‘Plain old untrendy troubles and emotions’ | David Foster Wallace | The Guardian
And once you’re aware that this is what “life” is, you probably realize that you’re no big deal and you shouldn’t think it all matters so much. Caring less, eases the burden. It prevents the worshipping.
That’s another weak point in our language. I agree with the theme of Bill Murray’s work, “It just doesn’t matter”. But, that’s the big picture, the ultimate “mattering” of “it”. The little things, like alleviating some pain, that does matters. And it can’t be a temporary alleviation that will lead to more pain, or you’ve done nothing. So, in that way, you connect to the larger matters. Still not the ultimate, but something bigger than just you and your selfish needs.
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I think I’ve posted this before. The series is too long to summarize in one meme, but this one comes close
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Okay, so in the end it’s still all about us.
Where do we go if we want to connect our existence with planet Earth? (that materially created us after all)
How does that journey of discovery begin?
Of course we’re connected to earth. It’s our nature. It’s by definition. Why do you think that is left out? It’s only a few sentences. It can’t tell the history of the universe but that doesn’t mean the author is unaware of it.
Where is Earth (& how evolution formed us), examined and celebrated?
You’ll be able to come up with some obscure examples, but as a mass cultural thing, Earth is boring to most -I see the general level of fundamental ignorance towards things like our global heat and moisture distribution engine, the outlines of its complexities and the reasoning behind why nature acts as it does, like it doesn’t matter, and it’s heart breaking become it is so common, and most these people are solid, good, etc, - but they’ve drank the koolaid and are turning to automatons feeding the system.
I’m a living dinosaur from another century, and traveling out in today’s world feels increasingly dystopia. Plus, it’s an economic balloon that terrifies me. Utterly unsustainable economy, getting ready to burst. Who knows when, I’m no judge, I’m amazed at how rebust it turns out to be. so I’m happy every year is like a bonus, still there is only one ending for this party at this point. (ironcially I drove from Charlotte, through Asheville, etc, that is I40 to Nashville, Sept 17 - 27th the stretch got hit by Helene. Here on October 7th there’s a cat 5 storm steaming across the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.)
What’s out there occupying people’s minds? Hollywood thinking, Disney reality, fashion and shopping, sports, music, cars, EV’s and their litium battery pact with the devil, weapons, and their use on the rise, lots and lots of ego going on out there.
This program the Meaning Crisis, seems to me about the crisis of making sense of our thoughts and consciousness, but it doesn’t tie into Earth/biosphere bound realities and it didn’t touch on how the human landscape has changed. How we’ve become gods in control, yet our numbers and gluttony have overwhelmed Earth’s ability to sustain us.
Nor how our evolutionary heritage can shed light upon our contemplations about consciousness.
I keep wondering why?
You tell me “Of course we’re connected to earth.”
and I wonder then why are so many people so totally out of touch with current trends regarding extreme weather destruction, until the day it lands in their own backyard and they are shocked, lost beat up and more and more broken.
Why are so many so profoundly, yet proudly willfully ignorant, to what we have wrought upon ourselves?
You imply people can’t be blamed for being apathetic & incurious about the real nature world around them, and so out of touch with what has been unfolding this past half century (and more, just the past half century has been downright ballistic and that is not a good thing for others), that they dare be shocked a watching hillsides and town and roads and dams wash away? We invited this into our lifes. And you wonder why I think people are disconnected to …
True enough it is what it is, and none of us has the power to do squat about it. So what’s the point. Well, it’s about getting up in the morning and living one’slife as best one can.
On we go. Regarding our philosophizing and pondering consciousness I think it’s fair to repeat this summary and hope that the quality of discussing will improve.
Oh boy, late at night and some alone time.
one thing leads to another.
The short version is it all seems such self-satisfied irovy tower stuff - what good has it done in this age when humanity was faced with its biggest challenge, one that needed us to grow up and reckon with our new found god like abilities; our endless gluttony/greed; exponential child birth; Earth’s limited ability ( become inability…) to continue supplying our ever growing needs.
All indicators point at us failing. Greed continues to rule the day so climate roulette and black swans will direct our future.
I can’t help but place some of the blame of our self-destructive western/global ways, upon western self-indulgent school of philosphy.
I can’t answer you because there is a wall in your mind somewhere, that you built. I was watching the news last night about hurricane Milton. They showed a weather person describing it and he started crying at the awesome power that was about to hit Florida.
Recognition of nature and our connection to it is literally everywhere. The series traces “how the human landscape has changed”. Those changes are at the root of the important issues we are all about to vote on, like immigration and abortion. I don’t know what it is that is making you feel disconnected from your human family, but I wish you’d figure it out.
I honestly don’t know, but your difficulties might be related to one of Vervaeke’s main themes, Relevance Realization.
