Soooo Strange

In this very very strange day and age in which we live, it can be hard to believe that reality really is stranger than fiction.

Why is that?

I've pondered this question in hundreds of different ways, to be led to the conclusion that the ontological nature of existence operates as the core referent in Human society. So, what is the ontological nature of reality?

My theory, or belief, is that mind and matter constitute two poles that are ontologically and dynamically created. In Karen Barads terms:

“In my agential realist elaboration of Bohr’s account, apparatuses are the material condition of possibility and impossibility of mattering; they enact what matters and what is excluded from mattering. Apparatuses enact agential cuts that produce determinate boundaries and properties of “entities” within phenomena, where “phenomena” are the ontological inseparability of agentially interacting components. That is, agential cuts are at once ontic and semantic. It is only through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of “components” of phenomena determinate and that particular articulations become meaningful. In the absence of specific agential intra-actions, these ontic-semantic boundaries are indeterminate. In short, the apparatus specifies an agential cut that enacts a resolution (within the phenomenon) of the semantic, as well as ontic, indeterminacy. Hence apparatuses are boundary-making practices.” – Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway; pg. 148, Duke, 2007

At once "ontic" and semantic means that reality in its continuing evolving is creating new phenomena not with 'external things', but as an "intra-activity' within the various material and semantic relationships that are being formed at the lowest levels (quarks) to the highest level (macroscopic organisms like Humans) as variously constituted "phenomena" interact with one another.

My sense - purely speculative, but strongly suggested by today's latest sciences - is that mind and matter are "unified" at the highest level of coherency in the body and being of the Human organism. Coherency is a function of the lifting of constraints. For example, look at Chimps and Bonobos. Consider what primatologists have to say about the difference between chimps and bonobo's:


1. Bonobos are sensitive, lively, and nervous, whereas chimpanzees are coarse and hot-tempered
2. Bonobo’s rarely raise their hairs; Chimpanzees often do so.
3. Physical violence almost never occurs in Bonobos, yet is common in Chimpanzees
4. Bonobos defend themselves through aimed kicking with their feet, whereas chimpanzees try to pull attackers close to bite them.
5. The Bonobo voice contains a and e vowels, whereas the chimpanzees uses more u and o vowels
6. Bonobos are more vocal than chimpanzees
7. Bonobo’s stretch their arms and shake their hands when calling, whereas chimpanzees do not
8. Bonobos copulate more hominum and chimpanzees more canum”

- Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, Frans De Waal, and Frans Lanting, pg. 9, University of California Press, 2011


If you study how this is, it becomes clear that the system the bonobo evolved in - an enclosed area just south of the congo river - it becomes eminently understandable how the loveable Bonobo's came to be: the constraint of being traumatized by threatening predators was moderately lifted, enough for the "neotonization" process to occur. Indeed, its quite plausible that our own ape-homo transition species was temperamentally like the Bonobo, which means that Hominization, or becoming Human, is fundamentally about affirming the Other.

As a person who studies Human psychological dysfunction (whatever happens to exist in myself, which serves as a model in recognizing similarities in it others) I know - quite absolutely - how horrible psychological trauma is to the Human brain. Indeed - its a disavowal of the very processes that underlined its emergence. Yet the Human organism is resilient to becoming devolved - that is, up until the present era i.e autism epidemic.

What is strange is what ha happened to the Human organism since around 75,000 years ago with the explosion of Mt. Toba. As a person with an epistemological sensitivity to the importance of science, I can't admit (as far as we know) fantasies like Atlantis or Mu or any other pre-civilization that precedes the oldest ones we know of i.e. Sumer. Myths - are not literally true, but definitely and witohut any doubt express the unconscious relational structure of the society the Human organism is existing within - and so constitutes a "transforming" sense of self and identity, projected into the "transcultura space".

I really do fear that even the so-called "elite" people who misunderstand the nature of mind-matter relations: their religion implies a dualism. It implies room for "inconsistency" within the self. It assumes matter and mind are irreconcilable opposites. It assumes that the "third" somehow stands apart from the 2 parts which create it. It advocates an ethics that is dreamy and wishful - impossible for a Human being because of the "three body problem of physics": just as it creates problems for astronomers seeking to predict an outcome, the same disorder arises when three humans think they can manage a relationship between them that doesn't inculcate within itself "rooms within rooms" of dissociation, filled with feelings and responses to feelings that are never known because the self has a fetish over the "Now" - as if such a philosophy were a sustainable orientation for a creature built by memory i.e. the past, and a capacity to project forward into the future.

