smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2004-08-26 09:40 pm
smokingboot) wrote2004-08-26 09:40 pm
Meditation and pointless stuff
It would be a misnomer to say I went into a deep meditation this evening; more like a dream/contemplation thing, very short and intense. The stuff following is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself (I never say a thing is dull if it isn't; be warned) and yet it's where my mind took me, so I want to keep a record.
I used a very standard shamanic technique as opposed to the more disciplined eastern modes. These are terrific but they weren't right for me tonight. Tonight was about darkness and fire in the hearth, and a slow drum. Sometimes letting one's head go to music, just one note or beat, its timbre and heart, really works. Other times the complexities of music will have me spinning cities and stories like a knotwork or something carved out of air. But not tonight.
I saw myself walking along a coastline, a land without other people at all. I saw orcas in the sea and beasts roaming the earth, but no other humans. I was the only one left. If I focused I could feel skulls underfoot, and an idle thought of the earth possibly being peopled by replicants came to me.
But there was no sign of replicants either. There was just the earth and the life of the landscape, and the consciousness of intelligences, all amazing, all different.
And I was drawn back suddenly to think of the first consciousness we would call human. Steering round Clarke and Kubrick, all right, one savant moment must have been tool use, another, perhaps death. But surely, somewhere way back when, some form of homo erectus (?) had a conscious thought and became homo sapiens. Made a conscious choice. Needed language.
What does a mind do without language? Does the concept come first and look for words to clothe itself, or do the words just flow out, simple words to begin with, 'Yours, mine, want, fear...' And then the words for things, the power of things, 'Fire, food, safety, mate...'
I would have to study the development of human language to understand the development of human thought. It's hard to believe I bypassed this at Edinburgh, but then I have crashed straight past so much that's important, I'm not surprised. I don't tend to notice much unless I fall over it.
It's always assumed that somehow Mankind as a species just stood up all together and started thinking, communicating, just like that, and each human in a group understood each other straight away. But I am not convinced.
One thinks about mutations and evolution, the flaws in Darwin's theories and the De Vries option. One considers; is it 60% of all dog DNA that can be traced back to one bitch, far away and long ago? Something like that. Hamsters, once sandy coloured, are now predominantly golden because one mutant female had the luck to fall into the hands of, not hawks swiftly drawn to her orangey-ness against the dust, but strange bipeds who liked to keep cuddly small beasts. Her mutation would have killed her in the wild. In the strange world of Humanity, it made her a wildly successful primogenitor, her offspring millions...
Consider giraffes, flying lizards and the like. The obvious flaw with Darwinian arguments is that there is no reason why an animal with a barely perceptible mutation (half an inch on its neck, a flap of skin between limb and body) would have more chance of surving than its brethren. OK, it can reach a tiny amount of leaves more, possibly, but it hardly makes it a major competitor; it is no stronger in mating, no faster in running away. Indeed, in terms of the flying lizard, a teeny flap of skin just gets in the way. In order for a mutation to be a major improvement on one's in-species rivals, it has to be either a lucky fluke (see the hamster) or an advantage both considerable and immediate.
Like intelligence.
A certain kind of intelligence.
Was there once a lone intelligence, something we would recognise as the first human intellect? An Eve, if you like, asking the first question?
Re fruit flies, there is still study being done of the way they work en masse; if one fly is killed by an insecticide in a corner of the room, the others will avoid that corner. They might be somehow smelling the presence of the insecticide, (my explanation) but Cambridge research came up with a different theory; that somehow, a group of fruit flies detected the fatal/negative/whatever influence on the original fly/group member that died...or via it. Group mind stuff. I never followed this up, so who knows if it led to any sound conclusions. The one they were edging towards was that the insect group collectively learns, collectively transmits information.
Reaching. Big time reaching, with no necessary connection to primates. They don't even know if it works with fruitflies.
We know how primates learn. We are pretty sure they learn through imitation. Was human cognition a swift, almost immediate, group development? Or was it a singular phenomenon, a one off? I feel drawn to the latter, for no better reason than that I know of no studies re group cognition in mammals. We do, however, have examples of stunning mammalian one-offs, i.e, Hamsterma, Dogma (Oh don't mind me, I'm enjoying myself!) And this leads me back to the idea of lone intelligence at the beginning of Man's development.
The first question is probably, 'Can I eat this?' (Back to the garden of Eden!) And that is an animal question, every specimen of life needs to ask this and answer it to survive. And the first question issuing from a human intellect?
When did Cogito Ergo Sum arise in concept rather than language?
All this and no drugs. You've got off lightly. I really am no philosopher.
But the idea of the first moment, when some ancestor of humanity looked at the sunrise and thought, 'What is that?' and then wondered, 'Is anyone else doing this?' is one of surpassing excitement. The moment before language. Before symbol. At the moment when language and symbol gain complexity, the moment when thought stops being mechanical.
