On Superstitions, Apophenia, and Patterns
Nov. 11th, 2011 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7Jarboe & Justin K Broadrick - Magick Girl--- Today is 11/11/11, in the modern world, no matter how you slice it unless you're slicing it Kosher, Halal, or Sichuan. Anyway, by the majority of the Western reckoning-- which, if you're reading this, is most likely the reckoning which colours and textures the background of all life experience, for you-- today is 11.11.11, and that has a lot of significance to a lot of people. Let's take a look at the idea of patterns, apophenia, and superstition for a second, because there's a thing about perspectives that i think funadamentally escapes most people, and it's kind of starting to irk the shit out of me.
I've often said, here, that pattern seeking/creating behaviour is what humans do, and that the application of meaning is what gives human lives meaning. (Blonde Redhead - Hated Because of Great Qualities). But that's not the whole of it, and you know that. Creating patterns creates worldviews, and creates substrates of understanding on which we then create new works and structures and the world. We've talked about this. Perspectives create the world. And I don't mean that when we're "more correct" about the way the world "actually is" (or "actually" "is") then we can
"properly apply" our "understanding." That kind of talk is all objective-meaning bullshit. There isn't anything like that. (Mephiskapheles - Rank & File). Of course there isn't not anything like that, either. Look, I'm not here to talk about the reality of irreality or the irreality of reality. We did that the last time we talked, so it should be pretty fresh in your mind. (Ataraxia - N'Importe Ou). No, what we're talking about, here, today, is what you do when you've hit upon something like "hey everything i think is just as real as everything else anyone else thinks because we're all extant in a co-creating matrix of subjective interpretation of experience, huddled together around the fire of agreed-upon perceptions so we don't have to face ourselves out there in the dark. Huh."
So. How do you create an idea scaffold? How do you build a trellis on which new concepts can grow and flower? Your first step is to understand the concepts and the ideas, as seeds. What do they look like? What do they need as nourishment (fear, Complexity, Casual disregard, Humour, Disassociative discomfort, et cetera)? What kind of space will they need, when they start to grow? Will you provide them a narrow space, or an open space? (Dionysos - Tes Lacets Sont Des Fées). Will you carefully sculpt them into a particular shape and purpose, or do you simply cherish the unknown of the seed and want to see what it'll do?
In the first case, you have to much more carefully ask yourself to whom you'll be speaking, how you'll be speaking to them, and what it all means, in the end. That means knowing the idea gardens, the conceptual cityscapes, of all those other people. (Angelspit - Dead Letter (Angel Theory)).The way they hear you will be integal to the way they take in your new ideas, the way that they go about constructing a component of the scaffolding which they'll then stretch out into the world, and take with them. This can get a bit meta(-physical/-textual/-morphosis), because you may have to take into account how you want the idea of wanting others to want the idea to spread to others into account. And if the idea that you want people to want to want is the idea of wanting to want ideas, then... Well. Labyrinthine. But doable. Imminently doable.
Snog - Yuppie Shall Inherit the Earth--- We can create, in thought, the structures that we wish to see imprinted on reality. Again, we already do this, but we need to take responsibility for so doing. Emotional content, mental analysis, blended approaches of psyche and intellect and visceral atavism; all are necessary to communicate. (Mona Mur & En Esch - 120 Tage). When we pick up and integrate patterns without examining them, we will find ourselves overruled by the pattern, the exterior symbolism applied to it controling our actions without much by way of our input. If we examine them too critically, we may begin to forget that they actually do have power within us. If we intentionally turn a blind eye, then we may lose ourselves in the process of unseeing.
Ataraxia - Tango des Astres--- If we insist that it's all meaningful, we again cannot act, and are acted upon by the all of it. Buffeted from one instance to the next, knowing that it's all connected, that it can all have meaning, that every perspective-- even the one directly counter to this one-- can have meaning. You even know what "Manichean" means... But those are other people's words. They're not your own, and if you want to make them mean something... Well... About that.
