Thinking through the Imagination

 Aesthetics in human cognition (Pt. 1)

Human imagination

Human imagination is an essential element of the human psyche, it empowers us to interpret artworks, create music, envision the future and enables science to continue progressing in order to improve our lives. Above all it is a unique aspect of our humanity: as a thinking process it facilitates the interaction of sense, emotion, and creativity, fostering fertile ground where new ideas and forms of human endeavour can grow and flourish. It has the power to transcend beyond our embodied existence.

In modern Western culture imagination has often been marginalised in favour of pure reason and embodied sensual experience. Too often the imagination has been relegated to mere fantasy and emotionalism. This notion can be traced back to Socrates's suggestion that imaginative poetry does not enliven but rather corrupts young minds. Modernism has separated affective and emotional components of cognition from the logical, analytic, and rational processes of thought. This emphasis on separation can be largely attributed to Descartes' 'Meditations' in a type of mind-body dualism which underpins much of Western modernist thought. This is what became known as Cartesian mentalism that represented thought as an abstract mental impression of the natural world as experienced by, but separated from our embodied sensibilities. Thus, in Western Enlightenment thinking, there is a disjunction of sensibility and understanding; a dualism of body and mind.

Thinking through 

It must be emphasised that the outgrowth of imagination in Western thought has remained an enigma but is essentially a part of a process of 'thinking through' conscious experience. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in his 'Critique of pure Reason', initiated a radical departure from this separation of sense and understanding, or reason and imagination. Although Kant highlighted the 'imaginative imperative' he failed to realise imagination's full creative potential. Moreover, he failed to understand its central role in creativity. The natural world has order and continuity and, as such, gives certainty, which enables us to make inferences, such as predictive inferences, about what is and what can be. Thus, human embodied experience is fertile ground for the growth of abstract conceptualisations to grow. 

Carrying across

Abstract conceptualisations are characterised by spacial, temporal, and visceral relations. For example, analogies and metaphors play a vital role in human construction of imaginative concepts and abstract meaning. For example, metaphor and analogy are mental devices that 'carry across' ideas to other situations that are different but have some similarity to embodied experiences. This transference allows the human mind to generate associations from embodied experience to generate novel symbols, signs and relationships. In most instances they will give clarity and give depth of meaning by way of comparison. For example, when you say that, "I am feeling down today." the statement imposes a temporal and spacial dynamic to this abstract expression of language . Thus, the human mind structures the imagination by using forms of space and time to make sense of the seemingly random stimuli. Our interaction with the world is not just a matter of  'knowing', 'thinking,' and 'understanding' but is an outgrowth of embodiment: of thinking through sensual interaction with objects. Our minds use forms of space and time to gather and organise what would otherwise be random stimuli in the environment. 

Organisation

Kant, maintained that imagination was a schematising process. Schema are products of imagination, they mediate between the world of objects and concepts. Concepts are essentially the imagined rules by which schema are constructed. Schema act like flexible structures that link images or ideas in the form of stories or scenes. Imagination is what comes before understanding and sense, the subject of which is both productive and reproductive. However, our empirical observations are not necessarily pure because we use judgement and schema to render thoughts in terms of images and concepts. Thus, schema act as a bridge between sense and understanding. A schema can be both a process and a product. 

Abduction is one of several types of imaginative reasoning processes that Kaag identified. It is a type of inference that moves toward a logical conclusion when presented with two arguments that both seem to be true. It relies on one's ability to listen and respond to the natural ordering of the world. It simply amounts to a type of guesswork, not necessarily based on random associations but it is more to do intuitively with what is normally expected in similar situations. Abductive thinking lends itself to the ability of the mind to bring order to perception (as anchored in embodied cognition). In other words, because there is order in nature (embodied experience) there is also order in cognition. Thus, the more one is attuned to the patterns of nature the more one is consistently more able to make inferences in the form of a viable hypothesis. Hypotheses are predictive inferences that are constructed in reference to the possible relationships that emerge from multiple embodied experiences. Thus, what the imagination necessitates is a sense of order and continuity in the natural world.

Relationship

Kaag maintained that the dualism of mind-body of the Enlightenment is a false separation. In contrast there is a type of triadic synechism, or a underlying principle of mind and being: Kaag outlines three logical/epistemological processes:' sensing', 'responding', and 'adapting' that operates in an organised and purposeful manner. Imaginative and complex systems can arise from simple natural systems in an organised and seemingly purposeful manner. These processes also correspond to Woolley's (me) three levels of cognition: perception (sensing), comprehension (responding), and metacognition (adapting) in a likewise purposeful manner. Whereas Kaag focusses on imagination and creativity Woolley's categories relate to the ability to form mental imagery to achieve comprehension of the written or spoken word. Essentially Woolley's triadic relationship functions in a similar way. 

