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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2017 - 07:47pm PT
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Ed, you're being slippery. I'm not THAT ignorant about math. I take it with your appeal to calculus (gotta go back to high school for that one) you are talking about "mappings" derived from functions that lead to, or at any rate you can posit as, real numbers. IE, some value that represents a quantity (of course) along a continuous line.
Maybe not strictly mechanistic, in your mind, but if you knew the output of the function, could you not reverse engineer said output to a physical mechanism?
How might that translate to consciousness lest you are making an appeal to functionism, whereby awareness itself is a function of ... what, if not a physical mechanism, or the process sourced by one.
But maybe I have it all wrong, so I'd love to hear your non-mechanistic, non-casual way of defining awareness?
Also, are you not really saying that while consciousness is itself private (only Ed can access his consciousness, itself, directly), that aspect of it is actually a physical function (of what, if not a mechanism?), we only believe, mistakenly, is something other than pure physicality?
Do you realize that by saying consciousness itself is entirely physical leaves you with only one option - that the brain itself IS conscious. That is, it does not give rise to consciousness, it is, itself, inherently conscious.
It's not logically coherent to try and have it both ways.
I never rule out that I have this all wrong in regards to what you actually believe, but I do remember my dad, an MD, saying that "few men ever leave their garden," meaning few of us ever leave the ground we are used to tilling. He somewhat comically said that no matter what question you ask a proctologist, he's bound to look up your a*# for the answer. That's his garden, the familiar ground where he believes all answers lie.
I'll believe you have an open mind when you leave that garden.
Or when take up the business of awareness sans content. Same difference...
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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But if you insist on soul as a fact, your credibility is diminished, IMO.
Facts, opinions, credibility—vernacular of the mechanical mind. All minds are the same: my mind, your mind, all minds. Unbridled, they all do the same things, repeatedly, endlessly. Mind eventually makes a great servant, always a wretched master.
Liberated Soul simply is. Eternal, breathtaking spark of the Divine, blissfully reveling in Knowing, Being, and Seeing. Needs no opinions. Not a rip for facts. What concerns the mind greatly is of no consequence to soul.
No two in the entire creation exist at the same level.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I take it with your appeal to calculus (gotta go back to high school for that one) you are talking . . .
Please tell me of a high school that teaches calculus of variations. You're in way over your head.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'll believe you have an open mind when you leave that garden.
Wait, you've spent 15k posts over six years flogging - I say flogging - your point with nary a sign of anything vaguely approaching an open mind. More like a dismissive one in most respects.
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WBraun
climber
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Ho Maaannn ..... Joe is having another bad acid trip .......
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Facts, opinions, credibility—vernacular of the mechanical mind. All minds are the same: my mind, your mind, all minds. Unbridled, they all do the same things, repeatedly, endlessly. Mind eventually makes a great servant, always a wretched master.
Liberated Soul simply is. Eternal, breathtaking spark of the Divine, blissfully reveling in Knowing, Being, and Seeing. Needs no opinions. Not a rip for facts. What concerns the mind greatly is of no consequence to soul.
This sounds like an advertisement for a WBraun perfume retreat ...
Who'll buy?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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But content and being aware of same are vastly different phenomenon.
You can say it, but can you show it?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I'll believe you have an open mind when you leave that garden.
Or when take up the business of awareness sans content. Same difference...
Thanks for you posts Largo... always wonderful to see examples of open mindedness.
As for the physical ideas inspired from the "calculus of variations," you have demonstrated, once again, that you don't really have a grasp on how someone might deal with multiple physical representations of the world.
I did explicitly mention that the "differential" approaches to this physical description are equivalent to the "integral" approaches, this is your "reverse engineering" idea... this equivalence implies that the way we think about the physics is probably not relevant, that is, whether we think of the mechanical causal bits you so like to refer to, or to the extrema of the action over the entire path (decidedly not mechanical) these are just ways we interpret what is going on, not a representation of the "actual" physical process.
Mentioned previously is your rather staunch position that physical theory has to be "realistic," but as the line of thought I introduced above shows, what matters in the physical theory is not its adherence to some non-physical concept of "realistic," but that in the end, its calculations correctly describe the outcome of observation.
In evoking the constraint that whatever consciousness is, it is the result of evolution, and therefore of physical origin (and of physical content), you have demanded a step-by-step demonstration along some causal chain to show this must be so; no such demonstration is necessary, though it might be possible.