Juke Baritone - Missed Me (Dresden Dolls Cover)--- Making words, concepts, conjunctions of thought mean anything other than they already do, when you fully recognise that everything means everything? How the fuck is that even possible? Isn't it just true, then, that everything is only itself, and everything else, and nothing else? What the fuck is there left to do, then, right? Wrong. We build new thoughts, rail against the imposition of other thought structures, or incorporate them into our structures. We realise that the demons are other, and that we have to fight them, and tame them, and force them inside the circle and the triangle and say the words, and approach them backwards and only look at them in a mirror over our shoulder and then we can realise that the demon is behind us, directly behind us, inside the circle, we're inside the circle the demon has trapped us inside the circle, we're trapping ourselves inside the circle and now we're caught trapped, tamed at the mercy of of this pissant little shit which thinks it can tame and trap a demon?
Jarboe - Mouth Of Flames--- One wrong move and we see ourselves and we're turned to stone. Resistance isn't futile, it's necessary. We burn down old things because we fail to imagine that anything truly new could exist in the presence of all this old old old. We don't have to be right about that. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely can be, if that's what we want. But we don't have to be. We can be right about something entirely else, if we stop and think about it.
Black Lung - The Useless Eaters--- We create and find patterns. Then we build new things by making those patterns interlock with the patterns that other people have found and created. There is enough space for all of them, there is enough time for all of them. We don't all have to be one thing in the superdense hologram of spacetime that we've created to nurture ourselves back to health after we bumped our head on the door of our playroom. We can be that too, but we can be human, we can be starseeds, we can be athiests, or gnostics, or Mayan Gods, or anything else. We can build structures of thought which allow us to do anything. To have luck, to see acausal connection, to watch as the fractals flower and twist. We can do anything.
Reality, the things you can touch, the things you name, what you smell, touch, hear, see, taste, understand... (Blonde Redhead - Harmony). All of these things start in a consensus decision to accept things as they are.
Today, try saying no to all that. Say, "No. Let's try this instead."
Where "this" is everything you can think. It's mired and covered in everything you thought, before, true. But you can almost always break off some part of a locked door and use it to pick itself, you know what I'm saying?
Have a good day.
[EDIT: 1554: See Also]
I've often said, here, that pattern seeking/creating behaviour is what humans do, and that the application of meaning is what gives human lives meaning. (Blonde Redhead - Hated Because of Great Qualities). But that's not the whole of it, and you know that. Creating patterns creates worldviews, and creates substrates of understanding on which we then create new works and structures and the world. We've talked about this. Perspectives create the world. And I don't mean that when we're "more correct" about the way the world "actually is" (or "actually" "is") then we can
"properly apply" our "understanding." That kind of talk is all objective-meaning bullshit. There isn't anything like that. (Mephiskapheles - Rank & File). Of course there isn't not anything like that, either. Look, I'm not here to talk about the reality of irreality or the irreality of reality. We did that the last time we talked, so it should be pretty fresh in your mind. (Ataraxia - N'Importe Ou). No, what we're talking about, here, today, is what you do when you've hit upon something like "hey everything i think is just as real as everything else anyone else thinks because we're all extant in a co-creating matrix of subjective interpretation of experience, huddled together around the fire of agreed-upon perceptions so we don't have to face ourselves out there in the dark. Huh."
So. How do you create an idea scaffold? How do you build a trellis on which new concepts can grow and flower? Your first step is to understand the concepts and the ideas, as seeds. What do they look like? What do they need as nourishment (fear, Complexity, Casual disregard, Humour, Disassociative discomfort, et cetera)? What kind of space will they need, when they start to grow? Will you provide them a narrow space, or an open space? (Dionysos - Tes Lacets Sont Des Fées). Will you carefully sculpt them into a particular shape and purpose, or do you simply cherish the unknown of the seed and want to see what it'll do?
