Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
So if everything is moving away from it at the same speed, wouldn't it HAVE to be the center? (BB)
Repeat: think of the surface of an expanding balloon.
;>\
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
Just as Darwin speculated, we are evolutionary automata.
That's the clean easy way to say it that makes the point very nicely and avoids the language and semantic problems associated with "deterministic" and "free will" that are easy to have as evidenced by posts here and elsewhere.
The tragedy for those who deny it - the automaticity of their biology, that is - is failure to understand their own nature. True, not an interest of everyone but an interest of some.
I am an automaton, a fact I started adjusting to a long time ago and one I'm pretty much accustomed to today. "Determined" by birth, genetics and circumstances to be human, male and a lot else on earth in the 21st century. So I don't have a certain kind of "free will" advanced in early to medieval times, so what? I look on the bright side (something I'd encourage others to do, esp young people, who might be coming around to the same, the bio-automaticity of their nature) I accentuate the positive; I am an automaton, yes, but an automaton with can-do power. That makes all the difference. Can-do power. We have more of it than any of our ancestors, esp our ancient forebears (shrews to protohumans); more kinds and expressions of it than our cousin species (e.g., abalone, a sea species I like to pick on). That's something to celebrate. Just as Sagan to Tyson to Dawkins to Krauss to Carroll and many many others apart from little old me would say, too.
When it's not about the facts, frequently it's about attitude.
.....
I read the NYT piece a few days back, too. Yeah, Jan came to mind, lol!
Well, I guess it was just two days ago.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
Yes so true automata.
You have no soul, a lifeless predictable robot with only the ability to chose your predetermined destiny.
Your predetermined destiny is continued cycle of birth, death disease and old age
while transmigrating from material bodies according to the consciousness you've made in each of those lifetimes.
Evolving and devolving you continue go in your automata limited gross material consciousness of bondage ......
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
Yes WB, you and I and the difference(s) we have intellectually and spritually could very well be emblematic, I think, that the time is right for H. sapiens to further speciate. Now if only we each had our different mountain ranges or continents to go to, so to speak, lol!
But feel good, no doubt about it, you're the majority branch, clan, groupthink, whatever.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Now if only we each had our different mountain ranges or continents to go to, so to speak, lol!
Yes this is the segregation and isolation Lucifer started and your following his footsteps nicely.
As opposed to Jesus's teaching's of love your enemy and invite them into the fold.
But don't you worry separation is coming all to soon, it IS deterministic.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
Per usual, provide the science and the supernaturalists, armed with their 2,000 year old mythologies, go crazy.
"Lucifer..."
LOL!
What country is this?
What century is this?
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 3, 2014 - 02:12pm PT
|
Ed, when I say "discursive," I mean this in the human sense (I can't speak for animals).
First we narrow focus on a thing. This prompts automatic word and symbol generation from from brain, a whole bunch of data streams rushing at us about "that" out there, or "this" (like a feeling or memory etc.) in here.
Discursive is simply the human capacity to observe and automatically contrast a particular thing or "tree," as opposed to holding a non--discursive, open focus (impossible without practice) and abiding with the "forest," so to speak, when the brain's auto symbol generating machinery is held off line.
Try holding an infinite open focus (al la a camera lens) and do math or recite poetry at the same time. No human can do it because awareness/focus and attention - the basic triad of sentience - operates basically the same for all humans and it cannot "do" discursive work while being wide open.
By nature, discursive work is "paying attention" to this or that. This attention does not generate awareness, as some have guessed, but it does generate words and symbols, as you can readily vouchsafe for yourself through self-observation.
Fruity said: “The tragedy for those who deny it - the automaticity of their biology, that is - is failure to understand their own nature. True, not an interest of everyone but an interest of some.”
I would largely agree with this statement, except Fruity is using a lop sided approach by only looking at content.
As mentioned above, this is the discursive process essential for investigating the trees. For the forest, or the All, however, you must include the observer, and not only is that where our true nature lies, but it is totally inaccessible by way of Fruity's methods, which are component-based. Had discursive means yielded fruit in this regards everyone in every Zendo and Ashran around the world would be sitting and thinking about things. Of course they would.
This dovetails into what Mike was trying to get Tvash to understand, but Tvash is apparently too closed off to hear what Mike was saying - believing as he does that Mike is actually guessing.
What Tvash does not understand is that the "void" is not some thing or state or mental perception that "you" go investigate should you have nothing better to do. Such thinking is simply the discursive trying to get hold of the ungraspable whole-damn-thing. The void or no-thing or emptiness is simply the flip side of stuff, some thing and no thing comprising the "coin" of reality. Ungraspabl does not mean unknowable, only that "you" can't objectify it from the outside because there IS not outside per the whole. The whole includes it all, including the objecifier.
