Calvin:
That's why I want
to ask you, as a
tiger, a wild animal close to nature, what you
think we're put on Earth to do. What's our
purpose in life? Why are we here?
Hobbes: We're here to devour each other alive.
Moral Compass
[Cardboard, paper, ink, credit card plastic, container lid
plastic, metal hardware; 12x12x1 cm]
|

June 2009 |
Manufacturing Absurdity
30.10.04
If
you think about it, there really is no absurdity in the natural world
because everything exists and occurs for a reason and in
response to a previous event, even if it's simply quantum chaos.
But the artificial world constructed by human endeavors is
riddled with absurdities; people seem to do things all the time without
any apparent reason.
All
absurdity originates in artificial living because it can’t
be found in the natural world. And this isn’t
an event related to modern characteristics but can be traced
back at least as far as ancient cave art
–
the first evidence of abstract expression.
Voodoo and other shamanistic
practices are further examples of the primitive, abstract mind
at work; for instance, trying to transfer personal suffering
into another person as a means of releasing oneself from their
own pain.
The
human mind and its imaginative powers created absurdity with the
advent of the ability to conceive things that aren’t there. This is also why humans can laugh
because laughter is the evolved response to absurdity needed to
maintain sanity, a self-created absurdity no less! Laughter is a
necessary component of human mental health; one of the primary
symptoms of severe mental illness is the inability to laugh or
laugh appropriately.
Human imagination is clearly a powerful force and one that can
harm as easily as it can help. It's fine to pretend and play
with fantasy, imagination is healthy after all, but when you
start to believe to the point of faith then it becomes
pathological. Faith in a belief is intentionally blocking out
alternative explanations; it is willful denial. All of the
distortions and perversions of man stem from the belief in
unverifiable and disconnected unreality, and the only thing that can
temper the imagination is intellect.
Disentangling the Absurdity in Artificiality
Reduction is a very powerful methodology for explaining the way
things work but it fails when used against very complex and
heavily inter-connected systems. Social systems for instance are
simply too tangled to reduce and then generate any useful
answers from the results. So, for instance, reduction has serious
problems when it's used to against human interactions,
essentially it answers with an error message. But the fact that
human activity does generate meaning creates a blatant
contradiction. Why do people want to talk all the time? Why do
they do things like paint or throw rocks into ponds or try to
climb mountains, or perform any other arbitrary act? The
complexity of social interactions within advanced human society
makes discerning origins and initial forces very difficult,
cause and effect are confusing or not even apparent - often
creating a façade of absurdity.
Addressing and
understanding the source of meaning and its absence is important
because nihilism is a response to the ubiquitous absurdity of
artificiality in modern existence. It may be that the only way
to explain these ultra-complex systems of interactions, and
perhaps the absurdity associated with them, is to factor in a
tertiary meaning derived from the interactions themselves. In
other words it's not the individual pieces that matter here so
much as the interactions binding them together.
Possession
shapes and consolidates the "I" of philosophers. "I own,
therefore I am" expresses a truer psychology than the Cartesian
"I think, therefore I am." A man's deeds are imputed to him as
their owner, not merely as their creator. - John Dewey,
1921.
The
Electronic Collective Subconscious
22.01.03 I'm going to start
out by stating that the Internet is a giant
collective human subconscious, one that is not
hidden in private dreams or masked thoughts but
free and openly accessible for just about anyone.
It's a giant venue full of all those things that
are so often deemed 'bad' in conscious life, such
as sex, racism, rude behavior - if you can think
of it, it's out there someplace. All the things
that people often avoid saying to a judging
public audience are safe to express with the anonymity of the
Internet communications medium.
The negatives of
this sort of expression are quick to be
recognized, such as the fact that someone can be
the most rude and obnoxious jackass online
without the risk of getting the swift punch in the
face such anti-social behaviour would justly
earn in an actual physical meeting.
Nevertheless, the benefits should be noted as well.
The free expression that the Internet currently
provides has certainly kept not just a few from
losing their sanity. This is really the basis of
dreams, that being a way to express and deal with
emotions and thoughts that are incompletely
developed, or simply unacceptable for expression
during everyday situations.
