LastThursday

There's something to be said for pushing yourself outside of your normal zone of comfort. Or comfort zone rather. Funny how English has two ways of making the genitive. Anyway. The least of things to be said for it, is that you are experiencing something new. This in itself can loosen formulaic ways of thinking and behaving and that's healthy. The most that can be said for it is that it can be life changing. Here's a few of my highlights: Laser Eye Treatment Ever since the age of about 13 or 14 I had been short sighted. I still distinctly remember my vision getting progressively worse over the space of months - from complete clarity to a world of indistinct fuzziness. I've written about this elsewhere in this journal. In retrospect I put it down to some sort of psycho-physical meltdown at the time. The short of it is that in my thirties I ended up wearing disposable contact lenses. These were great, except in the evenings when they would dry up, or when inevitably I drank too much after a night clubbing, slept over at friends' and didn't have my glasses on me. I would either sleep in my contacts (a very very bad idea) or fly blind the following day. In one such incident I had take take an hour's drive home with one contact in, the other of which I had somehow lost when rehydrating it on my tongue - all on a hangover - it wasn't pretty. As fate would have it the opticians had adverts for Laser Eye Treatment by the customer service desk, strategically placed in my eye-line. Eventually my unconscious gave in to the incessant signal month after month of collecting new consignments of contacts - and I decided to get the treatment (yes, free will doesn't exist). The cost wasn't prohibitive for me at the time, but neither was it really cost effective; something like five years to break even. I suppose I was doing it for freedom and that was cost effective enough. I booked the treatment and the hotel up in London, as my girlfriend and I lived near Brighton. We would make a day of it and travel back the day of the surgery. It all went smoothly. I sat in the operating chair whilst my girlfriend watched a monitor from an adjoining room. She had a medical background (HPV) so was very interested to see what they did. They squirted copious amounts of liquid into my eyes and then aligned their laser machinery. But the first step was to clamp my eyelid wide open (one eye at a time). This wasn't so pleasant, but the liquid helped. Then I was told to keep my eyes very still and the machine cut into my cornea like chopping the end off a boiled egg with a knife. This made a flap which was then propped open, and the laser did it's - bacon-like-smelling thing. The whole procedure was painless if uncomfortable. It was all then kept together with a massive contact lens in each eye. That was it. One oversight was that I had forgotten to bring some sunglasses with me, as they advised I would experience glare without them for the first day or so. We had also decided to take public transport. I think the sight of me wearing my girlfriend's sunglasses (an avid wearer) and tears streaming down my face (it wouldn't stop for hours) was very odd on a bus. After a month of eye drops and avoiding my face in the shower, I had new eyes. For me it was the first time in over 25 years I could see clearly again, and I was overjoyed. But it also had the odd psychological effect of making me feel more open and exposed - I could see everything, and everything could see me. It took me a while to "re-balance". But it changed my life in a not insignificant way. Playing Guitar at Wedding Never play an instrument at a friends' wedding. Not unless you're very very well practised. I wasn't. Although before the event I was feeling pretty confident and non-anxious. Saying that I don't really know why I had agreed to it in the first place. It was probably one of those alcohol fuelled conversations friends have in the pub - specifically male friends. The sort of conversation where you can't back down after the fact, because any sign of backtracking is weakness. I must admit I have always liked Air On A G String. And I had been practising on and off months before the conversation and I had boasted as much in the pub. Serves me right. I was immediately picked up on and asked if I wanted to play the guests in at my friend's wedding. I think he was joking, but I called his bluff and said "ok then". He was slightly incredulous but obviously decided to make me pay for my stupidity. Saying that, I have always tried to practise being a "yes man". Or of saying "yes" to things outside of my comfort zone. My idea being that future me would have to worry about it and I might even "grow" from the experience. However in this instance I had zero experience playing to an audience and my own level of mastery was overrated. Come the big day I walked in, guitar in hand and suited up and a murmur went round the already sat wedding invitees. I sat confidently, adjusted myself, quietly tuned the guitar and started playing. Not thirty seconds in and the bride walked in beaming and looked directly at me. It was at the point all confidence left me. This was her big day, not mine and I wasn't the centre of attention. But neither could I afford to get it wrong, I couldn't embarrass the wedding couple on their day. I got stage fright, the adrenaline ran wildly and my fingers seized up, I could remember nothing. I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself, the only thing my mind was telling me was "start again, start again, start again", so I did. The groom noticed, but in the end nobody else did, or really cared. I got my leg pulled over it for years to come. What did it teach me? It's good to go outside your comfort zone, but it can also be bloody terrifying. But there's no way of knowing that beforehand. Bungee Jump In another case of saying "yes" to something I probably shouldn't have, I did my one and only bungee jump in the motherland of bungee jumps: New Zealand. I had spend weeks travelling on a bus full of people ten years younger than me. Basically for an upfront fee, you jumped on and off the buses (using my legs) at your convenience and travelled your way around both the North and South islands. Mostly, I just went with the flow and did a different hostel each night. That way I got to know people and made friends along the way. Most days, there would be sign-ups to various activities in the following days. I didn't have money to burn, but had more than most so I would sign myself up for loads of tours or activities (swimming with dolphins, hot mud pools, sky diving, that sort of thing). I just put name down and forgot about it, until it happened. Of course I had never bungee jumped - and admittedly it was the one activity I was probably going to turn down. As fate would have it, I'd made good friends with this guy from the Netherlands and he was well up for bungee. So I was sort of coaxed into doing it. There was some level of anxiety I had to live with for 24 hours. On the day they tethered me to a gantry and I and my small group walked across it to the glass hut suspended over the gorge. I was nervous, but not nearly as much as my fellow jumpers. Once we reached the hut, the thumping music and the glass floor did nothing to ease the adrenaline. I could easily see people flying off the platform every few minutes. And like an inmate, my time came to be cross examined by fear itself. I sat on a harsh cold aluminium chair built into the floor of the jumping area, whilst they strapped my ankles together and then tethered me to the bungee cord itself. I penguined my way over to a small metal platform jutting out into empty space. At that point fear gripped me hard, and I had to overcome or I would faint or possibly vomit. Others before me hadn't been so lucky and fear had made them abort. The guy counted me down, I jumped. I'm glad I did it. The 300 foot fall took what seemed like an eternity and it honestly was the most serene and freeing experience I've had. I then knew what it was like to fly like a bird (or at least a very large fleshy dead weight). Would I do it again for fun? Probably not.

