Hearing the sounds of Saturn made me think about this universe we live in. That this little rocky planet going around this little star on this uncharming galaxy has such a rich living ecossystem gets me reversing the old question 'is there life out there?'. We should be asking 'how come life has blossomed here, in such a harsh environment?
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Sense of direction
Life is movement. And movement is relative. There is no movement without references... That's physics. We move around in search of a way to follow. Is there a right way? Is there a wrong way? What is right or wrong? Well, that depends on who you ask this question to. In a social context, right and wrong usually relates to rules designed to protect order as it emerged in that context... so as to protect its members and, more importantly, the masters of said order.
When you look at the whole diversity of human life on Earth, you have all those different conditions giving rise to all kinds of social organizational patterns. That was the insight that drove greek philosophers to question sacred beliefs and to start thinking about life and the universe using reason as a guide - as opposed to tradition.
The fact that we are here, thinking about life and its meaning, is most unsettling (at least for me). I can't understand why am I here, alive. When we consider the possibilities, the distribution of time and space around us, it makes even less sense. With so many galaxies, their stars and planets, what am I doing right here? The Universe has existed for the equivalent of something around 14 billions turns of Earth around the Sun, and we have entire religions based on the four different aspects of one single turn. Carbon based lifeforms have been around here for as much as 3 billion of those turns, and we talk about History, so proud of our accomplishments, covering a tiny little fraction of these time lapses.
When we are so damn insignificant for the order of things, it seems that the most unexplainable of all mysteries is our sense of dignity. It's dazzling, even mesmerizing, to watch a clear night sky, far away from the lights of the cities. There are so many bright spots, and each and everyone of them might be the sun for some other culture. We're really some pretensious little monkeys, aren't we?
On the other hand, why are we kept here if we are so meaningless? Does this mean something? Is meaning even a valid concept here? I mean (its hard to talk about the relativity of our existence using a language that exists only because of us) if there are more powerful beings, wouldn't they be upon us as slavemasters? If our history is any evidence of a universal pattern, whenever a lifeform is intelligent enough to perceive and manipulate its surroundings, and strong enough to protect itself and to impose its will upon other lifeforms, it will do so.
So, we are either useless to them, or being powerful enough to use us means they have already moved on and just don't give a rat's ass about what we do with our little rocky planet. And that's assuming there is life out there.
Is it sensible to believe there is no life besides human life in the whole universe? Why should we think that life as we know it (and as we haven't detected in any other planet close enough for us to have a good look) is the only way to go? It's difficult enough for life to express itself in this heavy dull matter we have here. Wouldn't be sensible to admit that inside a star, there might be a whole civilization, made of electrified gas or whatever?
Following the line of Maturana and Varela (two neuroscientists as close to Brazil as they are ignored here - they come from Santiago, Chile), the expression of the mind (and selfconsciousness) is nothing but the pattern of living systems arising in a whole new level - that of neural networks. From cells to brains, its just autopoiesis manifesting itself - cycle upon cycle of structures giving rise to structures. It's just a matter of what is stable and what's not stable. That's natural selection, right there. Winners win, so obvious it's almost tautological.
So why should we believe the whole phenomenon revolves around these 92 or so elements we found here? The whole of the universe, including its galaxies, with stars and blackholes, could be regarded as aspects of this very same dynamic.
The enigma of why here, why now? becomes a false dilemma. If we start with a definition of life so narrow as to include life as it is on Earth, the answer to the question 'Is there life anywhere else?' depends on the existence of another planet just like ours. If our definition of life includes self-organization, than there's life everywhere - how could anything organize the universe itself?
Maybe we should be asking: is this universe all there is?
When you look at the whole diversity of human life on Earth, you have all those different conditions giving rise to all kinds of social organizational patterns. That was the insight that drove greek philosophers to question sacred beliefs and to start thinking about life and the universe using reason as a guide - as opposed to tradition.
