Such is how it is possible that future generations will describe Jan Cox's. I of course have no crystal ball but if you realize the regard in which Socrates is held today and that the life of Jan Cox was spent pursuing similar goals, with a success that is not measurable and yet could be called immeasurable, such descriptions do not seem out of line. One cannot compare mystics, but it is neat how the 20th century seems to contain both Gurdjieff in the first half, and Jan Cox in the second. The singular contribution of Jan Cox to philosophy and any planetary knowing was a relentless empiricism in which all gauzy religiosity was stripped away from an objective pursuit of "that which is." Gurdjieff had started on this path. Jan Cox called it the "WORK" ("Way of Real Knowledge") in his early decades of having students, and in a pointing to the haplessness of all verbosity, "This Kind of Stuff," later among many descriptions. New descriptions were critical: the idea was to burn all maps when the nourishment was gone.
He is not better known today because during his life time there was a self regulating aspect to life that prevented attention from being paid to his efforts. Part of this was the fear which most experienced when they perceived at a biological level the accuracy of his knowledge of those around him. When will it be safe for the academics to chat about his writings of Jan Cox? Who knows. But he knew his own worth and he wanted whatever nourishment could be gained from his writings to be accessible to others who might follow after his death, along a comparable path.
This desire does not contradict his repeated reminder that he could not "teach" anyone anything. Part of the mystery is that you can only really learn from your own efforts. I am tempted here to mention a lovely event when Pentland sent spies to check out Jan's activities.
But that is only tangentially relevant and we will get to that later.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Poorly Packed Pickups
Poorly packed pickups--you have seen them, you hate to follow to close, something might fall off and dent your car. I like the sound of the phrase, the alliteration. Jan Cox often used alliteration, and of course it is an old English poetical device. Poorly packed pickups---this picture of the mind, shows exactly the way thoughts pop up in your head: thoughts in this picture might be something that fell off the truckload. If life is a pickup, then the stuff in the truckbed could be an apparently overloaded, genetic bundle, perhaps an individual, and words something that fell onto the asphalt. Falling onto the asphalt in this picture would be a word popping into ordinary consciousness. Academics then would be roadside scavengers of a sort. By academics I mean of course the aspect of ordinary mentation which purports to know what's going on.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
hx of religion riff
One thing the mechanical mind cannot deal with at all is that there are (to make an amusing joke with a sharp point) 25000 explanations for any event. And this is really obvious if you can step back at bit. And the best, the very best, the ordinary mind can respond with to this direct fact is, "well that cannot be the case since the mind cannot comprehend that complexity." This quote is from some philosophy of history text published sometime before 1970, the details are not at hand. But most times of course the mechanical mentation of the academics just avoids the issue and pretends that such mind defying complexity is not descriptive. I trust the absurdity of the sentiment in the quote above is apparent. As an illustration of the mechanical nature of human mentation the following is a sketch typical of academe in many respects, and intended merely to point to the complexity of reality versus the mechanicalness of the ordinary human mind. The point here is that there are uncountable explanations for anything ordinary mentation can label.
With that preface I am sketching a historical glance at the development of religion---as true as many such histories, but not of course, the WHOLE truth. (Whatever that melon may mean.)
Looking at the major religions chronologically, you could play around with certain generalizations, like that the polytheists viewed man as a small if significant part of a larger marginally reasonable world. Then Judaism introduced individual responsibility and Christianity added that every person was significant. (God as the father, and he cares for you in your individuality. His eye is on the sparrow, stuff, though that phrase may not be in the bible.). So people go from being (in what is arguably still a good description) cogs in a larger machine to each person having some significance. In fact you could argue that with the advent of monotheism man has lost a critical sense of his realistic place in the cosmos. (Funny that, many gods, one mankind, One god, many mankinds... oh well never mind.) Okay it seems like you could make a case for extreme variants of what some (though not me) would call modern Islam as taking this articulation of humanity to the extreme of making each person god. Get the picture here of the sweep of religions -- man is a small part of the cosmos, man is a really important part of the cosmos, to man has godlike power OVER the cosmos. Let me elaborate on this last point: the suicide bomber has surely moments of clarity before he blows himself up. A kind of alertness which we all strive for and which possibly happens to many people in their last moments, characterizes him. But for the bomber whose actions will be a bummer for anyone around him he controls a cosmos. The entire world for himself and some others==the entire world, in an experiential way, is under his control. Interestingly enough, there is only one thing he can DO with this control, and that is --- destroy. Still a case could be made for some chap in a bulky overcoat being a god.
