"Could we call this new style 'Interactive Music'?"
"In a blinding flash of inspiration, the other day I realized that 'interactive' anything is the wrong word. Interactive makes you imagine people sitting with their hands on controls, some kind of gamelike thing. The right word is 'unfinished.' Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a 'nature,' and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable - the 'nature' of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them. And our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else. Now a lot of cultures far more 'primitive' than ours take this entirely for granted - surely it is the whole basis of animism that the universe is a living, changing, changeable place."
- "Gossip is Philosophy" (interview with Brian Eno), Wired Magazine, May 1995
Monday, October 29, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
A Case of Synchronicity?
"Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul, anyone who fails to go along with life remains suspended, stiff and rigid in mid air. That is why so many people get wooden in old age; they look back and cling to the past, with a secret fear of death in their hearts. They withdraw from the life process, at least psychologically, and consequently remain fixed like nostalgic pillars of salt, with vivid recollections of youth but no living relation to the present."
- Carl Jung, Collected Works
Jung would consider it an episode of synchronicity, I believe, that I should pick up his book and read this paragraph first - a paragraph that seems to address my current and ongoing disillusionment directly and speaks to the core of what I feel and what I find myself going around about, again and again.
For my part, I believe in the phenomenon of synchronicity only to the degree that the world is emphatically not random; even seemingly unrelated things will rarely exhibit no correlation, and so, it should not be surprising that more things coincide, and more things rhyme, than we might perceptively expect to find.
That is not the same phenomenon that Jung was describing, but for my part, I cannot judge what happened today when I picked up his book as a case of his or mine, or something else. Or neither.
It is also possible the paragraph means less to me than I may suspect.
- Carl Jung, Collected Works
Jung would consider it an episode of synchronicity, I believe, that I should pick up his book and read this paragraph first - a paragraph that seems to address my current and ongoing disillusionment directly and speaks to the core of what I feel and what I find myself going around about, again and again.
For my part, I believe in the phenomenon of synchronicity only to the degree that the world is emphatically not random; even seemingly unrelated things will rarely exhibit no correlation, and so, it should not be surprising that more things coincide, and more things rhyme, than we might perceptively expect to find.
That is not the same phenomenon that Jung was describing, but for my part, I cannot judge what happened today when I picked up his book as a case of his or mine, or something else. Or neither.
It is also possible the paragraph means less to me than I may suspect.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Lifecycle of an Illusion
When I was twenty-two I was depressed (still) and bored and drunk, most of the time. There was a stage where I realized how badly I needed to stop drinking and start trying exciting things and start expressing myself in some way that amounted to something. I was certain, in my painfully shortsighted way, that what I needed was essentially a reset.
Now, there is another illusion beneath the one I am after, but about it, I will only say: I have often had thoughts that suggest I am the sort of person that believes that we are products of our environment, expressly. I would never consciously assume such a thing - nor do I think it today - but in subscribing to a lazy potential solution to my problem, I was suggesting as much. I will say, for the record, that such a theory can hardly even sustain illusion, it is so weak.
The idea of a reset is really the idea of escape in disguise, or a slightly practical manifestation of the idea of escape. Deep in the human genome lay the secret of our desires - when we are faced with a difficulty, our deeply-felt preference is for it to simply go away. It takes significant conditioning to abject reality to obstruct such a desire from interfering with day-to-day life. And, the degree to which each of us EVER produces such obstruction varies immensely. Typically, modern difficulties require methods of dispatch that are not impelled by instinct or the natural order of things.
When I was twenty-two, I wanted to reset all of it, and I was certain that the way to do that was to move away, certainly from familiarity and likely from people altogether, or to a place where my interaction with people was limited to my own discretion, which I would of course "want" to limit prudently, because I would have been reset into perfection.
Of all the quick "solutions" to the escape problem that people come up with time and again, moving away is one of the easiest, most absurd, and finally, funniest. Funny, that is, in extreme retrospect. The absurdity, for its part, is breathtaking. In these reactions, it betrays itself. The desire to simply change locations as a solution to life's problems is almost always nothing more than an emotional expression. There is little logic capable of supporting such a notion.
Why do I spend so much time pulling this apart now? Because what I have done recently, when I have chosen to spend my vacation alone, hidden from view, is just an evolutionary descendant of such a silly initial desire. I have found little of what I desired and expected to find. I have even now, in retrospect, identified the disconnect - which, in such a simple formula, cannot have been very many things, so I should not be especially proud of figuring it out. I am guilty of believing that what is desired can ever be expected without the complete understanding that comes from nothing so ordinary as taking the time to ask exhaustive questions and objectify reality.
There is a word for that rare feeling that comes when you get what you want, in practice, without the effort: serendipity. It is never something you earn, any more than anyone ever earns the random vicissitudes they are granted.