Kaag illustrates another triadic relationship:

"The prologue of the Gospel of John reflects Pierce's philosophy of mind and leads naturally to a development of agape. John opens with a description of the co-emergence of logic, in the form of the Word (logos), and being. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Here, it seems appropriate to describe the Word as the logos, the order and relation of things. If human logic has the ability to apprehend the ordering of reality, its ability rests on the logos that girds both the imaginative mind of the human being and the purposiveness of being in its most general form... Thus all matter is really mind."  

Conclusion

The imagination has long been the dark horse of western intellectualism, the substance of which has been relegated to Romanticism and pure fantasy. Kaag's book is a bridge that spans the spectrum of language from metaphor, creativity and reason. It addresses the short-comings of Enlightenment thinking with its separation of mind and body. At the end of the day innovation and scientific progress rely on imaginative thinking. It is in the of metaphor and image schema that moves us towards aesthetic and imaginational structures which give rise to creativity. 

This current discussion should give some traction to this blog series dealing with metaphoric and 

symbolic meaning.

The book:

J. Kaag (2014). Thinking through the imagination: Aesthetics in human cognition. New York: Fordham University Press.

My books are listed and hyperlinked on the side panel on the right of this blog. 

Propaganda

 

My motivation in reading this book was that I am interested in social memory and how perceived meanings/propaganda can influence people to make changes to deeply entrenched beliefs. I have noticed in the last two years how public opinion can quickly change over a very short period of time, particularly when people's fears are exploited, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Take for example, the recent shootings in America. If the perpetrator of a mass shooting is black, Hispanic or Arab the mainstream media tends to ignore it, but if the perpetrator is white the popular media will exploit and dramatise the event. As the Western Civilisation mythos is under attack and history is being rewritten one can assume that there is some political advantage in fanning the flames of racial hatred and fear through the channels of popular MSM. 

Another example of public opinion manipulation is the recent shooting of a teenage boy at night in an alley. MSM made a point in showing the youth with raised hands in a gesture of surrender before he was fatally shot by a white officer. What they did not show was the broader context in which the incident took place. The footage from the police body cam showed the police chasing the youth down a dark alley way, the young fugitive stopped with his body side on and shielding  the gun from the view of the camera. As the boy turned he dropped his gun on the ground out of view of the camera lens. As he raised his hand it was not clear whether or not he was going to shoot. The officer who allegedly shot him would have had to make a split second decision to pull the trigger in self defence. Only a thorough investigation will reveal the truth. What is apparent is that the media selected an edited (purposely?) still from the footage to support their view of the story. Remember the George Floyd incident that set the world on fire in 2020? A brief video clip was sent across the internet - no context - and delivered the needed content to activate BLM marches and worldwide protests and the call to Defund the Police. Eventually the whole video revealed a very different story to the one MSM pushed. But few people would even be aware of it as it does not suit the contrived political narrative.

And again the shooting of Ashli Babbitt on 6th January at the so called siege of the Capitol in Washington DC. Ashli was an ex-military intelligence officer who was unarmed at the time of the shooting. She was supposedly a conservative Trump supporter and was allegedly shot in the neck at a very close range by one of the guards in the capitol building. The whole scene was recorded by John Sullivan, a far left activist who was accompanied by a CNN reporter. Even though it was recorded on camera the incident has not been investigated (as yet), the name of the guard has not been released and the media has shown no interest in this case. Why? Especially in light of the fact that so much has been made of this incident and it appears that she is actually the only person who was killed in the action.

These above mentioned cases may or may not be referred to as examples of deliberate propaganda. However, the word 'propaganda' has not always been used as a pejorative. Certainly at the time of Edward Bernays' (the author) writing in 1928 propaganda was a neutral term that referred to pubic persuasion, for good or for ill. According to Mark Crispin Miller, the writer of the introduction to this edition, it was first coined in 1622, when Pope Gregory XV, used the term to emphasise the Catholic efforts to spread the Gospel in response to the spread of Protestant missionary efforts throughout the world. It wasn't until the First World War that it was used in a derogatory term. It is well known what the German propaganda machine was capable of but Allied propaganda also used it to demonise the 'Hun'.

