How the mind keeps busy avoiding reality

Below is a quote from the free email newsletter that New Scientist magazine makes available to the interested.The quote illustrates a particular strategy of ordinary human mentation; this strategy must have some value though as yet what value that could be is not clear to me. Perhaps it is the repeat a silly argument if that argument was ever believed in the past ploy. The parting line politicians use that they want to spend more time with their family falls in this camp. Never mind the guy/gal was just indicted for bribes, never mind their kids have already left for college. Never mind that the wife is furious their summer vacation will not be spent in Greece now. For some reason they can trot out the old argument that they have to leave their office to spend more time with their family and their audience does not break out in laughter.

Along these lines is this blurb for an article that does not need to be read for anyone to know the conclusions. Yet an academic magazine is publishing this article. The topic is about the effectiveness of makeup. It is my assertion that everyone knows that make up only makes young people look younger. The blurb ends that we deserve some evidence make up works. Oh sure, and we will learn from our mistakes.(That's what those stock brokers say.) Something else is going on, not what is being said. Yet this kind of blurb is repeated ad hilariousnessness, and it is all part of a dream. Part of a dream. And the proof that this research is silly, is that---if the makeup worked, you would need NO article investigating the claim. Everybody would use the product and look younger. Maybe research about HOW, it works, but not IF makeup works. So here is the blurb.

What lies beneath the makeup?
We spend a fortune on cosmetics that promise to keep our skin youthful, so surely we deserve some evidence that they work, says Richard Welle

Southeast Asia

It seems unlikely that no one else has noticed this but there seems to be some kind of engine of creativity, planetary creativity, apparently located in South East Asia.
The reasons I bring this up---recently the science news that flu viruses originate in southeast
Asia, brought back these things I had noticed before. The incredible biological diversity in for instance Malaysia. The origin of many species in this area (southeast China.) The fact that the oldest religion, Hinduism, is not only in this area, but is still vigorous after all these millenia (I base this judgment of vigor on the fact animal life is still protected in a way it is not in the west, animals protected in temples for instance.) You could make a case that the Chinese civilization is the greatest in terms of art and philosophy, that we have ever had on the planet. Religions that originated in southest Asia --Taosim and Buddhism --are able to continue while not loosing track of basic truths that the West has trouble even grasping---truths regarding change and nothingness). And a major language group appears to have originated in India, that to which English belongs.

One is tempted to assume the fact that some of this area is so volcanically active, is relevant,though exactly HOW increased volanic activity would be relevant is not clear. (See my mention of mind and matter in the first paragraph. (no reason to conclude creativity means human life is safer though, in such an area.) That a line through the Malayasian archipelago and the area including the Phillipines, seems to divide species, though the details are not right to hand (mind.)also may be relevant.

Against this idea that there is something special and generative about south east Asia,is the fact that civilization itself arose in the fertile crescent, which I cannot include in South east Asia, without extending the boundaries so much they are silly. And Jasper's axis time of history is a different kind of mapping which points to the fact that philosophy and major religions all arose within a narrow time frame. Whatever---though I am not sure we can say where civilization first arose, all we know is what is beneath where we choose to, or can, dig.

So when I say there seems to be something going on in South East Asia, am I referring to something geological?, to something spiritual, some magnetic lines of force, some energy derived from plate tectonics? I am clueless....

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.