Posts Tagged ‘Arthur Koestler’
Degrees of consciousness? A way to Bypass the Free-Will cultural philosophy?
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 11, 2015
Degrees of consciousness? A way to Bypass the Free-Will philosophy
Unconscious under anaesthesia, dozing off, automatic activities, spinal consciousness, protoplasmic consciousness, deficient self-consciousness, sub-conscience…
Deficient attention span related to levels of habit formation…
For example:
Phonemes acquire a meaning at the level of morphemes. Words have to be related to the context. Sentences are linked to a larger reference plan.
Verbal activities take the inverse path: They change from the higher mental hierarchy to the mechanical movements of the vocal chords.
Having difficulties in verbal intelligence, or having problems verbalizing to clarify ideas and intentions, is necessarily representative of problems in the higher levels in the staircase of the mind: The mind gets in close loops and unable to find ready open doors to the lower levels for activating the automatic mechanisms.
An alert mind is constantly moving up and down the staircase of the hierarchy and acquire talents and skills quicker than a slower mind.
Are we confusing Degrees of consciousness with Degrees of freedom?
The more constraints and independent variables are included in a game or an experiment the more degree of freedom increase and the less free we are to navigate the game.
The less the number of constraints the more the latitudes to practices free will choices.
If mankind is totally dependent on his genes, mankind would be very homogeneous and monotonous.
The genetic factor define the level of our physical and mental stability.
It is the Epigenetic transmission of Nurturing behaviors, in a broader sense, (such as family and community customs and traditions, peer pressures, climate, environment, food consumption, educational methods, varieties of opportunities…) that transfer attitudes, tendencies and characters to individuals that are different of how the genes would normally behave.
It is the epigenetic that defines your attitudes and characters on how your community perceives you.
Epigenetic acquisitions can last for many generations, even though they are considered of temporary nature compared to genes.
Arthur Koestler in “Janus, 1979) offered this maxim:
“Comprehend everything and never forgive your emotional tantrums”
The corollary to this principle is:
1. Demand a minimum of free-will from the others and
2. Demand a maximum level of free-will to yourself
This No danger maxim in dealing with others is very hard to practice and apply.
We prefer the easy way of “Don’t understand the others and forgive your emotional outburst 77 times a day”
You appreciate a civilization that initiate its communities to pay attention to their outburst when saying “This is inadmissible, you should control your emotion…”
Instilling the habits of discipline and order in your daily behaviour is tangibly administer through team sports activities and military service.
Habit formation is more than a second nature: It is who you are in your community.
When emotions get aroused, and they are frequent, control is relegated to the primitive levels of consciousness.
The saying: “Know yourself” is a cheater.
The total conscious of the self, the identity of the knower and the known will never be reached.
We are not looking through a single reflective glass but a multitude of glasses, reflecting ourselves to infinity
The “Complementarity principle” in physics state that an atom can behave as a solid and as a wave
It is important that, when we get conscious of an automatic reaction or behaviour, we stop our activity and analyse a little how we proceed in our action.
For example, as we hold the fork to eat, we could wonder how other civilizations eat without forks. Or how other civilizations hold a fork or a writing pen.
We have got to bring consciousness to our habits to keep our brain alert and alive.
The more we are conscious of our automatic behaviors and reactions the more the “free-will” activities will increase.
At least, so that you could claim your free-will actions are increasing in frequency.
Did our sudden Neo-Cortex outgrowth stumped our survival process as a species?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 29, 2015
Did our sudden Neo-Cortex outgrowth stumped our survival process as a species?
A few of the human species developed this Neo-Cortex outgrowth that was as big as the current species, and they have gone extinct.
The Cro-Magnon barely made use of this outgrowth and they never changed their dwelling habit and tools.
The Neanderthal species left very detailed painting in deep caves and vanished about 30,000 years after spreading in much of current Europe.
The current human species managed through sustained “nurturing procedure” to eventually integrate this process into their genes.
This qualitative jump allowed this species to tap into the potentialities of this new outgrowth, a gift that was Not that needed for its survival but played a big role in sedentary tradition, creating verbal languages and written languages…
The consequences were the forming of highly structured societies in hierarchical trends which affected our brains and sensory organs to structurally filter the multitude of stimuli (or background noises) that bombard our system.
