Consciousness and the Paranormal

[boomerang]

But a million people ... For example, this forum is smarter than any one member of it. Moby Dick - I don't know that Melville was smarter than other novelists but he was a conduit for his age for such a culmination of profundities in the novel that he could scarcely have fully known what he was doing at the time and that to me is another expression of collective intelligence.

I think.

Our brains are structured more like huge populations of registered voters who collectively choose paths of action than like digital computers. Neurons are either actuated or inhibited based on excitatory or inhibiting inputs from other neurons. (Perhaps I have this oversimplified, or just plain wrong here, and someone will correct me.) Now consider that individuals in society function in much the same way. We are constantly prodded and inhibited by the actions of others, and decide to act or not act accordingly. Societies engage in collective decision making in ways that might be described as comparable to the brain. Does this make a level of emergent awareness that is unknown to the individual, possible ? Is humanity a kind of hive intelligence ?

Whoa. It's way past this old man's bedtime and I am probably talking through the non-preferred orifice here. But maybe it's at least something to ponder.

 

[nameless]

"On the plains of the Serengeti, a dangerously emaciated cheetah stalks an antelope. A genetic accident has given the cheetah a brain that perpetually perceives its surroundings as they were a few seconds ago. When the antelope comes within range, the cheetah leaps from cover, but the antelope is already long gone. Weakened by hunger, the cheetah lies down and dies
On the plains of the Serengeti, a dangerously emaciated cheetah stalks an antelope. A genetic accident has given the cheetah a brain that perpetually perceives its surroundings as they were a few seconds ago. When the antelope comes within range, the cheetah leaps from cover, but the antelope is already long gone. Weakened by hunger, the cheetah lies down and dies.

It's a heart-breaking story. But, according to a prominent American physicist, it goes to the very heart of why we perceive the world the way we do. "Animals have been equipped by natural selection to experience the world in the most effective way for their survival," says James Hartle of the University of California at Santa Barbara. "An animal that hunts using the most recent data from its surroundings, eats; one that doesn't, starves."

Probably, this seem no more than common sense. However, Professor Hartle, a scientific collaborator of Professor Stephen Hawking, believes it addresses a major scientific conundrum: why we experience a past, present and future at all. "The odd thing is that none of these concepts is uniquely defined in our most fundamental description of physical reality," he says.

That description is the special theory of relativity, proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905. According to relativity, space and time are not separate but blended together into a four-dimensional amalgam called space-time. Crucially, space-time can be divided up into space and time not just in one way but in many different ways. A clock carried by one "observer" defines their "time" - a particular direction in space-time - while the perpendicular direction defines their "space".

However, an observer moving in a different direction in space-time will have a different way of dividing up the four directions of space-time into space and time, and consequently a different notion of time and a different notion of space.

Because of their different notions of time, observers moving with respect to each other will not agree on whether two events occur at the same time. They also will not agree on "what is happening now", "what happened 10 minutes ago", and so on. In fact, they may not agree even on whether one thing happened before another. "That's why fundamental physics supplies no unique notion of past, present, and future," says Professor Hartle.

Why then do we have such a strong feeling that such things exists? According to Professor Hartle, it is because significant differences in observers' notions of time occur only if they are moving relative to each other at speeds close to that of light. Since, on Earth, we are moving much slower than light - which travels more than a million times faster than a passenger airliner - we are all moving more or less in the same direction in space-time. "Differences in our notions of time are therefore too small to notice and we can agree on a past, present and future," says Professor Hartle.

But just because we can experience a "common" past, present and future, it does not explain why the present has a special immediacy - why we focus our attention on information gathered most recently from our surroundings and not several seconds ago, like the unfortunate cheetah. To try to make sense of this, Professor Hartle has made use of an abstract entity capable of experiencing and reacting to reality in the simplest way imaginable.

Such an entity, dubbed an information-gathering and utilising system, or IGUS, was actually concocted by the Nobel-prizewinning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. An IGUS records information from its environment - perhaps an image of its surroundings - in an "input register". The register, however, has a limited capacity and, as more information comes in from the environment, it is passed to a "memory register" to clear space for new input. An IGUS might have many memory registers along which it can shuffle the past information. Eventually, however, it will have to be dumped.

Of course, dumping this past information without using it would be a waste. Before this happens, therefore, it is passed to other parts of the IGUS.

In addition to the registers, it has a "schema", a simplified model of its environment with rules culled from past experience, which tells it how to behave in particular circumstances. It also has a computer that works out how it should react to its surroundings, based on the rules stored in the schema. The computer carries out two distinct types of computation: C (conscious), which makes decisions; and U (unconscious), which updates the schema.

According to Professor Hartle, some of the key features of human perception can be mimicked by this simple set-up if C is made to focus on the input register and U on the other registers. This distinction is important. It means that the IGUS consciously "experiences" the present but "remembers" the past, just like we do.

Also, the past and future are qualitatively different in that the past in the registers is "remembered" while the future is "predicted" as the output of computation. Furthermore, because the IGUS focuses its attention on the most recently acquired image, "now" has a special immediacy, just like it has to us.

The human-mimic IGUS works in the following way. Suppose an image of a chocolate doughnut appears in the first register. "The computer consults the schema, which has abstracted rules from a previous experience - from previous visits to cake shops - and realises 'Hey, I like chocolate doughnuts'," says Professor Hartle. "The IGUS therefore decides to buy a chocolate doughnut. Or perhaps the schema contains information on the fat and sugar content of doughnuts, which overrides the liking of doughnuts, so the computer decides not to buy a chocolate doughnut."

According to Professor Hartle, this human-mimic IGUS hints at why we experience a "flow of time". This is actually a puzzle because even a little thought reveals that such a concept is a nonsense. "Something which flows, changes with time," says Professor Hartle. "But how can time change with time? It's a logical impossibility." This impossibility is made explicit in special relativity where space-time is essentially a "map" in which all the "events" in the history of the Universe - from the birth of everything in the big bang into the far future - are laid out, exactly as if they are pre-ordained. Nothing at all flows.

In the IGUS, the flow of time is represented by the passage of images to the right until they are erased from the row of registers and are "forgotten". "This is what we mistake for the flow of time," says Professor Hartle. "Something analogous to the flow of information from register to register must happen in our brains. This is what ultimately gives us our sense of time passing."

