When I was quite young (too young, in any case), I read a paperback book that was a compendium of UFO and alien abduction stories. In the past fifty years, several abduction cases have flirted with something like widespread notoriety, some with particular, memorable details (especially the Travis Walton account, complete with witnesses who passed lie detector tests, though he himself could not), but of course the most interesting characteristic of abduction reports are how similar they are in outline and how short a list of characteristics provides sufficiently wide definition to cover the vast majority of the reported phenomena. Of course, whereas this degree of commonality amongst a wide variety of people may have provided fodder for the casual speculator, believing it proves that some common phenomena is responsible, most speculation does not take the time to assess the full range of candidate criteria that qualify as "common phenomena".
Having been exposed to these stories at an early age, I was terrified, but it would be more relevant to say I was riveted (terror typically pushes you away). My senses were activated like I had been plugged in to an outlet. It was certainly one of the most aesthetic experiences of my life.
There was, I recognize now, a primal activation - deeper than most - associated with the experience. I suspect that the cultural stereotype of an alien is a shared image - a symbol - that emanates from the [Jungian] collective unconscious. It is too powerful, too keen in its activation of our programming to be otherwise. There are no precedents for something like the alternative explanation, that they are part of material reality and that our minds merely react to their presence as an imposter for which we feel some particular fear (or the other typical reactions, which I will discuss below). If that were true, we would be just as likely to regard these events with equanimity, which rarely seems to be the case.
An archetype, or symbol, or any psychic construct (which is really just patterns; a set of predispositions, if you will) is an emergent phenomenon of the layers below it. We can say that symbols emerge from our anatomical brain and neurochemistry and the stimuli which itself is predisposed to take certain forms, and we can say that archetypes emerge from symbols, but these are all just words. The true predisposed reality that gets labeled randomness by those incapable of observing in adequate detail is fully emergent on that level. (Keep in mind, an archetype is not made untrue because a contradictory example is found, any more than a sunny day disproves the existence of thunderstorms. An archetype is only a predisposition, and in that, combined with the subjective nature of psychology, in its vast intricacy, it would be difficult to empirically falsify, though it could be "proven" into probabilistic boundaries.)
To me, it seems clear that the alien symbol is born of the primal fear of the predator, especially the predator whose presence is feared or can perhaps be "felt" (sensed semi- or un-consciously) in the dark. It should not be surprising that such a fear - which human brains have been able to detect for eons back through mammalian progenitor species (and through simpler chemical/reflexive channels well before) - should manifest itself into distorted, unpredictable results in the present day, when we have evolved consciousness and the ego and developed myriad modern technologies that distance us from our primitive environment and thus the stimuli we are built for.
Interestingly enough, there is more than fear involved with both the archetypal alien encounter as well as the simpler UFO sighting. The UFO phenomenon seems to be at least as intertwined with awe as it is with fear in the social context. Jung suggested the metallic flying circle was part of the motif of wholeness (shared with many religious symbols), that modern life is apt to displace from our psychic wholeness. Others have posited that specific social contexts can explain specific waves of UFO sightings (see http://parasociology.blogspot.com/2009/09/carl-jung-ufos-and-his-method.html, for instance). Indeed, I buy these suggestions as a broad concept - that social anxieties must manifest themselves not only through the "shallow" feedback loop of sociological action but the deeper feedback loop of the psyches of the individuals comprising the society. Of course, these are abstractions, in reality not disconnected, but that is quite the point. Sociology is not broadly interested in the workings of Jung's archetypes because they fall outside its common mandate. Some limited claims can undoubtedly be made in reverse, of course, of psychology.
Beyond fear and awe, and strangely enough at first glance, many reports of alien encounters contain a message of peace, brotherhood, understanding, unity from these visitors. Of course, they would. The modern world fills us with spiritual and existential dread, as well as feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, and isolation. The modern unconsciousness always desires balance, and in seeking to offset these feelings, the mental construct of alien beings - regardless of how abstract and conflicted - often provides a vessel that these feelings can empty into.