Cannot resist this aside---Whatever the phrase modern Islam may mean, I trust the Prophet would agree with me that it is not his teachings. Modern Christianity is already dead, you could date this with the execution of Bonhoeffer. (Trust me I could,a dn may elsewhere make this more convincing, that's the way ordinary mentation works---you can literally prove anything.) It is quite possible that Modern Islam (to distinguish it from anything resembling that intended by its founder, and to suggest a parallel with all intellectual movements in this divergence between founder and faithful, between prophet and the pious) is in its last throes, a rather flamboyant dying song.
Soon this inconvenience will be finished with. What we are seeing is the last flares of a major religion. Kind of makes you miss polytheism.
Hey it's just a riff-- we are just playing with ordinary mentation.
With that preface I am sketching a historical glance at the development of religion---as true as many such histories, but not of course, the WHOLE truth. (Whatever that melon may mean.)
Looking at the major religions chronologically, you could play around with certain generalizations, like that the polytheists viewed man as a small if significant part of a larger marginally reasonable world. Then Judaism introduced individual responsibility and Christianity added that every person was significant. (God as the father, and he cares for you in your individuality. His eye is on the sparrow, stuff, though that phrase may not be in the bible.). So people go from being (in what is arguably still a good description) cogs in a larger machine to each person having some significance. In fact you could argue that with the advent of monotheism man has lost a critical sense of his realistic place in the cosmos. (Funny that, many gods, one mankind, One god, many mankinds... oh well never mind.) Okay it seems like you could make a case for extreme variants of what some (though not me) would call modern Islam as taking this articulation of humanity to the extreme of making each person god. Get the picture here of the sweep of religions -- man is a small part of the cosmos, man is a really important part of the cosmos, to man has godlike power OVER the cosmos. Let me elaborate on this last point: the suicide bomber has surely moments of clarity before he blows himself up. A kind of alertness which we all strive for and which possibly happens to many people in their last moments, characterizes him. But for the bomber whose actions will be a bummer for anyone around him he controls a cosmos. The entire world for himself and some others==the entire world, in an experiential way, is under his control. Interestingly enough, there is only one thing he can DO with this control, and that is --- destroy. Still a case could be made for some chap in a bulky overcoat being a god.
Cannot resist this aside---Whatever the phrase modern Islam may mean, I trust the Prophet would agree with me that it is not his teachings. Modern Christianity is already dead, you could date this with the execution of Bonhoeffer. (Trust me I could,a dn may elsewhere make this more convincing, that's the way ordinary mentation works---you can literally prove anything.) It is quite possible that Modern Islam (to distinguish it from anything resembling that intended by its founder, and to suggest a parallel with all intellectual movements in this divergence between founder and faithful, between prophet and the pious) is in its last throes, a rather flamboyant dying song.
Soon this inconvenience will be finished with. What we are seeing is the last flares of a major religion. Kind of makes you miss polytheism.
Hey it's just a riff-- we are just playing with ordinary mentation.
What would the opposite of a black hole be?
The opposite of a black hole, what would that be, okay the opposite of a black hole as posited by the current scientific community, would be----
tiny, right? Not this galactic rustling cosmic structure that science envisages. Not even the small ones I believe Stephen Hawking has suggesting are all around. No the tiny black holes I am picturing are so tiny they are, ... mental.
Stepping lightly out of that room of marbles and cats dodging rocking chairs,
these tiny black holes would have event horizons, of course, but THESE event horizons would be
words, encircling, ever present just about to escape (be forgotten) OR get sucked in (verbalized), encroaching every minute, eternal --- run on sentences.
Just as no light escapes the posited black holes in the cosmos, no words can illuminate the actual quietness of the cyclonic center of the mental black holes which could support ordinary mentation.
tiny, right? Not this galactic rustling cosmic structure that science envisages. Not even the small ones I believe Stephen Hawking has suggesting are all around. No the tiny black holes I am picturing are so tiny they are, ... mental.
Stepping lightly out of that room of marbles and cats dodging rocking chairs,
these tiny black holes would have event horizons, of course, but THESE event horizons would be
words, encircling, ever present just about to escape (be forgotten) OR get sucked in (verbalized), encroaching every minute, eternal --- run on sentences.
