the return of the ideas:
"so i had this idea years ago, actually, several ideas, maybe a couple, you know, 2, maybe 3. and this idea just came to me. i was somewhere, maybe i was in public doing my shopping or whatever, and i just thought of this thing, and i've been wondering about this all my life."
"when did you have this idea?"
"i don't know, maybe 17 or 18 years ago. i had a full mental life then, you know? i don't know what happened. maybe i got tired, maybe i got old, or something."
"so, in your subconscious, or your unconscious? you've had this a long time. when other ideas attach themselves, i don't know, maybe you have something. it's a little dangerous."
"dangerous? i've never had a lot of time in my life, maybe if i had more time? anyway, i can see the danger in a lot of things."
"life is dangerous? so what? tell me about this idea."
"well, to go into it in any depth would only reveal my inadequacy at explaining things in detail. so, anyway, i put this old idea together with another idea, and bang, suddenly comprehension. you know what it seems?"
"anyone can do it? if you only thought about putting different ideas together, magic would happen? it's a tired story."
"really, i didn't say it was easy. you're too hard on yourself, i think. maybe i'm too easy. i don't know."
"you think i'm hard on myself? you have no idea. sometimes. i get bored and then i get angry. i think, you don't have the time for this. anyway, so you put a few ideas together in a new way and you get what? the realization that they are related concepts in reality?"
"exactly. so, you seem you know a lot about this. it's deceptive. you think, why didn't i think of this then. if only..."
"it's like history. history gets revised. it's called revisionism."
"well that's brutal. but true. i guess we're getting there. at least i hope so."
"let's hope so."
CLEARCHARGE
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Hit on the Thought
hit on the thought:
what makes us think? a million volt charger in our heads? we may have a generator ourselves, we may be reliant on what others have generated, or we may be carried by the field of "culture particles" in the cloud around us, invisible and inaudible, yet which promote thought. call it the cloud, or the Nebula, or the atmosphere, the mood, or the zeitgeist.
what is rude? what is temperamental? denial of our present ego? everyone wants the truth, however, the form it hits us might be unpalatable.
if we were to carefully deconstruct thought, what is related to image, what is related to sound, what is related to emotion, and so on, we might aspire to thinking greatness! the nasty, the good, the fine, the happy! for the conscious mind is a delirious, volatile person, fast to change, quick to build.
when we have exhausted the easy free thinking, it often helps to alter the frame, to introduce an entirely new component, to attach it to the present complex, and so by dismiss something old.
posit that a mere fact, like my name is such, is rather almost an abstract construct, facts about my life, passed through the conscious mind, do not define what i am very well, perhaps. to deconstruct my name, well, what if everyone has heard my name before? we have an opposition here, what if there are a million people who have heard my name? i am not other people!
CLEARCHARGE
what makes us think? a million volt charger in our heads? we may have a generator ourselves, we may be reliant on what others have generated, or we may be carried by the field of "culture particles" in the cloud around us, invisible and inaudible, yet which promote thought. call it the cloud, or the Nebula, or the atmosphere, the mood, or the zeitgeist.
what is rude? what is temperamental? denial of our present ego? everyone wants the truth, however, the form it hits us might be unpalatable.
if we were to carefully deconstruct thought, what is related to image, what is related to sound, what is related to emotion, and so on, we might aspire to thinking greatness! the nasty, the good, the fine, the happy! for the conscious mind is a delirious, volatile person, fast to change, quick to build.
when we have exhausted the easy free thinking, it often helps to alter the frame, to introduce an entirely new component, to attach it to the present complex, and so by dismiss something old.
posit that a mere fact, like my name is such, is rather almost an abstract construct, facts about my life, passed through the conscious mind, do not define what i am very well, perhaps. to deconstruct my name, well, what if everyone has heard my name before? we have an opposition here, what if there are a million people who have heard my name? i am not other people!
CLEARCHARGE
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
On Free Will
on free will:
the problem with the debate on "free will", about whether it exists or not, is it is hard to define what it is, in the first place. "will" is easier to understand, but the word "free" is somewhat nebulous. what does it mean exactly, for "will" to be "free"?
instead let us examine what cannot be denied. in many cases before we do something, some action or other, we make a conscious decision to do it. we think about doing it beforehand. never mind where the thought comes from, really, or whether it came as "free". but if we had to think about it most metaphysically, perhaps our decision engine, if you like, is like an electronic gadget, where electric currents flow, creating options, say four possible choices usually, and then the engine defaults to the option with the largest current, or perhaps it chooses the first option with current that flows, or the second. i think, where this could be construed as not being "free will", is where an outside agency interferes with the process, as in "pushes your buttons".
what influences our decisions? mostly our personality. this is a thing which limits what we do. we are people who would never do certain things because it is not in our personality to do those things. at an extreme, a person who does very little and avoids almost everything, could that person possess what we call "free will"? "free" rather implies the opposite of restrictive. you could say such a person had "restrictive will". and if life is deterministic, it is mostly determined by personality, is it not?
finally, let us look at a common social situation. in a room are several people, some friends perhaps, some strangers. all are on their best behaviour. now, if say one of them were alone in the room, she would act very differently, perhaps it is her house and everyone else is a guest, but the presence of other people, outside agency, is affecting her "will". she can't be "free" unless she is alone. this is a world, and perhaps a reality, full of people, who affect each other, so how much "free will", in a sense, could there be?
i think in the best sense "free will" is independent agency, where you make your own decisions as a person, and make the best decisions, all things considered, out of all the choices there are, given the circumstances.
CLEARCHARGE
the problem with the debate on "free will", about whether it exists or not, is it is hard to define what it is, in the first place. "will" is easier to understand, but the word "free" is somewhat nebulous. what does it mean exactly, for "will" to be "free"?
instead let us examine what cannot be denied. in many cases before we do something, some action or other, we make a conscious decision to do it. we think about doing it beforehand. never mind where the thought comes from, really, or whether it came as "free". but if we had to think about it most metaphysically, perhaps our decision engine, if you like, is like an electronic gadget, where electric currents flow, creating options, say four possible choices usually, and then the engine defaults to the option with the largest current, or perhaps it chooses the first option with current that flows, or the second. i think, where this could be construed as not being "free will", is where an outside agency interferes with the process, as in "pushes your buttons".
what influences our decisions? mostly our personality. this is a thing which limits what we do. we are people who would never do certain things because it is not in our personality to do those things. at an extreme, a person who does very little and avoids almost everything, could that person possess what we call "free will"? "free" rather implies the opposite of restrictive. you could say such a person had "restrictive will". and if life is deterministic, it is mostly determined by personality, is it not?
finally, let us look at a common social situation. in a room are several people, some friends perhaps, some strangers. all are on their best behaviour. now, if say one of them were alone in the room, she would act very differently, perhaps it is her house and everyone else is a guest, but the presence of other people, outside agency, is affecting her "will". she can't be "free" unless she is alone. this is a world, and perhaps a reality, full of people, who affect each other, so how much "free will", in a sense, could there be?
i think in the best sense "free will" is independent agency, where you make your own decisions as a person, and make the best decisions, all things considered, out of all the choices there are, given the circumstances.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Talk Illuminates the Mental Board
talk illuminates the mental board:
such was a time when talk was magical and wonderful, for it confirmed we were not alone. it is in essence why we talk, we don't want to be alone. to contend with the idea that you might be alone is a miserable experience. is anyone who suspects solipsism might be true happy? the concept that within the reality there is only one person. of course there might be other people but they would be in separate realities surely, not connected at all?
but given that there may be many people in this reality, each a head containing consciousness, the prospect becomes intimidating, does it not? the situation is complex. if each head were like a lollipop contained in its own zone of personal space, the space of this reality is littered with lollipops, stuck forever in place. through whatever the real process is, the lollipops can communicate with the other lollipops, and talking is the most obvious form. now presumably, the lollipops next to you are the ones most familiar to you, let's assume distance has a real effect, even though some communications may keep integrity over large distances. and probably you share values and language after so many years together. this localization makes those far away, those beyond your neighbours, perhaps hundreds of degrees of separation away in space, seem almost alien.
beyond the initial joy of not being alone and having someone to talk to, complications inevitably arise. each has its own values, what is good and what is bad, and to what degree. you might argue there are universal values and this is true, like death is bad, whatever death is, as we who are living cannot truly define death, it remains a vague original fear in the mind. of course those who live on earth now have another incarnation and death holds a modern meaning now, different from what it originally meant. i don't think the original fear is ever lost though. and so the problem becomes what to make of opposing values.
outright hostility because of it seems the threat. if i hate something and you like it, does that not mean i hate you? that is the premise of the fear associated with talk. if we assume there are a lot of people, and they act as a buffer, it perhaps just means indifference in actuality. if we can preserve at least civility with our closest neighbours, perhaps in the final judgement, disagreement with those far away does not matter much.
for talk reveals our values, it cannot not do so. generally, we speak of things we like most of all, unless we be toxic containers of hate spewing thoughts of what we don't. if we conceive of a mental board indicating that that we think is good and what is bad, the other person talking to us has a real effect. if they think something is good also, we feel they confirm our opinion, again the sense that we are not alone.
of course, there are other things apart from personal curiosity about the other person, we like to learn truths from others, and we want them to make us believe things are not as bad as we think, and of course day to day we talk about what we do. also, as it is as sound, like music, talk is an art, it may have a quality not easily defined, and is more than just the functional exchange of ideas.