The fact that we are here, thinking about life and its meaning, is most unsettling (at least for me). I can't understand why am I here, alive. When we consider the possibilities, the distribution of time and space around us, it makes even less sense. With so many galaxies, their stars and planets, what am I doing right here? The Universe has existed for the equivalent of something around 14 billions turns of Earth around the Sun, and we have entire religions based on the four different aspects of one single turn. Carbon based lifeforms have been around here for as much as 3 billion of those turns, and we talk about History, so proud of our accomplishments, covering a tiny little fraction of these time lapses.
When we are so damn insignificant for the order of things, it seems that the most unexplainable of all mysteries is our sense of dignity. It's dazzling, even mesmerizing, to watch a clear night sky, far away from the lights of the cities. There are so many bright spots, and each and everyone of them might be the sun for some other culture. We're really some pretensious little monkeys, aren't we?
On the other hand, why are we kept here if we are so meaningless? Does this mean something? Is meaning even a valid concept here? I mean (its hard to talk about the relativity of our existence using a language that exists only because of us) if there are more powerful beings, wouldn't they be upon us as slavemasters? If our history is any evidence of a universal pattern, whenever a lifeform is intelligent enough to perceive and manipulate its surroundings, and strong enough to protect itself and to impose its will upon other lifeforms, it will do so.
So, we are either useless to them, or being powerful enough to use us means they have already moved on and just don't give a rat's ass about what we do with our little rocky planet. And that's assuming there is life out there.
Is it sensible to believe there is no life besides human life in the whole universe? Why should we think that life as we know it (and as we haven't detected in any other planet close enough for us to have a good look) is the only way to go? It's difficult enough for life to express itself in this heavy dull matter we have here. Wouldn't be sensible to admit that inside a star, there might be a whole civilization, made of electrified gas or whatever?
Following the line of Maturana and Varela (two neuroscientists as close to Brazil as they are ignored here - they come from Santiago, Chile), the expression of the mind (and selfconsciousness) is nothing but the pattern of living systems arising in a whole new level - that of neural networks. From cells to brains, its just autopoiesis manifesting itself - cycle upon cycle of structures giving rise to structures. It's just a matter of what is stable and what's not stable. That's natural selection, right there. Winners win, so obvious it's almost tautological.
So why should we believe the whole phenomenon revolves around these 92 or so elements we found here? The whole of the universe, including its galaxies, with stars and blackholes, could be regarded as aspects of this very same dynamic.
The enigma of why here, why now? becomes a false dilemma. If we start with a definition of life so narrow as to include life as it is on Earth, the answer to the question 'Is there life anywhere else?' depends on the existence of another planet just like ours. If our definition of life includes self-organization, than there's life everywhere - how could anything organize the universe itself?
Maybe we should be asking: is this universe all there is?
Sunday, August 2, 2009
What do you know?
So, what can we really know? This simple question is at the core of the acient debate about who holds the truth. People are always trying to convince others that they are right, even if they are not. Sometimes they even know they are wrong, but don't seem to care.
In the past, religion and state were hardily distinguishible as loci for institutional domination. They were kind of two sides of the same coin. Two complementary aspects of the very fabric of society. Maybe it was needed them, maybe not, whatever. As time passed, people became more and more aware of the relative and precarious position of these 'absolutized' sources of certainty, stability and, utimatelly, safety.
Early christianity had very little to do with what came to be the so called Christianity. When it all began, as a cult inside Judaism, it was all about simplicity, clarity and self enlightement. Centuries later, it became all about power, authority and rites. The positivation of religion as some like to call it. The renovation lost momentum and a new era of domination ideology was born. It was only when the greek scriptures of early philosophy came back to europe from the hands of the arabs that the end of this era began. It is a great cicle in motion, really.
Being right is all about privileges and special interests. When people are frightened they seek ways to feel safe again. If this fear comes from something they don't know, to learn is to feel safe(r). So if you are scared to death of some menace you don't understand, and some authority (I mean, someone trusted for his competence over the subject) provides you with answers, you will question or follow them? And furthermore, if they have designed their answers to provide them and their peers with extra power, extra income, extra privileges or whatever, they will get it willingly from thankful followers.
