Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Wisdom (Redux)
"We attract to ourselves the life that we live."
"We attract to ourselves the quality of life that corresponds to our quality of being alive."
-- from Robert Fripp's diary, Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
"We attract to ourselves the quality of life that corresponds to our quality of being alive."
-- from Robert Fripp's diary, Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Absorbing
Reading:
- "In the Dark Places of Wisdom", Peter Kingsley
- "Metaphysics", Aristotle
- "Why We Suck", Dr. Denis Leary
Listening:
- "The Road Less Travelled", Danny Vaughn
- "Addicted", Devin Townsend Project
- "Battlestar Galactica Season III Soundtrack", Bear McCreary
- "In the Dark Places of Wisdom", Peter Kingsley
- "Metaphysics", Aristotle
- "Why We Suck", Dr. Denis Leary
Listening:
- "The Road Less Travelled", Danny Vaughn
- "Addicted", Devin Townsend Project
- "Battlestar Galactica Season III Soundtrack", Bear McCreary
Friday, February 12, 2010
Metaphysical Monthly
In the Gurdjieff-spawn Fourth Way mythos man is seen as a psycho-physical machine, an entity, mostly driven by its arcane programming. The path of enlightenment is reserved only to those who can decipher their programming, and silence the ghost in the shell whispering in their ears to “survive, feed, mate, repeat”. This is the programming at cellular level making possible the very survival of human race as species. In the Jungian-Freudian terms the ghost in the shell is ego and id. In the Buddhist tradition, which without a doubt influenced Gurdjieff a lot, ego is the individual or self, and it is considered an illusion, which helps to perpetuate all illusion. I have to admit that I do not particularly enjoy the Buddhist tendency of describing undesirable things as an illusion. To persist, that the less flattering attributes in human beings, in this world in general, do not actually exist, although they somehow manifest themselves very clearly, does not make them suddenly disappear in the light of Illumination.
That is not enlightenment; that is denial.
If, as a rule,
a human being, as a psycho-physical entity, in order to survive as a race, needs a complicated scheme of automated lower brain-functions, distributing signals through the neural network, and utilizing hormones to get the desired things done, and then feeding back signals interpreted by the brain as “pleasure” or “fulfillment”,
how can all that be an illusion?
How can those functions “help to perpetuate all illusion”?
Before getting metaphorically slaughtered by Buddhists, I'd like to point out that I do understand the meaning behind "the illusion" the ego supposedly creates and perpetuates. In my opinion it refers to the feedback ego creates in a situation where perception produces a reality which is more desirable to a person than the actual reality or truth. I've met a lot of people in my time whose point of views contradict the common consensus of how the world operates, and they cling on to these fabrications of their own minds with tooth and nail in fear that their own personal universe collapses if they accept the facts and realities such as they are. Meaning, such as they are in the conscious-free reality. Prime examples would be a found in followers of every single religion.
My argument is that these functions in human beings are manifest for a reason. They are not a flaw of error, or something that needs to be fixed. Everything under the sun operates with a premise of functionality and according to the law. If one was to retire to a temple and go "Ooom" until the cows come home, how does that person participate to this world? Leave all your worldly possession behind, put on an orange skirt, and be so goddamn spiritual that you can actually see a halo around your head. Where's the purpose? One could, of course, argue that "well, at least he's not putting a cap on someone's ass or committing rape, robbery or other not-so favorable things".
One could easily mistake that for escapism, or as an inability to function in the world.
The “job description” of the ego and id is to make you perform you actually do not want to do. Human beings are lazy and comfort seeking creatures. But if one would recognize those attributes and functions, analyze them and learn how to understand them, would an individual become somehow more aware of him/herself, and would those crystallizations lead to a “better individual”? I don't see how that is possible. Understanding how quantum mechanics work doesn't actually make anyone a physicist. It takes a great deal of trial and error, work, sweat and tears before a craftsman can emerge, be it a quantum physicist or an enlightened man. How does that appeal to an ego/id ridden human? All too much work? Thus, man in his great wisdom invented self-help. The heaps of self-help books produced since the 30's all offer one -pony tricks to make oneself “happy”, or “wealthy”, and all the other nonsense, modern world seems to value. The alarming amount of authors of that crap claim some sort of “antiquity” and supposedly invoking wisdom literature dating as far back as 2500 BC “as a validation of their particular enumeration of fundamental human needs“. It is a common misconception that the "ancients" knew something the contemporary do not. First of all, looking at the history of mankind on this planet, 4500 years is not a long time. 2500 BC is yesterday, not "ancient". Secondly, if one was to look how the human beings saw the world, their immediate surroundings, and their interaction with the aforementioned, it is very different. The very same way the 1960's are different than 2010's, not to mention the beginning of the 20th Century. The way human beings saw, and experienced the world around 2500 BC is more close to 10000 BC than to 2010 AD. It is so fundamentally flawed to try to make a comparison between modern day individualistic needs versus the needs of the so-called "ancients".
