heathervescent

1st Day Thoughts

All I can say, since I don't care much about proving anything, is that I'm glad no one from the web 2.0 was in the session on the social brain. Too much awesomeness was divulged and I'm happy to be the odd duck out in this conference of academics. Was today really just one day? I feel like I've been here a week.

We are Connected and Individual

Appealing to my more enlightened self - this TED talk blew my mind. I suggest you watch this right now - and then choose from where you want to live. (Thanks Ralitza for sending the link!)

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Some Links of Interest

An Interesting Article on David Allen - the man behind GTD (wired).

A site on whether a brain is necessary.

Thinking about Dr Schlegel again.

Paradigm Shift

There are things we believe today - things that science has taught us are true - that are not actually true at all. Big things. Things that make us believe the world is the way it is - but it is not. Things that will change the way we see the world.

When I was in grammar school I remembered learning about the solar system. How the sun is the center of our system - but the crazy thing is - it was not always believed to be this way. Before science discovered that it is really the sun that is the center, people believed the earth was the center of the universe. People also believed that the earth was flat and not a sphere.

It wasn't that science had failed those early humans that obsessed me - it was how the new knowledge changed their worldview. The Shift. What was life like when they thought the world was flat, what about after? Did they even know they believed the wrong thing?

And then, in a horror of horrors, it dawned on me, that there are most likely huge beliefs that I believe (and everyone else living along with me) believe as well - in some far far future time, will be shown to be false and incorrect. I could not bear the burden of believing a falsity - being unable to seek out the truth - my 7 year old brain could not bear it. But there was nothing to be done about it, so I went outside and played in the hot humid Iowa air.

But still this idea haunts me. I know that big idea is out there. That big paradigm shift is nearby. The one that will rip the fabric and when the light bleeds out we won't be able to ignore it anymore.

Recapitulation - why - a Hofstader story

Recapitulation is an exercise to recall, review, release, and recharge energy.  It rids a person of assumptions and preconceptions. Recapitulation is remembering or more precisely, reviving events and experiences. [Source]

I've alluded many times to Douglas Hofstader's new book, I am a Strange Loop. One of the reasons this book fascinates me so much, is that much of Hofstader's descriptions, describe almost exactly knowledge I learned through other sources.

But first, I'll come clean. I studied and practiced the teachings of mystic G.I. Gurdjieff actively for 5 years and in a school for at least 3 of those. (Much of what I know of Wilbur's Integral Theory reminds me of those Gurdjieff lessons.) Then I flowed into Aikido and practiced martial movements and paratheatrical rituals. One fine Berkeley day, I was coming back from aikido class and on a whim, I stopped in the temporary Berkeley Library. I frequent bookstore more than libraries. I had no idea what to look for. Them I remembered someone told me about some teachings of don juan. It was the last person I talked to at college. I had no idea who the author was, so I started looking up titles. I couldn't find that particular book, but I found the section that included other books by the same author. I picked two at random and took them on vacation with me. The author turned out to be Carlos Castaneda, and the first book I read, was The Fire from Within. (Shamanism was not new to me. Another fluke library stop, more than 10 years previous got 13 year old Heather obsessed with Lynn V Andrews. I accepted these stories as the myths and fairytales I had read.) I read the stories with a skeptics disbelief - the activities in his books are truly impossible, but I found myself agreeing more and more on the explanation and belief structure. It was so similar to my own, I realized that I was holding in my hands a book I would write had this book not been written. Rather than get angry (like I did at Taoism 10 years previous) I wanted to learn more. I gave myself a year to experience these impossible things. That year was the first of many years of practice and studying personal freedom - true freedom.

So what does this have to do with Hofstader?

Much of the more difficult concepts I learn (and try to explain) about true freedom Hofstader has explained with the ease of mathematical terms, analogies and stories. He easily explains Plato's cave - much more eloquently than Plato did. Here's an excerpt he uses to explain our warehouse (of symbols) and I can use it to show the importance of recapitulation.

(book excerpt after the jump)

Transcendeffervescence

A friend sent me a link to a galley page by Jonathon Earl Bowser. I don't usually go for this type of imagry, but one caught my eye. Gee, I wonder why??? Source.

Now, if she only had purple hair....

Some light Sunday Reading

It's a gorgeous day today, and after Romeo and I sat at squirrel watch for hours on the patio I decided to pick up a couple books I am reading. I am usually a speed reader, but these two books are making me slow down, because in addition to making me think, they each deliver pallet after pallet of wood/explosive material to this bonfire from which a phoenix will one day emerge. For now, we're cooking with gas!

First off is Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick.
This book is absolutely amazing. It's exactly how I think about philosophy. Well, I'm not really sure yet, as I'm just into the introduction at the moment. But my current mental ponderings about skepticism are right in line with his thinking. I can't wait to wade in deeper.

Second off is Stanislav Grof's Psychology of the Future.
I saw/heard him speak yesterday and it was a lot of good food for thought. Most interesting is the redefinition of emergency to "emerge"-ncy. As in, spiritual emergency. Of course, I couldn't help thinking about the art of bleeding and true safety consciousness.

Mix these two books with my results from the perception of perceptions conference a few weeks ago, add a dash of quetzalcoatl and you might get a feel for what I've got brewing up in my brain.