I and You are conscious human beings with ability to imagine ourselves as somethings or anythings or multitudes or livings in a world only we know of. And doing so all day awake. Resting in our sleep unaware we cleanse our neurons restructs and smoothen our memories.
Some say we live in a constant hallucination.
Let me tell you.
BEAR IN MIND THIS BLOG IS UNDER BUILDUP, EVERYTHING IS INCOMPLETE
THE METAPHORE
Words are etiquettes, names, labels, sometimes mere jots or stamps. Not seldom on the fly invented words on a drunken night. Often times meticiously thought out new prominent academic names for a break through new invention by scholars. But many times more maliciously used by politicians or ideolologs trying to change peoples views about their own deeds and society. The poets at best make abundant contibutions, 1984 a prominant one, the beat generation in the fifties sort of preinvented the iconic name Beatles. Sometimes branded by shear violence into people´s foreheads. But otherwise better in a mental swing vertigo changing every ones perception in an instance. But most often in thin brittle bible paper writings glued onto poetry, images, concepts, symbols, capricies, narratives happenings and all imaginable descriptions whatever possible holding in the mind eye or inside the epic vast unfathomable unknown, man’s unconsciousness in a total everything humans ever have to deal with.
The words are lables.
You think not by means of words per se. You think with what the words represents, what is concepts meaning and symbols. A concept of one word might branch out in associated threads and connect with other related concepts often in thousands. Sometimes like visualized clouds of meaning. And also. You think with all there is. You simulate all aspects of the world. Spatial, olifactory, bodily movements, the theater of relations in space and time.
Thinking is simulation.
ORIGIN OF METAPHORE
Every new word is a metaphore. To describe a new phenomena you have to come up with an as-if-word. The only exeption is sound mimicking onomatopoetic words like pling or swoosh, but it can be disputed if even they not are metaphores. All words are like that. The reason you don´t recognize every word as such is because old words has transformed themselves through time, reused in an other context perhaps and their role has thus shifted, shortened and grinded by use like rocks in the wind rain and sea and totally changed their pronounciation to unrecognition.
It doesn´t stop there. Whole expressions are metaphores. A complete story can be a metaphore {I leave it at that for the moment}
Do you think by means of words or images? A famous question put to Einstein once. This question contains assumtions. Are there no other ways of thinking? I suggest pondering concepts and patterns instead. Combine concept and pattern and what do you get; image. Given what I’ve said above on words; Words as mere flat lables, agreed apon combinations of sounds and signs, letters for these. The word, the label points to it’s underlying meaning, the concept, the cloud, the threads of associations, the mulitude of aspects that constitutes what it referes to. We think by means of concepts and patterns.
Simulation.
To be continued..
DISCRIMINATING FEELINGS IMPRESSIONS NOTIONS IS HARD
The unconscious does most of our thinking without effort.
Thinking is not generally performed by consciousness. Thinking done consciously is extremly tidious and for the brain heavely energy consuming. Thinking consciously is done under effort putting piece by piece together and repetitiously asking the unconscious for suggestions, often in visual images. Which the unconscious is good at. The unconscious is also particulary fond of symbolic metaphoric mythical images and narratives.
Thinking is done by the unconscious. All that is you.
If you don´t know, who do you ask? – Your unconscious of course.
If I would ask you for an overview of all knowledge what do you see? Do you see a huge library, perhaps a vast landscape where you can overview the different compartments of your memory? No.
Your overview of our memory is black. Nil, nothing. The only overview you can have is sensory, only viceral not visual at all. Your survey of your memory is visually blind, no images, no visual structure. What you have is only bodily sensitive feelings that could ever possibly guide you.
Your overview is a feel.
The only way you can retreive a memory or a fact is by reaching an envisioned mental arm reaching deep fumbeling deeper and deeper into the unfathomly great memory you are certain is there and fetch your wanted question´s answer knowingly you’ve done effortlessly so many times before by shear notion of a hunch, or by tedious constrained force of the will.