The most appalling example of this supposed "ancient wisdom" is the Rhonda Byrne's best selling “The Secret” featured in two episodes of Oprah.
The book claims that by using the "Laws of Attraction", an individual can become wealthier, healthier, and happier. This is how it is supposed to work:
you identify what you want,
you ask the universe for it,
you feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way,
and you are open to receive it.
Excuse me? It most certainly brings to mind Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce's definition of the verb “to pray”:
“To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”
And I've always thought that one would actually need to work in order to gain anything in this life.
The analogue “man is like unto a machine” is albeit an interesting one, though one has to keep in mind that every single analogue is man-made and therefore holds no significance, or absolute value, in universal context. In this case it is however even more accurate, since man did create machines. If we explore this thought and analogue further and bring it to the contemporary world, we could argue that instead of a soul, man has software. How is software produced? It is written. Can software write itself? It most certainly can and it does. If we picture DNA as writing, or a code that can actually write itself, and under certain conditions the code manifests itself in flesh resulting more code.
The limits of man are therefore dictated by this code, or if thought as a mathematical formula, man's maximum participation to this world cannot exceed the outcome of the given equation.
Would this be the revered "Logos" of the Greek myths? The word of God? I wouldn't go as far to claim that it is, but human beings do create by writing. Without the ability to identify things and events as an abstraction through the means of a common language, the modern world wouldn't exist. If the greatest achievement of mankind is written and spoken word, then it would be logical to assume that man would portray the gods he created with the same attributes and qualities deemed the most valuable. If you look at the gods of the antiquity, especially the Greek gods, after creating the world what was their purpose? Get drunk and fuck everything that moves, and plot against one another. The Sumerian gods? Get drunk, quarrel over nonsense and then send a flood to wipe out the mankind for being annoying and too noisy. That does make sense. Where are the old gods when you need them? The Judaeo-Christian god? The Good Lord's favorite sports, according to the scriptures, was mistreating his own people, rape, murder and ethnic cleansing. All too human, say I. There's of course the Egyptian creation myth where Atum actually masturbated the world into being. He was said to be lonely and decided to relieve his loneliness. In later times the followers of Ptah stated that "Ptah spake" the world and all the gods into existence, very much in the same manner the Good Lord in the Good Book did. That somehow would make sense, but at the same time, all too human. In the Egyptian lore it was the god Thoth, who gave mankind the gift of wisdom through language and writing. This is the very same god the Greek later identified with Hermes. Hermes would later become the revered Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the thrice-great, the father of magick, divine writing and divine language, and wisdom through thought. If you look closely, there just might be a pattern, and its stench is unmistakably human.
