Category: philosophy

Fate and Façade

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

A while back I wrote and entire blog around the notion of façade. It was called “Spiegelfassade”. The idea being is that people portray a façade, a persona, an ersatz, to others and then hide behind that. Rarely are human beings WYSWYG. They live in manner inconsistent with their authentic essence, life is a show-and-tell affair and they are not true. The public-relations-faux-façade is more present and giga-pixel ready these days. Insta-ready is not reality. One could make up a whole new identity with the help of AI and photoshop. This having a cover story is not new, it has been around for ever. There is tacit acceptance that some will need a cover in order to ply their trade. Others can take a face from the ancient gallery in a sociopathic manner. Others are knobheads.

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The trouble with cover stories is that people can struggle to know what is cover, what is real. There were cases in the UK of undercover cops fathering children whilst in deep cover. Who knows how wide the psychological damage from that propagated? I doubt national security warranted such cynical imposition.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I kept “getting” the number 37. Today I learned that 37 is a prime number, which I kind of knew anyway by sight. Apparently, that makes it useful for cryptography. If you ask human beings to pick a number at random between 1 and 100 it is the second most popular number after 7. Human random number generators are skewed. It is also a number used in a magician’s or mind reader’s force. They can, by prompting, guide you to this number. Ta-dah…magic!! 73 is also a prime number which makes 37 an unusual reversible prime. People choose numbers that are “lucky”. The odds for picking 37 are not 1 in 100. Humans have biases where they imagine there may be none.

The problem comes when façade interacts with façade and there is an illusion of reality on one or both sides. To an extent this is the basis of all 1:1 human interactions. We have a professional façade, a home one and perhaps are real only when we are alone. But if we have over egged the façade, it is impossible to understand or know our true authentic essence. People do not know themselves well and may deny a whole bunch of stuff. They may only know their shell, their façade, which they mistake for reality.

One of the answers in the University Challenge quiz last night was that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. People can quote philosophers in an erudite manner as a groovy tag to conversation. Rarely do they enact fully. Even those enamoured with the classics may quote more than do. We are selective. In this context fate is an interesting idea, that has on occasion a hackle tingling effect. We might like to believe it but only to an extent. We think we determine our life direction rationally, we choose. But a simple leaky condom can alter trajectory dramatically. We can be fated to meet someone who changes our life forever. We may miss a meeting that might be transformational by a hair’s breadth. We were not yet fated for that transformation; we came within a whisker.

If we live within the confines of our façade we may never know. If we are meant to find out, that façade might crack and perhaps violently so, revealing an unprotected nascent embryo beneath. It may evolve or develop another calcified shell quickly, lest the world sees an emperor unclad.

In all of us the authentic essence might leak through a crack. We might think, “what the fuck was that?” as we glue the porcelain mask quickly back together.

If like a Matryoshka doll there is façade after façade, identity after identity, it may take a long while to find that authentic essence. If we are fated to approach said essence then we will, no matter how much upheaval and struggle it entails. Layer after layer needs peeled back and like with onions we may cry along the way. If we are fated to stay in façade-land that is where we eke out our days.

Fate may engineer or come close, in one of these cases we will never know. Along the way we will have lent fate a hand by our choices, our decisions. It was fated thus.

Coincidence is Logical – Except When it Isn’t

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There is a certain type of person who prefers to ascribe coincidence, or random happenstance to events rather than accept any unproven {hypothetical} causal links. It would take a multiplicity of “coincidental” occurrence before they would deem significant corelation of happenstance sufficient to justify either causal linkage or even causality itself.

If the statistics to the contrary started to build up, they would resist dropping the logical conclusion of coincidence for quite a while.

Because of this they would never believe in karma. Even were it to slap them around the chops with a large wet pollack.

Say for discursive example you were covertly reading this blog and perhaps making some cunning plans which in some way pertained to me. You then noted that I posted “We’re only making plans for Nigel” here. The first port of call would be that this was entirely coincidental. You might start a tad, nevertheless. It is logically impossible for someone in another country to know that you were discussing or chatting about them. The occult ability of “seeing” belongs only to fictional characters like “Wednesday Addams”. At a stretch you might go so far as to think I had made some lucky intuitional guess which by fluke of timing matched circumstance. No way would you, as a rational scientist, accept that seeing is possible and that I am capable thereof.