The worst, though, is the sheer religiosity of these people: they are the most outrageously antropocentric minds that have ever existed. Instead of understanding the sense of 'being between two impulses' - itself being a function of the Humans INTEGRATION with other Humans (the "third" is the dynamical unity that emerges upon our individual sense of being i.e. embodied, unreflective awareness, in our coming together) itself a function of a progressive evolution (increasing complexity of structure IS progressive - its a lie to say it isn't when alligators haven't changed a bit) which began with a selfish drive (reptilian) to become increasingly animated - and motivated - by the implicit recognition of self in positive affective relations - such as play in social animals; then, finally, into the sorts of recognition that occur between Humans - when we experience the others positive feedback and feel the excitement it causes us.

For people who do not notice the above effect - this is a result of a conscious preoccupation with the self's own affects - meaning that the awareness of the self is almost always self-organizing not from a "conduit" type openness to what the world (other) reveals, but from the deficiency and hunger for stimulation that tends to animate its relations with the world.

Is it so impossible to believe that we are one thing, a "self", blasted into reality through an evolutionary (diachronic i.e. in time) dynamic of unfathomable vastness, to emerge on a planet within the context of the planets various interacting contexts - geosphere, hydrospher, atmosphere - each an emergent property, each helpong to generate other emergent properties? The diachronic - time - picture shows a remarkable unity.

Have fun in your little world.

But you are incredibly ignorant.

You use so many words to say that the way you experience things is empirically right.

You hold people to the endless nuances of discussion. This imparts no joy.

You issue subtle insults: living life is a "need for stimulation."

Refusing to be beholden to personalities like yours is "stunted."

What made you so bitter?

Rhetorical question because it's your responsibility to change.


You also could say the same thing in less words, like when someone offends you, say, "you offended me."

Don't leave us to police your subtle rage..

Whoa..
Very deep. I will need to reread your post and think about it some more when I can focus my mind better. S&F for your well thought out musings.

Eta; hmm.. I got something totally different from that.. will reread.

75,000 years? Where and how do you come up this? I imagine the Earth is very old. That's my theory. I have no idea how old mankind is. How do we measure that? Carbon 14? Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years so decays fairly quickly to unusable proportions. Come on man. Get real, and be honest. Im extending my hand to you. I do not expect to have a Chimp response

a reply to: breakingbs

I'm not sure what you're so upset about.

I can't even comment on anything you wrote because you haven't provided me much context.

a reply to: Astrocyte
Its not strange at all if you think about it. All of human history is mostly of fear, and even in human relationships in most anybody its the things they have in mutual common as a fear or hate that really binds them together love is merely an after effect in most cases.

Even today and even online on such social sites, you see groups who are for so and so or part of the blue or part of the green come together, its not there mutual love that attracts them but more or less there mutual dislike or hidden hate for the other group that gets them to coalesce into a group. Yes what I am trying to say is that your fears, hates, misunderstanding, intolerance, and everything else as a whole both in group and individuality are for the most part more stronger then the other things which would bind people together such as love.

Republicans and democrats, liberals and progressives, now ain't that right? And anybody who is above or not in the designated group so neatly laid out for people, now they would be in trouble.

As for fearing the night and all things you do not understand? There is a long and very real reason for that, one that has been so ingrained into the human animal DNA down to the molecule and atom which is also very real. There is a reason why people fear the night, and there is a reason why they should. And in past times in humanities infancy, being such a weak animal, and at the mercy of pretty much everything else.

Well you get the picture. They say humans evolved from apes, but its more or less that they evolved from a big bonobo type apish creature, fear has been the driving force of our humanity, and from fear like the bonobos you get sex and violence as a way to cope with the little bubble they are trapped in and the fears that is ultimately driving them, and everything else that comes after and latter from that foundation.

We may be living in the golden age of humanity for all anybody knows. Now ain't that a scary thought?

The beginning is the end, is the beginning, is the end. Reminds me of a song. Oh ya, this one by smashing pumpkins, so totally strange. Like so totally strange and stuff.

a reply to: Astrocyte


Oh baloney. Everything within your text is self referential and holding your tastes above others within the framework of a so called philisophical discussion. Stop hiding.

a reply to: visitedbythem

Humans left Africa (according to recent paleontological evidence) around 80-70 thousand years ago. 75,000 years volcanologists claim that a super-volcano exploded on the island of Toba, off on Indonesia.