In the first case, you have to much more carefully ask yourself to whom you'll be speaking, how you'll be speaking to them, and what it all means, in the end. That means knowing the idea gardens, the conceptual cityscapes, of all those other people. (Angelspit - Dead Letter (Angel Theory)).The way they hear you will be integal to the way they take in your new ideas, the way that they go about constructing a component of the scaffolding which they'll then stretch out into the world, and take with them. This can get a bit meta(-physical/-textual/-morphosis), because you may have to take into account how you want the idea of wanting others to want the idea to spread to others into account. And if the idea that you want people to want to want is the idea of wanting to want ideas, then... Well. Labyrinthine. But doable. Imminently doable.
Snog - Yuppie Shall Inherit the Earth--- We can create, in thought, the structures that we wish to see imprinted on reality. Again, we already do this, but we need to take responsibility for so doing. Emotional content, mental analysis, blended approaches of psyche and intellect and visceral atavism; all are necessary to communicate. (Mona Mur & En Esch - 120 Tage). When we pick up and integrate patterns without examining them, we will find ourselves overruled by the pattern, the exterior symbolism applied to it controling our actions without much by way of our input. If we examine them too critically, we may begin to forget that they actually do have power within us. If we intentionally turn a blind eye, then we may lose ourselves in the process of unseeing.
Ataraxia - Tango des Astres--- If we insist that it's all meaningful, we again cannot act, and are acted upon by the all of it. Buffeted from one instance to the next, knowing that it's all connected, that it can all have meaning, that every perspective-- even the one directly counter to this one-- can have meaning. You even know what "Manichean" means... But those are other people's words. They're not your own, and if you want to make them mean something... Well... About that.
Juke Baritone - Missed Me (Dresden Dolls Cover)--- Making words, concepts, conjunctions of thought mean anything other than they already do, when you fully recognise that everything means everything? How the fuck is that even possible? Isn't it just true, then, that everything is only itself, and everything else, and nothing else? What the fuck is there left to do, then, right? Wrong. We build new thoughts, rail against the imposition of other thought structures, or incorporate them into our structures. We realise that the demons are other, and that we have to fight them, and tame them, and force them inside the circle and the triangle and say the words, and approach them backwards and only look at them in a mirror over our shoulder and then we can realise that the demon is behind us, directly behind us, inside the circle, we're inside the circle the demon has trapped us inside the circle, we're trapping ourselves inside the circle and now we're caught trapped, tamed at the mercy of of this pissant little shit which thinks it can tame and trap a demon?
Jarboe - Mouth Of Flames--- One wrong move and we see ourselves and we're turned to stone. Resistance isn't futile, it's necessary. We burn down old things because we fail to imagine that anything truly new could exist in the presence of all this old old old. We don't have to be right about that. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely can be, if that's what we want. But we don't have to be. We can be right about something entirely else, if we stop and think about it.
Black Lung - The Useless Eaters--- We create and find patterns. Then we build new things by making those patterns interlock with the patterns that other people have found and created. There is enough space for all of them, there is enough time for all of them. We don't all have to be one thing in the superdense hologram of spacetime that we've created to nurture ourselves back to health after we bumped our head on the door of our playroom. We can be that too, but we can be human, we can be starseeds, we can be athiests, or gnostics, or Mayan Gods, or anything else. We can build structures of thought which allow us to do anything. To have luck, to see acausal connection, to watch as the fractals flower and twist. We can do anything.
Reality, the things you can touch, the things you name, what you smell, touch, hear, see, taste, understand... (Blonde Redhead - Harmony). All of these things start in a consensus decision to accept things as they are.
Today, try saying no to all that. Say, "No. Let's try this instead."
Where "this" is everything you can think. It's mired and covered in everything you thought, before, true. But you can almost always break off some part of a locked door and use it to pick itself, you know what I'm saying?
Have a good day.