In the past, religion and state were hardily distinguishible as loci for institutional domination. They were kind of two sides of the same coin. Two complementary aspects of the very fabric of society. Maybe it was needed them, maybe not, whatever. As time passed, people became more and more aware of the relative and precarious position of these 'absolutized' sources of certainty, stability and, utimatelly, safety.
The perception that many cultures had the same ideia of holding an absolute position, while they were all too diverse and contradictory had made it clear how fragile were their own fundations, on which they relied so much. And hence philosophy. Through geometry, arithmetic, mathematics in general and rationalization, the merchant cities of the east mediterranean came to a new expression of knowledge. The one revived some four to six centuries ago to subvert the grip of the Catholic Apostolic Roman Church on power. The name of this institution is very telling: Catholic means universal.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
What are you to answer?
Do you remember this line? It's from one of the most disturbing passages from 'Brave New World', by Aldous Huxley.
A worker from the fertilizing room (where humans are made in the novel's world), when confronted by her little kid (who she was not supposed to have had 'viviparously') about things such as 'how helicopters work?'... It illustrates social alienation, which is the whole point of the book. It's about the superorganism idealized and implemented by a tecnocratic elite to whom 'Community, Identity, Stability', the World State Motto, is the supreme good.
Many interpratations have been written by far mor knowledgeable people than me... I won't pretend to have some new breakthrough. All I want it to comment about my reading of this great book.
In spite of our great achievements as a species, we seem to live a great paradox... Progress is built on contradictions, which build up until a crisis becomes inevitable. Revolution happens and tensions are dispersed, the structure is rearanged...
Why is this? I think it has to do with our short life span, if compared with the longer time spans society takes to change. Another factor might be that we tend to get a little too confortable with privileges. When stability permits, we build up economies based on work and trade in various forms, which sustain our lives and fufill our needs for food, useful objects, artwork and social interaction. In this process, hierarchies seem to be inevitable. So, when people are given the opportunity to lead the way and to direct efforts, they use it in order to obtain privileges... Oligarchies take place, as usual. As time goes by and the situation changes, power equilibria becomes more and more unstable, and if opportunities present itself, those in the bottom of the social pyramids seize it and, as Marx puts it, having not to lose they take up arms and the rest is history.
Not that I like Karl, I don't.
It all boils down to the theme of my late post. Knowledge and domination. Society and alienation. Stability and change.
The fall of religion and the rise of science, as the knwoledge authorities, came with the promise of rationality, stability... and once again we fooled ourselves into accepting that the new elite was somehow better than the old one, more wise, more benevolent. So we have let them rationalize everything: Production, war, trade, education. Revolutions, crisis, were a thing of the past, right?
Two great world wars, one cold war, thousands of nuclear warheads and a couple of financial crisis later, I think we know the answer.
This is not a crisis of the capitalistic system. It is not a crisis of western domination. It is not a crises of USA supremacy. Its history repeting itself. We just chose to forget, to turn a blind why to the past, and refuse to learn. We actually prefer to be lured into the easy solution of giving sovereignty to somebody else, to forego making decisions. And
A worker from the fertilizing room (where humans are made in the novel's world), when confronted by her little kid (who she was not supposed to have had 'viviparously') about things such as 'how helicopters work?'... It illustrates social alienation, which is the whole point of the book. It's about the superorganism idealized and implemented by a tecnocratic elite to whom 'Community, Identity, Stability', the World State Motto, is the supreme good.
Many interpratations have been written by far mor knowledgeable people than me... I won't pretend to have some new breakthrough. All I want it to comment about my reading of this great book.
In spite of our great achievements as a species, we seem to live a great paradox... Progress is built on contradictions, which build up until a crisis becomes inevitable. Revolution happens and tensions are dispersed, the structure is rearanged...
Why is this? I think it has to do with our short life span, if compared with the longer time spans society takes to change. Another factor might be that we tend to get a little too confortable with privileges. When stability permits, we build up economies based on work and trade in various forms, which sustain our lives and fufill our needs for food, useful objects, artwork and social interaction. In this process, hierarchies seem to be inevitable. So, when people are given the opportunity to lead the way and to direct efforts, they use it in order to obtain privileges... Oligarchies take place, as usual. As time goes by and the situation changes, power equilibria becomes more and more unstable, and if opportunities present itself, those in the bottom of the social pyramids seize it and, as Marx puts it, having not to lose they take up arms and the rest is history.