Ironically, the "you" that Tvash imagines is not interested in the void, is itself no-thing, and it's fundamental nature is emptiness, or what Fruity called our true nature. What Tvash thinks is that when we are operating in no-mind, we are doing science but without instrumentation, ergo we are doing science very poorly. And we might be mistaken about what we find, since we have to find some thing - correct?
But science is built on the measurements of discrete things and forms, whereas void, or emptiness is the absence of those forms and the essence of your mind. Quite naturally, when you discursively look at subjectivity you will grock onto content and say - that's it, because that's how the discursive works. But at no time in any discursive work is the void or emptiness absent. It is the "Q space" or borderless field or awareness in which all "things" emerge into consciousness.
This is what Mike was saying Tvash needed to "awaken" to.
JL
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Good one JL
What Tvash does not understand is that the "void" is not some thing or state or mental perception that "you" go investigate should you have nothing better to do. Such thinking is simply the discursive trying to get hold of the ungraspable whole-damn-thing. The void or no-thing or emptiness is simply the flip side of stuff, some thing and no thing comprising the "coin" of reality. Ungraspabl does not mean unknowable, only that "you" can't objectify it from the outside because there IS not outside per the whole. The whole includes it all, including the objecifier.
This helped me understand in words what I do.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Ironically, the "you" that Tvash imagines is not interested in the void, is itself no-thing, and it's fundamental nature is emptiness, or what Fruity called our true nature. What Tvash thinks is that when we are operating in no-mind, we are doing science but without instrumentation, ergo we are doing science very poorly. And we might be mistaken about what we find, since we have to find some thing - correct?
And how ironic what they lash out against what they cant see inside there own selfs, While they turn their back from their own enterprise of concoctions when it comes to the unseen powers of nature outside the self. The obvious ones like gravity, electromagnetism, time, light, wind, life.....
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
First we narrow focus on a thing. This prompts automatic word and symbol generation from brain, a whole bunch of data streams rushing at us about "that" out there, or "this" (like a feeling or memory etc.) in here (JL)
To test this hypothesis, I just spent five minutes staring at the stapler on my desk. At first, the word "stapler" came, then . . . nothing. No data stream rushing at me, no sense of "out there" as opposed to "in here", or anything else. Just a stapler that didn't even seem separate from its surroundings. Just a stapler. No busy thoughts or conjectures. Just a stapler. No analysis of what it does or deliberations on its mechanics. Just a stapler. No thoughts at all. So I guess "narrow focus" needs to be refined a bit.
Maybe it's just my age.
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
What is "Stapler?"
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
When I go out walking in the woods alone there are long intervals when I am not aware of any words in my head. You could say that the thing we call "I" is not needed. My eyes and feet do a fine job without any effort from "me" that I am conscious of. Sometimes discursive thought pops up, usually as song lyrics. That doesn't seem to have any big effect on my state of mind. The whole experience reminds me that "I" am not needed to generate or support "reality."
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
You could say that the thing we call "I" is not needed
Ditto with my stapler. I felt nothing. No thoughts of any kind.
Just the stapler.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
Hey! I can narrow focus on a tree, but woods?
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
"Meanwhile if you're afraid of the worms in Nepal, I'll bet that what you're really talking about is a leech?"
No. I woke up with a leech on my eyelid, pulled it off, and ate it for breakfast without a second thought.
I'm talking about ascaris - an intestinal worm the size of a large nightcrawler that eventually gets into your lungs and multiplies until you've got them crawling out of your nostrils.
Fortunately - mine decided to travel south instead, at which point I flushed his pink ass into oblivion.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
"So you're an artist . . . . What do you have to say about being artistic, rather than an artist? What an artist is, or is not, is probably objective. What is artistic is probably not objective at all. Note the difference.
The problem is, I would think, that people of your persuasion face many unsolvable problems that you can hardly articulate, much less work to final solutions. You ignore the fact that at the end of the day, you cannot say what anything is with any certainty scientifically, although you can say so by the consensus of scientists."
The artistic life defined: Take something. Do something to it. Repeat.
People of my persuasion - hmmm - I wonder who those might be?
The 'without a doubt' thing is strawman, of course. Only the wooists have sung that song so far.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
"Instead you spend all day guessing, accepting and rejecting what your out of control mind is bubbling up all day."
Actually, I spent all day yesterday jumping off a 4 story rock into a crystal clear mountain lake with a beautiful, engaging woman before convening to design some lighting and furniture together over grilled halibut, but thanks for asking.
Damn you, out of control mind.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
"jumping off a 4 story rock into a crystal clear mountain lake with a beautiful, engaging woman before convening to design some lighting and furniture together over grilled halibut"
Right on, tvash, all that's what I call can-do power!
Whether we're fully-caused, fully-mechanistic organisms or not (we are), our can-do power, and really, the can-do powers of all living things, not just human, are to be appreciated, celebrated and most definitely, since they can be gone in an instant, not to be taken for granted.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!