About Lying, Illusion and the Predator's Mind

Buddy

The Living Force
This post is a result of an idea from stainlesssteve, who said:

stainlesssteve said:
...there seems to be another topic opening up on the subject of illusions. I think this is a fabulous topic to open up...

Seems like a good idea, so to prevent hijacking of the referenced thread, here we go...

As I see it, the Work concept of lying is very, very similar to the pattern collection called "classical" mindset. In fact, the "classical" mindset of ordinary life naturally carries over into physics and is now recognized as that distinction: "classical physics". Physics is isolated here simply because physics is an area where distinctions between "classical" and "quantum" have already been made and thus may be generally familiar. The potential application is seemingly very broad, however, OSIT.

As I see it, the point to be made here is two-fold: that few people seem immune to, or even fully aware of, the limitations of these "man-centered" thinking patterns, including me (Just saying "I"... is a confession of limitation, though it seems hardly avoidable), and that this condition may be vastly improved with awareness in a way that may generally assist a goal of unifying man.

At this point in my personal Work, my understanding includes the idea that the classical mindset IS the predator's or "flyer's" mind as seen from the widest perspective, though in conversation on the topic, people in general seem to notice and focus only on the "unpleasant manifestations" aspect and rarely notice anything that is implicit, yet equally present. The reason, I think, is simple enough:

Consider these two simple "classical" statements:

1) The classical mindset IS the predator's mind.
2) There IS war on Earth.

Since "classical" generally presumes to deal with what is considered to be, or can be determined to be, "objective", our default tendency is to define "things", to cognize only "objects", "real" and metaphorical (including those in the linguistic structure) and to not-notice the implicit that is present in statements.

Aside from the basic assumptions that language is built on, what is the implicit in the above statements - statements fabricated in the common language of "absolute" terminology?

For statement one to be true absolutely, the matching implicit statement "The classical mindset IS NOT the predator's mind" must be false absolutely. Hmmm, this one is not going to be easy. Let's go to the next one.

For statement two to be true absolutely, the matching implicit statement "There IS NO war on Earth" must be false absolutely. If we can find places on Earth where there is no war, AND If we can find places on Earth where there is war, then we have succeeded in making the implicit explicit in both statements and demonstrating that both statements are lies as seen from a wider perspective. That is, both statements are partially true AND partially false. This condition seems insufficient to the goal of obtaining objective consciousness, so we look for a way to improve our condition, right?

Admittedly, this is a very simple example and one might simply say that a sufficient solution is to make a habit of making our statements relative. Of course that helps, but I think that relativity is not the final solution. Lowering our hubris does not seem to make us more objective as a necessary consequence.

Understanding the mind-created notion of "state" may help. Classical mathematics, physics and everyday life carry an implicit assumption and need for a concept called "state". Can "state" exist in a system which is in ubiquitous, absolute flux, i.e., a "real" system? Formal mechanics depend upon "state". They will not work without "state". The false personality depends upon the illusion that "I" am a "state" named "Bud". The C's have even described how answers to questions can only be valid at the exact point of question, since a lot of "measurements" must be done at the "time" in a system of dynamic flux - an unstable "state" as viewed from the classical perspective.

My tentative summary says that the entire "classical" mindset IS the predator's mind in a duality of "negativity and a dual seemingly "positivity" (that part that can make valuable scientific contributions to mankind nontheless) and that the figurative Don Juan described it "quantumly" when he stated both the explicit and implicit associated with it: It is simultaneously a horrible thing to do to Man, yet brilliant from the point of view of "strategy".

Having said all this, I realize my own classical mindset is trying to explain the classical mindset, so naturally everyone is invited to comment in any way - especially if you have a knack for spotting distortion or a feel for what is missing.

So, what do you think? Bonkers or what? :D
 
Bud, honestly - this is a great example of you wiseacring for the sake of wiseacring - talk about philosophizing without contributing anything even vaguely concrete at all. What is the point of this - other than giving a real-time example of the predator's mind?

added later: apologies for how abrupt this is, but we've been working with you for years now on improving your clarity and signal to noise ratio across the board. You improve for short periods of time and then revert back to writing only for Bud all the time. I cannot stress to you strongly enough how important it is for you to fight against your impulse to pontificate in the most obtuse manner possible. If you could master this habit of yours, it would be objectively impressive.
 
anart said:
Bud, honestly - this is a great example of you wiseacring for the sake of wiseacring - talk about philosophizing without contributing anything even vaguely concrete at all.