Not that I like Karl, I don't.
It all boils down to the theme of my late post. Knowledge and domination. Society and alienation. Stability and change.
The fall of religion and the rise of science, as the knwoledge authorities, came with the promise of rationality, stability... and once again we fooled ourselves into accepting that the new elite was somehow better than the old one, more wise, more benevolent. So we have let them rationalize everything: Production, war, trade, education. Revolutions, crisis, were a thing of the past, right?
Two great world wars, one cold war, thousands of nuclear warheads and a couple of financial crisis later, I think we know the answer.
This is not a crisis of the capitalistic system. It is not a crisis of western domination. It is not a crises of USA supremacy. Its history repeting itself. We just chose to forget, to turn a blind why to the past, and refuse to learn. We actually prefer to be lured into the easy solution of giving sovereignty to somebody else, to forego making decisions. And
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The dearest causes and the cheapest relations
Why can't we all be completely sincere?
If you think the reason is: We think a lot of shit about people and therefore speaking it all up would upset everybody in the end... What if there is one underlaying reason to explain both phenomena? Something like our terrible mental discipline? If all our thoughts were constructive, the best would be to speak all of them up!
What about the development of our brains? We have this genetic kit to ensemble a neural network so plastic it can adapt to almost any set of circumstances, and this information, by interacting with 'arbitrary' environments develop into functional operators. So we tend to relate these two instances (intrinsic and extrinsic factors) seeking for a directional cause going from one to the other. But what if we consider them both consequence to who you really are, or in another words, your decisions?
This is what karma means - Its what we have been doing acting as contrains for our current decisions ... Well, at least for me right now. But you'd have to assume reincarnation and a whole lot of other definitions of life and the universe to make this work. I'll deal with them later... =]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Ceci n'est pas une pipe
An object is the death of any self perceiving it. Wait, what?
'How exquisitely the individual mind to the external world
Is fitted-and how exquisitely, too
The external world is fitted to the mind
And the Creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish' - Willian Wordsworth
The subject-object relationship so characteristic of shallow rationality is only achieved when the very fabric of the lifeworld is teared appart. This is what we have been doing since time immemorial everytime nature and more specifically, humans, are subjected to alienation of their dignity for serving anothe's purposes. This is the nature of domination.
Material expressions crafted by humans only exist in terms of utility in the broadest sense. If anyone expent time, effort and resources towards the manifestation of an idea, it was carried out with a sense of purpose, however subcontious it may be. Hence the idea of a general utility. It does not matter if it has an actual use, i.e., artwork.
Une pipe, or a candle, or even this notebook where I'm editing this post, they are not objects. They have no existence outside the context of human society. The ideias which were conceived and designed and produced into these expressions are aspects of a lifeworld shared by subjects. To imagine that they might be a self standing institution is to reduce ourselves to mere epiphenomena of the neurophysiology and the underlying biochemestry - utimately, simple physics complicated by huge number of possible combinations and hugh extensions of time available for them to 'evolve'.
This materialism of sorts was brought about, methinks, by an idolatry of physics. This field of science was the single most succesful enterprise of subjective reason in its project of finding truth in the division of ever more 'fundamental' particles and their mathematicaly modelled relations. So, for some reason, all other areas of investigation have suffered one time or another of a jealousy leading scholars to try and 'physify' their areas of knowledge, coming to a redutionism ad nauseum.
The absolute dignity of life must not be bargained for a mundane kind of validation before the all mighty subjective reason.
....
Disclaimer: The rest of the post will be a series of digressions very loosely put together.
