A scholarly look at the word scholar

Jan Cox said once that you cannot use a word correctly if you do not know its etymology. The example he used was the word "cakewalk." Learning about the Indo-European root of words like scholar, and hectic, gave me a glance of the connection between---scholar and hectic. The root of both 'scholar' and 'hectic' is the same indo-european word : "segh",  translated as "to hold." 

What I am today calling the monkey mind, which may be a eastern phrase itself, is the verbalizing aspect of the mechanical mind, generally assumed by modern scholars to be the most important function of the mind of man. What this monkey mind does, is hold--hang on to-- words, --- if it did not "hold" words, the monkey mind would glimpse something beyond itself.  If the monkey mind did not hold words, the words could become, transparent. So, for self preservation, and other reasons, this grasping of words is necessary and because of its necessity, is also hectic. 

The scholar must verbalize, (hold words) and must, doing so, at the very best, ignore other aspects of mind. This multiplicity of functions is one reason the scholar's monkey mind, is also---a hectic mind. The scholars mind must stay  full of words, while juggling various functions. Easy to see why scholars need words (as long as you don't immediately associate scholar with knowing something). The hectic comes too from the nature of words; words are pushy, loud, bumptious, with garish ties, --a fair description of words qua words. And this is all before you notice any connotative features. Hectic is a good word for ---words. 

This exposition acts like the the functioning of the monkey mind is difficult---that would be a misleading effect.  Our monkey mind is the default on the planet, the default for grown ups. 

Slumming

Philosophy can be a hobby, and that is the only excuse for the following.  We are looking into how it is that men apply different standards to themselves than they do to gods. If you are allergic to a certain kind of verbal vapidity, read no further. 

All this came back to me after reading a recent article discussing A. J. Ayer's so-called mystical experience.

This happened before certain chemical interactions and sites in the brain were the stuff of pocktail ponversation. (He died in 1988.) But now such accounts often get reductionistic comments along the lines of  a site in the brain that needs god, or whatever, a certain chemical has the same effects. Such "explanations" are worthless in that the same could be said about any experience, so pointing this out has no cognitive value. Because something might be programmed in the brain has no direct bearing on its ontological status. (Told you I was slumming. Jan Cox found such philosphical chatter amusing at best, useless at most.)

But this is fun, so let's talk about what the 20th century fondly referred to as the "verification principle.")

This was the idea that if you could not verify something  empirically your statement about whatever was nonsense. Ayer was a leading expositor of this idea.

(I haven't read enough to know how he explained metaphor.) But using this rationale the positivists threw out metaphysics.  Okay with any card carrying mystic.  And the threw out the past. Check. External world, need that. good. Hmm, maybe we are logical positivists after all. I. But wait---all this and you retain, not just the external world, (good) but you keep, that monkey in the skull, the chattering, oh let's call the rational mind, what, say, a "freddy." (No personal references here, freddy just has a certain simian similarity.) 

How did this happen, how is it that you are not bothered that the vp  (verification principle) itself  cannot be "verified." You are applying a different standard to god, than to man, is one way to put it.  Another way is to analyze the freddy for a certain regal, don't question my authority, aspect of the rational mind. 

When you lop off the past, philosophy (metaphysics), theology, and the subjective interior world, and leave just the monkey swinging behind bars, you could be accused of throwing out the ocean with the mermaid.

(For instance---there is nothing subjective about man's internal world----there is no accounting for human communication without assuming some similarity between minds. Because words referring to the external world do not apply internally does not deny the consistency and studyability of the interior side of man.)  It is like, having lopped theology off of reality, the chattering mind grabs some of its attributes for itself, like a coup de dieu. 

What the VP leaves is an incomprehensible world, with just a monkey clinging to a crown.  This leaves unexplained the critical structure of this mechanical mind, the filephilia of our kind of monkey, the motive for viewing reality as a table tennis table and asserting against all the evidence that this flat green table is all there is, as if it could hang suspended in (what?) and not evoke questions.  And what about those monkey bars? They in themselves (the reality of being confined in a physical space.) should provoke curiosity. To say nothing of a topology of humanity which includes such goings on in its so-called centers of learning.  (Ayer was Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford.) Least I submit to an agneurism, let's close with the thought of Thomas of Aquinas, the above

is just straws in the wind. (Too bad he wasted most of his life.)

