of freedom".
Wow, it gets complicated fast. But with "super-computers" you can solve for dozens of variables in some reasonable time. Most typically you get dozens of solutions too, but then you can choose the ones that make the most sense, (or those that make the most money for your benefactors).
If many related things were seen as arising together, in a greater matrix of relationships, perhaps many things could be simplified. That is only one way that I propose, but I don't know the greater workings of the universe. We could seek to:
SIMPLIFY EVERYTHING THAT WE TALK ABOUT. At least to the best of our ability, and leave mystery where it seems going toward the intractable.
8. That brings us to our two groups, Haves, and Have-Not's. I propose that the Have's, in order to avoid any concrete action that will denigrate their privilege, will always try to complicate everything. If really forced into action, they may choose one of the inconsequential factors to work on, and then say, "see, we spent all that money trying to do some good, but it just doesn't work. What we have now is the best that we can do."
AT LEAST THOSE ARE MOTIVES TO WATCH FOR IN OUR ARGUMENTATION.
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Let's do a survey of our conversation so far. We might as well start at the beginning, with the original post. In it you wrote about 42 paragraphs, depending on how you count them. (And I certainly do appreciate this about your writing style, to divide subjects with appropriate spacing.)
Of course I cannot quickly come to grips with 42 ideas, and maintain a coherent argument that arrives at a point of action. I will make some quick and arbitrary categorizations about your original written ideas to make my point. (And of course I agree with a lot of them or otherwise I would not be conversing with you.)
Categories:
Humor 2, Intractable Complications 2, Societal Malfunction 4, Neutral Statements 8, Truths 17 (quite a few need clarification), Things I Disagree (untruths) 5, Added complexity, non-sequitur example 1, Paradox 3.
So I have to ask: Is this a conversation to get somewhere, for a result? (small or large). Or is this a conversation to obfuscate, and prove that there is no possible improvement? Of course I don't mean to level any kind of accusations, but more to caution that a message can be crafted to encourage an action point of view. Actually you had some statements of simplification for the whole thing like:
"Various forms of public commons and public works would be a useful method of establishing a healthy society."
There were a couple of these "like-statements". Then the next step would be to propose some possibilities how they maybe could (legally) be put into action. Legally means within the current framework, and not necessitating a revolution nor a coup.
Other topics could be discussed in new posts, for instance; "Hurt is a signal, like pleasure. It has to be kept in context. Lessons learned are those connected to the context. Stories are best kept in context, if you want to learn from them and not be controlled by them." Do you just mean the circumstances where they occurred? New post please. I use the word "context" a lot, but in a certain definition.
Another is contradiction (in language): where you say; "The field is not divided, but there are always counter effects. No up without down, no good without bad, no attraction without repulsion." I suggested before to write a post about Yin and Yang.
See what you think? Regards.
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Thank you for the effort put into understand where I seem to be coming from.
While you do raise a lot of issues and questions, you seem to close with a final question of where I might being going with this, or am I really going anywhere.
Which I suppose I have stated, but maybe not so clearly.
The fact is that human civilization is an enormous process and has overwhelming momentum. Even those riding the very top of this wave don't control it, they simply are most effective at managing and manipulating it.
Yet it should also be evident that this wave, especially what is referred to as the West, that is the US and Canada, as well as much of Europe and various other countries pulled into this orbit, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, are about to stumble and fall. Knowing enough about debt since I was 20, when Reagan was elected in 80, I understood that while the party might be monumental, the hangover will equally unforgettable.
We have hollowed out our society, socially, educationally, politically, economically, financially, internationally, to the point the problems are starting to go parabolic.
The problem with bullshitting is that once you start using it to avoid the basic problems and up and downs of life, the willpower to recover quickly evaporates. Especially when it is an entire society and not just an individual, or a small group, where those outside serve as a counter-example.
Consequently I have spent my life trying to figure out what reality is, if you prefer that term over truth.
