July 2011
27 posts
“If a Martian ethologist were to land on earth and watch us humans, he would be puzzled by many aspects of human nature, but surely art — our propensity to create and enjoy paintings and sculpture — would be among the most puzzling. What biological function could this mysterious behaviour possible serve? Cultural factors undoubtedly influence what kind of art a person enjoys — be it a Rembrandt, a Monet, a Rodin, a Picasso, a Chola bronze, a Moghul miniature, or a Ming Dynasty vase. But, even if beauty is largely in the eye of the beholder, might there be some sort of universal rule or ‘deep structure’, underlying all artistic experience?”
—
To read.
(via scipsy)
Just as this article resonates with my recent experience and reason I’d suggest that the propensity is more than they observed. If the nature of beauty holds true, the response they observe in it’s view is the rule…
Play
Minority Rules ~ Scientists Discover Tipping Point →
sciencedaily.com
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.
Have to say, I was very interested in the article (and I’m sure Gladwell is smiling too), but I was actually a bit let down. It seems to rely too much on abstractions and so may have moved too far away from reality. For instance, most people probably don’t change their minds simply after meeting two people with the opposing view, and the degree to which our beliefs are malleable varies from person and subject. So, all in all, an interesting piece - but I’m waiting for the real-life followup.
I have always had an unshakable belief in an imminent global conscious shift…
The Sociology of Gay Politics after DADT →
gaypolitics.tumblr.com
The principle of lust
Isn’t time to review our definition of sin? Over the past two thousand years our perception of sin has hardly budged an inch, just take lust as a good example! Thanks to modern science and technology we now know that lust is nothing but a hormonal rush that that trigger various physiological and biological reactions. In the case of woman this will lead to orgasm if the initial stimulus continues to be applied in pleasure, while in the case of men it leads to a single minded and uncontrollable urge for climax.
More and more research support the view that lust is a normal biological response, and that suppressing our sexual instinct inevitably lead to abnormal behavior and mental dis-ease. With the mounting scientific evidence that there is nothing wrong with sex, but the fact that we are enjoying it much less than we could, I think we would do well by taking a different point of view to something that we are intricately designed to do with abundance. By changing our perspective on sex we will probably end up with a much healthier concept of pleasure, and scrapping lust from the cardinal list would result in lifting an enormous burden of sin. Perhaps enough to bring back the proven practice of saying were sorry.
With or without sexual reform, one thing that urgently needs to be addressed is our view about love and role that it plays in our lives, but then that is a totally different story. If you would like to read more, why not try my article on The power of ecstasy, Resisting temptation,
or Understanding happiness.
Life is nothing but a discovery of self, and in understanding the divine nature of who we are, we find the reason for life, the universe and everything.
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
—Bertrand Russell (via elige)
Education engender our youth with the value of power. How to get it, how to hold it, how to wield it, but nothing at all about its cost.
“Honesty and integrity is all that’s necessary to entrain the resonance inherent in the harmony of living thus.”
—Sync101
“I used to wonder what the difference was between almost too late, and just in time. Now I know the answer depend on what you did at the time.”
—Sync101
Creating awareness
Greetings Nixie, and thank you for inviting me to read your post. When you mentioned “Green Door” the first thing that came to mind, almost like an intrusion to my flow of thought on what you wrote, was the 80’s Shaking Stevens song.
My own introduction to synchronicity was triggered much the same as yours, through writing articles, and just like you describe I found the more I focused on it, the more it manifested in my life. The concept was originally introduced by Carl Jung in 1920 to describe any confluence of meaningful relationships. Since then the term has been loosely connected to a wide variety of events that would fit the general description, with Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”, Oprah’s “Aha” moments and “The Secret” to mention but a few.
The reason for it’s existence has remained a mystery until recent scientific discovery about the brain and how our minds work offered a perfectly sound explanation that is based on a current understanding of our self.
Simply put our minds are faced with excessive sensory input, and limited processing power to the extent that it literally carries a predictive future ready to be played out in case of any unexpected occurrence. Research has shown that our conscious awareness is generally limited to ten percent of our total sensory perception while the rest of the information is patterned to our previous experience in memory.
This process of selective awareness is influenced by a number of variables that include habit, focus, preconceived triggers of danger, experience, intention, and emotional activation.
In practice it means that our minds subconsciously filter our perception to optimal awareness if we sense any danger, can create a conscious experience to fit any reality we choose, and make us the creatures of habit we are.
“The day I chanced on power and found that wisdom was its twin are years apart, but woven tight with everything I am, and all I’ll ever be, hence and since.”
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“Pleasurous ~ Engaging in an activity that causes pleasure i.e. ” I find singing pleasurous”
—Willow Smith
“[T]hat as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul.”
— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
“Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing.”
—Hume, David (1711-1776)
“ “This universe seems, in some sense, to be a living, evolving, adapting universe that utilizes information to organize itself and to create ever increasing levels of complexity. We are a part of it and cannot be separated from it and are interconnected with it all. Furthermore it appears to be a self referencing system. As nature learns, habits form and those that lead to useful outcomes solidify and effectively become “hard coded”. Even then these “habits of nature” (including us) adapt and evolve by trial and error as change occurs.
It appears that nature has bootstrapped itself not only into existence but has evolved itself into the current state of complexity that we now observe all around us. Most astounding of all is that humankind has evolved to the point that we can ask questions and have begun to gain understanding fundamental to natures very existence. Perhaps, then, we and all sentient beings really are one of natures way of knowing about and experiencing itself. Not only that, in some sense, we seem to be able to influence its very evolution.” ” —Edgar Mitchell, American pilot, engineer, and astronaut, Robert Staretz, The Quantum Hologram And the Nature of Consciousness, Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14. (via amiquote)
It appears that nature has bootstrapped itself not only into existence but has evolved itself into the current state of complexity that we now observe all around us. Most astounding of all is that humankind has evolved to the point that we can ask questions and have begun to gain understanding fundamental to natures very existence. Perhaps, then, we and all sentient beings really are one of natures way of knowing about and experiencing itself. Not only that, in some sense, we seem to be able to influence its very evolution.” ” —Edgar Mitchell, American pilot, engineer, and astronaut, Robert Staretz, The Quantum Hologram And the Nature of Consciousness, Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14. (via amiquote)
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” “Is the Internet in the tool kit of natural selection? That is, does the Internet alter our fitness as a species? Does it change how likely we are to survive and reproduce? Debate on this question is in order, but the burden is surely on those who argue no. Our inventions in the past have altered our fitness: arrow heads, agriculture, the control of fire. The Internet has likely done the same.” “
I find it confusing to follow the argument, since the presumption on which it was formulated could be construed as likely, possible, or even desired by some, but that still doesn’t denote to it’s existence. In our search for truth and sensibility, any argument that would deny the impact of the internet on our psycho-social, neuro-cognitive, spiritual or even biological nature would first have to disclose some belief, or evidence to reason why it should not be fact.
I may be more confused now than before…
” —Donald Hoffman, Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence, The sculpting of human thought, Edge, The world question Center 2010, Page 6 (wildcat2030)