Now, there is another illusion beneath the one I am after, but about it, I will only say: I have often had thoughts that suggest I am the sort of person that believes that we are products of our environment, expressly. I would never consciously assume such a thing - nor do I think it today - but in subscribing to a lazy potential solution to my problem, I was suggesting as much. I will say, for the record, that such a theory can hardly even sustain illusion, it is so weak.
The idea of a reset is really the idea of escape in disguise, or a slightly practical manifestation of the idea of escape. Deep in the human genome lay the secret of our desires - when we are faced with a difficulty, our deeply-felt preference is for it to simply go away. It takes significant conditioning to abject reality to obstruct such a desire from interfering with day-to-day life. And, the degree to which each of us EVER produces such obstruction varies immensely. Typically, modern difficulties require methods of dispatch that are not impelled by instinct or the natural order of things.
When I was twenty-two, I wanted to reset all of it, and I was certain that the way to do that was to move away, certainly from familiarity and likely from people altogether, or to a place where my interaction with people was limited to my own discretion, which I would of course "want" to limit prudently, because I would have been reset into perfection.
Of all the quick "solutions" to the escape problem that people come up with time and again, moving away is one of the easiest, most absurd, and finally, funniest. Funny, that is, in extreme retrospect. The absurdity, for its part, is breathtaking. In these reactions, it betrays itself. The desire to simply change locations as a solution to life's problems is almost always nothing more than an emotional expression. There is little logic capable of supporting such a notion.
Why do I spend so much time pulling this apart now? Because what I have done recently, when I have chosen to spend my vacation alone, hidden from view, is just an evolutionary descendant of such a silly initial desire. I have found little of what I desired and expected to find. I have even now, in retrospect, identified the disconnect - which, in such a simple formula, cannot have been very many things, so I should not be especially proud of figuring it out. I am guilty of believing that what is desired can ever be expected without the complete understanding that comes from nothing so ordinary as taking the time to ask exhaustive questions and objectify reality.
There is a word for that rare feeling that comes when you get what you want, in practice, without the effort: serendipity. It is never something you earn, any more than anyone ever earns the random vicissitudes they are granted.
A Fog
I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about psychological and praxeological constructs. Where has that taken me? A couple places, lately:
1) Thinking about a single hierarchy of mental functional models. Since these span disciplines and do not follow any systematic conventions, the precise format of a "hierarchy" is in question; perhaps it is multi-dimensional. It must necessarily begin with neurochemistry, proceed through neurobiology to mental reflex, to basic behavioral theories (i.e. Pavlov), development of emergent behaviorism (exceptionally diverse just by itself; i.e. Kahneman's "System 1"), up through Freudian constructs (id, ego, etc...), Jungian "Collective Unconscious", and formal cognition (Kahneman's "System 2"), including cognitive biases that may emerge from below, as well. As I said, clearly these can be identified along multiple dimensions and I would be the last to know what the correct organization of such diverse concepts would be. Even a linear order seems quite hard to establish.
2) Where the hell am I at, mentally and emotionally? Usually I know, quite well. Today, I do not. I am in a fog. I have been wanting to rock this very boat, so there is no justification for me to complain. But what lay ahead of me, I cannot say. I will try to have faith in the reality the world has given me. I am having trouble sleeping, having trouble calming my mind. I am having, perhaps, mental fatigue caused by a change in physical activity over the last few days. The most important thing here is that I cut through the fog and figure out which pieces I wish to hold onto, because every day that I go back to undesirable old habits is an opportunity lost.
1) Thinking about a single hierarchy of mental functional models. Since these span disciplines and do not follow any systematic conventions, the precise format of a "hierarchy" is in question; perhaps it is multi-dimensional. It must necessarily begin with neurochemistry, proceed through neurobiology to mental reflex, to basic behavioral theories (i.e. Pavlov), development of emergent behaviorism (exceptionally diverse just by itself; i.e. Kahneman's "System 1"), up through Freudian constructs (id, ego, etc...), Jungian "Collective Unconscious", and formal cognition (Kahneman's "System 2"), including cognitive biases that may emerge from below, as well. As I said, clearly these can be identified along multiple dimensions and I would be the last to know what the correct organization of such diverse concepts would be. Even a linear order seems quite hard to establish.
2) Where the hell am I at, mentally and emotionally? Usually I know, quite well. Today, I do not. I am in a fog. I have been wanting to rock this very boat, so there is no justification for me to complain. But what lay ahead of me, I cannot say. I will try to have faith in the reality the world has given me. I am having trouble sleeping, having trouble calming my mind. I am having, perhaps, mental fatigue caused by a change in physical activity over the last few days. The most important thing here is that I cut through the fog and figure out which pieces I wish to hold onto, because every day that I go back to undesirable old habits is an opportunity lost.
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