Placing Product Placement

The ordinary mind casually and comfortably draws a distinction between art and advertising.  For most the distinction is clear, no matter how clever and effective, and inspired, the advertising, -- the design of the advertisement may require a genius -- the fact of the purpose, which must hang out, typically, if the ad is to be effective at all, the fact that advertising is seeking to affect what the viewer does--- all this sights down a rift plane which most view as ultimate--that art and advertising are separate.

And that there is a distinction between art and advertising  is not what I would put under examination.  What I would point out is that first---what is the point of that aspect of advertising called product placement.  Is it not to hide the fact of the advertising, to render the advertising more effective, more likely to result in your doing what the ad purchaser desires?  Is it not possible that a whole movie be designed around one scene where the star ---- eats a particular brand of -- say, french fries. Perhaps you could conclude that the less prominent the purpose of the ad is, the more effective the advertisement is.

Of course the attention of the viewer must be retained. Hence the art that must go into product placement.  

It is almost as if the advertisers are learning from reality: what is it that maintains attention, hides its purpose, and (statistically speaking) universally succeeds? 

The answer is: the ordinary consciousness that characterizes all of us some of the time. The fact of the perspectival bias called 'me' is almost never noticed.  But the attention of the observer is, for all practical purposes, constantly maintained.  And due to the cleverness of the product placement,  the advertising hook is not noticed.  The advertising copy is that you are a unique and independent agent. Is it not possible that this belief, of one's autonomy, is just, a pitch?  A pitch made most sucessful by product placement within -- human consciousness. 

The pitch --is that there is no pitch.

And who is writing the copy, who is placing the ad, and why? 

The first thing must be, on a path of understanding, to perceive your prison.This sentiment was best expressed by Jan Cox.  If these larger questions cannot be answered, at least verbally, be aware of the part of the advertisement which says you must never admit you do not know something.  Who knows whether these larger questions can be verbally answered.  There are options you cannot even imagine from the viewpoint of ordinary consciousness. 

Just, now, toss around this idea, that your consciousness may be a site for product placement, and what this could mean. And what would it be like if your consciousness could, actually, become -- art.

The Difference Between Physics and Philosophy

The Difference Between Physics and Philosophy could be phrased this way:

Philosophy (at it's purest, as in the radical empiricism of Jan Cox) is distinguishable from physics by the fact

philosophy has wheels.

The Significance of Jan Cox

Regarding the historical significance of Jan Cox:

A man finds out what is going on. It happens through out history. What the man has, perhaps, found out is the nature of words. This is not how it would have always been phrased by those who know. You might say, the man has found out what knowing is. A wrinkle here, first noticed, to my knowledge, by Gurdjieff, is that how this is phrased, and how the learning occurs, is an aspect of an historical process. Gurdjieff talked about the physical man, the emotional man, the intellectual man. Since I am a little vague on the exact terms here, let me stress my point is just this: men learned differently in different eras. Jan talked about this: what was sufficient for the physical man is no longer enough to "wake up." Now the physical element of waking up, is subsumed in Jan's phrase: lateral expansion. Necessary, but not sufficient, for awakening. I am speaking now, not from personal knowledge, but from a recollection of the words of one who knew. This puts my input here, in a slightly different category than book learning. There is no word for it, (the quality of information) and I am not going to invent one now.

There are many many spiritual teachers now who have not appreciated this simple point about waking up in different centers. And there are plenty of books written by those who have stumbled into experiences which lead them to make assumptions about their own spiritual states. It is a mental awakening which is necessary for modern man. What is the difference you ask, men still have bodies, they still have emotional centers, shouldn't their experiences count as awakening. Their experiences count as data (so to speak) for a topology of mankind, yes. But the wrinkle in the carpet here, is that these spokesman for spiritual learning, they do not know how they got where they are. And by labeling it falsely, (that is, by using words) they diminish considerably the odds of their own further progress. Jan Cox put this point more vividly. It is on a tape someplace. The task for modern man is more complicated than that of earlier seekers.