Exactly. It's totally possible to be or exist at more than one level simultaneously. You can know the illusion but still take part in it. Just go see a movie for example.

This is the "Duck Test". Or if you prefer the "Turing Test". If the robot were to walk and talk like it had consciousness and self awareness, then for all intents and purposes it has consciousness and self awareness. It's a philosophical question whether it has a conscious inner life, not a practical one. Actually, you are applying the Duck Test whenever you interact with people. You are mapping their speech and movements and form to yours and concluding that they too are experiencing what you are experiencing, a.k.a. consciousness. But, you will never know. Even if you magically expanded the reach of your consciousness to enter the "mind" of another person, that still wouldn't answer the question. Instead you would be some sort of hybrid consciousness, neither the original you or the original them. This is akin to the measurement problem in quantum physics. You can't measure the state of a system without disturbing the system. More accurately, whenever you measure a system, you are merging with it, to create a hybrid system. You can't disentangle the observer from the observed.

Very few people seem get this. A. "There's no time." B. "Yeah, I know what you mean." A. "No. No you don't." B. "Yeah, the present moment is eternal." A. "No. No you don't. No moment. No eternal. No present."

Does an awakened person feel pain if you cut their finger off? Does an awakened person feel hungry? What changes is the perspective not the sensations. And according to some there are infinite "levels" of awakening. Maybe there are perspectives which are totally disconnected from sensation, but that's just my speculation.

You will disappear before that happens. This will assimilate you. This is the Boogey(wo)man (sorry I'm on an equality drive in the usage of my language, it's a phase ).

Time exists. We even have a word for it. It's just not what you thought it was, it was something else: just a thought. There's no eternal moment, there's just this. This is not created by or related to anything else, it's just this. You are this. Everything is this. Apologies for the woo woo semi-poetic nature of my post. It's actually very very simple, but so incredibly hard to grasp or explain. It's scary to abandon yourself to just this, without the crutch of time and tomorrow to lean on.

