DIALOGUES page 9
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Ierrellus 09.23.06 9.37 (9)
Jakob wrote:
It takes two to tango and three is a crowd...
Ierrellus wrote:
What is important for me to understand is whether two indicates complementation or polarity.
Jakob wrote:
How could there be complementation without polarity? If one thing complements the other, it is necessarily characterized by complementary properties.... or do I misunderstand you?
I'd like to ask you to read this short essay by Aleister Crowley on the subject of duality:
http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/littleessays/love.html It is written in a very strange style and by no means a scientific explanation, but if anything, it should widen the scope of your thoughts regarding the subject.
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Doug 09.23.06 9.38 (9)
Jakob, your previous posts were eloquent, pertinent, supportive and gratefully received. Ierrellus, I shouldn't have to tell you again how much I have appreciated your insight and unlimited supply of relevant quotes. However, I have a feeling that you two are about to take my thread in a direction in which I do not want it to go, toward obtuse obscurity.
I started this thread to introduce my view of life. Jakob, I read the essay at the link you provided. Then I had a nap, reread it and I still didn't understand the author's view of love. Thus I have no clue how to relate it to "Life: a reaction to the void". If you can relate it to the title of this thread please continue. If it has no relevance, please start a thread on numerology and carry on.
Here, if you would like to read and comment on it, is the link to my really simple-minded essay on love. Also read LOVE
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Ierrellus 09.24.06 9.39 (9)
Doug,
Perhaps Jakob or I should start a separate thread in which we discuss the issues of complementation and polarity. These issues are entirely relevant to your discussions since they tell of how we relate to the void, of what perspectives we take in considering anything. I'm sorry if that does not relate to your intentions in doing this thread. At this point, I'm wondering what those intentions are. Do you want agreement without dissent? Are we remiss if we do not follow your idea of what we should say?
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Doug 09.24.06 9.40 (9)
I really want you to stay and talk to me Ierrellus. I'll explain myself in a bit. At the moment though I have to prepare breakfast for my Mom and me.
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Doug 09.25.06 9.41 (9)
My intention here, as with all my writing, is quite likely the same as yours when you started your thread the "5th paradigm". I want feedback to my view of life. The feedback can be positive as yours and Jakob's have been, it can be negative which some has been or it can be silence as a huge amount has been. I would like a lot more but I won't get any more if my thread breaks.
This thread, like I believe life has, will break if we become polarized. A couple posts ago I felt the three of us were a perfect complement. I could have panicked but when Jakob introduced that esoteric essay on love I felt that you two were going to become one in a conversation that was going to polarize us. The separation didn't bother me but the thought of you taking my thread with you did for it would then no longer provide the feedback I wanted, the original intention of my thread. You have been equally protective of your threads. Please don't think I am being unreasonable for wanting to protect mine.
I think you can see I fully understand the significance of "complementation and polarity". They are completely relevant to this post. In my view however, I talk about the absolute conflict characteristic of the absolutely restrictive reaction to the void. I am thinking you would use the term absolute "polarity" to describe the situation in which everyone is opposed to every one else. At the ideal point in my continuum of reactions to the void I talk about universal unconditional cooperation. Does that sound like a precise definition of absolute "complementation"? Let's talk more about these ideas. Perhaps we can elicit additional feedback.
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Ierrellus 09.26.06 9.42 (9)
Doug,
Here are the problems I face. First, when I wake up in the mornings, I have to use whatever energy is available to me. First I read. Then I write. Then I go to the web for communication. The hospital poems are nearly two decades old. I don't spend much time there these days. Second, I found your topic to be one that is very important and is discussed in much philosophic and theological writings. 10,000 people have looked at the thread. Yet only a few comment. That is discouraging. Third, I have my own questions about how much of our take on the human condition is socially conditioned attitude. If I were a native living in a tribe deep in the Amazon, would my take on life not be what the tribe is able to think? Would I question the validity of my existence or its purpose at all? I tried to get responses to this problem in two other threads, without much success. Fourth, I probably discourage participation by my insistence on biopsychology, something many do not find meaningful. I can argue moving potential and "white void" to the max without stirring an ounce of critical thinking from those who must have absolutes, ultimates, time-stopped-change, immobile references for self evaluation.
Yes, that's me with guitar and harmonica. I've since grown a beard--look like Karl Marx!!!
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Jakob 09.27 06 12.3 (9)
You're right, I should not have introduced that essay. It only obscured what I was trying to explain, and it draws the correspondence into the details polarity and away from the elementary meaning of the thread as I understood it.
Let me offer a simple quote to get back to the context of the void and the last why:
"If I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree"
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I think that all successful existence comes about by unconditionally supporting the 'other elements in the equation' one is part of, or one chooses to be part of. Such a cooperation is always a journey towards the unknown, as it is based on the acceptance of a lot of unknowns.
