This and That

Everything about your experience at this moment, or have experienced in the past, has been a continuing transformation of a) the physical structure of your brain, based in atomic and molecular symmetry dynamics, and b) how the "rightness of connection" gives rise to a semiotic experience of being, a being that is constantly existing simultaneously as the organization of the organic structure.

When you spend a right amount of time contemplating this fact, some basic ideas that are popular deserve to be reassessed.

One such idea is Nietzsches "Eternal Return", which has antecedents in the 'warrior' cultures of ancient kingdom-states, such as Egypt, Sumer, Persia, and India. In these cultures, the self is condemned again and again ad infinitum to reincarnate into a world of meaninglessness. There is no right or wrong way of being, and hence, this viewpoint is nihilistic - believing in nothing. From this nothing of existence, comes a decision to be made about the meaning-of-life, and therefore, of living.

Contemplating time is not an unusual behavior in complex societies, probably because complex societies induce in themselves a bit of stress, and so, make themselves more aware of the existence of temporality. It's not that time isn't real - its just not paid much attention to in more stabilized and "static" (maintaining a very slow rate of change) cultures.

In any case, the elites of the kingdoms had by that time evolved a very nihilistic belief system with all manner of morbid self-representations related to at this point as genuinely existing phenomena. The "spirits" were and are manifestations of the space that fills humans in their connectedness. It expresses our values, but be clear: it is connecting what exists within us already to another party. A spirit is not anything but an 'attractor' which hooks up two live existing beings into relation. The value expresses us; is a mirror of us; but not, in fact, a real existent being.

Yet isn't this the traditional view we're all born into? That "spirits" or "archetypes" are real, even though they are mere epiphenomena?

If so, why do they speak back, you ask? Indeed. If you consider a disordered human condition, schizophrenia, or another, more conventional one, dreaming, we have a similar phenomena at hand: a part of ourselves acting "independently" of our own volition, giving rise to a sense that a being other and different from ourselves is "acting within us".

If you lose your epistemological attitude to know "how things work", and jump to the prideful assertion "this is what is", you will have jumped too soon and may have, because of the sin of vanity, succumbed to what will become a closed feedback loop existing between you, other people, and the culture you and them share, but take far too glibly as representing THE truth.

How do humans work? Take your early life and the development of the orbitofrontal cortex, which is at the base part of the outer-front of your brain, and is connected to the thalamus, which connects to the amygdala, as well directly with the amygdala itself.

This cortex - or layered column of cells - is inhibitory, meaning it 'constrains' the flow of energy. The energy flowing through the body and within the brain itself is correlating to the specific features of the environment, specifically those that indicate threat and safety. When threat occurs, the orbital frontal cortex, thalamus, and the amygdala are "building a model of threat" as well as a "model of safety" in its biodynamical structure. The threat response is a combination of the metabolic state of the body, as well as the strength of the stimulus from the environment; the more weakened the former, the easier the latter can stimulate; the stronger the latter, regardless of whatever state you're in (seeing a baby murdered) your system wiill register the action as a massively unexpected behavior, insomuch as baby's = cute which equals = "to be loved", and not, as seeing a baby murdered would produce, a feeling of horror.

Integrating such an image (say, as happens with ISIS militants) would not be the "image" being "filtered" into the brain, but quite the opposite: the brain's physiological structuring dynamics would react to the image, and hence, produce the state of horror in question. The brains representation of the baby as "cute" is a semiotic product of the significance that baby's have historically given human beings; the brain is tremendously adapted to nurturing and loving, so much so that the very part of the brain which reflexively represents "how to be" is the orbitofrontal cortex. This "how to be" is a function of the security of your attachment to a caregiver, which is a function of their ability to read and know the nature of how they're affecting their children, and not get caught up in their own ideas as they interact with the child.

This is a very subtle asymmetry, but its teaches nonetheless which behaviors are "good" and which are "bad", by punishing with shame and frustration in situations of the latter type, and rewarding in situations of the former type. Reward and Punishment correlate with "internal models of safety" and "internal models of threat" which are embodied as the physical structure of the prefrontal cortex and its regulation of the amygdala and other deep brain nuclei associated with feeling.

