Cosmos Café: On the Human Species' Ultimate Potential [2018-01-30]

Commons Cosmos Café
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Excellent point, Geoffrey, and one that I have been wrestling with as well. The intent of my statement that we generally find “trauma” where humans are involved stands insofar as the poor dog’s leg was crushed by a car and it is very much the case that dogs are “closer” (both physically and emotionally) than, say, anteaters. It is we humans, however, who have the notion of “trauma” and we apply those notions in areas where they may not be adding anything to the mix.

Just about everybody I know who watches any show about nature always cheers for the wildebeest when it gets away from the lion. We characterize this whole scenario as violent. Why? The lion is doing what it does because of how it has evolved and because this is the approach it takes to satisfying its hunger. It has every “right” to live as the wildebeest does. Why do we favor one over the other? It is a fact of life that for anything to live something else is going to die (at least in its individual existence … fruitopians don’t get this point easily, for example).

When I come across the three-legged badger I’m a bit surprised and figure that maybe it gnawed of its leg after getting caught in a trap. It’s still functioning as badgers function and if it is “traumatized” (which I’m sure it is in some understanding of the term), it isn’t acting like it because it goes about eating and reproducing like every other badger, so the thought most likely never even crosses our mind. We just think, “Hmm, a three-legged badger … don’t see one of those everyday! Still going strong, too. Oh, the wonders of nature.”

I’m always on the lookout for when we start projecting our ways of thinking into areas where they may not be so helpful. I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud more than anything else.

So, resiliency may be a fruitful way of thinking about notions like trauma, I agree, but I also think that we need to constantly reflect on our fundamental understandings of just about everything or we end up with more chaos that we might have bargained for (though Prigogine, et al. in Order out of Chaos demonstrated rather clearly that there may be more order there than we suspect … chaos theory suggests this as well, but it is not a new phenomena in that the phrase is an English translation of a old Latin saying and is the motto of the 33rd Degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, if I’m not mistaken).

It is also very possible that this self-imposed self-referential reflection is what slows down my own thinking so drastically. Sometimes it’s just hard to keep up with you guys. :sweat:

But, this is what I like most about what is going on here: we can not only discuss specific ideas, etc., we can also kick around others till something meaningful pops out somewhere.

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This is a good short video with some great footage of a polar bear recovering after a traumatic episode. What happens to the bear feels a lot like what happened to me personally as I worked with PTSD symptoms. Trauma can be resolved and quickly but not with terrible psychotherapy models, demanding that we re-live the content of our trauma. The stories we tell about trauma often re-traumatizes us, and gets passed down, through the generations. That is why I am such an advocate of Clean Language proscesses, which I have shared with some of you. We can learn how to use metaphor to bypass the fight, flight, freeze response. Some of the new thinking around this topic is presented here.

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And that does come through loud and clear in Beast and Man. It occurs to me that, rather than avoiding the subject of consciousness, she was more likely just not feeling the particular need at that time (scientism certainly present but not quite running amok) to address it explicitly. Which makes sense if she is concerned with evolutionary “roots” rather than ultimate “causes”… Yeah, I gotta sharpen those hermeneutic skills!

Profound questions indeed.
The central problem of consciousness is of course that it enables us to ask such questions, so it cannot really be a “flaw” or any other kind of unmixed blessing or curse. Biology, culture, and consciousness (and technology) are inextricably entwined for the human being and in so far as they give us both our cages and our keys, so to speak, it is hard to lay “blame” at any particular “door”. Therefore “the answer to our mountain of issues” continually eludes us, probably because our mountain of issues also defines us.

But let’s do this:
If consciousness is some kind of ‘accident’, what does that imply for us? Does it matter then what we do? If yes, in what ways? In what sense does “potential” enter the equation?

If consciousness is not an accident but an integral ‘purpose’ of the universe (Young), what does that imply for us? Is our “potential” tied to our own (species) development or are we more of a step on the ladder to elsewhere? Or, somehow, both? In somewhat less than five billion years, the question of life on Earth becomes moot. Space does, I’m told, mean things to human anatomy in the long run. Will “we” still be “human”? Will it matter?

When I think of the Second World War, directed largely by people who lived through the First, I shake my head like a pessimistic theorist of history and ask ‘what potential?’ But we haven’t fought a Third yet, and I think there is more there than just the recognition that nuclear weapons are unusable tools.

Kicking things around. Janus isn’t particularly helpful… LOL

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I find what follows to your introductory line very much in keeping with the game I like to call “What’s the Consequence of that Thought?” It’s a lot like those old debating exercises: you get a thesis and you defend it; it doesn’t matter whether you believe it, you just find reasons for supporting it and see how far you get. Take its diametrical opposite, do the same. Compare results. If nothing else, it helps uncover whatever taken-for-granteds we’re operating on.

