Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[David_Sundaram]

'Tame' = 'slavery' and 'wild' = 'freedom' ...

Indeed, what about those wasps that somehow turn spiders into egg-hosting 'slaves' that are tasked with the role of spinning ~ not their usual fly-trapping webs ~ but structures that will serve as the hatched wasp larvae's cocoon? Seems such 'slavery' runs deep

Slavery is slavery and 'taming' may be 'instituted' to make enslavement 'easier' and.or more 'profitable' - like many have historically done in relation to 'beasts' of 'burden' (including 'sled' dogs and other humans).

This is not to be confused with friendship as illustrated/demonstrated in the 'animal friendship' video I shared earlier - or in real interpersonal human 'friendship', Dana. Where is your above comment coming from? And what is it 'pointing' to, meaning what is its relation to the subject of freewill 'friendship' with others not of ones own 'kind' which I introduced into this discussion - which Lou IMO diverted and you, with your 'clever' whataboutism, seemingly also, consciously or not, wish to do?

[Eugene I]

There is one trait almost unique to humans, which is especially appealing to me personally (I think it is the main reason I incarnated into a human, otherwise I would not bother). And this trait is creativity. Another key one is the sense of beauty and aesthetics, but one can argue that it might be also present in other intelligent animals. I like this Hoffman's analogy of the "Gödel's candy shop" - an inexhaustible space of the infinite variety of forms and states of consciousness that are both created and experienced by consciousness. There is no end to this creativity, to the inventions/discoveries of the infinite variety of forms and experiences. I don't think there is a single universal goal or telos in the Universe, for some it may be the spiritual and intellectual development of the individual loci or the whole the ecosystem of consciousness, for others it can be "Nature coming to know itself", and for others (like me) it can be creative exploration of the infinite space of forms, and it even may be all of those.

An interesting philosophical question arises as whether such creative process is "Nature coming to know itself" or "Nature creatively expanding itself into the unknown and previously nonexistent". Because if we assume that all possible forms of consciousness (i.e. all possible experiences, forms, meanings and ideations) eternally exist (in the Platonic sense) and what we do in the creative process is simply re-discover these forms, then we are, as part of Nature/Consciousness, are simply "coming to know ourselves". However, if we assume that the forms have no existence until they are invented/created, then this is not exactly the process of "Nature coming to know itself", but rather Consciousness/Nature expanding into the unknown and into previously nonexistent realms of its infinite space of possibilities. I don't think anyone has an answer to such question anyway, but I personally prefer to think it's the latter - that we are indeed inventing and not merely re-discovering the new forms, this brings a sense of adventure into the process of creativity.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

What I'm trying to suggest here is that if men simply revert to their primitive instincts things wouldn't go for the better. Then people will simply die in tribal wars but at least you'll be happy that it's Nature's will and man is not doing anything "wrong". Instead of dissolving the "I" in the instinctive whole, the "I" can be ennobled and inspired by its Divine Nature. Then we again reach wholeness. Something that has always been called brotherhood of men. Not an instinctive swarm of dreaming animals but society of free individual beings, living in expanded awareness towards the higher worlds, striving to express their highest ideals and contributing to the whole out of Love.

And what I am vehemently insisting is that such nonsense (see your bold type) is a strawman projection onto my position. I assert a great diversity of successful-or-failing traits manifestng at every level (below, within and above) and always needing a dynamic networked process of bringing into balance as an ongoing 'work'. I'm reminded of Aurobindo's great works reaching for an "Integral Yoga of Divine Life" stressing immanence on par with transcendence. I grok the "torus turning" more as a recognition of the dynamic multidirectional roles of both light and dark than as a pinhole-type ascending passage from one to the other. At bottom line, your position simply seems more dualist (either/or) than mine and I speculate that this is why you project a dualist meaning onto my words. A great saint was once asked if everyone saw him as a saint? He answered, "A thief would see me as a thief." However, if healing is to occur, the thief must be understood as needing the same love as everyone, which is the core insight bringing forth the so-called "shadow work" in the psychoanalytic tradition of Jung. And, yes, that's quite a challenge.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Where is your above comment coming from? And what is it 'pointing' to, meaning what is its relation to the subject of freewill 'friendship' with others not of ones own 'kind' which I introduced into this discussion - which Lou IMO diverted and you, with your 'clever' whataboutism, seemingly also, consciously or not, wish to do?

David ... There you go with the predictable psychoanalyzing again ~ but I suppose you can't help it, as that is your conditioning. The point is simply that life forms taming other life forms, and using them to benefit their own survival, as the wasp 'tames' the spider into constructing a cocoon for its larva, is an instinctual drive that runs far deeper in nature than just at the human level, and so the point was really nothing more complicated than that.

