Dinosaurs, Solar Systems and Humans!

Confronted By Existential Meaning

I just wanted to elaborate on what I wrote yesterday on dinosaurs because I think, even if we can't explain how consciousness relates with matter, we are nevertheless existing in a world that accosts us again and again with existential meaning. Really, it is hilarious how we align ourselves as 'atheists' or 'theists' 'materialists' and 'idealists'. Fact is, were living in a freaking STRAGE LOOPY world where fractal patterns appear over and over and over again.

We can either ask ourselves: is the universe speaking to us? And if it is, what is it saying?

The evolution of Organisms: Dinosaurs and Humans

When you look at the evolution of life on planet earth, I just want to hone in on one particular organism: Dinosaurs, and how these enormous creatures captivate our human imagination.

What, you might ask, should the existence of dinosaurs have for human beings? Why should it matter? It matters a lot! And it matters in a way that boggles our imagination, simply because the significance I'm about to highlight is purely metaphorical. If philosophers of mind are correct, the unique capacity of human thinking is our ability to tranpose bodily feelings into symbolic structures we call "concepts".

If were honest and not arbitrarily exclusive in our definition of evolutionary processes, then human concepts are as much a creation of evolutionary process as any physical organism. In fact, anything that emerges, and has existed, can be seen retrospectively as an "accretion" to what existed in the past.

Dinosaurs as a Historical Metaphor for Human Beings

My argument rests on the concept of fractals: with evolution, NOTHING seems to be lost, but contained and "folded in" within the development of any future system. EVERYTHING that exists seems to exist in just this way: the emergence of physiological structures is dependent on 'the folding in' of cause with effect; genes with proteins; biology with environment. In human development, for example, there is a constant feedback between what is given 'without' and what is established within. The body recursively "holds within itself" the information imbibed from the environment. To complete the loop, the mind pursues the very things its been entrained to pay attention to; and the things it pays attention, as per the recursive loopiness of it all, has been determined by another human being: the mother; who in turn has been shaped by the relationships that have shaped her.

Does anything happen 'under the sun' that isn't folded within the fractal web of established existence?

What I find amazing about dinosaurs is how metaphorically significant, from an existential perspective (the basic metaphorical meaning) their physical existence on earth is for the human organism that emerged millions of years later.

The relationship being posited between dinosaurs and Humans is causal "only" in a metaphorical sense: but why should metaphor not be treated as important? Why should we exclude the reality of metaphor from the phenomena established by supposedly "blind evolutionary process"? No reason. Nothing other than blind dogma keeps people from picking and choosing what should be treated as meaningful.

The Metaphor of Physical Enormity

No other earthbound creature has grown as large as the reptilian dinosaurs. They were enormous, and as studies of modern day reptiles indicates, their behavior was limited to "survival of the fittest". While nowadays we speak of nature and its creatures as "cruel", in many ways it is far from it. Wolves, Lions and Bears are all fearsome creatures, but with one another, and particularly in the early life mom-infant relationship, we see licking, grooming and a great deal of mammalian nurturing. This is love, a felt expression, of course - something that can only be inferred from the outward behavior - of something we humans can only see as loving.

In terms of our brains, what might as well be considered a type of spiritual hardware, the brain of a modern day wolf is significantly larger than the brain of a tyranosaurus rex, even though the wolf is many times smaller than the gargantuan body of the T-rex. What does this mean? In prehistoric times, we see a creature with an enormous body - what nowadays, with our metaphorical, teleological and ontological proclivities, we can't help but associate with the "reptilian" side of our personalities.

Take the metaphor from genesis of the snake and its association with evil. How did humans make this association? Perhaps, it was from an observation of reptiles; or, conversely, perhaps our unconscious naturally associates certain aspects of human behavior - such as the selfish instincts which naturally arise when aligned with natural emotional drives - for sex, food, control and power over others - with the sleek and surreptitious meanderings of the snake, hiding beneath the weeds yet ever-ready to attack.

In mentioning dinosaurs and their hugeness, I want to draw attention to the way evolution has both a) created a creature we call dinosaurs, and b) has produced a creature - humans - millions of years later, which can associate the physical hugeness, behavior and apparent ruthlessness of dinosaurs, with a part of our own physiology, our brainstem, which essentially performs the same homeostatic functions, and drives the same self-absorbed behaviors, which for many people can be metaphorically interpreted as "enormous"; as difficult to control and as menacing to confront as the monstrously-sized creatures of our planets history of life.

Big and Small

In positing a relationship between dinosaurs - a historical creature that once existed on planet earth - and our innate vulnerability to self-interest, I am basically claiming that the 'outer' and the 'inner' reflect the same dynamic pattern. Not only am I claiming that there seems to be a relationship between the two, but that the distinction between outer and inner is purely a construction of our linear-minded imaginations.

