Federica wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:55 pmAshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:55 amFederica wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 12:57 am
Ashvin, maybe this example is now worn out to the point where it won't find its right-sounding linguistic form for a little while. I am the one to blame, I've been too much focused on language. Beyond vocabulary, the parallel with the fingers typing on a computer makes me wonder about one thing. Fingers are not necessary, but only practical for using the computer interface. I could give the machine inputs in various alternative ways. On the contrary, in VR it’s intentional and crucial that there’s no alternative. The fingers are instrumental to the experience as such, not as the interchangeable tools they are for our computers, that live in relative harmony with the surrounding spectrum. Our computers fairly negotiate their place within the perceptual spectrum. VR doesn’t negotiate anything, it seeks to exterminate its surroundings. It’s the seclusion I referred to before, in which a schizophrenic threshold is passed (pathological as you called it), beyond which we become both abducted and the abductor. This inevitably sends me back to the idea of hunching on oneself, implosion, and dead end. Maybe I would spare this question for the dead end post: are these differences irrelevant in all respects?
In any case, even amidst these questions, the exchange is helping me look for continuity more than for differentiation, in the same line as Cleric's post on Levin. Thanks for the wealth of new supporting illustrations in this post. And I'm impressed by the sacrifice you're making and the composure it demonstrates. I can only hope I will attain some similar capability someday.
Federica,
Allow me to ask a few brief questions on this, and I understand if you would rather not continue much further on this topic. I sort of like it because VR is a new phenomena and therefore it forces us to test our principled understanding of spiritual evolution against a relatively unfamiliar manifestation of that evolution. Anyone can hold on to a bunch of principles, and many people do, but they only develop strength within us when they are tested.
1) Can you imagine a scenario in which VR technology develops further so that we can also feed it all necessary inputs in many different ways, perhaps by voice, without any hand controllers? Just as the computer started as some humongous set of clunky servers which took up an entire room and now nearly every person has one in their pocket or on their wrist, could a similar progression happen for VR?
(also, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?)
2) What is your feeling on the inner disposition argument I made previously, in relation to the mindset we must adopt to feel/think that there are some phenomena which, of themselves, pass a 'schizophrenic threshold'? What is the principle reason we could not adopt this same line of reasoning to say other phenomena have passed such thresholds, including other souls, who we feel/think are no longer 'negotiating their place within the perceptual spectrum'?
I will respond to the other part of the post separately.
Ashvin,
Sure, it's mainly that I'm wary of becoming tedious. Otherwise I would have no issue going on. My answers:
1) Absolutely, and that’s an example (steering the flow through voice rather than hand control) of how the technology will probably result in, and merge with, transhumanism. I never thought it was static. But what’s noticeable is, the experience it constitutes at this moment in time is constrained in the particular way I described - no alternatives. By contrast, at this same particular moment in time, I can continually choose how I interact with my computer. I have alternative constraints that mix in the sensorial spectrum in various ways. In VR, it’s crucial that there’s no such choice. It’s reductive, exclusive, seclusive.
The bold is what I was getting at. Do you discern the flaw in reasoning to conclusions about the nature of any phenomenal experience from how it manifests to us at any particular moment in time? We are dealing with the basic PoF principles here.
If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development.
If the argument you are making is dependent on these momentary appearances - in this case, the argument that the VR experience seeks to 'exterminate our surroundings' by uniquely constraining our activity beyond the 'schizophrenic threshold' - then it can't possibly be valid. If we end up with VR technology which manages to integrate with our perceptual environment, and you can continually choose how to interact with the VR experience, then the argument is defeated. So what does that tell us about the underlying line of reasoning, and the conclusions which the argument is reaching right now?
Federica wrote:"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?" It’s correct. I haven’t tried VR yet, but not because I’m strenuously resisting it. Last year it was even a question of possibly having it incorporated in my training/coaching work. A startup proposed that to me. In the end, for other reasons, it hasn’t happened, but I was open to exploring the possibility, because, even with my antipathy, I appreciate innovative pursuits and, also, I know that sooner or later it will happen in the industry. It is happening.
This raises another issue which I touched on briefly before. If it is happening and permeating the culture across many domains, should we have any sense of responsibility for permeating it with our own living understanding and thereby providing some counter-balance to the abstract, mechanistic, transhumanist, etc. approach to it which is prevalent and which will be spreading? What would happen to humanity as a whole if spiritually conscious people decided to generally avoid materialistic technologies whenever they could and simply work on their own development? This question is especially relevant when we begin to discern, in a living way, that our spiritual consciousness is only possible because other streams of development have lagged behind and formed the natural and cultural environments in which we live and operate, and that our spiritual consciousness only expands to the highest spheres when we become permeated with that sense of sacrificial responsibility. I am reminded of a passage here.
Steiner wrote:The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development.
Federica wrote:2) Are we back to splitting vocabulary then? It’s fine for me, especially if we can make a bonfire with all the splits Not sure what could be burned, but I got from your latest graph that fire is the most spiritualized element of the physical-mineral spectrum, whatever that might foreshadow that air cannot, in terms of scary upcoming technological evolutions.
So, to answer your question, by no means am I adopting a mindset in which phenomena do things by themselves! Which should be clear when I say that in VR we become both abducted, and the abductor. Previously I have worded that in various ways, for example by saying that - levels of spiritualization being supposed equal - what makes a difference is how andAlso, if we are to play this game, your vocabulary seems to suggest that, in the unitary system that holds the causal levels together, you are writing off one direction in the two-way causal flow, when you state:Federica wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 9:21 pm how much [our spiritual activity] overlaps across levels of causality. And I feel it has big significance, at least while we have an alive physical body, that we make our thinking expansion proceed or not in such a way that it will overlap and press across levels of causality, down to the sensory, and make us descend or not descend in those experiences.
The last part is fair, and elsewhere I have mentioned several times that there is a constant feed back between the spiritual activity and the forms which it impresses and utilizes for further clarification and expansion of activity. Nevertheless it is more helpful to always look for causes of physical manifestations in spiritual activity when we investigate phenomena, because even what we call the forms of the 'physical world' or 'cultural world', which serves as resistance-constraints to our spiritual activity, is the expression of higher-order spiritual activity in which ours is nested.
I am not quite following the part about the difference being in how much our activity is overlapping across levels of causality. In your view, is this overlapping a function of the technology being used or the individuality using the technology? In other words, could an individual using VR still manage to consciously engage their activity across all levels of causality?
This being said, I feel positively about the inner disposition of keeping in mind the usefulness of this exchange for our personal spiritual development. But how is this different from getting to grips with the phenomenon, provided that one strives for first person understanding? What am I missing in the inner disposition you suggest?
What I am asking is as follows. What would the world look like if people began to not only draw universal conclusions about certain phenomena on the physical plane based on their momentary manifestations in time, but to also allow those thoughts to then permeate their feeling and will? I'm looking at this question as a matter of principle, quite independent of what particular phenomena we are speaking of. What would happen, for ex., if certain groups of people, in their manifestations on the physical plane, were thought to have crossed a threshold of materialistic thinking, after which they have detached themselves from the normal sensory-conceptual spectrum from which spiritual development is possible? This is not to be taken as a suggestion that we need to sacrifice first-person understanding of phenomena for some abstract sense of being 'fair' to the phenomena or people using the technology, but rather that our inner disposition towards phenomena is intimately bound up with our very capacity for understanding the phenomena in a living way.