If all this IGUS stuff seems a bit complicated simply to confirm that the flow of time is a flow of information, there is a pay-off. The beauty of Gell-Mann's concept of an IGUS is that it is flexible and so can be wired up in many different ways. There are many different ways in which information can pass between its components, corresponding to very different ways of experiencing and reacting to reality. Because of this, it is possible for Professor Hartle to ask: "Are there other ways in which creatures could organise their experience that are different from ours but which are still consistent with the basic laws of physics?"

Professor Hartle imagines several different typed of IGUS, each of which experiences reality in a different way. The first focuses on not one but two times, 10 seconds apart, so it has two "presents". A second kind, like the cheetah, is always behind, seeing the world as it was 10 seconds ago. And a third has no "schema" so that it must calculate its next move from the contents of all its registers because all possible moments are equally accessible. "Would any of these be viable?" asks Professor Hartle.

According to Professor Hartle, the two-time IGUS would waste valuable conscious focus on inessential information in the past. The always-behind IGUS would starve to death like the cheetah. And the no-schema IGUS would waste precious computational resources. Such variant ways of organising experience, should they ever arise, says Professor Hartle, would be promptly weeded out by natural selection. Professor Hartle concludes: "Our time sense is determined biology as well as physics."

If Professor Hartle is right, it means that any extraterrestrials we one day meet will experience the world in the same way as we do, sharing concepts of past, present and future, and the idea of a flow of time. Perhaps George W Bush was wiser than everyone thought when he said: "I think we can all agree, the past is over."

Marcus Chown is the author of 'The Universe Next Door' (Headline)


sorry if this is not particularly relevant .

 

[nameless]

I like this very much:

"The games's not over, it's barely begun, the story is only at it's beginning. It is always noteworthy that we look at the great sweeps of geologic time, making it akin to the Washington Monument - say - and soberly indicate (in awe) that humankind's emergence is represented by but one inch on that column - and we don't turn it around: Humans, as Mind and Freewill, is a brand-new event, we are at the very beginning of this story that is us. Yes, we are breaking some stuff in our playpen, but what is our potential? Who are we?"
.

Sorry I couldn't help but note the irony. Considering its design, construction and contribution by Freemasons and supportive organisations and businesses. but i digress.

 

[Tyger]

In all of this it is the disconnectedness that is the problem - not the solution.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

I know, quoting myself - but connected (in the spirit of connectedness) to what I am further going to post. Keep in mind how 'wise' the eco-system was with the wolves present - how but one element out-of-place altered and then re-altered an eco-system, right down to changing how the rivers flowed.

From Radiolab: Is Planet Earth Under New Management? - Radiolab

Is Planet Earth Under New Management?

TEXT: "A hundred million years from now, when we're all dead and gone, a team of geologists will be digging in a field somewhere ...... and they will discover, buried in the rocks below, a thin layer of sediment — very thin, about the width of a cigarette paper, says British stratigrapher Jan Zalasiewicz. That skinny strip, when they look close, will send what's called a "biostratigraphic signal" that something enormous happened back in our era, something life changing, planet reorganizing, even earth shaping. The evidence, when they look closely, will be visible in that same skinny layer all over the world. In her new book, The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert describes what they'll find.

"For starters, Kolbert says, below this layer, geologists will see fossil remnants of all kinds of large animals: elephants, buffalo, rhinos, lions, tigers, whales, giant turtles (and deeper down, even earlier — saber tooth tigers, mammoths and giant sloths). Their big bones will litter those older rocks. But above this layer — after our era — they disappear. Something killed off the Earth's megafauna.

"During this same time, they will discover that animals and plants that used to be in one place — gingko trees in China, tulips in Asia, starlings in Europe — suddenly moved all over the world. Grasses found on one continent now strangely appear on four continents. Flowering plants, rats, goats, pigeons, kudzu, ants, inexplicably spread their territories across enormous oceans, climates, time zones. Specific life forms — chickens, cattle, roses, wheat, rice — turn up everywhere. Something moved them, though they may not know who or how. ...

"Also at this time, bits of air trapped in the rock will show that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped sharply — to about five hundred parts per million, higher than at any other point in the previous 800,000 years. So in this era, the chemical composition of the atmosphere changed, and changed very suddenly. ...

"And down in the soil where supplies of nitrogen had been relatively rare, coming from existing populations of plants and animals – something changed too. Out of nowhere, tons and tons of extra nitrogen appear. The supply jumps feverishly — feeding plants as never before. What happened?

"Digging on six continents, geologists will discover that almost all of the Earth's major rivers, instead of winding and meandering across the planet's surface, were altered — blocked, re-routed or straightened. In some cases those rivers were dammed and pointed to new destinations. Enormous lakes were starved of water, and disappeared.

"And surveying the continents, they will discover that roughly half the land on Earth that's free of ice had been significantly altered (yes, half) to provide space for crops, reservoirs, mining, logging, quarrying, housing, commerce, or transportation. Wild spaces continued to exist, of course, mostly as rainforests, deserts, tundra and the higher mountain ranges, but they were a smaller and smaller proportion of the planet, sometimes crisscrossed by pipelines and affected by climate change. The densely built spaces, meanwhile ...... got much bigger, affecting the air, the climate, biodiversity, nutrient recycling and soil structure.

"Millions and millions of years from now, all these changes will still be visible — to a geologist's practiced eye — right there in the rock, in that sliver. And the scale of the change and its subsequent effects will be so pronounced that geologists will want to give it a name, to mark the shift. Geologists do that when the change is big enough; we call the era of great dinosaurs the Jurassic; after that, the Cretaceous. What about this period? Right now, geologists call our time the Holocene, from the Greek for "entirely recent". Fair enough.

"When Future Geologists Wonder ...But looking backward, future geologists will want to know what caused all this change?

"Volcanoes don't explain it. Incoming asteroids don't explain it. Climate cycles don't explain all of it — not the rivers, not the nitrogen, not all those structures and byways.

"It will gradually become clear that some animal on the planet, proliferating, spreading, carrying, moving, building, designing, inventing, was largely responsible.

"Which is why the chemist Paul Crutzen, sitting at a science meeting a few years ago, interrupted a talk where the speaker kept saying "Holocene," and blurted out, "Let's stop it!" The room got quiet. Crutzen had won a Nobel Prize for his work on the ozone layer, and laureates, I suppose, are allowed to have hissy fits – at least in science meetings.

"The earth, Crutzen argued, is being dramatically changed, and the changer, this time, is us: humankind ("anthro" in the Greek). "We are no longer in the Holocene," he told the group. "We are in the Anthropocene." It's a coinage he may have borrowed from biologist Eugene Stoermer, but here's the logic: The Earth is no longer being shaped mainly by natural forces, forces that operate on their own with a logic of their own. Our little blue dot is now, increasingly, sculpted by one of its inhabitants. This is our planet now. We've taken over.

"Some geologists think this idea is too radical, premature — not to mention vain, self-regarding, transient and overdramatized. They argue that we humans have made little scratches on the surface of things, but have changed nothing fundamental. The world doesn't need us. It will hardly notice when we're gone. All we will leave is a layer in the sand.

"But the idea isn't going away. Jan Zalasiewicz heads the committee that is considering new names for our present epoch, and he supports a change. There are competing candidates — "Anthrocene" (from reporter Andy Revkin), the "Homogenocene" (from biologist Michael Samways). The International Commission on Stratigraphy will hold a meeting in 2016 to consider candidates for renaming this epoch we're in. There will probably be a vote, and the question for the group will be, is planet Earth under new management — or no?

"Elizabeth Kolbert describes the Holocene debate in her new book, The Sixth Extinction."

 

[Tyger]

One last little bit from RadioLab (I am actually on what is appearing to be a hopeless quest for an old RadioLab show where time is discussed - relevant to what is being relayed above regarding the subjective perception of the past and present. In the show a couple of researchers are interviewed regarding a series of experiments they did that seem to show that we humans - reminiscent of the cheetah's experience but not as pronounced - though how would we know? - never experience an actual 'now' - there is always - at least physically - a time-lag, be it nano-seconds. Wish I could figure out how to access that interview - from a few years back, I think - on the RadioLab webpage).

The following is the last paragraphs of an article by Krulwich summarizing his interview with a couple of Anthropologists regarding their new theory of what happened on Easter Island. The final few paragraphs I have bolded as most interesting to me - and reminds me of the observed phenomenon of the frog: place a frog in boiling hot water and it will immediately jump out of the hot water, but place the frog in cool water and slowly increase the heat to a boil, the frog will not jump out and will slowly boil to death. yeah....

Following text is by: Robert Krulwich/NPR

"One niggling question: If everybody was eating enough, why did the population decline? Probably, the professors say, from sexually transmitted diseases after Europeans came visiting.

"OK, maybe there was no "ecocide." But is this good news? Should we celebrate?

"I wonder. What we have here are two scenarios ostensibly about Easter Island's past, but really about what might be our planet's future. The first scenario — an ecological collapse — nobody wants that. But let's think about this new alternative — where humans degrade their environment but somehow "muddle through." Is that better? In some ways, I think this "success" story is just as scary.

"The Danger Of 'Success'

"What if the planet's ecosystem, as J.B. MacKinnon puts it, "is reduced to a ruin, yet its people endure, worshipping their gods and coveting status objects while surviving on some futuristic equivalent of the Easter Islanders' rat meat and rock gardens?"

"Humans are a very adaptable species. We've seen people grow used to slums [there are whole generations of people who live on garbage dumps in Mexico], adjust to concentration camps, learn to live with what fate hands them. If our future is to continuously degrade our planet, lose plant after plant, animal after animal, forgetting what we once enjoyed, adjusting to lesser circumstances, never shouting, "That's It!" — always making do, I wouldn't call that "success."

"The Lesson? Remember Tang, The Breakfast Drink

"People can't remember what their great-grandparents saw, ate and loved about the world. They only know what they know. To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That's when we'll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.

"It's like the story people used to tell about Tang, a sad, flat synthetic orange juice popularized by NASA. If you know what real orange juice tastes like, Tang is no achievement. But if you are on a 50-year voyage, if you lose the memory of real orange juice, then gradually, you begin to think Tang is delicious.

"On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There's a lesson here. It's not a happy one.

"As MacKinnon puts it: "If you're waiting for an ecological crisis to persuade human beings to change their troubled relationship with nature — you could be waiting a long, long time."

What we know is very much dependent on what we have around us to perceive and work with conceptually. The human being is an interface between this-here and that-there, in a manner of speaking. No matter what riches reside in the great spiritual storehouse - and many great thinkers reference such a great storehouse they were only able to access in small measure - our ability to access such is, in large part, dependent upon how we develop our perceiving ability, how we interface with our perceptual universe. It can be reasonably assumed that we have the materials around us to build the scaffolding - unless - like suggested with the Easter islanders - we cut down, or have cut down, the very sources for the material that enable our intellectual growth.

 

[Soupie]

@Soupie: Why is it that when humans do our thing, we destroy nature instead of making it "better?"

The mind, freewill and love - the ability to stand 'outside' creation 'looking in.'

The mind and free will were my initial thoughts as well, but upon further reflection I think not.

I personally believe that the differences between humans and the other beasts is quantitative not qualitative. That is, I believe animals also possess minds and have the capacity for free will and love. However, I would argue that their minds are not as complex as ours and thus their ability to express free will and experience love is not as rich as ours.

I think the human ability to destroy nature has to do with technology and scale. Many other animals on Earth use tools (technology) including fish, but, again, the capacity of humans to use technology is currently unrivaled on Earth. However, that in and of itself is not what leads to destruction, it's the scale at which humans use technology. Because of our use of technology, humans have been able to conquer the globe and populate the Earth unlike any other large-bodied creature.

It is our large scale use of technology which is destroying the planet.

Why is this opposed to mind, free will, and love? Because if wolves had the same capacity to use technology on the same scale as humans to do what wolves do - kill and eat other animals - I believe it would have the same resulting destructive impact on the Earth.

Obviously, this is an absurd analogy and difficult to wrap one's mind around. And humans use technology destructively for more than just killing animals, as wolves might do.

My ultimate point is I don't think human nature is quantitatively different from other animals; it's the ability (via technology) and scale at which we enact our will that is so destructive. If any other Earth creature had the same ability to enact their will at the same scale we do, it would likely be just as destructive.

(Also, our ability to use technology is a result of our intelligence. So you could argue that ultimately it's our relatively advanced intelligence that leads to our destruction of the Earth.)

On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe there is something inherently evil about the simian mind...

The games's not over, it's barely begun, the story is only at it's beginning.