CLEARCHARGE
such was a time when talk was magical and wonderful, for it confirmed we were not alone. it is in essence why we talk, we don't want to be alone. to contend with the idea that you might be alone is a miserable experience. is anyone who suspects solipsism might be true happy? the concept that within the reality there is only one person. of course there might be other people but they would be in separate realities surely, not connected at all?
but given that there may be many people in this reality, each a head containing consciousness, the prospect becomes intimidating, does it not? the situation is complex. if each head were like a lollipop contained in its own zone of personal space, the space of this reality is littered with lollipops, stuck forever in place. through whatever the real process is, the lollipops can communicate with the other lollipops, and talking is the most obvious form. now presumably, the lollipops next to you are the ones most familiar to you, let's assume distance has a real effect, even though some communications may keep integrity over large distances. and probably you share values and language after so many years together. this localization makes those far away, those beyond your neighbours, perhaps hundreds of degrees of separation away in space, seem almost alien.
beyond the initial joy of not being alone and having someone to talk to, complications inevitably arise. each has its own values, what is good and what is bad, and to what degree. you might argue there are universal values and this is true, like death is bad, whatever death is, as we who are living cannot truly define death, it remains a vague original fear in the mind. of course those who live on earth now have another incarnation and death holds a modern meaning now, different from what it originally meant. i don't think the original fear is ever lost though. and so the problem becomes what to make of opposing values.
outright hostility because of it seems the threat. if i hate something and you like it, does that not mean i hate you? that is the premise of the fear associated with talk. if we assume there are a lot of people, and they act as a buffer, it perhaps just means indifference in actuality. if we can preserve at least civility with our closest neighbours, perhaps in the final judgement, disagreement with those far away does not matter much.
for talk reveals our values, it cannot not do so. generally, we speak of things we like most of all, unless we be toxic containers of hate spewing thoughts of what we don't. if we conceive of a mental board indicating that that we think is good and what is bad, the other person talking to us has a real effect. if they think something is good also, we feel they confirm our opinion, again the sense that we are not alone.
of course, there are other things apart from personal curiosity about the other person, we like to learn truths from others, and we want them to make us believe things are not as bad as we think, and of course day to day we talk about what we do. also, as it is as sound, like music, talk is an art, it may have a quality not easily defined, and is more than just the functional exchange of ideas.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Ask of What You Think
ask of what you think:
"so your thought process is often a little vague to start with. maybe what you're thinking about has been in your subconscious for a while and only now you're really thinking about it. what comes from the subconscious may seem random and disorganized. it's the conscious thinker's job to organize it, if you like, to have it make sense and to question the assumptions it rests on. it may be thinking of an action, for example, something you should do. well, the first assumption you've made is that the action is possible and the second is that it is a good thing. if we examine the action part, we need to define our terms, what exactly is the action? if we express this as a sentence, what does each word mean exactly? then we can consider whether it is truly possible or not. the second part is an opinion and based on our own personal value systems, what is good and what is bad."
"most thoughts don't come into our consciousness with everything so clearly defined. i guess the subconscious is like a melting pot of ideas, mixing and combining them all the time. and what's going on in the subconscious is often not pretty, it's based on fears."
"what makes the conscious mind different from the subconscious is that it asks questions and isn't really satisfied until it has answers."
CLEARCHARGE
"so your thought process is often a little vague to start with. maybe what you're thinking about has been in your subconscious for a while and only now you're really thinking about it. what comes from the subconscious may seem random and disorganized. it's the conscious thinker's job to organize it, if you like, to have it make sense and to question the assumptions it rests on. it may be thinking of an action, for example, something you should do. well, the first assumption you've made is that the action is possible and the second is that it is a good thing. if we examine the action part, we need to define our terms, what exactly is the action? if we express this as a sentence, what does each word mean exactly? then we can consider whether it is truly possible or not. the second part is an opinion and based on our own personal value systems, what is good and what is bad."
"most thoughts don't come into our consciousness with everything so clearly defined. i guess the subconscious is like a melting pot of ideas, mixing and combining them all the time. and what's going on in the subconscious is often not pretty, it's based on fears."
"what makes the conscious mind different from the subconscious is that it asks questions and isn't really satisfied until it has answers."
CLEARCHARGE
Monday, March 3, 2014
The Extremes of Thought
the extremes of thought:
"you know i can't say it's true for everyone, but i think it tends to be that when people think, they think in extremes, in superlatives, or that something applies to everything. it's like they add words like "all" or "infinite" or "maximum", something like that. an example, the word "god", i mean that gives the impression of a person who is all powerful, all seeing, knows everything, infinite magical powers, present everywhere and so on. or when people make generalizations about nationalities, or gender, etc., it's like, without actually saying it, they're still implying it's true about everyone. it's like a common fallacy of thought."
"well, "god" is an extreme example, it's just that the word has that impact, you know? it just suggests all that naturally. but maybe that's why people don't believe in god, put like that, it's hard to imagine anyone really being that powerful. i mean what if a lesser version of a god existed, like just people who were powerful in ancient times, you know, who did things that determine what the present is today, like inventors or creators, but then again, maybe you wouldn't call them gods, i don't know. i mean it occurred to me, i had this idea that maybe someone drew a picture of a cat in ancient times and then cats appeared after that, you know something more prosaic like that. but anyway, i think the truth is that it's hard to think of exceptions or that something is only partially true, simple thought tends to initially assume the statement is generally true, that it's qualified by the word "all"."
"like space, for me, it's hard to imagine that real space, this reality, is infinite in size. i mean theoretically, the universe, which would be virtual if the external world were an illusion, could be infinite but that's only because the space of the universe is not real space. it's far easier for me to imagine and believe that the size of reality is finite. i mean maybe my own personal bubble in space, if you like, is part of the outer limit of real space and i sense there is nothing beyond that, who knows? but there are far more questions about time."
"here we go. time is change. real space is made up of discrete particles of matter and these change. that's what time is."
"or least bits of matter. even mental things are matter. everything in real space is matter."
"so it's sort of like philosophical idealism for you but mental is material, is a form of matter, in your concept. the problem for you is that the state of the language at present assumes materialism, "matter" generally means something else, something that exists in an external world, and therefore as it is, mental is not "material", is not "matter", to a lot of people, if that makes any sense."
"it's just that it's far simpler to call everything that exists truly in real space, matter."
"anyway, at least some of these least bits of matter change and in all time is a set of states that these can have, right?"
"yes, you can't assume that everything changes. the question is whether an individual least bit of matter's set of states is infinite or finite, i mean, even if change is discrete, theoretically you wonder still if the set were infinite."
"that's confusing because if the set were infinite, it would suggest that time would be continuous, because if change were continuous, obviously the set would be infinite, but maybe not the other way round, an infinite set does not necessarily mean that time is continuous. but i agree theoretically even if change were discrete, the set might still be infinite. but emotionally speaking, would i prefer to live in infinite change or finite? i mean first, you think, finite, well maybe that's not so good, i'm being limited, but then you think infinite, well, that includes all bad things as well, so rationally maybe it's not such a good idea? i think the length of time a state could last also changes. obviously, like, we can vary the length of time between blinks, for example, while still looking at the same thing, something like that."
"it's like a grand tapestry of life where everything that could happen is depicted in one huge picture, that's what finite is."
"and the whole question of immortality and death, though. again we can't help but think in extremes, what is immortality? perfect health, infinite time, free from illness and physical damage, fine food, beautiful gardens, wonderful life, etc. again, it makes it hard to believe in. and death, my thinking gets very confused. first what would it be in a metaphysical sense? when something ends? well what is time if not everything ending and becoming something else? and if you tried to stay the same forever, wouldn't that be the death of time? isn't there a contradiction there? time is a killer, it kills off the past? i mean what could real immortality, that is the opposite of death, what could it be?"
"but time repeats, at the micro level, and maybe even as a whole, at what you could call the end of time. this time now, unless it's a complete repeat already, like it's actually the year 40 trillion or something and we've already done like 300 repeats of this life but we still think the date is 13 billion or even Year 442 going into Year 443, it's a time of great change in general. actually hopefully it's just a once through event, i really don't want to repeat this lifetime."
"yes. maybe time is very "thin" now and this is not to be repeated, like once on earth is enough, never mind having to repeat this lifetime over and over again. but we think finite, and then little, but even if time were finite in a metaphysical sense the numbers are still huge. but back to thinking in general, we tend to think the word "all" about statements, but time and space make a difference, like maybe something is only true sometimes and not others and maybe something is only true somewhere else."
"like maybe it's true for someone else, somewhere else, but it's not true for me. also what about overestimation, something's true but it's not really that important?"
"well that's a problem of the mind, we can only focus on a few things or even one thing at a time consciously and everything we think, it blows up in our minds, so we overestimate it's importance. it's like, something was a huge deal when i was sixteen, but now i think, what was i thinking? and the mind is a fickle thing, because in actuality, we forget, we can't keep things in our conscious mind, but that's just time for you."
CLEARCHARGE
"you know i can't say it's true for everyone, but i think it tends to be that when people think, they think in extremes, in superlatives, or that something applies to everything. it's like they add words like "all" or "infinite" or "maximum", something like that. an example, the word "god", i mean that gives the impression of a person who is all powerful, all seeing, knows everything, infinite magical powers, present everywhere and so on. or when people make generalizations about nationalities, or gender, etc., it's like, without actually saying it, they're still implying it's true about everyone. it's like a common fallacy of thought."
"well, "god" is an extreme example, it's just that the word has that impact, you know? it just suggests all that naturally. but maybe that's why people don't believe in god, put like that, it's hard to imagine anyone really being that powerful. i mean what if a lesser version of a god existed, like just people who were powerful in ancient times, you know, who did things that determine what the present is today, like inventors or creators, but then again, maybe you wouldn't call them gods, i don't know. i mean it occurred to me, i had this idea that maybe someone drew a picture of a cat in ancient times and then cats appeared after that, you know something more prosaic like that. but anyway, i think the truth is that it's hard to think of exceptions or that something is only partially true, simple thought tends to initially assume the statement is generally true, that it's qualified by the word "all"."
"like space, for me, it's hard to imagine that real space, this reality, is infinite in size. i mean theoretically, the universe, which would be virtual if the external world were an illusion, could be infinite but that's only because the space of the universe is not real space. it's far easier for me to imagine and believe that the size of reality is finite. i mean maybe my own personal bubble in space, if you like, is part of the outer limit of real space and i sense there is nothing beyond that, who knows? but there are far more questions about time."
"here we go. time is change. real space is made up of discrete particles of matter and these change. that's what time is."
"or least bits of matter. even mental things are matter. everything in real space is matter."
"so it's sort of like philosophical idealism for you but mental is material, is a form of matter, in your concept. the problem for you is that the state of the language at present assumes materialism, "matter" generally means something else, something that exists in an external world, and therefore as it is, mental is not "material", is not "matter", to a lot of people, if that makes any sense."
"it's just that it's far simpler to call everything that exists truly in real space, matter."
"anyway, at least some of these least bits of matter change and in all time is a set of states that these can have, right?"
"yes, you can't assume that everything changes. the question is whether an individual least bit of matter's set of states is infinite or finite, i mean, even if change is discrete, theoretically you wonder still if the set were infinite."
"that's confusing because if the set were infinite, it would suggest that time would be continuous, because if change were continuous, obviously the set would be infinite, but maybe not the other way round, an infinite set does not necessarily mean that time is continuous. but i agree theoretically even if change were discrete, the set might still be infinite. but emotionally speaking, would i prefer to live in infinite change or finite? i mean first, you think, finite, well maybe that's not so good, i'm being limited, but then you think infinite, well, that includes all bad things as well, so rationally maybe it's not such a good idea? i think the length of time a state could last also changes. obviously, like, we can vary the length of time between blinks, for example, while still looking at the same thing, something like that."
"it's like a grand tapestry of life where everything that could happen is depicted in one huge picture, that's what finite is."
