Whats Important » Perceptions

Reflections on my Big Mouth

Paul admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:12:19 +0000

I was thinking back this morning about “my ways”. I do much reflection perhaps, compared to the average person, and wonder what I could have (or should have) done differently. Maybe that’s a good thing, considering that I have so many family and close friends who disagree with me so strongly on many things. I do alot of apologizing, and that’s usually just for things I’ve said.

There are some vague and looming thoughts circling my mind like vulchers blocked by the sun. I can’t quite make them out, but their shadows haunt me. What is the talent that some seem to have, for remaining oh so civil and polite with those whom they disagree with? Why do I find myself over and over crossing my own boundaries of respectable and decent conversation, hurling names and adjectives that include ugly images rather than the cold facts alone? There is no untamed beast so unwieldy as our own inner spirit, a mass of infantile desires and unfathomable appetites for self-indulgence. And yet we cannot just throw this away, like the single-minded muscle that holds our clam-shells together, we would fizzle lifeless into passivity and apathy without that fire.

There is more than such simple principles as these, which vex our best intentions. Hidden players lurk behind puppet veils, further drawing us innocently toward self-injury. Primary among these, is the master of illusion.

We are forever dreamers, even those who have no imagination by choice, drilling all color and music from their hearts for fear of being perceived as strange and outside of circles, too cowardly to sing loudly, and too self-conscious to let their wings soar them wildly. Yes, even the cold utterly meaningless lives spent in gossip and ceaseless trifling over office politics and television. Even these empty shells of souls have (without any doubt) a tiny, perhaps nearly invisible or well-hidden flame of the dream that remains. Some undernourished fantasy of wild adventure, or great accomplishments, of childhood hoped for greatness, of the trip never taken, the plunge into the unknown, or the ultimate love story untold. These unspoken, unfed dreams continue on, like a faint glimmer in the night, and have a strange effect on our perceptions from time to time.

For what appears to be but a small flame, is really a dragon’s fire. The only kind of fire that can create and destroy matter as if by a magical or thermonuclear forces, causing our perceptions to see what is not there, or to be blind of what everyone else around us can plainly see. This small flame, has over the billions of milliseconds that we perceive, carved out huge shapes that dwarf the grand canyon, such that all information is FORCED through these templates, prior to reaching our port. And this is the doomed magic, the sentence to human frailty, that we cannot escape, a flawed and corrupted perceptual system that cannot reconstruct itself completely. For that would require starting over fresh, without any preconceived categories and schema at all, and of course we all know how surgically precise water is (not!), because it will go where ever it wishes, and will relentlessly begin to smooth out whatever path it takes, beyond our control. And then the water, barring some massive earth-shaking divorce, or other trauma, will continue to gradually wear down our objectivity until we are in the end, but a construction resultant from our environment.

Film Reviews, Fake Intellectuals, and ‘Proper’ Hedonism

Paul admin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:07:15 +0000

I am a discerning critic of rare, philosophical, taboo, experimental cinema, foreign and independent films. I’m not above typically popular main stream flicks but much more enjoy dogme, verite, noir, art & documentaries. For reasons that follow, I have recently taken to the practice of writing movie reviews on Netflix. Being a huge movie addict and fan, over the decades I’ve also gradually become a serious critic of movies as well. Just choosing one to watch on Netflix can be quite a difficult task though, for my discriminating tastes. Often times, I am totally dependent on good reviews by others in order to decide whether a larger investment of my time is worth it. For me, a movie can sometimes be like a really good book, in the sense that I will talk about it with many people I know, sometimes write about it, and think about it a lot. The time spent watching can be just a small beginning of a long and philosophical quest. Not only do reviews save you from crappy wastes of time, they can also lead toward more full-filling ones.

Writing a review is one way of joining a community of people who use them and find them useful. But more than that, it is in some way a means of documenting and recording your thoughts about your own life, and your experiences. Movies are both fantasy, and part of our experiences, they shape our beleifs, values, and personalities. They become part of who we are and what we represent. If you consider all of them together that you may watch in a lifetime, what would they say about you? Reviews can help you choose this part of who you are becoming, and what you represent more carefully. Learning the art and science of wine-tasting and palette training does not make wine taste less good, it enables you to more fully enjoy the good ones. In fact, when I lived in Jacksonville, Florida, I had a close friend who was quite a scholarly film critic himself. Together we set aside one day every single week to get together and watch one, sometimes pausing it in order to make a quick remark, but usually waiting until the end and then engaging in contemplative discussion or debate.

Recently, I wrote a review about a video of a stand-up comedy show I watched on Netflix. The fact that I sought out and watched such a comedy show should be one clue that I wasn’t just seeking out some pseudo-intellectual crap to brag about at cocktail parties. Nevertheless, my review prompted one of my friends who does not know me too closely, to ask “How can you enjoy humor when thinking this much about it? If it is funny I laugh. It is not I don’t.” This is of course an excellent question, and deserves some response. The observation can be made that “the life unexamined is not worth living”, but that is assuming the ‘living’ part has been engaged already. Everyone including myself is tempted at times to introspect and reflect on past experiences, including movies that we loved. But there are some instances where I have been known to find myself making “meta” level observations or mental annotations for later critique, even while watching a movie.