[EDIT: 1554: See Also]
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-11 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 04:01 am (UTC)When last we had long, in-depth discussions regarding things such as this, I think we both achieved a level of frustration that outweighed the benefits of further discussion. I know I did, at any rate. I am passionate about things that I hold an in-depth interest in, and as such, my ability to maintain objectivity during in-depth discussions regarding these matters can be compromised. Sometimes very quickly and easily. Surely this is a character flaw which I simply have to overcome to whatever extent I can overcome it.
Months later, while I would love to say that I am in a frame of mind to discuss things with you "because I have grown as a person" I'm sure that the majority of it is that the saying "time heals old wounds" also applies to "time has a tendency to make me less pissed off about some random argument I had with someone about something that was probably totally trivial and besides the point".
So, as I dive into this without warning, and without asking, I can't say that I will treat it with a greater respect or understanding than I ever had before, nor can I guarantee that I haven't gotten DUMBER since then, but I *can* say that I am coming at it from a place of much-less-heated emotional content than when we last conversed at uber-deep levels for extended periods of time.
I suppose most of that was superfluous, but because text translates the nuance of speech poorly, I felt it somewhat necessary to inform you that I don't WANT to ruffle feathers, knowing full-well that there have definitely been times that I was moody and intentionally ruffling feathers at times.
/preface
"When we pick up and integrate patterns without examining them, we will find ourselves overruled by the pattern, the exterior symbolism applied to it controling our actions without much by way of our input."
If we were to over-simplify each other, putting you as a person who utilizes symbolism, and putting me as a person who rejects it (neither of us is that hard-line about it, but for the sake of the hypothetical...) me as the "opponent" of symbolism would say that this indeed describes you, the "proponent" of symbolism.
Whereas:
"If we examine them too critically, we may begin to forget that they actually do have power within us."
You as the proponent would say that this describes me.
"If we intentionally turn a blind eye, then we may lose ourselves in the process of unseeing."
And I for one, and perhaps you as well, would think the third statement describes a fairly large portion of humanity.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 12:10 am (UTC)Precisely.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 04:02 am (UTC)"meaning" can simply describe the relationship between a word or symbol and the object or concept to which it references. The word "chair" is just a symbol which means "and object you sit on" or some specific chair in the universe that the word is referring to.
But "meaning" can also imply the importance of a thing, and that's when value comes in.
The "meaning" of life, for example, can either be talking about the importance (value, either intrinsic or relative) of life, the purpose (the goal or intended final result) of life, or it can be a description of life, an all-encompassing blueprint or framework that IS existence. Like when people say "the TRUTH with a capital T!" they're not simply saying "an accurate description of a thing, a true statement" they mean a very all-encompassing concept with some purpose and intent and final result that can be tallied in some way.
So coming back to the idea of symbolism and meaning...
When we look at how WE interpret meaning and symbols, and how we then interact with the world, we in the process of doing so have a tendency to then invent FURTHER symbolic frameworks with which to describe the original symbolism.
If I were to take what you have described, and make a hypothetical scenario of a boy in a sandbox, playing with the sand, how it would work on for me is that the sand exists as the sand, and the boy exists as the boy. He observes the sand, and through his understanding of the sand, interacts with the sand, thus changing the configuration of the sand.
I could describe it in the same way that I describe a very symbol machine interacting with the sand. A small toy truck with a light sensor which scoops up sand which sparkles with the reflection of the sun, and moves it to a spot where there is no sparkling. The toy, by its nature, "values" the notion of placing bright sand in dark places, changing the configuration.
I could describe us as squishy machines that interact with the world in the same way, though in much more complex patterns due to increased neural capacity.
I would IMAGINE that this falls under the "over critical" statement.
But I think it is an accurate portrayal of the world, and of the functions and interactions of the objects and persons in the world.
It is "true" in that it is a true statement that things work in such a way.
