PapaElijah
Bluelighter
What is life but a way of understanding, renaming and reducing and applying the concept of systems and relationships in a way to maximize well being? Science is obsessed with concept or reduction, but what philosophy and the human mind seeks is irreducibility, a concept that you take for granted and in essence, a closed system that you cannot see within. But apart from words, I always use words and at time like this they feel quite comfortable, there's something to be said for feeling as well. There’s a feeling of emptiness in a sense, listlessness and wonderment about purpose, what is there to make me comfortable about the way I live my life. Life is lived in the imperfect tense, generally speaking. It’s completion and perfection on small scales, but viewed microscopically or macroscopically these perfections do not hold, and it is this duality which our existence is based upon. We live and are in essence, an instantiated potentiality. At any point in time, the possibility exists that we shall not exist, but we should deal with this when the moment arrives. Our consciousness can be a made a tool of adaptation, even though it seems an anomaly and indeed even an abhorrence of nature at times. The idea of consciousness is indeed in conflict with any idea of natural stability and perfection. The essence of consciousness is to know, to grasp and to understand. Because in accordance with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, in order to know anything about a given particle (or idea or anything) we must disturb that thing. What we now know is different from what we sought to know originally. We do not know the object for what it is; we know the object for what it is under investigation. But if investigation is a given in perception, then everything that we percieve can be nothing else than under investigation, so what it is under investigation is what it is. But anyway, back to the feeling that I seek each day. What from this experience can change that feeling, make me still open to new ideas but yet comfortable in my way of life and inquisitive and inclined to know and enjoy. I suppose the idea that life is a game would be the best approach. And the idea of a game is in probability. You can always lose, no matter how masterful you are. So mastery is the goal, but mastery entails knowledge of probability, and the probability of the unknown occurring is very real. You are seeking to beat the system, to know the system, and to enjoy the system all at once, but the fact is, you are the system. The statements above are seemingly perceptual givens, and I think I should hold to these as I live my life. I cannot live my life in fear of potentiality, but I must master what I can within my perception and accept the prospect of the unknowable, and when it arrives, seek to know. I now understand what Ashir meant by his statement "the point of life is for it to continue." Now I must wonder how I will look back on this moment and I am glad I have saved these writing, for Jung says that the psychedelic experience is a dangerous thing, as one faces the prospect of psychic immaturity in dealing with the contents of these experiences. But I suppose all this writing is futile, because the very thing I am trying to capture I know cannot be put into words. That is the essence of story, myth, and narration. you know that someone else (or even yourself at a different time) cannot literally interpret the words and find (out how you felt when you wrote that passage, but that the story in itself embodies certain ideas that indicate how you felt, and that they can identify with those ideas. it just seems like words upon words to me, more names for more things and the process continues, but I suppose that's the point of it all, the goal is the action and vice versa. it is an equilibrium. consciousness should be concerned with the reestablishment of equilibrium in order to avoid drastic thermodynamic expenditures (which would in turn, increase entropy). But why should we fear entropy, why should we fear disorder and presumably, annihilation? We shouldn't, when we wink out of existence it will simply happen and that is that, but until then preservation seems the most likeable route. Why? I don't know, these questions cannot be answered, it comes back to this feeling I am having, and that imperfection in a sense is the goal. it mostly in describable, like how planets orbit their centers but never come into contact with them unless their are going to be annihilated. A black hole is an interesting concept, because you will orbit around the meaning for a long period of time. but once you come into contact with that meaning (the hole) you are doomed in the understanding of most (and our perception), for within that black hole is the unknowable, and the unknowable is annihilation (we cannot know what it is to not exist, since we exist. instantiated beings cannot truly know what it is to be uninstantiated). To know something (perfectly speaking) is to be able to manipulate it to an incredibly precise point. but the only things you are totally capable of manipulating is yourself, and you can't even do that to a perfect degree most of the time. The self is on the brink, the meniscus, the membrane of existence on nonexistence. Order is existence, and disorder is nonexistence, and there is equilibrium between these two. But the self is not totally either of these.
All we are is this perceptual camera, constantly changing perspective and orbiting to get a good shot on ourselves. But we are the camera. Consciousness is faced with the dilemma of understanding something that is always changing. We can only know the principles that the system changes upon (and even these principles can change) with any real degree of certainty. Our perceptual principles are the only things we can perceive with certainty. Consciousness is engaged, ultimately in knowing itself, and part of itself is unknowable (because it is a potential, it does not exist quite yet), and so in the end consciousness must sit back and have its cigar and say "we will continue this tomorrow." consciousness as a limit approaching infinity? It never reaches the limit per se, but part of the definition of the function (and thus consciousness) is its limit. So why study mathematics or biochemistry or philosophy? I would be inclined to say science, because reflection on perception itself generally yields no results, but investigation of the objects of perception generally yields fruit because the investigation is a microcosm or instantiation of us at any given time. Philosophy looks to complete the circle, science, rather, follows the line (in the Euclidean sense of a line being and infinite collection of sequential points).
It’s all perceptual cat and mouse play. Consciousness itself is the one anomaly and unpredictability in the system. the system is not quite what is should be because something within it seeks to know, seeks to change, apply in order to know more etc etc
Please do not linger to long on any ignorance of modern physics and/or philosophy displayed in this rant
All we are is this perceptual camera, constantly changing perspective and orbiting to get a good shot on ourselves. But we are the camera. Consciousness is faced with the dilemma of understanding something that is always changing. We can only know the principles that the system changes upon (and even these principles can change) with any real degree of certainty. Our perceptual principles are the only things we can perceive with certainty. Consciousness is engaged, ultimately in knowing itself, and part of itself is unknowable (because it is a potential, it does not exist quite yet), and so in the end consciousness must sit back and have its cigar and say "we will continue this tomorrow." consciousness as a limit approaching infinity? It never reaches the limit per se, but part of the definition of the function (and thus consciousness) is its limit. So why study mathematics or biochemistry or philosophy? I would be inclined to say science, because reflection on perception itself generally yields no results, but investigation of the objects of perception generally yields fruit because the investigation is a microcosm or instantiation of us at any given time. Philosophy looks to complete the circle, science, rather, follows the line (in the Euclidean sense of a line being and infinite collection of sequential points).
It’s all perceptual cat and mouse play. Consciousness itself is the one anomaly and unpredictability in the system. the system is not quite what is should be because something within it seeks to know, seeks to change, apply in order to know more etc etc
Please do not linger to long on any ignorance of modern physics and/or philosophy displayed in this rant