"and the whole question of immortality and death, though. again we can't help but think in extremes, what is immortality? perfect health, infinite time, free from illness and physical damage, fine food, beautiful gardens, wonderful life, etc. again, it makes it hard to believe in. and death, my thinking gets very confused. first what would it be in a metaphysical sense? when something ends? well what is time if not everything ending and becoming something else? and if you tried to stay the same forever, wouldn't that be the death of time? isn't there a contradiction there? time is a killer, it kills off the past? i mean what could real immortality, that is the opposite of death, what could it be?"
"but time repeats, at the micro level, and maybe even as a whole, at what you could call the end of time. this time now, unless it's a complete repeat already, like it's actually the year 40 trillion or something and we've already done like 300 repeats of this life but we still think the date is 13 billion or even Year 442 going into Year 443, it's a time of great change in general. actually hopefully it's just a once through event, i really don't want to repeat this lifetime."
"yes. maybe time is very "thin" now and this is not to be repeated, like once on earth is enough, never mind having to repeat this lifetime over and over again. but we think finite, and then little, but even if time were finite in a metaphysical sense the numbers are still huge. but back to thinking in general, we tend to think the word "all" about statements, but time and space make a difference, like maybe something is only true sometimes and not others and maybe something is only true somewhere else."
"like maybe it's true for someone else, somewhere else, but it's not true for me. also what about overestimation, something's true but it's not really that important?"
"well that's a problem of the mind, we can only focus on a few things or even one thing at a time consciously and everything we think, it blows up in our minds, so we overestimate it's importance. it's like, something was a huge deal when i was sixteen, but now i think, what was i thinking? and the mind is a fickle thing, because in actuality, we forget, we can't keep things in our conscious mind, but that's just time for you."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, February 22, 2014
The Problem of False Memory
the problem of false memory:
of course, ideally, we'd like memory, what there is of it, to be true, but inevitably some of it is false, perhaps only a little part even, but that is enough to make us uneasy, if not question whether we are losing our minds.
as an example, i remember December, 1985, on winter school holiday, as a time of staying up late watching television. in my memory, a few years afterwards, i saw the film, Night Shift, on a Thursday night but also that it was New Year's Eve. now New Year's Eve, 1985, was a Tuesday so Thursday is perhaps a false memory. now for a long time right up to today, i thought i had seen the movie on a Thursday and therefore not on New Year's Eve, but having just discovered TV Tango's website and checking the listings for December 31, 1985 confirms that it was on CBS that day though of course this record may be false as everyone is confused. i thought for years that i had conflated two memories, and before that, that i had seen the movie on New Year's Eve and that December 31, 1985 was a Thursday. now one avenue of thought is that actually yes it was and somehow the calendar had changed after that but that is unlikely as i remember that August 27, 1986 was definitely a Wednesday and assuming the calendar hadn't changed between the two dates and that TV Tango is correct, December 31, 1985 was definitely a Tuesday and i saw Night Shift that night. where did the memory of Thursday come from? i did also have the vague memory that New Year's Day was Wednesday at the same time as thinking i saw the film on Thursday, so pretty confused there.
my dream life has some continuity as well, like a parallel world where i have a different history with the dream versions of people in waking life and in that they often happen in dream versions of places like schools i went to or old homes i lived in. it happened where i realized i was in a dream but struggled to remember whether such things had happened in waking life with people i knew. what i conclude from this is that memory is very bad in dreams, false memories are ever present, which explains why we remember so little of what happened before our lives on earth. that i was born into earth, this world, means that i had an amnesiac break from what went before, my previous life, perhaps i was asleep for days, if not months, dreaming and eventually captured and propelled by my dreams of earth into earth.
so i've muddled days and confused memories or that things had happened slightly differently or that the order was hard to determine, but most disturbingly, have i memories of events that never happened at all but which i have vivid details of in my mind? well, hopefully not, and nothing stands out.
what about when we cannot remember something, like a name, but obviously we have not forgotten entirely because when we check or ask someone, we instantly recognize that as the thing forgotten? there is some residual memory that exists even though we cannot bring it into conscious thought. how does this recognition work? i think it is something like an incomplete electrical circuit and when we introduce the missing element, the current flows and we recognize. now i digress, if the theory of eternal return of time were somewhat true, wouldn't we have a buildup of residue that got bigger and bigger with each repeat of events, that we might predict the future accurately? i don't think we do. and residue must exist, perhaps some of it's ancient, for some things feel familiar to us, without us being able to explain why.
what about the start of time? let us assume our minds always existed, predating earth. it is easy to think, because we don't think we can remember what happened before our lives on earth, that perhaps it is a solipsistic nightmare and that earth began when we were born. what do i remember of the first day? when i think about it, i imagine a scene of the ground covered with pebbles and stones, a reddish brown colour, not much visibility, there was fog, walking forwards slowly, looking around, seeing trees, and alone at first. now presumably, the first day was a shocking time and thus more easily remembered than any other day.
CLEARCHARGE
of course, ideally, we'd like memory, what there is of it, to be true, but inevitably some of it is false, perhaps only a little part even, but that is enough to make us uneasy, if not question whether we are losing our minds.
as an example, i remember December, 1985, on winter school holiday, as a time of staying up late watching television. in my memory, a few years afterwards, i saw the film, Night Shift, on a Thursday night but also that it was New Year's Eve. now New Year's Eve, 1985, was a Tuesday so Thursday is perhaps a false memory. now for a long time right up to today, i thought i had seen the movie on a Thursday and therefore not on New Year's Eve, but having just discovered TV Tango's website and checking the listings for December 31, 1985 confirms that it was on CBS that day though of course this record may be false as everyone is confused. i thought for years that i had conflated two memories, and before that, that i had seen the movie on New Year's Eve and that December 31, 1985 was a Thursday. now one avenue of thought is that actually yes it was and somehow the calendar had changed after that but that is unlikely as i remember that August 27, 1986 was definitely a Wednesday and assuming the calendar hadn't changed between the two dates and that TV Tango is correct, December 31, 1985 was definitely a Tuesday and i saw Night Shift that night. where did the memory of Thursday come from? i did also have the vague memory that New Year's Day was Wednesday at the same time as thinking i saw the film on Thursday, so pretty confused there.
my dream life has some continuity as well, like a parallel world where i have a different history with the dream versions of people in waking life and in that they often happen in dream versions of places like schools i went to or old homes i lived in. it happened where i realized i was in a dream but struggled to remember whether such things had happened in waking life with people i knew. what i conclude from this is that memory is very bad in dreams, false memories are ever present, which explains why we remember so little of what happened before our lives on earth. that i was born into earth, this world, means that i had an amnesiac break from what went before, my previous life, perhaps i was asleep for days, if not months, dreaming and eventually captured and propelled by my dreams of earth into earth.
so i've muddled days and confused memories or that things had happened slightly differently or that the order was hard to determine, but most disturbingly, have i memories of events that never happened at all but which i have vivid details of in my mind? well, hopefully not, and nothing stands out.
what about when we cannot remember something, like a name, but obviously we have not forgotten entirely because when we check or ask someone, we instantly recognize that as the thing forgotten? there is some residual memory that exists even though we cannot bring it into conscious thought. how does this recognition work? i think it is something like an incomplete electrical circuit and when we introduce the missing element, the current flows and we recognize. now i digress, if the theory of eternal return of time were somewhat true, wouldn't we have a buildup of residue that got bigger and bigger with each repeat of events, that we might predict the future accurately? i don't think we do. and residue must exist, perhaps some of it's ancient, for some things feel familiar to us, without us being able to explain why.
what about the start of time? let us assume our minds always existed, predating earth. it is easy to think, because we don't think we can remember what happened before our lives on earth, that perhaps it is a solipsistic nightmare and that earth began when we were born. what do i remember of the first day? when i think about it, i imagine a scene of the ground covered with pebbles and stones, a reddish brown colour, not much visibility, there was fog, walking forwards slowly, looking around, seeing trees, and alone at first. now presumably, the first day was a shocking time and thus more easily remembered than any other day.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, November 16, 2013
The Building Blocks of Thought
the building blocks of thought:
now what we have in our minds or our brains perhaps is a network, a web of connected ideas and concepts or what we might call items of thought. these relate mostly to real things but also those abstract. by real things, i mean images, actions past, sounds, and so on. yes we all have imagination and a surprising capacity to think about things that do not exist in actuality and also we can think about abstract subjects like mathematics.
now i digress. can a fiction, a made up story, ever allow us to wander far enough away from reality to ever be truly believable? a word always connects to something real. we cannot turn off thoughts about real things that we have experienced and seen and heard. a writer creates a work, but the audience has its own individual interpretation of it. of course, if we were less strict, yes it could be admitted that we all share a general sense of this work, but each individual brain whilst reading it works in its own way. i might mention the word "drink", but whilst i think of the coffee i've just had, a reader elsewhere in space at another time might think of whatever he or she just had, orange juice perhaps. the word triggers something in our own experience. what i am saying is that we cannot truly have a "clean" reading of any work, fiction or non fiction, for everything is coloured by individual experience. to deconstruct any work is to work out what is connected to what in the world of real things, to undermine imagination really, and in so doing perhaps we discover more of the impossible and the possible.
it is clear that the conscious mind is little in relation to the unconscious and memory. it is a slim "holder" of thoughts, like a tiny screen lit up on the side of a mainframe computer. it can only hold so much at any one time. it is volatile like a multicoloured flame of a candle or lighter blowing in the wind. i would say it is incorrect to attach all of our identity to our consciousness, for we are more than what we are thinking of at any given moment. i think, therefore i am, but i am not only what i think.
let's say an intelligent person's consciousness, or mental "holder", could have 50 discrete items of thought at once. of course, let us consider that this could be a variable number. perhaps in concentrated thought, even a 100 in one go, like the flame were adjustable. now the items of thought are like building blocks which a person might play with, each represents something real or abstract. in writing this work, i've thought of a computer, a flame, building block toys, etc. i have ghostly images of these things in my mind's eye now. i have a little collection of building blocks of thought. now what lateral thinking is, briefly, is the manipulation of these building blocks, creating a new collection or arrangement of thoughts, by adding a new, different block to what we had before, something seemingly unrelated usually. what do we have now in our conscious mind? what has the addition forced us to think of?
there is an argument that the consciousness is not the leader of the total mind, rather it is the larger unconscious that is so, even that calculation is led by the unconscious. then the concept that the unconscious is the supercomputer seems more apt. the conscious mind is more like a passenger viewing the scenery of thoughts.