So given that much (but
obviously not all) of the Internet is a massive
subconscious expression of multiple individual
thoughts and desires, I would predict that in the
near future the public will resist efforts by
corporations and government interests to identify
and track people who use this communications
medium, example the advent of sites like
Anonymizer.com. The public will
resist efforts to reduce their anonymous use of
the Internet because it's an important creative
outlet and one that they didn't have before, much in
the same way that the printing press created a
new means of expression for the public's ideas
and emotions.
Even something as relatively
innocuous as text file 'cookies' have generated
intense concern; same with creating unique
identification numbers for the CPU chips to
specifically identify a computer. Business' have
a significant interest in eroding anonymity
because they can exploit that information to
target their products. For instance a while back
somebody figured out that the online store Amazon.com
was charging different prices for the same
products to different customers based upon the
cookies and personal information they had
collected! Amazon discontinued the practice (so
they claim) but only because they were caught and
publicly revealed, not out of any respect for
business ethics or personal privacy. Who else do
you think is doing this sort of thing now?
My point is that
anonymity is important to people because it
increases the allowance for free expression of
strong emotion, uncomfortable thoughts, and
socially marginal notions. And whether you or I
like or dislike what's being expressed, the truth
is that for psychological health these things have to
come out some way or another, and it's better to have it
done in a fairly creative and mostly non-damaging
way than have it suppressed and spewed out in
unpredictable and non-constructive, damaging ways.
Bottom line is that the best defense against
unpleasant or disliked expression encountered in
this medium is to simply ignore it and move on to
something you do like, as opposed to censoring it
or getting the government to try and outlaw it,
and as a bonus that way you don't have to get
your hand messy with the ol' face-punch either.
The
Evolution of Evil
24.06.02 The concept of something created
from nothing by God is a common creation theme transcending both
history and disparate cultures, for example the book of Genesis
chapter one. But this division presupposes a duality between two
elements, nothing and something, dark and light, evil and good.
And since the 'something' created by a righteous God is good,
then evil is of course those dark uncontrollable forces and
chaotic elements opposing, subverting, and destroying righteous
creation.
Similarly we have the structures of
civilization, those elements of human invention such as laws and
leaders who are God's representatives on Earth whom we are
supposed to always obey just as we do God himself. The book of
Ephesians chapter 6 verse 5 admonishes all slaves to dutifully
obey their masters. Meanwhile the disobedient, the lawless,
anti-civilization barbarians remain the implacable forces of
evil.
The mediaeval Church
would often put animals on trial, nearly driving
cats to extinction on continental Europe at one
point and dramatically promoting plague in the
process! The witch trials are more commonly
known today, a tradition carried over into the
New World. Witches or rogue animals were believed
to be inhabited by demons, invisible spirits
compelling allegiance to a dark master. In the book of Mark
chapter five, Jesus drove the "legion"
of demons out of one sick man and put them into a
herd of swine as per their request. Immediately
afterward they all ran off into a lake and died,
all 2,000 of them. One would think the owner of
those pigs would be rightfully furious, nor does
the Bible say that he was compensated by Jesus
for the costly loss of property. No doubt the
promise of a "heavenly reward" quickly
soothed the agitated.
Evil was something
that came from demons and dark forces of chaos
and disorder that could never be controlled by
human powers, and instead one had to rely on (meaning
hope, pray and sacrifice to) heavenly forces to
save your sorry ass from evil and eternal
damnation, hence the importance of the priest, the saviour,
going to church every week, but most importantly being a very
good, obedient and tithe paying citizen. Hebrews 13:17 sternly
reminds everyone,
"Obey
your leaders and submit to their authority. They
keep watch over you as men who must give account. Obey them so that they their work will be a
joy, not a burden, for that would be of no
advantage to you."
Nature itself,
although being created by God, was nonetheless
emblematic of the ever present forces of chaos,
darkness and a permanent haven, for evil could not be conquered by human power, merely
kept at bay through the bright lights and city
walls of civilization and artificial order. In
the epic of Gilgamesh, the hero, along with trusty
sidekick Enkidu, leaves his sunny city and
travels far off into the dark and primeval cedar
forest to battle forces of evil like the
nature divinity Humbada. Man versus nature, no
quarter granted!