Taking ideas from the calculus of variation as it is applied in quantum mechanics and particularly in its application to statistical mechanics one might gain insight in this process of evolution, which can successfully be seen as a statistical process. A species takes a path through the "fitness landscape" and adaptations occur in response to that landscape, which is also dynamic (and non-linear). That response is governed by a set of physical principles, and results in changes to the population of that species over time, and to the species as a whole.
In this setting, we have a physical process, but the success in this sort of approach is that we are not required to detail the atom-by-atom interaction (which you demand, a demand that is irrelevant as to whether or not such a physical description is possible).
This way of viewing the evolutionary process as the physical procedure by which the hominid brain became the way it is, along with its behavioral adaptations (including "consciousness") are all rooted in this description.
From this way of thinking, your assertion that "consciousness" is not physical has to explain both what the non-physical domain is, and how the "physical" and "non-physical" domains interact. The paradox being, of course, that the "non-physical" domain is largely something you made up, first person... any attempt to "universalize" it requires distinctly non-first-person activities, like discussing it.
While certainly constraining, a physical approach does not have to deal with making up a whole new domain of reality (the "non-physical") and then elaborating on the thorny bits about the allowed interaction of these two domains, one of which is entirely "subjective" and not available for scrutiny.
And at least the physical approach has the successes of modern science, largely over the last 600 years, where as little new has emerged from the hypothesis that there is a "non-physical" world out there that determines what goes on in the universe... less and less falls in that category every year... in the limit, nothing is left there (pun intended).
I expect strong objections from you, this way of looking at physical descriptions removes your largest rhetorical cudgel from your philosophical armory, the insistence of a causal description, with which to challenge that physical view. The existence, or lack-of, such a description has nothing to do with a successful physical theory.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dingus:
I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the dharmakaya. It’s the best term that was available to me. The idea revolves around potential . . . *pure potential* before any manifestation appears. To listen, to see, to feel, to taste, even to think requires an openness. How does one achieve openness? What state of mind is openness? “Oh ok, . . . I’ll listen” is not it.
As for loading up the executive function with more than one topic for focused or full attention, that doesn’t appear to be possible from my reading of the literature. We may be characterized as a high number of complexes loosely held together, but our full attention seems to be particularly singular. Multi-tasking may not really be possible.
(Emptiness etc. are technical terms--just like derivatives, quarks, gravity, and electricity. Be skeptical.)
Werner:
You might note that I use the words “seem,” “appear,” “might be,” and so forth a lot. (My dad called them weasel words.)
MH2: You can say it, but can you show it [that content and being aware are vastly different phenomenon]?
I’ll take a swing at it.
When I eat, I am rejuvenated, but I am somewhat unaware of it (the mechanism, the experience as an object). Instead when I look back and reconstruct my experience interpretively, I generate an awareness of content. But at the time that it happened, I was unaware of the content I later generated retrospectively. I might say instead that *context* shifted subtly.
I imagine that this example is not what Largo is pointing to. I believe he’s pointing to something far more nuanced, something that escapes one’s notice (even though it’s going on constantly).
I have generated my example above in an attempt to show “a contentless awareness.”
Some folks make distinctions of many different awarenesses that are contentless—even some non-spiritual academics like sociologists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists. They might point to socializations, institutionalizations, categorizations, typifications, habituations, deep-structured archaic complexes, instincts, etc. that appear to be operating outside of consciousness yet are in awareness.
(Buddhists talk about obscurations, cognitive and emotional, which impede clear seeing.)
Folks like Navarro, Eckman, Pease, Schafer, and others have taught us how to recognize states of awareness in others that those others themselves cannot control or are not conscious of.
Again, there are many technical terms whose final distinctions leave us wanting. I believe we should not press too hard on them; instead we might note that our conceptualizations are sometimes a little fuzzy, that there are many ways to talk about things.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 5, 2017 - 12:21pm PT
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Ed said: I'll believe you have an open mind when you leave that garden.
Or when take up the business of awareness sans content. Same difference...
Thanks for you posts Largo... always wonderful to see examples of open mindedness.
Funny thing, Ed, and others, is that Ed can posit a Type A Physicalism from start to finish, but when someone else champions a contrary view, HE is closed minded.
This is the home court advantage that some enjoy here. So be it.
Ed goes on:
As for the physical ideas inspired from the "calculus of variations," you have demonstrated, once again, that you don't really have a grasp on how someone might deal with multiple physical representations of the world.
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What have you said, precisely, that you are sure I don't understand?