People therefore write off many things because their confirmation bias says that they cannot or should not be possible. Anecdotal evidence of not boarding a plane because of  bad vibe and it subsequently crashing and burning, remains anecdotal and conversational perhaps to be found on “The Daily Mail”. The life of those prone to ascribing things near always to coincidence is a bit boring and chances are that they miss a great deal. They should steer well clear of roulette, statistics says so.

There are however many things for which coincidence and random happenstance are poor explanations. But logic is very limited and as it is currently formulated fails to encompass many things without far-fetched hypotheses like dark energy and dark matter.

“Show me a can of dark matter!!”

There is a part of society which believes in karma and synchronicity. Were you forever looking for these things then chances are you will find them. You could argue that belief in synchronicity is a self-fulfilling prophecy because of confirmation bias. Similarly if you were fond of the notion of seeing, ANY thing, any event, no matter how small could provide you with proof of efficacy. You could comb the opus of Nostradamus or the Revelation of Saint John and find clear {and incontrovertible} evidence of fulfilment of prophecy. It might not occur to you that you are kidding yourself.

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So where is reality?

Is it that coincidence is logical except when it isn’t?

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The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse or the Apocalypse of John, is the final book of the New Testament, and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible. Written in Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text, apocalypse (Koine Greek: ἀποκάλυψις, romanized: apokálypsis), which means “revelation” or “unveiling”. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon and occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

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Martin Luther King Quotes

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“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

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“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

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“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

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“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

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“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

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“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

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“We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

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“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

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“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

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Fate or Self-Determination?

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Many imagine that they have partial control over their lives, their circumstances and the trajectory of those lives. I have used the plural lives here which might be a moot choice for those who do not believe in reincarnation. Already people might want to debate singular or plural. Their own minds may not be certain, “do I cark it and that is it, or am I reborn?” This is quite fundamental in terms of outlook. They don’t imagine that the entire trajectory of life can pivot on a few tiny things.

If those marking my undergraduate exams in 1985 had given me one more mark and Sue one less. We would have tied for the last remaining SERC Ph.D. quota studentship. The organic section already had a lot of applicants, the inorganic chemistry section less. The decision would have been to grant the supervisor of my third year research project the studentship and I would have done a Ph.D. in the synthesis of Pt and Pd mixed valence compounds with X-ray, FTIR and Raman. I would have become an inorganic chemist of sorts at UCL and not gone to the Royal Institution nor helped moved the group to Imperial College. At some stage down the line the UCL trajectory could have led me to doing coherent Raman spectroscopy of GaAs growth at UMIST. Here the two possible trajectories could have remerged. This could have led me to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electronic Materials and to Imperial.

But my life would have been markedly different in the meantime. I would not have formed the same “relationships”.

When Sue transferred to UCL part through her degree I helped her catch up on the course. In effect sealing my own fate by an act of kindness. Without my intervention I would have “beaten” her. Of course I could also have smoked fewer spliffs and not gotten so pissed on a regular basis too.

Seemingly innocuous happenstance can nudge life trajectory more than you imagine. Is it down to fate or is it down to the integral over all the decisions we make? I prefer the notion that fate has a considerable hand. Others do not like the idea that some external force has influence and control of their lives.

BUT.

If you choose your incarnation then you have in a way self-determined your fate by the choice of vehicle into which you incarnate. There may be a fate but it was caused by your choice.

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At the moment the residual fate in this life looks pretty simple. No big deal, no big external dramas and marginal significance to the world at large. I am very unlikely to have much ongoing wider significance. If it is fated there is no intervention required of me. If it is fated otherwise something might happened outside the compound to change things. I don’t have to be in any way proactive in this respect. If it is fated, it will happen.

Tomorrow, I have a urology appointment to follow up on my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. I don’t have cancer yet according to the guidelines of how these things are assessed. But the way the PSA numbers are going it will not be long before I fall into the right numerical regime to mean that I have cancer or at least warrant another hour long session in the high resolution MRI machine or an invasive biopsy. I may get a prostate exam. The trajectory of our lives might take another turn, if it is so fated.

