Soooo Strange

Somtimes you feel like a nut.

Try learning about Great Platonic Cycles, that would be a good start...

Monkeys aren't going to teach you anything.

a reply to: FlukeSkywalker

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

What "games". Why do you assume that you are "in a game"?

If you could 'step' outside yourself, and actually respect the facts of Human scientific investigation into the origin and evolution of matter from the big bang until now, you would not see our existence in this world as any sort of arbitrary game.

If you can just accept - as I and most people who subscribe to science implicitly accept - that we are social animals, then you will understand that what we are is history in motion. Matter, meaning, mutually entangled into one anothers structure.

The real issue is existence: do you appreciate it? Do you think its worth keeping around?

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".

Ok. That is your religious faith. A strange faith. A faith no different from scientology or jehovah's witnesses or worshippers or Haruman the monkey God. It's an idiosyncratic delusion - a harsh word, yes, but delusion because it forms its understanding of life, phenomena and its self-in-the-world with personal narratives i.e. "good vs. evil", a "group of beings" controlling things: from my perspective, you seem to be projecting meaning from an underground world of feeling relations with other human beings. Since we are all Humans - all physical beings with brains and blood flowing through our veins - we are all formed in the same way. Imagine asteroids flowing through space: in a sort of "topological" mathematical space, humans undergo different experiences of the environment. These different experiences result in different expectations. Desired or dreaded expectations form the backbone of motivation-formation.

The world you have come to inherit from your fore-fathers, if it at all recommended or encouraged immoral or unethical behavior towards other Humans, has seriously put you in a jumble.

If you have a faith - and need a faith - fine. If you want me to say "your faith is true, probably even in truer than mine", that would be sycophantic of me - because that isn't the truth i.e. the reality of things.

In other words, my intelligent friend: if you can't provide empirical evidence for a belief you have, that qualifies as a religious faith (which, from my perspective, is a function of you being an animal with affective needs that derive from your animality). You are absolutely convinced that I am wrong - but you cannot communicate that meaningfully, because, of course, you believe yourself to be quite "special" - to have knowledge of a nature that somehow comes from "without" the system, as opposed to - as it seems to my psychoanalytically inclined mind - to a fantasy of an intelligent group or culture i.e. a fantasy mediated through the bodies of already existing beings?

The tendency to trace such thoughts and narratives to some other universe or reality strikes me as naive and out of touch with the reality of the world we live in.

Civilization has largely been one big fantasy: the Human lost touch with the natural world - with animality - with its OWN animality - that it has lost touch with the dynamic inter-woven nature of things: in created cities "in lines", it has deluded itself about the nature of reality.

“Only with the development of farming did we have to discipline ourselves to think linearly: following a plan from one point to another across weeks or months. Before long we were ploughing in straight lines, making hedges and ditches and tracks in straight lines, building houses and then towns in straight lines. Now almost every aspect of our lives is lived within grids, either concrete or abstract. Linearity, control, and management dominate our lives. We fetishize progress: a continuous movement in the same direction. We impose our lines on the messy, contradictory, and meandering realities of the Human world, because otherwise we would be completely lost in it. We make compartments simple enough, amid the labyrinths we’ve created, to navigate and understanding.” – George Monbiot, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, pg. 92, Verso, 2016

a reply to: knightsofcydonia

Yes, a nice faith. Not proven - just a belief you have - and apparently an experience that gives you pride.

a reply to: 5StarOracle

I do understand that, but we are far more than mere star dust.

I confess to my own faith. If I'm going to nitpick at other people, I should also point out that besides empirically sourced knowledge with consistent (regular) values, I have a religious sort of faith in the perpetuity of life.

If one reads Stuart Kauffman's latest book, "Humanity in a Creative Universe", Kauffman makes the somewhat mystical claim that the "potentia" dimension is just as real as the actuated dimension. Between these two poles, Kauffman says, lies the "poised realm".