Jan Cox understood this. Alone, in the second half of the twentieth century, it was Jan Cox who clearly saw what was needed for a person to progress in the only meaningful way possible for our species.

Science and Its Discontents

C. P. Snow made a career describing what he called the gulf between religion and science.  Nobody reads him much anymore, and that is mainly because that battle is over. That gulf may even, as one wag said, have never been more than a ditch anyway.

Still scientists seem not to have gotten the word. They spend as much time distancing themselves from the those intellects who feed on the fumes of the fast food wrappers that scientists leave, as they do denouncing religion.  In both cases one has to ask what is going on here.  

Why expend energy on denouncing the kooks and fundamentalists?  The evidence of quantum entanglement is not proof of mental telepathy.  Why waste your breath on denouncing such rooky thinking when there is the mystery of dark energy to occupy one's intellect. Nobody but the scientists takes certain fundamentalist preachers as exemplars of religion. And especially since there is a sociologically interesting class of intellects-- the scientific popularizers-- whose job it is to keep the borders of science pristine, why expend your energy in this direction. 

 What are they afraid of---an invasion of a faculty meeting by people waving diagrams of perpetual motion machines or rattling rosaries at them. .

I do not suggest there are not shades of gray here. Look at Perelman, declining the Field medal, the Nobel for mathematicians. I mean ---LOOK at his figure in photographs. Is he not the picture of a Russian staretz? (The holy men from the steppes of Czarist Russian).  

Nor is my intent to denigrate scientists, they are a critical portion of humanity, the mechanical brain in fact.

Still this wasteful use of humanity's brain cells, leads me to propose, just a thought, and probably not by any means a comprehensive explanation, but--- it is as if scientists are trying to forget, trying to obscure aspects of a planetary reality, wherein the distance between a scientist and a foil capped  kook, is so small as to be insignificant, compared to the cleavage plane between  a master of radical mysticism, and the natural scientists.

Evidence in favor of my idea is the questions scientists do not ask. Scientists never ask how come we have to continually rediscover man's lack of free will and then continually forget about it, they do not ask whether it is logical to take the most literal of spokesmen for religion and treat them as exemplars of philosphical and religious insight. They do not ask whether the lack of answers to childish prayers is a relevant consideration to one exploring the dimensions of humanity. The glaring inconsistencies and illogical approach to any survey of humanity, on the part of the scientific establishment, leads me to treat their behavior as a puzzle of the piece. 

A Habit of Royalty

Perhaps you wonder why purple is the color associated with royalty.  Some relate that it derives from an old dye used in the ancient world, but how could that explain the persistence of the color as emblematic of a ruling class.  The vision of spring color, that fresh minted quality, that is unique to latitudes where there are distinct seasons, is what brought up the question. Spring denotes a rebirth, a reassurance.  There is also perhaps a sense of excess, of extravagance in the flowers and blooms of that season.  Darwin in fact, said that nothing puzzled him more than how to explain the fact of flowering.  Royalty in the past was an inherited status, and nothing was less compelling to one of royal birth than the expectation that he or she needed to explain, to justify, their right to power.  A sublime sense of entitlement was the result and the potency of their genetic heritage.  An example of this, that Jan Cox pointed out, though in a different context, was the way that dispossessed royalty merely grouped on the border of their former territory, waiting the opportunity to regain control----giving up was simply not an option--it did not cross their minds.  In the color of purple, so predominant in spring blooming,  we see this sense of unearned glory, sheer celebration, and it occurred to me that this was parallel to the attitude of royal folk and might explain their preference for the color. 

What such a class did not comprehend was the idea of another kind of royalty, a mental, self minted, royalty which was always individual, never a group label. Both kinds of royalty share a disdain for verbal justification. And both are ultimately transitory. Only, though, the mental self-minted royal, builds in an awareness of the transitory. This recollection, of the vanishing, is not as obvious as the royal class insistence on dynastic succession, but it is more realistic. More realistic, and the opposite of a group royalty in that it must be, invisible, to the world.