But because it does not include a meta-importance, it has no value or goal beyond the simple fact that the toy truck or the boy values these things for the moment, it has no "capital T Truth" kind of grand design, and therefore no symbolism beyond the description.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 04:02 am (UTC)You and I live in a much more complex and huge world than the hypothetical sandbox, so it's not as though I can just say "because my assertions about the sandbox hold logically true, then the world around us is the same". Of course not. If I believed that, I would just be all like "Hey Wolven, I'm totally right and you're a smelly face!" (which, as much fun as that might be, is hardly productive)
But I can look at some of the individual examples you've brought up and make some determination about whether I think the meta-symbolism is simply an arbitrary creation or an accurate description of the thing you are observing and its functions.
Obviously, we've always had the relationship where you see meaning in things that I describe as not having those specific meaning (or meta-symbolism? I get lost in some of the terminology sometimes, to be honest. I believe I understand what you're getting at most of the time, but sometimes the language seems as though it is itself an extension of the ACT of creating arbitrary symbols and meanings which are not implied by the actual observation, but are rather creations of the human mind)
I tend to think that just because we search for patterns and meaning in things, that does not imply that there is actually some pattern or meaning out there to BE found. We evolved to find the patterns and meaning and gauge the intent of those around us in order to survive. It does not LOGICALLY follow from that fact that there are actually ANY great capital-T truths out there to find, any more than the tiny toy truck in a sandbox "preferring" one configuration of sand over the other is in any way indicative of there being some cosmic significance to the configuration of the sand. We would have to essentially INVENT that significance, and I think largely what we as humans do is invent symbols as tools, and those tools are sometimes quite arbitrary, and ultimately superfluous.
And, yes, a superfluous tool may have a significant impact on the world despite its being completely arbitrary in its creation (ye olde holy war or whatever world-altering event that might happen as the result of a belief which is wholly the creation of the human mind and in no way consistent with the external world)
But that's where I think we have to differentiate between a relative and an intrinsic value or importance or meaning.
A holy war has meaning and purpose to us, and impacts us, and therefore has some value to us, but it has no intrinsic value in that it has no significance to anything or anyone else unless it directly impacts those things. Or, as I always say.. "it's not like the universe cares whether or not you masturbate, that's for the church to get worked-up about".
----
If I'm out of line coming in and making ginormous posts, I do apologize. It's not as though I reciprocate by leaving a lot of public posts for anyone else to come in and read and respond to, but I do tend to view you as a person who does prefer to HAVE the discussion to NOT having it. If I am in error, I apologize.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 12:32 am (UTC)I would IMAGINE that this falls under the "over critical" statement.
I think that this is a good start at being properly critical of the interactions we have with the world and how to understand "value." But I can't remember-- though I feel we absolutely must have, at some point-- whether we touched on the subject of reflexivity.
I think that the difference between human meat machines and the truck (and this can very much be characterized [rightly, wrongly, whatever] as an increase in complexity) is that we can reflect on the things we value and integrate those reflections into our value systems and actions. I think this is a very important level.
, that does not imply that there is actually some pattern or meaning out there to BE found
Agreed, but I also agree with Sartre in that if there is no inherent meaning in the universe, then the meaning that we make out of it is therefore ultimately important.
The framework and conception of the universe that I hold is a fairly radical one, but as a necessary function of itself it allows for a lot of simpler interpretations within it, without contradiction. The universe cares, it doesn't care, it's the work of chaos and an all-loving personal god. You know. Whatever.
Thanks for commenting with your thoughts. I appreciate it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 03:11 am (UTC)If the little robotic dump truck had a camera affixed to it's hull that could see the sand, and a second affixed to a crane that could see itself, and both cameras could see each other, and was programmed to know that...
A: the truck must survive
B: the camera on the crane must survive
C: the survival of A and B are dependent on the survival of each other
...you would essentially have self-awareness.
