We're not in Nepal anymore,

Toto

The Bark of Time

The Nature of Binary Thought is a question that never fails to help me, especially recalling the fragmentary nature of my grasp. Binary thought is what we think when we use words--- that is-- pretty much all the time. And it is mechanical, it is a symptom of what preserves us within the greater machinery -- (the Magnus Machina as Jan Cox titled one of his books) and in preserving, traps us. Our potential is like an insect in amber, as the present solidifies on the bark of time. 

Not that binary thought is the ONLY thing that traps us. Such an assumption---- that---oh, the problem is binary thought -- is an example of binary thought. The Everything is this or that logic is the logic of the ordinary. Ordinary Nobel winners, ordinary gardeners. They all subsist intellectually on binary thought.

We see it in the dialogue--- The rich say the poor suffer from class envy. The poor say the rich cheat at the power game and are heartless. Who considers both sides are correct. Who in the global chatter says, 'well I would be heartless too, if I were rich.'

We see it among the young--- (GMO foods are poison), and the well-retired (GMO foods will help us feed the masses.) They seem to be polar opposites. But polar opposites are the way the world thinks, not the way of someone struggling to always, in Jan's words, Willfully Consider. In fact the GMO situation is a 'both / and situation', calling for the Real Thinker to sort out, at least abstractly: some foods are poison, some will help. But where is there anyone discussing the issues in this manner. 

The essential and precious usefulness of binary thought is a subject for an later blog. 

Fishing for words

It is not impossible to imagine, what our forbears faced. It is just impossible to prove. But where good questions go unrecognized, it is worth an essay, for if just the question is outlined, there is gain. That is the methodological premise for a question really about how is it the idea of a god came to our species.

The pack behavior still extant today in people and in many other mammals can only have been stronger when our parents were more centered in the physical, and that centering really prevents a lot of lingering in illusion. This meant, and this is not the speculative part, there was a vigorous nonverbal link between the people. My guess is that this included a stronger psychic component than is extant today among men who are ruled by the verbal.

Regardless, the origin of the idea of a god may have come from an individual, part of something larger, the rest of the pack, his family and farther relations-- the origin of god may have lain in the awareness of this extensiveness beyond oneself, a larger something than oneself which was perceived, and which was recognized as being a protection and aid that was more than one, by oneself, could have supplied or guaranteed.  

Perhaps this awareness came about like this: These early folk hunted in packs too, but surely, there were times, times of hardship of a variety of sources, or, perhaps when one was some kind of outlier, some times, when a person had to hunt by himself. Then it may have come to this individual that he needed and depended upon, something greater than he himself was. 

That he gave, and many times, across the planet, men did this again, a name of what we call a deity to this, is not surprising. Whenever a verbal ability grew, what Jan Cox said, was a "falling upstairs," it would be convenient to mention something stronger than oneself, something which worked for one's benefit. Whether or not this calling of a tribe, by a word which we call some deity, is the whole story of the origin of god, this story is not meant to preclude the later reality of what people said about their deities. My account of a individual in a larger tribe, appreciating this sense of being part of something larger, need not be the whole story, to be of interest. 

the old maps we clutch

The ordinary consciousness, that of scientific popularizers and on down the demographic rungs-- see the unknown, like on an old map, as a separate area, separate from the continents of knowledge. But is it? Can it be, so delimited, if we do not know it, and why else call it the unknown, -- so how can we say, how can we point on the map, under the dragon? 

In fact there is evidence to suggest the unknown surrounds and interpenetrates us constantly. Rather than terra incognita, should we be saying, usus incognitus? 

How howling

The eye of the hurricane is calm, it is a quiet space while the hurricane winds encircle. Words and meaning might show a similar pattern. The meaning is the quiet space, with minimun verbal volume, the sense is just-- appreciated. The verbal thread that leads to this (ideally leads to it) is where the winds blow, blowing everything offcourse according to a pattern controlled by geographies unconcerned with one's -- sentence; one's breath is grabbed and winds into an unmeasurably small component of that which is blown. Beyond any consideration of authorship or cogency. Small shock then that so little of use is ever encountered. The possibility remains, of, communication. Slim, possibility. 

Are we merfolk? Are we helplessly so?

People make assumptions. Without this they would be unable to accomplish anything at all. The rational mind does not operate without these unthinking presumptions. The presumptions are like a sense that you are on firm ground. So you go on, without looking down.

Still, what if that were not the case: what if your situation were actually that of someone in an ocean-- some creature with some fishy talents and some strange ambitions. This picture of the human situation assumes such a thing as dry land, just that people are mistaken in assuming they know what dry land is. That islands even exist is derided by some in the ocean as an archaic fancy. 

A few may by dint of mainly, luck, perceive the idea of a boat. This boat as a conveyance to an island whose existence is challenged, becomes -- easy to forget. Yet the difference between  the boat and the island, is that though no one can reach the island through their own agency, -- no one-,  the boat is something they can by themselves construct and utilize. 

The boat in my story has been called by real teachers various names-- all the same thing. Gurdjieff's self-observation, the willful consideration of Jan Cox. I call it the method, because it is under human control, as opposed to life on dry land, terra of no chatter. The latter is never something one can take credit for. Nor can one assume it will last. There is no real estate contracts there, no property lines. According to Jan Cox, if you even say so this is "Istanbul," you are gone, back to Paris.

The boat -- the method --you have always accessible. 

That is,

if you,

remember. 

Example of binary thought ripped from the back pages of academic journals

In an article on evolution, we find this riff about 'cultural evolution, ' which seeks to in fact suggest the genetic component of our species has stopped evolving, and man's cultural world counts as evolution. Demonstrating, by his words, the fact man's culture is imagination, and in the imaginary realm is exactly where we might find, this unwritten, Origin of Species. For there is only biology when we deal with man. Man's culture changes because it is imaginary. Only binary thought would put this knife between biology and culture. 

One reason this argument passes as logical is that man cannot actually deal with the continuing evolution of his brain. A topic to which we will certainly return.

quoting from wired.com

Cultural Evolution

....People, including this science journalist, tend to emphasize biology when thinking about human evolution, but that focus contains an element of looking-for--my-keys-under-the-streetlight reasoning. Genetic evolution can be rigorously measured and quantified. Cultural evolution is messy and difficult to study in journal-appropriate ways, yet in many ways culture -- our social practices and institutions, including the all-important vehicle of language -- is more powerful than biology.

After all, if we could travel back in time a few hundred thousand years, Homo sapiens would be quite recognizable. It's culture that truly distinguishes us.

In the last decade, researchers have developed tools for studying cultural evolution, from patterns of linguistic change to folktale relatedness (above) to interpretations of Polynesian canoe design. As with biological evolution, cultural evolution is clearly continuing: The advent of digital communications technologies, for example, makes new types of cultures possible.

For now, though, an Origin of Species for cultural evolution hasn't yet been written.