Anyhow, a intriguing (at least for me) question remains: the poem I cited at the beginning of this post, as well as that verse from the Tao stating that 'Tao created One. One created two. Two created three. And three created the Ten Thousand things' (Chapter 42, first phrase), they both postulate diremptive ontologies. Well, how to discern without diremption? The Tao indicates that beings come to be when the two modes of existence are discerned: Ying and Yang. This duality is in no way simmilar to the subject-object relationship of western phylosophy. It is analogue to electrical polarity or gender differenciation: they are the origin of parameters. The substance, in a Spninoza kind of definition, is characterized by these parameters, and this is how the three is expressed. The three, methinks, is the original being: a set of parameters of the substance, which evolves in a biological post-darwinist fashion.
Shall we talk about parameters? 'Para-' means beside, alongside, and '-meter' means measure. It is the one dimentional variable that either increases or decreases, the essence of a characteristic. It seems that we cannot reduce the idea of a characteristic further, nor in no way more precisely, than in the ideia of parameter.
So, the original absolute being impulse is to parametrize and then to refract itself in the parameters, creating all there is.
The creatures are free to participate in this evolution or to part themselves from the process. And I belive that this partition creates the material universes, such as ours. The big bang would be the rupture moment, and the expansion-retration, the sublation of the quintessential duality, that called Ying-Yang in the Taoistic tradition, into the expression of the multiple creatures. So everything is an expression of the refracted whole, or a shared subsidiary being, such as our concepts of useful tools, or our ideas of institutions, society or even this post. We must learn to respect the absolute dignity of all there is in the lifeworld. We must forget any ideas of objective knowledge, and try to know ourselves better in our relationships with all that surround us.
This 'cosmic sublation' is most visible in the evolution of life on Earth. There seems to be a sense of direction towards the ampliation of mentality. IMHO, the Earth Ecossystem is crafted to allow for life to evolve from simple cells to complicated communities, which become aware and so on. Beings, it seems to me, 'want' to come together and share. Communion seems to be the underlying purpose of communities. And this seems to breed specialization where scarcity reigns. Cells specialize just as professions do: The specialization is kind of a balance striken between the search for new possibilities and the necessity to choose paths.
Nevermind this teleology assumptions... the weakeness of my comprehension forces me to use it in this explanation. You will have to either agree or disagree with me on that and move on.
I do reckon, tho, that this whole 'objectifying of nature' has been terribly useful for creating ever more sophisticated tools for a ever more refined life. Let's not be these neoconcervatives longing for a return to the wild as the remedy for modernity excesses. I prefer to challenge myself to further these accomplishments, regarding the ampliation of possibilities as our goal, instead of the selfish acumulation of rewards. This greedy is at the bottom of the domination impulse and we should try harder to overcome this limitation on human potential.
Friday, May 22, 2009
On this blog, it's name, it's author and the first post
Deep trance states are regarded as 'altered mind states'. I contend such alterity concept, for all mind process are about altering states... So why name just a bunch as 'altered'? Let's not pretend there is a 'normal' mind state, ok? Let's get rid of all prejudices... Let's just talk about things and relations among things. I do not believe in anything beyond myself, for I am all the truth I am ever gonna know... So, know thyself, as they say...
Anyhow, I am starting this blog to write about anything, and, in the process, try to get to know a little more about meself. There will be one underlying proposal: I am here to talk about my thoughts. They are generally a huge mess, but you know, we only make sense of messes similar to our own mental mess so hopefully I will find someone who understands what I am trying to say here.
I won't define myself, for, as a famous Brazilian songwriter puts it, 'eu prefiro ser uma metamorfose ambulante...' (I prefer to be a walking metamorphose). I will come through in my writings as who I am, and they will reflect my opinion solely in that time and space so don't try to hold me accountable for any change of mind. They will be the any constant here.
So what do mind states have to do with anything? The point of the title is simple enough: I believe we are all in deep trance states and we simply don't realize it. So I won't try to look rational, organized or logical. I will simply put forward my words and hopefully receive some feedback from the Internet surfing community. That's all. I couldn't find any title more appropiate, so...
My first post is a link to a Hayek lecture upon receiving the Nobel prize in economics more de 30 years ago, and I find it to be most useful to the present state of the economy. It reflects the position of one of the greatest and humblest economists of all time IMO. Please go on and read it, there won't be one second of wasted time.
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