It's like sitting up in the cheap seats. You might not be down close to the action, but you can better see the whole field.
As such, I'm not out to literally "save the world." I laugh at people who freak out about being banned and cancelled, because I've been banned and canceled my whole life. Before the internet, there wasn't anyone I knew who was interested in the things I found fascinating and on the internet, even the radicals seem to find me obnoxious, aka, too far out. Yet as I say in the second line of this essay, the cracks go to the foundations. Most likely when it crashes, more patches will be applied to the culture and we will go back to some sort of feudalism.
But I'm going to just keep pointing why our anthropomorphization of our reality seriously overlooks a lot of basic, foundational issues. From the basic nature of time, to the basic nature of money.
I'm not going to yell and pound my fist on the table, or my head on the wall, nor am I going to quit my day job, (currently repairing old farm machinery, but most of my life, working with race horses and a fair amount of farming) and go try to be a professional writer or other form of social influencer. My tolerance for aggravation is just not that great. So I spend my free time reading and occasionally writing.
Hello John, and thanks for all this conversation. Yes, I like writing, but not necessarily for the other. Surely it's for me. Bouncing ideas off of another is a discovery process that is deeper than individual inspirations. In other words, I am not trying to be an influencer, but merely to grow in my own understanding. Of course I suggest that you write more, just to see where it takes you. Engagement can open many unanticipated doors. We don't know what will come of it.
I have never found you obnoxious nor "too far out". Have you mellowed in these years? I actually think you are very respectful. (I often worry that I am not always coming from respect, but I do try.)
I must be skeptical of so-called authority. From all fields. Authorities have a career path, to be so intensely into their field. Thus they have a job and are paid. Who pays them and what does that company or institution believe in? That says it all to me. Only you and I, amateurs, can be honest.
For the most part I do not tell others what to believe or how to solve personal or communal problems. Why should they believe me, since I am not an authority? So my thrust is to investigate what limits people in making their own discoveries. (like unneeded complications). If anything I could be a coach on how to see deeper into your own circumstances. As your vision penetrates, alternative actions will become apparent, then I could coach on how to have the courage to try one. That's easy, just hold it as an experiment, and measure the results.
This kind of life is incremental. The only benchmark is a little bit more understanding than yesterday.
I think this thread is pretty well wrapped up. We could talk about horses or my study of music. But not here. I hope that we get into another discussion. Regards
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I do write, but mostly as comments on others pages, since there is more feedback possible on more popular and frequently updated sites, than my own occasional postings.
Here is one; https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-6323-west-stymied-by-strong/comments
He also has a more speculative, philosophical site; https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/intellectual-vanity-the-lost-art/comments
Which will eventually converge, as current political convulsions give way to the after effects.
As for being banned, I seem to push Overton windows. Naked Capitalism has banned me for questioning modern monetary theory. That it was just another name for monetizing everything. Yves called me a troll.
Moon of Alabama banned me, though I'm not quite sure. It seemed to be about my tendency to look big picture and B didn't approve. He's German, so maybe a control issue.
Obviously I've been banned by a lot of science sites, though I have to give a shout out to https://tritonstation.com. Stacy has tolerated my questioning of BBT in various posts relating to the larger cosmological picture.
I would also say I seem to be on Wordpress's list of undesirables, going back to various philosophy related sites, because it usually just won't let me through. I had to email Stacy directly, to be able to post in Triton Station and even then, it won't keep me signed in and I get referred back to a sign in page every time.
Well I would describe myself as more a horse listener, than a horse whisperer, but my musical talents are shriveled from lack of use.
I like to say, my appreciation for physics comes from not getting too hurt, too often. Rather than classrooms and books.
As for formal schooling, I avoided it with a passion. The last high school I went to, they gave me 3 and a half credits for work experience, to let me graduate.
Life may be complicated, (many factors interconnected or arising together), but we want the simple (synthetic) answers. Dealing with problems through false cause is likely to make them worse. And most people can’t change the situation even if they knew the real reasons. And those who have the power prefer it the way things are, since it's their power that has set these parameters.