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There are many who really don’t like this notion of relying on fate. It is core belief and orientation for me. My dreams help me evolve my fate in accordance with what I, the indwelling dreamer, planned at birth. I have made huge life changing decisions based on dream interpretation. Some of which were very hard with difficult consequences. I was fated to dream and fated to use those dreams to guide this life.

Of course I may seem like a complete nut-job to some. But if so, it was always fated thus.

I am open to the fact that there is not much left fated for me to do in this life. Why would one not accept one’s fate? Even were my life entirely governed by self-determination there is precious little that I can do to alter life circumstance as it stands. It looks like fate has me “cornered” so to speak…

Shit happens… you may as well relax into it…take a deep breath… this will only take a few seconds…

Philosophy at the OU?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday on a whim I looked at the Open University web site thinking about doing some study. I wondered about doing some courses in Philosophy. Because of my relatively poor ability in Maths I think it unlikely that I would pass any degree course in Physics. Though there was a time when I was a jolly good member of the Institute and officially qualified as a chartered physicist. That qualification is lapsed and cannot be resurrected.

I wondered how any tutor might mark / respond to my efforts. Clearly, I would be very undisciplined. When I looked into the possibilities, I foresaw problems.

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It occurred to me that the course was not Philosophy per se, rather the history of human ideas dressed up as Philosophy. I never liked the part of science that gave personal names to equations, like the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. That method was a sure way of encouraging me to forget. The hagiography of dead people has never really lit my candle. A little closer look suggested that what passes as Philosophy contains a lot of discussion of socio-political interaction and social conditioning.

I reckoned that were I to proceed there would be disagreement. The strict definitions would not work for me under the umbrella of Buddhist impermanence and non-attachment. Arguing the toss for arguing the toss’s sake seemed to be a core part. Anyway for France the prices are not low, around four grand a module. It suggested to me that what I think I know is not suitable for the normal Venn diagram discussions of traditional ways of thinking. It does not fit to that socio-political framing which seems to be a big part of a philosophy degree.

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“Block 3: Philosophy of Mind
Humans and other animals have minds, whereas sticks and stones do not. But what is it to have a mind? The brain seems to have something to do with it, but is it the whole story? In the distant (or not so distant) future, might there be robots, or other artificial intelligence, capable of thought, emotion and experience? The block explores these questions.

Block 4: Ethics
This block looks at three philosophical answers to the question of what it is for our actions to be right or wrong. Are the right actions simply the ones with the best consequences? Or do we have ‘moral duties’ we should fulfil regardless of the consequences? Or perhaps we should simply focus on being good, virtuous people and then the right actions will follow?

Block 5: Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. How do we know about the world? One obvious answer is by using our senses. Do our senses supply all that we know? Even mathematics? Don’t we, in fact, also acquire knowledge from listening to other people and reading what they have written? But how do I decide whether to trust other people? Do we all have equal access to knowledge, or are some groups better ‘knowers’ than others?”

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The conclusion I came to was that it would be better all round not to apply or try to start a course. I don’t think that the contextual setting would sit well with me. I would become a problem.

Yet I do consider myself to have some kind of a philosophical approach to life.

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Is a mystic different from a philosopher?

What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge?

Blaise Pascal a dit…Citations – Quotations

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Blaise Pascal, né le 19 juin 1623 à Clermont (aujourd’hui Clermont-Ferrand) en Auvergne et mort le 19 août 1662 à Paris, est un mathématicien, physicien, inventeur, philosophe, moraliste et théologien français.

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Se moquer de la philosophie, c’est vraiment philosopher.

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Il est bien plus beau de savoir quelque chose de tout que de savoir tout d’une chose.

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Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

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Personne ne parle en notre présence comme il en parle en notre absence. L’union qui est entre les hommes n’est fondée que sur cette mutuelle tromperie.

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Le vrai se conclut souvent du faux.

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Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.

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Que sert à l’homme de gagner tout le monde, s’il perd son âme ? Qui veut garder son âme, la perdra.

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Dans une grande âme, tout est grand.

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Deux excès : exclure la raison, n’admettre que la raison.

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La dernière démarche de la raison est de reconnaître qu’il y a une infinité de choses qui la surpasse.

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Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous, que ce serait être fou, par un autre tour de folie, de n’être pas fou.

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Douter de Dieu, c’est y croire.

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Je n’ai fait cette lettre-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

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Les belles actions cachées sont les plus estimables.

