Are we still able to debate fairly?

[Luce NDs]

That may be enterprise information management ... or everything in moderation ... go decide as it may fall prey to neuroplasticity! Psyche creeps ...

Knowledge, thought and process thereof does tend to bring on phobias in some domains!

 

[jimkenney12]

I believe I managed to have some informative debates with Mystic in the last while, even though they mostly ended with he and I making different decisions about our differences.

Healthy debates require respecting the others who participate and accepting our information is rarely complete.

 

[Luce NDs]

I believe I managed to have some informative debates with Mystic in the last while, even though they mostly ended with he and I making different decisions about our differences.

Healthy debates require respecting the others who participate and accepting our information is rarely complete.

Respect and reverence for all things eternal ... leave some sense of a divine reality ... know? Thus ups, downs, rights, lefts, back and forth sin the dance ... sophisticated enough to raise terrors in confined domains ... phobia in psychopaths causing certain black out functions ... night of des aule?

 

[Carolla]

I agree for the most part. I don't think some "perspectives" are legit though. LGBTQ rights, refusing the idea of a social contract when it comes to public health, racism etc. These are not "perspectives" and aren't worthy of any consideration IMHO. Indeed they are hateful ideas and are potentially so damaging to those dealing with those issues in practice.

This is interesting to ponder. I agree with you in a sense, but I would distinguish that some ideas have the potential to result in hateful & damaging actions. The idea itself may or may not be damaging. But perhaps that's putting too fine a philosophical point on it. Is the way that a person came to hold these ideas worthy of consideration & exploration?

 

[Mendalla]

I believe I managed to have some informative debates with Mystic in the last while, even though they mostly ended with he and I making different decisions about our differences.

I am much more positive about Mystic than some, I think. I find that when he isn't ranting about "woke" progressives, his contributions on topics around Biblical Studies and theology are quite useful and on point.

 

[Delightful Life]

"Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame to ones frustration.

The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration.

This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defence mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws.

The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability."

from Wikipedia

thanks for coming up with this term, Neitz :3

"When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you."
--African Proverb

 

[Northwind]

"Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame to ones frustration.

That's very interesting. I've never heard the term before. It seems to be in the same family as projection and transference. I realize it's different from those two. You've given me some reflection material

 

[Delightful Life]

That's very interesting. I've never heard the term before. It seems to be in the same family as projection and transference. I realize it's different from those two. You've given me some reflection material

It's a good term
Neitz was quite terrified of his civilization falling apart
And he tried to find a cause or causes and then a cure...
Unfortunately he died way too young...

 

[Northwind]

It's a really good term.

 

[Luce NDs]

Frustration in the realm of neuroplasticity in said to cause heated bursts of energy in places that are often dark and unseen in the night of the soul when cranked ... in shot or redacted form Eris 'n insubstantial worries we know nothing about.

In some of these domains nothing is critical ... as something to be source of falling ... otherwise descent of characters, personae and images ... shades cover the land!

There is even a ballad about being born in a desert and the mother suffered death of something while the father departed for fear of existence ... it may be worded paranormally to protect the unknown (that*sus; differs from sur). Expect that is up there also ... just out of touch of mortal implications! Now if only we could add all this up ... what accrues? Ruag thought ...

 

[Delightful Life]

I think my intrinsic values include pervasive fairness, resilience, and gratitude.

They have a test for that as well

Take this test to find out what your most important values are!

Explore and discover your intrinsic values, the foundation for making meaningful and authentic life choices.

programs.clearerthinking.org

Here are my results
I have 48 intrinsic values
Here are the Top 7
1. That beautiful things continue to come into existence
2. That the basic rights of all people are protected
3. That people all round the world have the freedom to pursue what they choose to persue
4. That I regularly experience beauty
5. That people should be able to freely and publically speak their mind without risking arrest or physical harm
6. That I am able to express myself creatively
7. That I have privacy to act the way I want without people knowing

This is good to know. I'm sure we can see in a group, even our group, that has individuals with differing Intrinsic Values, which are things you value for their own sake, not because they benefit or help or whichever...so money and food don't count, but wanting friends to be loyal is

Have at ye, fellow WC members?