I recently read Peter Kingsley's "Reality", and in that book, it is stated that "true wisdom" cannot be produced through the Aristotelean reasoning. To be more accurate, the book suggests that any kind of brain activity is not needed at all. In the book the author tediously makes his case through the first 300 pages. What he actually proposes could be represented much fewer words as follows:
In a poem written by Parmenides, a philosopher/prophet who lived in the city of Velia around 400 BC, it is claimed that a metaphysical reality, the underworld, the realm of the dead actually exists. True wisdom is only found there, and the gateway to nether world is reached through "incubation", "Incubation" means lying perfectly still, in suspended animation, for hours/days/weeks/months at a time. The "divine" wisdom is handed out by a deity/deities with all too human attributes. Kingsley claims that this is "the astonishing reality that lies unsuspected at the origins of the western world". The idea's that Parmenides represented were later further developed by Plato. Then, along came Aristotle who pretty much destroyed Plato. Kingsley claims that the original ideas of Parmenides were altered and distorted by Plato and Aristotle, and pretty much dismisses the two as charlatans and thieves, and their way of finding the true meaning of things through argument, reason and logic would be somehow flawed. So. here we have a nice conspiracy theory at work as well. It is admitted that Plato wrote quite a lot of crap, but to suggest that a logical evolution of ideas by each generation would be somehow wrong, or they would automatically mean that some form of "original wisdom" has been "corrupted" can only serve one purpose. Here comes the punch line:
There is a huge problem in what Kinsgley proposes: in order for the hypothesis to be plausible, the whole story, including the deities and whatnot, needs to be read and understood literally. If it is treated as an allegory, it is open to debate and interpretation. If the hypothesis is placed under any kind of scrutiny, it falls apart. It is then a matter of faith and belief. It is therefore a religious dogma, and a bad one at that. The author claims that the underlying message is that the reality as we know it, does not exist. Everything we experience is not real. I would go as far as to agree that the metaphysical structures built by mankind are not real. Culture and cultural phenomena, sociopolitical structures, religion and racial distinctions, to name a few, are fabrications, and therefore are not "real" in a reality outside human perception. Kingsley's literal interpretation of "not real" also means that everything he has ever produced is not real. Does that also mean that he is full of shit?
Kingsley throws around the word "divine" like he would know what it means. He also claims that "logic" for Parmenides meant a different thing that to his predecessors. For Parmenides "logic" was supposedly "divine logic" given from the underworld. The only problem here is that "divine" is a human fabrication, and so is the underworld. Kingsley however does not stop here. He claims that human existence is "divine life unlived" (sic). This is something only someone dwelling in the lap of modern western world luxury would, and could, think of. The very idea of thinking about metaphysics can only occur inside a stable, civilized and advanced society. There is absolutely nothing wrong about ideals. and reaching a higher ground, but to suggest a "divine life" to someone barely holding on in a third world country ravaged by war, famine, and disease, is so fundamentally demented and flawed. Most of the population in this planet live in such conditions. The constant fear of violence, oppression and rape is not "real"? The divine wisdom and logic that comes from the nether world will help these people how exactly?
A whole book based on a bad Greek poem suggesting that fabrications of one's own imagination
are the source of god-given ancient wisdom. Everyone seems to forget the fact that the world was very different 2500 years ago. However, there are things that do not seem to change. Human beings dream of photons, quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence in the beginning of the 21st Century. But then, how is the "divine wisdom" from the underworld any different that "channeled messages" from the aliens? How come the content of the messages is always something that is already known? Where, and what, is the much revered "divine/extraterrestrial" wisdom?
The next time you (or the local village lunatic) see an UFO at the drive-in, or meet a goddess, I suggest asking the following questions:
what is the mass of the Higgs Boson, and how to solve P vs NP, the Hodge conjecture, the Riemann hypothesis, Yang-Mills existence and mass gap, Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness, and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
And, just to be crystal clear on this one; "take me to your leader" (and then anal probing), and "divine love" are not suitable answers.
That is not enlightenment; that is denial.
If, as a rule,
a human being, as a psycho-physical entity, in order to survive as a race, needs a complicated scheme of automated lower brain-functions, distributing signals through the neural network, and utilizing hormones to get the desired things done, and then feeding back signals interpreted by the brain as “pleasure” or “fulfillment”,
how can all that be an illusion?
How can those functions “help to perpetuate all illusion”?
Before getting metaphorically slaughtered by Buddhists, I'd like to point out that I do understand the meaning behind "the illusion" the ego supposedly creates and perpetuates. In my opinion it refers to the feedback ego creates in a situation where perception produces a reality which is more desirable to a person than the actual reality or truth. I've met a lot of people in my time whose point of views contradict the common consensus of how the world operates, and they cling on to these fabrications of their own minds with tooth and nail in fear that their own personal universe collapses if they accept the facts and realities such as they are. Meaning, such as they are in the conscious-free reality. Prime examples would be a found in followers of every single religion.
My argument is that these functions in human beings are manifest for a reason. They are not a flaw of error, or something that needs to be fixed. Everything under the sun operates with a premise of functionality and according to the law. If one was to retire to a temple and go "Ooom" until the cows come home, how does that person participate to this world? Leave all your worldly possession behind, put on an orange skirt, and be so goddamn spiritual that you can actually see a halo around your head. Where's the purpose? One could, of course, argue that "well, at least he's not putting a cap on someone's ass or committing rape, robbery or other not-so favorable things".