I’ve never really considered why it’s so pleasurable for most people to intentionally avoid cognitive effort. I’ve seen smart successful people spend significant amounts of money and time avoiding reading some small amount of material. Yet stranger still (as you point out), why would some people derive such great pleasure from cogitating about crap, in precisely the moments when others are avoiding cogitating? When I and my friend Brian Hopkins went camping and scuba diving in the Keys, we had a tough time finding a gym where we could do some weightlifting for that week, but we finally did. It was a tiny near-empty local place with no females to look at, and undoubtedly many guys would have passed on that ‘fun’ — those who are there for purely social or other reasons. Maybe it’s sort of a delayed gratification/achievement type of thing? Part of me wants to believe that there’s no conceit or shallow pride involved, but that cannot be ruled out completely and is definitely an motivation for some folks. Perhaps hedonism and sloth are not the only kinds of pleasure?

First, there are lots of times when I think I naturally do shut the CPU down in order to “experience” the moment without the ‘interference’ that cogitation can cause. There’s a great pleasure that comes from beer drinking and bar-fights, from “mano-a-mano” challenges to manhood (and infantile versions of courage) which I dearly enjoyed as a young man. In a way, that’s party why I enjoy weightlifting so much, because it’s one of the few activities that somehow forcibly shuts me down mentally, and I enter some other state of primal raw emotion. But even without the endorphins or adrenaline of “fight or flight”, I assure you that I do have a keen imagination and frequently exercised “fantasy screen”.

Imagine the difference between watching a totally ridiculous, low-brow flick, and one which pulls you in, grabs your heart, and make you (yes, and other men too) shed a tear. They probably result in different levels of involvement and immersion. There are plenty of movies custom tailored to shallow or unintelligent adults, or to children — without the modern Disney invention of double market appeal — which are probably directly analogous to long lines of people standing in line, where there’s a definite opportunity to use one’s mind or not. Some will pause and rest their tired mind, others will turn and chat about people, places, and things although a few (such as me) will talk or silently think about ideas, concepts, and principles.

Not everyone who power lifts in the gym is an ego-addict, faking enjoyment or lying about why they enjoy it. The vast majority of my thoughts are never seen or heard and I still enjoy them, analogous to the person scaling a mountain all alone. It’s probably a little more fun though, sharing them with others too, as long as I’m not ridiculed too much for it). I’m most eager to share them with those who will join me in considering them, elaborate on and extend them. But I also want family, loved ones, and friends to be aware of or know that I have them, so they understand me more, in many cases even if they don’t see eye-to-eye. You mother may not ride a ride a motorcycle or relate to it at all, but you may still be eager to show her your new bike. And therein rests the single distinguishing characteristic that separates ‘enjoyment of cogitation’ from those various handicaps which prevent one from enjoying life.

There are clinical conditions (flat affect, depression, etc.) which will generalize to all of life decreasing one’s overall enjoyment of life. There are also emotional disturbances (insecurities, fear of intimacy, etc.) which will cause some people to over-analyze literally everything, even when their own private and natural instincts are telling them to just let go, relax, and breathe a little. But in those cases, the symptoms I think are fairly evenly spread over their lives. We need not doubt though, that there are folks who would be completely content to zone out and “enjoy” movies typically spoofed or made fun of by highly intelligent people (for example, “Mystery Science Theatre 3000”). In both cases, people are attempting to find a ticklish spot where some fun can be had. There is no reason to doubt, that the sharper tool needs denser material to cut a rug. It’s those who never seem to be able to cut a rug, who may be missing out. Trust me when I say, that I am often among the first few brave souls, eager to run out and “cut a rug”. I laugh often in life, and sometimes very loud.

To the casual observer, it can be truly difficult to understand why someone would enjoy some things which we may not. If someone is dressing up as a dominatrix and whipping a man on ‘all fours’, or if we watch a grown adult prancing around on a public stage at the local theatre and singing some song we think is humiliating, we may ask, “how can THAT be fun”? Some will scoff, and some will simply presume the mystery to be a dark and impenetrable black box. Others will look closer and begin to find slight differences between those on stage.

I think that some of those on life’s stage are emotionally “damaged goods” but otherwise normal, some perhaps clinically ill in some regard, and some are just very uniquely wired AND still really healthy. In all cases, there may be a temptation for us to presume that they are ‘acting’ or ‘faking’ enjoyment of their activities. When you hear of skydivers describe their elation and joy, do you not in some small way think of the same type of people who describe the joys of some other dangerous practice, which resulted in the ‘scars’ they show off like red badges of courage? I think we all feel that skepticism. But it’s not always correct and it may be that we are just being mentally lazy, and just going out of our way to avoid the cogitation required to seek deeper understanding.

