Cow Hum

So how come, -- no one marvels that no two pigeons are alike.?.

Constellations

By day attention went to survival, even after people started living together in small herds. But at night, yes one slept, but some had to be awake some of the time, perhaps the assigned guard person as the daily shift from hunter to hunted was effective, but men have always also, looked UP, at the sky. Hard to argue about, yet what other animal did this, looked up, especially when laterally, all was dark, but UP what a spectacle, every clear night. So much more incredible than the city skies we are used to. And so---out of reach, so mesmerizing, but not anything that had an immediate use. You could just gaze upward at the sky. Not for a purpose that was obvious, or could be handled. Just looking, with the body still. Probably soon men started to note changes. Every thing they knew had some relevance, a plant to avoid, or study for clues, or consume. Surely the spectacle above also had some relevance, some survival value, but what. The sky appeared unchanging in comparison with the daylight jungle, and yet, did a sense of change among the permanent, the falling star, become apparent? And yet the permanent also persisted among the changing. And to what end, in a world where all related to hunter or hunted, did this sky persist.

Perhaps there was an event, from the sky, some totally amazing, that may have left an impact crater we have or haven't found. Perhaps not, perhaps just the incredible glittering night, inviting study to an end that was not obvious, that had to be concentrated on, studied out. The patterns men described in the sky now seem arbitrary but these patterns we call constellations, we have not forgotten. Why have we not forgotten these old patterns? The ancient gods and cosmology is everywhere faded like a pressed flower, and yet all us know the names of the patterns traced out millenia ago.

One reason we have not forgotten -- is it is possible that the night sky, the patterns men talked about, are evidence of the ignition of, the invention of, human abstract thought.

Would this event, whenever, however it happened, the dawn of human thought, of mentation, would not this event be in the category of the Big Bang. And in looking up at the sky, and seeing, as we now understand, the light of past events,
could it not be that we also are seeing the beginning of human thought?

April Schools Day

On April Fools Day I find myself thinking of some news stories, is that a joke? What if everyday we could pinch our internal news and hold it to a light, and scan it for it's integrity.... Would our thoughts melt away, would we think who is doing the scanning,now? And where does all this news come from... Would we think?

The Dream of History

The dream of history may be described as self-knowledge. Jan Cox referred to the academic discipline of history as illusory. The motive behind studying history, as with so many things, is probably self-knowledge. There is a kind of search for self knowledge which actually involves hiding from real awareness. Some intellectual pursuits give the satisfaction of scratching an itch while avoiding the shock and joy of real understanding which requires among other things a certain kind of courage. As long as the procession of sentences can continue, one is protected from the self knowledge that real objectivity involves, while garnering the faint glow of intellectual creativity and curiosity.

An example of history as preserving illusions came to my attention this morning in the email summary of a scots newspaper. I quote from the Daily Scotsman,and in the quote below merely ask that you notice the assumption that the individual is capable of conscious action and responsible as an agent of action. What is history without this assumption--biology? but here is the quote :

"Fact of the Day Today in 1625 Charles I came to the throne of England and Scotland. His reign would be turbulent and his clashes with the English Parliament, plus his handling of religious issues, led to civil war and his eventual beheading. Read more of Scottish history at heritage.scotsman.com"

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Thu, 27 Mar 2008

A Trained Seal

A trained seal is a nice picture of human verbal thought. I guess everyone has a graphic accompaniment to that phrase. A seal which is on a ball and managing to keep his balance. If this were not a metaphor one would feel repelled by the connotations of the brutality (which confined animals, in the zoo or circus, suffer necessarily by virtue of their entrapment if nothing else) this image would bring up. But we are talking of something besides seals, we are talking about the human intellect and I like this picture of it. Wobbling here, weaving there, so warbles mechanical mentation when it spills forth from the mouth (or keyboard). The interesting part of human speech is that, just as the seal can stay upright, there is conceivably some sense which others may agree is the import of the words being spoken. All the while what is really happening is at a basic glandular level and any resemblance to actual denotative substance is accidental.

And the ball. What could the ball be in this metaphor? Maybe the secret. Oh yes there really is a secret. It is just not hidden away. Skip the purloined letter, what about a purloined universe. By not saying more I am not being coy. Anyone can study the words of Jan Cox on his website, jancox.com., and learn far more than by reading my words.

What women know

This whole silly todo about Eliot Spitzer getting caught with his wallet open (silly except that such distractions, keep the secondary world alive) reminds me of the time Jan Cox pointed out offhandedly that lawyers marry beautiful women. I suppose men are artless when they investigate why such behavior occurs ( NPR interviewed such an academic student in the aftermath of the above incident, who has done research on why men visit prostitutes,yes really) but women know darn well how blameless men are, and yet they cluck away. I do not wish to dwell too much about this now, to avoid what Jan called "the suicide of the secondary," ,but there are examples to hand of women who dealt with infidelity in a sensible manner. I refer to Queen Alexandra, who invited her husband's mistress to visit him by his deathbed. My point is this is well within the bounds of ordinary knowledge, at least for women, at least it used to be. Why indeed do men visit prostitutes. Give me a break.

Another picture

Why is there no verb form for being a plate of sheet glass? A sheet of glass is a nice picture of reality. Words are like tape on the glass to make the glass apparent. But of course reality is never a noun, and the reality of moving, flowing glass is not the best picture of what we are pointing to. For the nonce, our sheet of glass is on a truck. Notice it is outside, inside being too hazardous to keep the glass intact, what with pushy nouns and verbs that bang in the mental interiority of modern consciousness . So the relatively unconfined outdoors is the milieu in which to glimpse our plate of glass, whizzing by on a truck. Everyone assumes they know about the truck, when in fact none do.