I did explicitly mention that the "differential" approaches to this physical description are equivalent to the "integral" approaches, this is your "reverse engineering" idea... this equivalence implies that the way we think about the physics is probably not relevant, that is, whether we think of the mechanical causal bits you so like to refer to, or to the extrema of the action over the entire path (decidedly not mechanical) these are just ways we interpret what is going on, not a representation of the "actual" physical process.
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Haven't we already beaten this idea to death, that Hilbert Spaces etc. are figurative models that allow us to work with the phenomenon, and aren't meant to be one-to-one descriptors per the fluid stuff we are measuring?
Ed: Mentioned previously is your rather staunch position that physical theory has to be "realistic," but as the line of thought I introduced above shows, what matters in the physical theory is not its adherence to some non-physical concept of "realistic," but that in the end, its calculations correctly describe the outcome of observation.
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When did I ever say that physical theory has to be "realistic?" What does that even mean, when matter doesn't even have an agreed upon, universal definition. Get down far enough and all we have are rapidly pulsing bits of energy. So I'm not following you here.
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In evoking the constraint that whatever consciousness is, it is the result of evolution, and therefore of physical origin (and of physical content), you have demanded a step-by-step demonstration along some causal chain to show this must be so; no such demonstration is necessary, though it might be possible.
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Ed, are trying to reposit a materialism sans causation. If you want to be logically coherent, when you say, "is the result of," the word "result" implies a causal connection inherent between the physical and the output, here, the output is consciousness. You can rephrase "causality" to include dynamic, chaotic, random factors that nix a billiard-ball form or causality, but there is no way to avoid your basic premise that some physical process involving external physical objects or phenomenon "sourced" the output. My point here is that evolution is a physical process. It might jump around and proceed in unpredictable ways and be altered and influenced by unforseen vectors etc. but it is a physical process involving external physical forces that change over time.
Taking ideas from the calculus of variation as it is applied in quantum mechanics and particularly in its application to statistical mechanics one might gain insight in this process of evolution, which can successfully be seen as a statistical process. A species takes a path through the "fitness landscape" and adaptations occur in response to that landscape, which is also dynamic (and non-linear). That response is governed by a set of physical principles, and results in changes to the population of that species over time, and to the species as a whole.
Basically, you are describing the general nature of how some dynamic physical thing (humans) manages to itself change while existing in a dynamic environment. Those changes can be plotted as statistical output. Mechanical usually means a process devoid of spontaneous change, whereas the dynamic process you describe allows for the random and unforseen to naturally occur.
That's all fine, but the point is, Ed, no matter how you describe the process of change occurring to an external physical object "over time," you are still unequivocally talking about strictly physical objects and phenomenon morphing into other strictly physical objects and phenomenon. There is nothing to suggest in any part of this process that this physical flux would source, by statistical, causal, or any process you can state or imagine, a phenomenon that is qualitatively different, or more than, strictly physical objects and phenomenon. I believe you realize that, which is why you stick to your philosophical belief that consciousness ITSELF is nothing MORE than a strictly physical process.
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In this setting, we have a physical process, but the success in this sort of approach is that we are not required to detail the atom-by-atom interaction (which you demand, a demand that is irrelevant as to whether or not such a physical description is possible).
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Actually what I am demanding is to show, any way you choose to, how a strictly physical process can source ontological fruit, or how they are physically related, and how such an idea is logically coherent.
In the end you are saying either that physical processes source consciousness, or that consciousness IS that physical process. In the former, you would have to demonstrate some manner of causation - non-linear, non atom-to-atom, or entirely random if you like, but you can't have an evolutionary process that outputs a conscious human being sans a physical process by which matter, over time, become conscious.
Again, I am not questioning that the evolutionary process has taken novel shape in terms of how this morphs into that. I am saying you can describe the physical process any way you want to, evoking QM, calculus, statistics, or fill in the blank. But this is all besides the point because the question is NOT the physical process by which one quantity becomes another quanity, but how a physical process can "over time" source a phenomenon that is NOT solely and entirely a quantity.
I only did a year of statistics when I did grad work in psychology, but I had to buff that knowledge back up to interpret all the lab tests we did in making the anchor books, and but even with my little knowledge I know that so-called quantitative data pertains to measures of values (or "counts") that are expressed as numbers. That is, quantitative data basically describe how many, how much, or how often.
Conversely, qualitative data are measures of "types," typically represented by names, symbols, or numerical codes.
So the real question is: How does ANY quantitative physical process source "over time" a phenomenon of a type that itself, is not simply a physical, external object or phenomenon?