Supposedly, these filtering barriers were meant to allow us to survive our daily tasks within our structured environment.
This Neo-Cortex might be a handicap for our survival since the materialistic “rational” interpretations of phenomena and events are disrupting the vast potentials of our cognitive system.
Since Aristotle, many intellectuals claimed that “Within a few years, all the mysteries and superstitions will be explained and resolved for our rational comprehension.”
And yet, we are no nearer of understanding the multitudes of mysteries surrounding us.
Probably, our deficiencies revolve around:
1. The Neo-Cortex was not “programmed” to resolve abstract concepts related to our death and spiritual quests
2. The tenuous assumption that the power and potentials of our brains have No limits.
Mankind survived for thousand of years and relied on telepathy, premonition, psychokinese, pre-cognition… and people believed on the power of a few leaders (shaman, medicine man, priest of the tribe…) to see the future of events, catastrophes and the like.
People believed in extra-sensory abilities to predict and see what our limited sensory organs can perform.
People accepted that many connections and coincidences were Not related to physical causative factors.
The first half of this century produced scores of Nobel laureates who challenged many classical physical laws and set the stage of a wider openness of the mind to interpret mysteries not resolved by pure cognitive methods. (See notes)
After taking hallucigen matters (natural or lab fabricated), of all kinds, the brains and sensory organs will start recognizing certain stimuli as acceptable inputs or sounds to be retrieved and stored as reality. With frequent intakes, the filter structure in the brains will relax their hold and let more stimuli to pass into the cognitive realm.
The same procedure is valid for these new “Augmented” technology for the sensory organs to enhance our limited perception power.
The difference is that the Augmented technology should be more efficient than those over-doze intake of chemicals that are already in our system, because they create new side networks of neurons and synapsis that circumvent and bypass the hierarchical structure in our nervous system.
The problem with chemical intakes are addictive and prohibit the individual from experimenting with a life without those chemicals, even though with focus and determination they could experience the same extra sensations after they quit.
Mankind is going through a period of totally relying on the autonomous sub branches in our internal hierarchical structure. Most of the experts in sub-field are totally ignorant or uninterested in other disciples.
Barely a few of the intellectuals check with the higher levels in the structure to seek an integrative and holistic view of the problems the word is going through.
Note 1: Essay inspired from Arthur Koestler in “Janus” 1978
Note 2: The first half of the 20th century witnessed a new world view:
1. Heisenberg stated the “Uncertainty Principle“: In the atomic level, it is not possible to accurately measure simultaneously the location and the speed of a particle. Atoms are Not things or have to be viewed as physical objects with local space, speed, dimensions or energy. At the atomic level, the world of space-time stop to exist
2. The “Mach Principle” states: The properties of inert matters are determined by the Total Mass of the universe. Inertia is Not intrinsic to the physical body.
3. “Bell theorem” states: When 2 particles interacted and went on opposite directions, any interference with one particle will instantaneously affect the other particle, no matter how distant they are from one another.
4. Wolfgang Pauli “Exclusion Principle” states: No two electrons can occupy the same orbit around the nucleus.
5. “Woltereck Principle” states: Nature has the tendency of creating new forms of life (Anamorphous)
6. The biologist Paul Kammerer stated: Series are universal occurring phenomenon. There exist in the universe a tendency to unite same items in categories that has nothing to do with causality. A sort of selective (sympathetic) serial phenomenon is omnipresent and continual in life, nature and the cosmos.
7. John Wheeler stated: Black Holes and White Holes are two hyper-spaces. Each point in a hyper-space represents a complete 3-dimensional world
8. Feynman stated that particles can go back in time for brief instances.
9. Poisson probability distribution is a universal paradox where a large number of incertitude events generate a certainty.
10. Pic de la Mirandole stated:
1) Unity of the beings is so that each in One with itself, consists of itself and adheres to itself (Associative tendency)
2) Unity of each creature to all the other creature and the world (transcendental or integrative tendency)
By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 7, 2015
By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb
In a previous article From “Bind man by chains of Constitution” to “Bind man by chains of Cryptography”
Thomas Jefferson and Ed Snowden demonstrated that they had No confidence or faith in man behaviors from not using power to circumvent human rights.