In the same way that things like 'intrapsychic' dynamics feed in and out of bodies into words and behaviors and back into bodies, creating an incessant feedback between 'how we think and feel' (a psychological phenomena) to how our bodies organize themselves (a physiological phenomena) I think something similar is happening over history; the physical reality of dinosaurs, existing millions of years ago, 'exist within' human minds today as the extraordinaly powerful, dangerous and competitive urges mediated by the part of our brain called by neuroscientists "the reptilian brain". In stating this connection, I am both pointing out the continuity between us and them, as well as the profound metaphorical significance of the relationship, at least, in terms of how being human and living with other creatures imposes upon us the need to be MINDFUL of relationships if we want to avoid causing harm and perhaps, inviting desolation akin to the asteroid which wiped out dinosaurs millions of years earlier.

Solar System

Do the heavens mean anything? If the past structurally replays itself in different form in the present, would the evolution of our solar system embody dynamics in human being? Again, metaphor beckons our attention to notice the relationship between the sun: the source of illumination and revelation of an existing 'field', and our own ego, which makes a world apparent to our minds, effectively performing a corresponding dynamic.

What about the earth? If we have body's composed of physical matter, our evolution on planet earth would parallel our own subsistence on a physical form: genes, proteins, lipids, cells, tissues, organs, making up a body.

What about the moon? Our unconsciousness, the part of ourselves which instantiates our actions, working upon the earth - or our body's - in a similar manner to the gravitational effect of the moon upon the earths tides.

Or the outer planets? What do they mean? Each planet may correspond to an essential emotional drive, drives which may not be regarded as 'arbitrary', but basic to the human mammalian nervous system. Mars, or Rage, Venus, or Lust, are common associations which I cannot hope to justify, but nevertheless, one wonders if the basic drives which animate and motivate human behavior - essentially acting like 'planets' which impinge upon the egos centrality, as the planets within our solar system impinge upon the orbits of each and every other planet, including the suns center of gravity.

Since non-linear dynamics has taken over science, and fractal geometry continues to inspire and pique our human imagination, one wonders whether future science might after all vindicate ancient ideas - intuitions of the fractal connectedness of all things - that in our modern era have been looked upon as naive wishful thinking.

is there a point? this reminds of the same sht alphabets been posting

a reply to: moren

What do you mean by "is there a point"?

I can't - although I wish I could - inject in you the felt sense of meaning.

The funny thing about emotions is that they're essentially stimulations towards the world. In everything, as William James said, there is an experience to be known.

To me, nothing can be more revealing and more riveting than the facts coming out of from complex systems theory (which includes chaps theory). If you look at that and don't at least acknowledge the presence of a question, its as simple as you just not having any stimulation i.e. openness, towards the natureof the question.

Beneath all of these things is a sense of profound awe. The world as it is, revealed to an aware consciousness, is objectively awesome. Whether inspiring fear, dread, or elation and wonder, something about the nature of reality usually 'titillates' us.

For me, these foldings in of a common dynamic and pattern that becomes more and more refined, more and more complex, in short, is astoundingly amazing. I feel blessed to not be stricken with apathy towards all of this. Where is your body - the source of you liveliness - if you do not at least ponder the question of life - and how it looks outside and feels inside? Especially in today's theatrical and histrionic culture, to see how superficially absorbed most people are - needing things galore - amidst this brilliant existential wonder: the very fact of human being, makes this experience even more astonishing. It doesn't make it 'better' - since this is how things actually are, but it does present a perspective that adds a superficial element of "how sad".

a reply to: Astrocyte

i dont understand what all these topics have in common with each other can you make a central theorum

you talk too much

a reply to: Astrocyte
Well its some interesting theories. But what if for instance I like my human hairier ancestors throw a monkey wrench into it. For instance you seem to assume the dinosaurs went extinct, they did not, and they to evolved. Some into a chicken, and some are off planet. And much later fast forward some few 30 million years give or take a few million here or there, the human element was allowed to grow. Monkey's and there wrenches eh!

And what if the visible universe was all merely the schematics of something in itself. A fold into a fold, folding ever into increments of itself's ever on. That would be weird huh? Kind how the moon pulling tides of the ocean, yet at night when its closest the ocean is at its quietest, or how gravity is holding everything from the biggest planet or galaxy to the smallest grain of sand and particle merely in conjecture to themselfs compared to others, balancing eternity on a unfathomable count of pins and needles. Improbabilities there by become probable, and some that 0.01% may even become a reality...Someday, but not today.

Very good post OP think yes of all things in nature and otherwise. Considering fractals or self repeating things are seen everywhere, I suggest looking at superposition and see everything as the same thing. Consider you may be a simulated version of yourself, and this may be one simulated world amongst infinate simulated worlds out there. It could be a self repeating fractal meaning the universe keeps on reproducing itself in everything as everything. So to that effect everything is contained in every part down to the atom.

Think of your dreams, you create everything then see it from your own point of view.