So to speak

How wonderful to think rats might be finding a safe place, so to speak. 

Near-death experiences are 'electrical surge in dying brain' This is a headline in the BBC write-up of the widely reported research wherein a surge of electricity has been identified in dying rodent brains. 

Jan Cox spoke of such experiences, in people of course, as something we did not NEED to wait for death, to experience. 

The interesting thing about the reports though, are that the scientists are treating this as some kind of explanatory refutation of the reports so common in the literature, of NDE experiences. 

Quoting the article, [Scientists] measured a sharp increase in high-frequency brainwaves called gamma oscillations.

These pulses are one of the neuronal features that are thought to underpin consciousness in humans, especially when they help to "link" information from different parts of the brain. In the rats, these electrical pulses were found at even higher levels just after the cardiac arrest than when animals were awake and well.

The curator of this link wrote:

Guess there's no tunnel then? 

Your whole life is this electrical activity. There's no tunnel the way there is no mental constructs beyond the physical in human life in general. These findings in no way diminish the cognitive content of such electrical brain activity. Whatever that cognitive content may be, and I do not know how that works. 

But it is lovely to think that other animals have something akin. Unless we follow the path laid out by a real teacher,  or somehow accept the challenge to explore such possibilities on our own, -- and I am not sure how realistic that is, not having a teacher -- our own options will be --- ordinary.  

The decline of the illuminated manuscript

Should we not confront the fact that the foliate flourishes associated with the medieval illuminated manuscript are not some embellishment of the page. They are not a decorative diversion from the text, as if the job of hand copying of books were not already a strenuous and time-consuming enough undertaking. How could this be? How could this not be?

Surely the ubiquity and beauty of the medieval sentence is one whole, and this means the illumination of the manuscript is a crucial dimension of the message. 

What then was the cognitive burden of the illuminated page? What then was the "progress" of the printed book? 

To be continued....

The death of printed books

Discussions about the death of printed books miss the point. All these tears over the demise of a book you can lay in your lap, annotate in the margins, crease the page corners of, ponder until you daydream, leave in a purposeful stack, when you need to mark your turf in the stacks alcove, these tears for a tearable page, are beside the point---

which is---

Can we live in a world without  book jackets? 

Science and modern science

The popularizers of natural science, and most scientists, stress the importance of repeatability as a token of validity, as the measure of truth.

That leaves one's own experiences as, statistically insignificant.Jan Cox, himself coming of age during the heyday of this philosophical trend, would smile at his students, and say, while pointing a finger at his skull, here is your lab. 

This environment of the natural sciences relies on a false division of inner and outer experiences. The inner are supposedly subjective, and thereby invalid. Only the external world can be set up so tests can be repeated. 

The problem with this view is that nobody really lives in a world divided into inner and outer. There is, to use an old Latin term, "in media res," in the middle of things, which describes the situation humans participate in, in learning, communicating, studying, anything. 

This middle ground, neither in nor out, but both, is the human experience. I don't understand it completely now, but it is an approach for study--this middle ground. 

That is the relevant arena, and in fact, not only does modern science ignore this, they are uncomfortable with this prospect.

The natural sciences would.have to confront the valid question of why people disagree, have contradictory experiences and conclusions. Life was simpler when you could lop off half of reality, the so-called subjective side.

We've got the lab set up. 

The sacrifice of children in ancient cultures Part 1

The sacrifice of children in ancient cultures is on the surface not just pretty universal, but totally baffling.

Throughout history the dreams of men have been simple really: Let the harvest be bountiful. Let there be enough food so my family can survive the winter. Survival would seem to be the primary genetic motivation for the human race. 

So why kill your own children? What is the logic there? Those hands for helping with the harvest. Those hearts to take care of their parents in old age. Those extra eyes and trigger fingers in case there are disputes with the neighbors. How could you lose that, -- on purpose? You might even argue that your children could be an ultimate meal if your survival was that threatened, but --- this option seems not to have been extant in human history, so that underlines their importance even more, and the weirdness, that they could be sacrificed.

