My Fellow Eukaryotes

The news is that there is definitely a black hole at the center of our
galaxy. Surprised me, since I thought that was the accepted view, but
apparently now it is even more accepted. The instruments used to
substantiate this are so sensitive that I am going to quote the
description:

Unprecedented 16-Year Long Study Tracks Stars Orbiting Milky Way Black Hole
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=27143

"A team of astronomers led by John Johnson of the University of
Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy
has used a new technique to measure the precise size of a planet
around a distant star. They
used a camera so sensitive that it could detect the passage of a moth
in front of a lit window
from a distance of 1,000 miles."

Nothing in that contradicts Bede, whose picture of man's knowledge was
of a bird flitting through a room, in and out, from dark to dark.
That was about 1400 years ago.

So are we, proportion wise, cells? Or is our planet itself a cell?
Just questions. About our world where light depends on dark, a world
where some cellular component can glimpse a larger part of the
machinery...

Bolt from the White

There's a new Disney Pixar film out, about a dog tv star who discovers
that he does not actually have the talents of the super dog he plays
in the movies. The New York Times says this about the plot of "Bolt."
The dog "must learn that what he thinks of as his true identity is an
artifact of make-believe."

That sounds familiar to students of Jan Cox, even before you factor in
that the realization the dog must make is actually happens in an
animated film -- the layers of reality, onion thing.

These tasty crumbs are everywhere on the path.

Studying the sun

Looking back on the history of science you see that any accurate knowledge of the center of our solor system, came very late in the history of  humanity---that is assuming we do now have MUCH reliable information about the sun. Galen came before Newton.  

This came to mind when I considered the very consistent human questions about what men call god, and these questions have only  remained steady or increased throughout  human history---anyone who thinks we do not live in a theological age has not listened out to what is being chatted about.  In the past day the idea of men putting god on trial, has been verbalized, and also I just read that Isaac Bashevis Singer, an adorable thinker,  had said he was "angry with god."

Most all mention of god, in human history,  ignores one salient fact (and I am not including in this list Jan Cox, Gurdjieff,  the anonymous author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," or other mystic scientists)---but the parade of human thinkers we typically include in an intellectual history of humanity---they all ignore a certain detail---they are asking about god before they have answered THIS question---what is man.

You start with what you can access, you start with the possible, the local terrain, the planet you know, this terrestial study must preceed a study of the sun, or galaxy.  You must know what rocks are before you can study thermonuclear equations---  You start questioning what you have a chance of answering, and keep asking, pushing intellectually. This kind of radical empiricism is the path of honesty and hope.

To proceed courageously, persistently, objectively, in a study of WHAT IS MAN, is to be on the path to a summit from which real answers could be glimpsed. 

Hoax? or Natural Condition of the Brain?

There's a story with a dateline of Nov 12 in the New York Times about
these guys that hoaxed the modern media world with a story about
someone not knowing Africa was a continent. The "lesson" given in the
article is that sources must be carefully checked. That's not it
though--that is missing the whole wonderful point.

The story to be gotten from this story is about the human intellect.
The intellect is not "gullible", the nature of human cerebralness is a
group event. Jan Cox talked much about any person being one of 6
million nodes in one mind. There is no true or false here, there is
socialability--a cozy handshake passed around and around. The content
is irrelevant. So that some pranksters pulled one off is not
surprising. The surprising thing is that is does not happen more, and
more flagrantly. Or perhaps it does and we are just not aware.
Really the latter. Because ultimately

All thoughts are alike in the dark.
They are all imaginary, (Excepting of course those thoughts focussed
on rearranging the external world, and illustrating the mind as a tool
maker.)
In a certain front lobe the lights are always off.
This is never even noticed, and when someone talks about finding the
light switch, they always assume they can TALK the switch into the on
position.

So it stays dark. And only a few ever wonder why it is always dark in
this front lobe, this living room of the brain. They wonder if there
is illumination other than that from the t.v. And most, never even
notice the dark.

And that is as it should be.