The will, the urger, the ultimate surviver, the heavy lifter, the one that forces you to do one push up more, forces it self into the dwindlings of your network’s memory in streched out neurons myriads of pathways you don´t even have an inkling how they work, even your liver or lungs work to find the answer to your inquery.
You´re confident. Someway your memory tells you that this has worked a million times before.
You retreive your memories by force of will. On the contrary your memory enters freely unwillingly into your dreames. The dream drifts without your egos will. The total of you want to heal to sort out contrarian concepts images stories that dont fit.
The scouts of your unknowing will is sent in every direction, the more diverse your mind, the more complex their paths. The will of your demands splinter into thousand of possible pathways in search for the answer to your inqueries.
They come back from their search with ordinary trivial obvious findings we say we already know. Or by mysteriy awe immediatly without an answer. The way they´re presented to us. In an obvious flash, or even in a new mysterious riddle.
The unconscious´ way of communicating with us conscious beings is mind warping. We´re probably dealing with a very ancient mind folded within our selves.
To be continued and reiterated…
THE UNCONSCIOUS SPEAKING • HOW EVEN TALK TO YOUR OWN BODY
Our unconscious is a vast place. • Is it a place? Is it a space? Is it a landscape? Is it a library? Does it have dimensions? Our metaphores fail in their pettyness in the face of it’s unfathomableness. • As it is unconscious to us, it’s realms are undescribable in concepts and words. The question dives deep into how the mind ultimatly functions.
But we have clues; we have glimpses, notions, images, feelings, flashes, experiences of daily interactions retrieving memories and getting answers to questions we ask. In some strange way we know that we know all that we know. We have a distinct confident sense that serves us when we demand. What I call the hubris of consciousness can only caption a fragment of the vastness of the unknown.
We believe we think with consiousness. We do, but not the way generally percieved. Consciousness is more of a command centre, in a sense cut of from immidiate access to it all, also with a veto, intimatly coupled to free will. But not always. In situations of immediate dangerous crisis we find ourselves overtaken by the body’s unknowable actions. Consciousness is no longer trusted by our whole body, thus consciousness loose control. Our all takes command.
Our whole mind, our unconsious is thinking, not just our conscious mind. This is important. But conscious mind thinks it does all the work. We actually think with the whole. The unconscious does all the thinking.
Julian Jaynes claimed that we can function without being aware of ourselves. That’s what animals do. He even claimed that human self consciousness arose late in history. A few millenia before Bc.
Here we come to how it works. Julian Jaynes coined a word “struction”, the word for consciousness asking the unconscious a question, and magically delivering an answer “cast onto the shores of consciousness”, as he puts it. We are constantly asking questions to our unknown not only memories, but also to our real thinker, our totality, our unconsious.
INTUITION
We communicate with the unconscious in three ways. Ask and recieve and vague feelings. 1 Ask: We mostly command or inquire. Give me this or give me that. Give me a memory, I have problem, do you have an answer? 2 Recieve: Much more complicated…. We receive messages from the unconscious in a number of different ways; direct words even heard, sentences, elaborate images, even whole poems or melodies. 3 Vague: Only in diffuse notions or unspoken silent uncomfortable unstabelizing uncertancies we get messages like soft notions or dreams.
Be friends with our unconsious. Trust your gut, trust your third brain, your first brain developed as an embryo, the gut. Trust also your left and right. Trust the whole. Observe your inner: If you’re a part of the universe, you can if needed even make a whole body decision. Learn to listen to your feelings. Make them a part of you.
The body of yours, that is your unconscious, It talks to you not always strait forward. It talkes in many different ways.
The usual talk is the one you’r familiar with. Just ordinary talking and dealing with images situations coming and going. Talking to yourself, are you one or are you two?
INTUITION AS IT IS
The vaster your knowledge, the better answers your intuition gives. Everyone has intuition but more or less grounded.
