Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

"I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman."-----Alan Moore

It's a shame that the most we ever remember of our lives are just the outer physical events. The new job we got. Some relationship we had. A vacation we took. Or a great catastrophe on the news. And yet most all our life is filled with meaningful inner events. A fascinating piece of writing we read. A sudden observation we made out in public. A scene from a movie or program that deeply affected us. A moment of deep empathy we had for another. No wonder our past occurs to us as a largely hollow shell, empty of the richness and depth of all the thoughts and feelings we had in between its notable events. So remember this: even if nothing dramatic is happening in your life, there is still ALOT going on inside of it. Your soul is a work in progress.

The many ways that Being keeps appearing and then vanishing away. Like when you wake up in the morning, and you are comforted by being in your home again, in a certain city, at a certain time of your life. Or how the rustling of the trees at night reminds you of some vague wildness of your spirit lost in your distant past. Or how this next thought, unraveled by the tracing of lines of words on a screen surges up out of nothingness, only to fall back again into the swirling flux of your own imaginings. Everything is appearing to us all the time, and yet quickly fading away, opening us outward and ever onward to the manifesting presence of Being.

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The innate circularity of time-keeping: How long does it take for the minute hand on my clock to make one revolution on the dial? It takes one hour. How long is an hour? One revolution of the minute hand on the dial of my clock.

"The Sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light, giving itself over to become energy that we, with every meal, partake of. For four million years, humans have been feasting on star energy stored in the form of wheat or reindeer."---Brian Swimme

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To be honest there's only a very few situations where knowing in advance would benefit us very much. Nearly all growth and learning happens right after something we didn't expect happens to us.

We don't really have a 3D perception of our world. Not initially at least. Just as if we were in the 2nd dimension and only perceiving other flat shapes as just different colored 1 dimensional lines, so in the 3rd dimension we only ever perceive 2 dimensional shapes containing different colors and other 2D shapes.

How is it then that we know they are really 3D objects? Because we can walk around the shape and watch it morph and change appearance which we project as the serially exposed other sides of one selfsame object. This is such a reliable way of obtaining a seeming all-surrounding 3D perspective of the object that we don't even have to do it to be sure the 2D shape we are seeing is really a 3D object. Thanks to the illusion of binocular vision, we are even quite sure we SEE the 3D objects sitting before us. And ofcourse their shading has also accustomed us to their depth.

Thus it is that by incorporating the smooth flowing movement of change over time (the 4th dimension) that our 2D world is conceptually experienced as a 3D world. Perception it seems is not a static succession of discrete still frames. It is an animated movie of shapes and shadows and colors shifting about and morphing and changing size to manifest as one 3D objective world we are moving around in and that is moving relative to us as well. It is the flow of time itself that provides the continuity that unifies every viewed shape and color and shadow into a seamless streaming experience of a world of unmoving places and self-same objects around us and of our bodies as the ever-moving and shifting center of it.

"Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself."---Maurice Merleau-Ponty

I find it fascinating that there are a few things that seem to be universally funny, no matter what our culture or age or belief system. And it comforts me to know that laughter is one of those fundamental experiences uniting us all as humans.

Learning and becoming more aware is our default state. It takes no effort or energy at all. It happens naturally all on its own. What DOES take effort and energy is remaining ignorant, a state sustained only by deliberately ignoring and shutting out.

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“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of 'world history' — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world."---Friedrich Nietzsche

I have always been suspicious of the much-lauded and idealized trait we generally call intelligence. As if it were some mysterious free-floating property of a person that is just inborn and intrinsic to who they are. To me this smacks too much of an imposed virtue morality on human mentality, as if there are just some people who are objectively more intelligent than others. The practical usefulness of categorizing people this way in our society cannot be overstated, resulting in whole classes deemed innately superior or inferior and resulting in unjustified discrimination and stereotyping. Hence the whole myth of the IQ, a questionable measurement of this aptitude based entirely on the ability to pass tests.

But in reality I don't think intelligence is a property inherent in persons. It is I believe a situational state---a mode of being-in-the-world. We find ourselves mostly intelligent based on the situation or circumstances we are in. We tend to frequent places where that intelligence is optimized thru familiarity and habit--our homes, our place of work, our favorite stores and restaurants. If we go to places we are not familiar with, our intelligence, as our successful navigation and utilization of those places' resources, is quite low. Only by going there more often does intelligence increase.

Likewise, just about every person has situations in which intelligence is optimized. For instance for most people being out in the woods is a low intelligence situation, filled with unfamiliar things and variables. But to a seasoned forest ranger the woods provides a optimized intelligence situation where his/her knowledge and experience is specifically applicable. Or take a master chef, who outside of the kitchen may be confined to low intelligence situations, but who suddenly becomes highly intelligent in the kitchen. Or a mother who is intimately acquainted with the situation of running a family. Generally there are at least a few situations where everyone feels natural and "at home" and in one's "wheelhouse". Some people are highly intelligent in social situations, some in reading and studying situations, some in mechanical/technological situations, and some in musical/artistic situations.

Intelligence then not as some fixed trait of our personality but as an acquired adaptedness to situations. As a relational and dynamic knowingness and savviness within different environments and fortes and milieus.

“I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.”― Susan Sontag

^Cope.

Everything is better against the backdrop of a gloomy autumn day. Food is better. Coffee is better. TV is better. Music is better. Traveling is better. Everything acquires an almost literary meaningfulness and a nostalgic longing for days gone by. The faint scent of wood burning and wet leaves. Soup and candles and books. Everything is an excuse to contemplate and reflect on the human condition. There is a depth and interiority in everything that is experienced.