reason vs faith vs reality

[Whateverist]

I find the entire human project endlessly fascinating. A lot of my thinking was kick-started when I read Dawkins' work on the "ideosphere" (again back in the 1980s!) where ideas and thoughts evolve in mutual interactions --similar to the biological evolution and interactions of populations of plants, animals, insects, bacteria, etc. in the biosphere. The units of thought ("memes") combine in different configurations to form new conceptual structures which inhabit different populations of minds interacting with each other. Thought structures which are successful in populating a sufficient number of minds will reproduce and become more complex and developed.

In my own thought structures this became one of the foundational ideas which shapes my thinking about all the stuff of being human. I also incorporated a lot of the idea structures from biology to provide models for thinking about the evolving dynamics of being human.

I see our humanity as not a static state but an evolving dynamic interaction between all human minds comprising not merely the universes of thought and ideas but including social interactions, emotional and psychological relationships, cultures, societies, political governance, and everything else we do as humans. All of that is evolving and changing constantly. We are continuously working out what we want our humanity to be.

This whole thing is what I find endlessly fascinating - with a particular soft spot for the phenomenology of the mind ;-)

You may be the first person to present the whole meme idea in a way that interests me. I'll have to look more into it sometime. To be honest, I'm mostly not looking for greater understanding anymore. I've grown content. What has my interest now is the fact that our whole symbolic language using, conscious brain is a fairly recent add on to what should still be a completely functional mammalian brain. Except for direct communication with our own species, I like most when I can sink into purposeful activity without words. I have sworn off discursive thought for all other purposes. I still note realizations that come in that form but I'm less hungry for them. I don't wish to produce self speech. I want instead to make more time to live in and appreciate my mammalian brain.

Unlike our embodied unconscious, I don't believe the collective unconscious has any direct agency. I think of it more as the common core at the base of each of our unconscious minds. The similarities in architecture account for commonalities in the meanings we find/make in life.

yes I agree with your conception of the collective unconscious. But I think of it like a communal well - we can each draw from it and we also each contribute to it. So for the extended self, it seems the collective unconscious could provide a wider scope for engagement of thought and evaluation.

I'm less sure of it being a two way street but I sure don't know for sure that it isn't.

I've had a couple epic dreams in my life that I never forget, one in early childhood and one from the late 70's in my early adulthood. Both have meaning for me and convince me that dreams can be meaningful.

most of my dreams were prosaic but a few were, like yours not only memorable but have stayed with me as touchstones of my self-conceptions.

love James Hillman - discovered him in the 1990s I think. Also one of his students who has also published some great books: Thomas Moore ("Care of the Soul").

I will look him up. One of the points Hillman made that resonated with me is the distinction between spirit and soul. In my twenties I was more spiritual, a peak bagger, looking to get further and further above it all. I think it was my success and excess in seeking spiritual heights which precipitated my one and -thus far- only episode of depression. Where spirit gives detachment, soul is like enmeshment. In Star Wars terms, soul is Dagobah. Soul is the actuality of that which isn't transcendible within. Spirituality without soul is escapism. I've given up being a spiritual cowboy for being a soul-man. I serve soul enthusiastically and am grateful to be included. I think depression may be estrangement from soul, whatever the biomedical signature of that may be.

I was introduced to the phenomenological approach to the anthropological study of religions along with a dozen other approaches (psychological, sociological, political, economic, etc. etc.) and was particularly attracted to the phenomenonlogical methodologies.

Afraid you are right about our old hippie souls. You were on the right coast for that. Wow, Alan Watts and Robert Bly. I just read them, never studied with or met them.

I never actually met Alan Watts but my professor had and infused a good deal of his writing into the course. I was particularly taken by his book "The Wisdom of Insecurity". I read that when I was deeply depressed and it really spoke to me, at a time when I was mostly just sleeping and reading.

Guess we must both be a couple of old, latter day hippies .. of course the age I am isn't yet elderly by the latest revisionist definitions.

yes, 60 is the new 40. We baby boomers are still revising definitions!

Perhaps we should redefine death as being breath and brainwave challenged.

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yes, 60 is the new 40. We baby boomers are still revising definitions!

