A few posters have now suggested, half from real interest and half from perhaps understandable exasperation, that I post a lengthy assemblage of data that has accumulated on my hard disk and present the data as an OP for a new thread here. The phrase "Design for living" is the title of a Noel Coward comedy. But it might just as well apply to an odd historical pattern that I think I may have unearthed, and I am interested in getting a discussion rolling on just what that pattern may indicate. To me, this pattern indicates two or three distinct and alternate scenarios, so it's not possible right now to come down on "one final answer". Rather, I think it worthwhile to discuss each and every possible answer in depth, without fear or favor. I'm not wedded to any single answer, although I do consider one or two as marginally more plausible than some others. Still, I regard any and all possible answers as still on the table.
There are reasons why I've been previously reluctant to come roaring in like this with the full nine yards of this material: It is 12 whopping installments long(!), and the last two times I submitted it (quite a few years back), it triggered considerable acrimony, largely from the devout but also from some nonbelievers as well. I hope the same thing won't happen this time. As it is, this may qualify as the most imposing OP in web history. But only time will tell if it's also the most useless. Accordingly, here's installment #1.
The human brain, belief/(delusion?) & all that
I) PREAMBLE
For me, it all starts with reading. I have always been a compulsive and omniverous reader since before grade school. And I spend time comparing things a lot -- historical patterns, texts, social reformers, everything.
Personally, I don't ascribe to any one creed/religion, and I am, furthermore, skeptical of many a religion's claims, including those of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic orbit. I do, though, not rule out the possibility of some kind of extra-dimensional presence that certain especially acute sensibilities may have glimpsed in the past. The question is if that presence is only inside their own (deluded?) heads, or if they're responding to something that is external and therefore real. I don't pretend to be able to answer that question. But to be candid, I don't think anyone else today can really honestly answer that question yet either. Many a future research project into the mechanisms of the human brain will be needed far into this century and beyond, most probably, before we can fully understand its workings well enough to know when it is concocting a mere delusion and when it's responding to something external. Only when we understand the mechanisms of the brain faaaaaaaar better than we do today will we even begin to barely comprehend just what was going on inside the heads of some of those "acute sensibilities" of the past.
It's still interesting to see which gods, whether concocted or not (we simply don't know which), might -- theoretically -- emerge as the more useful, viable -- whatever -- when scrutinized through a 21st-century lens. Whatever the "god"/"presence" is that some visionaries of the past may have glimpsed, I don't think it likely that this "presence" has any kind of active power over events on Earth. If it has any influence at all, it's more likely to be some kind of modest consciousness-raising inside certain isolated acutely sensitive minds rather than any physical dominance over any external events. The latter notion is just too replete with too many internal contradictions.
That said, I'm going quite a bit overboard here -- no question -- with certain speculations on just how the kind of consciousness-raising that I describe might really operate. In this overview, which is strictly speculative on my part, of course, certain concepts relating to this "presence" may emerge as more viable than others. Naturally, few posters will have time to read this (it's a slap-dash compendium of some fairly random jottings that I've assembled here and there on my PC over the past ten years or so), but still it's time for a relatively serious retrospective like this one.
Here goes!
There are reasons why I've been previously reluctant to come roaring in like this with the full nine yards of this material: It is 12 whopping installments long(!), and the last two times I submitted it (quite a few years back), it triggered considerable acrimony, largely from the devout but also from some nonbelievers as well. I hope the same thing won't happen this time. As it is, this may qualify as the most imposing OP in web history. But only time will tell if it's also the most useless. Accordingly, here's installment #1.
The human brain, belief/(delusion?) & all that
I) PREAMBLE
For me, it all starts with reading. I have always been a compulsive and omniverous reader since before grade school. And I spend time comparing things a lot -- historical patterns, texts, social reformers, everything.
Personally, I don't ascribe to any one creed/religion, and I am, furthermore, skeptical of many a religion's claims, including those of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic orbit. I do, though, not rule out the possibility of some kind of extra-dimensional presence that certain especially acute sensibilities may have glimpsed in the past. The question is if that presence is only inside their own (deluded?) heads, or if they're responding to something that is external and therefore real. I don't pretend to be able to answer that question. But to be candid, I don't think anyone else today can really honestly answer that question yet either. Many a future research project into the mechanisms of the human brain will be needed far into this century and beyond, most probably, before we can fully understand its workings well enough to know when it is concocting a mere delusion and when it's responding to something external. Only when we understand the mechanisms of the brain faaaaaaaar better than we do today will we even begin to barely comprehend just what was going on inside the heads of some of those "acute sensibilities" of the past.
It's still interesting to see which gods, whether concocted or not (we simply don't know which), might -- theoretically -- emerge as the more useful, viable -- whatever -- when scrutinized through a 21st-century lens. Whatever the "god"/"presence" is that some visionaries of the past may have glimpsed, I don't think it likely that this "presence" has any kind of active power over events on Earth. If it has any influence at all, it's more likely to be some kind of modest consciousness-raising inside certain isolated acutely sensitive minds rather than any physical dominance over any external events. The latter notion is just too replete with too many internal contradictions.
That said, I'm going quite a bit overboard here -- no question -- with certain speculations on just how the kind of consciousness-raising that I describe might really operate. In this overview, which is strictly speculative on my part, of course, certain concepts relating to this "presence" may emerge as more viable than others. Naturally, few posters will have time to read this (it's a slap-dash compendium of some fairly random jottings that I've assembled here and there on my PC over the past ten years or so), but still it's time for a relatively serious retrospective like this one.
Here goes!
via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/RMANsv
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire