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Defining Class
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Quotes
- Hits: 1959
Defining Class: That group of people that make us feel comfortable in our prejudice.
- rod boyle
Lights out in BC
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2048
Travelling, moving to BC, A***** from work is with me (why him, really?), in my car, heading to BC, 7 hours to go, nighttime in the mountains...
A gas station, diner, I pull over to fill up, my car packed with my belongings, A***** is travelling onward with my family (father, family, general), I'll only be a few minutes behind...The gas station, all the lights are out, just a few emergency lights, I go around it, fill my car with gas, pull it over and park it...the phone rings, it's A***** telling me there's a power outage all over BC, I look down the road, can't see a single light, back to the kiosk where I filled up with gas, people in the restaurant, lights dim, kiosk unattended, the restaurant must be on a generator...
I grab a couple of packs of cigarettes from the kiosk, leave my car at the gas station, I'm taking my motorbike instead, it's fast, sleek, so new, I've never owned anything so nice, dunno what I'll do about the car but I can come back for it, can't drive 'em both, and I take off down the highway in pursuit, much faster...
(odd. Don't own or know how to drive a motorcycle. And why is A***** tagging along...gonna have to speak to him. Don't like work intruding on my dreams...)
The Illusion of Mind
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2376
Somewhat musing, and clarifying my thoughts on the Illusion of Mind.
By which I mean, of course, that necessary delusion that we all suffer that somehow we are "I" - unique, continuous, congruent people.
The Ego, constructed from birth forward, pejorative, it's social convention to disregard the ego, we use the terms "egomaniac", "egotistical", "egocentric" to describe someone who's ego is unacceptably developed - the ego, that combination of individual experience, that separation from others, we manifest it a hundred ways, through consumerism, fashion and clothing, brands, our identifying with various causes, corporations and lifestyles, religion, art, we are anchored to our experiences, opinions and beliefs, all of which serve to make us "unique". But this ego is the frail, uppermost, "conscious" realm of thought, it's the day-to-day quest for identity and belief in ourselves that defines us, and I would argue that it's largely, if not entirely, an illusion.
There are in fact a hundred, maybe even thousands of smaller mental and psychic cogs that work to create this illusion, largely hidden (but not entirely), our conscious self is perhaps a bit like an optical illusion where we see lines against dot backgrounds and our mind fills in and imagines a square , or any of a hundred other corollaries, the square does not exist, certainly, but it is suggested, and the suggestion is enough for our minds to imagine a whole...
Imagine, extend feelings of hunger, of pain, of withdrawal from your chosen addiction, there comes a point with each of them where you break, you're mind no longer able to grasp the wholeness of you, the smaller mind that preoccupies itself with food, survival, pleasure is now in control. Homunculus has taken over. But these are extreme states you argue, but then think of emotional states - be they pleasure, anger, heartbreak, loneliness, etcetera, and you'll find they as well can consume you - and everyone, at some time, has fallen prey to these. Again, extreme states. Think about your autonomic responses - breathing, heartbeat, kidneys, a thousand parts that work efficiently in the background until it's time to make their demands known - and when they do, there's an urgency that cannot be resisted. Relating, on a curious and personal note, while trekking in Nepal, above 15000 feet my breathing was no longer autonomic, it became very much a labored, conscious process - each breath required both diligent effort and concentration, curious, indeed, for this was a process that my entire life had looked after itself.
And curious, too, or not so, if you please, but consider meditation - various practitioners are able to alter any number of their autonomic responses, reducing heartrate, breathing, raising or lowering core body temperature and adjusting metabolic rates. And curious or not, meditation is generally the process of refuting ego, descending beneath the realm of self, enlightenment (a popular aim in meditation) is generally described as a liberation from ego and worldly desires, a oneness - an intellectual as well as an emotional realization - of the connectedness of all things.
In mind - or the grasping of mind - it as well helps to survey the external landscape of external stimuli - always a part of mind, the backdrop of thought, the countless super and subliminal cues and subconscious responses, the manipulation of which suggests that a great proportion of which we consider to be free will is nothing but a conditioned response to the environment around us. Consider the illusion of what we perceive to be the world about us, generally shared, but represented to each of us independently in our own heads, we agree - often - as to the size and shape of an item, but disagree as to it's meaning, it's subjective value (a piece of music might simultaneously inspire and/or revolt 2 different members of an audience), our every sensation is first filtered through our senses and a hundred hidden prejudices, opinions, interpretations, understandings, emotions, creating an internal representation that bears little objective relation to the external world.
And finally there's memory - the lingering experience as recalled through all the processes above - seldom accurate or objective to begin with, memories are overwritten every time we revisit them, destroying all continuity, we continue our lives from places we think we have been...from false memories and interpretations of events, memories of books, films, third party narratives told to us at cocktail parties and by our parents, siblings, teachers, all woven into our own, we know that it's unreliable, tested and proven, but our own recollections are somehow not to be doubted, and every memory is a false starting point from which we begin again...
These are just a few random thoughts, poorly organized, but for more coherent and inspiring reading that might challenge or enlighten you on theories of self and mind, try some of the links below...
Link: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome
Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en
Link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/partial-recall
Lost in Translation
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 2176
And English, so rich in theory, but so poor in realization, the poverty of day-to-day language and ideas.
For a few ideas that get you out of the box, try:
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
and, rather the opposite: http://matadornetwork.com/life/35-untranslatable-words-describe-nuances-love/
Favorites: L'esprit de Escalier, Saudade, Koi No Yokan (that seems like 3 words to me...meh, Japanese...), Wabi-Sabi (2 words again), Aware, Mamihlapinatapai, there are more, find them and send them on...
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