Maybe we are forgetting violence was often used by privileged people in the past. The federal government used violence to end the general strike in Winnipeg. White males frequently used violence in conflicts with Indigenous people with few repercussions for decades. How many freedom riders were beaten and killed by law abiding racists in the states? We had a thirty year window where the reckless use of violence was condemned for the most part. Most people are still opposed to violence. Unfortunately Trump and others approved the use of violence and violent people believe they have permission again to use violence. Many police officers believing the same thing make it more difficult to control violence.

The failure of governments to build societies with hope for everyone builds feelings of anxiety, despair, and anger. The strikes in France snd Germsny are signs the neoliberal agenda has gone too far and workers are ready to push back.

Violence has also been used, to give US examples, in various Civil Rights situations by Blacks. Not necessarily to win, but it exacts a cost on the attacker. And guns are, no matter what people think, incredible force multipliers.
I'm thinking of the Black Panthers who would regularly patrol with rifles and be able to help fellow Blacks who were being hassled by officers. I am also thinking of the Tulsa, Oklahoma disaster. In that case it was survival.

Anonymity on social media and the continuing creation of new slurs develops poor habits for social interactions and influences people not using those slurs. Our reflex actions are shaped by what other people do.

We are all co-creators
With some words being both slurs and not (just look at recent example of "Woke"? Or "Cracker", which my wife was very offended by. Even Person of Colour I think can be offensive because it is just a restatement of Coloured Person)
And yes, we are social creatures. We are all part of bigger organisms as well. Family, town, city, country, tribe, species, life...

We need to remember violence is really going backward. I winder if parliament no longer wants dissent, debate is over. But it also means we can easily become more communistic rather than be following God. The God, Creator I believe is pure love, which means justice and much more.
But the Creator is not human, but Spirit. Who isn't into human ways that bring us down. Which bear do we feed. Love, or hate.

Do we teach children to love themselves? That they are beloved also by their Creator? When grounded in love one sees the world
in a more loving way and that moves into behaviours that are more healthful. It's a two way street.
It may sound fanciful but I've seen it at work.
People who are attacked are more apt to attack, or go silent and too compliant. I don't follow the Bible is anything violent.
It's not God's way. Putin's war is an ego war.. Selfish idea he can bring back an extinct empire. For his own egotistical conquest.

Remember dictators are selfish and are so afraid of being deposed and losing power. The more we ae told to be quiet and not speak our minds
the closer we are to losing our freedom . Be awake. Remember the Old Testament is about Speaking Up.

I sure hope the dark ages of being a species does not come back. Growing up up in the Spirit requires love, examples and stick at it ness.

Love and prayers for the world .. lets throw that High Positive Energy out there.
Spread the word... love .. is on!

I'm glad you are still here, Sister
Yes, Praise Jesus and God and Spread Love and Caring
Banishing All Fear
We live in such a fortunate time and area of the world, where Criticism and Suspicion of Authority are baked into the culture...

I believe we can still debate respectfully, but it is harder work.

I like JayneWonders workplace rule about 3 emails. I will keep that in mind.

If I notice a series of three posts with someone else with no apparent evolution of the discussion or start of resolution, I will try to review the whole discussion. If I do not see a path to resolution, i will try to declare my concern and cease to participate.

To debate respectfully we must also be able to empathize. If we can't, or other Blockages to Communication are there (like the person hates the other person, or has extreme anxiety about the personh), that Blockage has to be broken first.

What is resolution in some of the debates we have here, though? A lot of our discussions are exchanges of opinion and the resolution is just that no opinions change, we just learn a bit more about what other folks here think. This isn't like a Oxford debate where there will be "winner" based on how they presented their case.

In fact, I don't think most of what happens here qualifies as "debate". It is more discussion and exchange of ideas. Rarely do we see people presenting a case and then carefully defending it as in a proper debate.

Yep
When we are at the top of our game
We are sharing our Lived Experiences with each other
Which we all should know very well by now
We are all Common Law with each other lol
GROUP MARRIAGE!!!

I am interested in how people would define mental health.
For me, someone who thinks that if he is mad about someone or something, he has the right to shoot down as many people in a mall to which he has no connection , is not mentally normal. On the other side, someone who is mad at someone and goes and beats him up about it, might still act in a relatively ”normal” way, though not socially acceptable. I would guess, that the latter example would probably happen today as often as it might have happened 100 years ago ( 200 yrs ago, the other might have been shot more often), but that a shooting spree like it happens in the US today on a almost weekly basis , would not have been as frequent as 100-200 years ago ( with the exception of killing people in war or killing indigenous). So, maybe the violence has moved from a group action to an individual motivated action? Do male humans “need” violence? (Almost all shooters except for the one last week were male) while females need internet ”bitching”?