Just as no light escapes the posited black holes in the cosmos, no words can illuminate the actual quietness of the cyclonic center of the mental black holes which could support ordinary mentation.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The Vikings Are Coming!!
Action and thinking of action---those are the exact words of Jan Cox. It is not easy to glimpse the reality of the relation that points to---the interaction of hormones and neurons. Neurons are programmed to say, hey, I'm in charge. That does not mean your brain cells have a clue---it simply means their job is to pipe up and declare, yes I planned that, yes sir, that was my deliberate decision.
The example of Wesley Autrey is just an obvious example of why the conscious deliberation that is feigned AFTER THE FACT is a useful (to ordinary progress) aspect of man's mentation. What would happen in a world where the reality of, "heck, not sure why I did that, it just happened." The law courts for one, would just come to a screeching halt if there was any large scale glimpse of this reality. Politicians could not be blamed for economic problems, (and what would we do then???). Literature and philosophy are all based on the unstated assumption that man is a conscious agent. Without this assumption any idea of personal reform or a search for motives is silly.
Actually though, history is meaningless withOUT the assumption that the body moves and then, the caboose, the mind, chatters. Why DID those Vikings in the first millenium decide to terrorize Europe. Did they set out with a plan, or did, on a large scale, a physcial population, get the urge to DO SOMETHING. Gotta move, gotta dance, gotta strut my stuff. Oh no, that did not come from the brain. Of course once the long ships got in the water, then mind came up with something for a reason.
Could this also be the case for the European crusades? What about the attack on New York City and Washington in 2001. Could it be that the reason there was no competent intelligence for the security agencies to collate before the attack was that the attack did not start as a deliberate action.
...Okay, well, just think that this scenario I am sketching "could" be a possibilty.
The example of Wesley Autrey is just an obvious example of why the conscious deliberation that is feigned AFTER THE FACT is a useful (to ordinary progress) aspect of man's mentation. What would happen in a world where the reality of, "heck, not sure why I did that, it just happened." The law courts for one, would just come to a screeching halt if there was any large scale glimpse of this reality. Politicians could not be blamed for economic problems, (and what would we do then???). Literature and philosophy are all based on the unstated assumption that man is a conscious agent. Without this assumption any idea of personal reform or a search for motives is silly.
Actually though, history is meaningless withOUT the assumption that the body moves and then, the caboose, the mind, chatters. Why DID those Vikings in the first millenium decide to terrorize Europe. Did they set out with a plan, or did, on a large scale, a physcial population, get the urge to DO SOMETHING. Gotta move, gotta dance, gotta strut my stuff. Oh no, that did not come from the brain. Of course once the long ships got in the water, then mind came up with something for a reason.
Could this also be the case for the European crusades? What about the attack on New York City and Washington in 2001. Could it be that the reason there was no competent intelligence for the security agencies to collate before the attack was that the attack did not start as a deliberate action.
...Okay, well, just think that this scenario I am sketching "could" be a possibilty.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Action and Thinking of Action
This story has by now been told often. How
on January 2, 2007, Wesley Autrey was waiting for a train at the 137th Street and Broadway station in Manhattan with his two very young daughters. Around 12:45 p.m., he noticed a man,
Cameron Hollopeter, having a seizure. Afterwards, the guy stumbled from the platform, falling onto the tracks. As Hollopeter lay on the tracks, Autrey saw the lights of an incoming
into a drainage ditchtrain. One of the women held Autrey's daughters back away from the edge of the platform and Autrey jumped down into the track area. After realizing he did not have time to get Hollopeter off the tracks before the oncming train, Wesley Autrey protected Hollopeter by pushing him between the tracks, and throwing himself over Hollopeter. The operator of the train saw them and tried to stop before reaching the two people, but two cars still passed over Autrey and Hollopeter. Autrey was not scratched.