I turn 40 next year, what is that the new of?

Probably 25 or 30. Thirty used to be the big wake up call that you have left the realm of the youthful. I don't see why that couldn't wait until you become 40, do you?

[Rahul]

Probably 25 or 30. Thirty used to be the big wake up call that you have left the realm of the youthful. I don't see why that couldn't wait until you become 40, do you?

What irked the wife and I with the now 17 year old was over the past few years we'd listen to one of our old favorite bands around her.

She'd react like, "You're listening to Alice in Chains (just an example. I can't remember the specific bands she'd react this way to)?!?!" or whatnot. In the manner like "How do you know them?" Like it was a band of her generation.

Little girl, I was at their concerts years before you even existed.

[Whateverist]

What irked the wife and I with the now 17 year old was over the past few years we'd listen to one of our old favorite bands around her.

She'd react like, "You're listening to Alice in Chains (just an example. I can't remember the specific bands she'd react this way to)?!?!" or whatnot. In the manner like "How do you know them?" Like it was a band of her generation.

Little girl, I was at their concerts years before you even existed.

You're going to make a great

[Captain Colostomy]

Probably 25 or 30. Thirty used to be the big wake up call that you have left the realm of the youthful. I don't see why that couldn't wait until you become 40, do you?

What irked the wife and I with the now 17 year old was over the past few years we'd listen to one of our old favorite bands around her.

She'd react like, "You're listening to Alice in Chains (just an example. I can't remember the specific bands she'd react this way to)?!?!" or whatnot. In the manner like "How do you know them?" Like it was a band of her generation.

Little girl, I was at their concerts years before you even existed.

You're lucky.

My youngest spent the afternoon learning the lyrics to Weird Al's 'Won't Eat Prunes Again'...a rip on the Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again'. My wife wants to murder my family in hopes the influences they give stop. My soothing harmonica ballads did nothing to assuage her anger, either.

Alice in Chains. I wish...

[wandering soul]

yes, 60 is the new 40. We baby boomers are still revising definitions!

I turn 40 next year, what is that the new of?

chuckle! well using the same math that would make you 20! But I'm not sure you want to go back that far. I know the difference in my life between 20 and 30 was gaining a whole lot more control of my life and confidence in my own perceptions; making better decisions; knowing how to better navigate the complicated world of the working world; to be an actor in the world instead of being acted on. And by 40 I was even better at all of that.

maybe you just want to revert to 30!

and for those of you looking to your futures, I can say that after 60 has made me remarkably more comfortable with my life though my life hasn't actually changed so much. It does get better. I wouldn't have believed it since from about 15 I was convinced that life was a horrible mistake and I just wanted out. I'm glad I hung in there. For many years I just made it through by going one day at a time. But although I cannot say my life is good, my experience of my life is pretty good most of the time.

---

To be honest, I'm mostly not looking for greater understanding anymore. I've grown content. What has my interest now is the fact that our whole symbolic language using, conscious brain is a fairly recent add on to what should still be a completely functional mammalian brain. Except for direct communication with our own species, I like most when I can sink into purposeful activity without words. I have sworn off discursive thought for all other purposes. I still note realizations that come in that form but I'm less hungry for them. I don't wish to produce self speech. I want instead to make more time to live in and appreciate my mammalian brain.

I like this line of thought. Maybe I'll post it as a new topic. Although pursuing this line of thought as a discussion would actually be counter to the idea itself! :-)

I also love immersing myself in non-verbal and unmediated experience - primarily working in the yard, building things for the house, grooming and playing with the dogs. But the part of me that is the artist and writer pushes me to create; I feel the need to make images, poetry, and writing about stuff that I encounter or think about.

I want to give your idea above some more thought.

In my twenties I was more spiritual, a peak bagger, looking to get further and further above it all. I think it was my success and excess in seeking spiritual heights which precipitated my one and -thus far- only episode of depression. Where spirit gives detachment, soul is like enmeshment. In Star Wars terms, soul is Dagobah. Soul is the actuality of that which isn't transcendible within. Spirituality without soul is escapism. I've given up being a spiritual cowboy for being a soul-man. I serve soul enthusiastically and am grateful to be included. I think depression may be estrangement from soul, whatever the biomedical signature of that may be.