Since matter has already accumulated a very long history, the Human lies within and as an expression of matters dynamics.

In short - all of us exist, and may continue existing as a function of those desires we have that relate to the future. These desires may constitute ontological phenomena that become "actuated" back into existence when a particular ecological state supports the continuation of our mind-stream.

Do I have evidence for this claim? Kauffman's latest book indicates that this proposal can be tested, but I haven't checked up on its present status.

In any case, I tend to talk with this sort of idea in the background of mind. Perhaps its audacious to think that our capacity to 'witness' the world is the Universe witnessing itself through the creation of a system of entangled monads that change and transform as space-time continues to expand outward, until conditions arise on a planet (or planets...I'm also ignorant about life elsewhere, although it seems very plausible) for life to form, which entails a "dialectic" between an "inside" and an outside system - whirlpools upon whirlpools, helping to restructure one another's existences.

I could be wrong about this, but I have a religious faith that the desires which animate me today will be reanimated again at another time in the serial-progression of the evolution of life on Earth.

In order to test your theory, we need all evidence. If some is removed from the control , it will not produce truth. We need to follow the steps. When someone removes some of the Information for scientists to form their opinions on, their opinions become irrelevant . Its like being on a jury. You will likely be instructed by the judge that anyone who is caught in a lie, or embellishment can and should have their testimony thrown out by you.
Lets practice the same, and be logical Beings

I like your posts. I've subscribed to them all.

“Only with the development of farming did we have to discipline ourselves to think linearly: following a plan from one point to another across weeks or months. Before long we were ploughing in straight lines, making hedges and ditches and tracks in straight lines, building houses and then towns in straight lines. Now almost every aspect of our lives is lived within grids, either concrete or abstract. Linearity, control, and management dominate our lives. We fetishize progress: a continuous movement in the same direction. We impose our lines on the messy, contradictory, and meandering realities of the Human world, because otherwise we would be completely lost in it. We make compartments simple enough, amid the labyrinths we’ve created, to navigate and understanding.” – George Monbiot, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, pg. 92, Verso, 2016

"It is all part of the culture of tidiness," says ecologist Cath Turtle. "Animals such as dormice need untidy woodland edges and scrubby fields with tall hedges to act as corridors linking populations. But many of these places have gone because of a fear that they look untidy."

You'd make your points better if you omitted some academic jargon. I've read many of your posts, and admire your obvious drive and enthusiasm for certain topics, shown by your prolific output. However, I increasingly get the impression that you haven't considered your audience even once and worse, that you enjoy responding passive-aggressively to those who bother to point out that your writings are largely inaccessible.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

If the "third" is an evolution of human synchronicity, it might be impossible for an elitist to control - regardless of the resources available to the elite.

An outlier might be introduced into the synchronized effort which may effect the end-state in an unpredictable or spontaneous manner. If the elitist fails to detect these early enough, an X factor could cause irreparable damage to the desired outcome.

Trying to keep it short, but here's an attempt at examples:

Currency is a fair example. The goal of most monetary systems is to increase the value of the note or token being exchanged. Black markets might emerge because the monetary system places controls on the note, and it becomes impractical because other, more accessible tokens or notes can be exchanged. Or maybe there is too little regulation on the note, it is easily forged, or overvalued in certain areas.

An outlier could be anything unforeseen. Chi gong, David Koresh, deepthroat, faulty lithium batteries. An outlier doesn't have to exist in the parameters of the elitist's framework, either. As long as new players exist on the board, they could take the game in unexpected directions. It doesn't always have to end badly for people either, there's a lot of room for perception here.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I am not sure that Mind and Matter should require such a long sientific , empirical and religious (not in the litteral sense) post.

I would have put it simply as : mind = matter. You can experience it for yourself if you would cast away your scientific tools of analysis for a short while.

Sadly one of the consequence of too much scientific and empirical thinking is to create boxes within boxes within boxes.