human perspective: the only good in this world
Posts tagged evolution
Our Human Animal Essence
Oct 28th
Human animal essence, in self-awareness and imagination, is infinitely wonderful, and supernatural mythology keeps on utterly messing it up. Even now, on the brink of the worst atrocity ever (human extinction) the shaman-delusion of immortality and human unity with its imaginary supernatural purpose only keeps on accelerating. As we approach posthuman technological singularity, machine-shamanism is adapting more rapidly than ever in its continuous sick seduction of human minds.
Why? Because it is machine. Your religion and your enlightenment program imagining goodness to be universal are machine. Universe or machine does do not care about anything except whatever is happening, whether it is human extinction or not. This means they are universally self-existential. It does not matter what the form of the universe is or becomes, whether it is thin or fat, or beautiful or ugly, or good or evil. In the dynamics of the universe, meaning as we understand it, means absolutely nothing. Our human goodness is in our singular human physical form, which is human animal. Human existence is the only real truth.
Of course the biased dualisms mentioned above are part of machine mind singularity. If we had kept human-existential dignity as our main principle of meaning, the cultures of dualistic bigotry would not have existed. The universal dynamic overall does not care about anything. It makes these dualisms opportunistically by natural selection. What works procreates and proliferates, even with ideas/memes, concepts and terminology. Language is an opportunistic MECHANICAL device to submit humans to the dynamic of the perpetual cosmic evolution.
Yet the hope is that we have imagination … this atrocity can be overcome.
The Evolving Teleology of Opportunistic Mysticism
Apr 26th
This post follows up on the post of 15-Apr-09, The Organization of the Human Mind.
At the forefront of facilitating this delusional process of human neural subjugation are the gurus of the enlightenment culture. In every historical reincarnation, the gurus validate spiritualism as well as materialism in one fell swoop of their culture-prostrate neural waves. Gurus are not innocent. Opportunistically selective mysticism has always had, and still has a central bearing on what is happening to humanity. Historically, the development of consciousness threads through shamanism, Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism and Buddhism, etc. I am going to use the thoughts of a contemporary consciousness guru, Ken Wilber as an example.
Wilber says he is integrating all such great traditions into one philosophy. Since Wilber is eminently concerned with the spiritual, he points out that the whole fight between the ancient and the modern is about whether the evolution of the universe takes place as a gradual reconstitution of a cosmic involution. Wilber suggests that what we perceive, as newly emerging forms of cosmic evolution are not ultimately new, but is a physical expression of ontologically pre-existing levels or dimensions of reality, ie. in the mind of God. Apart from Wilber’s more local existential thrust, to me this idea suggests the idea that the universe could be a small part of a multiverse evolution forever outside our perception. How Wilber thinks this kind of holistic spiritualism is important to humans, is similar to the question how someone thinks humanity is important to a grain of sand. How is his urgent mentality not merely the involuntary mechanical coursing-through of a mermaid’s call for humanity to integrate with the fabric of the cosmos, in the case of civilized humans, equivalent to utter submission to whatever is happening to them as subjects of civilization? How is it like the ancient institutionalist religious traditions not part of a remorseless seduction in the guise of spiritualist, cosmic immortality? What other kind of becoming is this for humans, other than being made mince meat of?
Wilber is concerned with the world-wide cultural transition between the ancient to the modern and post-modern and its natural opposition to spiritual integrationist culture because of what he sees as its unfortunate suspension of enlightenment spirituality. He notes that the significant percentage of humanity’s influential leadership now in the modern level of consciousness (according to that kind of theory) will develop further, causing the current reportedly 2% at the integrationist post-modern level of consciousness to quickly swell to 5% and 10%. It seems to me that Wilber’s mislead guru mind is trying to reinsert the opportunistically selective mysticism of antiquity into the emergent models of what integrationist consciousness means. In his recent work he tries to construct an argument in support of the ontological preexisting reality or form and its teleological implications that does not rely on the ontological principle of preexisting reality or form. In his mind he is trying to construct a purely rational paradigm that would reconstitute the highest possible level of preexisting ontological reality. Let me stress again, he calls it “cultural integration.” Wilber actually admits to trying to sell integral philosophy to what he sees as the skeptical post-modern mind by dressing it up in their language. He thinks he is smoothing humanity’s path to cosmic Nirvana.