Semantic to Neural Encoding

Paul admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:24:46 +0000

I presume that as we move forward in time along experience data, broad classifications of initial impressions (internal value attributions, beliefs, interpretations) become increasingly detailed, as with an anisotropic filter. Radial branches from the event origin map more or less with other event origins like twigs off main branches, according to similarity algorithms. But when we discover dissonance or correct ourselves, do we begin a new tract, or simply veer?

So how (??) does that relate to the finding (from the Journal of Neuroscience*) that…

A voxel-based whole-brain level linear regression analysis was performed to relate fractional anisotropy to indices of true and false memory recall and recognition. True memory was correlated to diffusion anisotropy in the inferior longitudinal fascicle, the major connective pathway of the medial temporal lobe, whereas a greater proneness to retrieve false items was related to the superior longitudinal fascicle connecting frontoparietal structures

* The Journal of Neuroscience, July 8, 2009, 29(27):8698-8703; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5270-08.2009

Altered Consciousness & Space-Time

Paul admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:25:24 +0000

I’ve been doing alot of reading lately about the experiences of Aldus Huxley and others who have attempted to describe their experiences “outside of time”, when they could touch the ‘eternal’. It’s really easy to whimsically castigate these guys as prone to ‘flights of fancy’ (epistemologically) or poopoo their prose as ‘self-defense’ (psychologically). How oft it is that I wish I’d chased that rabbit down the hole! I wanted to become a cultural anthropologist long long ago.

I s’pose I could ramble for ages ABOUT what I want to say, and never even get to it, and besides…. it’s coming up on 5 am already. 2nd consecutive night with less than 3 hrs sleep — is this causing me brain-damage? It sure feels like it. Sooooooooo… (here goes).

I just had a dream. It was quite a strange dream. When I awoke, it was as if I was being compressed back into my body, a rather congested and uncomfortable squeeze. Consequently, I was panting a bit and my heart racing. Stranger still, I realized (or had been dreaming) that I was returning from a thought thread, upon which I had been traveling. It’s only been an hour or so since I woke up, but it’s all fading so quickly now, and I really don’t want to add or elaborate in any way which will inauthenticate what I experienced. Still, I’d like to deconstruct this just a bit.

If my memory is not being creative now, I think my very next thought was awareness of what I had been doing before (not sure whether immediately before, or whether I had been on the thread for some time —- not that a thought thread has any real relationship to time). Before that, I had travelled on triangles. Which is a greater leap in terms of technology, complexity, or difficulty? I don’t know. All I know is that it was much more easy to move along a throught than it is to move in time-space.

As I lay there in bed, I kept trying to probe EXACTLY what I was feeling. Was I somehow hiding something from myself ?!? — the way that you can conveniently forget a nightmare sometimes, but still KNOW that you just had one, and that is was not pleasant at all. Heck, I wasn’t sleeping and now curiosity was building. What a STRANGE DREAM!!!! Was that really what I was dreaming about? Why would a person dream something so odd? Maybe I should have taken that undergrad class in dream interpretation so many years ago.

Like any short-term memory, I didn’t have to “access” it because it was within my immediate awareness in the same way as the imprint of your intentionality and purpose when you leave the house to go to work (as I shall in a few hours now. UGH!!). Because of this awareness, it was different than the experience that you might have when questioning some childhood or otherwise very faint memory. When the glimmer has begun to fade, and all you really have are outlines, or worse still – the copy of a copy of a copy (ad infinitum) after retelling it (to yourself or others), then you really DON’T know for sure, whether and to what degree embellishments or explanations have become part of the story, rather than meta information added later.

For these reasons, it was really difficult for me to doubt that this indeed was exactly what my mind had been doing before, this and no more, no less. All I knew about traveling on triangles at that point, was that it was similar in some regard to travelling on the threads of throught in that it was outside of normal space-time. The last detail I will record now is the only other detail not constructed but as part of the experience itself. Which is this: that when traveling on a thread of consciousness, I had spread out somehow, and yet was able to move forwards and backwards (like moving along a ticker tape which had been recording consciousness). Even when moving backwards, I could understand the meanings of the thought and how they were connected to their prior thoughts.

That’s really all I could remember. In order then, I awoke. I was breathing a bit heavy, and heart faster than when awaking from a calm slumber (as you would for instance, if you merely needed to use the restroom). Upon awaking I could recall what I was doing mentally just prior to awaking (what I was dreaming). I lay there questing this dream for a good half-hour, and came to the conclusion that I could not recall more and yet what I could recall, was solid and needed no retractions. At this point, I began to toy a bit, intellectually. Wondering what the heck it means to travel on a triangle?

Is that like folding time-space, like in Dune? I wasn’t sure, because I couldn’t remember at this point what in the heck that meant or how I had done it. Pure speculation now. If you have many triangles before you, and you begin to fold them, then certainly the distance to the edge of those triangles will diminish, right? And for that matter, how could consciousness exist outside of space-time, and yet somehow interact with matter and energy inside space-time?!

Whats Important » Perceptions

Reflections on my Big Mouth

Film Reviews, Fake Intellectuals, and ‘Proper’ Hedonism

Semantic to Neural Encoding

Altered Consciousness & Space-Time

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