Bernays adds, "Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in the minds of millions of persons is very common. ... It was not many years ago that newspaper editors resented what they called 'the use of the news columns for propaganda purposes'. Some editors would even kill a good story if they imagined its publication might benefit anyone."

Click on picture to go to original

Advertisers have used Bernays' ideas to convince people that they should buy their products. For example, the tobacco industry have spent a fortune on advertising (see the poster on the left) even though it was obvious that the product was causing cancer. This poster shows a cowboy lighting up a cigarette in an effort to show that smoking is essentially a masculine thing. Even though the tobacco industry had used Bernays' ideas he was exceptionally ethical and so the toxic side effects of smoking became impossible for him to tolerate. Bernays eventually gave up working for tobacco companies and lobbied staunchly (but unsuccessfully) to get the Public Relations Society of America to work against the spread of the habit.

On 15th April 2021, James O'Keefe released a secretly taped conversation with a technical director from CNN in which he admitted that their news items were deliberately biased towards Black Lives Matter. Project Veritas had also previously released 2 other segments of the undercover conversation with Charles Chester where he admitted that CNN had played up Covid death statistics and promoted anti-Trump propaganda. To make matters worse James O'Keefe announced on 14th that he intended to sue CNN for defamation for accusing him of using disinformation (propaganda).

Click on picture to go to article

Bernays finishes with the following statement, "Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realise that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos." Something to think about!

The Book: Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda. N.Y.: Ig Publishing.

Beauty

 A not so very short introduction: A reflection

If you are asked to imagine the word 'beautiful' chances are that you will visualise a breathtaking landscape, seascape, building or some precious object with some emotional attachment associated with it. I might suggest that most people have a different image suspended in their imagination. Most of us have an intuitive notion of what appeals to sensibility and we actually do make judgements about beauty based on comparisons using words like: 'charming', 'elegant', and 'attractive'. Order, harmony, meaning, and fittedness are examples of typical criteria that people often use to make aesthetic judgements. Most likely would think of something regarded as being good or noble. 

Avant-guarde

However, the philosopher, Nietzsche pointed out that beauty and goodness sometimes diverge. For example, Duchamp, a French Dada  artist, exhibited a urinal as a work of art at a major exhibition in France earlier last century and the artefact became a valued icon of the avant-guarde. Dada was an anti-art movement that would have disapproved  of what became a much sort after and highly prized museum treasure. So then what is beauty? If a common and normally repulsive object can become esteemed then what can we say about an individual's judgement of what classifies as a thing of beauty? In her forward to this edition, Sperryville commented, "Hence the current 'crisis in the humanities': is there any point in studying our artistic and cultural inheritance, when the judgment of its beauty has no rational grounds?"

In a recent blog, Zombies in Western Culture, I wrote about the attraction of the Zombie myth exemplified by its ghoulish ugliness and human degradation. You would have to ask the question, "What makes us attracted to what is normally regarded as inherently ugly?" To answer this question Scruton delves into what we actually mean when we ascribe something as being beautiful. Philosophers first grappled with this question before the birth of Christ. The Greek philosophers imputed beauty to a thing's innate nature, to its 'telos', because they believed that all objets have an inherent purpose. They believed then that truth, beauty, and goodness were attributes of the deity and in some sense these divine virtues have been revealed to the human soul. Later, St Thomas Aquinas adapted the ancient virtues as transcendental attributes, but considered truth and beauty as being inseparable. 

Enlightenment

In contrast, some Enlightened thinkers tended to see beauty as an appreciation of an object for its own sake. In other words, desiring the thing for its inherent attractiveness rather than for its utility. Likewise, the Enlightenment philosopher, Kant postulated,  to ... "be interested in beauty is to set all interests aside, so as to attend to the thing itself." Kant also made a distinction between aesthetic interest in a thing from the position of desire or from a position of 'disinterested interest'; from the point of view of a judge using 'pure reason'. During this Enlightenment period (which extends to the present) there has always been this tension between desire and reason.

Steven Pinker, an Enlightenment thinker and a cognitive scientist postulated in his book, 'How the Mind Works', the notion that the human sense of beauty has evolved purely by a natural biological means. Scruton reflected on Pinker's idea with the following comment, "According to this theory the sense of beauty has emerged through a process of sexual selection - a suggestion originally made by Charles Darwin in his book, 'The Descent of Man'. Pinker uses the Darwinian illustration of female birds being attracted by the colourful male bird's plumage in order to mate and reproduce." As an 'Enlightened' rationalist, Pinker understands the mind merely as a soft electro-chemical machine and, as such, cannot possibly explain how the displays of birds and sexual attraction evolved randomly into the intricacies of human aesthetics.