Who knows how long humans - and perhaps our progenitors - have believed in supernatural beings? And, certainly, psychic urges and predispositions are the true and common bedrock of all of these things and the beings themselves merely what has emerged in time. I do not believe that lesser mammals have known the concepts of gods or demons, fairies or witches or aliens. But I believe they must contain the same underlying psychic urges (to varying degree and effect) that produce those particular aberrations in modern man. It is certainly true that all of these beings act as conduits for the desires of the humans who have "seen" them, in whatever age they have existed.
The symbol of the alien is unique from some of these in that it is a prevalent phenomenon not only in a scientific age, but a stage of that age where the majority of the observed world has ceased to be a mystery. Science, in its prevalence, has triumphed perceptually. And yet the idea of aliens can persist because we can believe easily enough that it is in no contradiction to science - that it lives in one of the remaining corners that science has not conquered.
Of course, that is all just part of the bigger myth that the modern era can augment the human experience, while leaving behind some degree of our "primitivism", as if the rational and instinctual sides of our being were designed to be remodeled and realigned however we see fit. For the matter of the previous point regarding science, most of us do not even know where science holds claim and where it does not or can not for practical or other reasons. In our omissions, we have made two mistakes. One is to broadly assume that our shared heritage - expressed in our instinctual self - serves our rational self in any way. The second is to believe our limited command over the rational self can carry over in any way to the instinctual self.
But in the end, it is no mystery to say that we cannot escape our own nature nor the pieces of it; they are all just natural phenomena.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
On Nature
There is a periodic observation that I hear among the realms of mathematics or philosophy, that randomness is no more random than order; that order is no more ordered than randomness, because no randomness is random. An order suggests an organizing principle, and any we utilize are arbitrary. I suppose you could say this is the "base case" of subjectivity just after it has splintered away from universality. We will always see things in our own context. That is an inescapable effect of having private histories.
It is not impossible to imagine a world where our private histories make all attempts at communication useless. It is not impossible, I would argue, because we are often closer to this than we think. And while it makes me fearful that I might hurt someone I love, I am thankful that mystery persists in both our thoughts and words. The alternative creates a logical cascade that turns the world into something fundamentally different than we have, and indeed, the idea of a world without subjectivity may be at least a canard as at most an impossibility, but I digress.
I have learned to think and talk in what is commonly known as a "systems" perspective due to my daily use of such a model at work. And thankfully, it has not fully invaded my mind and daily patterns of thought. It is a deterministic nightmare, devoid of any humanity, any spirit. It is the existence only of rules; of rules until flexibility does not exist, and the name of this state is "optimization". If ever were one single idea meta-Orwellian, this would be it. Followed to its extreme, it is the trap that exposes the deterministic world, where human actions are so optimized to make any choice obsolete. Whatever the world may really be, my heart's desire resides in a land polar opposite.
I look for the world that is mystical; a cipher, a contradiction in terms.
I like best what Borges said about the world, because it speaks to my heart, and yet my mind can find no way to criticize:
We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false."
- Avatars of the Tortoise
It is not impossible to imagine a world where our private histories make all attempts at communication useless. It is not impossible, I would argue, because we are often closer to this than we think. And while it makes me fearful that I might hurt someone I love, I am thankful that mystery persists in both our thoughts and words. The alternative creates a logical cascade that turns the world into something fundamentally different than we have, and indeed, the idea of a world without subjectivity may be at least a canard as at most an impossibility, but I digress.
I have learned to think and talk in what is commonly known as a "systems" perspective due to my daily use of such a model at work. And thankfully, it has not fully invaded my mind and daily patterns of thought. It is a deterministic nightmare, devoid of any humanity, any spirit. It is the existence only of rules; of rules until flexibility does not exist, and the name of this state is "optimization". If ever were one single idea meta-Orwellian, this would be it. Followed to its extreme, it is the trap that exposes the deterministic world, where human actions are so optimized to make any choice obsolete. Whatever the world may really be, my heart's desire resides in a land polar opposite.
I look for the world that is mystical; a cipher, a contradiction in terms.
I like best what Borges said about the world, because it speaks to my heart, and yet my mind can find no way to criticize:
We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false."
- Avatars of the Tortoise
What is Responsibility Doing to My Personality?
