Category: Buddhism
Consciousness is that which chooses
Anything that can choose is conscious to that extent, to the extent that it can choose.
In this respect, “that which chooses” has cognition of its options and also tends to make anti-entropic choices, choices that go against the entropy of itself. (If it did not do this or stopped doing this, it would not survive long. Its anti-entropic choices take energy from the environment, of course.)
Choosing and going against entropy does not mean always doing this correctly or in the best way.
It can be argued that matter also chooses or participates in some overarching principle of choice or selection. Matter’s very common cause-and-effect relations with itself must be based on something besides matter itself.
Consciousness, thus, can be defined as that which:
- chooses
- has cognition of options
- is primarily anti-entropic for itself
We can also say that this same consciousness as just defined:
- chooses though not always well
- has cognition though often mistaken
- is anti-entropic in ways that can be counter-productive
Matter itself conforms to principles—the laws of physics—though these do not appear to apply or apply well to chaos, radiation, quantum fluctuations, black holes. Nor to themselves in the sense that they do not reveal where they come from.
This suggests that matter itself persists under unknowable conditions much as we do.
What we do not know does not just include metaphysics but also anything we can imagine. At some point, we just won’t know anymore.
Socially, we rarely know the motives of others. Psychologically, we often cannot be rational about our own motives. And even if we are being rational we often base our decisions on bad data or incomplete or unknowable data. We often do not understand or even know what our own motives are.
When there are many factors, we become confused. Our minds feel chaotic. We become anxious, indecisive, emotional. This is a form of consciousness trying to make choices, struggling to choose, to select.
The importance of seeing the small in the large and the large in the small: repost
When the subject is human behavior and we see the small in the large and the large in the small, we will be much better able to appreciate the spectrum of thought, feeling, and behavior that underlies whatever is in question.
For example, the self-centeredness of individuals scales from the individual (small) to society (large) and everything in between. Two friends can be self-centered together as can larger groups and entire societies comprising millions of people.
Similarly, when we see self in other and other in self, we are more likely to grasp the spectrums of thought, feeling, and behavior that underlie the actions of all individuals.
For example, alcoholics often make false accusations against others as their conditions worsen. They take the seed of unreasonable defensiveness that resides in all of us and expand it into malicious attacks against “adversaries” that do not even exist.
In FIML practice, partners will discover many kinds of small mistakes in themselves. Usually, it is easy to see how these small mistakes, if left uncorrected, can lead to much more serious misunderstandings and bad (because it is based on a mistake) behavior.
For example, the alcoholic who falsely attacks a friend is almost certainly magnifying some little misunderstanding into something huge, something worrisome or insulting that demands revenge.
Nations can behave like children and all good people have at least the seeds of a malicious drunk in them.
FIML discussions can be greatly enhanced by seeing almost everything as part of spectrums that underlie all people and societies.
Microaggression as a crude measure of interpersonal ambiguity
I do not doubt that microaggression exists in human communication.
The problem is ambiguity exists in all the same places, so you can never be sure what is aggressive, wary, weirdly friendly, just weird, or nothing at all.
A recent paper on microaggression has this to say:
The microaggression concept has recently galvanized public discussion and spread to numerous college campuses and businesses. I argue that the microaggression research program (MRP) rests on five core premises, namely, that microaggressions (1) are operationalized with sufficient clarity and consensus to afford rigorous scientific investigation; (2) are interpreted negatively by most or all minority group members; (3) reflect implicitly prejudicial and implicitly aggressive motives; (4) can be validly assessed using only respondents’ subjective reports; and (5) exert an adverse impact on recipients’ mental health. A review of the literature reveals negligible support for all five suppositions. (Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence)
I think we can assume that intercultural interactions will often involve many prejudices and assumptions founded on cultural norms and that microaggression will sometimes be one of these. But that is very hard to study, quantify, and identify.
In public situations—jobs, organizations, many private settings—just follow public norms and forget about microaggression. Your looking for it will itself constitute a kind of microaggression.
In private, you can and should do something about all kinds of interpersonal micro ambiguities.
The way to do this is FIML practice.
I found the study cited above in this essay, Micro-aggression and Hyper-sensitivity, which discusses the study.
Here are a couple of relevant posts on ABN on this topic: Triggers and microaggression and Microaggression and FIML.