You have a very romantic view of humanity's role/position in reality. I'm not so romantic nor anthropocentric (or at least like to pretend I'm not).

I'm not sure humans are destined for anything. (Life on the other hand is a different story...)

It's possible that humans can be most accurately compared to a virus or even a forest fire. Perhaps our global role is to purge the Earth. Mayhaps ever million years or so a species arises on the Earth (and other similar planets) and manages to reduce the place to a pile of plastic baggies and empty soda cans. And then the process (whatever that is) starts all over again.

@smcder: [W]hat I remember of The Spread of Excellence is that life doesn't necessarily get more complicated it just adapts...

@boomrang: The theory that previous hominids may have had larger and more complex brains than ours is a new one for me and sounds interesting.

The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

However, I agree that viewed pragmatically, life certainly appears to have gone from "less" complex to more complex. (Although to call even a single-celled organism less complex given our current, limited understanding would be an act of hubris).

Anyhow, it's possible that the advent of technology externalizing intelligence (language and writing) meant it might be less adaptive for humans to have larger brains and thus more intelligence. So humans today are not as "smart" as past humans because we rely more on external technology.

 

[Tyger]

@Soupie: Why is it that when humans do our thing, we destroy nature instead of making it "better?"

The mind and free will were my initial thoughts as well, but upon further reflection I think not.

I personally believe that the differences between humans and the other beasts is quantitative not qualitative. That is, I believe animals also possess minds and have the capacity for free will and love. However, I would argue that their minds are not as complex as ours and thus their ability to express free will and experience love is not as rich as ours.

I will disagree - every evidence is that animals do not have freewill - they operate according to instinct. It is the human alone that can 'turn its back' on what is instinctual. The other living creatures have aspects of the human - but they are specialized - the human is actually 'weak' because we have all the specialized aspects but not in a specialized way. We have all the aspects found in the animal world, one way or another, the animals do not have this generalization. Hence, we can run like the cheetah, but not as fast as the cheetah. We can dig, but not as well as the mole. However, we can think and create tools that move faster than the cheetah, and dig better than the mole.

I think the human ability to destroy nature has to do with technology and scale. Many other animals on Earth use tools (technology) including fish, but, again, the capacity of humans to use technology is currently unrivaled on Earth. However, that in and of itself is not what leads to destruction, it's the scale at which humans use technology. Because of our use of technology, humans have been able to conquer the globe and populate the Earth unlike any other large-bodied creature.

One will always see aspects of the human in the world of the animals - but never in the complete way one sees it operating in the human. In a way, the human is the 'complete animal'.

It is our large scale use of technology which is destroying the planet.

We have been changing/evolving the planet since we became settled agriculturists. Destruction is another matter.

Why is this opposed to mind, free will, and love? Because if wolves had the same capacity to use technology on the same scale as humans to do what wolves do - kill and eat other animals - I believe it would have the same resulting destructive impact on the Earth.

Some would argue that it is our 'wolfish nature' that does the destruction - our very animal selves that we allow to overpower our higher natures. Not for nothing do native peoples across the world reference the animal totems they are akin to.

The mind is linked to the hand. Wolves do not have hands. If you have a stroke one of the methods of recovery is using one's hands.

Also, there is a reason why when a human appears, the animals make way. Only hunger, illness (a wound or derangement) or feeling the young are threatened or they themselves are cornered - will cause an animal to stand and confront a human. Otherwise they skeedaddle. The human is not 'part' of the whole in the same way as the rest - and the rest sense that.

My ultimate point is I don't think human nature is quantitatively different from other animals; it's the ability (via technology) and scale at which we enact our will that is so destructive. If any other Earth creature had the same ability to enact their will at the same scale we do, it would likely be just as destructive.

Study animal behavior. Within their eco-niches - with all the natural limits in place - animals are law-abiding. Humans are not.

(Also, our ability to use technology is a result of our intelligence. So you could argue that ultimately it's our relatively advanced intelligence that leads to our destruction of the Earth.)

Yes, but it's one step more complicated - it's our failure to keep pace in our moral development that is creating the problem. Adolescents are very smart - they are not very wise, nor always moral in their choices.

On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe there is something inherently evil about the simian mind...

The simian mind is quite beautiful. The human mind is in the process of development - and as such - is far and away more complicated and nuanced than any purely simian mind/brain.

You have a very romantic view of humanity's role/position in reality. I'm not so romantic nor anthropocentric (or at least like to pretend I'm not).

Positing the human as 'outside' or as 'no more than' is a mind game imo that many engage in. Fact is, we are clearly endowed with aspects and potential that make us 'superior' - even the animals know this. But recall the ancient texts that - from everywhere - have always cautioned that we are not 'rulers' but 'caretakers'. We've been given our inheritance - it's up to us whether we fritter it away on momentary pleasures and worthless baubles.

I'm not sure humans are destined for anything. (Life on the other hand is a different story...)

To continue with the analogy - the teenager rebells against their parents and would prefer not to be associated with them, in all kinds of ways. A time comes, though, when the marvel of the inherited stream - 'good' or 'bad' - bedazzles with it's complexity and we come to terms with our 'inheritance'.

It's possible that humans can be most accurately compared to a virus or even a forest fire. Perhaps our global role is to purge the Earth. Mayhaps ever million years or so a species arises on the Earth (and other similar planets) and manages to reduce the place to a pile of plastic baggies and empty soda cans. And then the process (whatever that is) starts all over again.

Interesting. How does such a species-wide self-loathing - a kind of introspective, subjective reality (an animal gives no evidence of having) - play out in actions in the world? Is such self-loathing genetic? Is is instinctual? Just between you and I we can say it is not a shared world-view. Why is it not shared? We are both human - should we not instinctually share the same world view? In the bear-world they share a common bear-view of the world - no one bear goes rogue. Why am I not in concert with your view and your subsequent actions?

The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

I wish I knew the origin of the 'Scientific Consensus' idea. Its on this chat site that I have started to hear it spoken. Since when has there ever been anything akin to a 'Scientific Consensus'? I know about dominant ideas - or prevailing ideas - but never a 'consensus'. This politicized global warming 'debate' has really scrambled the public perception of science, methinks.

However, I agree that viewed pragmatically, life certainly appears to have gone from "less" complex to more complex. (Although to call even a single-celled organism less complex given our current, limited understanding would be an act of hubris).