Just over a hundred years
ago it was very unusual, and generally considered
suicidal, to simply venture out into the
wilderness unless forced to. Lewis and Clark
traveling across the new Louisiana Purchase in
1804 was an accomplishment at least as momentous
to contemporary minds as America on the moon in
1969! Not until President Theodore Roosevelt,
suffering from massive masculine insecurities,
ventured out into the rugged outdoors for
entertainment and adventure did such things
become remotely reasonable endeavors for the
public. Today many think nothing of climbing a
20,000 foot mountain on a weekend, or driving far
out into the national forest and camping for the
night, then complaining about bears ransacking
food supplies or getting stuck on the
mountainside and dialing up the cell phone to
call for help. Or more egregious yet,
constructing housing subdivisions in the woods and
then desperately searching for someone to
blame when it all burns to the ground in a seasonal forest
fire!
The
radical change in power-position that has transformed the human
outlook over the past century is remarkably understated in its
most crucial elements, that being how we deal with life itself
and the eternal forces of nature. Gone is the era where
President John Adams could boast with confidence of a thoroughly
awed public response:
"My
family, I believe, have cut down more trees in
America than any other name!"
Instead of a mortally antagonistic position of one versus the
other, it is now generally accepted that we are the stewards of Earthly life, rather than
its victims. And homo Sapiens are no longer just
another animal in the menagerie, but now the zoo
keepers! Today certain organizations are
desperately trying to save butterflies in the
Amazon basin or rescue hopelessly stranded and brain
damaged Orcas. This interface between humanity
and nature has shifted so suddenly that it's no
surprise significant cultural fractures
occur between the traditional camp continuing to
espouse exploitation and the new camp promoting
manic preservation. And so the definition of evil,
or more importantly the source of it, remains
muddled in the modern mind.
Someone to blame...
Evil has begun to
turn inward from residing within mostly vague
external forces into an endogenous evil. The age
old excuse, 'the Devil made me do it!' just
doesn't work anymore, not in court and not within
the context of any serious social setting.
Indeed, the existential source of contemporary
evil is really none other than man himself. The
monsters of our era don't live in poorly lit
cedar forests; they live in whitewashed State
Houses on the taxpayer's dime. Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, these are our emblems of evil.
Never mind the millions of eager and willing
participants needed for the enactment of their
'mad' whims. And yet herein lies the crux of the
existential dilemma, one that fills entire book
shelves in libraries and endless circles of
debate and concern, how can one normal individual
become a monstrosity of evil in one lifetime?
Witness the concomitant rise of philosophy
grasping to explain the duality
conundrum within humanity. Demon possession, once such a
convenient and fitting answer, appears less and less palatable.
In some cases the religion, or lack of it, is portrayed as the
culprit of the madness. But a more acceptable answer, serving to
schism the evil from the good within the very narrow boundaries
of humanity, is of course ideology. Ideas are the playground of
good and evil once inhabited by simplistic angels and demons or
wilderness and civilization. And once again the error lies in
trying to split the indivisible for the sake of satisfying a
fictional notion.
[All Bible quotes from the NIV.]
Dead
"The most incomprehensible thing
about the universe is that it is comprehensible." - Albert
Einstein
11.09.01 Philosophy fixates
on the apparent complexity of nature, and
classical thinkers ponder the grandeur and
mystery of the universe. Yet one who builds
meaning with the substantive materials of
scientific knowledge eventually reaches the
stunning, inescapable, and diametrically opposed
conclusion: existence is so absurdly simple it's
utterly disheartening.
Making things
predictable and understandable erodes their power
and vitiates the drama. Just think of the simple
fact that the laws of the universe and biology
are all even capable of being comprehended with a
modicum of human effort. The fact that things are
both consistent and quite understandable is
utterly devastating to philosophical thought.
Even the most
enigmatic and bathetic of topic for poets and
philosophers, love, is just simple chemicals in
the brain. Sexual and maternal bonding is just
oxytocin from the pituitary gland.