To restate a theme of this thread: your mind is a) the physical evolution of your physical structure, in terms of the connections between atoms and molecules, as well as b) the continuouslyy evolving experience of being which directly results from the qualities of the interaction with the environment.

All of this rests on the premise that Internal physical symmetry corresponds to external symmetry betwenn acting human selves. There is a fundamental isomorphism between these two levels, such that asymmetry in interaction produces entropy in the physical structure, and so a poorly functioning/dissipating cellular dynamic between neurons.

Back to the "eternal return". Were they right? Is it not true, indeed, that such a thought rips away meaning from existence? Do we not feel our hearts drop, and feeling an immense depression - a meaninglessness - from existence? The thought implies that all of reality is to be replated, again and again, an eternal error, an eternal farce; indeed, the external world has come to be represented as a "false archon" - a being that is at odds with the "One" - the Eternal, torturing his own being with time, and so, quite naturally, sadomasochism follows right after.

All the while this narrative of master-slave is crafted, the organism overlooks "how" they know from "what they are knowing". They take it to be downright real: a powerful truth which can never be overcome - a truth which shall dominate all truths; indeed, so deeply did these humans believe their truths, that they wrote their truths down or passed them down in specified ways, making sure that the truths of one generation will remain the same for those of the next. A closed loop; and sealed, by what? I'd say pride, vanity; the egotism of making an assertion and feeling the enlivenment of asserting. The nihilist is traumatized first - as an infant, as a toddler, as a child - before he ever comes to believe that he knows reality "so utterly, and truely", that he must say what it is. This manic need to make assertions - is this not concealing the vain need to feel alive, at whatever costs to the..

Other? Depression precedes nihilism. Just as a healthy and secure attachment precedes a life of deep and profound meaning - a life of gratitude for living, for the mystery of time, and existing, and change...What will come next? Nobody knows, as we have no categories for knowing in the present to know how future humans would know; similarly, the electron awaited till 1897 to be a coherent concept, whereas before then it could not be known.

Hence, isn't the eternal return a deeply depressing projection made by minds that come to reinforce this fixation in everyone of their minds? Does the reification of the ego into a thing - in other words, isn't the pridefulness that comes at the expense of others the fundamental basis for elitist nihilism - and hence, the basis for their delusional percepts and the cognitions - or "truths" - they imagine themselves to be holding?

It's an echo chamber in here; with Egypt, Sumer, Greece, India, Persia, etc, etc. There is one continuous theme: asymmetry between humans - and what that asymmetry entails for those who are the cause of the suffering that their actions cause; with no remediation for others - with no "reward" in the form of extraction, and skimming the rewards from the work of others. It's a philosophy which masquerades as a real point of view - rather than a consequence of being greedy and not be willing to change their thinking, think reasonably, and give up the pretentions about "absolute knowledge".

Thermodynamics is a great concept because it has consequences for us and how it is we know. No ancient human could know the mind as we do, because the brain as a complex physical structure wasn't known. They didn't know that time is real; they merely grew disenchanted with it - as in many hunter-gatherers, or, they become hyper-sure that it was a fake thing, and hence, there is only two ways to respond to change: the path that mocks it, or the path that escapes it through meditation.

This is what kingdom states continuously produced, and hence, the major religious traditions are bizarre relics of a time in human history which we should not personally want to keep holding - insomuch as epistemology was not their top concern, but rather, "claiming what the structure of reality is" as nothing more than the unconscious structure of the valuations that the human lives by.

Excluding the body excludes how we know; which excludes how our knowledge is formed, first, by affects which organize our reflexive feelings (OFC), followed by meanings which evolve in higher levels of prefrontal cortex (front of the skull) which add "refinements" to the reflexive organization of the OFC. In people with a poorly developed orbitofrontal cortex, there is a history of negative experience; and hence, it is difficult to live a life where nihilism - and attachments with others - doesn't create an attraction for you, and hence, become for you your "idol" - your way of coping with existing in this way.

Its not surprising that people do this, but it seems crucially important to recognize what you're doing, and what those ramifications are for other living beings - who, unlike you, tell you that the world can be known as a very different place, and hence, not be experienced as the torment that so many experience it as.

You should consider writing a book, if you haven’t already.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Starting 8:32, where is your vision experience located:

a reply to: Astrocyte

You just can't help yourself, can you?

Sigh...