Many Paleoanthropologists believe that Homo Sapiens left Africa as a function of the climatological effects of Toba on Northern Africas environment, also where some of the densest evidence of Human habitation comes from i.e. Eastern Africa all the way up into Chad and the southern Sahara.

So, I think its plausible to reason that Humans were knocked out of an equilibrium with their environments by Toba. That is, since then, Humans began wandering the Earth, first the Israel region (70,000 year old settlements have been found) then outwards towards towards southern Asia. 40,000 years ago, Humans began to appear in Europe. Then they appeared in Australia, and finally, in the America's.

There are many ways to date bones. Not just carbon dating.

Unless you intend on plugging your ears and avoiding reality - most people have eyes to see, ears to hear and have no problem at all appreciating the brilliance of Human beings in discovering legitimate objective ways to understand the history of our being - planet - and universe.

originally posted by: breakingbs
a reply to: Astrocyte


Oh baloney. Everything within your text is self referential and holding your tastes above others within the framework of a so called philisophical discussion. Stop hiding.

In other words, what you are saying: It is Pride driven trash?
I concur

a reply to: breakingbs

Science is not taste. It is- fundamentally better knowledge.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't go to experts in specific fields when you have a problem.

Science is rules...for the game. Doesn't mean the rules aren't ever changing/malleable.

I believe there is a group of beings who are playing a game and at the center of the game is a single human life. Call this life "the ball" if you will. There IS dualism involved because there HAS to be when competing...when playing a game where only one side can "win".

Everything hinges on the directions this human life takes. Which sex it becomes, which interests it has, etc. The problem we're having right now and the reason the apocalypse is upon us is that the "ball" doesn't want to be used anymore for their games and wants to know the truth. The real truth, not the fake "scientific" truth that is only being used in this particular game.

-ball

originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: breakingbs

Science is not taste. It is- fundamentally better knowledge.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't go to experts in specific fields when you have a problem.

I was criticizing you, not science.


That and you can't blame everyone for not being a scientist. You would probably make a crappy firefighter but who am I to judge.

You're doing your "you" thing, and you are gleefully aware of it. I'm Audi. No more complications from YOU!


(Gives best soup Nazi salute..)

a reply to: Astrocyte
As a matter of fact, your ears have been plugged for you. Many bones have been removed, and are not spoken of. Skeletal remains. Those who bring this up are harassed, and attacked. What is the agenda? What is there to hide?

So did Karen Barads get drunk one night and trip over a thesaurus and decide to write that thesis using as many obsolete or possibly conjectured words as she could type?

What a load of gibberish!

Too bad you couldn't decipher it better for us plebes. I mean seriously do people actually converse like this and expect to be understood? And labels what's with all these labels. You know what we're all humans as flawed as we may be and as ignorant or as enlightened as we may be we are meaningless in the universal scale. We don't matter and we barely exist.

Yeah pictures or it isn't happening!

Sorry it's ATS and I couldn't help myself

a reply to: Astrocyte

Thoughtful examination of our circumstances. Consider that creating your own reality isn't outside your capabilities. Perhaps the "third" works outside of the resources and intent of the elite? You'll be the only one to know for sure!

a reply to: breakingbs
Keep in mind not all scientist agree with this theory.
My Pops is one who disagrees. He is a 90 year old super genius. He has many titles. Among them, Chemist, Microbiologist, Parasitologist, Director of Research for a fortune 500 company, a Stanford man, with a medical background as well. He has been summoned to the White house for meetings with Americas top leaders.
Let me sum it up for you. He says most of what is written is the op is crap. That is the worst word I have ever heard him use in all my life

a reply to: TheFatefulDay
You hit the nail on the head with this one
"intent of the elite"

It is about control, and loss of rights. Animals don't have rights

a reply to: visitedbythem

You must forgive his confabulation he is prone to the beliefs of others as absolute truth and frightened by the paradox you present to his brainwashed sensibilities...
In other words he cannot respond to your questions he has no thoughts of his own because nobody has provided him the answer for him to regurgitate...

double

a reply to: TheFatefulDay

Perhaps the "third" works outside of the resources and intent of the elite?

Interesting. Examples?