Buddhism and Stoicism
Buddhism and stoicism are highly compatible with each other.
Stoicism is fairly simple. Here is a (too) short summary:
Our normal impulse is to see misfortune, loss, death, and the choices of others as primary concerns, since they can significantly affect our lives. But this is where the Stoics deviate from our natural inclinations. They offer a bold new take: a thing doesn’t automatically become your concern just because it might affect you. (The Only Thing You Need to Get Good At)
Be sure to read the article linked above. It provides more information and links.
Silk Road evolved as ‘grass-routes’ movement
“Archaeology documents the development of mountain-herding economies in highland Asia as early as 3000 B.C., and we argue that centuries of ecologically strategic mobility on the part of these herders etched the foundational routes and geography of ancient trans-Asian trade networks,” Frachetti said. (Source)
Buddhist monks and traders carried a major part of China’s Buddhist tradition into China via the Silk Road. ABN
Christian universal love is a dubious concept
As practiced today by many, I don’t think it works.
An example I know in detail is the story of a woman whose second husband was a closet alcoholic. After she discovered his problem and divorced him for other reasons, which were profoundly complicated by the booze, she continued to believe that he just needed more Christian love. Long story short, eventually she came to understand that you cannot love someone away from alcoholism. That tactic only enables them in too many cases.
A second example appears in the video below, Wilders’ opponent uses many abstractions, including Christian love, to defend his position. His defense reminds me of the woman in the story above. It is an a priori defense, an application of a rule that obviously cannot be right every time.
Why is wisdom thought to run counter to universal love in Christianity? Why can’t loving your neighbor be tempered with a wise understanding of your neighbor?
Here is the vid, which is interesting in and of itself.
By the way, I favor love and kindness as much as reasonably possible. I also favor erring on the side of mercy and kindness as much as reasonably possible. But there is a line there that I believe it is stupid to cross.
Most of the arguments about immigration in the US and Europe today are arguments about degree. Often those arguments get mixed in with “universals” like constitutional law, Christian love, fairness, rights, and so on.
Reasonable minds may differ, but all factors need to be considered, including the factors of the traditional culture of the region and the needs and desires of the citizens who are of that traditional culture.
In my view, some new people is good. Too many new people is not good.
______________
Edit 3/18/17: I am a distant foreign observer, but my guess is Wilders lost at least partly because he says things about Islam that there is no need to say. A simple cultural-demographic argument is all that is needed.
“Culture and demographics are our destiny”
What could be more obvious?
And yet, this obvious statement from a US Congressman is producing a minor firestorm among US media and political elites.
The full Tweet from Steve King of Iowa reads:
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.
A cuck is basically someone who denies the obvious fundamental truth of King’s statement. A cuck supports policies that help them personally in their career (think neocons and “principled conservatives” in addition to leftists) but undermine their culture, society, or people.
Almost all cucks are white. You won’t find very many Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Arab, or African cucks (in their own homelands). Unless, maybe they are Christian.
Christian so-called “universal morality” places little or no importance on ethnic, cultural, historical, or racial realities. That’s nice and may become so in future when robots, gene-splicing, and brain-computer enhancements are the norm. But as of now, those are not the norm.
Basic human realities of violence, perfidy, hypocrisy, and deceit, unfortunately, still rule the world.
Fundamental truths are always very simple when stated outright and it is very easy to muddy the waters of basic truths. But they are still true and you are a fool to ignore them.
Arch leftist Howard Dean, Tweeted in response:
King is a total ignoramus and no one takes him seriously.
Dean’s response is the fundamental Christian/Western response approved by our elite masters of today. It says, “this person is bad, not one of us,” while conspicuously refraining from providing a counter-argument. Dean is a cuck, like it or not.
For Buddhists, here is what the Dalai Lama himself has to say on this issue:
BERLIN: The Dalai Lama said in an interview published Thursday that Europe has accepted “too many” refugees, and that they should eventually return to help rebuild their home countries.
“When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children and women, we can feel their suffering,” said the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has himself lived in exile for over half a century.
“A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now,” he said. (Source)
The Dalai Lama knows from experience that too many immigrants destroy cultures. Tibet is all but lost due to massive immigration from China.