The basis of this basing-on, that is, the reason for the cooperation and the necessary faith in it's outcome, is what I would call a primordial will, which is apparently aimed at developing a seed into a rose, for reasons which I can only understand in a term like beauty.
I am defenseless in the face of this will, I can either accept it as a great mercy and source of energy challenging me to rise above what I am, or just be reasonable, have nothing to do with such fantasies and find all the energy fleeting from my life.
Ha - I'm truly grateful to be able to formulate this; the void, to me, is 'being reasonable'.
I thought it over under the shower and concluded that what I mean here by reasonable is to only take into account the known in an equation - and considering the unknowns, until they are known, as negatives.
A white void is possibility, a black void uncertainty, unreliability - danger. A white void sustains, a black void threatens to take away.
The constant challenge, in my life, is to react to the white void even if the black void seems more reasonable.
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Doug 09.27.06 12.4 (9)
Ierrellus, Jakob, I am having trouble thinking of a word to describe the feeling your posts evoke so I won't. I will delay commenting so that I don't put any more distance between them and the end of the thread with what I have to say. Nice avatar Ierrellus. I knew you were featured on the ILP banner but I didn't know which one you were. Now I know, second from the left. Nice to meet more of you. I have two pics of me on my web site but when it comes to a choice between them and the rose, the rose wins. I'll talk to you later.
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Doug 09.28.06 12.5 (9)
The word I was looking for is harmony and not because it gives me the opportunity to link to a poem. The apparent harmony of thought seems spontaneous and natural; and I don't see it as you two agreeing with what I have said. I claim the thread but not the ideas. I hope we are agreeing on what the 'voice' of humanity is saying and I don't think we are the only ones able to hear the message. I hear it occasionally in statements on other threads but it remains isolated because generally we haven't gotten beyond thinking, "This is mine" to the point of saying "I hear the same message". I think if we could break that dam there would be a flood of agreement from far more than "10,000".
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Doug 09.28.06 9.43 (9)
Now Ierrellus, my common sense response to your question, "If I were a native living in a tribe deep in the Amazon, would my take on life not be what the tribe is able to think?", is yes. To your question "Would I question the validity of my existence or its purpose at all?" my answer is no. My guess is their philosophy would involve a harmonious relationship with nature, wisdom I suggest we need to regain. I am not sure exactly what you have in mind when you think of biopsychology. It is interesting though that near the end of my thread "Knowledge & Understanding" I introduced the term biophilosophy. I defined it as: the use of reason and argument in seeking truth and knowledge of reality, especially...human nature, based on biological facts. In response Obw wrote "sounds like a reduced-emissions philosophy..not necessarily a bad idea!" Unfortunately that brilliant reply was the last 'twist' of the thread. It was unraveled by two posts that argued about the importance of studying history. (Once again, forgive my defensive stance.)
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Doug 09.28.06 12.6 (9)
Jakob wrote:
Ha - I'm truly grateful to be able to formulate this; the void, to me, is 'being reasonable'.
I thought it over under the shower and concluded that what I mean here by reasonable is to only take into account the knowns in an equation - and considering the unknowns, until they are known, as negatives.
A white void is possibility, a black void uncertainty, unreliability - danger. A white void sustains, a black void threatens to take away.
The constant challenge, in my life, is to react to the white void even if the black void seems more reasonable.
Even before your shower cleaned up your formulation I suspected you didn't mean exactly what you said. I was going to translate "being reasonable" to, being, with reasons; and "the absolutes, ultimates, time-stopped-change, immobile references for self-evaluation" that Ierrellus mentioned to what I call somewhat restrictive reactions to the void.
Jakob, yesterday I published my poem GOD. Later as I scanned the philosophy threads I saw your name so I clicked. Within your post I found..." 'God' is a name for a possibility. It focuses the will and strengthens the heart." That would look good in your signature. Thanks to you too for sharing some of your time with me.
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Jakob 09.28.06 12.7 (9)
Doug - I like your poem. The thought that came to me was that the revolution that is necessary in religion is not about setting people free from their dogma, but about liberating God from people's dogma. If anyone is trapped here, it's God. I think this change of focus might release some tied up strength. If God exists, I mean if we assume this, then certainly he does no like to be tied up in a knot. Who knows what He'll do when he smells freedom.
I think poetry is a good way to give God space to play around.
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Ierrellus 09.29.06 9.44 (9)
Jakob,
Testy is good! You think for yourself. I like the Greek idea of plenitude--a whole comprised of ultimate variety. Our lack of harmony on the globe and in debates may be due to our intolerance of variety, our personal agendas seen as the only possible world views. What a bland world this would be if there were only roses and no daisies.