One could easily mistake that for escapism, or as an inability to function in the world.
The “job description” of the ego and id is to make you perform you actually do not want to do. Human beings are lazy and comfort seeking creatures. But if one would recognize those attributes and functions, analyze them and learn how to understand them, would an individual become somehow more aware of him/herself, and would those crystallizations lead to a “better individual”? I don't see how that is possible. Understanding how quantum mechanics work doesn't actually make anyone a physicist. It takes a great deal of trial and error, work, sweat and tears before a craftsman can emerge, be it a quantum physicist or an enlightened man. How does that appeal to an ego/id ridden human? All too much work? Thus, man in his great wisdom invented self-help. The heaps of self-help books produced since the 30's all offer one -pony tricks to make oneself “happy”, or “wealthy”, and all the other nonsense, modern world seems to value. The alarming amount of authors of that crap claim some sort of “antiquity” and supposedly invoking wisdom literature dating as far back as 2500 BC “as a validation of their particular enumeration of fundamental human needs“. It is a common misconception that the "ancients" knew something the contemporary do not. First of all, looking at the history of mankind on this planet, 4500 years is not a long time. 2500 BC is yesterday, not "ancient". Secondly, if one was to look how the human beings saw the world, their immediate surroundings, and their interaction with the aforementioned, it is very different. The very same way the 1960's are different than 2010's, not to mention the beginning of the 20th Century. The way human beings saw, and experienced the world around 2500 BC is more close to 10000 BC than to 2010 AD. It is so fundamentally flawed to try to make a comparison between modern day individualistic needs versus the needs of the so-called "ancients".
The most appalling example of this supposed "ancient wisdom" is the Rhonda Byrne's best selling “The Secret” featured in two episodes of Oprah.
The book claims that by using the "Laws of Attraction", an individual can become wealthier, healthier, and happier. This is how it is supposed to work:
you identify what you want,
you ask the universe for it,
you feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way,
and you are open to receive it.
Excuse me? It most certainly brings to mind Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce's definition of the verb “to pray”:
“To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”
And I've always thought that one would actually need to work in order to gain anything in this life.
The analogue “man is like unto a machine” is albeit an interesting one, though one has to keep in mind that every single analogue is man-made and therefore holds no significance, or absolute value, in universal context. In this case it is however even more accurate, since man did create machines. If we explore this thought and analogue further and bring it to the contemporary world, we could argue that instead of a soul, man has software. How is software produced? It is written. Can software write itself? It most certainly can and it does. If we picture DNA as writing, or a code that can actually write itself, and under certain conditions the code manifests itself in flesh resulting more code.
The limits of man are therefore dictated by this code, or if thought as a mathematical formula, man's maximum participation to this world cannot exceed the outcome of the given equation.
Would this be the revered "Logos" of the Greek myths? The word of God? I wouldn't go as far to claim that it is, but human beings do create by writing. Without the ability to identify things and events as an abstraction through the means of a common language, the modern world wouldn't exist. If the greatest achievement of mankind is written and spoken word, then it would be logical to assume that man would portray the gods he created with the same attributes and qualities deemed the most valuable. If you look at the gods of the antiquity, especially the Greek gods, after creating the world what was their purpose? Get drunk and fuck everything that moves, and plot against one another. The Sumerian gods? Get drunk, quarrel over nonsense and then send a flood to wipe out the mankind for being annoying and too noisy. That does make sense. Where are the old gods when you need them? The Judaeo-Christian god? The Good Lord's favorite sports, according to the scriptures, was mistreating his own people, rape, murder and ethnic cleansing. All too human, say I. There's of course the Egyptian creation myth where Atum actually masturbated the world into being. He was said to be lonely and decided to relieve his loneliness. In later times the followers of Ptah stated that "Ptah spake" the world and all the gods into existence, very much in the same manner the Good Lord in the Good Book did. That somehow would make sense, but at the same time, all too human. In the Egyptian lore it was the god Thoth, who gave mankind the gift of wisdom through language and writing. This is the very same god the Greek later identified with Hermes. Hermes would later become the revered Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the thrice-great, the father of magick, divine writing and divine language, and wisdom through thought. If you look closely, there just might be a pattern, and its stench is unmistakably human.