The thing that overwhelms me is the sheer scale of my ignorance. And what I have recorded here is by no means true meditation. In meditation, one empties the mind and is still. In my head, everything is chatter chatter chatter, and where is the comprehension?
Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
I used a very standard shamanic technique as opposed to the more disciplined eastern modes. These are terrific but they weren't right for me tonight. Tonight was about darkness and fire in the hearth, and a slow drum. Sometimes letting one's head go to music, just one note or beat, its timbre and heart, really works. Other times the complexities of music will have me spinning cities and stories like a knotwork or something carved out of air. But not tonight.
I saw myself walking along a coastline, a land without other people at all. I saw orcas in the sea and beasts roaming the earth, but no other humans. I was the only one left. If I focused I could feel skulls underfoot, and an idle thought of the earth possibly being peopled by replicants came to me.
But there was no sign of replicants either. There was just the earth and the life of the landscape, and the consciousness of intelligences, all amazing, all different.
And I was drawn back suddenly to think of the first consciousness we would call human. Steering round Clarke and Kubrick, all right, one savant moment must have been tool use, another, perhaps death. But surely, somewhere way back when, some form of homo erectus (?) had a conscious thought and became homo sapiens. Made a conscious choice. Needed language.
What does a mind do without language? Does the concept come first and look for words to clothe itself, or do the words just flow out, simple words to begin with, 'Yours, mine, want, fear...' And then the words for things, the power of things, 'Fire, food, safety, mate...'
I would have to study the development of human language to understand the development of human thought. It's hard to believe I bypassed this at Edinburgh, but then I have crashed straight past so much that's important, I'm not surprised. I don't tend to notice much unless I fall over it.
It's always assumed that somehow Mankind as a species just stood up all together and started thinking, communicating, just like that, and each human in a group understood each other straight away. But I am not convinced.
One thinks about mutations and evolution, the flaws in Darwin's theories and the De Vries option. One considers; is it 60% of all dog DNA that can be traced back to one bitch, far away and long ago? Something like that. Hamsters, once sandy coloured, are now predominantly golden because one mutant female had the luck to fall into the hands of, not hawks swiftly drawn to her orangey-ness against the dust, but strange bipeds who liked to keep cuddly small beasts. Her mutation would have killed her in the wild. In the strange world of Humanity, it made her a wildly successful primogenitor, her offspring millions...
Consider giraffes, flying lizards and the like. The obvious flaw with Darwinian arguments is that there is no reason why an animal with a barely perceptible mutation (half an inch on its neck, a flap of skin between limb and body) would have more chance of surving than its brethren. OK, it can reach a tiny amount of leaves more, possibly, but it hardly makes it a major competitor; it is no stronger in mating, no faster in running away. Indeed, in terms of the flying lizard, a teeny flap of skin just gets in the way. In order for a mutation to be a major improvement on one's in-species rivals, it has to be either a lucky fluke (see the hamster) or an advantage both considerable and immediate.
Like intelligence.
A certain kind of intelligence.
Was there once a lone intelligence, something we would recognise as the first human intellect? An Eve, if you like, asking the first question?
Re fruit flies, there is still study being done of the way they work en masse; if one fly is killed by an insecticide in a corner of the room, the others will avoid that corner. They might be somehow smelling the presence of the insecticide, (my explanation) but Cambridge research came up with a different theory; that somehow, a group of fruit flies detected the fatal/negative/whatever influence on the original fly/group member that died...or via it. Group mind stuff. I never followed this up, so who knows if it led to any sound conclusions. The one they were edging towards was that the insect group collectively learns, collectively transmits information.
Reaching. Big time reaching, with no necessary connection to primates. They don't even know if it works with fruitflies.
We know how primates learn. We are pretty sure they learn through imitation. Was human cognition a swift, almost immediate, group development? Or was it a singular phenomenon, a one off? I feel drawn to the latter, for no better reason than that I know of no studies re group cognition in mammals. We do, however, have examples of stunning mammalian one-offs, i.e, Hamsterma, Dogma (Oh don't mind me, I'm enjoying myself!) And this leads me back to the idea of lone intelligence at the beginning of Man's development.
The first question is probably, 'Can I eat this?' (Back to the garden of Eden!) And that is an animal question, every specimen of life needs to ask this and answer it to survive. And the first question issuing from a human intellect?
When did Cogito Ergo Sum arise in concept rather than language?
All this and no drugs. You've got off lightly. I really am no philosopher.
But the idea of the first moment, when some ancestor of humanity looked at the sunrise and thought, 'What is that?' and then wondered, 'Is anyone else doing this?' is one of surpassing excitement. The moment before language. Before symbol. At the moment when language and symbol gain complexity, the moment when thought stops being mechanical.
The thing that overwhelms me is the sheer scale of my ignorance. And what I have recorded here is by no means true meditation. In meditation, one empties the mind and is still. In my head, everything is chatter chatter chatter, and where is the comprehension?
Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
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