What is responsibility doing to my personality? Particularly, I wonder what is different about me now because of having the job I've had for the last few years. First, let's acknowledge some truths:
1) Behavioral changes cannot be isolated to one part of our personalities. That's not how human brains work in and of themselves, and it's definitely no way to think about what happens when our own changed behavior starts reflecting back different stimuli from the outside world.
2) Wilde's "creeping common sense" from my previous post - if it is a real thing - must be able to be accelerated or decelerated. I have my suspicions which one of these two are more likely applicable in regard to getting better at a job requiring dynamic responsibilities and decision-making skills.
3) The world - as it really is - is far more unknowable than we are inclined to believe. Building thematically on ideas propounded by Nassim Taleb, Daniel Kahnemann pointed out recently as a simple thought exercise that there was a one-in-eight chance that we could have had a 20th Century without Hitler, Stalin, and Mao (each could have been born female). How many similar men did we avoid because they were born female? Three? Zero? Ten? I guess a statistician would say the most likely answer is three, but that doesn't make it right.
The more difficult question is whether any given behavioral change is something I should want. Especially as someone who has more money than a desire to spend it. If I do not want these changes, then my already high opportunity cost to go to work skyrockets. After all, you can't put a price on your [mental - or spiritual] health.
Perhaps a way to more accurately see the problem the way I do is to view rationality and aesthetics as opposing forces. But, is that true? Richard Feynmann said that, as a scientist, he saw more beauty in a flower because he understood the intricacies of its design. Although I find his argument fascinating, it leaves me confused. Learning - whether it is something like "education", or what happens when we intuitively grasp an idea - has always sucked my sentiment out of things where it used to exist. But does it add more to my future than it subtracts from my past? I have always been sentimental - if it were possible, leave it to me to overvalue the past at the cost of the future.
On the other hand, we have Vonnegut, whom I believe is on the side of Feynmann when he says (I paraphrase, for lack of access to the relevant book):
"How can you tell a good painting when you see one? Easy - just look at a million, and then you'll know!"
- Bluebeard
Next time, perhaps I can deconstruct this entire post in the context of, "Am I actually getting more responsible?", and while we're at it, "Do I really have a personality worth concerning myself about?"
1) Behavioral changes cannot be isolated to one part of our personalities. That's not how human brains work in and of themselves, and it's definitely no way to think about what happens when our own changed behavior starts reflecting back different stimuli from the outside world.
2) Wilde's "creeping common sense" from my previous post - if it is a real thing - must be able to be accelerated or decelerated. I have my suspicions which one of these two are more likely applicable in regard to getting better at a job requiring dynamic responsibilities and decision-making skills.
3) The world - as it really is - is far more unknowable than we are inclined to believe. Building thematically on ideas propounded by Nassim Taleb, Daniel Kahnemann pointed out recently as a simple thought exercise that there was a one-in-eight chance that we could have had a 20th Century without Hitler, Stalin, and Mao (each could have been born female). How many similar men did we avoid because they were born female? Three? Zero? Ten? I guess a statistician would say the most likely answer is three, but that doesn't make it right.
The more difficult question is whether any given behavioral change is something I should want. Especially as someone who has more money than a desire to spend it. If I do not want these changes, then my already high opportunity cost to go to work skyrockets. After all, you can't put a price on your [mental - or spiritual] health.
Perhaps a way to more accurately see the problem the way I do is to view rationality and aesthetics as opposing forces. But, is that true? Richard Feynmann said that, as a scientist, he saw more beauty in a flower because he understood the intricacies of its design. Although I find his argument fascinating, it leaves me confused. Learning - whether it is something like "education", or what happens when we intuitively grasp an idea - has always sucked my sentiment out of things where it used to exist. But does it add more to my future than it subtracts from my past? I have always been sentimental - if it were possible, leave it to me to overvalue the past at the cost of the future.
On the other hand, we have Vonnegut, whom I believe is on the side of Feynmann when he says (I paraphrase, for lack of access to the relevant book):
"How can you tell a good painting when you see one? Easy - just look at a million, and then you'll know!"
- Bluebeard
Next time, perhaps I can deconstruct this entire post in the context of, "Am I actually getting more responsible?", and while we're at it, "Do I really have a personality worth concerning myself about?"
