Right or Up

This link to a right wing news site is part of my policy to listen to different sides of debates. Our topic is never current gossip: this headline I share to bring up the topic of ordinary consciousness again. (To even get the point of the headline, though, you must be aware of the Brexit debate.) I stress that this post (this blog) is not about external events, it is about the way we think. That is, as Jan Cox spent much time elucidating, reliant on binary thought. But this is a good example of the processes of thinking that we rely on constantly. And it is blinkering, not clarifying. How so?

I quote:
REMAINERS’ PRO-MIGRANT MASK IS SLIPPING
It is oligarchy, not migrants, that elite Europhiles are fighting for.

End quote.

The operative logic in this statement is that if a person is for rich people, they must be against immigrants. But why could one not be for both segments of the population. No reason except that the point in the headline is made in an either/or format. The writer can do that because of the binary thought that is the structure of ordinary consciousness. 

Maybe some rich people are just pretending to worry about the fate of migrants, as a tool to prevent Britain seceding from the EU. But many are not insincere and there is nothing persuasive in that sentence, no facts marshaled, to diminish a both/and scenario. The strength of the headline is simple binary dualism. If a thing is that, then it cannot be also this. 

Binary thought serves a useful purpose when we examine the external world with a view towards rearranging it. But for most that is rarely the content of their thought. And since they are unaware of their reliance on a faulty dualism, gaining a broader picture of their situation, of the complexity we live in, is frustratingly out of reach. Yes they can fix a broken garage door, but others things do not yield to binary thinking in a manner that leads to effective ideas.

There is no right in right or left. And that is just the slightest example.
This binary thinking is a manifestation of that mechanicity which lives our lives for us.

Hawk in a hurricane

Jan Cox was a hawk who flew in a hurricane. The hurricane surrounds us always. Not so such birds: a raptor in search of others, of his own unnameable species.

Language -- you gotta love it

"Normal" is a pretty light weight concept; it suggests an inherently subjective approach. The word "normal" has gained use recently in politics, where the idea of normalizing has gotten a lot air time/print space. I thought of that reading this morning Brian Koberlein's always excellent blog. He ends a discussion of a puzzling type of galaxy with these words:

These diffuse galaxies could have formed with a mass similar to our Milky Way, but with much less gas and dust, producing much fewer stars. To know for sure we'll need a better understanding of dark matter, but that's another story.

"A better understanding" is a phrase which normalizes human ignorance: we know nothing about dark matter. This phrase suggests we just have some gaps to fill in.

Language-- you gotta speak it, but it is always -- another story...

Shocolate and Chit

Shocolate and Chit: what is the difference? Does it matter?

One way to phrase the goal of what Jan Cox called "This Kind of Stuff" is to tell the difference between what is actual, and what is otherwise.

First you have to appreciate there is a problem. In ordinary terms, perhaps the value of a dish depends on your being able to tell the difference with your fingertips between a painted design on a plate, and one that is a decal pasted on. A mere example this, to point to things far more valuable, and even more fragile.

Is that a saxophone or a clarinet you hear?  Investigating the physical itself, is a step onward, and critical to any more ethereal weight-bearing matters. The phantasmal of any kind, just dilutes one's effort.

To know what is going on, that is ever the goal.

What is bravery

How brave those little mammals, like meerkats, and chipmunks, that signal the presence of predators, to warn their kin. They are telling the hunters where they themselves are. Chipmunks of course may be underground, but not always,-- I saw one doing the gong alarm they can do, from under a vehicle.

Celebrating Cerebration

This is a real headline:

"John Brockman's Book on Thinking Machines: What Should We Keep From Artificial Intelligence?"

I have no doubt the author did not intend this to be funny. The threat from AI has been raised by leading intellectuals.

THERE IS NO SUCH THREAT.  You can only program words. And that is not the whole game.

To really understand thinking, you must grasp what is a non-verbal distance from cerebration.

So kick back jack. put your boots on the table and open a beer. Not to relieve the scary thought of a robot takeover. But to try and forget the tension a 'real attention' requires to sustain the gap we mentioned, the distance between words and a something adjacent. The gap which can nurture if sustained. And if not sustained, is still responsible for all the literary masterpieces, and scientific advances on the planet.

The gaps in maps

Notice any example of cartography. There is an outline of land, and of sea. Perhaps we see first the shapes of land, but the shapes of the seas are just as enthralling.  Maps are a product of man's imagination. The usefulness of maps points to the utility of imagination. Imagination got us to the moon, and is the source of most of our bourgeois splendor. It is marvelous indeed to inhabit such a world.

Mapmaking is a nice hobby. For some few though, they recognise the rivet holes of binary thought in the spectral pursuits. Thank goodness someone is pursuing them. That is the way it is meant to be.

And for some few, their interest is in that which is not cartographable. I mean, marshes.