A thought is that part of experience which doesn't obey the normal rules. A thought comes, a thought goes - unlike the sofa you're sat in. If a thought stuck around and you could touch it and smell it and taste it, then it would become "real".

This question seems very familiar, but I don't know why. Anyway... Tricky things to contemplate: 1. Your conscious experience includes more than brains right? So is it possible brains are inside consciousness, instead of consciousness being inside brains? 2. Is it possible to have an experience that isn't in consciousness? Think deeply about it. If not then there is nothing outside consciousness - everything is consciousness. 3. If the only way to prove the brain produces consciousness, is by using your conscious experience, can you trust that? Isn't that circular reasoning? 4. If a brain produces consciousness, then it must be outside of consciousness and separate from it. So how can point 2 be true?

Having a strong interest in languages and language, it's often fun to play around with it. One of my recurring thoughts is the abysmal state of gender neutral pronouns in English. Since we're in the 21st century it's a sensible hypothetical exercise to try and fix this. So. What to do? My first thought is that language isn't prescriptive by nature. Just because you want language to be a certain way, doesn't mean that anyone else cares about what you want. So any sort of language reform is going to encounter immense resistance and even worse: complete indifference. However, some languages are worse than others in this respect. French at least has a language academy that attempts to keep it in check - so ironically reform for French would probably be easier to instigate if the will was there. English is in the indifference category, so no chance there. The second thought, is that English in particular is extremely diverse. If you're going to install a new language feature, you better make sure it fits all dialects and regional variations. That is a very tall order, even if you overcome indifference. Fourthly, written language is actually a parallel (visual) language to the spoken language. You can see this immediately from the large lack of correspondance between spelling and pronunciation in English for example. So here I'm really talking about spoken English and the written version closely following that. So to pronouns. The thing about pronouns is that they are a core part of grammar. It's not like coining a new technical word (noun or verb) and it being used only in rarefied settings. Pronouns are everywhere. So we have to look at how pronouns actually work if we want any new ones to "fit in". Pronouns can be categorised by person, i.e. who or what they refer to. Generally 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. They can also be categorised by "gender", i.e. male, female and neutral. They are also categorised by their plurality: singular or plural. Finally they are categorised by part of speech: subject, object, possesive, possessive adjective, reflexive. Any new scheme for pronouns has to correspond to all these categories, otherwise they won't fit with their grammatical use. A very interesting point is the neutral category of pronoun: it. The sense in English is not actually "either gender", but "inanimate". This is quite important to take into consideration. We use it for objects, and possibly for animals, but rarely to refer to people except in a derogatory way. So if we want gender neutrality we need to actually invent a new "gender neutral" category that refers to "animate beings". Also if we're going to have a "gender neutral" category, what happens for plurals? There are three cases. The first case is where it is known that there is a gender mixed group of people. The second case is where it is unknown what the mix of genders are. The third where there is only one gender in the group. Should we differentiate these cases? If we're going to be using inclusive language, then it should not matter what the mix of genders are in a group. So it seems like we can collapse all three cases into one. But, if we are doing that, then why should we differentiate gender in the singular case? Good question. One reason to differentiate gender at all is that in a sense gendered pronouns are being used as adjectives through the back door. What is really meant by "Give him the book", is "Give male it the book". So it's a shortcut way of referring to attributes of a person. Should we mess about with established pronouns instead of just adding new ones? I'd say no. Instead we should introduce gender neutral singular pronouns, to give the most options. Ok, so the new gender neutral categories are: animate singular (1st, 2nd, 3rd person), animate mixed plural (1st, 2nd, 3rd person). The last consideration is the use of the words they and them. This has an informal singular gender neutral use, but only solves the problem for 3rd person singular. I would instead be inclined to leave it as a plural and invent new words. What about the actual words themselves? They need to be short, like all the other pronouns. They need to decline like the other pronouns. They need to sound like English. Here's my solution for gender neutral words: Subject Singular 3rd Person: dee Subject Plural 3rd Person: dey Object Singular 3rd Person: derm Possesive Singular 3rd Person: deer Possesive Singular Adjective 3rd Person: derz Reflexive Singular: deerself Obviously spellings would have to be Englishified. Weird eh?

