On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:51:36 -0500, "George Cherry"
alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> "In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as
>> that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ is dangerous and painful
>> to give birth to, expensive to build and, in a resting human, uses
>> about 20 per cent of the body's energy even though it is just 2 percent
>> of the body's weight. There must be some reason for all this
>> evolutionary expense."
>> -Susan Blackmore
>
>To raise hell and cause trouble ...
>oh yes, and improve survival, domination, and reproduction.
>
>> George Cherry wrote:
>>> From today's NY Times.
>>> Here're just the first two paragraphs.
>>>
>>> Reminds me of the Pali Canon:
>>>
>>> All that is comes from the mind;
>>> it is based on the mind;
>>> it is fashioned by the mind.
>>>
>>>
>>> December 30, 2006
>>> Op-Ed Contributor
>>> Ghosts in the Machine
>>> By DEBORAH BLUM
>>> Madison, Wis.
>>>
>>> THE human brain is, in surprising part, an appliance powered by
>>> electricity.
>>> It constantly generates about 12 watts of energy, enough to keep a
>>> flashlight glowing. It works by sending out electrical impulses - bursts
>>> of
>>> power running along the cellular wires of the nervous system - to
>>> stimulate
>>> muscles into motion or thought into being. We're mostly aware of this
>>> when
>>> the machine falters, when it short-circuits into epilepsy or frays into
>>> the
>>> tremors of Parkinson's disease.
>>>
>>> So when scientists wrote in a recent issue of the journal Nature that
>>> they
>>> could induce phantom effects - the sensation of being haunted by a
>>> shadowy
>>> figure - by stimulating the brain with electricity, it made perfect
>>> neurological sense. One could even argue that the existence of such
>>> sensations explains away the so-called supernatural. In fact, as The
>>> Times
>>> reported, the researchers promptly concluded that ghosts are mere "bodily
>>> delusions," electrical misfirings and nothing more.
>>
>>> What wonderful common sense wisdom, George. I always am puzzled
>> that anyone in the 21st century can actually question this.
>> Interesting, though, that the passage that you quote about the mind,
>> when the brain is ignored, can be taken to be reality-denying idealism.
>
>Yes, nit- and dimwits can figure out lots
>of ways to get it all wrong. One of the
>problems with a big brain is that its
>possessors can figure out how to think
>up really big misconceptions.
>
>Take my quotation from the Pali Canon,
>
>All that is comes from the mind;
>it is based on the mind;
>it is fashioned by the mind.
>
>To me the quote means something like
>"There is nothing either good or bad,
>but thinking makes it so".
>
>This quote is the basis of Stoicism and
>the basis of the cessation of suffering.
>
>But to "idealists" can take the Pali Canon quote
>to mean their house doesn't exist until they drive
>up the driveway and see it.
>
>George
>
If you don't drive up the driveway and never see it,
what then? Is it then magically 'gone'? Isn't it impossible
to actually perceive that which isn't perceived?
(Namely absence, loss, or non-being?)
Do you have a head? You say, "Of course." But
before you examined your intellect for that information,
where was there any head? Or any 'you'? Do you have
feet? Oh, there they are, suddenly appearing from
nowhere. You can say they were there all the time,
but isn't that a bit of flattering dishonesty? You
didn't know about your feet then, and you can't
prove the constant persistence of phenomena now.
It's just the govenment approved social consensus.
(And how can 10,000 frenchmen ever be wrong?)
The storehouse of memory and perception seems to
be ever present, but it's never actually present,
but only available. And only in particular and
smallish pieces. And only when provoked into
action by circumstance or the sticky stringy chain
of the idly daydreaming 'stream of consciousness'.
The babbling book.
The social mind is a confidence game. No one invented
it. We just accepted it trustingly and uncritically at our
mother's knee. These are 'the facts of life'. Crooked and
depressing, but apparently the Only Game In Town.
Fools raised by fools wind up foolish. (Who knew?)
We trade our bodies and mind-souls in tedious drudgery
for scraps of green paper. The paper has no intrinsic
value, except that others will also sell themselves for it.
(Like the Farengi of DS9 we don't want to end tyranny
and exploitation -- we all want to be tyrants and exploiters.)
Possessions. How can anyone 'own' anything except that
others refrain from just taking those things away? It's all
just a social fiction with the force of a 'law of nature'.
Thieves have a better grasp of reality than most people.
They are shockingly direct in disproving the truth of
our social fictions. Outrageous!
If matter and time define and confine your vision of reality
(your completely reasonable 'understanding') then it isn't reality
that you are seeing, but just the abstract symbols of a totally
imaginary game of 'who, where, what, and how much?'.
A whore's life is not a happy one.