A goldfish is self-aware in the sense that when it feels pain it flees, when a dog sees you about to step on its foot it reacts, knowing that the foot is an extension of its pain receiving apparatus, and therefore within the jurisdiction of its self-preservation instinct.
The ability to cognitively place that information into some sort of rational storage facility (IE, "human" understanding of the self, or "human" level self-awaresness) is just an evolved version of the former, and while I'd love to say that this is something we could argue about as a philosophical matter, it's really not. It's a purely neurophysiology and evolutionary biology matter. It's not that we can't discuss the implications or importance of it, but the mechanism is no longer the domain of philosophy, and in reality, hasn't been for the last 50 years. Because it's been the domain of religion and philosophy since the dawn of cognitive capacity, it's hard to simply extricate it from the humanities, but I think you'd have to agree that the wealth of evidence does NOT point to cognition being outside the realm of neurophysiology. I've heard assertions to the contrary, but I have yet to hear any arguments that really support the contrary, and I haven't heard any that I can recall that actually overturn any of the scientific evidence that support the notion that the brain is the seat of conscious awareness.
So on that basis, I think self-awareness on the human level can only be given the label "important" in the sense that we, as self-interested beings, find value in because we find it useful or enjoyable to engage in cognitive tasks.
"if there is no inherent meaning in the universe, then the meaning that we make out of it is therefore ultimately important."
If there is no inherent meaning (and by "meaning" I assume we mean a level of value or importance, or significance within a system) then the only meaning is relative meaning.
In a world where all meaning is relative, then no meaning can be held as ultimately important because you have no set standard by which to judge it as higher than others in any objective sense, you only have beings which hold things to be valuable to judge them, and all of their judgments are subjective.
So to say that our meaning is ultimately important is logically equivalent of saying "what is important to me is as important as it is to me". I place high value in something, therefore it has X value to me, and it may be the ultimately important thing to ME, but nobody else, and certainly not the universe/reality, because those things lack an objective standard of value and importance.
I understand the rhetorical and poetic beauty in saying that "in a world without meaning our meaning is the highest form of meaning" but that doesn't actually MEAN anything, it's just poetic.
In a universe without some objective and inherent economy, our economy is the highest form of economy, but without some higher level economy to place value on our economy, you could never say that our economy is "ultimately valuable". It's just there, with only relative value. And if there is no inherent value system for it to be relative TO, there is no way to say that it HAS value.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 04:17 am (UTC)If the only value that exists is the value that is made, then, even as a relative quantity, that value and that TYPE of value is necessarily ultimate.
It's not just a rhetorical move, it's a logically necessary one.
We create all economies and values and systems by which anything is judged anything. It's "arbitrary" and "valueless," but it's also the way we create new scientific disciplines, art, etc. If we place value on anything, then it's only possible because we create the systems, symbols, and phrases to do so.
What I'm saying is, every attempt at modeling the universe is an exercise in symbolism, and the extra symbols and systems teach us more about what's possible.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:11 am (UTC)But while I agree, I think this is also what causes the rift between our points of view.
Yes we are the ones who create value.
Yes, it only exists because we make it.
Yes, it is "ultimate" in the sense that it is the ONLY value that exists.
Yes, that is a logically necessary jump.
But no, it does not mean it is *inherently* important, and I think this is not only a problem in the language used by I think a problem in the actual way in which it is understood.
If I were to say "love is important" I could very easily distinguish between the inherent value and the relative value. Some would say love is intrinsically valuable, some would say it's valuable for the survival of the species.
If I were to say that "God" is important, it would imply automatically that God is intrinsically valuable or inherently important, if for no other reason than that is GENERALLY how people think of God.
But saying "our meaning is the only meaning and it is therefore important" is equivalent of saying "one pound of gold is worth one pound of gold, and is as important as gold is".
When the meaning we make is described as ultimately important, it is technically correct in that it is the standard by which importance would be judged, being the only available standard, but at the same time the statement "ultimately important" tends to imply that it is somehow important OUTSIDE of that system.
