A pile of -- peoples

Pebbles on a mountain side are unlike pebbles worn by the waves. In their tiny peaks and steep inclines they may well bear a fractal resemblance to the mountain on which they rest. Usually rest. For of course the ambient conditions and interior volcanic potential of the mountain can at any time initiate movement the pebbles might well misdescribe as something they themselves had intended. Skidding, bouncing, down a slope, can't you hear them insisting they had planned the whole excursion? 

Is there really a wall between the inside and the outside, of man

We quote now from a National Geographic  blog

Take two people with identical genes and put them in different environments, and some of their genes may respond in different ways. That's long been a good counterargument against genetic hyper-determinism.

Oh really. I like this quote because it simply states an assumption apparent in much writing about science--- this concern about preserving man's free will. In this case, if we tug at his argument, it may show up sloppy thinking. The idea is that  greater complexity is an avenue for greater freedom for the individual. Yet how could that be. Greater complexity just mean more intricate genetic functioning. Greater complexity mean tighter determinism not a lapse from "hyper-determinism." It seems so obvious, but that is because I heard Jan Cox discussing causality  occasionally. Relevant here is his pointing out that there is no  genetic inside and environmental outside. That environment outside you, it is just more genetics. So obvious, what is outside us, it is genetic also. 

This kind of blatant disregard for reality, is something to ponder, another time. 

When words are worthless

This article is interesting as an example of how ordinary language can plausibly miss the whole reality. I copied this paragraph--

But the notion of ending suffering through extreme spiritual stances—the cessation of desire (Buddhism) or of emotion (Stoicism)—doesn't square well with other values we hold dear, such as caring for one another or seeking to improve our own lives.

May I suggest that the case may be quite otherwise. What if such discipline is in fact a means of feeling for others beyond the bounds of normal experience. I merely present this as a possibility.  

Stealing Fire

Surely there were a number of men sitting in that circle. The fire was circular to warm as many as possible. 

Those men sitting up late, their wives asleep already, had a dark we cannot imagine easily. There was the fire, lighting up a few trees, but the dark, was beyond description, the picture and fact,  of the unknown.

Did these stalwart researchers appreciate that their hearth echoed the stars they studied?

Somehow this distinction, picture and reality, became something men could leverage. To surmise that man's theft of fire, his acquisition of symbolic cerebral activity, involved several steps, first studying the stars in wonder, seeing patterns of things in the overhead lights, so different from the day,  may suggest pictures came before words. If so, it explains nothing, Just to know what the steps are, does not answer why. The how is not why. 

These men were braver than people today. They measured the edge of the unknown and pushed outward, upward. Jan Cox noted that people now do not look up. (And this was before the cell phones). These men did. And perhaps they saw the stars were similar to their own bright, circular, hearth. They saw patterns in the stars, patterns which at some point became the abstractions we call verbal words. These pictures in the sky were simpler, connecting the dots, white points without  distracting shrubbery.

So when Jan Coix spoke of men "falling upstairs" when they acquired language, the direction may reflect the men looking beyond their fire, exhausted but determined to understand their world with the tools they had. Pictures, then words. They, then, did not confuse words and reality. It was all new. Symbols evaporated and had to be rediscovered, not, as with moderns, just forgotten. The stars were  abstractions that became as important as the hunters' weapons, their knife edges. Only after many millenia did words become the cement of sleeping awareness. The sleeping dreams which assume that what is known, what is knowable, is all there is. This efficiency did not happen for a long time.

draw picture of campfire-- ask --is this before or after they stole fire-- the real fire-- verbal ability-- that leap [Jan COx called it falling upstairs] ---

tgat fire--- intellectual symbolic ability--- of course it was divine, it was nowhere in the primate lineage--- discontinuous--- 

what could it inspire but stories of gods, of a seeking to understand, itself inpsired by and made possible by----[[[ this symbolic acuity-]]] -- a seeking to understand which always, was self-understanding, pursuing the only valid objective path within its borders. boprder continuously expanded -- the edge always bleeding, leading, avodiing the lead of words by surpassing them---

one assume at first though--- there was no need to surpass this leaden cooling molten, loss of real form into, words---- because at first--- there was no sleeping state, necessitated by the efficiency of evolution---

Grandma Got Run Over By a Rainbow

Tis the season

We need rich people

There is no reason to believe what rich people say about their own contributions to the economy, etc. There is an element of truth to their ideas, as there are to most. 

What I would say though, is that we need rich people for the variety.

Variety is good. The binary mind secretly, perhaps, despises variety. The "blooming confusion" William James spoke of, is the source of originality and growth. The binary minds wants nothing so much as to sort, regardless of reality -- just get everything into this or that category. Problem is, these drawers are artificial. 

We need variety. We need rich people. 

War of the words

May I just draw your attention to a strange quality of words. Analysts like to point to denotative and connotative content. What I am trying to focus on is not these things. What I refer to is that words validate themselves, regardless of their meanings.. Their being spoken grabs a certainty. an authenticity, accuracy, and believability, regardless of the content. If  a reader  replies, I wouldn't believe a thing my brother-in-law says, his words are not self-authenticating,  To this I say that we are referring to a brief period after the words are in the air, and you can see this in the current eastern European situation. 

One side says, we did not invade Pretania, and though, there are written accounts, recorded interviews,  and plenty of pictures, of armed troops marching across the border,  there is a split second where you take that seriously, something to turned around in your mind: "They did not invade." And then you think, oh wait, they are Grossnians, of course they would lie. But for a moment the words of the Grossnians, had a sheen of authenticity. 

A strange and amazing quality of words, qua words, is my point.