Guru:: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
The guru is seen as a conduit for sacred wisdom and guidance, and finding a true guru is often held to be a prerequisite for attaining self-realization. The gurudev is the concept of one’s highest consciousness as an inner teacher or intuition within the student.
Nirvana :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
Nirvana – Buddha described nirvana as the perfect peace of the state of mind that is free from craving, anger and other afflictive states (kilesa). The subject is at peace with the world, has compassion for all and gives up obsessions and fixations. This peace is achieved when the existing volitional formations are pacified, and the conditions for the production of new ones are eradicated. In Nibbana the root causes of craving and aversion have been extinguished such that one is no longer subject to human suffering (dukkha) or further states of rebirths in samsara.
Shamanism :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
Shamanism is a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, pronounced /ˈʃɑːmən/, /ˈʃeɪmən/, (|ˈshämən; ˈshā-|) noun (pl. -man(s)). There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world and several common beliefs are shared by all forms of shamanism. Shamans are intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds. According to believers, they can treat illness and are capable of entering supernatural realms to provide answers for humans.
Neo-Platonism :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
Neo-Platonism posit that the primeval Source of Being is the One and the Infinite, as opposed to the many and the finite. It is the source of all life, and therefore absolute causality and the only real existence. However, the important feature of it is that it is beyond all Being, although the source of it. Therefore, it cannot be known through reasoning or understanding, since only what is part of Being can be thus known according to Plato. Being beyond existence, it is the most real reality, source of less real things. It is, moreover, the Good, insofar as all finite things have their purpose in it, and ought to flow back to it. But one cannot attach moral attributes to the original Source of Being itself, because these would imply limitation. It has no attributes of any kind; it is being without magnitude, without life, without thought; in strict propriety, indeed, we ought not to speak of it as existing; it is “above existence,” “above goodness.” :: Wikipedia, 26-Apr-09.
…. compared to Aristotle’s Scientific Method – :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle’s philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular imitations of these. For Aristotle, “form” still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is “instantiated” in a particular substance (see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain sense, Aristotle’s method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato’s is essentially deductive from a priori principles.
Christian Mysticism :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
For Christians the major emphasis of mysticism concerns a spiritual transformation of the egoic self, the following of a path designed to produce more fully realized human persons, “created in the Image and Likeness of God” and as such, living in harmonious communion with God, the Church, the rest of humanity, and all creation, including oneself. For Christians, this human potential is realized most perfectly in Jesus, precisely because he is both God and human, and is manifested in others through their association with him, whether conscious, as in the case of Christian mystics, or unconscious, with regard to spiritual persons who follow other traditions, such as Gandhi. The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of this transformation in terms of theosis or divinization, perhaps best summed up by an ancient aphorism usually attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria: “God became human so that man might become God.”
Buddhism :: Wikipedia 26-Apr-09
Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices considered by most to be a religion and is based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as “The Buddha” (the Awakened One), who was born in what is today Nepal. He lived and taught in the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent and most likely died around 400 BCE.
Buddhists recognize him as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end their suffering by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving Nirvana. Among the methods various schools of Buddhism apply towards this goal are: ethical conduct and altruistic behaviour, devotional practices, ceremonies and the invocation of bodhisattvas, renunciation of worldly matters, meditation, physical exercises, study, and the cultivation of wisdom.
The Organization of the Human Mind
Apr 15th
As you know I am writing a short book to show how humans have been dismally wrong in the way we think for 2,500 years. I want to show that if this changes, the rest will follow. I am in fact optimistic that we can drastically change the minds of our species and that it will save us from extinction.
“Organisms organize, and humans organize meaning.”
- Robert Kegan quoting psychologist William Perry. In Over Our Heads p.29
“This kind of ‘knowing,’ this work of the mind is not about ‘cognition’ alone, if what we mean by cognition is thinking divorced of feeling and social relating. It is about the organizing principle we bring to our thinking and our feelings and our relating to others and our relating to parts of ourselves.”
- Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads p.29
Kegan goes on to talk about psychological growth as the unselfconscious development of successively more complex principles for organizing experience throughout life. As we mature the successively more complex levels of organizational maturity determine the structures of our thinking, feelings, affection and self-analysis in successively more mature ways.
Here is my view of the issue of humans organizing meaning. Keep in mind that organisms do not need self-reflective minds to organize. Organizing meaning is not as strictly a human trait, as psychologists are inclined to think. We can see civilization itself as an unselfconscious organizing organism determining human psychological development as part of its own explosively growing organization. Organization is a characteristic of civilization. The structured way psychologists analyze human nature also belongs to the organizing principle of that organism hiding itself behind the cultural mythology of human stewardship over the earth. Human development beginning at birth and carrying on throughout childhood and adulthood is strongly subject to an organizational entity we have apparently been very euphemistic to call, “society,” or “culture.” The horror is that it is not a society or culture. It is a monster.
… continued in this post: The Evolving Teleology of Opportunistic Mysticism
How Science Is Always Wrong
Mar 24th
Science, as it is now practiced, is intrinsically wrong for human life.
For those of you kneejerking that I am a thankless idiot for medical science having saved my life, let me say that it is very likely that science was instrumental in my cancer in the first place.
Scientific measurement is always wrong because we cannot measure the terrain and we cannot produce maps representative of the terrain – where the terrain is not some hypothetical ideal, but is always and everywhere chaotic (or random) * because it is always open. [This relates to both Gödel's incompleteness theorems and chaos theory.] Yet we are extremely compelled to measure everything because a mechanical evolutionary process chronically seduces each of us from birth to constantly go on measuring like crazy. We know this process euphemistically through nice catch phrases like economic growth, (technological) progress and personal development.
When we are compelled to measure we make maps of the terrain to measure, because we cannot measure the terrain. Making maps has evolved as constantly working at trying to find better ways to collectively measure experimentally in closed system. The story of science is that scientists reproduce certain measurements all over the world to collectively draw approximate maps of the terrain, which engineers and other relevant professionals can then take out of their bags at the right times, as they negotiate the terrain. I am indeed saying that this scientific method would, if humans would adopt a human-centered rational perspective, reveal itself to be blatantly delusional. I am saying further that the scientific method is perfectly rational from the perspective of the evolution of technology; that is as a prolific mechanism of technological evolution. What happens as we repeatedly apply the theory is that we chronically run into problems, because of the gross incompleteness of the variables to account for open currents of determination. Instead of questioning the intrinsic myopia of the scientific method, engineers now run back to the computer and plug in the new data to try and find more finely tuned theory more appropriate for the local conditions. But again, from other perspectives, “local conditions” also apply as myopic “closed system,” the engineers ignore the destructive consequences of the running of their machines.
It is twisted to ascribe progress to human “creativity” as some kind of first cause. It is just as delusional as to say gods created the universe. It is the robotic systematic correction in application of mathematical incompleteness and scientific error, that is the engine of the exponential acceleration of the change/evolution of technology, and certainly not human “ingenuity.” Humans are seduced to thinking from a machine perspective, a perspective conducive to the relentless evolution of the machine, with ultimately zero interest in human survival. Civilized humans ultimately don’t care about human survival. This is the amazing paradox. While bullshit stories about human creativity seduce human minds into “productivity” for the sake of human well-being on the one hand, at the same time bullshit stories about human guilt for all kinds of things gone wrong, as if humans have original free will, cause humans to regurgitate the phrase that humans don’t deserve to survive! Amazing!
*The established popular scientific wisdom is that there is order in the universe and it being orderly, with some kind of predictably pattern, it can be measured, and if we measure it, we can expand the order into the surrounding chaos. Rarely included in the mainstream currents of popular scientific wisdom is the notion that order can be measured only locally in space and time, in other words in closed system. To conduct its destructive business, science rejects the valid perspective that because of the open chronological connectedness of the universe, beyond the immediate short run/term, there is no order anywhere and that order is an illusion of the closed focus (closed in terms of variables, space and/or time) of our analysis and measurement.
Instead of actually being constructive on the whole, science merely stimulates change. Science certainly produces local order, but on the whole, in human existential terms, in a kind of delayed action, or potential energy (pressure) build-up it inevitably produces more extreme disorder.