Really? Do you think any of my conjecture could be useful at all? To anyone?

anart said:
What is the point of this - other than giving a real-time example of the predator's mind?

Well, I stated my point in the post, but perhaps your suggestion is better.

anart said:
added later: apologies for how abrupt this is, but we've been working with you for years now on improving your clarity and signal to noise ratio across the board. You improve for short periods of time and then revert back to writing only for Bud all the time. I cannot stress to you strongly enough how important it is for you to fight against your impulse to pontificate in the most obtuse manner possible. If you could master this habit of yours, it would be objectively impressive.

You're on... :)
 
Bud said:
anart said:
Bud, honestly - this is a great example of you wiseacring for the sake of wiseacring - talk about philosophizing without contributing anything even vaguely concrete at all.

Really? Do you think any of my conjecture could be useful at all? To anyone?

I don't think that conjecture for conjecture's sake is valuable and that is what you're doing - it's mental masturbation. I also don't think that you wrote this for anyone other than Bud.

[quote author=bud]
You're on... :)
[/quote]

If you can do it and it actually sticks, I will put a life size poster of you up in my house and light a candle under it every day.
 
Between my post, your replies and my reflection, I feel like something important just hit me. Hold the poster idea. I think I may be requesting yours.
 
Bud

in trying to understand what the meaning of your initial post attempts to convey.. does this have something to do with non-dualism perhaps ?

is this idea you have akin to the Eastern 'Advaita Vedanta' for instance ?

or am i missing the point ?
 
transientP said:
Bud

in trying to understand what the meaning of your initial post attempts to convey.. does this have something to do with non-dualism perhaps ?

Hi transientP. Do you have a link or reference for "non-dualism" the way you are meaning it?

transientP said:
...is this idea you have akin to the Eastern 'Advaita Vedanta' for instance ?

Not sure. I may need to read up abit on that too.

transientP said:
or am i missing the point ?

I don't know. Hopefully I can answer soon, but if it helps, I might say that, from one perspective of the Work, useful realizations may begin by sort of like using an awareness of our own language limitations to find the boundaries of the "box" we're in.
 
Bud

this is the wiki page for non-dualism;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

i thought this might be connected to what you were trying to express, but maybe it isn't ?
 
transientP said:
Bud

this is the wiki page for non-dualism;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

i thought this might be connected to what you were trying to express, but maybe it isn't ?

No, not so much. From the wiki:

Nondual awareness

Craig, et al.. (1998: p. 476) convey a 'stream of consciousness' or 'mindstream' as a procession of mote events of consciousness (C) with algebraic notation C1, C2 and C3 thus to demonstrate the immediacy of nondual awareness:

That nondual awareness is the only possible self-awareness is defended by a reductio argument. If a further awareness C2, having C1 as content, is required for self-awareness, then since there would be no awareness of C2 without awareness C3, ad infinitum, there could be no self-awareness, that is, unless the self is to be understood as limited to past awareness only. For self-awareness to be an immediate awareness, self-awareness has to be nondual.[10]

To the Nondualist, reality is ultimately neither physical nor mental. Instead, it is an ineffable state or realization. This ultimate reality can be called "Spirit" (Sri Aurobindo), "Brahman" (Shankara), "God", "Shunyata" (Emptiness), "The One" (Plotinus), "The Self" (Ramana Maharshi), "The Dao" (Lao Zi), "The Absolute" (Schelling) or simply "The Nondual" (F. H. Bradley). Ram Dass calls it the "third plane"—any phrase will be insufficient, he maintains, so any phrase will do. The theory of Sri Aurobindo has been described as Integral advaita.

What? Why can't they just get it together? The nondualists have only half the picture. The other half is filled in with some ephemeral, classically subjective "third something" where "any phrase will do". The logical end of this is merely the same as the love-and-lighters concept of unity: "One Global Context", or "One Global Truth". Horsehockey! OSIT.

What I was suggesting is that a useful view of reality that would be consistent with our present partial understandings of quantum theory exists. It is simply that "reality is ultimately neither physical nor mental" AND "reality is ultimately BOTH physical and mental". Except that I question their meaning of "mental" in their own context.
 
Thanks for this Bud.

It looks like you may have been trying to justify your very loose use of English. In other words, you may be trying to defend your use of a "quantum English" (where sentences have perhaps several meanings which cannot be pinned down) - as opposed to a "classical English" (where sentences have clearly identifiable meanings).