Equal Internet to all? Any why science must outpace laws on restricting collective data gathering and national security?
And I’m wondering:
1. By what chains can we bind our morbid species from igniting a Hydrogen Bomb?
2. By what chains can we bind our fickle and instant gratifying species from poisoning our environment to an irreversible state of no return?
If history is a guide, the few occasional decades of enlightenment and culture do Not match the consistent trend of our species for self-immolation
In the last 2 million years of a variety of mankind species, separated in tiny colonies around earth, we were very close to total disappearance. But we didn’t know it.
During all these species existence, we came to admit that the individual is to die sooner or later, and will be survived by offspring, the clan, the tribe…
By August 6, 1945, as the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it dawned on us that our hopes to be survived by anyone of our species has dwindled dramatically.
In our deep psychic, we are living a pseudo normal existence, in waiting of the ultimate calamity.
How can we recover the hope that our species might live another million years?
In Janus (this two-faced God), Arthur Koestler considered Aug. 6, 1945 as the new calendar: It is the date we are counting the days of our total extermination, a new way of living, on borrowed time, in excruciating apprehension of tomorrow. Probably, there will be No Tomorrow.
By what trusted and inviolable chains can we bind this inconsistent and not so rational species, of 7.5 billion and increasing, regardless of technological stopping activation and multi-layered decision -process that any one of those existing hydrogen bombs will not go off?
Can you imagine a world of a bunch of delinquents being trapped in a room filled with inflammable materials and allowing them to carry lighters and combustible match boxes?
What universal Constitution or universal laws can withstand an institution holding the power to trample transparent decisions and actions, and acting in total darkness of secrecy, and deciding what is good and what is evil?
After Aug. 6, 1945, the world was on the verge of using again the atomic bomb on Berlin 1950 and on Cuba 1962.
After Aug. 6, 1945 we experienced more wars, preemptive wars, civil wars supported by external powers… that humanity could have witnessed in all its existence.
After Aug. 6, 1945 many states owns nuclear weapons and the potential countries are increasing rapidly.
After Aug. 6, 1945 the web of satellites (for military, communication purposes) is clogging the outer space and all intelligence agencies are engaged in mass collection of information, intercepting emails, online and telephone communications and eavesdropping on everyone. There is No Place to Hide from the Big Brothers.
After Aug. 6, 1945 most States accumulated stockpile of toxic and deadly biochemical agents that have been used frequently.
After Aug. 6, 1945 our species has acquired this diabolic knowledge of annihilating the living and the plants.
As Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) wrote
“Man has no choice but to live a fiction. We have to accommodate as if:
1. the illusions of our senses represent the ultimate reality
2. we have to convince our selves that we have free wills and are mostly responsible for our acts
3. We had to admit that a God must exist in order to recompense our virtues and good deeds
4. As if the individual is not condemned to die, until much later
5. And prepare his future as if his days are not counted
6. As if the potential calamities are mere probabilities, probabilities at the far end of the tails of the graph that will never happens
After Aug. 6, 1945, we must be listening to the tic tac of the bomb attached on our neck. If this bomb failed to be activated, one of our neighbor’s bomb will not fail.
So far, we live in the fallacy that we can reverse what we were capable of doing, and that we have enough time to counter the imminent danger of total annihilation.
What we have come to term to realize is that the rational thinking portion in our species is never sustainable to give us a convincing reprieve: We act on instant gratifications, fallacies, myths and illusions.
Can we blame those extremist, one directional movements and dogmas, claiming to abide by a God orders and laws, who are acting up from shear fear and desperation in understanding the current conditions and holding on to an exterminating Allah. Bakunin would have characterized these movements as Believing without a God and Heroes without any Phrases. no matter how insistent they are in shouting their mantra Takbir.
These movements are claiming to revert to outdated “going to the Roots” periods that they feel suit their temperament, period of simple predictable and conformist societies.
These youth committing suicide bombing and “killing death” so that they avoid doomsday at Day Zero. As is the case of all religions claiming that doomsday is very close to fall on our head.
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