CLEARCHARGE
now what we have in our minds or our brains perhaps is a network, a web of connected ideas and concepts or what we might call items of thought. these relate mostly to real things but also those abstract. by real things, i mean images, actions past, sounds, and so on. yes we all have imagination and a surprising capacity to think about things that do not exist in actuality and also we can think about abstract subjects like mathematics.
now i digress. can a fiction, a made up story, ever allow us to wander far enough away from reality to ever be truly believable? a word always connects to something real. we cannot turn off thoughts about real things that we have experienced and seen and heard. a writer creates a work, but the audience has its own individual interpretation of it. of course, if we were less strict, yes it could be admitted that we all share a general sense of this work, but each individual brain whilst reading it works in its own way. i might mention the word "drink", but whilst i think of the coffee i've just had, a reader elsewhere in space at another time might think of whatever he or she just had, orange juice perhaps. the word triggers something in our own experience. what i am saying is that we cannot truly have a "clean" reading of any work, fiction or non fiction, for everything is coloured by individual experience. to deconstruct any work is to work out what is connected to what in the world of real things, to undermine imagination really, and in so doing perhaps we discover more of the impossible and the possible.
it is clear that the conscious mind is little in relation to the unconscious and memory. it is a slim "holder" of thoughts, like a tiny screen lit up on the side of a mainframe computer. it can only hold so much at any one time. it is volatile like a multicoloured flame of a candle or lighter blowing in the wind. i would say it is incorrect to attach all of our identity to our consciousness, for we are more than what we are thinking of at any given moment. i think, therefore i am, but i am not only what i think.
let's say an intelligent person's consciousness, or mental "holder", could have 50 discrete items of thought at once. of course, let us consider that this could be a variable number. perhaps in concentrated thought, even a 100 in one go, like the flame were adjustable. now the items of thought are like building blocks which a person might play with, each represents something real or abstract. in writing this work, i've thought of a computer, a flame, building block toys, etc. i have ghostly images of these things in my mind's eye now. i have a little collection of building blocks of thought. now what lateral thinking is, briefly, is the manipulation of these building blocks, creating a new collection or arrangement of thoughts, by adding a new, different block to what we had before, something seemingly unrelated usually. what do we have now in our conscious mind? what has the addition forced us to think of?
there is an argument that the consciousness is not the leader of the total mind, rather it is the larger unconscious that is so, even that calculation is led by the unconscious. then the concept that the unconscious is the supercomputer seems more apt. the conscious mind is more like a passenger viewing the scenery of thoughts.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Errors and Progress
errors and progress:
"i think generally history is put across as this catalogue of progress, as a grand accretion of knowledge, but there's something lacking, a recognition of error, or even that we could be wrong somewhat. it's all a little one sided."
"you think historians won't admit to mistakes made? it's all a glorification of the past?"
"something more insidious than that. it's like we make errors in our thinking, and we follow on from that, we build the craziness up until it almost consumes us, for decades or hundreds of years even, and then finally we recognize we were wrong and then it's wiped out, and we don't really talk about it again. it's not like it's a cover up. it's just this vacant time that's been lost."
"right, what were we thinking? so life is like the game of snakes and ladders? we make mistakes and back we go?"
"exactly. it's like, the truth is immortality. the very thought that you could be fundamentally crazy about reality or something in life is really frightening at some point for everyone, i think. and all the time you were crazy you were on the path to mortality. but i mean, even the thought that you might never know the truth about something important is pretty disturbing to anyone, right? and no one wants to really die, right? all this time spent being crazy isn't just not desirable, it's dangerous. it's hazardous to your health."
"but someone might say, we may never know the truth, that we cannot know anything for certain?"
"yes, and i think that's reasonable, but my theory is the truth fits better than a falsity. it's like it's ultimately easier to think about the truth than something that's false is the best i can put it."
"that makes sense. the truth works."
"like i have problems with belief about modern science. because i don't believe that people are powerless beings in a universe with fixed unchanging physical laws as it's put, that these scientific laws exist without the human element, so to speak, forever unchanging. i believe people are creative, sometimes very powerful beings. i wouldn't be shocked if it were put that great scientists were actually gods who created science not men who merely discovered it, that they had theories which they made real. they actually changed the way things work."
"so the world is more mental than physical. it's malleable by thought."
"yes. and that's why thought errors are dangerous."
"and Isaac Newton is the god of mechanics?"
"right, something like that. where science can't resolve something only says to me that something is false in the argument. it's like someone who has teleported knows the whole mechanical motion argument is false, but that's what the world seems. actually, nothing really moves as it seems, it's only the image that makes it seem so. that's the only explanation that works."
"i suppose it's one thing to teleport all the time in your dreams, i mean you move from one place to another in an instant, but another, quite shocking, to do it while you're awake. but how could it work, if physical laws have no original basis, that they were, in a sense, created later?"
"if it were true, you would have to imagine an earlier world, where things like these physical laws simply didn't hold, where objects behaved differently."
"so it's like the popular notion that magic existed hundreds of years ago to be replaced by modern science, that the world was a very different place a long time ago?"
"like that. the essence is that science really didn't exist hundreds of years ago."
"what else?"
"so i've thought about time and how a movie projector is supposed to work, and it's along the lines of best fit. the argument is that time and change are discrete, like the frames of the film passing through the movie projector at 24 frames per second. just as you couldn't show a infinite number of frames in the projector, time cannot be continuous, it cannot have infinitesimal change, change is discrete. it merely seems continuous like a movie does."
"but if change is discrete, are the states of real matter finite therefore?"
"well if they are finite, i guess that means repetition seems inevitable, but there is still the question of time how long states last and does that vary? but i guess it's still too early to tell. but discrete change doesn't necessarily mean there are finite states, does it?"
"i guess there still could be an infinite number of states. i'm going on like infinite is a good thing, aren't i?"
"yeah. nobody wants everything to happen, right?"
CLEARCHARGE
"i think generally history is put across as this catalogue of progress, as a grand accretion of knowledge, but there's something lacking, a recognition of error, or even that we could be wrong somewhat. it's all a little one sided."
"you think historians won't admit to mistakes made? it's all a glorification of the past?"
"something more insidious than that. it's like we make errors in our thinking, and we follow on from that, we build the craziness up until it almost consumes us, for decades or hundreds of years even, and then finally we recognize we were wrong and then it's wiped out, and we don't really talk about it again. it's not like it's a cover up. it's just this vacant time that's been lost."
"right, what were we thinking? so life is like the game of snakes and ladders? we make mistakes and back we go?"
"exactly. it's like, the truth is immortality. the very thought that you could be fundamentally crazy about reality or something in life is really frightening at some point for everyone, i think. and all the time you were crazy you were on the path to mortality. but i mean, even the thought that you might never know the truth about something important is pretty disturbing to anyone, right? and no one wants to really die, right? all this time spent being crazy isn't just not desirable, it's dangerous. it's hazardous to your health."
"but someone might say, we may never know the truth, that we cannot know anything for certain?"
"yes, and i think that's reasonable, but my theory is the truth fits better than a falsity. it's like it's ultimately easier to think about the truth than something that's false is the best i can put it."
"that makes sense. the truth works."
"like i have problems with belief about modern science. because i don't believe that people are powerless beings in a universe with fixed unchanging physical laws as it's put, that these scientific laws exist without the human element, so to speak, forever unchanging. i believe people are creative, sometimes very powerful beings. i wouldn't be shocked if it were put that great scientists were actually gods who created science not men who merely discovered it, that they had theories which they made real. they actually changed the way things work."
"so the world is more mental than physical. it's malleable by thought."
"yes. and that's why thought errors are dangerous."
"and Isaac Newton is the god of mechanics?"
"right, something like that. where science can't resolve something only says to me that something is false in the argument. it's like someone who has teleported knows the whole mechanical motion argument is false, but that's what the world seems. actually, nothing really moves as it seems, it's only the image that makes it seem so. that's the only explanation that works."
"i suppose it's one thing to teleport all the time in your dreams, i mean you move from one place to another in an instant, but another, quite shocking, to do it while you're awake. but how could it work, if physical laws have no original basis, that they were, in a sense, created later?"
"if it were true, you would have to imagine an earlier world, where things like these physical laws simply didn't hold, where objects behaved differently."
"so it's like the popular notion that magic existed hundreds of years ago to be replaced by modern science, that the world was a very different place a long time ago?"
"like that. the essence is that science really didn't exist hundreds of years ago."
"what else?"
"so i've thought about time and how a movie projector is supposed to work, and it's along the lines of best fit. the argument is that time and change are discrete, like the frames of the film passing through the movie projector at 24 frames per second. just as you couldn't show a infinite number of frames in the projector, time cannot be continuous, it cannot have infinitesimal change, change is discrete. it merely seems continuous like a movie does."
"but if change is discrete, are the states of real matter finite therefore?"
"well if they are finite, i guess that means repetition seems inevitable, but there is still the question of time how long states last and does that vary? but i guess it's still too early to tell. but discrete change doesn't necessarily mean there are finite states, does it?"
"i guess there still could be an infinite number of states. i'm going on like infinite is a good thing, aren't i?"
"yeah. nobody wants everything to happen, right?"
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, July 6, 2013
The Passive Dreamer to Earth
the passive dreamer to earth:
it is the passive mental state that exists that marks a person as asleep or dreaming. in the early stages of sleep, before consciousness has passed fully, thoughts become less clear, less "logical", and more "random". in sleep, a stream of fact-like thoughts present. often, when they refer to waking life and people we know, they are false, but the sleeper is susceptible to believing them. the sleeper passively accepts these thoughts. they form the "rules" of the dream world.
as i have posited before, earth is a derivative of the dream world, formed from the collective unconscious, the destination after being asleep for something like four days and propelled through a long series of dreams, progressively more and more like waking life, until you wake up in the meta dream that is life on earth. even though waking life on earth feels and seems real, it is still part of the dream world. if we were paranoid, we would be convinced Descartes' malicious demon had created dream world earth and hauled us there to lie to us and imprison us in a false world. however, we must accept that false thoughts and in extension false manifestations of these thoughts naturally occur and to blame agency where there is none is perhaps the case here.
but why is the sleeper or dreamer so passive? when we are awake, we constantly question or critically review our thinking, asleep we often do not. we could characterize the sleeper or dreamer as a docile, somewhat gullible, trusting, childlike person, quite unlike the more sophisticated, cynical, jaded person awake. who amongst us would have truly chosen to awake upon earth and who wouldn't have but are still here anyway?