For many, it is not that easy to keep their own little shell in order. Others are busy making a "room-addition" on it. Public servants get a salary, let them do their job and fix the world, at least fix the community, (for me).
To be alive, we count on our "conscious contact" as our connection to our surroundings, to navigate our world, gathering resources and avoid dangers. The vital part if this navigation is based on that part of mind called our memory, which is the basis of recognition, (recognizing the resources and the dangers). Memory is also the way that we recognize the sequence of time. Something is there in memory, but it is not present now? Or it had a duration, and then it stopped. Where did it go, into the past? (Well really I don't know the "stuff of the past", so I will just say that it is there in the memory, and then we surmise something we call the past.) Not all living beings have a memory, so not all living beings live in time.
That is about the human perception of time. I am not saying that is all there is to time. If there is matter, there must be energy, because, (as far as I know), matter is always in motion, with vibration). To have motion you must have time, and of course you must have space to move from here to there.
If there is a "Spirit World" not made of matter, there is no motion, no space, and no time. It is inert. Probably it is only made of "Principles". To me, those principles seem to be a human creation, or at least a human interpretation, and an anthropomorphism. Anyway it is inert, until we proscribe another principle to it. Having no time, there is no hurry to get there. (In other words, don't worry that you'll be late, you'll get there with plenty of time to spare.)
Causality comes through the adoption of time and it is also dependent upon memory. Without memory, events arise and fall, but they are not tied to any other thing. Energy creates patterns that coalesce and dissolve. The important thing to acknowledge is that human perception easily gets cluttered. So we have to focus; we parse the geosphere and we focus on the signal and reject what we call the noise. But it is all reality.
Therefore Human perception is for the most part linear, one important thing at a time, and that is (for the most part) the basis of our science. Causality starts out as linear, our concept of past to present. We may add a few sideways arrivals as patches. So energy patterns that coalesce and dissolve may well be part of a giant network that is arising and cohabitating together, unknown to our linear way of perceiving. Ignoring that possibility takes us right into false cause. We live in a limited window of perceptual ability, and that seems to serve us, but a dash of humility about our knowledge of "truth" is a good spice to add to our recipe.
Some say that consciousness flows from past to future and thoughts and emotions give it form and content. I would define consciousness not as a "thing" that can move in space and time. It is an inert perceptual realm-of-possibility, that can be filled and emptied, and the contents are perceptions, thoughts and emotions, really just memories composed of words. There may be raw images and sequences, but by now they all have words attached to them. At least for everyone reading this.
Consciousness is an empty boxcar. It is filled with worded memories.
I said that our limited window serves us, so scientists, politicians, (everyone) focuses on different shorthand explanations that skip over what seems intractable. They even go into the abstract , but avoid the middle, where life is. Good vs Evil is one of most widely accepted shorthands. It is really probably pretty simple, and it's based on conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is a polite way to say corruption. Scientists and thinkers have paid jobs. That is enough reason to ignore the obvious.
Desire is just about strip-mining society, to steal from the collective. Nobody will mind and everyone is doing it. (Even through tax avoidance.) How long can it last? Just get while the getting is good. What sets people against each other is not race or religion. It is the lack of prosperity. We live in a system that equates my prosperity with your subservience. I can be very clear about that, (in another discussion). I am not going to tell you what would be a better system. That is your life-time work. Own it.
The rest is open to ponder.
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Lots of points to consider.
Keep in mind that when events dissolve, they shed the constituent energy off in all directions, becoming part of succeeding events. There is no one line, but endless networking.
I understand the idea of consciousness as beyond physical, thus form and energy, but like energy, it is only known by the forms it expresses. You say the main aspect is memory, but how is the memory sustained/recorded? If there is no physical aspect.
(Do you know what "floaters" are?)