But this really won't do. Nobody is going to understand you if you use "quantum English", and you'll be left isolated from your network. And then we'll all be sad. Here's a sad face to make the point: :(

Well, perhaps this is all rather ironic! One of the points, though, that I think Anart is making is: Is this actually externally considerate to the reader - especially to a reader whose first language isn't English? One of the most elementary things you can do is to ask yourself about any sentence that you write: How might this sentence be misunderstood by the reader? Now you're standing in the reader's shoes.

This is NOT to say that you may not be making some good points - and perhaps even some extremely good points - if, that is, I've understood you correctly, or indeed understood you at all. Here are two further points which might be given in reply:

1. There is, of course, a whole branch of philosophy called "philosophy of language". Have you read anything much in this area? Recently I've been trying to get through Henry Laycock's book "Words without Objects". It's especially tough going. I got as far as page 45, and even that felt like reaching Everest Base Camp: a really tough climb, but still not the summit by any stretch of the imagination. It's not an easy read, but then the subject-matter isn't easy either. I found I could understand, but only as long as I applied myself to it very thoroughly. Perhaps you may enjoy reading something like this? It is possible to write about abstruse things, which call for a lot of attention on the part of the reader, and actually be understood. Such writers may give you some idea of how to proceed.

What I was particularly struck by here was the thought that in academic philosophy we may not have moved very far from where we were c. 500 BC. The pre-Socratics suggested that everything was in flux. Then Democritus came along, and philosophy, as we know it, started. But it may have been a false start. The point here is that Democritus was an atomist; he insisted that each thing can be subdivided until we reach a final thing, which can't be divided any further. (Obviously this was a purely philosophical position, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the sort of thing Dalton, Rutherford, and all those other physicists were working on in the early 20th century.) The point Democritus was making was that things had boundaries, and could therefore be talked about, and also, by implication, controlled. That Democritus stands at the beginning of written philosophy may also be particularly significant, because this whole approach is all about language too. Language calls for clear demarcation in meaning, so that we can understand each other. But these necessary limitations (i.e. demarcations) are also limitations in another sense: they limit what we can conceive of in our minds. They suggest that things are just things, and that's all there is to it.

And here is where it gets really exciting: we've got an impasse. We can no longer trust the way we think, because our way of thinking is itself constructed of discrete units. In other words, there are automatic self-imposed limitations in our thinking which are a direct result of (a) the wish to control things; (b) the natural wish to be understood clearly; and (c) a misunderstanding about the very nature of reality. This seems to be the final point that you yourself make. I cannot go further than this, and I don't think that Laycock goes any further than this, and I'd love to meet the individual who has gone further than this. The pre-Socratics had suggested instead that there were, in the final analysis, no things: each "thing" was a part of something else, in a living, dynamic, ever-moving system. Nothing could really be pinned down. One had to move with the flux if one was to get any real understanding of how "things" really were. An analogy might be seen in an oak tree. There it stands before you: it's a thing. But have we really understood it by giving it a name, and saying, "There you are, that's an oak tree!" At a completely different level of reality it's actually something completely different: it's alive, it's the centre of an ecosystem supporting 1000 different species, each thing moving in crazy ways to make up the order that we can then symbolize by the term "oak tree". It's dynamic, rich, ever-changing, beyond our full comprehension.

So, this basic point in philosophy (the pre-Socratics versus Democritus) has never really been dealt with properly in the past 2500 years. It somehow eludes us - and this has to do with our general mindset, as you imply (I think). In attempting to understand (i.e. grasp the meaning) of everything, everything was broken up into discrete units. This did away with the absolutely essential links between things. I don't want to labour the point, but this is how we ended up with a situation where the universe was 'dis-enchanted' (i.e. the manifold links between things ignored) to pave the way for the scientific revolution, the triumph of technology, the divorce of ourselves from our natural environment, and the corruption of science, which could no longer see the wood for the trees.