Okay the point for our purposes is that there is no way this guy thought out what he was going to do. Autrey's story illustrates the fallacies of thinking that the brain controls our actions. In the words of Jan Cox, "the brain is the last to know." Picture what must have happened if you doubt this. There is a train, there is no way this guy could think, if I do this, then will my daughters see me die, is it worth my life for this poor fella. No, there was no time for any thought, the body just took over. If I cannot argue persuasively that this scenario is typical of human action, at least try and see how in this case, the brain did not decide to be a hero. This story still freaks me out, but it is not a story of rational activity, and that is why I include it here.
on January 2, 2007, Wesley Autrey was waiting for a train at the 137th Street and Broadway station in Manhattan with his two very young daughters. Around 12:45 p.m., he noticed a man,
Cameron Hollopeter, having a seizure. Afterwards, the guy stumbled from the platform, falling onto the tracks. As Hollopeter lay on the tracks, Autrey saw the lights of an incoming
into a drainage ditchtrain. One of the women held Autrey's daughters back away from the edge of the platform and Autrey jumped down into the track area. After realizing he did not have time to get Hollopeter off the tracks before the oncming train, Wesley Autrey protected Hollopeter by pushing him between the tracks, and throwing himself over Hollopeter. The operator of the train saw them and tried to stop before reaching the two people, but two cars still passed over Autrey and Hollopeter. Autrey was not scratched.
Okay the point for our purposes is that there is no way this guy thought out what he was going to do. Autrey's story illustrates the fallacies of thinking that the brain controls our actions. In the words of Jan Cox, "the brain is the last to know." Picture what must have happened if you doubt this. There is a train, there is no way this guy could think, if I do this, then will my daughters see me die, is it worth my life for this poor fella. No, there was no time for any thought, the body just took over. If I cannot argue persuasively that this scenario is typical of human action, at least try and see how in this case, the brain did not decide to be a hero. This story still freaks me out, but it is not a story of rational activity, and that is why I include it here.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Emulate the Aristocrats
Ever notice how they wave at crowds--- Jan Cox once pointed this out--that wave that aristocrats and autocratic rulers give to the subjects. Any "Hello" magazine will show it, even the kids pick up this royal wave early. See them in their motorcades, raising their hand to recognise the people, and then slightly turning their hand.
Okay---this is the attitude we aim to have towards our----thoughts. They ain't going away (the thoughts, yes the aristocrats did go away, ignore that for now). In one of his final (and I say 'final' knowing that the idea of a boundary here, a frame, is very alien to what Jan was striving to convey to us.) Jan Cox repeated this---you never completely get rid of those thoughts, regardless of what most mystical texts advertise.
Anyway we can ape those aristocrats til we hit the genetic grand prize. Like, know yourself---all those books about and pictures of royalty---most folks do not have this family documentation, but the aristocrats do, only -- they forget it all----they can do this because the library has a lock on it. It is all there, just not cluttering up the moment.
And do not forget your goal. Yes, the aristocrats were overthrown on occasion. And what did they do? Again, a direct quote from Jan Cox. He said once that real aristocrats never gave up getting their kingdoms back. If removed from power they spent their time gathering troops on the border of their lost kingdom.
Also--notice the really rich (the kind who you will not see waving in a parade) they do not want you even knowing their name, an instance being the heirs that until recently controlled the Wall Street Journal. They have their reasons; so too does a different aristocracy, The really really rich (that'd be those who knew Jan Cox) do not speak of themselves, or give interviews. And they may not always even always know their OWN names.
....
And yeah, Jan did NOT put THIS into words but, hey, those royalty, they get to have as many animals as they want. That would however be the only advantage the rich really have.
Okay---this is the attitude we aim to have towards our----thoughts. They ain't going away (the thoughts, yes the aristocrats did go away, ignore that for now). In one of his final (and I say 'final' knowing that the idea of a boundary here, a frame, is very alien to what Jan was striving to convey to us.) Jan Cox repeated this---you never completely get rid of those thoughts, regardless of what most mystical texts advertise.
Anyway we can ape those aristocrats til we hit the genetic grand prize. Like, know yourself---all those books about and pictures of royalty---most folks do not have this family documentation, but the aristocrats do, only -- they forget it all----they can do this because the library has a lock on it. It is all there, just not cluttering up the moment.
And do not forget your goal. Yes, the aristocrats were overthrown on occasion. And what did they do? Again, a direct quote from Jan Cox. He said once that real aristocrats never gave up getting their kingdoms back. If removed from power they spent their time gathering troops on the border of their lost kingdom.
Also--notice the really rich (the kind who you will not see waving in a parade) they do not want you even knowing their name, an instance being the heirs that until recently controlled the Wall Street Journal. They have their reasons; so too does a different aristocracy, The really really rich (that'd be those who knew Jan Cox) do not speak of themselves, or give interviews. And they may not always even always know their OWN names.
....
And yeah, Jan did NOT put THIS into words but, hey, those royalty, they get to have as many animals as they want. That would however be the only advantage the rich really have.
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