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Nous souhaitons la vérité, et ne trouvons en nous qu’incertitude.

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C’est une maladie naturelle à l’homme de croire qu’il possède la vérité.

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Les hommes se gouvernent plus par caprice que par raison.

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Aux vrays difciples de Hermes – Immortalité

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There is a very real likelihood of ancient non mainstream, dare I say it, non-peer reviewed knowledge, being undervalued and forgotten. Some manuscripts have been kept. This one has a publication date of 1710 by Limojon de Saint-Didier, Alexandre-Toussaint {approximately 1630-1689}. These are {inter alia} in the internet archive and at Wellcome Collection library, there are other Alchemical texts.

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I have seen a 1699 frontispiece for this.

Peter the Philosopher was made famous by J. K. Rowling. In the Hermetic mercurial tradition, there are references on turning quicksilver into gold. Here silver {quick} is matter and gold is spirit. Transmutation of consciousness is out of gross form to achieve liberation {nirvana} and cease the endless cycle of rebirth and hence death. One never dies again; one ceases to be mortal and hence achieves im-mortality. It does not mean living in meat, incarnate, for ever and ever {or a very long time}. It means not being reborn. No more dying.

Just as in esoteric Vajrayana Buddhism there are Hermetic mandalas:

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The symbolism in sketches like this is extensive and cannot be understood entirely rationally. That approach gets nowhere other than intellectual masturbation. The thought form has to be built with care and the consequences of making it, managed in “real” meaty life. It is the battle royal of soul in matter. The Caduceus in not solely two dimensional. People imagine, incorrectly, that the stone, the rock, Pierre is a thing, a talisman, a magic artefact. They may fuck around in a chemistry lab trying to synthesise it.

One can only grasp and attain these mandalas fully when one is ready. Whoever drew this one was no novice….

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It is a shame that required orthodoxy often squanders knowledge and burns books. Socio-political position and self-advancement so often overshadows. The powerful often destroy knowledge, wisdom and science if it threatens their power base. Because knowledge is power, in a sense, those in search of mundane power seek to handicap and destroy it. Anything not catholic enough in terms of the papal edicts, whatever shape or form they may be, is ostracised and attacked.

Soon New-speak and The Ministry of Truth rule the roost and all dissidents are punished.

In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.

This pattern is a historically repeating one.

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Sometimes the esoteric can survive in the shadows. Sometimes things are lost for ever. We will never know, by definition, what is lost already.

The orthodoxy always ridicules and talks down, bad mouths, that which does not conform or obey. It has always been thus and it will probably continue to be…

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi – Quotes

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“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

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“What you seek is seeking you.”

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“Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?”

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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

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“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”

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“Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of This Moment.”

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“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”

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“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

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“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”

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“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”

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“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one”

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“Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?”

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“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”

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“Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.”

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“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”

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“When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.”

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Squeamish About Death – Place Your Bets

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I think it fair to speculate that many are afraid of death and the concept of dying. Opinions differ on the nature of afterlife, if there is one, and although reincarnation is a widely held concept there is no direct physical proof, rather circumstantial evidence. People are curious about what happens when you die. If one is simply extinguished then death is not to be feared whereas loss of life might be.  Time wasted is regretted.

People say “it is tragic that so and so was taken from us” when in fact death is a wholly natural process, at least on our planet. Few say, “it is natural that he passed away.” There is much social conditioning around death.

Humanity has a hang up about death.

I saw my first deaths up close in the Zambezi River aged ~11. One man died by drowning the other by crocodile. I had to write the account for the local police because they, grown men, were unable to write. Somewhere that report of death in my scruffy childish handwriting may still exist.

No matter how strong your faith, what your teachers tell you, nor whatever is written in books, from a philosophical point of view, whatever your opinion about death is, is simply that, opinion. There may be aspiration or wish. In effect you are placing your bets on what may or may not happen. This may be conscious or simple laziness. People can drift sleepwalking towards their death. Some contemplate it up close and personal. I’ll speculate that it is better to be prepared.

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To think about death can be seen to be morbid. On the other hand it might be wise to take advice from the inevitability of death and change your actions accordingly. No matter how squeamish you may be about death, dying and the death process, it awaits you. Your allotted time, your length of planetary sejour are finite.