Like energy, consciousness is always pushing its bounds, which is curiosity, which is a form of desire, to know. Obviously desire run amok is greed, but it is the function of thought to understand when the good turns to bad, to pass judgement. Moderation. Set limits, definitions.
We have become obsessed with the competition over the cooperation, but that's a consequence of viewing ideals as absolutes. One point I didn't make in this essay is that a spiritual absolute would logically be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it. To the Ancients, monotheism was monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Family as godhead. The Romans adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion, as the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic, to validate The Big Guy Rules. When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics.
The problem left is the long shadow of God has come to define Western thought. That the ideal is absolute. Consequently every village totem has to be universal, or it is dismissed as relativistic. There can be no balance, no yin and yang. It can only be about the Big Guy who sets the rules. There are multitudes of ideals; truth, beauty, platonic forms. When every school of thought insists its brand is the only, the result is endless conflict and no healing.
The fact is that everything between the absolute and the infinite is relational and morality is obviously not an absolute, given how little there often seems to be. It has to be learned the hard way. Karma, The Golden Rule, what goes round, comes round. More yin and yang, than God Almighty.
Hello John, and thanks for the response.
We can discuss things on many levels. I like when you look at the basics (human perception and such). Lots of limitations could be (are) hidden there.
I want to explore some of your many metaphors which I find helpful for understanding. So I hope it is OK to ask some questions. One way to ask questions is to propose some alternatives. I am not married to any of these alternatives, but I would like to hold them up to the light.
(First, I think to go off subject, so I will get it out of the way now, the floaters I know about are loose black things that move around in my eye.)
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1. Things dissolve, but their elements are still here, (the energy component is off somewhere, and probably just heat). So we are in the habit of saying they constitute succeeding events. Eventually, but not in our lifetime. For now they are just tiny elemental particles, or fertilizer, and not the ready raw materials for something on the human scale.
It is memory that makes us human, the ability to recognize, communicate, and act accordingly. Where memory resides is a curiosity, but not an essential to get on with life. If I can conceive of a question, (where's memory?), someone is tempted to make up an answer. I can conceive of a lot of dumb (inconsequential) questions. Does that mean we should rely on the wide panoply of made up answers? The point is, there is the unknown, and we should honor it.
There will always be the unknown, except for those people who think there is an edge to the universe. Society is proof positive that what we know now, DOES NOT WORK. The myth is that we are not practicing what we know "hard enough". Double down. Where then is the probable solution to our collective hurt?
It is in the unknown. And were is that? Where we haven't been looking before. Why didn't we look there? Because our world view and our human instrument doesn't seem to contain that realm of possibility.
2. Last time I proposed that the human focus gets easily cluttered. There are multi-tasker's out there, but how many things can they concentrate on, and how does it befuddle the other things they are supposed to be doing. (Multi-tasking is for robotic level tasks.) Everything a robot does is repetition.
I am not a scientist, so I could ask many things to scientists. I suggested that focusing on one thing at a time creates a time-line, which reinforce the idea of past - present - and future. P.P.&F. create cause and effect. Without time there is no sequence. Our concept of time is pretty well linear. We prefer the synthetic quick answers, so hopefully cause and effect is linear also. That is, one cause creates that one effect, (with some variations). That is constantly where we are looking, and any other model is mostly beyond our conception.
3. To understand the technique of looking into the unknown, you have to investigate the basic protective measures of the human instrument. Events or circumstances don't cause our feeling of uneasiness (fear), but our explanations are the cause of our emotions. (Please don't try to look for the exceptions, they are probably numerous and they are meaningless for my point.) The proof is in all the (millions of) world views and creation stories throughout history that have eased people's fear. We have had a good laugh at every one of them, EXCEPT OUR OWN. About that we are true believers.
Hence the fervent drive to explain everything, because without that explanation we are uneasy. It is a built-in protective mechanism. It is a robotic neural pattern that has served us. We can't explain everything away, but just our knowing (whatever we invent) is enough comforting. But now at a different level of rationality, we know that we don't have to follow those primal feelings. I am not saying that rationality will discover the unknown. I am saying that rationality will envision the trajectory that each belief structure will force upon us. If that trajectory leads where we do not want to go, I will override that emotional response.