[Lou Gold]

There is one trait almost unique to humans, which is especially appealing to me personally (I think it is the main reason I incarnated into a human, otherwise I would not bother). And this trait is creativity. Another key one is the sense of beauty and aesthetics, but one can argue that it might be also present in other intelligent animals. I like this Hoffman's analogy of the "Gödel's candy shop" - an inexhaustible space of the infinite variety of forms and states of consciousness that are both created and experienced by consciousness. There is no end to this creativity, to the inventions/discoveries of the infinite variety of forms and experiences. I don't think there is a single universal goal or telos in the Universe, for some it may be the spiritual and intellectual development of the individual loci or the whole the ecosystem of consciousness, for others it can be "Nature coming to know itself", and for others (like me) it can be creative exploration of the infinite space of forms, and it even may be all of those.

An interesting philosophical question arises as whether such creative process is "Nature coming to know itself" or "Nature creatively expanding itself into the unknown and previously nonexistent". Because if we assume that all possible forms of consciousness (i.e. all possible experiences, forms, meanings and ideations) eternally exist (in the Platonic sense) and what we do in the creative process is simply re-discover these forms, then we are, as part of Nature/Consciousness, are simply "coming to know ourselves". However, if we assume that the forms have no existence until they are invented/created, then this is not exactly the process of "Nature coming to know itself", but rather Consciousness/Nature expanding into the unknown and into previously nonexistent realms of its infinite space of possibilities. I don't think anyone has an answer to such question anyway, but I personally prefer to think it's the latter - that we are indeed inventing and not merely re-discovering the new forms, this brings a sense of adventure into the process of creativity.

Eugene, I tend toward agreement with you about creativity as the sacred purpose of an earthly incarnation. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Creativity is both constructive and destructive and the incarnate being must learn to self-limit as well as to self-reveal. Yeah (I know) this gets a bit tricky when we start pointing toward 'no-self', so...

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

[Lou Gold]

'Tame' = 'slavery' and 'wild' = 'freedom' ...

Indeed, what about those wasps that somehow turn spiders into egg-hosting 'slaves' that are tasked with the role of spinning ~ not their usual fly-trapping webs ~ but structures that will serve as the hatched wasp larvae's cocoon? Seems such 'slavery' runs deep

Slavery is slavery and 'taming' may be 'instituted' to make enslavement 'easier' and.or more 'profitable' - like many have historically done in relation to 'beasts' of 'burden' (including 'sled' dogs and other humans).

This is not to be confused with friendship as illustrated/demonstrated in the 'animal friendship' video I shared earlier - or in real interpersonal human 'friendship', Dana. Where is your above comment coming from? And what is it 'pointing' to, meaning what is its relation to the subject of freewill 'friendship' with others not of ones own 'kind' which I introduced into this discussion - which Lou IMO diverted and you, with your 'clever' whataboutism, seemingly also, consciously or not, wish to do?

David,

Here is a blog post about my favorite cow-human relationship located in rural Brazil.

Back With Baiano

[Cleric K]

An interesting philosophical question arises as whether such creative process is "Nature coming to know itself" or "Nature creatively expanding itself into the unknown and previously nonexistent". Because if we assume that all possible forms of consciousness (i.e. all possible experiences, forms, meanings and ideations) eternally exist (in the Platonic sense) and what we do in the creative process is simply re-discover these forms, then we are, as part of Nature/Consciousness, are simply "coming to know ourselves". However, if we assume that the forms have no existence until they are invented/created, then this is not exactly the process of "Nature coming to know itself", but rather Consciousness/Nature expanding into the unknown and into previously nonexistent realms of its infinite space of possibilities. I don't think anyone has an answer to such question anyway, but I personally prefer to think it's the latter - that we are indeed inventing and not merely re-discovering the new forms, this brings a sense of adventure into the process of creativity.

I think both positions are equivalent at some level. If the Platonic array contains the whole infinity of the possible states of being then each unknown state that we expand into would also exist in this array. It's just a choice of words. Whether we call it "Platonic space of the infinite variety of states of being" or "the unknown territory of yet to be created states" is practically the same - both concepts represent the imagined infinity of possible states of being.

I think that there would be difference between the two only if we accept time as being something fundamental. But if we assume that time is an effect of gradual implosion of states of being then we should also assume that all possible states already exist simultaneously. In that case time emerges as a "mechanism" of being able to "spectrum analyze" the possible states and experience them in a growth like integration, which is experienced as temporal becoming, leading to the state-at-infinity that encompasses the whole infinity of states as an eternal 'now'.