If time is seen as linear and coming from a 'past' moving into a 'future'. Time is linked to growth - where there is no growth - it can be argued - there is no 'time' as we know it. But - does 'growth' actually come from out of the past alone?

Anyhow, it's possible that the advent of technology externalizing intelligence (language and writing) meant it might be less adaptive for humans to have larger brains and thus more intelligence. So humans today are not as "smart" as past humans because we rely more on external technology.

There is a western bias - bigger is better. Why should a bigger brain be better? Might a smaller brain - able to produce folds more efficiently - be a better design? There are problems with larger and heavier heads to carry around - and really, intelligence has everything to do with the brain's capacity to fold.

Plus, the urban legend is that we use only 10 percent of our brain. LINK: Do People Only Use 10 Percent Of Their Brains? - Scientific American As the article states its more accurate to state that we understand only 10% of our brain functions. One could also say that the current 'myth' is that our thoughts exist in our brain - whereas, it can be reasonably posited that we 'think' with our brain (apparently) only because we perceive with our senses in conjunction with our whole bodily system of organs, etc.

I have a much older friend who in her 40's went for an eye exam for the first time in her life since she was blessed with 20/20 vision. In the course of the exam the doctor enquired: "So how have you been dealing with your lack of depth vision?" She had no idea what he was talking about and it was then revealed to her that she did not have what most of us have - depth perception. Suddenly a whole mess of stuff across her life made sense, clicked into place. She still has no depth perception but she now understands she is not experiencing the visual world the way others are. This lack also explains a great deal about how she thinks and actually physically moves her body in the world.

How we think - and what we think - depends intimately on what we are able to perceive.

 

[Tyger]

Meant to post this earlier but got into replying to Soupie.

Regarding the age of the Easter Island statues. I had the fortune to actually come face-to-face with a small version of those statues at Forest Lawn Glendale in their 'museum'. There I was, looking at a Rodin sculpture - I moved one step - and this face, ancient beyond telling, very much with the full lips and bone structure of an African, was staring at me. My archaeologist's soul was moved at once - and everything I know, both from mainstream science and occult history, came flooding back. Every ounce of me just 'knew' that this face is ancient - far, far, far older than 800 years old. [Not at all 'scientific', of course - but this did my 'gut feeling' tell me in the moment - and I could be wrong, of course.]

So saying, I want to quote two comments posted to the Easter Island 'new' hypothesis story from RadioLab -

POST: "I'm sorry, but why do scientists and other people still insist that these barely subsistent islanders created and then implanted (yes, implanted, as the latest archeological digs show these statues actually are buried up to 50% of their visual above ground presence) these megaliths into an island from which they are obviously not native to? And just how did they do it?

"(Also) Obviously, there were other 'Easter Islanders' resident much, much earlier than our 'history' of this island indicate. If they were not 'buried,' that indicates they were buried over time - a great amount of time.

"Leaving many more questions that 'Archeology' does not want to either answer or even approach questioning."

This is an example of science - in this case history/archaeology - needing to jive with in-the-box thinking. I am personally of the opinion that there were world-wide civilizations prior to the ancient Sumerians and Persians and Egyptians. The Greeks talked about it - Plato mentioned it (Atlantis). But in my occult studies I have become aware that it is posited that there was an even older civilization than Atlantis - and those familiar with alternate history streams will recognize the idea of Lemuria, placed variously but generally, in the Pacific to far western Pacific region. My hunch is the Easter Island figures face 'inland' for reasons of geology that we have not even considered - and that they are very, very ancient. The fact that they are indeed buried 50% suggests a huge passage of time. That they are not native to Easter Island suggests being part of a much vaster cultural context than a mere pinprick of an island.

We wonder about how the world may be if there is a world-shattering natural disaster like an asteroid hit. I think we are the living example of what happens. Humanity slowly, slowly, slowly recovers - but moves unerringly in the direction of a world culture.

I also am fond of the idea (its my personal favorite) that humanity has existed on this planet for far, far longer than Physical Anthropological evidence can find - and there is good reason evidence cannot be found. I think humanity spent time existing with dinosaurs, for example. I think humanity lived in a very different world at one time - under 'a different sun' and 'a different sky' as so many ancient myths indicate (like the Norse Mythic Cycle). The ancients speak of ages - of great cataclysms - and they are clear about previous civilizations of great beauty and sophistication. I think the 'aliens' were us, in fact.

Now regarding we not knowing what kind of world even our grandparents experienced -

POST: "Excellent article. Fits my experience perfectly. I live in Orange County, California. Not too far, in San Diego County, there is a place called La Jolla. I often traveled there and brought guests too, since it's just about the nicest places around. But when I talked to old Californians, they told me, "What do you know? You have no idea how beautiful La Jolla was before they destroyed it." Indeed."

Same experience. Talk to anyone who knew Los Angeles in the 40's - or better, the 20's and 30's - and a description of nature, life and culture jumps out at you, no where near what is here now.

When I lived in Palo Alto not that long back, I was told what Silicon Valley - the Santa Clara Valley, really - was like in the 60's and 70's before all the building up and leveling of the farms and orchards. All almond orchards - and in the spring, the orchards would bloom and the scent of the blossoms would be borne on the breezes all the way up the peninsula to San Francisco.

The changes are so fast - and the population moves so rapidly (in the US) - that few recall 'what it was like' in a given area. The memory fades. But the speed of the changing is faster. We know not what we are losing.

And yet, that said, there are also changes for the better. The gentrification of downtowns and neighborhoods (in the US). I hear there is now a new movement away from the suburbs and back to the cities - even the notorious 'inner cities'. And we have learned. The small California hamlet I live in is growing and expanding in a more intelligent way - green spaces are mandatory. Development geared to the walker rather than the car is front-and-center in planning. People are living closer to their places of work. Since moving to CA my car's daily mileage has shrunk to where I do a fill-up of gas once a month, whereas before I did one at least once a week, and often more. There is also a new sense of maintaining civic beauty. So it's not the way it was - but it is also not the way it was for the better, too. Just thought I'd put in my Tigger sensibilities.

 

[Soupie]

@Tyger: We look at a flock of birds flying in unison and say those are separate birds having a unitary experience - might it not be that we are seeing 'one' animal that manifests as separate 'pieces' - a single being having a split experience, in a sense? This is the basis of the Native Americans invoking the 'spirit' of the deer to 'allow' the hunter to cull a member of the deer herd.