4. One of your metaphors is that a spiritual absolute would logically be the essence of sentience, from which we rise; and not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
The former makes a lot more sense that the latter, because its trajectory is open for discovery. Going back to my point #3., it is also an explanation that eases the feeling of unknowing. Do we need it? True openness could also consider no spiritual absolute and no essence of sentience. That's not a denial. I am not discarding essence, but I am not adopting it either. I am open to have the direct experience.
I think that I WILL have a direct experience, but only when it comes, and it's not that I can make-it-up or force it.
5. Where does that leave us?
Memory creates the human experience of time and space, (no matter where that memory resides).
Time and space equates to cause and effect. The vast majority considers it is for the most part linear.
Some questions are not well thought out and best not addressed.
Quick truisms, like the recycling of the material world, are often not within our life-span, (so they're irrelevant)
All of the old is well tested and found deficient. Even bibles have not changed the world, (enough).
The new resides in the unknown. It is uncomfortable and we are not used to looking into it.
If we make a reasonable explanation for what is now a mystery, we may think we got something.
Maybe that explanation traps us into the conventional, and it's better left open.
Most desire to know is synthetic, just a patchwork on emotional upsurges.
(Some desire could also be more authentic).
At a certain point we don't have to follow feelings, but we can trump them to further our objectives.
If you have reservations about any of these points, please let me know. Maybe this is not the best way to look at it?
Topics like Yin and Yang are very big - OTHER - discussions, and I hope to be able to consider them with you some day. (Write a new post.) THANKS for these considerations.
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Lots of angles.
The mind experiences. Yet what is the line, the distinction between the experience and what is doing the experiencing? As I point out, the consciousness goes one way as the events go the other way.
Think of it in terms of a plant. The growth ring of a tree expands out, pushing the bark out, as it generated rings. Or just the seed breaking through its husk. Or think of one generation as the husk of the next generation. Each peeling away, leaving the next to expand out. The growth goes to the future, as the husks of the previous go to the past.
Now put this in terms of the mind. Normally the ideas that we hang onto and remember are the ones we keep building on and patching where there are gaps. Rather than letting new ideas bubble up through the gaps, like grass through the concrete.
So sit back even further and just let the mind sense.
Remember, reality is energy. Mass/matter is an effect of interacting forces. There is no tiniest atom or string. So ideas are like mass or matter. They are interactions of forces. Yet our reality is this material world we live in. Can it really be a big Truman Show? What if your mind sensed the energy and not just the patterns expressed?
Those little flat devices in our pockets can transmit a lot of information in a little bit of radio waves, but we have been evolving in a sea of electromagnetic energy for billions of years. Can we look into the wiring?
Which gets to the floaters.
Once when I was a child, I was laying on the porch, watching this ant. When it stopped, like it sensed something. Then I saw this tiny cone of awareness, waving around with its antennae. That's how I first noticed floaters. As projections of consciousness. It's gotten a lot more complex since.
For one thing, as you say, they are disruptions in our vision. Some are internal expressions and nodes in fields and planes of perception. Like when a batch of them will move like they are stuck on a surface, yet that surface was like a plane of glass you were looking through, until the floaters on it made it separate from your consciousness. Like that husk peeling away, or a layer of skin peeling away, with the fresh growing up and pushing it away, like grass pushing up through the concrete.
The floaters are an endless topic, but you really have to delve into those parts of your mind. Driving is when they are most apparent to me, as everyone is focused on the road in front of them. It becomes a bit of a dance, as their awareness attracts and repels, the directions they are going and the things they want to miss, as yours navigate through, finding patterns in the situation reflective of those layers in your mind, such that you begin to understand how there is no real line between what's inside and that's outside. That you are a kaleidoscope of views, when not focused on the one view you take to get you through. There are waves and layering and all sorts of other patterns to the energy.