Okay, try this

You don't need a dualistic philosophy, you don't need another realm,
you don't need an alternate reality, you do not need another
dimension, or a separate universe, ...(all these options only beg the
question for one thing---though this is actually not a point Jan Cox
made when he said there was only one reality, not separate physical
and mental realms, to explain the human experience. At least I do not
recall him pointing this out: adding to the number of realms just gets
you into an unacknowledged regress wherein the intellect must posit a
whole other realm to connect the two realms you articulate in an
effort to comprehend intellectually man's intellectual and man's
physical world, at least if the intellect is being consistent. Ha ha.)

You do not need a separate dimension to explain how, from wood and
catgut, a beautiful sound can emerge.

The less things change, the less things stay the same

The way history changes is something people rarely notice. Many
people think external change will bring inner psychological change.
Marx is one example--a certain type of external event was causal, and
everything else 'epiphenomenal.' This simplistic thinking has
characterized much of the last century and remains the default view of
most people, though their views are not typically coherent.
All this ignores the really unimaginable complexity of humanity.
Human nature itself changes so slowly that even after millenia you
could fairly say human nature is static. These views in themselves
are not exclusively those of Jan Cox; rare academics such as Eric
Voegelin, have filled many volumes documenting such ideas.
The latter used the phrase 'metastatic faith' to denote the mind set
of people who think human nature can change overnight.

Voegelin could not glimpse the complexity of change communicated by
Jan Cox. It is against this background that Jan Cox pointed out those
events that encompass what we call "the fall of the Berlin Wall,'
(though he would never speak in such stuffy academese) were
unprecedented in history. For those in power to just drop the reins,
and say, 'I don't want to do this anymore,' --this is not the way
power is transferred, this is not the way empires end.

And here, a mere 20 some years later---another astounding event. No,
human nature has not changed, the scaffolding of history remains a
mechanical set which will break those who think that "out there' is an
arena of real change.

And yet, how wonderful to witness what is going on -- a black man
holds the highest office in the most powerful nation on the planet. A
sweet wonderment.

Is That a Poodle or a Polecat

We see lots of cute pictures of dogs in costume this time of year. Jan
Cox would have felt it a pity to see the animals harassed this way.
He didn't even like collars on dogs, though he knew it a necessity at
times. His thirst and drive and hope for freedom extended not just to
his students, but to the critters around him. Those of us not so alive
to life's cruelties can hope that the photographer removed the costume
quickly, and this blog is not going where you might guess.

Why the impulse to dress up dogs in human garb, why do most of us find
it appealing and CUTE? Perhaps this costuming reminds us of the unity
of everything, the essential interconnectedness of all---that pug may
really be a bat--at least the glimpse is there, and it is comforting
to the mind, because the interconnectedness may be more accurate than
the separation the mind hacks out of the external world. Glimpsing
this externally though is sufficient, any more real looking and the
mind would find itself doubting the unexamined tenets that support its
own hegemony.

In support of this perhaps grandiose sounding picture, we have the old
old art which was never intened to amuse, but to present the
gratification of the truth----every early civilization has some
depiction of animal human creatures. For the first "civilized men",
those for whom the mind's shift into a higher gear was perhaps still a
recollection, for those brothers of ours--closer to the scene of
mental creation, that dog and men could be commingled was just a fact.
Anubis carried a sceptre.

So common is this in the art created thousands of years ago that one
has to assume this is some fundamental stage in human evolution.
With the idea of monotheism, One god, man got separated from his
physical surrounding too. But does viewing this as a stage of mental
evolution mean that the earlier stories and pictures of animal/human
combination creatures are outdated?

Possibly the earlier depictions are still accurate but that reality
must be forgotten for human mentation to function as an engine of
external progress. If we have to rearrange the external world to (in
the example that Jan Cox used, to get water to run uphill) to improve
our living conditions and odds of survival---we must assume that
external interconnectedness is of small relevance, so that we can
continue with the mind's ability to rearrange things. The mind must
not have to worry about offending some woodland sprite if it invents
water mills. The mind also must be free to see itself as autonomous,
but that did not happen all at once, and now we are drifting away from
our point.

Yes that pug in a crocodile costume is cute. Cuteness may be a memory
of something real but so distant that the mind is not threatened by
the recollection.
Not threatened as long, as the questioning does not press too far.