Hello journal, it's been a while. It's typical of my interests in general that they run in phases. The typical pattern is that something gets my interest up and then I'll explore it to death. This seems to last longer and longer the older I get, but usually one day for no particular conscious reason I stop. I've never really regretted having stopped doing something that interested me, mostly because there's lots of other goodness to be interested in. That's not to say the some of my interests don't resurface from time to time. Sometimes it can actually take years before I continue off from where I stopped. But I just get straight back into it. This journal may or may not go the same way. To be frank I never thought I'd keep posting for this long at all, but I think the lockdown here in the UK helped that along - it gave me a daily routine outside of work to focus my mind on (since I'm at home all day every day). Whilst I'm generally good with routine and habit, paradoxically I'm bad with self discipline. Lockdown has started again for a month here and most probably longer. Practically, for me not much changes other than on weekends, where I have been seeing friends and family. Now the scramble for everyone to religiously meet on Zoom every weekend has started. It kind of makes me feel uneasy, as it feels imposed rather than spontaneous and a bit of a panic reaction. I think this time, I will just dip in and out when the mood takes me. Boy I'm antisocial at times! Bah humbug.

If I'm a good subjective idealist, then all I can know is what I perceive, so that is primary. I can say with certainty that I'm having a subjective experience of seeing right now. If I close my eyes, then that subjective experience immediately changes (I see the back of my eyelids). The idea that I physically have eyes, must be secondary though. In other words having "eyes" is a thought story. This is obvious by asking: are my eyelids part of my eyes? Or, are my eyes just projections of my brain? It's not obvious where eyes begin and end. So how is it that a thought story (my eyes) is affecting my subjective experience of seeing? Is it just pure coincidence that every time my subjective vision goes dark, my subjective feeling of my eyelids are that they are closed? What role does the idea of "my eyes" have on my subjective experience? What are they for? Why are they correlated with vision?

@Corpus cool. And go one step further. What is creating the distinction once you "get it"?

I hope I'm not being provocative: is there a difference? Any discussion about reality is a metaphysics a.k.a. philosophy. And we each have our own personal flavour of metaphysics. Strictly that isn't my original question. My original question is why do eyes affect my sight? Or more accurately, why is there a correlation between the two? It is a given that consciousness itself gives rise to sight (in my metaphysics), but in turn it's not obvious why then eyes should "modulate" what happens to sight - being that eyes are in the experience of sight (and other primary experiences). As I mentioned above, the tail is wagging the dog. Why? Not really, if sight is primary in the first place. Even if the form of "eyes" are somehow constricting the experience of seeing, that still doesn't answer as to the "why?". What is the strange connection between the form of eyes and sight itself?

The tail wagging the dog. Or the tail is the dog?

Quite. I picked the question because materialism has a very clear answer (the eyes do the seeing). Whereas in subjective idealism it doesn't: eyes are simply phenomena within consciousness and seemingly have no use, since they are not the primary means of experience (consciousness itself is). So how can a subset of experience (eyes/eyelids), be affecting a super-set of experience (seeing)? Bringing in "form" is akin to bringing in objects from materialism - so I find it unsatisfactory as an answer. After all "form" is still within consciousness (a subset) and hence not primary. Anyway. I have no clear answer. But I thought it was a fun question nonetheless. Maybe it is just God's way of tricking itself?

"Weird, but received" describes my entire experience on this forum so well. And mine. Although I was actually being cheeky and politely poking fun at the whole, "I before E except after C" thing, since Weird breaks the rule and Received doesn't (sorry @Nahm). But I think it got lost. Ah well, it amused me. I do like a double entendre.

Indeed, that's the whole point of my post. What are my eyes for exactly?

