Suck it in guys

Basic stuff.

In Praise Of, uh, modern culture

One of the most elusive and complex aspects of the great machinery, is the role of the destructive flow in the happening and processing of levels of the great machinery, as Jan Cox called it. There can be no real criticism of, selfish rich people, political tyrannies, once the nature of how the world works is glimpsed. 

Along these lines is the role of imagination. If there is one thing that unites the variety of schools descendent of Gurdjieff it is that identification is a negative thing. Yet let us step back a moment. What may be a stumbling block for the earnest inquirer, could well be, on a larger scale, a critical component of progress. An example of this may be novels. Surely a sober perspective would scrutinize this wanton leap into total imagination, that leap that happens when you open a book of fiction, or tune in some dramatic series. In these circumstances there is no distance between one's attention and the washing machine jumble of externally controlled fantasy. 

And yet, looking at the history of the last few centuries, a characteristic would be just this loosening of imagination, these circumstances and intent which encourage man to live more in utter fantasy. It does not exhaust the subject to remind readers that Jan Cox pointed out how imagination was critical to scientific progress because such imagination allows a rearrangement of the external world, as a guide to what and how things can be changed.

My own assessment of this major characteristic of modernity was that the enormous increase in the flow of imagination was necessary to sop up the extra time now available on the local cerebral level. Now something else is clear.

So far my thoughts are just an elaboration of Jan's point. My point is, as the machinery becomes more complex, and the evolution of Humanity quickens, (another of Jan's points, though he always said these changes were invisible at the life span of an individual), that this evolution is requiring a greater cerebral percolation of imagination. 

My fresh enhancement of this intellectual perspective, is that this growth of imagination must be of major importance to our group survival. And -- that the blindness imagination encourages, is necessary, to actually bring about changes in the external world. Any real grasp of what is going on, might be so alarming as to be debilitating. The machinery as a whole needs this blindness to facilitate change. 

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.