Triadic structure of Cognition

The ancient philosopher, Plato, on the other hand, thought that platonic love bore no relation to eros (sexual desire). He did, however, separate mind from embodied experience by valuing contemplation more highly over physical desire. In fact, Plato was disgusted by physical lust just as many moderns are disgusted by obscenity, which is euphemistically described as an 'eclipse of the soul by the body'. Maybe the answer is somewhere else. "The love of beauty is really a signal to free ourselves from that sensory attachment, and to begin the ascent of the soul towards the world of ideas." From this statement  I tend to think that Scruton is not discussing beauty in terms of a Platonic or Cartesian separation of mind and body.  Scruton asserts that the human condition involves a triadic structure of cognition. Whether by desire or reason we take pleasure in listening, viewing or taking part in art happenings, scenes, or artefacts we can take pleasure: 'from,' pleasure 'in', and pleasure 'that.' When we take pleasure 'from' something we derive enjoyment directly from our senses. When we have pleasure 'in' something we have enjoyment in the actual thinking activity inspired by the appreciation of that object, performance, or activity. When we have pleasure 'that', we enjoy reflecting about our own appreciation in a responsive mental act. In essence, the 'that' is a transcendent reality, it is a stepping out of ourselves and thinking about our own thinking. In other words, it is a stepping out of embodied experiential thought.

Transcendence

Many people attest to art and beauty as being a very transcendent spiritual experience. In other words, a transcendent process that seeks a meditational and relationship orientation to spirituality and to that which is beyond the mind and sensorial experience. Thus, aesthetic meditation can be a spiritual state that seeks connection with the sacred. Sacred things are not normally of this world; they are set apart from ordinary reality through meditation and affect. Human beauty, nature, art, or symbolic ritual can evoke transcendence and ontological meaning. Thus, art has been an important transformative element of traditional Christian worship that encompasses a union of body, soul, and spirit. Moreover, this triadic appreciation encapsulates sacred art has the propensity to move one in the direction of transcendence, or contemplation on a relationship responsive to God's spirit.

Click on picture to go to Video

Johnathan Pageau is a Canadian Christian artist who specialises in traditional Eastern Orthodox iconic sacred carvings and painting. In the YouTube video 'A call to Christian Artists' (link in the picture on the left) he gives a very articulate outline of the current state of art and spirituality in contemporary Western culture. He makes a plea to Christians, in particular, to use art to portray narrative. We are all involved in story, myths, legends, movies and literacy, it is when our own story is responsive to art that we can respond to what is meaningful and transcendent. 

The book:

Scruton, R. (2009). Beauty: A very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Links: 

Roger Scruton: The True, the Good and the Beautiful: YouTube

A Call to Christian Artists: Jonathan Pageau: YouTube

Why is there so much Beauty in the World?: YouTube: Rupert Sheldrake

Ship of Fools

Click on picture to go to original source

I thought it appropriate to post this bog on April fools day. You may immediately think that I am playing a trick on you, so read on and see what the punch line is. And then the inevitable, April fool!

Now I wouldn't do that to you would I?

In a previous blog I discussed some recent events at the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6th where I identified a fool in the mob, the buffalo headed Sharman, Jake Angeli. In that article I talked about the role of the fool in bringing about change, how the fool, or joker, has the power to flip our perception of reality. 

Plato's allegory of the 'ship of fools' illustrates a ridiculous problem that he originally attributed to democracy (but seems to have a wider appeal) in Book VI of 'The Republic'. "Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about steering - everyone is of the opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first claimed up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. ... Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star gazer, a good-for-nothing?" 

What results is a drunken pleasure cruise with one wondering whether or not they will arrive at the set destination in one piece?  The allegory like his earlier cave allegory questions our perception of what is real. Likewise the ship of fools suffer from a type of cognitive dissonance and are oblivious as to the true state of reality. 

Click on picture to go to original source

The Evergreen running aground

Imagine another ship, a very large Globalist modern day cargo container ship, about the size of a 14 storey building and the length of three football fields, by the name of Evergreen running aground in the Suez Canal just a few days ago. At the time I started writing the ship was still wedged firmly between the two sides of the canal completely blocking all shipping. There were hundreds of ships waiting in line with billions of dollars worth of merchandise. 

In effect the Evergreen ship, Ever Given, blocked approximately 12 percent of  the world's shipping and could have been wedged there for weeks while they may have possibly had to evacuate the containers so that the ship would be able to ride higher in the water with the expectation of rescuing the container mega-ship. European leaders called it a worldwide disaster as 8 percent of the oil and 8 percent of the liquified gas was held up. It was not just a problem with supply and demand but it also caused an economic disaster, particularly in Europe. 