Many different ways
The mainstream way seems to be "able to function as a productive citizen"?
There are also some who I think would say that being Mentally Ill in our society is justa normal reaction to an effed society lol
I would say, a usage that would work for me, is for my whole self to be in wrong relation with where I exist so much that it affects my whole being, social spiritual mental physical...

Violence or a physical attack, even verbal attacks in crowds is removed from the original question...
Are we still able to debate fairly?

The violence question is a good question, and you can see that lots of sociologists and statisticians have attempted to answer it, comparing societies today and 100 years ago, or population types.

I'm curious, though, can we debate a topic?
When was the last really good debate that you had?

Last really good debate?
With my nephew
He was arguing that Humanity in Avatar was justified because they were literally in danger of going extinct

I agree for the most part. I don't think some "perspectives" are legit though. LGBTQ rights, refusing the idea of a social contract when it comes to public health, racism etc. These are not "perspectives" and aren't worthy of any consideration IMHO. Indeed they are hateful ideas and are potentially so damaging to those dealing with those issues in practice.

We can't control our ideas
We can however guide our actions
That is why most of our laws are built around actions and not ideas...
A lot of what we believe, process, etc I think are unconscious?
Every time we have tried to ban ideas or such, it has led to more horror
The best we can do is to continue to try to be good people, help those we can, bring up moral and ethical children and so forth?

This kinda reminds me of the Justification of Grace through faith and not works...those who think you just need faith...those who think you need action...and those who mix :3

It also reminds me of the talk between nordstrom and Bette on Repentance...nordstrom seemed to think the thought was most important...Bette said the action was the most important...

I find in some areas they just shut it down. Too afraid of emotions and maybe too afraid of how they will reasct.

We need to learn the difference between reacting and responding.

Hear hear!
Learning that we have a choice in our interpretation. We react how we will react. That is human. But we always have a choice in interpretation. Harder to do in the heat of the moment. Or with triggering things.

This is interesting to ponder. I agree with you in a sense, but I would distinguish that some ideas have the potential to result in hateful & damaging actions. The idea itself may or may not be damaging. But perhaps that's putting too fine a philosophical point on it. Is the way that a person came to hold these ideas worthy of consideration & exploration?

It is always worthy of consideration
A thing that frustrates me is when anyone goes like "stupid libtard/cuck" as a way to not consider anything they say.

When it comes down to it, Beliefs, Intrinsic Values, politics (Right, Left, Conservative, Liberal, etc) are similar to Gender Identity, Sexual Preference, what ice cream we love...we don't choose. It is a part of who we are.

I'm really glad this thread is still going

Good job, @Mrs.Anteater :3

 

[Delightful Life]

More coolosity

The World Value's Survey

Get to see an attempt at Beliefs and Values mapped Geographically! W00t!

WVS Database

World Values Survey Data-Archive Online Survey analysis website

www.worldvaluessurvey.org

 

[Delightful Life]

Here are the rest of my results from the Intrinsic Values quiz

Intrinsic Values Report | GuidedTrack

www.guidedtrack.com

 

[Luce NDs]

These are very deep values given the extent of the dirt encountered as hidden (Gnostic, or diagnostic) faith is proposed as sacred and below the horizon so that corruption is better accepted!

Investigation may require prognostics and paradigmatic excavation of concerns presently beyond us ... in the abstract? In such communications much is lost due to MS Understanding messing with sentience ... thus messes when the shock wave impacts ... gravid? If it hasn't already hit yah ... some will not take note ... regardless ... no regard! Especially for word and what is biding there ...

 

[Delightful Life]

It's a really good term.

The term can apply across politics and reality tunnels

From Antifa to a trans murdering 6 innocents to BLM to Qanon to Proud Boys to actual Nazis to Greenpeace to Wokists to Hamas to Israelis and on and on

We are powerful beyond measure and we have dangerous visceral depths that can explode...

There are more ways to ruin and failure than there are to peace and fruition...

Since we are an ancient species, we have had the chance to explore this space...discover what works and what doesn't...