The classic heart shape is a floater that's glowing slightly red, with a line running directly through it, pulling it toward you. The line presumably Cupid's arrow.
When you really get lost in it, things like having a floater will go through that surface and become a bug flying away on the outside.
The fact is, we are these beings on the surface of this orb and we are just one little ripple in the ocean. But we are still part of the ocean.
Life is like a sentence. The end is just punctuation. What matters is how well you tie the rest of the story together and how well you are tied into the story.
In general I do like to consider the basics, at least for a moment to see what may be hiding there. But if as you say, all the ideas that I have written below are an "interaction of forces", that is the great equalizer. Now every distinction becomes that one interaction; and thus they are all nothing. It is relaxing though, because now there is nowhere to go with them, no possible duty implied.
Sometimes you say "Lots of angles", "Lots of points to consider". Please don't worry about it, I will always try to summarize, and land on a point at the end. I do try to focus, but it often gets away from me. (I quote some of your phrases to relate to what you said.) Please see if I quote them out of context?
1. We live in a human network. There may be two major topics for discussion:
One is to investigate the "Collective Hurt", those parts of life which are not working for everyone.
The other topic range is to divert ourselves from thinking about the collective hurt, and thus ignore its injustice, (it feels better). Or we concentrate only on improving our own lives, often to the detriment of the rest of the world. But we don't consider if our "exported hurt" rebounds back onto us, and is the basic cause of our intractability.
An example of exported hurt is like the markets forced open, whereby we can sell all of our surplus products ensuring our full employment. While the receiving entity is denied the employment opportunity to make those "toasters" for themselves. They remain unemployed. The idea that everybody sells what they are best at making and we're all happy, is complete and utter nonsense.
2. A third topic for discussion could be those floaters that pop through the glass ceiling and posit a new conjecture, (if it is not quickly repressed). Watching that dismissal mechanism is vital, "the things that they want to miss", so you really have to delve into those parts of your mind with an openness.
So by floaters you must refer to those "tiny cones of awareness that project consciousness". Where do they project it to? They project it through the glass ceiling of your present verbal context, of your current realm of possibilities. They project it beyond your present conventional wisdom. Nothing about that can be a new creation, it is only a breakthrough into an arena that you haven't allowed yourself to consider. The ant expanded its boundaries past its instinctive to-do list, and sensed a field of external observation.
3. Many people are devoted to exploring the distinction between the experience and who or what is doing the experiencing. They are called "Spiritual Seekers". After the concentration of decades, they determine that what is experiencing is not an entity, but a field of perception. They are merely the possibility to experience, but not an individual apart from that possibility. Their personal being was a construct, not a reality, it's not existential. Therefore the field is a wholeness, and not divided into a you and a me.
They claim that now they honor the apparent-parts more, because they know it is really oneness. But yet there is no-one there. So there is no actor that can confront the collective hurt, (that in society, which doesn't work). The opt-out is that the "I" is not real, so the collective hurt is not real either. I see it as an inert place to stand, designed only to avoid my personal automatic emotional response. There are better was to do it. It is kind of like the new sex crazes, where they cut off their most important tool to live a non-human experience.
Usually we try to master our emotions to become more empowered actors, to have an uninterrupted focus and to get productive things done. These seeker people only want personal comfort without emotional upsets, and to be relieved of all responsibility for the collective, on which they nurse continually.
I don't see them as a contribution. I see knowing more about who is experiencing as inconsequential. Or in the very least it is highly misused.
4. One factor that seems to bode ill for the collective hurt is that these days the one generation is not much of the husk of the next generation. There is a growing separation (I think) where the young are moving further and further away from their roots. ("Who needs roots"? "I am free.") True they keep building, patching and verifying their pre-existing mental constructs, but it is all authored from some other, far removed center, far from their original origin, and certainly not from themselves. Orderly progression has been overridden.