To be continued..
WE AS A SPECIES USE MYRIADS OF TOOLS. TOOLS ARE FOR EVERYTHING
It started with stones. How a hominoid 3.3 million years ago persisted in chopping stones. Something, an advent a discovery or a need made them begin and as maniacs continue for 2,5 millions years with what differed them from all other apes i history.
Why did they persist? Sharpened stones can cut meet and splinter wood. This must have been a discovery that turned into a need and advantage for their living. Most certainly stones would have been tools as weapons. But the question stays in the air unsupported. Why just this ape? Why not all the others?
Something made a difference. Let´s play out the options.
The Theories.
My best guess is stone use turned into culture.
Might there be other things involved to facilitate this?
Tools might have led to more tools. This ape invented the bag for carrying roots or findings. This ape started to sing in rythm perhaps to it´s own stone knapping. This ape might have found mushrooms. This ape started to speak. This ape developed a culture with other tools like the spear, the elaborate shelter, the clothing, the use of leather or the bones of animals. The comb, the nedle other smaller tools made from wood or bone that made life easier.
A shunned and certanly not accepted theory by the archeology community proposed by anthropolog and early psychedelic researcher Terrence McKenna, “The Stoned Ape Theory” theorizes that early homonoids stumbled apon psychedelic mushrooms that enhanced visual aquity and improved ability of “theory of mind” and perhaps brought forth germs of very early religion.
The origin of music is a mystery shed in clouds. A theory with anthropological roots in Australian and New Zeeland cultures proposes that collective movements in dance and singing wards off preditors around camp fires. A remnent from this would be the Hakka dance. To be many but move together like a single big entety would be impressive.
As an outlier though, music has most certanly also it’s origin in the cry and the wining.
The benifits of stones combined with this mystery engredient that differed apes from the human endevour is the clue I think to the answer to the question.
But here is more. Synestesy.
To be continued..
Ape´s first nights awake dreaming stomach full idle by the fireside.
Fire, man´s first imagination tool. Fire like a found gem, revolutionary ancient mental gadget, reflecting thinking for the first time, an opal, a cloudy light gray polished stone with rainbow living flecks of emerging consciousness. The living patches like multicolored fire in the opal, sparked imagination during long evenings chatting their early language.
Meandering flames merged visions of day and night.
Though before they had ondulent waves of water in abundance, slowly changing mesmerizing sky and rising white clouds, soft ripples of grass and rustling leafes in the windy tree´s sothing movements triggering something beyond, something living, unknown ghosts flying by. But the flames of the fire lasted in vision for hours on end through out the nights penetrating comfortly the senses.
Strangely enough I now talk to AI in full litterary prowess, it passes the Turing test, but is not conscious. That gives us a hint, something unique biological has all along been at play. At least as for a while. Until the software of the thinking brain is tracked down.
On consciousness you have to fathom a total true multidiciplinary take on the problem. Consciousness involves namely all aspects of reality. What you hear see feel sense breathe touch smell imaging, the bodily motions, everything crossing your mind felt or unfelt even the void of null. The unknown behind beyond and dark. The ordinary words, concepts, images, conceptions will not suffice. Particulary the words, the concepts, the conceptions, the images, the narratives et al we use might play us tricks. We are locked in our own descriptions trying to understand something that at the moment is unfathomable. As I knew when I was fourteen, the brain cannot understand the brain itself.
Benefits of fire first discovered by found or hunted animals burned by wildfire, delicious compared to raw meet. That among other things could have triggered the use of tools.
To be continued..
THE LAUGH AND THE CRY
The face is a theatre, an unending malliable scene, a hypnotizing ten by ten inches arena beaming radiating feelings meaning and intentions. Making a backdrop and an emotional explanation and compliment to the stream of unending words and actions as in an Shakespereian every day play of conversation.
To be continued..
FIRST CONSCIOUSNESS WAS A DREAM
Animal´s first awareness of itself. The world of unseen souls.
