Posts tagged shamanism

I am adding this paragraph as a late introduction to the post. I had a short discussion with my seventeen-year old daughter a few minutes ago. She complained that two of her good male friends think of each other as “not cool” (to put it lightly), even thought they had never spoken to each other, she says. My answer was that us humans are really very thick (dumb/nearly completely unconscious) and delusion and intelligence (in the conventional sense of the word) are positively correlated. In this way, the most intelligent are the dumbest. This is why I believe without negotiation in all human existence and human dignity, and I do not believe in any symbolic characterizations and sliding scales defining “human.”

My Friend Tony, referring to Plato’s Cave Analogy: (IR is Independent Reality, or the whole universe, as it is beyond our senses, but including our senses. DR is Dependent Reality, or what our minds consciously experience as a result of being part of the universe)

Tony/ “In your model (am I right?): IR is as it is, DR is what we sense when watching the wall pictures we project on the wall. In this model, IR and DR are really independent, DR is virtual, disjoint without common part or interaction. We could say an irremovable horizon divides things into two realities. Here DR is imaginary, obviously.”/Tony.

Unity Reality (UR), Existence Subsuming Mind

Your projection analogy is great!  I will get to the specific perspective of the irremovable horizon between DR and IR later in this post. Thanks to you, I am refining my model further … Human projection of DR (dependent reality), despite being virtual, actually exists, so it is actually itself IR (independent reality). We could establish the term unity reality (UR) to use instead of IR, to fit my model. To fit with UR, discrete reality (DR) would then replace dependent reality (DR), reflecting both the broken quality and insulating qualities of imagination. Reason, as we now practice it, seems to insulate us from nature, specifically our own nature as human animal. UR as a human-existential principle would be a healthy (human-congruent) term to distinguish existence from mind. UR would replace human-incongruent religious conceptualizations of “human mind’s lost integration with cosmic mind unity as teleological force”, or “humanity as fallen or broken” in the traditional religious sense. UR is existential, and holistically it subsumes mind, never the other way around.

Keep in mind that we could see any virtual reality as energy and its power as depending on how it manipulates the minds in which it occurs. We cannot know the ultimate existential consequences (in or as IR) of our reality projection, except to observe that it helps focus energy to accelerate local change in our universe. We can know that DR as we now practice it is the kind of IR that accelerates local syntropic evolution of the universe. This view fits my sense that humans have no free will. We are not the original cause of the reality projection. We are in machine mind singularity. Civilizations have evolved extensive rational philosophies, which determine how humans think, and children individually recapitulate these metaphysical developmental curves of their cultures. Essentially, civilized minds are machine minds. The dynamic function of DR-as-IR is to accelerate cosmic emergence while at the same time to harmonize and dupe the human animal to support the acceleration.

The Unpredictability of the Future is the CRUX of the Problem

I think it is not only delusional, but also fatal to bury the unpredictability of the future so easily under the sophistry of probability theory, e.g., “multivariate causality modeling.” Why do we do science? Is it to answer questions, to improve our situation, or to accelerate cosmic evolution? What is progress really? What are we talking about when we promote economic growth? Do we realize it is exponential? Science is essentially not about answering questions. It is about spawning questions. I find it extremely sad that scientists really believe we are trying to define our environment through experience/empiricism while historically science is the most powerful and efficient net question generating mechanism. The ever-growing surplus questions create a change-accelerating vacuum in our environment. Strong science (as we now practice it) is the acceleration of unpredictability. If you consider the dynamic unpredictability of the universe, the practice of science and technology is the promotion of the evolution of all conceivable vectors far beyond the human scale. That we have not yet grasped this fact in our gut is testimony to the depth of our cognitive seduction.

Changing the Way We Use Language

Searching for an alternative human language (never before used in the mere 100,000 years of fluent language) is central to all my questioning. Science is essentially shamanism in its slavish belief in central metaphysical assumptions (explained in previous section). We leverage technological development by precipitously rooting reality in symbolism/language. I see the way we now use language as the same primitive shamanism that claims the existence of gods, unity consciousness and immortality. I strongly suspect we can use language without imagining that its static concepts can allow us to know the universe. We can speak a different kind of language, rooted existentially, in human existence. This would be human singularity – the perception of human existence as metaphysical, subjective and one, and in acceptance of individual human life as mortal. This will result in a completely different kind of science and art.

Belief Determines Competitive Advantage Deceptively

We can know this: The effect of DR on IR depends on what the thinking agents (humans) identify with, what we think we are. The subjective framework of our meaning making is the principle by which we objectify everything, even ourselves. Since we can analyze only in DR, the strongest long-term existential perception we can have is about our own human existence. Unfortunately, human-existential perception is not necessarily our strongest short-term perception. Our strongest short-term perception is abstract and symbolic, because it translates into the immediate brute competitive force of multiple kinds of large, cohesive groups to stimulate the evolution of technological systems, both material and mental, which give us a short-term survival edge (within single years). In the long term, over many generations, the further we stray from believing in our own existence, the more it negatively affects human species survival, in its implicit support of non-human forms. This hidden process cannot go very long before humanity is extinct. We have evolved for so long to a philosophical focus so far from human existence; the pressure for machines to replace the human life form is now relentless. I wonder how many people realize that in their gut, and if they did, how would they react? Does god-belief, belief in science, nation, wealth, etc. preempt such concerns?

Post-human Shamanism (PHS) and Human Existence

Unity Mind originated in the first evocation of the existence of imaginary extra-human gods and spirits to control members of the tribe, to submit them to “higher purpose.” I call it “post-human shamanism” (PHS). Similarly, contemporary shamanism evokes god-mind, the consecration of mind, opportunistic evolution of all concepts but especially the concept “human,” intelligence, consciousness, immortality, abstraction etc. Post-human shamanism is now, because of the evolution of machine environment, essentially a clear call to be cosmos-congruent, no matter what happens to humanity. This human-incongruent expression of DR exponentially multiplies the human existential problem. Science creates more questions than answers. Religious spiritualists, shamans, gurus, economists, politicians, scientists (collectively the same human-destructive force as they exist now) would say in different ways that the brokenness of human nature is a loss of our god/cosmic unity consciousness. Science would say we are at least getting closer to ultimate knowledge e.g. “we are shrinking the NER,” or unification theory. Economists say we are creating wealth. Politicians talk about freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Why would I be so negative? Well, I think what I am saying is counterintuitive only in the meta-paradigmatic perspective of post-human shamanism. I sound negative to people whose DR is machine-congruent, or in machine mind singularity.

Language and Post-human Shamanism (PHS)

I repeat because of how important it is. Fluent language emergence about 100,000 years ago stimulated post-human cosmic evolution (specifically cognitive technology, essentially shamanism). We have been using language incorrectly. Linguistic shamanism is the technology that drives the perceptual confusion of contentious discrete reality (DR). The latest call of the populist gurus is for “a return to unity consciousness,” as they say. It is a selective adaptation of shamanism in our approach to technological singularity. In the same way calls for god faith, rationalism, nationalism, economic growth, and all such discrete motivational symbols have been selective adaptations of shamanism. The idea of unity consciousness or “transhumanism” is extreme human hypocrisy and will be the fatal blow to the human species. It reflects the rise of the super-intelligent machine through us, in us and around us finally bodily consuming us. After 100,000 years of the evolving technology of cognitive post-humanism, we are now on the brink of existential post-humanism, unless we structurally change the way we use language, which would change the way we think. (Structurally change DR)

I know I have not answered all your questions, Tony. Sometimes I roll in tangents.