Rock Art and Hard Heads

We have all I think, glanced twice at an article on rock art. There is a part of the population that believes in extra terrestrials and finds confirmation of their visiting our planet in rock art, and ancient artistic depictions. I am putting this forward as common knowledge and as a basis for a question.  What is the appeal of  talk about extraterrestials?  It fills the airways sometimes, and yet is absurd. To support that position I merely ask: why don't spaceships land on the whitehouse lawn?  No, they appear to guys in pickups on lonely roads. There is no reliable evidence for UFO visits, and yet there is even among scientists discussion of the liklihood of extraterrestials existing. No evidence, and yet massive talk raises for me a question as to the appeal of such. 

On one level extraterrestials answer the question for many of where we came from.  This answer to the origins of life, of humanity, of civilization, is pretty low grade intellectually. To say human progress resulted from the visits of extraterrestials is to ignore the fact this theory merely pushes BACK the real question of origins.  To say extra terrestial visits explain life on this planet is to ignore the next question, how did life arise, progress take place, on the OTHER planet these extra terrestrials came from?? And so on, the infinite regress objection is easy, once it is pointed out, to grasp and I am relying on it.

One thing that occurred to me is that these so-called explanations avoid any theophantic mystery, any discussion of conscience in the terms of Georges Gurdjieff, or of essence in the (early) writing of Jan Cox. 

Perhaps it is precisely because these ideas about origin, come, so to speak, from intellectual vending machines, that their appeal is explained. The explanations of life on earth that invoke extraterrestrial visits is not intellectually challenging, to put it gently. Nothing is demanded from the believer except a certain credulity.  No effort is required intellectually, and this lack of effort is the gulf separating Gurdjieff and Jan Cox from most of twentieth century attempts at explaining ANYthing.  Say man, has a need to understand, regardless of his situation, and this urge is rarely totally eradicated (I think.)  Answering these questions in a non intellectually challenging way may just be comforting to some types. And in this and the last century, explanations addressing ultimate questions must have some scientific shreds attached. So nowadays people see not apparitions of women in blue, but they see spaceships. The more things change, the more things fall into the same rut. Just some thoughts.

Viewscasters

It is not just newscasters who have a tiny, invisible, microphone, in their, and somebody telling them what to say. Every adult on the planet (okay--most) has such a device.  The inhabitants of the planet though, do not recognize the microphone for what it is. They call it their "I."

We are all casting forth, someone else's "news."  If Life, that is, can be called a "someone."

A difference between newscasters and the ordinary verbiage is that newscasters know someone else is feeding them their lines.

The content of the news we are casting forth with each word, actually is significant not for its denotative value.  The news we are casting forth is like the songs of the birds: come here, go away, this is my space, I am here.

 

Pictures at an internal exhibition

Water routes have for most of man's history, been the main way he got around.  Canoes, for instance, require a binary motion to move through the water-one side, the other side, paddle paddle.  In my story, this is man's ordinary mentation. Then there is horseback. Faster, and mainly, you can go directly towards your goal, regardless (mostly) of the terrain.  Maybe in this story, horseback is having a teacher. So, we will mention that, and skip on. Because the thing I want to point at, is walking, maybe you could call it portage, combining water travel and carrying everything over the areas the river can't carry you.  The thing to notice here is that if you are walking, you have got to travel light if you are going anywhere of significance.  Carrying that canoe will slow you down, big time. But, though you may not ever (or so Jan Cox told us) completely eliminate the chatter, oops, 'canoe', of the journey, you can diminish, the weight, of what you carry on this trip.

January 20, 2009

Today we heard so often, "I never thought I would live to see this
day," and I thought again, the election of a black man to the
presidency is miraculous. It is impossible and yet it happened. These
words are a good way to point to the impossibility of history, to the
unavoidable and unrecognised ignorance which informs historical
generalizations. To call something miraculous is a certain way of
noticing ignorance. The sense that many feel regarding current events,
of the freshness, of the impossibilty, of the miraculous, is already
fading and will soon will be completely 'explained." And lost.

Yet the unknown interpenetrates what we think we know, like water in a
swamp. And by being unaware of the ignorance, we can not be confident,
cannot speak truly, of what we say we 'know.'

For the events leading to the inauguration were miraculous. Only in
hindsight can we explain them. And already we are forgetting that
sense of amazingness. That we forget the miraculous, does not make it
less so. Forgetting the miraculous just makes us--not the events,
mechanical. Just as it should be. But not "true."
Perhaps there is a miraculous edge to every mechanical thought, event.
What is not impossible is that through a certain perseverance this
edge can be kept intact by an individual, not by a group. Yet who is
interested in remembering what we don't know. In remembering how we
didn't know something.