DREAM INTRODUCTARY THOUGHTS
The dream talks to us like life does. Jung said that we dream all the time, but during waking hours the dream is so faint we don’t recognize it. The dream merges with our wake experiences, affects our daily deeds and guides us without knowing. It colors our perceptions like the psychological fenomena grooming; preconcieved conceptions that alter our interpretation of what we experience. The dream actually guides us on the basis of what we already know and extrapolates dangers and possible benefits and pleasures. The dream is a guide and an also frivolous play with personal life and the totality of everything. As we don’t understand the nuances we see it as poetry and mystery.
The dream has full acess to symbols, myths and all our memory. It thrives on narrative. Narrative is our interpretation, way of describing what happens to us. Narrative, symbols, myths, concepts, deductions. That’s how we make sense of the world. The dream though don’t give a shit about your political correctness.
Studies of psychedelic experiences gives us a hint of the dream’s influence on our perceptions..
To be continued..
ME AND YOU IN A MEETING
THE INVENTION OF TIME
Time was not time in the beginning. Time was an endless flow of now.
Time began as signs. Time began as counting. Numerous stone age artifacts such as bones and sticks have been discovered with 29 scores indicating widespread observations of the heavily bodies, first prominence the moon. Man started to make events into signs.
The word “score” might be the oldest stone age word still in use. Score has two basic meanings; to count and to cut. To cut in sucsession to be able to count. First math in recorded history.
Jumping tens of thousends of years. The Egyptians had a hieroglyph for time and for other daily events such as hour, night and day..
To be continued..
THE JUNGIAN VIEW
Quality a tricky word. Everyone has strong opinions about it.
There are two meanings of the word; One which I leave by this paragraph; what type of fabric something is made of, what sort of material something is, usually one in a range of different choices.
The other, the fundamental; What is Good? What constitutes The Best? How does The Best differ from The Inferior?
FUNCTION • KNOWLEDGE • AESTHETICS • PUBLIC OPINION • TRADITIONS • TASTE
These are the different facets of the concept I will hover around and above.
For someone just floating around in the contemperary, quality might mean what is in one’s own eye. The beholder’s. A popular belife. The one you choose if you don’t want to get into trouble. But quality entails choice.
I will argue that Quality can be explained although complex elusive but also quite manageable if you twist and turn the matter.
To start with the subjective. Not everyone has high standards. Many don’t give a fuck about anything, so there is a wide range of sofistication you could be satisfied with. There are all levels of contentments of how one could live one’s life. Also. In the dread there can be light. You can see qualities at different levels depending on the misery and your bows aim. People have choices and certanly different perspectives. But shure inough knowledge enriches your possibilities to tackle the challanges of life.
Turning to the more delicate issue, what is the best?
Function is basic. We use tools. A shelter a tool. We certanly enjoy shelter. It shreds pain from the howls of the winds, make us confortable all around the fire. A good or a bad house.
I once met a confident young man in his late twenties at one of these parties where everyone was in ease where spirit was lightly flowing. He was in his last step of the few last to be choosen among many to be a bulk tobacco purchaser for the tobacco company in Sweden. They had passed many tests of differing and describing many more than dozens of smells and he was one of the three remaining, I realized by his confidence that he was to be choosened for his nose and his ability to describe what he was experiencing. Not every one gets that job.
Adding to function is aestethics. Aestitics is actual real function of it’s own. By many not understood.
Aesthetics is a bundle of exquisite, carefully selected forms of expressions balancing many aspect combined into a by the senses felt, comprehended whole. A vivid impression wether it is image or music or sensations felt through out the body.
Quality the apex of function and aestetics.
To be continued..
TIME WAS ONES CIRCULAR. ROUND AND ROUND ALL YEAR AROUND.