We can only process so much information in the moment, we have evolved to frame those moments. Somehow, we filter out the insects under our feet, the movement of a cloud in our peripheral vision, and a smell of something rotten off in the distance, and put our attention on the branch that is about to poke us in the eye. Often, we get it wrong, and that cloud has a story behind it that we should know. But if you stopped and attempted to calculate the probability of every outcome of all of the tiny events around us, we would never move on to the next moment. The world would move on, so, we’d die, trying to figure out our next best move.
LIke I said, I don’t know, but it sounds like what you are asking me to do, to be aware of everything. But the attempt to do that ends up missing almost everything.
Busy day, but I wanted to bookmark this so I don’t lose it. This woo-woo guy is describing our evolved beings and how we react to threats and how THAT translates into our political problems. It’s survival, in a nutshell. This is something that so many people are addressing from so many directions, it should be common knowledge, but knowledge is not common, it never has been.
What happens, is not just the immediate reaction and body sensations he is talking about at this time stamps, but, if we have too much of that stress, and many of us do, everything starts to look like a threat, even things that should be helpful and calming. We see a beautiful sunset, then we realize it’s smoke from a distant fire and fires are happening because of global warming and we feel guilty because we drove out to this hilltop with our 20oz Vanilla Zero Sugar Coca-Cola. It’s so prevalent.
That was shock and grieving at overwhelming destruction and loss.
I’m talking about internalizing, making an emotional connection (the way we do with our children and family and pets).
Superficial lip service is one thing, caring about, being actively curious about, knowing about, excepting it as a critical component of our hearts, minds and lives, that’s quite another.
That may be true, from a physical reality standpoint,
but how offen have you heard politicians, business leaders or citizens recognizing the real world connections? Instead we’re busy making "immigrants "the issue, while doing our best to ignore why their homelands have become untenible. Etc., etc…
(For instance, this list from 2022)
Take a look at that list of American priorities, “Climate Change” is lucky to make the list, and there’s nothing else on there about this Earth and its complex life supporting systems, that we are tearing apart just as fast as technology will allow.
No, what I am asking you to do is recognize the failure of western philosophy to prepare humanity for this moment - heck most won’t even recognize that our continued population explosion trendline has spent the past century crossing the “Earth’s ability to sustain us” line.
Nor, to recognize that one main problem is that we are still so god-awful self-centered and believing we are above nature - which a millennium of philosophizing simply reinforced.
First Maddy, and some wood gathering, then hopefully to your video.
You aren’t happy even when it’s there. I think the problem might be in your mirror
Not arguing with that. That is the meaning crisis. Previous cultures gave you a packaged set of beliefs, a structure to accept, and some rejected and moved on. All those gods are dead, and no one has a new way of teaching and nurturing meaning. Including you. Yes, you. You have a skeleton of a concept of a framework, but then you start ranting about everything wrong with everyone. That’s not teaching.
A facebook “reel” went by quickly this morning, before I had my coffee. It was one of those top cosmologists who can argue about the origin of the universe. He said consciousness is where meaning is made. You can discuss, but that was his premise. He goes on to say, we’ve been looking for a while and we may be the only planet with conscious life in this galaxy. So if it is us who carry meaning, who have brought meaning to the galaxy, that’s a responsibility to not blow it up.
For a while? We barely register in the scope of time. And our “looking” has been severely limited by our technologies.
Given the scale of the cosmos and the expanse of time, it seems nearly infeasible that we are the only planet with conscious life in this galaxy. I would be more inclined to agree with, “in our solar system.” But with a minimum of 100 billion stars in our galaxy?
Now in all practical terms sure we’re alone. Communicating with ET within our existential time frame is extremely unlikely. That doesn’t mean we are actually alone.
The occurrence of life is not anything extraordinary, given the right ingredients and planetary climates, it is just another evolutionary process.
Origins of life: first came evolutionary dynamics
Abstract
When life arose from prebiotic molecules 3.5 billion years ago, what came first? Informational molecules (RNA, DNA), functional ones (proteins), or something else?
We argue here for a different logic: rather than seeking a molecule type, we seek a dynamical process. Biology required an ability to evolve before it could choose and optimise materials.
We hypothesise that the evolution process was rooted in the peptide folding process. Modelling shows how short random peptides can collapse in water and catalyse the elongation of others, powering both increased folding stability and emergent autocatalysis through a disorder-to-order process.
Requirement for life’s origin: persistent propagation
more… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10392681/
I didn’t address any probability, I only said “may”. The Drake equation is wildly speculative. More to the point, we can do something like calculate it, AND, what are we doing? We’re killing off species that could exceed our intelligence in a billion years from now. It’s similar to the “first in, last out” hypothesis.
I don’t know what’s out there, but I know what’s here, and I know we’re not taking care of it.
This isn’t about making me happy.
