self-knowing, parts, and wholes
Some analogies are coming clearer tonight. Let's suppose I am the relative God to my parts, the whole of them. A greater thing than they can ever know, except in the sense that they each contribute to MY knowing, which is a distributed process. There is no central kernel of me.
I am not real and I am not a lie, I am a way of seeing things. Any grouping, anything we wish to see as a closed system or unit, is a way of seeing "things". Things, which are thought to be realer. Parts are often thought to be realer than wholes. They are the meat. Higher granularity, reduction, seems to point us to the actual REAL, the explanation.
But no, right? You can't reduce me to molecules. Something is lost.
What is the confusion then? What two realities are pushing and pulling here? So many of us have been suckered into misperceiving the push and pull as something more contentious than it is, something hard to resolve.
Science vs religion, or mysticism and holism vs. reductionism, yada yada.
Here's what I see as the actual misstep. Just because everything magnified is parts in parts in parts, doesn't mean you can ever look at a "part", a "thing", extract it from its system, and expect it to have any meaning, any relevance.
All these things are defined entirely in terms of what BEARING they have on the rest of the world. How can they be observed, what are their mechanics -- how much momentum will this part absorb from that part, or that part? To the extent that they have NO bearing, to the extent they cannot be observed, and no effects of them can be observed, THEN they are not real.
When we break away from "things" just a little it becomes clearer. What about non-things that are nonetheless "real" and scientifically quantifiable. Voltages. Temperatures. Wavelike things not just particle-like things. What is this wave side of reality? The further these get nailed down (I can't even avoid the thing-y phrases) by science the more easily we think of them too as "things" even though they are dispersed.
But what THESE kinds of things are, is patterns. Understood sets of relationships. Real to the extent they have a BEARING on ... THINGS.
So these kinds of wavey things seem to be, simply put, relationships manifest.
Side note: if you know much about matter you know that all these things ultimately seem to break down into energy, waves, and so all we've got is relationships among relationships. Patterns of change in patterns of change on the grossest and subtlest levels, so that all manner of solidity and subtlety is noticeable and distinguishable relative to an observer somewhere in the inevitable middle.
SO back to the push & pull between reductionism and holism. There is a clear point to saying "it's all tiny pieces" but it's a fallacy to GRAB a given piece, and magnify it, and say, "it's all THIS". That's using one image, one idea, of one part, to represent the whole gazillion of them. Who only are seen to be as they are in their gazillionhood, in the form that calls itself a ME.
So that being resolved, here is my theory of what it means to be self-knowing. One one level I would say I am unconsciously automatically self-knowing as a resident of the universe. My system maintains itself, and the mechanism for doing so is just plain reality, inevitability. But seen this way, it's hardly a closed system. I have not explained how food comes and goes, how my molecules replace themselves, I have not explained any basis for the CLAIM that I with the mouth and the fingers and such, am the same "thing". All I have pointed to is some kind of mindless self-sufficience of the mechanical universe.
But what is my *consciousness*? What is my "knowing", the kind I presume to "own", or to somehow be distinct from that universal grand vague automatic being-in-reality-ness-thing. What is my mind?
I am thinking it is in the relationship of my parts, the solid ones, and also the patterns and subpatterns. It is the water and the channels it follows. I am thinking I am self-aware to the extent my pieces & parts individually and/or collectively REFLECT the whole (which I presume to be).
Who decides when they truly do reflect the whole me? Well at some point, the collective pattern self-adjudicates. Or maybe it doesn't, but at some point OUTSIDERS start to agree that this pattern is a self-knower, self-reflector. The outside patterns start to model/reflect ME as an EXAMPLE of what-they-are (self-reflectors). Relative to ourselves we are real enough to speak of.
And so I am not real or unreal, but a way of seeing. Meaning emerges in the relationships among the parts, and the meaning is capable of meaning itself, at least in the obvious context, which is itself. And that is its proper context for self-reference. Strangely enough it's kind of more of that mindless self-sufficience. But it's rich and personal this time.
But there is this. Who is to say I know myself properly? Who is to say my perspective on me is truest? My conscious perspective is some particular summation of reflections in me. My parts reflect the whole world around me and model me in the center of it. Again the question is, who decides when these parts truly DO reflect the WHOLE me?
I hinted that outside folks start validating it. Still we can all be collectively deluded, or deluded each in our own way about what I am. What is the RIGHT way to even interpret these partial reflections, these patterns in me. I have said that the proper context for me is already where it needs to be, but where is that.