CLEARCHARGE
it is the passive mental state that exists that marks a person as asleep or dreaming. in the early stages of sleep, before consciousness has passed fully, thoughts become less clear, less "logical", and more "random". in sleep, a stream of fact-like thoughts present. often, when they refer to waking life and people we know, they are false, but the sleeper is susceptible to believing them. the sleeper passively accepts these thoughts. they form the "rules" of the dream world.
as i have posited before, earth is a derivative of the dream world, formed from the collective unconscious, the destination after being asleep for something like four days and propelled through a long series of dreams, progressively more and more like waking life, until you wake up in the meta dream that is life on earth. even though waking life on earth feels and seems real, it is still part of the dream world. if we were paranoid, we would be convinced Descartes' malicious demon had created dream world earth and hauled us there to lie to us and imprison us in a false world. however, we must accept that false thoughts and in extension false manifestations of these thoughts naturally occur and to blame agency where there is none is perhaps the case here.
but why is the sleeper or dreamer so passive? when we are awake, we constantly question or critically review our thinking, asleep we often do not. we could characterize the sleeper or dreamer as a docile, somewhat gullible, trusting, childlike person, quite unlike the more sophisticated, cynical, jaded person awake. who amongst us would have truly chosen to awake upon earth and who wouldn't have but are still here anyway?
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, June 8, 2013
The Voyage of Sleep
the voyage of sleep:
"...so at one point i used to think that sleep was kind of like being dead, but that wasn't very satisfactory, in that you don't really know what death is, right? all the time you're alive, being dead is just some vague as yet undefined state of being, or not being, like nobody knows what death is while they are alive, right?"
"i used to think that when you are fast asleep, you're just not thinking, so you don't remember anything when you wake up."
"right. so sleep, and in extension, death, seems like an absence of thought. i mean the word "consciousness" is used, but like all words, i mean, if words and thought were like food, a particular word has its own unique flavour, right? all the words that mean the same thing, all the synonyms, might be like one type of food, like ice cream, but ice cream comes in all these different flavours, and so do words. for me, the word "consciousness" seems to suggest something mystical and fragile and fleeting, but it means the same thing as the phrase "thought in your head", right?"
"how about head think?"
"yeah. so words have different connotations. but the most commonly used words might not be the best or the simplest words. sometimes it seems the oddest words get promoted the most. it's like the most popular sandwich was banana with mustard and cucumber on raisin bread! but i digress..."
"you were talking about sleep and consciousness."
"again the word "consciousness" just makes it seem like it could go at any moment, like it was a flickering candle flame or something, and you know any minute something could come along and put it out. you know, maybe it's just the wrong word."
"right, but we are stuck with it, don't you think? as much as you'd like to, you can't change the vocabulary. anyway, i don't believe that you're not thinking whilst you're asleep anymore. i wanted to try to, you know, like observe myself as i was falling asleep, and remember what was happening."
"monitor yourself, like thinking about what was going on while you were falling asleep?"
"exactly. and a few times as i was falling asleep, i forced myself awake, you know, sat up suddenly so i could think about what i was thinking just before. and it's like, as you are falling asleep, everything in your mind becomes cloudy and violent, in that your thoughts change really fast, and they don't make much sense. you certainly couldn't easily explain in language what you were thinking about clearly. and then, yesterday, i had been drinking coffee, and i woke up further along the sleep cycle, i think actually just fallen completely asleep and then suddenly awake and i realized, you are completely thinking all the time you are asleep, that you stop thinking is a complete lie."
"i know but what you are thinking, or the quality of your thinking, if thoughts could be conceived of as like a matter substance like a diamond, are completely different to what they are when you are awake. it's like the mind switches to another substance."
"yeah, so my head could be like a giant crystal glass marble, but it's a magical marble and keeps changing inside."
"yes. during consciousness, it's say more or less clear and slow swirls and waves happening inside but as you fall asleep, the marble clouds over like you're saying and it's almost getting violent inside, everything is moving and twisting and turning so fast. that's probably why most of the time you can't remember what happens at this stage."
"yes, it's ironic. sleep seems slow and peaceful but what is really happening in the first stage is completely not."
CLEARCHARGE
"...so at one point i used to think that sleep was kind of like being dead, but that wasn't very satisfactory, in that you don't really know what death is, right? all the time you're alive, being dead is just some vague as yet undefined state of being, or not being, like nobody knows what death is while they are alive, right?"
"i used to think that when you are fast asleep, you're just not thinking, so you don't remember anything when you wake up."
"right. so sleep, and in extension, death, seems like an absence of thought. i mean the word "consciousness" is used, but like all words, i mean, if words and thought were like food, a particular word has its own unique flavour, right? all the words that mean the same thing, all the synonyms, might be like one type of food, like ice cream, but ice cream comes in all these different flavours, and so do words. for me, the word "consciousness" seems to suggest something mystical and fragile and fleeting, but it means the same thing as the phrase "thought in your head", right?"
"how about head think?"
"yeah. so words have different connotations. but the most commonly used words might not be the best or the simplest words. sometimes it seems the oddest words get promoted the most. it's like the most popular sandwich was banana with mustard and cucumber on raisin bread! but i digress..."
"you were talking about sleep and consciousness."
"again the word "consciousness" just makes it seem like it could go at any moment, like it was a flickering candle flame or something, and you know any minute something could come along and put it out. you know, maybe it's just the wrong word."
"right, but we are stuck with it, don't you think? as much as you'd like to, you can't change the vocabulary. anyway, i don't believe that you're not thinking whilst you're asleep anymore. i wanted to try to, you know, like observe myself as i was falling asleep, and remember what was happening."
"monitor yourself, like thinking about what was going on while you were falling asleep?"
"exactly. and a few times as i was falling asleep, i forced myself awake, you know, sat up suddenly so i could think about what i was thinking just before. and it's like, as you are falling asleep, everything in your mind becomes cloudy and violent, in that your thoughts change really fast, and they don't make much sense. you certainly couldn't easily explain in language what you were thinking about clearly. and then, yesterday, i had been drinking coffee, and i woke up further along the sleep cycle, i think actually just fallen completely asleep and then suddenly awake and i realized, you are completely thinking all the time you are asleep, that you stop thinking is a complete lie."
"i know but what you are thinking, or the quality of your thinking, if thoughts could be conceived of as like a matter substance like a diamond, are completely different to what they are when you are awake. it's like the mind switches to another substance."
"yeah, so my head could be like a giant crystal glass marble, but it's a magical marble and keeps changing inside."
"yes. during consciousness, it's say more or less clear and slow swirls and waves happening inside but as you fall asleep, the marble clouds over like you're saying and it's almost getting violent inside, everything is moving and twisting and turning so fast. that's probably why most of the time you can't remember what happens at this stage."
"yes, it's ironic. sleep seems slow and peaceful but what is really happening in the first stage is completely not."
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Beyond the Control of Thought and Intention
beyond the control of thought and intention:
the insecurity and sense of danger we have always felt can be explained thus, simply that some things are out of our control. often we may delude ourselves with a false confidence, that we are powerful beings, our minds can force the situation to our own design, but is this ever real enough to be believed, given though we accept that 100% total power never quite seems true anyway? we may not view ourselves as having the power of gods, but do we presume to exert power enough to get what we want, more or less, and in a safe manner?
at the start of time, what we have is fate. there was no rationalizing, no planning, the state of our emotions and thoughts as they were at time zero may not even have made any sense, as such. we were disorganized beings. organization could only happen after some time had passed. after much history, we figured out what was fine, what was bad, and created value judgments, and preferences formed. creation happened. anyone would ask, after examining some modern construct or invention, how much went into this, how much time spent designing and planning and refining, and would conclude it to be a marvel of rational thought and intention.
however, it would strike any observer that many things that exist, that may always have existed, may not be a product of any thought and intention. they are parts of Creation that were not created, so to speak. there are forces at work that are simply beyond or constantly evolving too fast to fall under the power of our minds. imagine the situation at the start of time, assuming there was a start of time and that something mental that would become our present minds existed at that point, of course. to our modern selves, it would appear a random, irrational, chaotic jumble mix of things. rationality and logic came later to construct the world. it is highly probable that many things are pretty much unchanged and still with us. other things have been tidied up, so to speak, rationalized.
whatever sound is and whatever light is, existed back then, of course, and it is not much of a leap to assume that the basic sounds and even shapes of letters of language did too. what we did was to apply some matching and reasoning of ideas to fit what was available as sound and text. how long does it take to create a language? one year at least?
the biggest common fear is that of death or fatal damage. this hasn't gone away since the first day but in our lighter moments we may avoid consciously thinking about this. the very reality that things are out of our control and that danger seems real, that things happen unexpectedly all the time, is the unspoken threat in our lives. things can change abruptly and some things stop suddenly. perhaps invisible to us, things we cannot yet comprehend are going on all the time in the background. we certainly haven't rationalized everything because we do not yet know everything.
CLEARCHARGE
the insecurity and sense of danger we have always felt can be explained thus, simply that some things are out of our control. often we may delude ourselves with a false confidence, that we are powerful beings, our minds can force the situation to our own design, but is this ever real enough to be believed, given though we accept that 100% total power never quite seems true anyway? we may not view ourselves as having the power of gods, but do we presume to exert power enough to get what we want, more or less, and in a safe manner?
at the start of time, what we have is fate. there was no rationalizing, no planning, the state of our emotions and thoughts as they were at time zero may not even have made any sense, as such. we were disorganized beings. organization could only happen after some time had passed. after much history, we figured out what was fine, what was bad, and created value judgments, and preferences formed. creation happened. anyone would ask, after examining some modern construct or invention, how much went into this, how much time spent designing and planning and refining, and would conclude it to be a marvel of rational thought and intention.
however, it would strike any observer that many things that exist, that may always have existed, may not be a product of any thought and intention. they are parts of Creation that were not created, so to speak. there are forces at work that are simply beyond or constantly evolving too fast to fall under the power of our minds. imagine the situation at the start of time, assuming there was a start of time and that something mental that would become our present minds existed at that point, of course. to our modern selves, it would appear a random, irrational, chaotic jumble mix of things. rationality and logic came later to construct the world. it is highly probable that many things are pretty much unchanged and still with us. other things have been tidied up, so to speak, rationalized.
whatever sound is and whatever light is, existed back then, of course, and it is not much of a leap to assume that the basic sounds and even shapes of letters of language did too. what we did was to apply some matching and reasoning of ideas to fit what was available as sound and text. how long does it take to create a language? one year at least?
the biggest common fear is that of death or fatal damage. this hasn't gone away since the first day but in our lighter moments we may avoid consciously thinking about this. the very reality that things are out of our control and that danger seems real, that things happen unexpectedly all the time, is the unspoken threat in our lives. things can change abruptly and some things stop suddenly. perhaps invisible to us, things we cannot yet comprehend are going on all the time in the background. we certainly haven't rationalized everything because we do not yet know everything.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, March 9, 2013
One or the Other or a Bit of Both?
one or the other or a bit of both:
about earth, there are the facts commonly accepted, about population, that there are billions, age, billions again, and so on. now it must occur to anyone who has ever experienced, either visually or audibly, what could be called "errors", that something is perhaps not quite right about the many assumptions people make. now medical science would have it that these "errors" are strictly those of the individual in question, so to speak, and not of earth itself or science. however, what if the fault does lie with whatever earth is and blame is not on the person's senses? inevitably, the more glitches in the system that appear, the more you become convinced that there is some huge electronic machinery at work underlying everything, a supercomputer that simply does not work perfectly.