I am saying that you can experience floaters every week or every day, if you keep one part of your attention on your verbal context around each situation. "What am I telling myself about this today?" I call it self-talk, and it never ceases. Well, you can call it waves and patterns of energy, or just raw energy before any patterns. That completely mystifies it and makes it useless. I'd say keep one eye on the content, the story that you're telling yourself. We're all tied into that story and definitely limited by it. What may matter the most is to expand that story to let more of the world into it. (It is a day by day process.)
5. So where does that leave us?
Before I had said that it is memory that makes us human. (However and wherever it may work).
I said that memory allows the human perception of time, and also that time is real and a part of matter/energy.
I said that our experience of the progression of time makes us interpret many things as a linear progression. I had zero ideas of getting humans to give up the idea of progression.
But still I do not say, "that a thing recedes into the past and this other is projected into the future". That is not time. Time is real, and past and future may be a shorthand, but they are not existential. It's memory in the present tense in both directions.
That false shorthand is a very big part of our blinders. That is my sense, without a huge experience of the rewards from avoiding this misconception. I am no expert, but I just don't indulge it.
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I am quite convinced that all of us are directed by automatic emotional responses. Some people's drive is to coast through life with only positive emotions. What a zig-zag path avoiding all upset. Lots of no-go zones.
Emotions are the result of a difference between our explanations, and our perceived circumstances. (Please don't busy yourself looking for exceptions.) My statement will make a huge difference in your life.
While we often cannot control our circumstance, we can always author our explanation. Therefore we can definitely tame emotions, and find equanimity.
Perhaps most people think equanimity is inert, a la-la land, but it is the perfect balance that can best react to any surprise. It depends on if you seek equanimity through repression, or through insight. The repression route makes you a dullard. But when you have it through insight you can let anything run, because you know the home address of peace of mind.
True openness (seeing all the floaters), is in the space equanimity.
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I grew up on a farm, as a younger child and found more room on the nature side of the equation, than the culture side. So I would fight the voice in my head and make it go run circles while I did something else. It would slow the connections between sense and action. I had lots of help. My siblings would ignore my little voice as well. I found the less connected you are to the focal point in the center, the broader the range of vision otherwise. More the network, than the node.
Hurt is a signal, like pleasure. It has to be kept in context. Lessons learned are those connected to context. Stories are best kept in context, if you want to learn from them and not be controlled by them.
My knowledge of physics comes from trying not to get too hurt, too often. Much trial and error and few abstractions.
Think of time like a movie. The light goes from one frame to the next, past to future, as it is present, while the frames flash up and are gone, future to past. As consciousness goes from one thought to the next, as the thoughts come and go. It has to be both directions, not just one. It doesn't make sense as one, because there would be nothing to relate it too. If both consciousness and a thought always moved together, there would only be one thought and nothing to relate it to.
The young often think they are free, but after they have been around a while, they realize that freedom was just a lack of knowledge of the world and it they don't understand the world, they find themselves very unfree, because there are so many out there, just looking for the young and dumb.
Freedom is knowing how to look for the holes in the walls and stories, that are meant to bind them. The youth of this generation will find they were more pawns in some larger game. Some is seed, the rest is fertilizer. Trial and error.
The field is not divided, but there are always counter effects. No up without down, no good without bad, no attraction without repulsion. One and oneness are not the same. One is a node, while oneness is the connectivity of the network. Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields, galaxies and space. Synchronization spirals in, toward the black hole in the middle. Harmonization radiates out, across infinity, as black body radiation.
Space is equilibrium and infinity. The frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the unmoving void of absolute zero. Like the number line, from zero to infinity.
Three dimensions are just a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude.
Equanimity is surfing the wave. Ups and downs. Being part of your world. One in the oneness. Energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Motor and steering. Desire and judgement.
Good morning John, I still think that there is life in this discussion thread. I am just taking a break. If you have anything further to add, please do. I will consider all, when I come back with comments.
Thanks for your indulgence.
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