Buddhist morality is based on wisdom not compassion. Compassion must be tempered with wisdom. This is why the DL says in essence, “When we look in their faces, we feel compassion for them but culture and demographics are our destiny, so it’s is wrong to take in too many as Europe already has.”
The word cuck arose to combat the kinds of words Dean and the left use all the time. It’s unfortunate that public discourse needs a simple response like cuck but that’s reality too.
Cucks constantly swear at and demean opponents with strong words like “total ignoramus,” “rayciss,” and “deplorable” if you disagree with them.
So those of us who despise that simple-mindedness and the way it short-circuits wise discussion have been all but forced to respond with words like cuck.
Cucks like Dean are selling out American and Western civilization for their own selfish and temporary advantage. Their descendants will hate them for that.
_________________
Edit: The following point seems beyond obvious to me but probably needs to be stated:
Recognizing that your civilization will be destroyed if too many people from other civilizations come into it, does not mean you hate the other civilization(s).
I suppose the need to make this statement shows yet again how basic basic truths really are.
A subtle danger helping personalities face
Generally, helping personalities enjoy seeing others do well.
They have an active desire to help others.
A subtle problem with this desire is if the helper is dealing with a narcissist (or worse), fulfilling the desire to help will also involve fulfilling the narcissist’s dark need for people to attend to them.
This is an example of why we must be careful about positive moral feelings in ourselves.
Such feelings probably will not be filed in the mind as “positive moral feelings.” Rather, they might be filed simply as “good feelings” or “relationship satisfaction” or “the right thing to do.”
The narcissist (or worse) feeds off the helper’s good moral instincts to maintain a dead-end desire, a low desire.
You can see this in subcultures as well. Like malignant narcissists, some subcultures will destroy, even seek to destroy, the larger culture that hosts them. They do this for pleasure and/or because it seems to them to be to their advantage.
Buddhist morality is always based on wisdom, on conducting a wise analysis of yourself and any situation.
It is good to be a helping type. But you have to be careful who you help. You really need to analyze it.
If you help a malignant narcissist because it feels right and because you are blinded to their condition by your moral feelings, you are not doing any good. You are probably causing harm.
At the very least, your positive moral feelings are being wasted. Beyond that, a more deserving person is not receiving your help. And beyond that, the narcissist is being strengthened and confirmed in their ways while a ripple effect from all of this goes outward.
Could Mysterious Cosmic Light Flashes Be Powering Alien Spacecraft?
Bizarre flashes of cosmic light may actually be generated by advanced alien civilizations, as a way to accelerate interstellar spacecraft to tremendous speeds, a new study suggests. (Source)
In Buddhist cosmology, there exist billions of world-systems, each of which contains billions of worlds. This has always sounded like a description of galaxies to me.
The hypothesis that “fast radio bursts” could be evidence of alien spacecraft is presented in the linked article, which also has a link to the study itself.
Very small decisions and what they show about us
A very small decision I make on many mornings is which coffee cup is going to be mine and which goes to my partner.
The two cups we normally use are the same and I cannot tell one from the other. If I thought one was better than the other, I would give it to her.
What happens is at some point while I take the cups from the cupboard and set them on the counter, I incline toward deciding that one of them will be for me and one for her. This “decision” is so small I describe it as “incline toward deciding.”
As I continue preparing morning coffee, my very small decision about which cup is mine spends more time in my mind. By the time I pour the coffee, I am generally always mildly set on which one is going to be mine for the morning and which hers.
My initial “inclining toward deciding” has changed into my being “mildly set on” which cup is mine. I might even feel a bit possessive toward “my” cup as I pour the coffee.
The main point is that once we make even a very weak decision or incline toward a weak decision it requires energy to change that.
Of course, I do not really care which cup I get and yet I have inclined toward one or decided on one of them. At some point in this process you have to do that.
If I try to change my decision once the coffee is poured and give “my” cup to my partner, I am aware of expending a bit of energy.
The energy required to change which cup is mine is greater than the energy required to decide which cup is mine. I only fell into my initial decision but must climb out of it if I want to change it.
I bet you do this or something like it, too. Just watch yourself and observe it happening. Once you see it, try changing to the other cup or whatever it is you have chosen.
It’s not hard to change your decision but it decidedly requires a little bit of energy. That may be some of the smallest mental energy you will ever exert, but you will have to exert it.