Sunday, December 18, 2011
On Wisdom and Joy
"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I've quoted that before, but I was reckless, for now is a more apt occasion. What is the place of wisdom in a life we must try our best to enjoy? Tonight, I got two clues.
First, I went to a party where I said everything I had to say to anyone there. It was not much. It could almost have been nothing. Is this an emanation of wisdom? Am I so sated with knowledge so as not to need any more? Obviously I say this tongue-in-cheek, but even so, what sort of way is that to be happy? I can sit and look in the mirror and confirm that "success" (in whatever asinine form this is supposed to be) has visited me. I am certifiably knowledgeable enough to be bored by some people into having very little to say, through no fault of their own, or mine (as far as I can tell).
The second thing I saw tonight was the new profile timeline feature on Facebook. Even as a product guy (by employment), I don't really care about the details of the "feature" in any conceptual sense, although it was fun enough to play around with. But I got hopelessly caught up in scanning back through old posts and events from my past. The thing that really struck me is how people's use of Facebook has changed. Especially the tone and quality of their posts.
By definition, I generalize here, but people's tone today, on average, is more refined. Fine. But the sad part is what that turns out to mean about quality. Facebook is not a book. It is not articles or ad copy or an email or a phone call. It is truly unique. And it turns out that the Facebook medium - through brevity - calls for earnestness, for no facade. That is its strength and its opportunity and the truest measure of "quality" in this medium. But time is carrying it away. As people refine their skill for creating posts, they are concealing the earnestness. They... it... is becoming something else. We end up with a marketing tool instead of an urgent communications tool. It is because people are infected by a sort of creeping common sense that steers them inexplicably away from being forthright, exposed, and earnest and towards being measured and calculated, and it is everything that kills me about interacting with certain people.
I guess what I truly miss is my friends and the things they would post on my wall. And ironically, out here in the real world, I miss the days when I had things to say to them, too.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I've quoted that before, but I was reckless, for now is a more apt occasion. What is the place of wisdom in a life we must try our best to enjoy? Tonight, I got two clues.
First, I went to a party where I said everything I had to say to anyone there. It was not much. It could almost have been nothing. Is this an emanation of wisdom? Am I so sated with knowledge so as not to need any more? Obviously I say this tongue-in-cheek, but even so, what sort of way is that to be happy? I can sit and look in the mirror and confirm that "success" (in whatever asinine form this is supposed to be) has visited me. I am certifiably knowledgeable enough to be bored by some people into having very little to say, through no fault of their own, or mine (as far as I can tell).
The second thing I saw tonight was the new profile timeline feature on Facebook. Even as a product guy (by employment), I don't really care about the details of the "feature" in any conceptual sense, although it was fun enough to play around with. But I got hopelessly caught up in scanning back through old posts and events from my past. The thing that really struck me is how people's use of Facebook has changed. Especially the tone and quality of their posts.
By definition, I generalize here, but people's tone today, on average, is more refined. Fine. But the sad part is what that turns out to mean about quality. Facebook is not a book. It is not articles or ad copy or an email or a phone call. It is truly unique. And it turns out that the Facebook medium - through brevity - calls for earnestness, for no facade. That is its strength and its opportunity and the truest measure of "quality" in this medium. But time is carrying it away. As people refine their skill for creating posts, they are concealing the earnestness. They... it... is becoming something else. We end up with a marketing tool instead of an urgent communications tool. It is because people are infected by a sort of creeping common sense that steers them inexplicably away from being forthright, exposed, and earnest and towards being measured and calculated, and it is everything that kills me about interacting with certain people.
I guess what I truly miss is my friends and the things they would post on my wall. And ironically, out here in the real world, I miss the days when I had things to say to them, too.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Why I Feel Compelled to Write
"Basically I wanted to undertake the task of writing songs about a particular year of my life. Not the task of telling that story in a linear way, or in any way that would make the story explicitly knowable to a listener, but rather, to tell the story to myself. I was starting to see a lot of connections, and I wanted to make them more substantial to myself, or at least explore them. Writing these songs was a way to organize my brain and organize these events and how they had affected me."