Another very intriguing line of thought. In my twenties I was just breaking out of my familial reality structures and discovering personal empowerment. But without any alternative reality structures to inhabit I sort of wandered around a lot mentally... with a lot of anger!

I wonder how my life would have turned out if I'd encountered Alan Watts or a teacher who brought out Watts' work, or James Hillman when I was in my 20s. Actually for the next decade I was just enjoying working, buying clothes, hanging out with friends. I completely externalized myself and didn't think about life much at all.

[Rahul]

You're going to make a great

I've been telling my wife that for years.

Old people rock! I want to be one, one of these days.

[Whateverist]

I also love immersing myself in non-verbal and unmediated experience - primarily working in the yard, building things for the house, grooming and playing with the dogs. But the part of me that is the artist and writer pushes me to create; I feel the need to make images, poetry, and writing about stuff that I encounter or think about.

Another simpatico area. Working in the garden, hanging with the dogs and fixing the house up are all things I like to do. (Not much a dog groomer however, unfortunately for my poor dreadlocked aussie.) What sort of dogs do you have and what do you do with your yard? My signature line shows a bit of my garden and gardens are big part of what interests me these days. I think we all look for some acknowledgement for what we do in the world that matters to us. Perhaps it is just a concern to find others with a similar sensibility so you can say, hey, me too. Maybe that is a basic desire for community with ones peers.

In my twenties I was just breaking out of my familial reality structures and discovering personal empowerment. But without any alternative reality structures to inhabit I sort of wandered around a lot mentally... with a lot of anger!

You don't seem to have a lot of anger any more. How big a family? What did your parents do? What if any religious affiliation and how central was that for them? Did you end up doing any therapy in finding your way out of your family of origin?

I did. My father was military, my mother was the primary parent for 7 children of which I'm the second. My father, while pretty bright analytically, probably had some brain damage and was woefully incapable of ordinary interpersonal relationships. He was authoritarian as a parent but blessedly absent a lot, out to sea in the navy. He was obsessed with religion. (I think if God had given him Abraham's task, he would have been a hell of a lot faster about it and have had us all flayed before any angel could arrive to call it off.) My mother was manic depressive and squeamish about all things sexual. Her mother was schizophrenic. My many siblings are all bright but all no one else did college and probably all suffer from essential self esteem issues. Some are depressed. Aside from my one bout with depression I may also have had episodes of mania, but if so they didn't lead to any major financial ruin but here have been some adventures some might find odd. I coped by being the apple of my mother's eye and a flaming narcissist (though I'm no longer practicing .. when I catch it). I might be somewhere on the bipolar spectrum but I doubt it.

I wonder how my life would have turned out if I'd encountered Alan Watts or a teacher who brought out Watts' work, or James Hillman when I was in my 20s. Actually for the next decade I was just enjoying working, buying clothes, hanging out with friends. I completely externalized myself and didn't think about life much at all.

Ahh, so when did the wheels come off for you? Did anything specific lead to your dissatisfaction with the friends and cloths? What did you find exciting and what adventures did you have?

[wandering soul]

What sort of dogs do you have and what do you do with your yard? My signature line shows a bit of my garden and gardens are big part of what interests me these days.

100 lb Golden, 60 lb Walker Coon Hound, 40 lb Chowchow mix, 16 lb furry little dominatrix who has the face of a Shitzu and body of a Yorkie! bosses the others around.

You, my friend, have a garden. I have a yard. As I am still working 40-50 hours a week, and in a city 3 hours from where we live (stay in small apartment during the week there), the best I can do on the yard is try to remove stuff: the ivy from the trees (I insist it stay only in the border area and the fence), pull up the briar vines endemic to our area, cut back the bushes and hedges (not doing so well on that lately). Husband takes care of the mowing. Dogs have reduced our back yard to Crater Central. So filling in holes every week also part of my yard work.

You don't seem to have a lot of anger any more. How big a family? What did your parents do? What if any religious affiliation and how central was that for them? Did you end up doing any therapy in finding your way out of your family of origin?