This way of viewing the evolutionary process as the physical procedure by which the hominid brain became the way it is, along with its behavioral adaptations (including "consciousness") are all rooted in this description.
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You are positing consciousness entirely in functional terms. This is behaviorism, Ed. You are aware that this approach has been abandoned - decades ago.
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From this way of thinking, your assertion that "consciousness" is not physical has to explain both what the non-physical domain is, and how the "physical" and "non-physical" domains interact. The paradox being, of course, that the "non-physical" domain is largely something you made up, first person... any attempt to "universalize" it requires distinctly non-first-person activities, like discussing it.
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It makes no sense to present reality dualistically, as you just did, or at any rate, are accusing me of doing. I always talk about consciousness being the interface of objective and subjective dimensions in a unified whole. There is no such thing, IMO, as two distinct, stand alone realms where in absolute terms, there are physical and non physical realities. Normal consciousness involves content that is sourced by the physical brain. The human body is "compriised" of mostly empty space. But what is "empty" when we find energy potential is every bit of "it?" And what is consciouness when "it" becomes even more accute in the absence of content? My beef with this is when you insist that there is only one phenomenon at play, the one you can measure.
While certainly constraining, a physical approach does not have to deal with making up a whole new domain of reality (the "non-physical") and then elaborating on the thorny bits about the allowed interaction of these two domains, one of which is entirely "subjective" and not available for scrutiny.
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That's weak sauce, Ed. As though a Type A materialism can simply ignore the subjective (in what way is the subjective a "new realm" for you Ed?), call it physical, start pulling measurements and think you have "explained" something. Go figure, indeed. Or that materialism entirely avoids the "thorny" bits by sticking with measurements. And who said any phenomenon is "entirely" this or that? Implied in the above is the belief that the subjective itself IS open for physical scrutiny and quantification. Excellent, Ed. Quantify your experience of being present while taking one of your excellent photos.
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And at least the physical approach has the successes of modern science, largely over the last 600 years, where as little new has emerged from the hypothesis that there is a "non-physical" world out there that determines what goes on in the universe... less and less falls in that category every year... in the limit, nothing is left there (pun intended).
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You have tried here to evoke the woo woo magical world I am always criticizing. You are attributing, or are trying to attribute, physical causal powers to a causal agent that itself is non-physical, tho old "creator" world of old time religion. If you would look at your own creative process you would observe, with enough study, the interplay of your awareness with non-linear brain function. Neither, by itself, can pull off conscious acts. It happens together. But the way you have it, it is a blind process sans observer, and that simply does not square in the real, obserable world. You have simply evoked a straw man, only to shoot it down. More subtle thinking is required in this regards.
I expect strong objections from you, this way of looking at physical descriptions removes your largest rhetorical cudgel from your philosophical armory, the insistence of a causal description, with which to challenge that physical view. The existence, or lack-of, such a description has nothing to do with a successful physical theory.
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Again, Ed, consciousness cannot be so easily explained away by rephrasing causality to include non-linear factors. Inherent in your philosophical beliefs are the notions that the physical entirely sources the conscious, that though the evolutionary process "over time," matter became conscious though functional adaptation. How quantitative data became qualitative output. Or even wonkier, how both are selfsame.
Most confused of this whole rambling rehashing of undergrad causation and evolution is the belief that I "made up" the very subjective realm that you and every other person live in 24-7. It follows that I "made up" all the content (memories, feelings, thoughts and sensations) that stir within you (at least I hope they do), and which only you have privileged access to but which you swear is entirely open to physical scrutiny by any knowledable external observer. It's worth clarifying that you have done nothing whatsover in demonstrating how any of this is so. In fact you haven't provided a single link or point of contact between the experiential life you lead and your vaunted physical stuff.
While for whatever reason you haven't come out and say it, one assumes, perhaps incorrectly, that what you really feel is what Uncle Dennett keeps saying: That we only think we are conscious, but what is really going on is a physical process and ONLY a physical process, all other being the "magic" of fools who don't understand the math.
My question to you is: if the above is true for you, if you believe the subjective, if the reality of your own experience, is a mental construct "made up" or imagined, how is this statement logically coherent, and what criteria would have to be met for the realms you accuse me of "making up" to be real?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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I suspect the "first-person experience" is a largely imaginary realm that coincides with physical reality at times and wanders off onto Astral Planes of thought at other times. I'll never forget my "first-person" experience of walking through a solid wall over forty years ago. Or flying over a desert by out stretching my arms. Now I sit here, sipping my coffee, another aspect of "F-P" experience.