I understand that this has as much to do with the person that's reading the phrase as anything, that it doesn't NECESSARILY imply any sort of other level of importance, but that's where I think it's taking a little poetic license in that it's phrased in such a way that the vast majority of people would take that to mean that once you remove the inherent standard from the universe, you're "raising" the value of the human standard to something higher than nothing by labeling it "ultimately important", when it really hasn't been raised in importance in the eyes of the universe at all. It's still completely valueless outside of humans valuing it.
I sound like a total nihilist, I know, and I don't mean to, it's just my mind-numbingly furious desire to be absolutely accurate in my technical understanding of minutia. (read: nitpicking... to the nth fucking degree)
I realize that in the most literal dissection of these arguments we are on a similar page when it comes to their base components, but I think it's the way in which we then take that language and expand on it that creates much of the difference in the overall view and resulting ideologies we hold.
To me, symbols are just symbols and the concepts they represent are what must be accurate. From the outside looking in (and this is in no way a statement of "this is how your viewpoint IS" but instead it's "how this appears from over here, and I'm wondering if this is the case so please explain if it's not") it would appear that such phrases, and the way in which I described the general populous' misunderstanding of them, seems to be the cornerstone of a great deal of metaphysical philosophy in general.
Taking words, and rather than hammering out the actual concepts they relate to, instead verifying components of one concept, and then accepting the symbol and all related concepts as validated.
Like saying that "magic" (the LaVey, applied-psychology sense) exists, and because "magic" also implies action-at-a-distance, accepting it as validated as well.
I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but from the outside it at time appears that the symbols BECOME the important thing to much of metaphysical philosophy or symbolist philosophy or what-have-you, and the concept themselves end up not being the thing discussed or thought about at all, like it's just a game of matching words on cards until you get the result you want on paper, and assume that because the words lined up, the concepts can also coexist in space without any problems.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:11 am (UTC)Not to mention, there *are* those, like Casteneda and Crowley that were so obviously bullshitting their way through it and taking the people around them for everything they were worth, that it's hard to see arguments phrased using similar symbols and language as not also representing a sort of linguistic chicanery, so slogging through the jargon in order to understand how it might be used in an organized and useful manner is at times arduous.
I understand that somehow you are taking this and doing something with it that makes complete sense to you, and looks perfectly fine on paper, but it is REALLY hard to accept that on faith sometimes because there does not appear to be a way to actually model it coherently with language, and the language that many use, and you personally use, seems AT TIMES to be intentionally vague and without logical structure for the sole purpose of being symbolically evocative. When this happens it makes it really difficult to not think I'm just being taken for a ride, and if I can ignore *THAT* possibility, it's still hard to work out how it forms to make an argument that actually has some sort of philosophical or logical weight to it, and that's after I just assume that it must have some merit, despite that merit not being immediately obvious.
for instance...
as a necessary function of itself it allows for a lot of simpler interpretations within it, without contradiction. The universe cares, it doesn't care, it's the work of chaos and an all-loving personal god. You know. Whatever.
On the surface it just appears to be intentionally vague. It's obviously not logically coherent, but comes with the assertion that it's not contradictory, but with no explanation to that effect.
I know it just doesn't seem like it, but I'm trying so hard to take all of this and formulate some workable model with it, but for the life of me I can't understand how you stitch this together and make sense of it because like I said, so often in isolation the statements make perfect sense, but somehow you mold them into something which is so very very VERY much in opposition with what seems a much more clear and obvious way to mold them. It's like trying to go back to a creationist school and trying to get back into the mindset that I held when I believed that. It's just so foreign now that I hold these other beliefs that it's not easy to see how it could make any sense with all the other things that so obviously make sense.
I can't deny the artistry of it, and the beautiful aesthetic of it, but I don't see how it coalesces into an actual model of something.