I find I feel a bit awkward when I change my initial decision. It seems my mind is already set at some lower level so the meta-level that changes that does not have the right networking or connections for the transition to be completely smooth. This is the opposite of the initial decision which seems to have required little or no energy. And has managed to grow bigger all on its own, outside of my awareness.
Notice also, if you are like me, you will happily give your partner the better cup if one of them is better. That decision, too, will require energy to change, maybe even more energy than if the cups are the same. This probably happens because if you change your decision to the better cup (for yourself), you will also feel a bit selfish in addition to the above considerations. This will happen even if your partner wants you to change cups.
So either way—changing between two cups that are the same or changing from the worse cup to the better one—you will need to expend a bit of energy, even though your initial decision probably required none at all.
Panpsychism, pansignaling, and Buddhism
Panpsychism means “all mind” or mind in all things, with an emphasis on cognition being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.
Pansignaling means “all signaling” or signaling in all things, with an emphasis on signaling being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.
I like the term pansignaling because it gets us to look at the signals, without which there is nothing.
Another word that is close to these two is panexperientialism, which connotes that “the fundamental elements of the universe are ‘occasions of experience’ which can together create something as complex as a human being.”
These ideas or similar can be found in the Huayan and Tiantai schools of Buddhism.
Highly recommend giving these ideas some thought and reading the links provided above.
I tend to favor thinking of this stuff from the signaling point of view. A signal can be found, defined, analyzed, and so on. A signal is a fairly objective thing. When we consider signals and consciousness, it is very natural to consider that signals are parts of networks and that networks can be parts of bigger networks.
As I understand it, panexperientialism holds the view that atoms have experience, and that molecules have experience as do the atoms that make them up… and so on till we get to cells, organs, brains, human consciousness. Human consciousness, which is fundamentally experiential, is what humans mainly think of as experience. At all levels, the “parts” of human consciousness also are conscious or cognizant and thus capable of experience. Thus, there is no mind-body problem. Cognition or awareness is part of nature from the very bottom up. For example, a single bacterium can know to move toward something or away from it.
Life is “anti-entropic signaling networks” that organize, self-organize, combine, cooperate, compete, eat, and change constantly. From this, we can see where impermanence and delusion as described in Buddhism come from.
When matter breaks down into waves and laws, it becomes information, but similar processes are still at work. In Buddhist terms we find again dependent origination, no intrinsic self separate from other information, impermanence, rational structure, karma (the work of this producing that), the primary consciousness found in deep samadhi.
A very small irrational thought
A very small thought can show how irrational thinking operates.
Recently, I have been putting more salt in food I make. I have some good reasons for this and one bad one.
The bad one wrongly believes that my partner does not at the table salt food I make enough, so I have to use more to counter this.
This thought comprised about 10% of my reason for using more salt when I cooked. This thought was subliminal, meaning it almost never rose to consciousness. And when it did its appearance was fleeting and went unquestioned.
It is a selfish thought or at least not fully considerate. As soon as I examined it I realized it is a dumb thought and discarded it completely.
This thought was wrong and irrational for obvious reasons. But it still had a small effect on my conscious behavior.
I noticed it while washing dishes and watching my mind at the same time.
This thought has an element of reason in how it is constructed: i.e. “because my partner does not do this, I will do this.”
But not much else about it is reasonable. I have no idea how or when this thought formed. Did it form subconsciously or in a dream? I don’t know.
I believe it stayed in my mind as a weak but partially operative “reason” because it is selfish (and thus less likely to be examined) and because it has a reasonable construction when put in words.
God Exists, the Rest Is Speculation
Kevin Barrett
David Ray Griffin is one of the world’s most important thinkers. I first encountered his work in the mid-1990s while preparing a Ph.D. on Moroccan Sufi legends. It quickly dawned on me that Griffin’s analysis of postmodernism was more sensible than most of the trendier literature on the subject, while his work on such empirical topics as the scientific evidence for psi showed him to be an uncommonly flexible yet rigorous thinker who followed logic and evidence wherever it led. So while most contemporary Christian theologians were not terribly relevant to my Islamic Studies related Ph.D., Griffin and his mentor, John Cobb, the two biggest names in Process Theology, could not be ignored. (Source)
American Buddhist Net 