Such a beautiful concept. I believe it is also a part of Japanese culture/religious thought.

I will disagree - every evidence is that animals do not have freewill - they operate according to instinct. It is the human alone that can 'turn its back' on what is instinctual. The other living creatures have aspects of the human - but they are specialized - the human is actually 'weak' because we have all the specialized aspects but not in a specialized way. We have all the aspects found in the animal world, one way or another, the animals do not have this generalization. Hence, we can run like the cheetah, but not as fast as the cheetah. We can dig, but not as well as the mole. However, we can think and create tools that move faster than the cheetah, and dig better than the mole. ... Fact is, we are clearly endowed with aspects and potential that make us 'superior' - even the animals know this

Again, this is a very romantic, anthropocentric worldview. I don't know that it's wrong, but I do know that it's just one worldview among many.

Based on this worldview, you must believe that the human capacity for free will was bestowed upon us by an other, correct? Because if free will is a capacity that has evolved, than it would be bold to say that other animals do not have this capacity. (In cognitive psychology worldview, this is known as Executive Functioning.)

I don't disagree with you that humans are unique among the others animals. However, I think they are unique in degree, not quality. I also disagree with you that our uniqueness was bestowed on us by an other in a mystical fashion.

We have been changing/evolving the planet since we became settled agriculturists. Destruction is another matter.

Yes, the other matter is scale.

Some would argue that it is our 'wolfish nature' that does the destruction - our very animal selves that we allow to overpower our higher natures. Not for nothing do native peoples across the world reference the animal totems they are akin to.

It's not just native peoples, it's religious/mystic peoples in general. As I've said elsewhere, the ideas of karma, Original Sin, etc. are all bedfellows. Our Executive Functioning allows us to inhibit our impulses, to delay gratification.

I'm cursing myself because I just deleted an essay about why people have consciousness at all. It was the same old, same old (social interaction) so I didn't bother posting it here. However, the author did mention something that I've believed for a long time, but had never seen in writing:

If consciousness can be defined as being aware that one is aware, then many mystical/religious practices - such as meditation and mindfullness - are an effort to shed, if momentarily, this awareness; rather than being aware of our awareness, we strive to just be.

His point was this "altered" state is more akin to the animal state; that is, a state of being in which we lose our self-awareness. The ego/self dissolves and we merge with reality.

I'll continue to search for the essay.

Interesting. How does such a species-wide self-loathing - a kind of introspective, subjective reality (an animal gives no evidence of having) - play out in actions in the world? Is such self-loathing genetic? Is is instinctual? Just between you and I we can say it is not a shared world-view. Why is it not shared? We are both human - should we not instinctually share the same world view? In the bear-world they share a common bear-view of the world - no one bear goes rogue. Why am I not in concert with your view and your subsequent actions?

I suppose we could boil it down to two worldviews:

1) Humans, and everything else in the universe, are the result of self-organising processes. Thus, we can't say that humanity is evolving towards anything like a perfectly moral uber race, but perhaps we can say they are evolving.

2) Humans are the result of a super being bestowing upon us free will and morality. If humanity can come together just so we can evolve into the super special species we were meant to be and make it to the next, perfect plane of existence.

Why do you subscribe to the latter and I the former? I don't know, but it probably has something to do with both nature and nurture.

Since when has there ever been anything akin to a 'Scientific Consensus'? I know about dominant ideas - or prevailing ideas - but never a 'consensus'.

Probably since the advent of formal Science bodies. Do you object the existence of a Scientific Consensus, or do you merely object to the label? I've already explained to you what it is. Do you disagree that it exists? If not, what would you call it?

Might a smaller brain - able to produce folds more efficiently - be a better design? There are problems with larger and heavier heads to carry around - and really, intelligence has everything to do with the brain's capacity to fold.

That's absolutely a possibility.

I have a much older friend who in her 40's went for an eye exam for the first time in her life since she was blessed with 20/20 vision. In the course of the exam the doctor enquired: "So how have you been dealing with your lack of depth vision?" She had no idea what he was talking about and it was then revealed to her that she did not have what most of us have - depth perception. Suddenly a whole mess of stuff across her life made sense, clicked into place. She still has no depth perception but she now understands she is not experiencing the visual world the way others are. This lack also explains a great deal about how she thinks and actually physically moves her body in the world.

Fascinating story, but I'm not sure how it ties in to the discussion.

 

[Tyger]

@Soupie, I will respond to your post later - after I do the work that is hanging fire because I've been messing around here. BTW in your post the last sentence is part of my post but got free of the quote. Ambiguous who is saying what, and what you mean as a result.

But I wanted to repost the link to the RadioLab story: What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario - Radiolab

The comments are great - especially this last one: "The moral of the story is, don't sleep with aliens."

 

[Soupie]

@Soupiein your post the last sentence is part of my post but got free of the quote.

No worries. I edit all my posts no less than ~15 times.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie: Why is it that when humans do our thing, we destroy nature instead of making it "better?"

The mind and free will were my initial thoughts as well, but upon further reflection I think not.

I personally believe that the differences between humans and the other beasts is quantitative not qualitative. That is, I believe animals also possess minds and have the capacity for free will and love. However, I would argue that their minds are not as complex as ours and thus their ability to express free will and experience love is not as rich as ours.

I think the human ability to destroy nature has to do with technology and scale. Many other animals on Earth use tools (technology) including fish, but, again, the capacity of humans to use technology is currently unrivaled on Earth. However, that in and of itself is not what leads to destruction, it's the scale at which humans use technology. Because of our use of technology, humans have been able to conquer the globe and populate the Earth unlike any other large-bodied creature.

It is our large scale use of technology which is destroying the planet.

Why is this opposed to mind, free will, and love? Because if wolves had the same capacity to use technology on the same scale as humans to do what wolves do - kill and eat other animals - I believe it would have the same resulting destructive impact on the Earth.

Obviously, this is an absurd analogy and difficult to wrap one's mind around. And humans use technology destructively for more than just killing animals, as wolves might do.

My ultimate point is I don't think human nature is quantitatively different from other animals; it's the ability (via technology) and scale at which we enact our will that is so destructive. If any other Earth creature had the same ability to enact their will at the same scale we do, it would likely be just as destructive.

(Also, our ability to use technology is a result of our intelligence. So you could argue that ultimately it's our relatively advanced intelligence that leads to our destruction of the Earth.)