Click on picture to go to source

Would I call this a modern day "ship of fools"?  Yes, precisely because of the erratic nature of the behaviour of the ship's pilot before and during the entry into the canal.  This is an extremely unlikely accident as it is requires a deliberate turn in order to hit both sides of the bank. Some have claimed that a sand storm blew the ship off course but it was unlikely to alter the navigation of such a large ship.

While waiting in turn to navigate the canal the ship made a swag of manoeuvres: as it changed direction the satellite tracking (see picture on the above right) recorded Ever Given's journey through the waters of the Red Sea during the waiting period.  However, the recorded digital trail did not appear to be random wanderings but depicted, instead, a male genitalia motif. Were those guiding the ship drunk or was this a joke aimed at those doing the tracking? If so was the running aground in the Suez canal also a joke? A very expensive joke.  Or was the whole charade deliberate? 

There were some interesting synergies (or were these deliberate clues to add some further mystery to the tragedy). The call sign for the cargo ship was 'HRC'(H3RC), similar to the CIA's codename for Hillary Rodman Clinton? As if by coincidence one of the attending tug boats went by the name, 'Barak'. Stranger still was the name of the other ship that sounded like 'Mossad' (one vowel different and with one s missing but sounding the same). Was it another coincidence that an Evergreen truck blocked traffic (see below - right) on a Chinese highway on the same angle as the ship?

Click on picture to go to source

For a mega-ship of this size representing the Globalist order one would expect that there would not be one mistake but a series of errors for it to go off course. There would have had to be a comedy of errors (so to speak). Was this incident the result of tricksters playing an April fools day joke a little ahead of time? Was this caused by a ship of fools on a drunken binge? Was this a deliberate attempt at sabotage by the so called 'black hats' or alternatively by the 'white hats'? One wonders what is in the containers! When they are unloaded we may find out, or then again, we may not. What we know for certain is that if you take a look at the Red Sea from a satellite camera you will see the entry point looks like the two long ears on a rabbit's head. Is this an omen to tell us that we are going down the rabbit hole (or sewer/Suez)? The event coincides with International Waffle Day!! The situation becomes biblical occurring on the eve of the Jewish Passover when the ancient Jewish (Hebrew) people escaped 400 years of slavery in Egypt (the Globalists of the day) by parting the Red Sea and crossing to the Promised Land led by Moses (an Egyptian raised ruler but of the people).

Click on the picture to goto original source

However you look at this unfortunate and ridiculous incident, you have to ask the question in relation to the bigger picture, "What does this mean for global trade in the future?" This situation caused major economic disaster affecting many of the world's economies especially as it comes on the heel of the recent COVID 19 pandemic that spread around the world at an amazingly rapid pace and almost brought the world to its knees. 

Ironically, a week later, the ship having been dislodged is now being inspected while birthing in the Great Bitter Lake, which is situated along the Suez Canal. 

The book extract: Plato's Republic: Bbook VI

Links: 

April fools:The roots of an international tradition

The truth about the Suez Canal Crisis: The supply chains breakdown: YouTube: The Atlantis Report

Controversial Track of the Container ship Ever Given that Blocked the Suez Canal: YouTube

Another Anon dives into Evergreen: YouTube: Radio Patriot

10 of the best jewish tweets about the pre-passover Suez Canal Blockage:YouTube

Zombies in Western Culture: A reflection/review

 A twenty first century crisis

 One of the most popular genres  in movies in recent times in the West is that of the zombie. The zombie  phenomenon represents a type of horror movie that has captured the imagination, particularly of 21st century audiences. In 2001, a performance art event took place in Sacramento, California and was repeated in several other US cities. In late 2011 in New Mexico over 9000 people dressed up in zombie gear and goolish make-up to parade grotesquely through the town. Since then there have been many zombie walks throughout the world. 