The truth is depressing,
ignorance really is bliss and if God ever went to school he took
the short bus with his name sewn into his underwear and his
mittens pinned to his coat. Welcome to your new world, mystery
is dead, philosophy is dead, faith is dead, love is dead, sex is
hollow and hedonism is boring.
System
Health
19.02.01 Medical science is
long on quantifiable fact and short on
qualitative feeling, which is unfortunate because
the human body is more than just a series of
chemical reactions - it also includes the human
mind, a largely non-quantifiable yet extremely
important part of the health process. Human
health is about environment, sanitation,
nutrition and health care, all of which are well
represented in modern hospitals and clinics.
However the health of the mind is still the realm
of quacks, pseudo-scientists, and masters of mumbo-jumbo worse than the bone-saws and leeches of
medicine 200 years ago. A healthy mind sustains a
healthy body, and people that have purpose in life
and a desire to live will outlast those that
don't regardless of mitigating factors.
Instead of pouring
billions of dollars into eradicating illness' that
affect a fraction of the population it would be
wiser to invest that money into the afflictions
of the entire population, that being mental
health. Instead of a small return for a huge sum
we could gain a huge return for a small sum.
Physiology is but a
part of the answer because social interactions
and stimulation is the environment that creates
sickness or health for the mind. Employment, or
lack of it, vapid degenerate entertainment or
edifying education, mental exercise in learning
or dumbing-down. Medical research will eventually come around to
the conclusion that the human mind is a part of the human body
and both are an intricate part or a larger system. The entire
system must be healthy for any of the parts to ever be healthy
as well.
God's
Depression
15.01.01 & 05.07.09 It's typical
metaphysical fashion for everyone to think they
would want to be God, but after the abuse of
power wore thin would you really? Think about it,
God must have the most boring and lonely job
possible - no equals, no one to converse with or
learn from. Knowing all and having experienced
all leaves nothing to explore, discover or
encounter! Even the most slovenly dullard doesn't
wish to watch TV reruns every night. The source of life's
excitement is the unknown, the chance and risk within all new
encounters. Take it away, make everything predictable, knowable
and the result is stasis, boredom, hatred for life and eventual
suicide.
Through the advent of the demise of
idealism and the triumph of scientific reason we've found
ourselves at a unique juncture. Despite fervent efforts to
conquer the unknown, ultimately it's clear to carry this purpose
to a final conclusion would be counterproductive. Hence the
perpetual popularity of extraterrestrial encounters, ghosts,
demons and angels, ESP, LSD and peyote psychotropic drug
experiences, psychic and paranormal powers and similar
'mysteries of the unknown'. Of course they can be explained with
non-supernatural answers, even ghosts are just infra-sound
waves. Excuse my repetitiveness but reality really is just a
profound misunderstanding of simplicity.
Still people
continue to believe because they find the topics
fascinating. Humanity wants to know so as to be
able to control, but without some mysteries life
is intensely dull. So it really shouldn't be any
surprise that boredom is a plague across the
western industrialized world. We collectively ask
"is that all there is to life?!" The reduction wounds run deep, "but there
must be more!" Science's success at
generating predictable models is its own
weakness; will delusion and myth create a new era
or will scientific ennui reign forever-more?
And this is no idle
issue because the need for myth, for the
supernatural even, is wholly ingrained into the
human psyche. Despite the rational conclusion
that God is an absurdity with suicidal tendencies,
every culture employs an almighty deity in single
or multiple forms! The human mind stubbornly
refuses to accept that life is just this
nihilistic clockwork mechanism designed to
perpetuate a malignant stasis descending from
nothing and headed to nowhere.
Beyond the truistic
hyperbole the solution remains elusive. An
explained myth is like a revealed placebo, it
doesn't have much validity unless one sincerely
believes in it. Archeology will provide
entertaining mysteries for some time and since
the universe is largely unexplored astronomy
should provide sufficient vagary for
contemplation. For the moment quantum physics
poses a few perplexing conundrums. Neuroscience
has a ways to go yet, surely the human mind will
occupy theologians in some form. But really, ennui and boredom are
mostly products of laziness and lack of effort. The more we
look, the more mysteries we find.