Doug,
Biopsychology (See Cosimedes & Tooby) is a relatively new approach to human understanding. Dewey's essay collection, "On Darwin and Other Essays" is probably a good start here. The theme does, however, have a history going back to Spinoza and beyond. Patricia Churchland's "Neurophilosophy" and E. O. Wilson's "Consilience" represent current trends in biopsychology. Both Dawkins and Pinker are into it. OBW was right.
Harmony may be the individual right to coexist and be different, not some forced homogeniety prompted by anyone's ideas of the way things should be for everyone.
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Doug 09.30.06 9.45 (9)
Ierrellus, it seems to me we might have lost a significant piece of common ground; but then, perhaps not. In my view we have tolerated the increasing variety of world views long enough. The consequence of this variety is the discord, conflict and self-destruction that characterizes our existence. We are becoming more and more alike in defending our different world views, increasingly restricted by and indistinguishable in our ever improving 'helmets and bulletproof vests'.
I believe we can achieve harmony only by having the same biophilosophical world view, the one that allows us each to become what we are capable of being, without reasons (religious/philosophical world views), "absolutes, ultimates and immobile references for self-evaluation" to quote one of your recent posts. I call this common world view the ideal reaction to the void. It is becoming by reaching out to the limits of our capacities, to others and to God. I see it resulting in "a whole comprised of ultimate variety", a humanity of individuals coexisting without coercion, in complete harmony.
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Doug 09.30.06 12.8 (9)
Jakob wrote:
Doug - I like your poem. The thought that came to me was that the revolution that is necessary in religion is not about setting people free from their dogma, but about liberating God from people's dogma. If anyone is trapped here, it's God. I think this change of focus might release some tied up strength. If God exists, I mean if we assume this, then certainly he does no like to be tied up in a knot. Who knows what He'll do when he smells freedom.
I think poetry is a good way to give God space to play around.
Jakob, I am disappointed you haven't added your statement that " 'God' is a name for a possibility. It focuses the will and strengthens the heart." to your signature. It is pure poetry. Thanks too for adding further to the discussion of God and again not going beyond the possibility.
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Ierrellus 09.30.06 9.46 (9)
Doug,
The ancient conundrum, expressed in mythologies, religions and philosophies, is how to reconcile concepts of the one (individuals) with concepts of the many(diversities). There can be no problem with diversity if it comprises the ingredients necessary for a larger, more humane whole. In that sense, for me to believe I have the only truths about humans is solypsistic, divisive and often fatal. If I am led to believe that my individual contribution to humanity is viable and good, my difference is not the difference that destroys; it is part of the spices that make for a good recipe.
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Ierrellus 10.03.06 9.47 (9)
There is no way I would wish to trash a thread as timely as this one is. I would, however, ask that some of its fundamental assertions be explained. The most pertinent to me is whether or not there is a universal reaction to the void, one that can be found in the written or oral traditions of all humans.
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Jakob 10.03.06 12.9 (9)
When the void is taken to mean 'meaninglessness', as it can be, then the first real reaction to the void in western philosophy came in the form of Nietzsche's idea that life can only justify itself, that there is no predefined context, no purpose, no structure to relate it to and to provide it with substance.
I think many interpretations of the great monotheistic faiths have been denials of the void. Zarathustra's observation that God is dead means to me that the void is again the void, instead of a hypothetical reality.
As frightening as this void is to people who have no personal meaning in their lives - existence would become devoid of meaning - so encouraging is it to those who do recognize that seed of reality that they discovered at a certain moment, when they were invited into the mystery of life. A challenge, which can only be answered proudly, boldly - I will CREATE meaning. That is my reaction to the void. I think, to put it impossibly naive, that the first thought existence had when it came into existence was; 'if I am going to exist anyway, there is point in holding back!'
That's the only explanation I can think of for existence not to be a mass of nano-goo. My answer to the question that Darwin left to be answered.
Whether or not this, or another reaction, is written in the different scriptures of the worlds history I don't know. Of course in Zen, all joy in life is a reaction to the experience of the void, the experience of the void is the first reaction to the void. The experience means that the experiencer must be separate from the void, which is a purely extactic awareness of undeniable and undivided existence.
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Ierrellus 10.05.06 9.48 (9)
"Creativity is our image of God"--Nicholas Berdyaev. Yes!!!. And that is why I attempt to describe the potentials involved in physical evolution, upon which mental evolution is built, as excursions into the unknown, but not unknowable, as reaches into a bounty of possibility. IMHO, this universal, physical excursion is a reaction to the void that sustains and verifies existence.
What does your geometric design signify? I'm into experiential geometry.
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