Cultural malaise

The zombie zeitgeist has now become a pervasive metaphor that has seeped its way into post-modern popular culture. The zombie would seem to have become a symbol of a cultural malaise portraying human degradation and loss of meaning in a post-Christian world. It represents the decay of moral and ontological meaning that has managed to survive after the World Wars and the threat of a nuclear holocaust. This trope has replaced the alien invasion movie genre that was popular in the 1950's when there was a sense of hope for the future after defeating the Nazi and Nipon empires. At this time America had overcome the sacrifices of the war years and was poised to enter a new era upon the back of its industrial might. However, this vision of the future began to fade with the US entrenchment [in foreign wars of questionable morality] and the sacrifice of young people to a war machine that seemed to be motivated by profit. This was the time of mass protests and the beginning of the civil rights movement. As the population entered the new millennium, the vision of the age of Aquarius, and the disintegration of the dreams of psychedelia faded and poverty reared its ugly head in the richest country of the world as the US seemingly pursued policies detrimental to its own people. There is little wonder why the zombie has become so popular. 

Zombie Walk in Stockholm 2017

The living dead

The image of the zombie is haunting and pervasive. They are usually referred to as the walking dead because of their typified hollow staring looks and decaying bodies. They are not alive but not altogether dead either, they are the living dead. They congregate together without connecting or communicating with each other. Their only preoccupation is to eat the brains of living human beings, because of their mindlessness they crave the thing that they do not have. They envy human life but have a consuming need to destroy it. Once a living person is taken by the 'walking dead' their fate is to become as one with this aimless and eternal cabal. There is no escape since their numbers keep increasing exponentially while the depleting numbers of the living are what sustains wanderings. The new norm  becomes a nihilistic world of meaninglessness and decay with body, not only separated from mind, but also from God. 

To some degree it is what befalls a civilisation that is consumed by materialistic capitalism with no regard to the environment. The post-apocalyptic movies of the late 20th century portrayed a degraded world affected by a nuclear holocaust. Later, this was replaced by pandemic genres that demonstrated nature's punishment for the extinction of plant and animal life. In response the Zombie movie is an extension of the pandemic genre depicting mankind's self-loathing and inescapable guilt. Thus the zombie trope shows a world of anxiety and lack of hope. This is truely a post-modern existence with no purpose, no meaning, and no grand narrative. It is a fallen reality with no hope of reconciliation and restoration. This is encapsulated in the recent series called "The Walking Dead" where we see the human survivors struggle to hold back the tide of the living dead. There is never any resolution, the narrative has no end, the series  cycles though reiterations of searching for safe havens only to find human betrayal. What is presented is a downward cycle of decay and hopeless degradation.

Victor Frankl hope

There is obviously a direct relationship between hope and economic agency.  "... it seems apt to say that the anticipation of agency being usurped, of losing one's place in the world in the order of things, is fundamentally what drives the anxiety, depression and suicide associated with economic instability, an effect that is amplified if one's agency in the political arena is also threatened." This quote is quite pertinent, the politicisation of society in contemporary Western culture has replaced religion and has, itself been deified in the form of predatory cancel culture. This is the new emerging, but unsustainable religion that is nihilistic, tribal and unforgiving, one that ostracises others offering no pathway for atonement.

Click on image to go to video discussion

It is no wonder that there is an associated pandemic of youth suicide, particularly with white males. Vervaeke et. al. posit ..."the rate of suicide among whites is almost four times greater than that of blacks, and three times greater than hispanics. ... People have in part, lost confidence in the institutions that are supposed to nurture both individual and collective economic prosperity." Disappointingly this book does not offer hope but does give a brief mention of Victor Frankl's book Man's search for Meaning(1946) as a seminal work that explores the possibility of finding meaning even in the Nazi concentration camps. There is meaning to be found - but sadly not in this book. One starting place will be in a future book review in this series of Frankl's book. Another starting point will be Roger Scruton's book, Beauty, which is the antithesis of zombification.

The Book:

Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C., & Miscevic, F. (2017) Zombies in Western culture: A twenty-first century crisis. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.

 

Links:

Cognitive science and the sacred: Johnathan Pageau and John Vervaeke: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGglfl5j_I&t=1s

Cognitive science and the sacred: Johnathan Pageau interview with John Vervaeke: YouTube

Synchronicity

 Joe Biden falls up the stairs three times

This morning I was listening to Steve Bannon's War Room Pandemic on Rumble while driving in my car. He was interviewing Sean Parnell, a decorated-ex-captain in the US army in Afghanistan who expressed concerns about the optics of Joe Biden falling up the stairs as he ascended to Airforce One earlier this week. He expressed horror as to what he saw as a humiliating incident that sends a clear message that America is weak. Media commentators are also reiterating that what we are witnessing is nothing less than a metaphor of the degradation of the US under the present administration. Sean alluded to a meme circulating the internet of late which shows Trump playing golf: after hitting the ball from the tee the golf ball flies into the air and the frame switches directly to the above mentioned video  as if Trump's ball knocked Biden over. 