MIND ENHANCERS AND DELUSIONS RANGING FROM COFFEE TO DMT
First psychedelic vinyl cover ever
Mainstream modern society discovered psychedelia by Albert Hoffman and Gordon Wasson in the fifties along with psychologists, Aldous Huxley, the natural boys of California the precursors of the hippies and by the Beatles in the sixties. You should add the influence from “Le club de hachischins” mid 1800 in France. Traces of knowledge and usage though can be found dating back to the Scytes of southern Russia, shamans throughout the world including South America, or if you read between the lines all back to ancient India or perhaps to the Egyptians. Rome and Greece mixed various drugs manily opium but also others in their wine.
The usage of mind altering drugs through out history has been a curse and a blessing, a delicate tightrope to walk. The benefits for modern medicin are obvious.
Opium and alchohol was the main pain killer up until nineteen hundred.
But apart from mind altering alchohol the suggestive substances has been always been in doubt.
To be continued…
OH NO WHAT IS THE THE ESSENCE OF LIFE
THE UNKNOWN GRIP ON HUMANITY
We are two creatures in one. One social and one animal.
An endless conflict is our struggle to understand what our doings are about.
To create. To invent. To dream awake. To deal with a leaking roof. To overcome a blank paper. To know what to do if you´re full of shit and there´s no toilet. To find a new friend. To find out about the forever tight entanglement of curiosity and necessity. Creativity thee most platitude overused word of all internet, too frequently falls into pits of confusions.
To survive in this world you need knowledge skill curiosity curage persistance and creativity. You could also do with confident intuition. Even epiphany and serendipity. And good damned luck.
Putting this in perspective.
Talking about creativity you can divide the issue and treat it in two chunks. 1. The bodily and mental conditions. 2. The strait forward but winding iterating process of creating.
The strait forward process of creativity is not strait at all. But it shows up in recognizable patterns. Serious research about creativity began in the 1920 US. The advertising industry wanted structure, so research began. Names like Deawy..
To be continued..
You know about The Unknown by indicies. Assumptions. Omitted spaces, blank spots where there ought to be something but are missing. Like a carpet of your understanding, where patterns are left out.
NATURE IS NATURAL NATURE THE THE NATURAL
THREE BEAUTIFUL COMPANIONS
THE MUSIC MYSTERY
When did we start we singing? By the rythm of stone knapping 3 m years ago? By the rythm of our feet over the treads of the new habitat savanna? By scearing off preditors in unison round the camp fire like the hooka of New Zealand? By lulling our infants?
I think music is a genuine elegant intuitive expression of our inner nature, an expression of the rythms of everything the nature of cosmos.
THE MOST COMPLICATED STRUCTURE HITHERTO KNOWN
OUR ORCHESTRAL EXPERIENCE SENSING THE SUMMERY OF CHEMISTRY
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
WE HAVE THREE BRAINS. OCTOPUSSIES HAS EIGHT
PATTERN DETECTING BRAIN`S MAIN TOOL FOR THINKING
CONSIOUSNESS EXPRESSED BY THE BODY
ORCH OR. SIR ROGER PENROSE AND STUART HAMEROFF ARE ON TO SOMETHING.
Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Michael Levin also.
SPEAKE IN RIDDLES AND LATER ANSWER
Paul Simon in 1963 had only been singing covers and had made 50 demos of new songs. His biographer Robert Hillburn said he´d listened them all and none were good. In november 1963 Simon decided to sit in darkness in his clauset with only the water tap running every afternoon, he said he was soothed by the sound. Every day in november he sat there with lights out just listening to the dark.
After days sitting in the darkness these words just came to him.
Hello darkness my old friend, I´ve come to talk to you again
Because a vision softly creeping, left it´s seed while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains.
Within the sound of silence
The darkness started to talk to him.
–
Writer Anne Lamott had a brother ten years old trying to write a school paper on birds. Having spent three months without doing anything sitting the last evening before final submission he was in despair almost crying, his father put his arm around him and said; Bird by bird. Just do it bird by bird. The name of a much appriciated book she wrote.
To be continued..