It’s not always a happy game, but, if pursued seriously, it almost always produces results.

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I find the game necessary to take me from ‘I don’t know squat’ to ‘Now I know even less, but I can ask better questions.’

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Added Attempt 2 to the mix. Take note of disclaimer and NB above!

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A related topic you might want to refer to as this one develops: What is post-humanism and why does it matter?

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@Douggins: Should we merge the posts in this topic into the Café post here? Cosmos Café: On the Human Species' Ultimate Potential [01/30]

I’m planning to post the video there, so might as well have all the related discussion in one place, right?

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Makes sense! go for it.

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Hmm…it added them below Johnny’s post above (#3) which technically came later…

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My post emerged out of several Integral impulses and spread out over several threads. I respond to multiple audiences no doubt some who are present, mostly present, not present at all, and the eternally absent. So I apologize for posting in an inappropriate place and feel free to move it!

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Not at all! You posted on the Café event specific thread, which grew out of an earlier thread where Doug was working out his thoughts. I am just consolidating the two and trying to get the order of comments correct. But, I think I’ve found a way…let’s see if this works…

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Yesterday I was reading Philip K Dick and chapters from Kripal’s Secret Body. After dinner, I had a Guinness Stout, and I recorded a large section of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and listened to the play back. The use of the voice and the re-hearing that follows creates bio-linguistic-socio loops through my psyche-soma. I feel that I am in Blake’s landscape as well as my own, correlated with the human voice, my human voice, our human voice. Then I listen to another talk given by Banerji on the Isha Upanishad which was the inspiration behind Sri Aurobindo’s Life Divine. Before bed I watched this clip, from The Mahabharata, directed by Peter Brook.

Dreams
I am in a hospital bed, coming out of a deep sleep, and feeling quite good, no pain. My mother is there, but not my real mother. She is a kind of alternate mother figure.

I am released from the hospital and am in the back seat of a van. My mother is driving and my father is in the passenger side. I ask them," Do I have a tumor?" They admit that I do. I point to my left temple and say, " It is right here isnt it? " They acknowledge that it is.They were going to keep a secret. My father leaves the vehicle and I am with my mother and a change of scene.
_
We are with an expert of some kind, a lab tech type, who tells me I have a tumor on my right side of my torso as well as my brain.I touch the right side, under the rib cage and it is hard as a rock. The technician gives me percentages and statistical data and I am told about the drugs and I’m wondering if I will do the drugs. I feel that this is a dilemma I have always dreaded but also feel a kind of calm resignation.

Then I wake up and feel my physcial body and notice the body feels, on the right side, soft and perfectly normal. Relieved that it was only a dream I return to sleep and am dreaming of driving a car. On my left is a companion, a woman we are chatting, when I notice the road and the streets starts to blur, the sense of the solid objects has faded and I am riding in a kind of soft fuzzy fog. I reach out and dont feel my companion in the seat next to me. I say," Oh dear, I am all alone." I am fully lucid now , flowing through the fog without any objects, and I say," I want the intelligence behind the dream to explain the dream about the cancer. What is it that you want to have happen?"

There is a clearing of the fog and I am in a community area, of small cottages, and cafes, in the daylight. I hear a voice above my head and it is a muffled, male voice. It sounds like it comes through another medium, not not a sound carried by air waves, but something else hard to describe, but more mechanical. It has an absence of any affective tone. It feels robotic.

It asks," Do you speak to anyone about your feelings?"

I reply, " Never." I realize that keeping the secret self a secret has been the only way I could survive in a shallow society driven by self destructive impulses.

There is no more contact with the VOICE and I am conflicted for that is not really a clarifying dialogue. I enter a cafe and notice a man, very friendly and attractive, invites me to sit down at his table. I notice there is an amorous feeling between us, a mutual attraction. He says," I think the voice is a Gnostic voice."

I’m not sure what he means by that but before we can act out a romantic possibility, the scene fades and I am in a dark world with Christmas lights glowing in fantastic topological configurations. I sense that there are lots of connections between language and logic that are underneath those disciplines and that these light displays are demonstrations of some kind of underlying relationships between my personal dilemmas and other dynamics that I have no direct access to but are coming from an intelligence that I cant quite fathom.

I have awakened to view snow on the limbs of the trees and as I sip coffee I feel a keen satisfaction, the presence of the bliss of the eternal and the sensory based limits of my hominid physical brain.

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FIXED IT. Posts now should be in order. I moved Johnny’s post to the older topic and then back here again. Will now close the older topic so that any further conversation continues on this one.