But as I sipped, my mind slipped by the physical sensation and speculated on a math conjecture. And, afterwards, I recall the physical sensation of the coffee as it went into my body.
There is no substance to the Wizard's position, regardless of absence of woo. He is wrapped in an abstract philosophical momentum that only pauses in revelation when physical processes intervene.
But, like many prominent philosophers, he expresses himself well and this has the effect of fabricating content that is otherwise missing.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Well said, John Gill.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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While for whatever reason you haven't come out and say it, one assumes, perhaps incorrectly, that what you really feel is what Uncle Dennett keeps saying: That we only think we are conscious, but what is really going on is a physical process and ONLY a physical process, all other being the "magic" of fools who don't understand the math.
Excellent example of the confusion I referred to not long ago.
Thanks for your contribution.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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In fact you haven't provided a single link or point of contact between the experiential life you lead and your vaunted physical stuff.
before I was born I was not of this world
after I die I will not be of this world
that world existed before me and will exist after me
by the way, I think you misunderstood my criticism, which was of your insistence for a step-by-step causal explanation of the physical phenomenon. This is being in the thrall of a Baconian prejudice, and to see that you need only look at the equivalent description in terms of variation principles, for which no such thing is needed...
The only causal connection for the physical variational principle is the space-time structure, which divides into three regions: the future that can be affected, now, the past which could have affected.
By way of you OP question, there are many physical pictures that are possible without resorting to the sort of childish mechanical processes you seem to require. (By the way, statistical mechanics isn't the same thing as statistics, unfortunately they share a name, and some of the calculations are similar...) An atom or a particle or any similar thing cannot be and should not be viewed as a little human buzzing around "causing" things to happen...
hopefully you are not confused that I believe consciousness is a physical process...
(sorry for the consecutive editing, that wall of text is probably going to take a few days to get up).
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Ridicule, anger, circular arguments, mass confusion, ignorance, and colossal ego—these are the attributes of the mind/ego complex. The same attributes which seem to define this particular, male dominant, arrogant and vociferous six year old thread, and its title, on SuperTopo. I know you guys are proud of it. I wonder about the rest of SuperTopo.
Whether you believe, know, or accept it or not, soul is present within each human being. It's present in the entire creation, from animals to atoms. In the rarified realms beyond the mind, nothing exists but soul, the Divine, and the Sound Current. Soul doesn't require anyone's or anything's acceptance. All it needs is the loving grace and Shabda that only a true Master can deliver.
But let's bring it right back down to the guys in this 'conversation'. Yes, whether you know it or not, like it or not, soul resides within you. In this lifetime and many more to come. It's currently bound and gagged—stifled and subjugated by the willful mind, which is ironically and completely dependent on soul's energy. Knowing the nature of the soul, one can't help but wonder how it might describe the horror of its present incarnation.
When I read some of the distortions that come out of mouths here, I hear, along with the entrapped soul, the sound of the gates of Dachau slamming shut behind its back. Sheer horror, indeed. Yet once again, considering the nature of soul, it is also reserving itself for the moment, thousands of lifetimes down the road, when it will resume its place in freedom and its inherent supremacy. And the pathetic mind, ego, and personality will bow before it as it ascends, gaze fixed on an unseen target above, to its home in regions beyond their presence.
All part of an absolutely flawless system, but my attention wants to be in a more gracious part of the system—it's just too gruesome to witness this. Besides, there is still plenty of karma left for me to surrender before I'm graced with the first resting place in eternity, and that will require all of the limited energy I have remaining.
Can you imagine, I actually thought someone here might entertain hearing something beyond the little frog well? How utterly naive of me!
As autumn color began to fade, a majestic white swan was flying south to the great ocean of its winter home. The crisp air was inspiring and its heart was light, but eventually, the swan's powerful wings began to feel the fatigue of the long flight, and it decided to land for a breather and maybe a drink of water. This area was quite parched, but the swan spotted a well, and landed on its edge.
The swan sensed immediately that the well was nearly dry and wasn't going to accommodate its thirst. Just a few puddles, deep at the bottom of the dark well.
"You're new", said a voice from the bottom of the well. The swan squinted into the darkness and saw a frog among the puddles. "Who are you, and where do you live?", asked the frog.
"I'm a swan, and I'm flying from my summer home in lands to the north, to my true home, the ocean in the south."
"Hunh", muttered the frog. He had never seen anything so large and brilliant in his life. "What's 'the ocean'?", the frog asked.