Nihilism
Meets Holology
08.01.01 One must ask the
question first, then focus the mind. What does it
mean to be a Holologist? Traditional problem
solving entails the reduction paradigm -
breaking down all into components and then
building up again. Essentially building
simplistic simulations of the original, something
purified to the point we can better understand it.
But as even a simpleton knows that life is no
simulation, darn that elemental chaos! No, it doesn't always
work because components and the whole aren't
equivalent, example synergy and quantum systems.
Ultimately we'll realize what the Holologist
already knows: strategic solutions must come
from the incorporation of disparate datum mixed and
mastered in a mind to generate a hypothesis which
then can only be verified in-situ. But testing on
real-life doesn't really happen, rather it's
either employed or it isn't. Thus one accepts the
hypothesis and the proponent or not, in-toto, the
map and the guide, the prophet and the saviour,
the ultimate package deal. Keeping in mind
perfection exists only in the simulations (any
artificial system lacking chaos).
The Holologist is
rational but not devoid of spiritual elements
because they understand what can be discerned
given present knowledge and what cannot. The
unknown remainder is the spiritual realm, a
hemisphere oddly enough at least as equally
relevant to human well-being as the known.
It's tough to fit in
socially, most people solve the conundrum by
sacrificing personal identity for the collective
uniform of conformity, then cynically employing
delusional phrases and symbols of channeled
rebellion and acceptable heterodoxy to mask their
doublethink. Personally I don't fit into any
social niche; I gave it up long ago, and probably
couldn't even if I tried. But after sacrificing
the superficial connection I found that even
finding an ideological niche eluded me.
Persons
cut adrift like this tend to become nihilistic,
but true some people simply have a greater need
for social acceptance than others. But after
blaming myself and feeling sorry for my apartness
I came to the realization that much of the reason
is not my own but rather the narrow range of
acceptable categories we must subscribe to in our
plastic, digital society. My problem must not
afflict just me but many! Today we should have
more options ideologically than ever, yet we
discover that instead we've all been channeled
into a binary reality consisting of gray and more
gray, damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I don't need to be damned, so instead I
quit the game and won.
Nihilism is about
the closest established 'ideology' I could find
that properly characterized my beliefs and
feelings. It works in a fashion but like most
everyone else I have a hard time allowing it to
be the ultimate end of a means.
Evolution of ideas
with the fusion of known and unknown yields
Holology. It works even better since it's organic - not a marble
statue but a living evolving entity.
The
Interpreters Ruin The World
21.10.00 Many times
simplicity is its own beauty. Leave it to the
interpreters to destroy the simple maxims of the
Ten Commandments. Rabbis turned it into the Talmud
and themselves into monopolist-portals to 'truth'.
The Bill of Rights gets perverted and interpreted
by Supreme Court, legislators and lawyers.
Classic works of literature get interpreted and
convoluted by self-described experts, the
literati losers telling us all what it really
means. Even the most banal and simplistic
Hollywood film needs at least three critics to
invent disparate spins and generate enough
confusion and intrigue to boost ticket sales.
Interpreters build a new world
based on bias and truth monopolies while profiting from
confusion. Unfortunately, this trend will only get worse as
specialization rampages through our society. No one seems
to have the time or patience to figure anything
out for themselves, so they rely on their
political representatives, or their Pastor, or
their favorite film critic. And when these fake
heroes fall whose really to blame? You can't
control your own destiny until you start to think
for yourself.
Dreaming
06.03.00 I think the
nonsensical dreams are created by intense
emotions such as anger, fear and so on, while more
moderated and orderly dreams are formed by
desires, wishes, and imagination. And generally
dreams deal within an unrecognized realm of a 6th
sense. A sense dealing with emotional feeling - likes
dislikes, hates and those feelings transposed
onto others people and situations, as well as the
detection of those feelings in other people.