I'm advocating for the weak form the of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, not the strong. So distinctions can be made "spontaneously" without being backed up by language concepts. So yeah, "what the fuck is that fucking thing" works for me. But note that "thingness" is a distinction or concept already in language - does a "thing" really exist? But I would argue that there are also potential distinctions that are not made at all, because there isn't a language category to fit it into. So there are things that you are not even aware of, because there's nothing in your mental (language) model that it could snap to. I'm desperately trying to think of a smart example, but I can't. I suppose the sensation is something like this. Notice that you're not just seeing pebbles (one concept), but there is another concept hidden in the image, which you are not aware of (immediately):

And you came on here to ground yourself? Gulp. No, but consciousness does have the ability to divide itself - and also to be aware of its wholeness. Keep up the isolation - much kudos.

That is of course swapping one sub-modality for another. I need to become reacquainted with my friend Don Juan, he was a blast. I suppose the deeper point is that the six senses are not separate, they are simply distinctions in the flow of experience. The Assemblage point is the "distinction engine" of experience. Shift that, and the whole of experience shifts with it. I suppose taking psychadelics and other practices such as meditation shift the Assemblage point - maybe even permanently. I guess eyes and ears and skin etc, are only associated with the sub-modalities of experience simply because of their greater correlation. So, what I mean is, I associate my eyes with seeing, because their behaviour is correlated more closely with the "seeing" part of experience, same with ears and so on. But as I've had drilled into me: correlation is not causation. Maybe in your case the feeling and seeing parts of experience have become intermingled (you have lost the distinction over time).

That's awful, I hope that you recover as soon as possible and that the Covid is not getting the better of you. I'm not so sure myself. I agree, experience is mostly distinctions without a running mental commentary. But is it even possible to see a stool without the language concept of a stool? Language definitely informs distinctions and distinctions inform language. It's messier than you make it out to be. Language has it's tentacles deep in our conscious experience. This is why I have a deep issue with "direct experience" because it's anything but. I wonder if a doctor even has the same conscious experience of a human body as someone who isn't? The language available to them allows them to have finer distinctions in consciousness than most people.

Rock and roll baby...

I already re-incarnated. None of me is left from when I was kid. Just some vague memories and sensations and other people's accounts. Will the idea of "me" live on? Yes in other people's heads until I finally get forgotten. After all, I'm just an idea anyway. The reality is that I'm indistinguishable from the rest of existence. Will my influence live on? Almost certainly. I have permanently changed the Earth in my way, and my possesions and things I've touched may get passed down. My close family share my genes and they will live on and "re-incarnate" by giving birth. And if you're materialist then my constituent atoms and particles are immortal and will get re-cycled during and after my death. I think the premise of re-incarnation is flawed, because it has a too narrow definition of "you".

So form is more fundamental than distinctions? It kind of makes me uneasy, is there then something more fundamental than form then? Turtles all the way down? I suppose with this line of reasoning, there is then a form for "sight" which manifests itself as the experience of seeing and the physicality of my eyes - the two being facets of the one form? Interesting. Which of the above two are right? I presume that "prior to labeling" really means "prior to making distinctions"? But surely there must be some distinction in order that I can separate out "my eyes" from "my sight"? (let me use the word "my" without questioning "my" existence please). You're right, the label of "subjective idealist" is just a concept - and "subjective experience" is actually not well defined, except in opposition to "objective experience". However, that doesn't discount that I'm actually having some form of "experience", that is one thing I'm absolutely certain about - even if I don't fundamentally know what it is. But I concede that "change" is conceptual and in fact could be/is illusory. The unchanging thing however is the experience itself. And the experience itself is made up of distinctions, one of which is my eyes and the other my sight and they are mysteriously linked. I suppose I get there are levels to this. Then, "experience" is non-duality? Or is that going too far? Or is "experience" the world of forms? I grok that "perception" requires an observer, and observerless is the way to go (on here). And so "subjective experience" is tainted with implying an observer and a shared experience (everyone has it), i.e. it's still a consensus construct and not to be trusted. For the record. After much thinking about it. I was confused about seeing. Seeing and eyes are not inseparable, they are both manifestations of the same thing. It's like pointing to the tyres and the engine and being surprised that they're linked in some way. Further, is it actually possible to "see" with other parts of the body, such as the fingers or ears? Is a bat actually seeing with its ears?