I am hoping we as human beings survive this (as an innately Hopeful person I have faith in that)

Jesus must be looking at us, jaw agape, going nein! Merde! Kerfuffle!

 

[Delightful Life]

Here is that invaluable resource on ground news site where they explain to us on the outside various jargon and general words that people in the USA use


I have found it handy to discover justwhat it heck it is they are talking aboot, agitated aboot and whatnot

a peek into another frame/perspectacles

Red Blue Translator

The AllSides Red Blue Translator™ reveals how people across the political spectrum think and feel differently about the same term or phrase.

www.allsides.com

 

[Delightful Life]

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING - Robert Anton Wilson on the topic of "Belief" and how "reality" is not a noun

>I DO NOT *BELIEVE ANYTHING*

>This remark was made, in these very words, by John
Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV
debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity
on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the
medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the
educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist,
and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe
fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X,
one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse
of X.

>My own opinion is that *belief is the death of intelligence*. As soon
as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one
stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more
certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a
person sure of everything would never have any need to think
about anything and might be considered clinically dead under
current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is
taken to mean that life has ended.

>My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the
majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the
Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in
Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model
agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our
experience of the world is a model of the world and should not
be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the
semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the
slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented
exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The
menu is not the meal."

>Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma,
amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" — or
grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — "contains the whole universe
and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of
science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and
arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many
people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

>*Cosmic Trigger* deals with a process of *deliberately induced brain
change* through which I put myself in the years 1962-76. This
process is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional
societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety
of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not
recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good
results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two
varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific
philosophy and was not inclined to "believe" any astounding
Revelations too literally.

>Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that
*"reality" is always plural and mutable*.

>Since most of *Cosmic Trigger* is devoted to explaining and
illustrating this, and since I have tried to explain it again in other
books, and since I still encounter people who have read all my
writings on this subject and still do not understand what I am
getting at, I will try again in this new Preface to explain it ONE
MORE TIME, perhaps more clearly than before.

>"Reality" is a word in the English language which happens
to be (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English
language (and in cognate Indo-European languages) therefore
subliminally programs us to conceptualize "reality" as one blocklike entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which
every part is just another "room" within the same building. This
linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot
"think" outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different
perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.

>**The notion that "reality" is a *noun*, a solid thing like a brick
or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our
nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into
such block-like "things," probably as instant bio-survival cues.
Such "things," however, dissolve back into energy dances —
processes, or verbs — when the nervous system is synergized
with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises
or aided by scientific instruments. In both mysticism and
physics, there is general agreement that "things" are constructed
by our nervous systems and that "realities" (plural) are better
described as systems or bundles of energy-functions.**

>So much for "reality" as a noun. The notion that "reality" is
singular, like a hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with scientific
findings which, in this century, suggest that "reality" may better
be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river, or interacting, like a dance, or evolving, like life itself.

>Most philosophers have known, at least since around 500
B.C., that the world perceived by our senses is not "the real
world" but a construct we create — our own private work of
art. Modern science began with Galileo's demonstration that color is not "in" objects but "in" the inter-action of our senses
with objects. Despite this philosophic and scientific knowledge of
neurological relativity, which has been more clearly
demonstrated with each major advance in instrumentation, we
still, due to language, think that behind the flowing, meandering,
inter-acting, evolving universe created by perception is one solid
monolithic "reality" hard and crisply outlined as an iron bar.

> Quantum physics has undermined that Platonic iron-bar
"reality" by showing that it makes more sense scientifically to
talk only of the inter-actions we actually experience (our
operations in the laboratory); and perception psychology has
undermined the Platonic "reality" by showing that assuming it
exists leads to hopeless contradictions in explaining how we
actually perceive that a hippopotamus is not a symphony
orchestra.

>The only "realities" (plural) that we actually experience and
can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced
realities, existential realities — realities involving ourselves as
editors — and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating,
evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from
low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a
jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast
illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in
a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler.

>Alan Watts may have said it best of all: "The universe is a
giant Rorshach ink-blot." Science finds one meaning in it in the
18th Century, another in the 19th, a third in the 20th; each
artist finds unique meanings on other levels of abstraction; and
each man and woman finds different meanings at different
hours of the day, depending on the internal and external
environments.