If you are placing your bets on there being no heaven or hell, then you could be in for a surprise when you find “yourself” conscious therein. If you are shit-scared of dying then the process for you will be very uncomfortable. If you are relaxed and ready, then whatever happens will be more facile.

According to religious theory you cannot get away with placing a spread bet, covering all options. You need to choose, decide and commit.

If you are somehow still conscious after death and visit your old “haunts” to see what is transpiring, you could be in for a surprise. If you came to check up on me, to say hi. That might be a surprise for you. What might you say? If I was less surprised than you, would that be surprising for you?

If the light simply goes out there is nothing left to worry about.

At the end of the day, literally, how you approach death depends upon where you have placed your bets in life, what your opinions, points of view and actions have been.

Death although it can be in a public space with people, is largely personal. I don’t believe that you can bullshit death. You may try to be in denial, but death will not care. You are effectively alone on your own when you die. That may not be brain consciousness as we know it. But there is nobody “there” with you on the “inside”.

I don’t think that being squeamish about death and dying is wise.

A Fondness for Thought Experiments

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I speculate that many like to “win” an argument and be “right”. Some dread being demonstrably wrong. But the diamond sutra advises against seeking the absolute…

Our schooling demands answers which correspond in alignment to the quasi-consensual mark scheme. I have seen “A” level students marked wrong because, even though their answer was correct and accurate {according to my expert opinion}, it did not comply with the dogmatic mark scheme prepared by the thought police. Straying from the agreed dogma yields a poor grade and can prohibit further education.

There is an ethos to conclude, to be right, and to want to know where one stands. People can seek certitude when in fact there is none. They may misconstrue adamant assertion with accuracy and broad applicability. In fact, over simplification can be very attractive. There is a bit of laziness. Many rely on the imagined omniscience of “they”. If the herd deems it so, then it must be. Individual thinking and the expression thereof can lead to prompt and irrevocable social isolation.

One of things, I like to do is to take some kind of conceptual framework and then apply it to my life, to see if there is any fit. I don’t do this in a quantitative way rather I try it on like a moccasin. If it appears to fit as a thought experiment, I note the fit and then like a child with a sandcastle rub it out. I am really not fussed if I am right or wrong, nor with the quality of fit. I am fluid and don’t need fixed descriptors nor to be corralled by a conceptual framework. I am mindful that were the outcomes of these experiments accurate and those within the framework aware of this, implications might follow. Some of these within the model could be wide ranging.

Some might find this annoying.

“Tell me the answer!!!”

I also like the idea of all or nothing situations in which there is no negotiable middle ground. Herein lies a problem. Whenever I mention that I do not negotiate people immediately see it as a negotiation strategy which it is not. I am not responsible for the perceptions and conclusions of others. If they like to interact transactionally via negotiation, they may transfer their preference onto their interpretation of me. They may see me through their lens, which may have aberration and distortion.

Which model, which thought experiment applies? The answer is quite a few.

It would be very easy to characterise me as a spendthrift quasi-functional alcoholic who threw it all away, and as a result is a socially isolated loser eking out his end of days in self-induced poor health.

This model has only a very local implication and using Occam’s razor, paraphrased:

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

As a model which fits it is the simplest and the best.

Therefore all other models are speculations and by way of embellishment.

People like complexity and may not be satisfied, though it is possible to leave things here with this characterisation. My (our) physical plane life does not impinge beyond a small geographical radius and a set of healthcare professionals. I very rarely travel more than 35km in radius. I have only travelled more than 150km once in six years.

There is no need to invoke any other explanation. I have played with various alternatives.

This then is a nothing situation, a null, a default

There are various other interpretations which may be a tad more grandiose, but although there is a hint of applicability, they are inconsistent with observable circumstance. These interpretations may further be inconvenient. Any model must have use or else it cannot be tested thus a theoretical possibility remains speculation and likely to fade into the mist. There is no point developing a use-less model, when viewed from one angle. Inconvenience is also not a desired property of a model. This can lead to jettison.

Reductionist thinking can limit but it also simplifies.

The thought experiment in the absence of tangible and measurable data often leads back to the null or near null hypothesis, which is the safe conclusion.

We all often unconsciously apply the model or bias which suits us best, which is easiest for us to assimilate and has little inconvenient implication for us.