by visual "errors", those that i have experienced personally, from most shocking to least, first of all, a sudden total change in place, to teleport to another location, secondly, less striking perhaps, but common enough, a sudden change in text, for example, looking at a printed train timetable at a railway station and the times change, thirdly, maps that are all wrong from what you know, fourthly, definite changes in books you have, on second reading, some passages have disappeared, fifthly, and often you cannot be sure about this, objects have been rearranged in the room when no has been present or they have vanished.
actually, the only ones who could firmly believe in all that the media presents about earth and what their teachers taught them in geography and science, the only ones who actually "buy it" are those for whom there are no discernible "errors", those who have supernormal lives.
it is all too easy, however, to dismiss all common scientific theories and leap to the other extreme, that all of life on earth is a vast computer simulation and perhaps therefore you are the only real person on earth and everyone else is virtual, if you like, non player characters or NPC's, illusions, philosophical zombies, etc. such is the nature of the beast when something happens that makes you question reality. it is most likely that neither extreme, the one of a densely populated earth where everyone is real and the other of the empty simulation with a real population of one, is true. it is not all or nothing, but a little of both.
it is interesting that the thinker always thinks in absolutes first or extreme positions. this may sound perverse, but often something may be true and false, even if only time and space make the difference. now it is true, then it was false! it is true here, but not there! define your terms! clarify! what i am speaking of is a tendency, perhaps almost a hope, to think that something would be true now, here and everywhere, for all time! that things contradict themselves moments later exposes this fallacy in our thinking.
what is the suitably complex, averaged world view? it is most probable that there are many people on earth but not as many as purported, and that some people truly are not real, they are part of the background simulation. there are questions about history too. if we assume the numbers prone to exaggeration, we would guess that the true age is much younger. when the first real person was inserted into the simulation earth is another question. note that to teleport rules out the whole model of classical mechanical motion in reality.
CLEARCHARGE
about earth, there are the facts commonly accepted, about population, that there are billions, age, billions again, and so on. now it must occur to anyone who has ever experienced, either visually or audibly, what could be called "errors", that something is perhaps not quite right about the many assumptions people make. now medical science would have it that these "errors" are strictly those of the individual in question, so to speak, and not of earth itself or science. however, what if the fault does lie with whatever earth is and blame is not on the person's senses? inevitably, the more glitches in the system that appear, the more you become convinced that there is some huge electronic machinery at work underlying everything, a supercomputer that simply does not work perfectly.
by visual "errors", those that i have experienced personally, from most shocking to least, first of all, a sudden total change in place, to teleport to another location, secondly, less striking perhaps, but common enough, a sudden change in text, for example, looking at a printed train timetable at a railway station and the times change, thirdly, maps that are all wrong from what you know, fourthly, definite changes in books you have, on second reading, some passages have disappeared, fifthly, and often you cannot be sure about this, objects have been rearranged in the room when no has been present or they have vanished.
actually, the only ones who could firmly believe in all that the media presents about earth and what their teachers taught them in geography and science, the only ones who actually "buy it" are those for whom there are no discernible "errors", those who have supernormal lives.
it is all too easy, however, to dismiss all common scientific theories and leap to the other extreme, that all of life on earth is a vast computer simulation and perhaps therefore you are the only real person on earth and everyone else is virtual, if you like, non player characters or NPC's, illusions, philosophical zombies, etc. such is the nature of the beast when something happens that makes you question reality. it is most likely that neither extreme, the one of a densely populated earth where everyone is real and the other of the empty simulation with a real population of one, is true. it is not all or nothing, but a little of both.
it is interesting that the thinker always thinks in absolutes first or extreme positions. this may sound perverse, but often something may be true and false, even if only time and space make the difference. now it is true, then it was false! it is true here, but not there! define your terms! clarify! what i am speaking of is a tendency, perhaps almost a hope, to think that something would be true now, here and everywhere, for all time! that things contradict themselves moments later exposes this fallacy in our thinking.
what is the suitably complex, averaged world view? it is most probable that there are many people on earth but not as many as purported, and that some people truly are not real, they are part of the background simulation. there are questions about history too. if we assume the numbers prone to exaggeration, we would guess that the true age is much younger. when the first real person was inserted into the simulation earth is another question. note that to teleport rules out the whole model of classical mechanical motion in reality.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Time and the Question of the Limits of Thought
time and the question of the limits of thought:
thinking about time and what it really is has absorbed the minds of many. theories abound but we find some contradict each other, so not all could be true. we enter a thought space starting with binary propositions, but then realize that perhaps the issue is more complex than a simple question and the answer true or false would tell us.
questioning time, in turn, makes us question our own capacity for thought and for thinking about the truth about reality. the subject is so difficult and so easy to wander off the path into falsity is it that we begin to doubt that full knowledge could ever be obtained. could we ever know everything or even at least think about reality, what goes on, clearly?
again, it cannot be contested against that time is to do with change. and again, in the model with the fixed spatial position of all matter, that is, everything that exists, it is true to say that a lot of matter changes state, though it is not certain that all matter changes. now, whether change is "discrete" or "continuous", is a binary proposition, i hazard. and this is where the thinking about time becomes difficult, certainly for me. the discrete change of a "least bit of matter" or "particle", to use another word, is, i would say, far easier to think about the other theoretical possibility. for a period, it has one state, then suddenly another, and so on, never mind how long it stays in one state or how many states it could have. i admit this may seem impossible. but how to think about continuous change? to me, this seems even more impossible, if both seem impossible. continuous change, if it were to be considered, would be something that never "stops" and seems therefore that could not be measured at any point, if that makes any sense?
the question then becomes, does because discrete change is easier to think about make it more likely to be true, the theory being that the non-existent is harder or even impossible to really think about?
CLEARCHARGE
thinking about time and what it really is has absorbed the minds of many. theories abound but we find some contradict each other, so not all could be true. we enter a thought space starting with binary propositions, but then realize that perhaps the issue is more complex than a simple question and the answer true or false would tell us.
questioning time, in turn, makes us question our own capacity for thought and for thinking about the truth about reality. the subject is so difficult and so easy to wander off the path into falsity is it that we begin to doubt that full knowledge could ever be obtained. could we ever know everything or even at least think about reality, what goes on, clearly?
again, it cannot be contested against that time is to do with change. and again, in the model with the fixed spatial position of all matter, that is, everything that exists, it is true to say that a lot of matter changes state, though it is not certain that all matter changes. now, whether change is "discrete" or "continuous", is a binary proposition, i hazard. and this is where the thinking about time becomes difficult, certainly for me. the discrete change of a "least bit of matter" or "particle", to use another word, is, i would say, far easier to think about the other theoretical possibility. for a period, it has one state, then suddenly another, and so on, never mind how long it stays in one state or how many states it could have. i admit this may seem impossible. but how to think about continuous change? to me, this seems even more impossible, if both seem impossible. continuous change, if it were to be considered, would be something that never "stops" and seems therefore that could not be measured at any point, if that makes any sense?
the question then becomes, does because discrete change is easier to think about make it more likely to be true, the theory being that the non-existent is harder or even impossible to really think about?
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, December 1, 2012
The Imprecise Nature of Words
the imprecise nature of words:
but think, if words were merely tools to manipulate thought, to shape concepts crystallizing in the conscious mind, it would seem they are often but a blunt instrument, lacking the precision to control the hoped for outcome of perfect realization of the truth. not only that, when misused, they can easily lead the thinker astray, into the realm of half truths and falsity, or even madness.
what is conscious thought? what is it to think? now this is a world of objects and feelings and sounds. in that the mind is actually connected to the very fabric of this world, these things are highlighted, so to speak, or thought about, by the conscious mind. i am conscious of, i am thinking about various scraps of images, events that happened in my world, places i have been to, and so on. it is a tangled mess. in real time, certain parts fall away, new parts appear.
now all of these things are labelled by words. what words mean to me may not be the same as what words mean to someone else. inevitably our own life experiences colour and ensure that our individual complexes of words and the personal events and things seen and heard and felt by us, to which they are connected, are unique.
however, let us assume that words can have some universal meaning. even so, words and their connections are wrapped up with the past of the universe. when something totally new happens, it has the effect of altering the language complex, for it is a disturbance. and so it always was. the mind, both conscious and subconscious or unconscious, makes and breaks connections continually. as the words in a sentence are read, each word amplifies whatever it is describing, like a live current passing through space. the very act of thinking alters the mind, and perhaps even what it is thinking about.
we all have various conceptions of what reality is, or may be. all are metaphysicians. it cannot be denied that that affects significantly how we define words for ourselves. if i believe that time is infinite, for instance, and this was the original use of the word, this affects what i think when i think about the word infinite when used generally. my argument is that it cannot be divorced from this original plank of belief. so later i may think about infinite numbers as supposedly a purely mathematical concept, but i am still thinking about time all the while. it is almost impossible to separate later thought from its original basis.
if thinking were like guiding a ball to a target, the truth, then words in a sentence hit the ball this way and that way, each word carrying its own "baggage" from the past. often it is difficult to hit bullseye. how did words come into creation? well, it is not hard to guess that merely they were the words people first thought of when something happened, that they were "in the air" at the time. the language universe has its own inflation. we know new words come into being. what may be disturbing, for as ever the new replaces the old, is that parts of the past are lost, and we have no idea how we got here.
CLEARCHARGE
but think, if words were merely tools to manipulate thought, to shape concepts crystallizing in the conscious mind, it would seem they are often but a blunt instrument, lacking the precision to control the hoped for outcome of perfect realization of the truth. not only that, when misused, they can easily lead the thinker astray, into the realm of half truths and falsity, or even madness.
what is conscious thought? what is it to think? now this is a world of objects and feelings and sounds. in that the mind is actually connected to the very fabric of this world, these things are highlighted, so to speak, or thought about, by the conscious mind. i am conscious of, i am thinking about various scraps of images, events that happened in my world, places i have been to, and so on. it is a tangled mess. in real time, certain parts fall away, new parts appear.
now all of these things are labelled by words. what words mean to me may not be the same as what words mean to someone else. inevitably our own life experiences colour and ensure that our individual complexes of words and the personal events and things seen and heard and felt by us, to which they are connected, are unique.
however, let us assume that words can have some universal meaning. even so, words and their connections are wrapped up with the past of the universe. when something totally new happens, it has the effect of altering the language complex, for it is a disturbance. and so it always was. the mind, both conscious and subconscious or unconscious, makes and breaks connections continually. as the words in a sentence are read, each word amplifies whatever it is describing, like a live current passing through space. the very act of thinking alters the mind, and perhaps even what it is thinking about.
we all have various conceptions of what reality is, or may be. all are metaphysicians. it cannot be denied that that affects significantly how we define words for ourselves. if i believe that time is infinite, for instance, and this was the original use of the word, this affects what i think when i think about the word infinite when used generally. my argument is that it cannot be divorced from this original plank of belief. so later i may think about infinite numbers as supposedly a purely mathematical concept, but i am still thinking about time all the while. it is almost impossible to separate later thought from its original basis.
if thinking were like guiding a ball to a target, the truth, then words in a sentence hit the ball this way and that way, each word carrying its own "baggage" from the past. often it is difficult to hit bullseye. how did words come into creation? well, it is not hard to guess that merely they were the words people first thought of when something happened, that they were "in the air" at the time. the language universe has its own inflation. we know new words come into being. what may be disturbing, for as ever the new replaces the old, is that parts of the past are lost, and we have no idea how we got here.
