Where the action really is

The article excerpted below hightlights a point Jan Cox made. That processing is necessary for the human brain to assign a meaning to anything.

Matt Dickinson, author of the Mortal Chaos series and one of the Brits who has reached the summit of Mount Everest, offered a surprising insight into life on top of the world once when we met. He said: "When you get up to the very top of Mount Everest there is a remarkable amount of rubbish that has been left behind - old rope, discarded oxygen cylinders, broken tents, beer cans and bottles."

A group of artists have now turned eight tonnes of this trash - including the remains of a helicopter - into works of art and sculpture to highlight the issue of littering on the slopes of Everest. It took 65 porters and 75 yaks to carry down the rubbish from the mountain over two Spring expeditions.

The exhibition of 75 pieces commissioned for the 'Everest 8848 Art Project' is on display in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu before it moves to Pokhara next week.

Project organiser Kripa Rana Shahi said: "We thought that this would help promote the artists as well as contribute to making Everest clean. We were happy to get the trash and (the waste collectors) were happy to get rid of it."

Fifteen Nepalese artists spent a month preparing pieces for the exhibition. In one of the works, by painter and poet Sunita Rana, white shards of aluminium from drinks cans are fashioned into medals signifying the bravery of mountaineers, while black metal tent poles are transformed into a wind chime

Jan's point was that a sincere quester would look NOT the "to" or the "fro", of living, but the inbetween. Not the Everest peak, or Kathmandu, but the trip itself. 

The difference between Jan Cox and the best of academe

 Strunk and White  advised writers to "omit needless words,"  when addressing others. Jan Cox said to "omit words" addressing yourself. 

The Paucity of Positive Thinking

The Paucity of Positive Thinking is the paucity of all thinking.

Beacon of Dark

It is interesting how when Humanity has some new form, or function, the new option is, itself, before evolving with use, turned on its head. Afterwards the newness of the new function is forgotten. But right after birth, there is a phase where  the new something is tossed around, held upside down and shaken, and generally, objectively, examined. 

Things I am talking include the work of the novelist Laurence Sterne -- particularly his novel : Tristram Shandy. The novel, was a new form in the 18th century. People say the novel was born in classical myths, in medieval tales, and yet, when we talk of the novel as a form, we mean something of which man, a psychological entity, separable from his surroundings, is the star. This whole notion may be analyzed for its accuracy, but now, that would be a diversion from my point. The novel, published in full by 1767, both invents and exhausts, the form, before it has even become a --  formula. Tristram Shandy parodies the whole idea, of taking an individual and making his life events, to be of some interest, in a linguistic, linear, form. 

This kind of birth, where something new is shaken, turned upside down and thoroughly examined,  before being commonly used, is similar to what happened when man acquired language. One might assume these births of the novel would proceed with learning and examination of the options slowly evolving with use and time. Such was not the case with Sterne and also not the case with human language.  This birth of human language one may easily imagine necessitated millenia to occur. So my focus is on that shaking examination of mind itself, soon after rational discourse was brought on stage, which is evidenced in what we now call--- the Paradoxes of Zeno. 

These are remembered today, the most common perhaps, that proving that motion cannot occur. At least such is a common description now, of Zeno's point. An example was that if, with each step, you covered half the remaining distance to your goal, you, would never get to the goal. Actually Zeno's knew quite well that motion was part of human, planetary reality. What Zeno wanted to show was the limitations of language as a tool. He used language itself to prove the inadequacy of words. Such an astounding feat did he accomplish that his deathless reputation is not a surprise. Nor, to someone acquainted with human nature, is the misunderstanding of Zeno's purpose.  Motion occurs, language cannot capture it. Our modern world utterly misunderstands Zeno's point about the limitation of language. Modern popularizers of science typically assumes language not just sufficient, but the sole guarantor of reason. Yet Zeno's insights are not out of reach for the empirical among us today. 

Courting more than black rectangles

The tennis courts in the park remind me of the verbal mind, that is, the ordinary, binary mind. This incredible, necessary, dimension to our life, remains at the same time, a hindrance to efforts to persistently inhabit a less asphalt ruled surface. An impediment to an aural dimension where the whop of the bop bop balls drowns the bird melodies and grasshopper hums. Without the linguistic domineering of the mechanical mind, men in crowds could not progress. The individual though must win a grassy verge with none of the jolliness of company. So it has been, and it is hard to imagine how that hard blade would change. That any purchase at all is pertinant is enough of a joy. 

Paradox or Parable

A review of Jim Al-Khalili's new book, Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics, points to an apparently superficial summary of certain aspects of modern thought. The review though gave me a new way to focus on the question of the difference between that aspect of the material world we denote as consciousness, and that, aspect we, less problematically, call the physical world. This is an ongoing puzzle, that may never be resolved, but lots of fun to think about: the difference between consciousness and other aspects of the world we encounter. Our apprehension of the so-called external world is mainly communicable through the rational mind, and for my present purposes, the ordinary. binary mind of man, that allows him to alphabetize, and otherwise. divvy up the external, is thrown into contrast with pure consciousness, an awareness not focused on a particular object. From a cognitive point of view this could point to the difference between the physical and the mental, though we are speaking loosely.

The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics, has a chapter on the paradoxes of the philosopher Zeno. These are typified by the one which says if you move towards a destination by having each step cover half the distance, you will never arrive at your destination. This is supposed to show how motion is impossible. 

What occurred to me is that what we have here is the difference between the consciousness of man, and one aspect of that consciousness, -- rational thought. What I like about this perspective is that it points to the necessity for complications in man's mental functioning, beyond the the rational, binary, aspect, that part we often call the rational mind. The paradox is less pungent when you realize that the apprehension of motion needs both binary thought and a wider consciousness extant constantly. This wider consciousness, is apparently necessary all the time, for man's comprehension. This is not the majority view of 20th century philosophy, focused as it was on linguistics. The solution to this paradox -- motion is impossible, and yet exists -- was within and about us, all the time. 

What Zeno meant, to demonstrate the limitations of rational thought,  was a paradox and is now a parable. There are at least two, aspects to consciousness-- that which divides (that is, the rational mind) and that which unifies, unifies human perception, and awareness.

The above paragraphs hardly explain the unity the human mind demonstrates, but hints I hope at the necessity of two necessary dimensions each second that mind is alert. I would not want to suggest that two is a confining condition.

Less or more

Could we comparatively rank the natural scientist and the persistent mystic? One looks at stuff, the other between the stuff. The latter draws mo boundaries because there are none, the former know nothing of the latter, and could not work if they did. So together they are one molecule.