On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe there is something inherently evil about the simian mind...

You have a very romantic view of humanity's role/position in reality. I'm not so romantic nor anthropocentric (or at least like to pretend I'm not).

I'm not sure humans are destined for anything. (Life on the other hand is a different story...)

It's possible that humans can be most accurately compared to a virus or even a forest fire. Perhaps our global role is to purge the Earth. Mayhaps ever million years or so a species arises on the Earth (and other similar planets) and manages to reduce the place to a pile of plastic baggies and empty soda cans. And then the process (whatever that is) starts all over again.

@smcder: [W]hat I remember of The Spread of Excellence is that life doesn't necessarily get more complicated it just adapts...

@boomrang: The theory that previous hominids may have had larger and more complex brains than ours is a new one for me and sounds interesting.

The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

However, I agree that viewed pragmatically, life certainly appears to have gone from "less" complex to more complex. (Although to call even a single-celled organism less complex given our current, limited understanding would be an act of hubris).

Anyhow, it's possible that the advent of technology externalizing intelligence (language and writing) meant it might be less adaptive for humans to have larger brains and thus more intelligence. So humans today are not as "smart" as past humans because we rely more on external technology.

Did you mean to capitalize this?

"The Scientific Consensus"

"You have a very romantic view of humanity's role/position in reality. I'm not so romantic nor anthropocentric (or at least like to pretend I'm not)."

Do you think humanity's (and/or a subset thereof) view of its role/position in reality have any impact on it's actual role/position/destiny? What is the effect if all mankind embraces the story you are telling above? What effect does it have on you in your day to day life? What would a Cosmic Therapist advise?

On your view what are the virtues of a non-anthropocentric view? What differences in your lifestyle result from embracing this viewpoint?

Some interesting links on "cosmic narrative":

http://www.ibhanet.org/Resources/Documents/newsletters/Newsletter_I_4.pdf

The Cosmic Story, a discussion by Brian Swimme and Br. David Steindl-Rast

I'm still looking for one more on science and meaning - a grant proposal that included cosmic narrative or sagas and the difficulty of making these both empirical and meaningful, so a kind of conscious myth making ( if that's possible) ... So maybe we don't have an innate drive to go to the stars - what we have is an innate drive to matter. Failing a new myth or creating a role in the greater cosmic drama we give way to a species that can get along without meaning ... Which thing I think we might see as monstrous.

 

[smcder]

@Tyger: We look at a flock of birds flying in unison and say those are separate birds having a unitary experience - might it not be that we are seeing 'one' animal that manifests as separate 'pieces' - a single being having a split experience, in a sense? This is the basis of the Native Americans invoking the 'spirit' of the deer to 'allow' the hunter to cull a member of the deer herd.

Such a beautiful concept. I believe it is also a part of Japanese culture/religious thought.

Again, this is a very romantic, anthropocentric worldview. I don't know that it's wrong, but I do know that it's just one worldview among many.

Based on this worldview, you must believe that the human capacity for free will was bestowed upon us by an other, correct? Because if free will is a capacity that has evolved, than it would be bold to say that other animals do not have this capacity. (In cognitive psychology worldview, this is known as Executive Functioning.)

I don't disagree with you that humans are unique among the others animals. However, I think they are unique in degree, not quality. I also disagree with you that our uniqueness was bestowed on us by an other in a mystical fashion.

Yes, the other matter is scale.

It's not just native peoples, it's religious/mystic peoples in general. As I've said elsewhere, the ideas of karma, Original Sin, etc. are all bedfellows. Our Executive Functioning allows us to inhibit our impulses, to delay gratification.

I'm cursing myself because I just deleted an essay about why people have consciousness at all. It was the same old, same old (social interaction) so I didn't bother posting it here. However, the author did mention something that I've believed for a long time, but had never seen in writing:

If consciousness can be defined as being aware that one is aware, then many mystical/religious practices - such as meditation and mindfullness - are an effort to shed, if momentarily, this awareness; rather than being aware of our awareness, we strive to just be.

His point was this "altered" state is more akin to the animal state; that is, a state of being in which we lose our self-awareness. The ego/self dissolves and we merge with reality.

I'll continue to search for the essay.

I suppose we could boil it down to two worldviews:

1) Humans, and everything else in the universe, are the result of self-organising processes. Thus, we can't say that humanity is evolving towards anything like a perfectly moral uber race, but perhaps we can say they are evolving.

2) Humans are the result of a super being bestowing upon us free will and morality. If humanity can come together just so we can evolve into the super special species we were meant to be and make it to the next, perfect plane of existence.

Why do you subscribe to the latter and I the former? I don't know, but it probably has something to do with both nature and nurture.

Probably since the advent of formal Science bodies. Do you object the existence of a Scientific Consensus, or do you merely object to the label? I've already explained to you what it is. Do you disagree that it exists? If not, what would you call it?

That's absolutely a possibility.

Fascinating story, but I'm not sure how it ties in to the discussion.

I'd like to see the essay on self-consciousness - what was the part you'd never seen in print before - specifically that it was a return to animal nature? Is self-consciousness a qualitative difference in humans? Sometimes self consciousness in and of itself seems painful to me, like you are zooming in on Yourself and this can be akin to panic or cosmic claustrophobia, don't know what else to call it. This seems to happen when self consciousness piles up on itself - awareness of awareness of ... Like the pain comes from supporting too many layers or levels. Of course in the best of times I seem to flow in and out of self awareness more or less comfortably.

Around me I see most people modulating their self awareness almost continuously and more less unconsciously in some way or other - worry, distraction, TV , obsession, busyness, sporting events, concentration, drugs ... So that I wonder what ordinary, unaltered consciousness is? And what states are extraordinary? Zen tells me Enlightenment is "nothing special" ... Chop water, carry wood = argue with wife, smoke cigarette. Just under no circumstances are you to worry about worrying, there yawns the abyss. (With boredom, no doubt.)

 

[Tyger]

The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

Probably since the advent of formal Science bodies. Do you object the existence of a Scientific Consensus, or do you merely object to the label? I've already explained to you what it is. Do you disagree that it exists? If not, what would you call it.

I've just never heard of it until this chat site - maybe I just don't 'get around' enough. Very possible, that.