Sean said that it was not a laughing matter because the Commander-in-Chief needs to show that he is strong in the face of his enemies. Of course one should be mindful of the fact that Biden is 78 years old and that is what you could expect from someone in that age group. However, he ascended the stairs unassisted - possibly for the sake of optics. This would be consistent with the careful media concealment of Biden's feebleness before and after the election: basement video interviews, crafted questions, etc. This particular incident is important as there are many US troops overseas and their safety depends upon the appearance of strength. This comment is particularly relevant this weekend as the a top diplomat representing the CCP in discussions in Alaska gave the US Secretary of State an embarrassing rebuke, "The US does not have the qualification to talk to China from a position of strength." This does not seem to be coincidental.

While Biden's fall was alarming it is significant that his fall happened three times (I will explain the significance of this number in a future blog) while going up the steps. Normally people fall while going down stairs, the fact that it happened this way is noteworthy. Also noteworthy is the fact that it happened three times in a row. Most media pundits downplayed this by explaining that the wind blew him over even though there was only a slight breeze (see the two Rumble videos below). This situation reminds me of  a New York Times article entitled "Trump's haunting walk down the ramp raises new health questions" by Maggie Haberman published on 14th June, 2020 (see link below). In this article she affirms:

"President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there. Mr. Trump — who turned 74 on Sunday, the oldest a U.S. president has been in his first term — was recorded hesitantly descending the ramp one step at a time after he delivered an address to graduating cadets at the New York-based academy on Saturday. The academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, walked alongside him. Mr. Trump sped up slightly for the final three steps, as he got to the bottom."

It is interesting to note the biased "reporting" reflected in Haberman's false assumptions but also by most of the legacy mainstream media. People normally do not walk quickly down a slippery ramp wearing leather soled shoes. And avoiding water splashing onto your expensive silk tie while drinking is a given. As far as Trump's health was concerned he showed that even Covid 19 could not keep him out of action for more than a few days. When the reporting does not match the facts one begins to wonder what reality actually is!

Jung's Synchronicity 

What really caught my attention was the synchronicity that has presented itself, particularly, since posting "Biblical symbolism of shapes and numbers: Trump and symbolism" in a recent blog.  In that blog I talked about the mystical language of symbolism, or rather, Donald Trump's apparent intentional use of Biblical symbolism and its significance. I also made the analogy of traversing stairs and escalators by travelling up or down (and sometimes the wrong way). The  example of Biden's fall was obviously accidental but it would appear, at times, that even seemingly random occurrences may not be merely coincidental.

This latest presidential incident is a segway into a book that I had intended reviewing next: "Synchronicity" by Carl Jung.  Rather than reflecting or reviewing his work I will share with you some very pertinent quotes (and hopefully you can see the synchronicity for yourself).

"The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality. ... However, ..."the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another principal of explanation. "... He goes on to question our very understanding of space and time as it relates to causality. "... space and time have a very precarious existence. They become 'fixed' concepts only in course of his mental development, thanks largely to the introduction of measurement. In themselves, space and time consist of 'nothing'. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behaviour of bodies in motion. They are, therefore, essentially psychic in origin, which is probably the reason that impelled Kant to regard them as a priori categories. But if space and time are only apparently properties of bodies in motion and are created by the intellectual needs of the observer, then their relativization by psychic conditions is no longer a matter for astonishment but is brought within the bounds of possibility. This possibility presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies but itself."

Jung's argument is that the very notion of causality and even our notions of time and space cannot always explain the sometimes unexplainable, so called coincidences. What Jung calls Synchronicity makes psychic connections to other entities beyond the individual psyche.

The Book: C. G. Jung (1960) Synchronicity. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Associated Videos: 

Rumble: Joe Biden falls up the steps 3 times

Rumble: Biden falls three times while boarding airforce one

Rumble Commentary: Sean Parnell Questions Biden's Fitness: "Who is running the country."

New York Times Article: Trump's halting walk down ramp raises new health questions

Life After Google

 The fall of Big Data and the rise of the blockchain economy

According to Gilder and other researchers the digital industry is rapidly approaching a "moment of singularity". Supercomputers and the cloud are becoming much more powerful and intelligent with accumulated multi-sensorial data banks that are appropriating data from our brains and bodies with the increasing power to even make many decisions for us. Added to this is the growing realisation that Silicon Valley seems to be merging a neo-Marxist political ideology with their expanding technological vision for the world. Historical Marxist vision for  mankind was one of redistribution of the scarce resources of the society, whereas Google's vision would seem to be one of redistribution of an abundance. However, rather than thrusting us into a utopian world of prosperity, the reality would be an 'algorithmic eschaton ' that 'renders obsolete not only human labour but the human mind as well.