"The ocean is a huge and vast expanse of water. Truly awesome."
"Big, huh?" The frog hopped backward across a puddle. "This big?"
The swan smiled inwardly. "No, it's much bigger."
Hmmm, thought the frog. And he jumped backward across the next puddle which was quite a bit bigger than the first—"This big?"
"Oh, no. Much, much bigger than that."
The frog was beginning to think he was being had. He sprang backward several hops across the entire expanse of the bottom of his tiny well. "Bigger than this?"
The swan smiled into the darkness. "Yes, my friend. The ocean is far, far bigger."
"Well, if you expect me to believe that, you're a fool and a liar!" shouted the enraged frog.
The swan simply smiled, lifting his gaze to the sky. The sun was passing its zenith, so the swan spread its magnificent wings and resumed its journey.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Climbing never really felt spiritual to me. Sure, it was intense sometimes, and I came close to getting whacked by rockfall a few times, but it was mainly just an activity that I just loved doing. I would drop out of school for a semester to work and then travel, and after school I was a climbing bum for a while, but it didn't feel spiritual. I do recall being aware of the incredible views that only climbers can see.
I've seen a ton of skydiving students land with no memory of the jump. Their minds overload, and they shut down. When I was in a hairy spot, I would tune in, and become calmer than normal. Soloing sometimes felt like that, but not always. It had to be an acute situation. Not some 5.9 that I had downclimbed for years.
I was nothing special, though. I am happier when doing something that is dangerous. Or at least exciting. Anything that gets all synapses standing at attention. In that aspect, I think that I am different from many others, and I've always found kindred spirits along the way, in climbing, jumping, whatever.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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BASE, I had to cut out once and use my reserve, did
you ever have to do this?
I had wondered how calm I would be. I was calm.
Good to know. Self-awareness.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dingus:
Ok. I used the word “potential,” and I tried to relate it to openness.
I don’t see that one’s conscious will can give rise to openness, because openness (for some of us) implies no stand and no conceptualization assumed. I tried to point out that many fields of research have shown that we don’t see clearly, in an unbiased way. We see things because we believe in things, and we believe in things because we’ve been taught to believe in things. It begins to happen almost immediately upon birth. (This logic may seem circular; that’s the nature of projection and reification.)
For me, listening is not really something can be done actively, willfully, consciously. Real listening, seeing, touching, etc. *arises* on its own accord. That makes it a characteristic of being for me—not a result of doing.
It’s my (and a few others’) view that doing is a form or subcategory of being.
So when someone says, “oh, ok, . . . I’ll listen,” it’s unlikely that they aren’t, because they can’t. Their mind (with all its baggage) is in the way.
I’d say that everyone is locked in a box of their own making. Delusion is like the clouds in front of the sun, a masking or a veil of what is always there.
On Netflix is a documentary called, “Brain Games.” Netflix promotes the film with the following language: “This interactive series uses games, illusions, and experiments to illustrate how our brains manufacture our reality and often plays tricks on us.”
Ed: . . . wall of text . . .
Great phrasing.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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My first rig was a piece of junk. I had 4 reserve rides in 25 jumps. I also did El Cap on that rig.
So 4 reserve rides there. Once I had my reserve pilot chute get stuck in my burble, and I had to turn onto my side to clear it. It had a 3 foot bridle, or something crazy. It was an old 26 foot Lo-Po.
Then I had a rig that would break center A lines now and then. I had 6 other reserve rides.
That is 10, which is a super high number. Most skydivers never use their reserves. It goes to show how poor I was, and the junk gear I used.
I could have landed all of those malfunctions, but they were either spinning or unstable. Safer to just use the reserve.
One time I landed and was packing. I noticed some torn cloth. I checked it out, and the bottom skin of the center cell had ripped from nose to tail. I was getting lazy, and didn't even notice. It landed fine.
I never freaked out. Yes, I was calmer than normal. I was more aware than normal. That feeling is what I have chased most of my life. That awareness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Ridicule, anger, circular arguments, mass confusion, ignorance, and colossal ego, these are the attributes of the mind [and] ego complex. The same attributes which seem to define this particular, male dominant, arrogant and vociferous six year old thread . . .
Larry, a casual reading of this thread might lead one to think this, but in fact we are here, having a little fun, and the rancor is pretty much just poking back and forth and superficial. Occasionally there will be a touch of anger, but mostly it's all just friendly entertainment.
The politard threads are a different matter.
Relax and enjoy the ride.
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