Comment from the Vegetable Gallery?

"Most philosophers concede that whether others experience consciousness is strictly unknowable. Some take this one step further and argue that consciousness and perfect simulation of consciousness are the same thing. Here most people object. You probably feel that there is a difference between consciousness and the lack thereof, even while admitting that no possible observation or experiment would establish it. Is this a rational objection?"

~ from "Labyrinths of Reason", William Poundstone

Upon Finding a Reason

One way to tell the story of a person is developmentally, through the events that have shaped their life. And although it would be endlessly interesting to tell this story in an absolute sense to someone who was unfamiliar with the common tenets of human behavioral and social development, it is more reasonable to tell the story of the aberrations.

It is impossible to talk about developmental aberrations without talking about childhood, because our early development informs so much of our ingrained behavioral stock. In many cases, we will carry these behaviors with us our entire lives. And usually, the best we can hope to do with an unwanted behavior is to bury it beneath newer and more 'mature' behavioral patterns. Long and winding is the path that leads us 'home'. But which is the greater illusion?

I believe that mystery adds to our existence to a profound degree. Understanding through the existence of strong theoretical frameworks and the rigor of inferential deduction is inspiring and powerful, but it removes the mystery from the world. Mystery is the source of awe and wonder, and what do we pursue besides these things? Perhaps pleasure; enjoyment. How much of these feelings do the average person receive from the ego and not the id? Maybe today's learning machines can penetrate to the meaning of the universe through one-dimensional accomplishments. I grew bored with such games long ago, but perhaps I am in the minority to count existential awe as the greatest goal.

Buffett has said, "It's not greed that runs the world; it's envy." Perhaps therein is the answer. It is so much easier to envy things that appear to us to be objective: money, possessions. Much more difficult to envy a mental state or a belief system.

I have always remembered that the locus of reality for a living creature is the perception the creature possesses for the world around it, NOT the ultimate objective reality of the living world (is such a thing even knowable, except as a belief?). In other words, I have always believed in the absoluteness of subjectivity. The universe as we know it begins at conception, and ceases at death; it does not persist. To quote Huxley:

"We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

Subjective insight has always strangely held lower currency, perhaps for the simple reason that it is non-transferable. I value it highly enough to devote myself to it, regardless. It has pained me for as long as I can remember that this conversation is necessarily solitary. Who would relate to me, and for what, anyways? What could another person offer me? What existential insight can ever release a person from isolation?

What do two people ever offer each other? Amusement, love, time, money? A relationship is a transaction, whether the currency is subjective or not. And it is surely easy to desire shallow things. Hell, if for no other reason than that they can be found. The true nature of existence is personal and unrelatable.

Let's call this an incomplete thought.

Carl Jung: The Point Where The Wave Broke

Carl Jung will live forever in a general obscurity, as the man who built one of the most natural and complete bridges between science and spirituality, between objectivity and subjectivity, in the abbreviated history of human civilization. Unfortunately, people ceased having widely public discourse on spirituality years ago. There was some false impression of unsolvable ambiguity (as if anything subjective can ever be unsolvable to the individual, or ever avoid being socially ambiguous). That, or perhaps a constant stream of other comforts pummeled us gently and inevitably into a shallower reality. After all, who cares about spirituality when all we have to do here is live and die, and hurry up while you're at it, right? More commonly, who cares about intelligent discussion when it produces better results by our shallow measures to relate to our neighbors through common acknowledgment of ignorance?

The idea that Sigmund Freud maintains some degree of cultural currency, while Jung enjoys relative anonymity, is an example of the power of memetic simplicity (the idea of Freud is an order of magnitude simpler than the idea of Jung; in fact, Jung - like many thinkers who systematically refuse the use of simplifying assumptions in their work and embrace the inevitable complexity of reality - almost completely defies memetic representation). He also provides a working example of society's inability to judge critical ideas as a whole, or to selectively disseminate ideas based on the credulity of the source. In personal experience:

I would consider myself well-educated on a handful of topics where there is a prevailing effect of knowledge isolation (a small educated population amidst a much larger, relatively uninformed population). But the suggested social dynamics beget the reality: remove a few of my close friends, and I fail when I attempt to recall a single occasion when someone uninformed has shown a desire for knowledge, even that being freely offered. Perhaps free knowledge portends deception: is the assumption that surely the disseminator must stand to gain? Not that simple, though. I suppose that a whole list of psychological predispositions is required to explain this; but, let that be a lesson. Simple psychological predispositions don't necessarily have a diffusive effect on each other; they may indeed have an amplifying effect.

I believe that the most identifiable change in humanity's recent priorities is the need to manage time. Then, should we be surprised that people are unwilling to learn lessons that may take a great deal of time, even when the payoff could be great? We are so great at managing risk in some ways and so astoundingly poor at it in others. We won't spend the time to teach ourselves things that may enrich us - because they may not, and why risk the time? But we are notoriously poor at managing the risks of our own health, for instance. Do people do it because they don't know, or they are skeptical, or they are lazy? Do people do it because they are too afraid, or too comfortable?

The issues are deeply psychological. Of course, Jung wasn't much interested in these simple predispositions; go read Adler. But Jung's body of ideas is both strikingly spiritual and reinforced by Jung's life spent psychoanalyzing thousands upon thousands of patients. His theories are also complex beings to mimic the workings of our complex minds. They're not easy for people to hold on to; certainly not to appreciate or relate to after a quick read. It may actually be an intuitive sense of their correctness that allows anyone short of an academician to respond to them at all.

I think it was Jung's idea of the Shadow that first resonated for me. It is one thing to understand that people see unlikeable figures in dreams; but to understand that the feelings behind those figures transcend people or even ideas is extraordinary. The shadow is a manifestation of repressed weaknesses. Perhaps more interestingly, Jung said: "in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity."

Perhaps modern life will twist our Shadows into something that desires a more spiritual connection to life. I doubt we would listen anyway, which is not an admonition; just an observance. But I do hope that Jung is remembered by our progeny.