Chimira

This would-be doomsday scenario has been rendered possible by a redefinition of what it means to be human. After the introduction of the seminal 'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin man was re-conceived as just another animal, an ape that has evolved to be just a smarter product of random natural selection. Google's techno-Marxism has taken this development beyond natural selection to the point that it views technology not just as a creation of man but a superior chimera to mankind. 

Fiat system

Abundance is normally measured by accumulated wealth, and in today's information society wealth is a product of knowledge. Moving on from our previous review of circular and linear time (see previous blog - The Fourth Turning) knowledge can be seen as a product of an accumulation of wealth over linear time. Isaac Newton, like many other alchemists finally discovered that gold could not be produced from other elements, nor could it be reducible. For this reason it was seen as an ideal basis for the tangible accumulation and storage of wealth. This notion reinforced Newton's view of the world as a homogenous conception of one universe, one money and one God. However, Google would have us believe that this view has been eclipsed by the notion that money, like the cosmos can be viewed as relativistic and reversible. Under president Nixon in 1971 the gold standard was replaced by a fiat system that meant that the world financial system was linked to the American dollar, a system that relied on printed paper and trust that the American dollar could be a measure by which other currencies are valued.

The Judeo-Christian world view inspired a notion of progress that was linked to human creativity and free will. The Google conceptualisation of progress is also a religious one in that it sees the purpose of mankind as a blend of human and machine cognition that combines technology with metaphysics in a type of cyber singularity. What emerges from this is a creation of a new world order that redefines the very nature of mankind. The apple CEO, Tim Cook envisioned a digital space where everything would be free. However, the reality of this relationship is that if everything is free then you are not the customer but the product. Thus, the accumulation of personal information is the currency of advertisers and corporations. From your perspective, as a personage, you pay in time. Google aggregates your personal information and advertisers use this accumulated data. What is important to techno-conglomerations is that they want you to be kept online and involved for as long as possible. However, what could be Google's demise is its lack of personal security. This is the same problem as our current fiat money system with its lack of trust, particularly when America decides to print more dollars than their accumulated wealth should dictate.

Emergence of the blockchain

What is emerging, instead, is a revolution in the digital universe in the form of a distributed peer-to-peer technology that could spell the end of Google as we know it. This new cryptocosm builds on trust and  transaction security. Every entry in the crypto-ledger is time-stamped and decentralised, it is, therefore, a deterrent for information theft. The main difference is that Google is hierarchical or a top-down entity. This means that information (accumulated wealth) makes it way to the the top of the digital hierarchy:  consolidating wealth to the controlling techno-oligarchs. What is emerging, however, is a newer system that is bottom-up or heterarchical. This bottom-up cryptocosm will enable future users to control their own information and thus retain their identity, knowledge and wealth. 

"Consciousness is who we are, how we think, and how we know. It is echoed in religious institutions and in the form of psychological identity. It is the essence of mind as opposed to machine. It is the source of creativity and free will." Essentially the human mind is not defined by electrical impulses and digital algorisms and it is not determnistic but creative and independent. The machine is part of the deterministic order and, as such, confined to human interpretation and moderation. The emerging cryptocosm is built on the notion of the blockchain platform that supports this type of human intelligence and ownership. 

Cryptocurrency

What has emerged is a cryptocurrency that is enabled by the secure blockchain ecology. As transactions are recorded and timestamped immutable transactions become a form of currency which are much more reliable than the current paper fiat currency. The advantage is that it is also more transportable and more dynamic than gold or paper. After all, gold is merely dug out of the ground and placed in another hole dug into the ground to keep it safe! Just as gold is proof of work (knowledge) the blockchain is also secure and therefore, valuable. Cryptocurrency, like gold, is limited and therefore precious. Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency, is an artificially limited commodity, which, means that as more people use it the value increases. Fiat paper currency on the other hand can be printed at will and so the value decreases as more US dollars are made available.

At the end of the day Google will have to change or fall by the way as it relies on the false narrative that machine learning and the 'singularity' can improve human quality of life. However, what human kind needs is a dynamic platform that enables individuals to retain their identity, free will, and independence while at the same time empowering them to achieve more than they could by themselves.

Gilder, G. (2018). Life after Google: The fall of Big Data and the rise of the blockchain economy. New Jersey: Regency Gateway.