It is like there is this leap going on,a leap beyond genetics, with the sacrifice of children. One thinks of leaps in history. The logic might be-- here is the precious thing I have, and I will surrender it...because.... ??

Other leaps are like the what Jan Cox called, "falling up the stairs," when he referred to man's ability for language manifesting itself. Manifesting like it was there all the time. Who knows about that. But suddenly we could talk. 

Then there is what Karl Jaspers called the "axis time of history", when, simultaneously, in effect, a certain objective thought became apparent, Socrates. Buddha, Confucius, the composers of the Upanishads, Lao Tzu. There were other figures Jaspers mentioned. Of course the word he used was spiritual influence. You might also say a certain kind of personhood was involved. For my point here the significance is this leap humanity made as a whole. A leap which cannot be explained by "cultural diffusion," try as the positivists might to do so. 

Back on the track: it may be that there was a time, between the birth of speech, and the birth of philosophy, when what men appreciated was, the existence of this leap, this gap, and all they could perceive was that a certain appeasement was called for, in the presence of this gap---

Only that's not really it, either. So I don't know an answer, yet. But I know this --- why these children were sacrificed is something we can understand, because we too are humans, and this is something that happened to our species. The standard reply, that they were barbarians, is I trust, an evasion that does not merit a response. There is an answer, I just don't know it. 

Yes, of course it's ridiculous

Writing about it, minutes after the announcement that there is a new heir to the English throne, it is enough to make a republican of you. Unless, of course, you give it some thought. 

What are the alternatives. The rule of plutocrats? Such as seems to be a current product of democratic processes? When elections are just bought, subtly or not?  TV stars setting taste and opinion? That's better? Thugopolies, like Russia has? 

Only the young disregard the benefits of political stability, an easy argument to make for monarchy. But there is more. The people born into that status do not seem to be particularly handsome, or beautiful. Certainly they are not terribly bright. What they do have are standards. Standards of fairness, standards of taste, and the ability to convey their own fairness as plausible. 

Their own sense of entitlement is not as defensive as that of the bankers. They can, sincerely believing themselves superior, make decisions based on a larger good  Their sense of entitlement is genetic, and they may lack that grasping defensiveness characteristic of modern psychology.

Compared to a typical politician, the aristocrat has nothing to hide. One speaks in generalities of course. And of course we are not talking about the monarchy you read about in history. We are talking about constitutional ones, and their value. 

There are not many left, and it is reasonable to wonder if that tyke will ever make it to a throne. 

Because once gone, monarchies cannot be replaced. There is this hope though: the function of the monarch, that is to say, to wave at you, yes, you personally, is not a need that is going away. One shudders to think what is replacing them. 

Secrets as a cultural meme

So Baigent died. Meh. He reminds one of the extent of popular interest in conspiracies, in secrets. When I read of some conspiracy, some idea that there are people who are secretly controlling public affairs, it makes me giggle. And these ideas are so common. Among a variety of types. 

I imagine myself saying to some exponent of such ideas: And you, are clever enough to have penetrated this plot, a plan which has fooled the rest of the world, but YOU, have figured out the plot. Oh yeah. 

Such innocent spokesmen who point to conspiracies have no clue about the nature and complexity of reality, or the mechanical nature of human knowledge. And the same applies to anyone who THINKS they themselves could be a participant in such a plot. I should say here, a participant in an effective plot. 

All  of which does not mean such events have no basis at all in reality. Jan Cox spoke once about the Knights Templar as having at one point a connection to something real. By the time you read about it from me, reality has gone through a stage of myth, and become mere gossip. The person who could speak of such things is dead. 

But I trust the person who mentioned that detail. I trust him, you see, because Jan Cox was a person who could keep a secret, keep a secret FROM -- himself.