Not What, but How: A Poem

"Epistemology"

Hmm hm

With the increased availability of data in these cyberdays (for
example google books),
education should focus more on what to do with the data, facts. fata,
how data is determined, facts dated, slant sliced.

It will do no good of course. Mystics are the philosophers who did not
fall by the way, since the way philosophers avert their daze is the
point.

Only for the mystics the joy of empirical epistemology.

Rip and Ruminate

The brain is the last to know. That is the way Jan Cox once expressed a physiological reality the implications of which are not grasped by the modern ordinary consciousness..  The literal truth of this gap (the gap between getting scratched and noticing the wound in  words, is the gap I am pointing to)  can be seen at various levels of human reality.

I am not now pointing to the most useful aspect of this gap--remembering it and the implications of the gap for knowing the present. The idea in this essay is looking at this gap in the macro world of human culture.

History reflects this gap--prior to the 19th century there was a certain accepted brutality at all social levels. I refer to bear baiitng, and public executions , for instance.  Yet a certain coarseness in sentiment was receding.  One way we know this is that this brutality began to be 'talked about.'   When a certain kind of brutality was ended, it could become the subject of discussions.  One place to see this verbalizing was the work the Grimm Brothers. In the fairy tales they collected, the brutality is  described.  The brutality in the fairytales (a woman dances to death in flaming shoes, for instance), reflects the real brutality which however, was already in the process of ending, or it  could not be talked about.

A  more recent example are the reparations paid to World War II victims. Why wait til the nineties to make these payments?  A case could be made that the payments were delayed because the war was not over til the nineties.--not over where it counts, in the bodies of men.

And today's paper has a lovely example.  There is a report that Wesley Autrey and Mr. Hollopeter had dinner together on Dec. 23.  This the paper says is the first time they met since the day Autrey jumped onto the subway track in front of an oncoming train to save the life of a stranger, Mr. Hollopeter.  The physical event was so dramatic that it took two years to really be over, and now the participants can 'discuss it.'

And again--this gap has a powerful use for those trying to remember themselves, to use the terminology of Gurjieff and Jan Cox.

History as a Hobby

There will be news in this anniversary year about the Copernican
principle. This reminds me of a strange phenomenon in modern
historiography, and an aspect that no one else seems to have noticed.
My guess is that there will be publicity not just about the Copernican
principle, which says that since the earth is no longer considered the
center of the universe, this shift in perception has adverse effects
on man's sense of himself. (That is the modern version.) Typically
since the last century the Copernican principle has been mentioned
along with two other events which are said to have altered man's
perception of himself. One is Darwin's ideas and the other Freudian
theory. All three events are said to have dethroned man as the center
of the universe, and this dethronement is commonly assumed to have
effects.

Now this explanatory model ignores history--during the time when man
was supposedly the center of the world--there is evidence that he (and
she) actually had a view of themselves as part of a larger whole.
Medieval society allowed no one except royalty to think of themselves
as the center of the world, and even royalty seems to have had a sound
grasp that the universe included other dimensions which precluded
self-absorption as a useful energy model.

I am certain other writers have noticed these facts. Probably these
theories have been hashed out somewhere and i am just not aware of it.
I bring up these ideas to point beyond them.

What is interesting in view of the thoughts of the empirical thinker,
the late writer, Jan Cox, is not just that modern historians have got
the story reversed, and it is modern man who is uniquely concerned
with himself as the center of the world. (Actually he used to say:"
the opposite is never true". So take my summary above as just a
direction, not a position I would defend.) What is interesting in
view of this idea that man has been dethroned as the center of the
universe, is that it reveals an enormous lack of apprehension of
this---

the healing and joyous results of considering one's position in a larger whole.

This is not a new mystical technique, and it is not an idea that I
recall Jan Cox phrasing in this manner exactly, but the reality that
he spent his adulthood seeking to allow others to grasp, this reality.
available to all who earnestly and persistently seek to understand
what is going on, this reality, can be approached by reminding oneself
of one's physical and chronological position in relation to the world
we live in. There is no "the truth" in a way you could sketch it, and
have it posted in a public place for all the see and grasp. Anything
that could accurately be labeled 'truth" is an individual gain and act
and healing. There is momentary and personal sight.

These thoughts come from someone for whom history is a hobby. Jan Cox
actually said that history is a dream. So for goodness sakes do not
think I am pushing the profession of history. But my background leads
me to use these ideas to make another point about man and his queries.
And I cannot resist mentioning another thing Jan said---to lighten the
path--he said if you are not smiling (inside,) you haven't yet got it.
"Getting it" always being a moment by moment, temporary thing. I had
better just stop writing, now.