From the preface to [Cosmic Trigger I](http://logoilibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Robert-Anton-Wilson-Cosmic-Trigger.pdf)

 

[Luce NDs]

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING - Robert Anton Wilson on the topic of "Belief" and how "reality" is not a noun

>I DO NOT *BELIEVE ANYTHING*

>This remark was made, in these very words, by John
Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV
debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity
on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the
medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the
educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist,
and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe
fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X,
one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse
of X.

>My own opinion is that *belief is the death of intelligence*. As soon
as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one
stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more
certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a
person sure of everything would never have any need to think
about anything and might be considered clinically dead under
current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is
taken to mean that life has ended.

>My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the
majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the
Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in
Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model
agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our
experience of the world is a model of the world and should not
be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the
semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the
slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented
exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The
menu is not the meal."

>Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma,
amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" — or
grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — "contains the whole universe
and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of
science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and
arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many
people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

>*Cosmic Trigger* deals with a process of *deliberately induced brain
change* through which I put myself in the years 1962-76. This
process is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional
societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety
of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not
recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good
results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two
varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific
philosophy and was not inclined to "believe" any astounding
Revelations too literally.

>Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that
*"reality" is always plural and mutable*.

>Since most of *Cosmic Trigger* is devoted to explaining and
illustrating this, and since I have tried to explain it again in other
books, and since I still encounter people who have read all my
writings on this subject and still do not understand what I am
getting at, I will try again in this new Preface to explain it ONE
MORE TIME, perhaps more clearly than before.

>"Reality" is a word in the English language which happens
to be (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English
language (and in cognate Indo-European languages) therefore
subliminally programs us to conceptualize "reality" as one blocklike entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which
every part is just another "room" within the same building. This
linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot
"think" outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different
perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.

>**The notion that "reality" is a *noun*, a solid thing like a brick
or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our
nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into
such block-like "things," probably as instant bio-survival cues.
Such "things," however, dissolve back into energy dances —
processes, or verbs — when the nervous system is synergized
with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises
or aided by scientific instruments. In both mysticism and
physics, there is general agreement that "things" are constructed
by our nervous systems and that "realities" (plural) are better
described as systems or bundles of energy-functions.**

>So much for "reality" as a noun. The notion that "reality" is
singular, like a hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with scientific
findings which, in this century, suggest that "reality" may better
be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river, or interacting, like a dance, or evolving, like life itself.

>Most philosophers have known, at least since around 500
B.C., that the world perceived by our senses is not "the real
world" but a construct we create — our own private work of
art. Modern science began with Galileo's demonstration that color is not "in" objects but "in" the inter-action of our senses
with objects. Despite this philosophic and scientific knowledge of
neurological relativity, which has been more clearly
demonstrated with each major advance in instrumentation, we
still, due to language, think that behind the flowing, meandering,
inter-acting, evolving universe created by perception is one solid
monolithic "reality" hard and crisply outlined as an iron bar.

> Quantum physics has undermined that Platonic iron-bar
"reality" by showing that it makes more sense scientifically to
talk only of the inter-actions we actually experience (our
operations in the laboratory); and perception psychology has
undermined the Platonic "reality" by showing that assuming it
exists leads to hopeless contradictions in explaining how we
actually perceive that a hippopotamus is not a symphony
orchestra.

>The only "realities" (plural) that we actually experience and
can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced
realities, existential realities — realities involving ourselves as
editors — and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating,
evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from
low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a
jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast
illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in
a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler.

>Alan Watts may have said it best of all: "The universe is a
giant Rorshach ink-blot." Science finds one meaning in it in the
18th Century, another in the 19th, a third in the 20th; each
artist finds unique meanings on other levels of abstraction; and
each man and woman finds different meanings at different
hours of the day, depending on the internal and external
environments.

From the preface to [Cosmic Trigger I](http://logoilibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Robert-Anton-Wilson-Cosmic-Trigger.pdf)

Some say that god is just a word too and no one questions it because of all the misunderstood words that compound to make a world in alchemy!

Thus, begin by understanding plants ... some posing as animals of debatable intelligence given what they've experienced in a mortally limited life! Comparatively short compared to eternal concepts ... these go on and on ...