My family was different from yours - but similar effects - maybe that is the case with all families? Family-extended family for three generations (now going on 4 & 5) deeply religious conservative Christians. Also nearly all with college degrees. My parents (and I think the extended family for the most part also) were not only comfortable in their sexuality, but celebrated it.

My father, though loving in his own way, was totally intellectual, logical, and always had to be right. For him, only intellectual, educated, white, Christian men were right. Only they knew the truth and everyone else was simply wrong - about everything. My mother was an exhubrent energetic outgoing celebrator of life, children, people, the world and everything. She was an artist.

As a child in the 1950s I was already questioning some of the assertions of the reality structures I was being told were truth. Internal inconsistencies that they couldn't give me satisfactory answers for. In particular - if God is really universal, the creator of everything, and loving the world, why would he only accept people who believed a particular set of ideas? Why isn't everyone's idea of God just because we are in different cultures with different languages and different perspectives on God? I couldn't bring myself to believe that only these types of Christians were right and I couldn't bring myself to believe the particular set of beliefs they said were mandatory or you'd lose God.

In my teen years I began to find the liberal/progressive writers and thinkers in Christianity (my father told me they were from the devil). They completely accepted the entire scientific explanations of the universe, the psychological explanations of our humanity, the historical critical analysis of the bible, and they were engaged in and responsive to the way I experienced and saw life in the 1960s - an exciting time to be a teenager. I also found the rising feminist writers and began to feel much more empowered in my own thinking.

During those years (because as an artist I am very visual in my thinking) I began to see the reality structure of the conservative Christians as a large jigsaw puzzle where they have all the pieces fitting together to create a very complete picture of the universe, god, humanity, and everything. I saw the liberal/progressive perspective as an alternative way to incorporate the same pieces plus some other important pieces (like the scientific, historical, and psychological information) while leaving out the most troubling pieces from my family jigsaw puzzle.

I saw I could take them both apart and put them back together quite easily. I became "bi-lingual." And I gained a model for any new set of ideas I came across. I didn't need to lose anything. I knew how each puzzle went together and how it came apart. I began to collect versions of the universe, god, humanity, and everything. And I became multi-lingual.

Through my 20s (1970s) I was engaged in working, playing, making money, enjoying a life built by me, on my terms, for my reasons - without having to answer to my family. But was still very angry.

In my 30s I began to pursue my life as an artist. My primary self-identity is as an artist. Trying to exhibit, get into galleries, sell at art fairs, joined associations and guilds. Thinking mostly about art. I found that living geographically distant from my family (so I didn't have to deal with them unless I chose to) helped reduce the anger a lot.

Ahh, so when did the wheels come off for you? Did anything specific lead to your dissatisfaction with the friends and cloths? What did you find exciting and what adventures did you have?

So I didn't get back into seriously thinking about life, the universe, god, humanity and everything until in my 40s. Divorce disrupted my life as I knew it and forced me to re-think the entire conceptual structures I had constructed for my life.

Instead of merely thinking abstractly as I had been doing, that everyone has a valid, sustainable, internally coherent and consistent reality structure and respecting them, I began to actively study what everyone actually believed, the details. I began to deliberately fill out my mental shelves of jigsaw puzzles so that each one was a complete picture (inclusive of the various forms of atheism). And I began to spread them out and look through all of them.

The grand inclusive perception I began to have was similar to what a biologist might experience studying a dozen different ecosystems around the world. The diversity is stunningly beautiful; the individual systems uniquely adapted. The differences can be seen in the context of the conditions and resources of each particular geographic region. And the similarities suggest the intriguing possibility more universal underlying principles, properties or systems that beg for more study.

and this has gotten way too long for anyone to get through it! so adventures I may have to just send you in personal communication if you are interested!!

[Whateverist]

Just got back from Fort Bragg. They have a great garden there called the Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden. The only one I know of that you can walk your dog in, which of course I did .. both of them. Wow, four dogs! Are you or your husband their main caretaker, or do you share? Interesting post. I'll PM you soon for more details on those adventures.

[Rahul]

Just got back from Fort Bragg.

You're in North Carolina? I had a Revolutionary War ancestor from there that served as a colonel in the colonial forces. He was also a member of the House of Commons in NC.

Drove through that state once. Not much to see as far as terrain.