2. I want to quote something from Professor Austin Duncan-Jones on the difficulties of language, which you might enjoy. Again, the theme of atomism in language is made the centre of attention. This is from his book "Butler's Moral Philosophy" (p. 31), where he discusses Joseph Butler's writing style, and explores some of the difficulties in writing about philosophical matters, which originate in the limits of language itself:

Duncan-Jones said:
Butler had certain clearly held opinions about the functioning of language. Of the meanings of words he took what is now fashionable to call a 'contextual' view: he held, that is, that words are not, as too great reliance on concise dictionaries might make us suppose, bricks or atoms of meaning, each of which enters without change of shape, size or mass into walls or molecules of meaning, whose properties can be deduced from those of their components. To amplify Butler a little, language operates in wholes of varying size and complexity, whose ingredients include people's thoughts, acts, and situations, as well as their words: and the whole contributes as much to the force of the word or idiom as the word to that of the whole. "I must desire the reader" (Butler writes) "not to take any assertion alone by itself, but to consider the whole of what is said upon it: because this is necessary, not only in order to judge of the truth of it, but often, such is the nature of language, to see the very meaning of the assertion" (Preface to the Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729)). Thus, although Butler adopted from Locke the notion of the imperfection of language, he did not follow Locke in supposing that a few simple maxims of definition would provide a remedy.

So there we are. And perhaps we begin to understand, too, why philosophy of language became the frontier of modern philosophy - and indeed harsh, mind-bending territory too. It offers a challenge to how we express things, which further offers a challenge to how we think about things. And it suggests that we may have got everything wrong.

So it's easy enough for misunderstandings to arise when writing about philosophy. Your problem seems to be that you're not even considering that there might be a difficulty. Your posts often read like wiseacreing for this very reason: you seem to think that lack of clarity is just a natural part of any presentation in philosophy because the subject-matter itself is unclear. But this is surely just to invite disaster. You can make your presentations clear enough for people to understand what you are saying - and indeed you should find that it's actually fun trying to put your thoughts into clearer English.

If you don't achieve some level of clarity, there really is very little reason to jot your thoughts down here; you might be better off just putting them in a private journal. This of course is not to suggest that you might not have some good points to make - but without more effort at achieving clarity (which boils down to external consideration) your points are largely without value because they lack that most important thing of all: humility.

Hard words, I know. Of course I'm conscious that my own words in this very post are probably somewhat incoherent, which is all rather ironic. The point, though, is that it's useful for everybody to at least try and be as understandable as they possibly can be.

Please let me know if anything remains unclear.
 
There is moral relativity in predation, Bud.
All war is evil.
The same can't be said for the habits of carnivores.
Where humans fit is a debate that seems intractable, given our limited knowledge of our origins, and our insane recent urbanization. Most of us who eat meat certainly consume too much of it, in the west. Then again, vegans can get pale and sickly, unless they are obsessively careful. Predation of energy is possibly also relative, morally, though the old saying "as above, so below", is not safe to apply in reverse.
 
[quote author=Ottershrew]
And here is where it gets really exciting: we've got an impasse. We can no longer trust the way we think, because our way of thinking is itself constructed of discrete units. In other words, there are automatic self-imposed limitations in our thinking which are a direct result of (a) the wish to control things; (b) the natural wish to be understood clearly; and (c) a misunderstanding about the very nature of reality. This seems to be the final point that you yourself make.[/quote]

Yes, yes, oh so yes!

[quote author=Ottershrew]
I cannot go further than this, and I don't think that Laycock goes any further than this, and I'd love to meet the individual who has gone further than this.[/quote]

Me too. I sense something or someone though and this sensing feels like a tug, though it could well be totally imaginary.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
So, this basic point in philosophy (the pre-Socratics versus Democritus) has never really been dealt with properly in the past 2500 years. It somehow eludes us - and this has to do with our general mindset, as you imply (I think).[/quote]

Yes, and this is where I'm at.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
1. There is, of course, a whole branch of philosophy called "philosophy of language". Have you read anything much in this area?[/quote]

Only if General Semantics is included, but that was some time ago.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
In attempting to understand (i.e. grasp the meaning) of everything, everything was broken up into discrete units. This did away with the absolutely essential links between things. I don't want to labour the point, but this is how we ended up with a situation where the universe was 'dis-enchanted' (i.e. the manifold links between things ignored) to pave the way for the scientific revolution, the triumph of technology, the divorce of ourselves from our natural environment, and the corruption of science, which could no longer see the wood for the trees.[/quote]

Agreed.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
So there we are. And perhaps we begin to understand, too, why philosophy of language became the frontier of modern philosophy - and indeed harsh, mind-bending territory too. It offers a challenge to how we express things, which further offers a challenge to how we think about things. And it suggests that we may have got everything wrong.[/quote]

Maybe the suggestion is correct.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
So it's easy enough for misunderstandings to arise when writing about philosophy. Your problem seems to be that you're not even considering that there might be a difficulty. Your posts often read like wiseacreing for this very reason: you seem to think that lack of clarity is just a natural part of any presentation in philosophy because the subject-matter itself is unclear. But this is surely just to invite disaster. You can make your presentations clear enough for people to understand what you are saying - and indeed you should find that it's actually fun trying to put your thoughts into clearer English.

