That old mind/mind split

The wringing of hands about whether computers will "take over" mankind caused Jan some mirth when he discussed this aspect of modern dreaming. I was reminded of this when I saw this recent headline:

 

"Is there nothing a smartphone can't help you do better? Downloadable applications, or "apps", are becoming indispensible complements to their owners' biological brains – indeed, some argue that they are turning us into cyborgs."

 

While I do not know if Jan Cox would have put it this way, what struck me reading this ad was, Yeah, man's mechanical mind, the binary part which is so useful dealing with the external world, and so misplaced when expected to deal with the internal and anything complicated, that mechanical mind, is not at risk for becoming computer controlled, it already IS a computer.

 

Not sure whether this will get folks to focus on the possibility that mechanical verbal mentation is not the total of man's mental capacities...

 

Like kudzu

The way kudzu covers growing things so you can discern the outline but no detail, is like words and the world. And if the words -- I mean kudzu continues, then what is underneath loses form utterly.

What if there is secret knowledge

That the poets accidentally mention,

That the scientists tangentially address

and

That the mystic philosopher cannot speak of.

Why Alpha Wolves Wag Their Tails

I am of course not talking about wolf wolves, they don't keep their rivals around, I am talking about world statesman (mainly statesmen.). And the tails I am talking about you can see mainly in their eyes and smiles. Because those pictures of world leaders gathering for summits, posing for group pictures clearly show----how pleased those people are to be in their own company. Yes, the only place alpha wolves can be truly appreciated is in the company of other, wolves.  No need to pretend to be religious (as Jan Cox pointed out about the social elite, religion is not what motivates them.) or worried about the poor. Finally they can draw a breath and relax. Those documents they sign were settled before the politicians even arrived-- but still the meetings have to happen, because briefly there is there ---no need for phony explanations about the rich menus at banquets to benefit the starving. Or stories mentioning the need to spend time with their families, in those cases involving the other reasons wolves wag their tails. Among their own wolves can relax.  And we can't do without the meetings either. Though the number who can understand why we can't do without alpha wolves  is smaller than the number of wolves themselves.

The Uses of Words, part 1

How common is it that words, qua words, are used to forward the necessary D flow?  I am not sure, but the use of words -- simply as linguistic objects -- to accomplish what our ordinary mentation would call destructive purposes is an interesting phenomenon.  What I have in mind is behind Lenin's quote that (this is a rough quote) listening to music was bad because it made him want to smile when what he needed to do was bash someone's head in.  Okay, what I mean by words qua words is that in this example I assume Lenin was following the ideas of some communistic philosopher, and it was the ideas themselves that led Lenin to think it okay to hurt someone else because he was following a revolutionary goal. I call this using words qua words because Lenin, our sample thinker, is not trying to verify the words against reality, he is simply allowing the words of a theory to guide his actions.  Like the words were planks in a stream and the thinker is walking from plank to plank, that is, following the ideas, rather than listening to the reality of his own inner and outer surroundings. Now no doubt our sample thinker here would argue that these are not just any words he was following, but the correct formula based on a study of history, and thus his actions were justified. Yeah, yeah.  (I cannot resist pointing out that the Russian communists killed far more people than the czarist police ever did, however that is not the point of our using this incident.) To me the interesting point is that he was allowing the words to determine his actions. His heart told Lenin to do one thing, but Lenin measured his feelings against an idea, and he followed the idea. Note I am treating Lenin's comment as having some honesty to it, and I am treating Lenin as merely an example. The point is not that he was following bad ideas, no the point is he was following ideas, that is, words, at all.

 I am not going to point out here that a follower of the maps of Jan Cox, could respond that any words will miss the mark.  Rather let me vary Jan's map by saying that a philosopher of talent would be constantly testing that web of words, constantly tugging on it (mentally is the picture here), because the present is the only arena there is, the only source of reality, and words are just a minor part of this reality. Words are always subject to testing, revision, because they are only fresh and useful, ever, for a very short time. Useful, that is to accomplish that which we can using the energies of C flow.

The Tension of Tenses

Jan Cox once wrote that about 500 years ago a change of some kind happened so that human life had a value.  I am sure his original phraseology was clearer-- but my recollection is that he was referring to a sense that every human life has a worth.  He was pointing to something other scholars have delved into the fringes of, and call the Renaissance. One thing that also happened around this time frame in Western history has been called the 'discovery of the past.'  What this means is that people in what we call the medieval period in western Europe,  assumed that everything around them had always been the way they currently observed it. The church was a big factor in this perception, one church, supporting a clearly structured society.  People were born into a certain class and did not consider it unfair if they were not rich, this was where God had meant them to be.  Then all heck broke loose, with the printing press making books more widely available, and many other factors of which I am unaware going on -- but now, as the historians would say, a perspective of change was pressed on people's attention. Old books, old art, for instance made it apparent that society had not always been arranged the way it currently looked. And if things had not always been a certain way, perhaps change in the current structure was a possibility.  In the words of certain malcontents: 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'  Change had become conceivable.
The above is pretty standard stuff in history books. (Except for Jan's comment.) What it brought to mind is that, you would think a discovery of the past would mean a discovery of the future...Yet this little essay argues that in fact, there was not then, nor is there now, a real discovery of the future. By discovery of the future I mean a sense of the future as real, as in the first paragraph, I tried to show what people mean when they say the past is a real factor.  Of course, I do not mean the future is real as in currently existing, that would be contradictory. But the future as real in the sense of something unknown which impinges on us, an arena of the new, the possible new --that future is not part of the ordinary machinery of man's mentation.
WERE the future a reality in the mind of man, then there would have been no amazement that we could have planes crashing into office buildings in a city arguably the capital of the world. Okay---it would have been amazing, but there would have been no sense of how could this happen, how could our intelligence have let us down?  Because a sense of the future would give to man's ordinary mind the flexibility that an awareness of areas of which we are ignorant would lend it. 
It is possible, it seems to me, that ordinary human mentation could include a sense of the future, and does not now.

And It's Not Called The Artemis Mission Because...?

The mechanical mind is marvelous to the very edge of words and the moon missions are vibrant examples of what rearranging pieces of the external world can accomplish. This phraseology is that of Jan Cox, to describe the proper functioning of the mechanical mind. But imagination hovers at every portal and one evidence of this is naming the missions Apollo. Besides, Apollo was the Greek god of the sun!!! Not the moon. The god associated with the moon was a goddess----named Artemis, Diana, Selene.
Yet the (mostly) men, bright men, who thought out, calculated, trouble shot, bravely believed in what the words predicted, named their goal, not after the thematically appropriate, goddess of the moon, but the god of the sun----emphatically NOT where they were heading.
It seems to me that we are not dealing here with any rinkydink bias, but have, in this example of a misapplication of old stories, the fact that ordinary knowledge is about the knower, not what is known, or the hoped for goal. The proper goal of the mechanical mind of man is rearranging the environment to enhance the survival of our species. The goal of the mechanical mind is NOT knowledge per se (though this sounds shocking, and is rejected by that mechanical mind itself). Actual knowledge of the world and man in that world, is not within the grasp of the verbal mind. The proper use of the mechanical mind is protecting --- mankind. The knowledge available to the ordinary intellect is not about the objective world of which we are apart, the knowledge available to the ordinary intellect is about the external world of the knower. So it is proper that the Apollo mission was named for those bright men who are laying a way for our species to leave our ancestral home, this planet we call dir--, I mean, earth.