[AshvinP]

There is one trait almost unique to humans, which is especially appealing to me personally (I think it is the main reason I incarnated into a human, otherwise I would not bother). And this trait is creativity. Another key one is the sense of beauty and aesthetics, but one can argue that it might be also present in other intelligent animals. I like this Hoffman's analogy of the "Gödel's candy shop" - an inexhaustible space of the infinite variety of forms and states of consciousness that are both created and experienced by consciousness. There is no end to this creativity, to the inventions/discoveries of the infinite variety of forms and experiences. I don't think there is a single universal goal or telos in the Universe, for some it may be the spiritual and intellectual development of the individual loci or the whole the ecosystem of consciousness, for others it can be "Nature coming to know itself", and for others (like me) it can be creative exploration of the infinite space of forms, and it even may be all of those.

An interesting philosophical question arises as whether such creative process is "Nature coming to know itself" or "Nature creatively expanding itself into the unknown and previously nonexistent". Because if we assume that all possible forms of consciousness (i.e. all possible experiences, forms, meanings and ideations) eternally exist (in the Platonic sense) and what we do in the creative process is simply re-discover these forms, then we are, as part of Nature/Consciousness, are simply "coming to know ourselves". However, if we assume that the forms have no existence until they are invented/created, then this is not exactly the process of "Nature coming to know itself", but rather Consciousness/Nature expanding into the unknown and into previously nonexistent realms of its infinite space of possibilities. I don't think anyone has an answer to such question anyway, but I personally prefer to think it's the latter - that we are indeed inventing and not merely re-discovering the new forms, this brings a sense of adventure into the process of creativity.

Eugene, I tend toward agreement with you about creativity as the sacred purpose of an earthly incarnation. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Creativity is both constructive and destructive and the incarnate being must learn to self-limit as well as to self-reveal. Yeah (I know) this gets a bit tricky when we start pointing toward 'no-self', so...

In connection with Lou's response, I would say Nietzsche was on the right path with his concept of "eternal recurrence of the same". Heidegger believed this concept, along with the Ubermensch (the two are integral to each other), lay at the foundation of all of Nietzsche's thinking, and it is hard (and unwise) to argue with him. Without any further exploration of its meaning, we see it involves two nouns and a verb; Being and becoming. Both must be incorporated into any metaphysical discussion of Reality IMO.

[Eugene I]

Eugene, I tend toward agreement with you about creativity as the sacred purpose of an earthly incarnation. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Creativity is both constructive and destructive and the incarnate being must learn to self-limit as well as to self-reveal. Yeah (I know) this gets a bit tricky when we start pointing toward 'no-self', so...

Yes, I agree, but with one reservation: creativity by itself is neutral, it's how we use the results of creativity that can be constructive or destructive.

[Eugene I]

I think that there would be difference between the two only if we accept time as being something fundamental. But if we assume that time is an effect of gradual implosion of states of being then we should also assume that all possible states already exist simultaneously. In that case time emerges as a "mechanism" of being able to "spectrum analyze" the possible states and experience them in a growth like integration, which is experienced as temporal becoming, leading to the state-at-infinity that encompasses the whole infinity of states as an eternal 'now'.

Not necessarily, may be time (not being fundamental) is one of the facets of "becoming" that allows for the possibilities to come into existence, while without time they would virtually not exist in any sense at all and there would simple be the "Being" without any "becoming".

If we look at that from conscious-experiential point of view (rather that intellectual), and if we look into our direct conscious experience, we see a variety of forms appearing and being experienced in our field of conscious experience as a succession of states ("in time"), with the forms of infinite variety never repeating themselves, yet there is an ever-present and never-changing feature that is common to every experience - the awareness/experiencing of these forms itself. So, the awareness appears to be totally timeless, yet the qualia experienced by the awareness always change in time. To me this is the factual reality of time co-existing with and inseparable form timelessness, and once we recognize it, there is no need anymore to invent an idea of a "Being" existing in "timelessness" as some imaginary metaphysical inference. The timelessness of the awareness is fundamental to it (because awareness is changeless fundamentally and by nature - it is impossible to experience the disappearance or any change in experiencing/awareness itself), yet from this fact we can not conclude that it also contains the infinite integral of all possible states.

This is an example of how knowing the reality experientially as it is (as much as it is given to us in the direct conscious experience) and inferring about it metaphysically can lead to very different conclusions. But in any case, I've read a lot on what philosophy have said about Platonism, but all I got from it is that it still remains inconclusive, as it usually happens in metaphysics. The Platonist hypothesis (eternal/timeless pre-existence of ideations) is unprovable (non-verifiable and non-falsifiable) simply because it is impossible to prove (or disprove) the pre-existence of an idea before such idea appears in someone's mind.