If you don't achieve some level of clarity, there really is very little reason to jot your thoughts down here; you might be better off just putting them in a private journal. This of course is not to suggest that you might not have some good points to make - but without more effort at achieving clarity (which boils down to external consideration) your points are largely without value because they lack that most important thing of all: humility.

Hard words, I know.[/quote]

The words would be hard except that I'm often harder on myself, so I don't get as embarrassed as easily anymore. Your tips and advice is priceless to me right now.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
Of course I'm conscious that my own words in this very post are probably somewhat incoherent,[/quote]

Not incoherent to me.

[quote author=Ottershrew]
The point, though, is that it's useful for everybody to at least try and be as understandable as they possibly can be.

Please let me know if anything remains unclear.[/quote]

Unclear? I so wanna give you a hug right now. :hug2: Thanks for this feedback! :clap:
 
Ottershrew, I liked the 5 lines about the preSocratics holding that reality could be grasped only by being attuned to the flux.
I can tell you why academic philosophy (as opposed, and I mean opposed, to philos Sophia, love of wisdom ) has not progressed lately. ( I wasn't around 2500 years ago)
The reason is, philosophy lecturers like to use last years notes.
That's it!
They pick subjects that are intrinsically intractable, narrow the frame of reference to exclude real parameters, all in the name of some obscure, private gods like "objectivity" and "linear logic", and never forget the small, equally private matter of their regular, dependable salary.
Your English is exquisite, Ottershrew.
Please tell me, what are you doing about the problem of alienation from Nature, which you mentioned?
 
This is why the alchemists found it necessary to speak in the language of the birds — because common speech was insufficient for the concepts they dealt with. Was it because the predator's mind had corrupted human communication as Bud posits?

Sociology 101 introduced me to semiotics and Ferdinand de Saussure. Three terms: sign, signifier, and signified. Humans communicate with signs. A sign requires the signifier (e.g. the word 'apple') and the signified (e.g. the mental image of an apple). More importantly, Saussure noted that the relationship between the signifier and signified morphed over time so that the original signified was lost. You can look at contemporary Internet 'memes' to see this. Or simply examine the entire English language: with words borrowed endlessly from Norman French, Latin, Greek, etc. that come to signify something vastly different from the parent word.

This brings me to Athanasius's (chauvinistic but nonetheless interesting) threads on the Magyar language, the Sumerians’ Lizzie language, and Shijing's noble quest for the 'original' Kantekkian language. Could it be that once humans spoke a language that was 'unatomized' and pure, before a Fall (and degradation of signs) of some sort occurred? And if we traced the origins of our extant words far back enough, would we unearth the 'original language'?

What would such a language be like? Could it be a language birthed from an intimate knowledge of Unified Field Theory, where everything is termed a 'distortion' like Ra did? Can we find clues in the only Orion word we know of: 'farnoon'? In telling us that Orion was our birthplace, the C's pointed out that the similarity between words like 'Orion' and 'origin' and 'original' was no coincidence. Here we have another example of signifier-signified degradation. Somewhere in our secret history the meaning of 'Orion' changed from 'the direction in space where we come from' to 'this group of stars' or worse, 'a hunter'. Is this the doing of the predators through the predator's mind?

So you see how our current language entraps us within what Bud calls the 'classical mindset'? And to venture out of it requires 'another language', one on which we have not reached a consensus. The alchemists had many signifieds but no signifier, and they had to create their own signifiers from scratch. Bud coined his own signs, but the problem was those signs were as yet undecipherable/unacceptable to the rest of us. Fear not Bud, these are the growing pains of a new 'language of the birds'.
 
stainlesssteve said:
I can tell you why academic philosophy (as opposed, and I mean opposed, to philos Sophia, love of wisdom ) has not progressed lately. ( I wasn't around 2500 years ago)
The reason is, philosophy lecturers like to use last years notes.
That's it!
They pick subjects that are intrinsically intractable, narrow the frame of reference to exclude real parameters, all in the name of some obscure, private gods like "objectivity" and "linear logic", and never forget the small, equally private matter of their regular, dependable salary.

And you would know this because... you once taught philosophy at a university?
 
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