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, October 27, 2012
A World View Distorted by Schizophrenia
a world view distorted by schizophrenia:
what is a world view? the fundamental beliefs or assumptions made about the world, the universe even, and reality and life. what drives the philosopher in all of us is the need to know what is real and what is not. to be delusional or crazy is generally agreed to be a bad thing. people are supposed to be locked up in mental hospitals for this very reason. it may be argued that on earth, busy place that it is, such knowledge is not required to be a "success in life" and even that some confusion may not affect ability to "function in society", but this a weak argument, deflected away by the very overriding emotional demand to know the truth.
what does it mean to know? i know there are more complicated theories but two words stand out, "true" and "think", indeed, to think about true things. actually it cannot be further reduced as a concept. academically, if you had little confidence in your judgment on what to be true and what to be false, you would need to think about every theoretical possibility just to cover yourself, in the faint hope that at least you had thought of everything and at some point in time "knew the truth". happily, often the search for truth is a binary proposition, for it is either one or the other, though i am sure sometimes there are multiple theoretical possibilities, and therein lies the "third way" or fourth or fifth.
i don't think i am deceiving myself when i claim to know the conventional beliefs or assumptions on earth. i went to school, after all, i read newspapers and magazines, i've watched television and films, i have attended church before, i've sat through lectures, indeed i have consumed information and media. and i've seen what is technologically possible, telephones, computers, 3D virtual reality games.
let us deal with one of the most fundamental questions. what is motion exactly? it calls into question what you think about time and space, and ultimately decides what you conclude about the so called "external world" that may be highly convincing. can matter, a person, a mind, whatever, actually "move" relative to other matter, persons, or minds? happily, this is a binary proposition. it is either true or false. what are you thinking? i presume you are visualizing an object moving towards or away from another and thinking that might be actuality! in the model of the external world, this is entirely the case put forward.
but the whole question of eyesight, what i see before me, and to the sides, and i really do see objects at a distance in front of me, not in my head, if people were actually moving relative to each other on a round planet, how does the structure of my eyesight not crash into someone else's near me, so to speak?
i began hearing "voices" or "auditory hallucinations" and seeing visual hallucinations when i was 20 years old in my third year at university. after i had been sectioned or committed and released from hospital, i had the rest of the year off and returned to repeat the final year. in that year, i teleported twice. to anyone who has experienced teleportation, the concept of an external world is simply not believable anymore! the first time, i was at an ATM, i had got the cash, i turned away and then i was suddenly at the train station, about a mile away. i even started to worry what would happen if i teleported to New York without my passport on me and couldn't teleport back! if the external world were real, how could i move to another point instantly without feeling anything, even if it was at light speed? or was i a clone somewhere else in space, with my consciousness suddenly activated? no and no. Ockham's Razor would suggest the simplest theory is that, indeed, the external world is not real and that matter does not "move" relative to other matter, space is merely that that is occupied by matter, it is not a "vacuum" or "empty container", quite the opposite.
conventional thinking about schizophrenia is that it is a mental illness of perception, that sufferers are delusional, all voices are hallucinatory and so on. i suspect it is hinged on a belief in the external world, it is posited it is only our perception that has gone awry and reality is just fine, so to speak. if we eliminate belief in the external world, an explanation would be that schizophrenia is an acute instability of the mind, that our hearing and our eyesight are "turned up", which accounts for the "hallucinations", and the system that worked for so long to provide normality, is thrashing around wildly. if the external world is not real, then perception is reality, is it not, don't you think? anything can happen to a schizophrenic!
when i returned to university, i still heard people speaking without seeing them, the "voices". one day i was calmly looking at the door handle, making it move up and down slightly by thought alone. i was staring at the light bulb on the ceiling, adjusting the brightness, dimmer and then brighter, again by thought alone. objects disappeared, i never found where my dissertation went! you see the interesting dichotomy? on the one hand, hallucinating and delusional, on the other, maybe i was telepathic and had budding psychokinesis powers!
CLEARCHARGE
what is a world view? the fundamental beliefs or assumptions made about the world, the universe even, and reality and life. what drives the philosopher in all of us is the need to know what is real and what is not. to be delusional or crazy is generally agreed to be a bad thing. people are supposed to be locked up in mental hospitals for this very reason. it may be argued that on earth, busy place that it is, such knowledge is not required to be a "success in life" and even that some confusion may not affect ability to "function in society", but this a weak argument, deflected away by the very overriding emotional demand to know the truth.
what does it mean to know? i know there are more complicated theories but two words stand out, "true" and "think", indeed, to think about true things. actually it cannot be further reduced as a concept. academically, if you had little confidence in your judgment on what to be true and what to be false, you would need to think about every theoretical possibility just to cover yourself, in the faint hope that at least you had thought of everything and at some point in time "knew the truth". happily, often the search for truth is a binary proposition, for it is either one or the other, though i am sure sometimes there are multiple theoretical possibilities, and therein lies the "third way" or fourth or fifth.
i don't think i am deceiving myself when i claim to know the conventional beliefs or assumptions on earth. i went to school, after all, i read newspapers and magazines, i've watched television and films, i have attended church before, i've sat through lectures, indeed i have consumed information and media. and i've seen what is technologically possible, telephones, computers, 3D virtual reality games.
let us deal with one of the most fundamental questions. what is motion exactly? it calls into question what you think about time and space, and ultimately decides what you conclude about the so called "external world" that may be highly convincing. can matter, a person, a mind, whatever, actually "move" relative to other matter, persons, or minds? happily, this is a binary proposition. it is either true or false. what are you thinking? i presume you are visualizing an object moving towards or away from another and thinking that might be actuality! in the model of the external world, this is entirely the case put forward.
but the whole question of eyesight, what i see before me, and to the sides, and i really do see objects at a distance in front of me, not in my head, if people were actually moving relative to each other on a round planet, how does the structure of my eyesight not crash into someone else's near me, so to speak?
i began hearing "voices" or "auditory hallucinations" and seeing visual hallucinations when i was 20 years old in my third year at university. after i had been sectioned or committed and released from hospital, i had the rest of the year off and returned to repeat the final year. in that year, i teleported twice. to anyone who has experienced teleportation, the concept of an external world is simply not believable anymore! the first time, i was at an ATM, i had got the cash, i turned away and then i was suddenly at the train station, about a mile away. i even started to worry what would happen if i teleported to New York without my passport on me and couldn't teleport back! if the external world were real, how could i move to another point instantly without feeling anything, even if it was at light speed? or was i a clone somewhere else in space, with my consciousness suddenly activated? no and no. Ockham's Razor would suggest the simplest theory is that, indeed, the external world is not real and that matter does not "move" relative to other matter, space is merely that that is occupied by matter, it is not a "vacuum" or "empty container", quite the opposite.
conventional thinking about schizophrenia is that it is a mental illness of perception, that sufferers are delusional, all voices are hallucinatory and so on. i suspect it is hinged on a belief in the external world, it is posited it is only our perception that has gone awry and reality is just fine, so to speak. if we eliminate belief in the external world, an explanation would be that schizophrenia is an acute instability of the mind, that our hearing and our eyesight are "turned up", which accounts for the "hallucinations", and the system that worked for so long to provide normality, is thrashing around wildly. if the external world is not real, then perception is reality, is it not, don't you think? anything can happen to a schizophrenic!
when i returned to university, i still heard people speaking without seeing them, the "voices". one day i was calmly looking at the door handle, making it move up and down slightly by thought alone. i was staring at the light bulb on the ceiling, adjusting the brightness, dimmer and then brighter, again by thought alone. objects disappeared, i never found where my dissertation went! you see the interesting dichotomy? on the one hand, hallucinating and delusional, on the other, maybe i was telepathic and had budding psychokinesis powers!
CLEARCHARGE
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Instruments of Thought and the Inflation of Expectations
instruments of thought and the inflation of expectations:
our thoughts form a large part of our identity, even though the content of our thoughts may not be unique, they may seem highly personal to us. of course thoughts may be expressed in words and imagination in pictures and drawings. language is an instrument of thought. if only all thought could be expressed in language! language could be criticized as a blunt instrument, that words often express only what is obvious and clear to us, that they describe only that which is manifest, an extreme condition metaphysically.
very obviously so, no one wants to be crazy, to be a victim of insanity! however, whatever its shortcomings, language can still be used to express an infinite variety of thoughts. perhaps not infinite in every direction or area, but still infinite in others. therein lies the problem, infinite thought in a finite reality!
the human being is a social creature. and the mind naturally wanders. true thoughts about people mutate into untrue thoughts about people. that is inevitable in the thinking process. as we effortlessly make up our own fictions and add to that those of others, surely we must sometimes be living with a rampantly inflated concept of human activity in the universe?
imagine a little girl in a single room in a reality somewhere. this is a simple reality. to start with she knows nothing of language but as her imagination grows and her inventive nature dominates, she create words and then a whole language. and she draws pictures, lots of them. eventually she can imagine earth. but there is no earth in her reality and there never will be. it is all in her own mind. at best, she has overestimated things a little, though with the sense that it is her imagination, and is only somewhat crazy. at worst, she is insane, has hopes that could never be realized and she has grossly overestimated herself personally and everything else in her reality.
a word conveys a meaning. now whether a word was discovered or created or merely happened upon, it first changed our thoughts to form a concept, it channelled our minds through a certain pathway. perhaps there is no satisfactory explanation as to why a particular word means what it means, that each word is a peculiarity of this reality. it does not stretch the mind to imagine an alternate reality where the same word means something completely different.
some words we use a lot, some very little, if we use words at all to think. what is the current state of the language in the most real, metaphysical sense? words and phrases come in and out of fashion. can a word ever escape its original meaning? does precedence always determine validity?
like a musical instrument, where we can try different notes, in language, the act of randomly combining words together may not form a coherent concept to the conscious mind, but perhaps this is what is happening at the subconscious level anyway all the time? we are slowly trawling through the infinite space of thought! of course, all this is not to suggest that we began at the start of time with our minds a clean slate, for yes, there is the concept of original craziness!