The neural paths
that determine memory are spatially organized, and
likewise remembered in three dimensions. This causes
complexity in dreams and makes them difficult to
directly understand in a conscious state. The dream
world is also like a foreign language that's long since
untranslatable and it appears confusing or nonsensical upon
awakening and translating in the conscious mind.
Freydis Landers, Self-Help Guru
28.12.99 Our subconscious minds are
influenced by everything we see and hear. Our surroundings
subtly shape our perceptions and beliefs, which is especially
pronounced strategically. In other words little things like
names, ideas, and visual imagery all coalesce in the mind. This is
proven through dream studies. Amazingly, our mind actually
remembers everything, all details, it’s just that most gets
buried in our psyche. Nonetheless it still exerts influences on
our daily lives. Our spontaneous ideas are often just a replay of
things we've seen or heard of.
A little scary huh? Indeed, but we
can now understand that the first step to self-empowerment is to
control our own environments as much as possible, taking ground
when we can bit by bit. Control the influences on your life and
direct the input you receive, see the things you like and avoid
the ones you don’t.
Denial tactics? In
some ways, Im not saying ignore things that
are detrimental to self and others, like deny
that truck is about to hit you head on while
driving down the Interstate. Just change the
little things, the entertainment what you read
and what you hear as much as possible in more
profitable directions for self-enrichment.
Degrading and negative milieus will have
sympathetic affects on you. You are in many ways
a summation of the constant influences
surrounding you. Advertisers spend billions of
dollars and Im sure they wouldnt be
wasting all that money if it had no effect
on the minds of consumers. Think about that next
time you watch television, see a movie, or buy a logo
shirt.
The greatest marketing coup has to be the
guy that figured out how to get consumers to pay to see
advertising (think of cable TV and movie theaters)!
Coincidence?
30.01.99 Concerning the
nature of coincidences, ask what do
they all have in common? The answer is that theyre
all impulses from the subconscious. Never are
they forced or a product of desire, just a
flowing feeling that occurs usually suddenly.
This means that the
subconscious is dictating much, if not all, that
occurs during conscious state. Almost as if we
live the lives we planned out during the
subconscious sleep time.
Thus in order to
manipulate what we want to experience we need to
transfer a conscious idea into the subconscious
realm of thought. But you know this happens all
the time, just on a less focused basis. This is
why TV commercials and advertisements do have
effects on us. Even the most subtle concept
repeated enough times creates a new reality.
Dreams
are Backwards future
11.07.99 It could be that if
dreams are really visions of the future then they appear confusing because they're
being played out in
reverse time and motion. This subconscious
interpretation of reversed temporal events would
explain why dreams are often so confusing. The
present moves from past to future, but any future
time frame would behave the opposite way and
progress from end to beginning. If one were to
view this occurring it would seem confusing to
say the least, but if one were aware of what was
happening you could make sense out of it, or of some of it at
least.
Modern quantum
theory posits that anything traveling faster than
light speed (tachyon) would also be traveling
backwards in time (from our tardon perspective). In this case
the end of a dream would actually be the beginning of the future
event and vice versa.
Who
Needs God Anyway?
12.12.97 Is it too
presumptuous too state that I'm happy to be
Godless and exist within the perfectly
predictable framework of physical laws? When
I make mistakes its my fault, but I know
that I made the best
decision given the
known datum. When I succeed I know that no one
deserves credit
except
myself! Fate is merely the events that occur
beyond my control and I see no need to attribute
those events to any supernatural being. Why do so
many people seek out the most complicated and
convoluted explanations for everyday life? People
invent philosophies that cant be disproved
and then decry their sorry outcome on abstract
constructs.
I’m happy to be me, the
sum of both functional and dysfunctional. Who needs God except
the coward that wants to deny fault?
Holological
Significance
Philosophy
is really just a code word -- the invalid
license to be intellectually opaque. Not
that useful interpretations and unique
ideas can't arise from philosophical
discussions, merely that philosophy lacks
value due to its intangibility, dearth
of quantifiable boundaries, and lack of empirical
substance. Philosophy and modern art has much in common;
in both
cases their greatest weakness is
simultaneously their greatest asset - oh
how philosophic!
|
|