 

[ninj]

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING - Robert Anton Wilson on the topic of "Belief" and how "reality" is not a noun

>I DO NOT *BELIEVE ANYTHING*

>This remark was made, in these very words, by John
Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV
debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity
on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the
medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the
educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist,
and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe
fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X,
one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse
of X.

>My own opinion is that *belief is the death of intelligence*. As soon
as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one
stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more
certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a
person sure of everything would never have any need to think
about anything and might be considered clinically dead under
current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is
taken to mean that life has ended.

>My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the
majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the
Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in
Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model
agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our
experience of the world is a model of the world and should not
be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the
semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the
slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented
exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The
menu is not the meal."

>Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma,
amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" — or
grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — "contains the whole universe
and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of
science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and
arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many
people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

>*Cosmic Trigger* deals with a process of *deliberately induced brain
change* through which I put myself in the years 1962-76. This
process is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional
societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety
of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not
recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good
results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two
varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific
philosophy and was not inclined to "believe" any astounding
Revelations too literally.

>Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that
*"reality" is always plural and mutable*.

>Since most of *Cosmic Trigger* is devoted to explaining and
illustrating this, and since I have tried to explain it again in other
books, and since I still encounter people who have read all my
writings on this subject and still do not understand what I am
getting at, I will try again in this new Preface to explain it ONE
MORE TIME, perhaps more clearly than before.

>"Reality" is a word in the English language which happens
to be (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English
language (and in cognate Indo-European languages) therefore
subliminally programs us to conceptualize "reality" as one blocklike entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which
every part is just another "room" within the same building. This
linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot
"think" outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different
perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.

>**The notion that "reality" is a *noun*, a solid thing like a brick
or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our
nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into
such block-like "things," probably as instant bio-survival cues.
Such "things," however, dissolve back into energy dances —
processes, or verbs — when the nervous system is synergized
with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises
or aided by scientific instruments. In both mysticism and
physics, there is general agreement that "things" are constructed
by our nervous systems and that "realities" (plural) are better
described as systems or bundles of energy-functions.**

>So much for "reality" as a noun. The notion that "reality" is
singular, like a hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with scientific
findings which, in this century, suggest that "reality" may better
be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river, or interacting, like a dance, or evolving, like life itself.

>Most philosophers have known, at least since around 500
B.C., that the world perceived by our senses is not "the real
world" but a construct we create — our own private work of
art. Modern science began with Galileo's demonstration that color is not "in" objects but "in" the inter-action of our senses
with objects. Despite this philosophic and scientific knowledge of
neurological relativity, which has been more clearly
demonstrated with each major advance in instrumentation, we
still, due to language, think that behind the flowing, meandering,
inter-acting, evolving universe created by perception is one solid
monolithic "reality" hard and crisply outlined as an iron bar.

> Quantum physics has undermined that Platonic iron-bar
"reality" by showing that it makes more sense scientifically to
talk only of the inter-actions we actually experience (our
operations in the laboratory); and perception psychology has
undermined the Platonic "reality" by showing that assuming it
exists leads to hopeless contradictions in explaining how we
actually perceive that a hippopotamus is not a symphony
orchestra.

>The only "realities" (plural) that we actually experience and
can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced
realities, existential realities — realities involving ourselves as
editors — and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating,
evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from
low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a
jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast
illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in
a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler.

>Alan Watts may have said it best of all: "The universe is a
giant Rorshach ink-blot." Science finds one meaning in it in the
18th Century, another in the 19th, a third in the 20th; each
artist finds unique meanings on other levels of abstraction; and
each man and woman finds different meanings at different
hours of the day, depending on the internal and external
environments.

From the preface to [Cosmic Trigger I](http://logoilibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Robert-Anton-Wilson-Cosmic-Trigger.pdf)

Yup.

 

[Luce NDs]

If anything becomes negative space is that appearing as dippy or as a gravid depression in clear space?

Einstein spoke of such visions in the abstract domain ... no top, bottom, left, right, back or forth ... just fifth as not a quintessential lie ...

Here the absolute and abstract overlap in a licking ... like the tongue of an old shoe in the dox ... not science as ology is paired with in thesaurus!

Such metaphorical stretch of parallels can go a long way ... yet still just words among what is mostly in just by principle ... that's life! Living, crawling creepiness ... Oronoco's?