Should vs Could

 When we use "should", we are in some sense battling reality, i.e., it IS not the way we want it to be. However, if we use "could", then we engage the imaginal to chart possible paths to what could be. It take more energy and is more difficult to find a path of what could be. And what could be may not what we want once we actually get there.

It may be useful to note that should's often arise out of a value system. And our value systems are a story about what is important. What is important to us is not necessarily important to "reality". And hence we are out of sync with the real. The Tao Te Ching talks about being one with the way without specify what that way is. That is the eternal journey - discovering a way to the way.

Relationship as foreground

 We tend to notice and name things. These things are in the foreground of our thinking and behavior. Let us consider the notion of holons. Part come together to make a whole. Wholes can be parts to another level of wholes. We can see this progression from particles, to organisms, to galaxies, etc. However, no whole can exist without a a particular set of relationships between its parts. Most / some relationships do not create a whole. In that sense, when we see a thing ( a whole), that whole only exists because of a very particular set of relationships between its parts. And hence one can say that it is the relationships that are in the foreground for "all" things that exist.

The origin of this post is from Iain McGilchrist's idea that:

We cannot understand reality by disassembling it and examining its parts. The whole is more than the sum of the parts | Iain McGilchrist on why the world is made of relationships, not things.

Categories, Errors, Spectra, Spaces

 Let us apply the Laws of Form to the notion of categories. Before any distinction is made, there are not categories. Is this what is reflected in spiritual, psychedelic, and other experiences where one has the sense of no boundaries and being part of one "consciousness"? We create categories with some value / intent. In particular, our psycho-biology uses distinctions / categories to create the "other".  The other can he revered (perhaps as authority) or hated. These variations determine our behavior towards the "other". 

Another way to think about this is that we are all somewhere on a spectrum of whatever attribute we are using to create categories. Categories imply a qualitative difference. However, on most attributes what we have are really quantitative differences.

We can further generalize this notion to think of a multi-dimensional space of attributes in which we all exist. In this case again we are quantitatively different from each other rather than qualitatively as implied by categorizations. These categorizations can be positive (saint vs sinners, boss vs worker, ..) or negative (good ethnic group vs vermin, chosen group vs damned, ...).

These ideas can be applied to the notion of category error / mistake. We put things, beings, etc, in different categories with some intent. Would it be more accurate to think of them as being in a different part of ontological attribute space? One of the possible benefits of that may be that affect circuits may not be inadvertently activated with their resulting behaviors and responses to the delineated category?

The Sacred as a Container

 

Think of the Sacred as a containment field for consciousnesses. What contains behavior? Some kind of container / limit can be such a "manager" / controller for behavior. The sacred acts as such a container. It creates both a wall as well as a veil that stops the algorithmic neural nets we have from venturing past that wall or looking beyond that veil. Perhaps this is the notion behind Nietsche's "God is dead" statement. 

In another sense, one can think of the creation of the meme of the sacred as a psychotechnology to set limits on behaviors and practices.

Depolarization

 Think of an identity as a developing and layered structure, part of the "cognitive light cone":

• Part of a family / origin group
• Part of a tribal group
• Part of an belief system / culture group
• Part of species group
• Part of a planetary group
• Part of "biologic / life / living" group
• Part of a "conscious" group
• Part of "sentient" group
• Part of  existence

It seems like polarization is possible at any level as most of existence is outside wherever identity is situated. The next stage that transcends polarization is when identity is with "infinity" / all that is possible. Degrees of depolarization occur as an identity traverses this sequence.

The Veil of Narrative

 Once a particular narrative / model is accepted ( somewhere on a spectrum of total belief or maybe or perhaps even total disbelief) it acts as a veil / filter to keep out other ways of looking at a phenomenon. One can think of this in terms of laws of form - a distinction once made makes distinctions that parse the infinite differently more difficult to make.

Reframing Moloch

 Let us consider the notion of Moloch in terms of the view that "All things that have a beginning have an ending". Some patterns to note:

• When the situation is not the way we would like / want / expect, we seem to need to invent a causal agent. We have invented the devil, dark matter, Moloch, the other, the system, the incentive, ....
• The connotation of this agent can be positive or negative (guardian angel vs the devil). That connotation affects our neurology. That affect colors our reasoning. Our reasoning is always (?) motivated reasoning. And that motivated reasoning is affected by our affects. (Too much affect?)
• Consciousness transformations can lead to very different perspectives on this ( and other ) issues and lead to statements like: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. or the four noble truths, the eight fold path, the exhortation to love, to be at peace, The Power of Now, ....
• Perspectival changes include seeing ourselves as part of the meta process of how we parse and interpret reality and try to make sense of it. Often leaving out that any perspective leaves out of it the "rest of infinity". A depth of caring and love affects us as we try to make sense of the world in that "miasma" of simulated pain
• ????????????????????

Below is a conversation I had with an ai (google bard) about this.