CLEARCHARGE
our thoughts form a large part of our identity, even though the content of our thoughts may not be unique, they may seem highly personal to us. of course thoughts may be expressed in words and imagination in pictures and drawings. language is an instrument of thought. if only all thought could be expressed in language! language could be criticized as a blunt instrument, that words often express only what is obvious and clear to us, that they describe only that which is manifest, an extreme condition metaphysically.
very obviously so, no one wants to be crazy, to be a victim of insanity! however, whatever its shortcomings, language can still be used to express an infinite variety of thoughts. perhaps not infinite in every direction or area, but still infinite in others. therein lies the problem, infinite thought in a finite reality!
the human being is a social creature. and the mind naturally wanders. true thoughts about people mutate into untrue thoughts about people. that is inevitable in the thinking process. as we effortlessly make up our own fictions and add to that those of others, surely we must sometimes be living with a rampantly inflated concept of human activity in the universe?
imagine a little girl in a single room in a reality somewhere. this is a simple reality. to start with she knows nothing of language but as her imagination grows and her inventive nature dominates, she create words and then a whole language. and she draws pictures, lots of them. eventually she can imagine earth. but there is no earth in her reality and there never will be. it is all in her own mind. at best, she has overestimated things a little, though with the sense that it is her imagination, and is only somewhat crazy. at worst, she is insane, has hopes that could never be realized and she has grossly overestimated herself personally and everything else in her reality.
a word conveys a meaning. now whether a word was discovered or created or merely happened upon, it first changed our thoughts to form a concept, it channelled our minds through a certain pathway. perhaps there is no satisfactory explanation as to why a particular word means what it means, that each word is a peculiarity of this reality. it does not stretch the mind to imagine an alternate reality where the same word means something completely different.
some words we use a lot, some very little, if we use words at all to think. what is the current state of the language in the most real, metaphysical sense? words and phrases come in and out of fashion. can a word ever escape its original meaning? does precedence always determine validity?
like a musical instrument, where we can try different notes, in language, the act of randomly combining words together may not form a coherent concept to the conscious mind, but perhaps this is what is happening at the subconscious level anyway all the time? we are slowly trawling through the infinite space of thought! of course, all this is not to suggest that we began at the start of time with our minds a clean slate, for yes, there is the concept of original craziness!
CLEARCHARGE
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Search for Truth
the search for truth:
to anyone, the thought that you might be insane or even just a little muddled, is something deeply concerning. to not know the truth is bad enough, to believe falsity is at best embarrassing, at worst truly horrifying. to live a lie, and then to realize so, crushes the soul.
the whole problem with thought is that it is too wide in range and somewhat random. we can entertain ideas that are wildly distant from reality, not only easily, but too often. this range can be a strength, to be sure, we can happen upon true ideas from a short start sometimes, but the thought process is like watching a building being constructed haphazardly with different concepts that may or may not form a complex that is true. but thought never ceases, it continues throughout all time.
but how, if we arrive at a thought, do we know if it is true or not? we have the ability to consider all the combinations, quite carefully even. does the truth return something from the void out there, a confirmation of validity? it is frustrating when there seems no way to prove whether something is true or not. we hope that the truth will unlock the puzzle. if the mind is like a computer, trying all the combinations that fit, it would seem a slow process, and often it is.
the need to know the truth about life and existence is not just an exercise in vanity and greed, to know it all, so to speak, for how can we ever be secure in ignorance or dangerous insanity? for example, everyone knows they exist, but what do they know of others who exist, how many and who are they? the range of estimates of number, if not hardened belief, goes from zero to billions, from the world of solipsism to an entire plural universe or multiverse, but even this is confusing, for how do we define ourselves and what the other person is exactly, that is, what is a living person and can someone very different from me be a living other person as defined by myself? to believe that i am the only real person in existence, the solipsistic nightmare, is a horrific thought. basically, you are god, but you can't control that much, everything around you is an illusion and you are completely alone! alternatively, to believe there are billions of people brings its own troubling thoughts, personal insignificance, difficulties relating to so many others and so on. this leads us to assume there is a magical perfect number of people, perhaps, a "goldilocks" population, not too many, not too few.
which brings us to the perpetual thinking difficulty, if you had the power, would you want things to be a certain way, just as you think, that is, if you were God, is this what you want to be the case? there is the danger of confusing thought with emotion. caught up in our thoughts, we delude ourselves that we are thinking about what we want, when this is not truly the case.
is the truth a resonant thing? is the universe a wonderful machine where the truth is the only thing that "works"? the conscious thoughtful mind connects to the subconscious to the unconscious to the rest of surrounding reality. there is a process of testing hypotheses perhaps. we are ever closer to the truth.
CLEARCHARGE
to anyone, the thought that you might be insane or even just a little muddled, is something deeply concerning. to not know the truth is bad enough, to believe falsity is at best embarrassing, at worst truly horrifying. to live a lie, and then to realize so, crushes the soul.
the whole problem with thought is that it is too wide in range and somewhat random. we can entertain ideas that are wildly distant from reality, not only easily, but too often. this range can be a strength, to be sure, we can happen upon true ideas from a short start sometimes, but the thought process is like watching a building being constructed haphazardly with different concepts that may or may not form a complex that is true. but thought never ceases, it continues throughout all time.
but how, if we arrive at a thought, do we know if it is true or not? we have the ability to consider all the combinations, quite carefully even. does the truth return something from the void out there, a confirmation of validity? it is frustrating when there seems no way to prove whether something is true or not. we hope that the truth will unlock the puzzle. if the mind is like a computer, trying all the combinations that fit, it would seem a slow process, and often it is.
the need to know the truth about life and existence is not just an exercise in vanity and greed, to know it all, so to speak, for how can we ever be secure in ignorance or dangerous insanity? for example, everyone knows they exist, but what do they know of others who exist, how many and who are they? the range of estimates of number, if not hardened belief, goes from zero to billions, from the world of solipsism to an entire plural universe or multiverse, but even this is confusing, for how do we define ourselves and what the other person is exactly, that is, what is a living person and can someone very different from me be a living other person as defined by myself? to believe that i am the only real person in existence, the solipsistic nightmare, is a horrific thought. basically, you are god, but you can't control that much, everything around you is an illusion and you are completely alone! alternatively, to believe there are billions of people brings its own troubling thoughts, personal insignificance, difficulties relating to so many others and so on. this leads us to assume there is a magical perfect number of people, perhaps, a "goldilocks" population, not too many, not too few.
which brings us to the perpetual thinking difficulty, if you had the power, would you want things to be a certain way, just as you think, that is, if you were God, is this what you want to be the case? there is the danger of confusing thought with emotion. caught up in our thoughts, we delude ourselves that we are thinking about what we want, when this is not truly the case.
is the truth a resonant thing? is the universe a wonderful machine where the truth is the only thing that "works"? the conscious thoughtful mind connects to the subconscious to the unconscious to the rest of surrounding reality. there is a process of testing hypotheses perhaps. we are ever closer to the truth.
CLEARCHARGE
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Place of Consciousness
the place of consciousness:
located in space are many, or few perhaps, centres of mental activity, each point being where individual consciousness lies, surrounded by a vivid, fluctuating field, different and to a degree separate from all others. was this arrangement always thus or was it created or was it shared?
what controls the flow of conscious thought? other than light and sound? raw data from the unconscious mind? we are so locked into thinking about what we see and hear that other things have less of a place in our thoughts.
consciousness endlessly mixes and matches ideas together to form new concepts. some thoughts are well defined, some only vague. we don't always know what we are thinking about! consciousness is a speculator, an explorer, a thing that is always chasing knowledge and understanding.
CLEARCHARGE
located in space are many, or few perhaps, centres of mental activity, each point being where individual consciousness lies, surrounded by a vivid, fluctuating field, different and to a degree separate from all others. was this arrangement always thus or was it created or was it shared?
what controls the flow of conscious thought? other than light and sound? raw data from the unconscious mind? we are so locked into thinking about what we see and hear that other things have less of a place in our thoughts.
consciousness endlessly mixes and matches ideas together to form new concepts. some thoughts are well defined, some only vague. we don't always know what we are thinking about! consciousness is a speculator, an explorer, a thing that is always chasing knowledge and understanding.
CLEARCHARGE
Friday, April 6, 2012
Awake, Asleep and the Cycle of Thought
awake, asleep and the cycle of thought:
there is an interesting universal question, that is, was i born awake or was i born asleep? i mean, really? let us explore what we mean by these two words, awake and asleep.
awake, conscious, seeing light and hearing, thinking about the world around us. asleep, though the lights are off so to speak, this does not mean that our thoughts have died, and our thinking ceases to exist, only that it has become more abstract, less to do with the very real senses of sight and hearing.
well, why can't we remember what we dream of, and what we were thinking of before we fell asleep? when sleep fades in, our thinking becomes blurry, less controlled by what we see when awake, and it is an often wild, volatile sequence of thoughts, unto the state of being dead asleep, that we experience daily.
what is typical in the states of being awake and being asleep, probably exist simultaneously all the time. in a sense, we are never "100% awake and 0% asleep" or "0% awake and 100% asleep", at any time. which leads to a refining of the first question, well, how awake was i, at true birth, and how asleep?
dreams are a strange mixture of the two, a fluid state that is similar to the stage of falling asleep, in that thoughts are often abstract, for we cannot easily define what we are thinking about.
is this an important question, the nature of our minds at birth?
CLEARCHARGE
there is an interesting universal question, that is, was i born awake or was i born asleep? i mean, really? let us explore what we mean by these two words, awake and asleep.
awake, conscious, seeing light and hearing, thinking about the world around us. asleep, though the lights are off so to speak, this does not mean that our thoughts have died, and our thinking ceases to exist, only that it has become more abstract, less to do with the very real senses of sight and hearing.
well, why can't we remember what we dream of, and what we were thinking of before we fell asleep? when sleep fades in, our thinking becomes blurry, less controlled by what we see when awake, and it is an often wild, volatile sequence of thoughts, unto the state of being dead asleep, that we experience daily.
what is typical in the states of being awake and being asleep, probably exist simultaneously all the time. in a sense, we are never "100% awake and 0% asleep" or "0% awake and 100% asleep", at any time. which leads to a refining of the first question, well, how awake was i, at true birth, and how asleep?
dreams are a strange mixture of the two, a fluid state that is similar to the stage of falling asleep, in that thoughts are often abstract, for we cannot easily define what we are thinking about.
is this an important question, the nature of our minds at birth?
CLEARCHARGE
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