I recently read Peter Kingsley's "Reality", and in that book, it is stated that "true wisdom" cannot be produced through the Aristotelean reasoning. To be more accurate, the book suggests that any kind of brain activity is not needed at all. In the book the author tediously makes his case through the first 300 pages. What he actually proposes could be represented much fewer words as follows:
In a poem written by Parmenides, a philosopher/prophet who lived in the city of Velia around 400 BC, it is claimed that a metaphysical reality, the underworld, the realm of the dead actually exists. True wisdom is only found there, and the gateway to nether world is reached through "incubation", "Incubation" means lying perfectly still, in suspended animation, for hours/days/weeks/months at a time. The "divine" wisdom is handed out by a deity/deities with all too human attributes. Kingsley claims that this is "the astonishing reality that lies unsuspected at the origins of the western world". The idea's that Parmenides represented were later further developed by Plato. Then, along came Aristotle who pretty much destroyed Plato. Kingsley claims that the original ideas of Parmenides were altered and distorted by Plato and Aristotle, and pretty much dismisses the two as charlatans and thieves, and their way of finding the true meaning of things through argument, reason and logic would be somehow flawed. So. here we have a nice conspiracy theory at work as well. It is admitted that Plato wrote quite a lot of crap, but to suggest that a logical evolution of ideas by each generation would be somehow wrong, or they would automatically mean that some form of "original wisdom" has been "corrupted" can only serve one purpose. Here comes the punch line:
There is a huge problem in what Kinsgley proposes: in order for the hypothesis to be plausible, the whole story, including the deities and whatnot, needs to be read and understood literally. If it is treated as an allegory, it is open to debate and interpretation. If the hypothesis is placed under any kind of scrutiny, it falls apart. It is then a matter of faith and belief. It is therefore a religious dogma, and a bad one at that. The author claims that the underlying message is that the reality as we know it, does not exist. Everything we experience is not real. I would go as far as to agree that the metaphysical structures built by mankind are not real. Culture and cultural phenomena, sociopolitical structures, religion and racial distinctions, to name a few, are fabrications, and therefore are not "real" in a reality outside human perception. Kingsley's literal interpretation of "not real" also means that everything he has ever produced is not real. Does that also mean that he is full of shit?
Kingsley throws around the word "divine" like he would know what it means. He also claims that "logic" for Parmenides meant a different thing that to his predecessors. For Parmenides "logic" was supposedly "divine logic" given from the underworld. The only problem here is that "divine" is a human fabrication, and so is the underworld. Kingsley however does not stop here. He claims that human existence is "divine life unlived" (sic). This is something only someone dwelling in the lap of modern western world luxury would, and could, think of. The very idea of thinking about metaphysics can only occur inside a stable, civilized and advanced society. There is absolutely nothing wrong about ideals. and reaching a higher ground, but to suggest a "divine life" to someone barely holding on in a third world country ravaged by war, famine, and disease, is so fundamentally demented and flawed. Most of the population in this planet live in such conditions. The constant fear of violence, oppression and rape is not "real"? The divine wisdom and logic that comes from the nether world will help these people how exactly?
A whole book based on a bad Greek poem suggesting that fabrications of one's own imagination
are the source of god-given ancient wisdom. Everyone seems to forget the fact that the world was very different 2500 years ago. However, there are things that do not seem to change. Human beings dream of photons, quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence in the beginning of the 21st Century. But then, how is the "divine wisdom" from the underworld any different that "channeled messages" from the aliens? How come the content of the messages is always something that is already known? Where, and what, is the much revered "divine/extraterrestrial" wisdom?
The next time you (or the local village lunatic) see an UFO at the drive-in, or meet a goddess, I suggest asking the following questions:
what is the mass of the Higgs Boson, and how to solve P vs NP, the Hodge conjecture, the Riemann hypothesis, Yang-Mills existence and mass gap, Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness, and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
And, just to be crystal clear on this one; "take me to your leader" (and then anal probing), and "divine love" are not suitable answers.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
February
A year ago the dark February whispered a prophesy and I refused to believe. What was then only a hint of intention and unfulfilled potential, would cast a long shadow under which I still remain today. The fork in the road approaches with undeniable inevitability, and soon, very soon, I will not have the strength to cast another spell that would send the crossroads further down the road.
In the raging storm that is indecision, indifference is a safe haven.
In the raging storm that is indecision, indifference is a safe haven.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)