- Joanna Newsom, on writing the songs that became "Ys"
http://www.pitchfork.com/features/interviews/6488-joanna-newsom/
- Joanna Newsom, on writing the songs that became "Ys"
http://www.pitchfork.com/features/interviews/6488-joanna-newsom/
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Two Comedies
I discovered the Noel Baumbach jewel of a movie, "Kicking and Screaming" a few months ago. I watched it and thought about it a lot. Then, about a month ago, I watched it... eight more times. Although I haven't had this experience with a movie in a long time, I have had it with books - when there's enough to hold onto the first time, but it challenges you beyond that with a language that you have to learn slowly.
There is enough evidence to support a hypothesis that the characters all started as caricatures, but such a hypothesis would be moot. I don't know how many revisions Noel went through with his script, but there is not a sharp edge to be found in any of the characters, nor their various interactions. This is all the more impressive given the pushing and pulling the script does with the characters and, in the case of Grover and Jane, the evolution we see. I imagine that Noel could tell you about each character's childhood in depth, and it would all ring just as true as what we see in the movie. Call me a simpleton, but that is a "good movie trump card" in my book.
Like most glowing artistic criticism, listening to my tone will set you all wrong on the movie. It isn't perfect, and a big part of why I like it is undoubtedly that I relate to it so well. But maybe it is worth watching.
----------------------------------------------
Tonight, I saw "The Trip", which was hilarious. I can't remember the last movie I saw that was as funny as it is. And it, too, rings of truth foremost in its conversations and relationships and it too leaves narrative form (even further) in the background - good for it. But the real bonus was Steve Coogan's dream that Noah Baumbach wanted him to star in his next movie. Now, I can't claim that Michael Winterbottom was thinking what I am thinking. But, I am thinking that Steve Coogan's character in The Trip is an older, British version of Grover - cynical, listless, intelligent, talented.
I suppose that we all fit on some great tree of archetypes and sub-archetypes, and whatever you call it when someone you just met reminds you of someone you used to know, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is about them.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
A Conversation With Myself
I have been engaged in writing for some time now, and although a flurry of keys has not been a constant current, my thoughts have undeniably stayed active and I have been having a consistent conversation with myself that underpins my progress. To avoid producing a one-sentence paragraph, I will now point out that I have sufficient writing instincts to notice such a trivial violation that, as a rule, is little more than a crutch for weak writers, or: I could title this sentence, "Treating the Symptom".
I have found it difficult to answer even such simple questions as, "For what purpose am I writing?" But, today I certainly made some progress. Before a person can write for others, they have to be able to write for themselves. Or: first comes the art of writing, which I would call a selfish pursuit because how could we know otherwise? For others to agree with you is this other matter. Others might disagree. You could suggest that the art of writing includes this, but I choose to believe that aesthetic considerations are aggregated only because they are subjective to begin with and thus must be aggregated if we are to talk to others about "works of art". To me, art ultimately resides in one person's mind, and if others agree, then fine - but agreement is not a prerequisite to the presence of an aesthetic experience. But to get back to the point - why do I write?
I have felt the answer all along, but I didn't quite get it into the correct words until recently. I initially thought it possible that writing was a means of closure to the subject matter. (I suppose this is simply a more charitable take on Nietzsche's, "That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts." But I now believe I was wrong. The new theory I offer for writing is to understand what I have experienced by having a conversation with my memories.
I have traversed a lot of mental and emotional ground in the last ten years. One day I wanted to understand what the hell had happened. It's not that I was unsatisfied with where I was (although it helps to realize that such issues are always a mixed matter). I couldn't accept that I had gone unaffected by my decisions. I couldn't believe that different decisions would have spit the same "me" out at the end of some other causal sequence - that the same "me" might be writing these same sentences having joined the circus years earlier or living behind a bedroom door all this time. I needed to see how I happened. Ultimately, I needed... need... to learn how to see ahead through the emotional perturbations of my decisions to the person that will come out on the other side. Not a decision made out of time and in a bubble; a decision that must be anti-fragile. It is critical that I make the big choices ahead of us the best that I can. I should have no other goal.
The effect of transferring memory so directly into writing is to have a conversation with those memories. They are pulled apart and I get some sense of what was present there, see how their essence changes with embellishment. It can be fascinating - the aesthetic content of a life. That it can be made better or worse strikes me as some enigma. This is the strangest of all mirrors I know - between what we are and what we imagine and project.
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