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Response to final 30 minutes of video cafe (pardon the audio quality):

Edit: just completely completed the video. Missed your question @johnnydavis54 and @Geoffreyjen_Edwards’ question about possibility and potential. I shall answer at a later time, and I believe @achronon or someone noted that we have already started to see the possibility (here on the site maybe? Have to watch again).

@madrush, I was going to say that you are the hobbit, of course, but maybe you can just stick to being not the writer but the reader :slightly_smiling_face: and write about other stuff. I’ll have to explain one day my nightly “story minutes” told to child and how a universe of characters are forming slowly and they seem to tap into archetypal intuitions and reflections upon readings in an unconscious manner. Sloterdijk’s Globes Chapter 3 “ark” types, birds and of course Thomas the Train are all combining into some strange alternate universe.

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I so beg to differ, Doug @Douggins. Marco @madrush is an eminently suitable Rider of Rohan, he even looks a bit like Kurt Urbain (although perhaps Aragorn is a better role for his kinglike qualities), but you, my dear sir, are evidently the hobbit. The humble one from the small country who protests that they are too small to play in the company of giants (well, elves, dwarves and men anyways), but who reveals themselves to be far scrappier and resistant and valorous than anyone could have expected? I think you have to take that mantle on, @Douggins!

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What exactly were you getting at @Geoffreyjen_Edwards when you mentioned possibilities vs the potential? I know what you are getting at, but want to take a sip from the source before diving in.

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And a few connections to my bird learning to fly metaphor during opening statements in the Cafe video, freshly re-woven by @madrush’s haiku, Sloterdijk, Nietzsche and our possible potential:

Merdo-

Esperanto; noun; (neologism) excrement, shit

And holding my nose, I wandered disgruntled through all of yesterday and today…
—Sloterdijk opens Excursus 2 with this Zarathustra quote from “On the Rabble.”

"Rabble" conclusion:

On the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us food in their beaks. Verily, no nourishment which the unclean might share: they would think they were devouring fire and they would burn their mouths. Verily, we keep no homes here fore the unclean: our pleasure would be an ice cave to their bodies and their spirits.

And we want to live over them like strong winds, neighbors of the eagles, neighbors of the snow, neighbors of the sun: thus live strong winds. And like a wind I yet want to blow among them one day, and with my spirit take the breath of their spirit: thus my future wills it.

Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra for all who are low; and this counsel he gives to all his enemies and to all who spit and spew: “Beware of spitting against the wind!”

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So, I’m not exactly sure, so I looked up some definitions. Here is a definition of potential : “Currently unrealized ability ; Existing in possibility, not in actuality.” And for possibility : “a thing that may happen”. Then there’s this quote from Brian Massumi : “[T]here is a difference between the possible and the potential… Possibility is a variation implicit in what a thing can be said to be when it is on target. Potential is the immanence of a thing to its still indeterminate variation, under way. Implication is a code word. Immanence is a process.” (Parables for the Virtual, p. 9).

So, I view potential as being a kind of “latent” ability, whereas I view possibility as embracing the novel. Potential strikes me as being fore-ordained in some sense, whereas possibility provides access to the unexpected, the singular. Both are useful concepts to explore, but I am personally, at this point in my life, drawn more to the realm of possibility including the novel and the singular, than to potentiality and its focus on latency. Not sure if that helps.

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As we are discovering lots of other than human DNA in our gut, ( we contain multitudes!), the Human Possibility captures some the lawlessness and emergent character that doesn’t easily fit in the tool kit of Human Resource Directors and Central Casting that design from above what they imagine is already there. The biome doesn’t have clear boundaries, but borrows from it’s neighbors, is shape shifting along with microbes, in intricate displays beneath the surface of our statistical worlds of prediction and common sense and profit margins.

Symbiopoetics is how to make meaning with other species in motion, who are out of sight. And each man or woman plays many roles in a life time, and there is much she will never know about her gut except by putting her hand on her belly and making a guess. This cannot be shaped by law-like regularities based on linear print outs and external models. It appears much of our intelligence is driven by the gut and we would not survive a day without it.

That is why I work with head, heart and gut in unknown situations. It is very hard to put into words, but it is necessary, sometimes . When we are aware of head-heart-gut we can tune into the field of all possibility which communicates with us in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Paradox, not rule governed behavior, is the norm in these complex co-arising living arrangements. More like a dance in an odd bit of impromptu choreography with dancers with different training, than it is an easily manipulated algorithm. Unlearning fast is an important skill. Drop what you think you know. We are not becoming what we were becoming.

Adequate translation is needed before transformations can occur. This is when the Symbolic Imaginal is where the action is. And God(s) and Demon(s) will not be mocked! Bring forth what is within you and it will save you, dont bring forth what is within you and it will kill you. We are split beings, living in different dimensions. This will come as a shock to most people. Yes, dear friends, we are the doppelgangers.
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