It’s about facing the reality that’s playing out in the Physical Reality out there, as opposed to what is happening within our flickled imaginations.
Our infrastructure is getting its butt wooped by storms that are just starting to work up a head of steam. And what’s our plan for dealing with it? … But I’m supposed to be happy that Climate Change is acknowledged as a sort of problem, that maybe someday, when we can, we should do something about it - but right now the priority is to keep our economy growing.
When I look at America’s (well okay and the world in general) priorities, and America’s desperate exercises of mass denial, in the face of growing existentially serious environmental problems, at every magnification level from local to global - that stuff has nothing to do with how much of jerk, or not, that I am.
Yeah we have many Meaning Crisises, beginning with losing sight of being human beings in a natural world, we’ve become consumer units, and are well on the way to become automata.
We’ve also got a Meaning Crisis in that we’ve forgotten how much we depend upon this natural Earth, and that it is definitely a finite being that is incapable of providing all that we and our moron sociopathic billionaires can dream of.
We have a Meaning Crisis in that most don’t have a clue who they are, when we know full well through science that we are evolved biological creatures, products of Earth’s processes - actually grasping that fundamental opens all sorts of channels to inner enlightenment (won’t make a super hero out of anyone, but it does lend a foundation (benchmark?) and sense of timeless belonging that goes a long way.
I don’t think it’s a rant to point out that a millenia of western philosophizing has been incapable of offering any guidence for this key period in human history. Or that it’s worth looking at what was missed in the consumate self-absorption and
Then don’t call it ranting.
I made it an assignment to listen to it.
Capacity for Difference
I listened to the video and it’s a fine talk, for what it is. Strategies for better communication, by better getting in touch with one’s own feelings, and mastering one’s negative reactions (emotions) that often sink constructive dialogue before starts.
20-25min. - discussion touching on recognizing our inner self, emotional impulses, … 35 min. - biochemical state of stress, bodily state of safety, etc.
“What am I experiencing – What does the body feel like …”
This is exactly where having a more explicit understanding of our body’s evolutionary heritage comes in handy because it affords a deeper window into the different strands that went into making you how you are. This, in turn, offers some ‘handles’ and strategies for guiding our emotions into more productive directions for more positive outcomes.
This failure to recognize the depth of evolution’s influence upon who we are, feels to me like an entire set of potential psychological tools is missing.
… Body is the cumulative total of half a billion years’ worth of successful generations.
… Your consciousness is the cumulative total of all the days and experiences you have lived.
…Your thoughts and consciousness are literally the inside reflection of your body communicating with itself.
Materially that is who we are! It deserves much more attention.
“Debate” was mentioned a few times.
I will fault them for not taking the time to discuss the difference
between a serious constructive debate,
where learning and constructive outcomes is the goal
were fidelity to honesty is the gold standard.
As opposed to today’s usual rhetorical debates
where it is all about strategy, shrewed audience manipulation and winning.
Finding common ground, finding a way to connect . . .
Great stuff, could be more.
This is why I call it a rant. “Most don’t have a clue” “when we know full well”. How can I tell what you’re saying or what you’re missing?
People not having a clue has been orchestrated for thousands of years. It’s hard to pinpoint when we just didn’t because we we couldn’t and when that flipped to we could know but some suppressed others from knowing. In Islam, Al Ghazali promoted Allah over education, in early Christianity there were preachers against curiosity. Today we have creationism vs evolution.
We are born ignorant, not stupid, just not knowing. The skill of tapping into our natural knowledge has to be taught and nurtured.
In a different thread, you said, “it is pretty much the luck of the lottery which neighborhood you get to live in.” That’s key to how we learn, what we become, but you ignore that in most of your threads.
My brain is fried from a day with Monica Guzman, and a week of community meetings. I need some time in the forest. But, or maybe, so, I was up early, trying to finish this damn series.
Episode 49 is both practical and completely illogical. Because that’s the process of finding meaning. We are what we are, then we experience something, the world, usually through the eyes, ears, then words and actions of others, signals that there is something more, something to aspire to. We get a sense that we can be more, that we can appreciate and value something and by doing that we’ll become better, or simply happier.
Something else in this one, just barely touched on, and something he rarely mentions, is that the ego can take over, and that thing we aspire to can become too material, an image in our head of a cool object, instead of an unformed becoming. It’s hard to avoid the word “thing” in describing that which we aspire to. It’s a glowing thing or a beautiful sound in the distance, and the danger is to let it become metastasized, hardened, into a thing to be possessed.
The movie Dogma has God as a character at the end, played by Alanis Morisette, and she comes with an angel, because she can’t speak directly to people. If God speaks to us, it’s too much, and our heads explode, so the angels sing and glow and we are drawn to that, and become greater selves, then we’re drawn to the next step. Anyway, fun image.