"Scientific bodies" - by that I think you may mean peer-review of articles and research for publication? If you are referencing that, then my rejoinder would be that such 'scientific bodies' are suppose to check the science - make sure the scientific method is being followed, that previous well-researched science is addressed - stuff like that. But consensus? Not so much.

Though in truth I could see that the unintended result of the way research itself is conducted, and the politics in the university system itself, could engender that impression. There is some truth to it in the sense that there are prevailing ideas that govern at any time. An example: it can be hard to get a doctoral idea accepted that doesn't jive with at least someone's views. There is really good research going forward in certain areas and yet if you listen to certain scientists talk they will do an arching 'diss' of other scientific work. Laymen have no way of knowing the 'truth' and there is a lot of ad hominem that gets bandied about - sometimes destroying reputations, going so far as to impact funding. It's a wild and wooly world - especially when corporate money gets in the mix.

Scientific Consensus - with the capitals? I'd say no, doesn't exist. Most scientists wouldn't be comfortable with that spin, methinks. Because it's all so complicated and layered. Just saying.

 

[smcder]

Here is the short story The Things:

EP298: The Things - Escape Pod : Escape Pod

 

[smcder]

@Soupie: Why is it that when humans do our thing, we destroy nature instead of making it "better?"

The mind and free will were my initial thoughts as well, but upon further reflection I think not.

I personally believe that the differences between humans and the other beasts is quantitative not qualitative. That is, I believe animals also possess minds and have the capacity for free will and love. However, I would argue that their minds are not as complex as ours and thus their ability to express free will and experience love is not as rich as ours.

I think the human ability to destroy nature has to do with technology and scale. Many other animals on Earth use tools (technology) including fish, but, again, the capacity of humans to use technology is currently unrivaled on Earth. However, that in and of itself is not what leads to destruction, it's the scale at which humans use technology. Because of our use of technology, humans have been able to conquer the globe and populate the Earth unlike any other large-bodied creature.

It is our large scale use of technology which is destroying the planet.

Why is this opposed to mind, free will, and love? Because if wolves had the same capacity to use technology on the same scale as humans to do what wolves do - kill and eat other animals - I believe it would have the same resulting destructive impact on the Earth.

Obviously, this is an absurd analogy and difficult to wrap one's mind around. And humans use technology destructively for more than just killing animals, as wolves might do.

My ultimate point is I don't think human nature is quantitatively different from other animals; it's the ability (via technology) and scale at which we enact our will that is so destructive. If any other Earth creature had the same ability to enact their will at the same scale we do, it would likely be just as destructive.

(Also, our ability to use technology is a result of our intelligence. So you could argue that ultimately it's our relatively advanced intelligence that leads to our destruction of the Earth.)

On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe there is something inherently evil about the simian mind...

You have a very romantic view of humanity's role/position in reality. I'm not so romantic nor anthropocentric (or at least like to pretend I'm not).

I'm not sure humans are destined for anything. (Life on the other hand is a different story...)

It's possible that humans can be most accurately compared to a virus or even a forest fire. Perhaps our global role is to purge the Earth. Mayhaps ever million years or so a species arises on the Earth (and other similar planets) and manages to reduce the place to a pile of plastic baggies and empty soda cans. And then the process (whatever that is) starts all over again.

@smcder: [W]hat I remember of The Spread of Excellence is that life doesn't necessarily get more complicated it just adapts...

@boomrang: The theory that previous hominids may have had larger and more complex brains than ours is a new one for me and sounds interesting.

The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

However, I agree that viewed pragmatically, life certainly appears to have gone from "less" complex to more complex. (Although to call even a single-celled organism less complex given our current, limited understanding would be an act of hubris).

Anyhow, it's possible that the advent of technology externalizing intelligence (language and writing) meant it might be less adaptive for humans to have larger brains and thus more intelligence. So humans today are not as "smart" as past humans because we rely more on external technology.

smcder: [W]hat I remember of The Spread of Excellence is that life doesn't necessarily get more complicated it just adapts...

boomerang: The theory that previous hominids may have had larger and more complex brains than ours is a new one for me and sounds interesting.
The Scientific Consensus is that life/organisms adapt to the environment. Sometimes this means life becomes more complex, sometimes less.

However, I agree that viewed pragmatically, life certainly appears to have gone from "less" complex to more complex. (Although to call even a single-celled organism less complex given our current, limited understanding would be an act of hubris).

Do you think,

 

[Burnt State]

And what states are extraordinary? Zen tells me Enlightenment is "nothing special" ... Chop water, carry wood = argue with wife, smoke cigarette. Just under no circumstances are you to worry about worrying, there yawns the abyss. (With boredom, no doubt.)

Well that's a rather boorish approach to Zen isn't it? To just 'be' requires a discipline bordering on the mystical. And what Zen mystic would ever be embarrassingly caught smoking a cigarette or arguing with partner? The calming of the routine anxieties that plague so many certainly allows for more of an expanse of personal freedom than the yawning abyss of nothingness. The zen master is not cold like Sartre but empty as the mind of the flower in the sunshine.

 

[smcder]

Well that's a rather boorish approach to Zen isn't it? To just 'be' requires a discipline bordering on the mystical. And what Zen mystic would ever be embarrassingly caught smoking a cigarette or arguing with partner? The calming of the routine anxieties that plague so many certainly allows for more of an expanse of personal freedom than the yawning abyss of nothingness. The zen master is not cold like Sartre but empty as the mind of the flower in the sunshine.

Crazy wisdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[smcder]

Well that's a rather boorish approach to Zen isn't it? To just 'be' requires a discipline bordering on the mystical. And what Zen mystic would ever be embarrassingly caught smoking a cigarette or arguing with partner? The calming of the routine anxieties that plague so many certainly allows for more of an expanse of personal freedom than the yawning abyss of nothingness. The zen master is not cold like Sartre but empty as the mind of the flower in the sunshine.

Zen and Buddhism - if I understand correctly, is about waking up.

 

[smcder]

Well that's a rather boorish approach to Zen isn't it? To just 'be' requires a discipline bordering on the mystical. And what Zen mystic would ever be embarrassingly caught smoking a cigarette or arguing with partner? The calming of the routine anxieties that plague so many certainly allows for more of an expanse of personal freedom than the yawning abyss of nothingness. The zen master is not cold like Sartre but empty as the mind of the flower in the sunshine.

The bit about the abyss was a play on words.

The rest was about my day to day consciousness - not that of a Zen master.