Surely the proper context for the meaning of me, for interpreting the collective reflections in my parts, is whatever context is the FULLEST, most far-reaching. What each of these parts and patterns mean in relation to the WHOLE dang truth.
So I just gave two separate most-proper-contexts for myself and my meaning. How to resolve? Sure enough if you know my thinking, the answer must be a synthesis. Find a line between two pieces and walk on that line till you find where they meet.
ALL OF THIS IS BULLSHIT. Back to what's coming clearer. I don't even know myself, or have an experience, or ILLUSION of knowing myself, except to the extent that SOME of my parts collectively systematically reflect me. They don't have to be "correct" because whatever they DO reflect already is present, already interacts with the world and types and speaks. The reflection already interacts with itself, evolves and stabilizes, sustained by evolved and stabilized currents of food-matter. I float loosely on the surface of all that magic shit. And it seems to me the "truer" my image of me (or at least I take it as a guidepost), the LOOSER it is, the SIMPLER it is, the more self referential, platonic and mathematical it is.
So I can take God the same way. God is the would-be-self of all of it. All of it is the proper and highest context for interpreting who I am. But God like me only can be thought to exist, to the extent that the parts reflect the whole. Inevitably I think they do. We can diagnose plenty of disorders in these parts, we can see the lack of harmony, lack of reflection, on the grand scale just as we can see it in ourselves. But ultimately these parts can't help but reflect their whole -- we just want the prettiest song, the most meaningful kind of reflection.
As I see it we are leading God into self-awareness. We are parts of sufficient complexity to sit in the "middle" of the equation, having achieved this self-awareness thanks to our own parts, and we now look upward (or better, outward) and ask what we as parts reflect in the bigger system. We are welcome to humor God as real by whatever name, and this turns out to be an experienceable organic relationship of part-to-whole, grown out of childish myths and maturing into something actual.
It's all a big-ass fractal and I think we can work inwardly and see the work happening outwardly, and vice versa. Yesh.
I am not real and I am not a lie, I am a way of seeing things. Any grouping, anything we wish to see as a closed system or unit, is a way of seeing "things". Things, which are thought to be realer. Parts are often thought to be realer than wholes. They are the meat. Higher granularity, reduction, seems to point us to the actual REAL, the explanation.
But no, right? You can't reduce me to molecules. Something is lost.
What is the confusion then? What two realities are pushing and pulling here? So many of us have been suckered into misperceiving the push and pull as something more contentious than it is, something hard to resolve.
Science vs religion, or mysticism and holism vs. reductionism, yada yada.
Here's what I see as the actual misstep. Just because everything magnified is parts in parts in parts, doesn't mean you can ever look at a "part", a "thing", extract it from its system, and expect it to have any meaning, any relevance.
All these things are defined entirely in terms of what BEARING they have on the rest of the world. How can they be observed, what are their mechanics -- how much momentum will this part absorb from that part, or that part? To the extent that they have NO bearing, to the extent they cannot be observed, and no effects of them can be observed, THEN they are not real.
When we break away from "things" just a little it becomes clearer. What about non-things that are nonetheless "real" and scientifically quantifiable. Voltages. Temperatures. Wavelike things not just particle-like things. What is this wave side of reality? The further these get nailed down (I can't even avoid the thing-y phrases) by science the more easily we think of them too as "things" even though they are dispersed.
But what THESE kinds of things are, is patterns. Understood sets of relationships. Real to the extent they have a BEARING on ... THINGS.
So these kinds of wavey things seem to be, simply put, relationships manifest.
Side note: if you know much about matter you know that all these things ultimately seem to break down into energy, waves, and so all we've got is relationships among relationships. Patterns of change in patterns of change on the grossest and subtlest levels, so that all manner of solidity and subtlety is noticeable and distinguishable relative to an observer somewhere in the inevitable middle.
SO back to the push & pull between reductionism and holism. There is a clear point to saying "it's all tiny pieces" but it's a fallacy to GRAB a given piece, and magnify it, and say, "it's all THIS". That's using one image, one idea, of one part, to represent the whole gazillion of them. Who only are seen to be as they are in their gazillionhood, in the form that calls itself a ME.
So that being resolved, here is my theory of what it means to be self-knowing. One one level I would say I am unconsciously automatically self-knowing as a resident of the universe. My system maintains itself, and the mechanism for doing so is just plain reality, inevitability. But seen this way, it's hardly a closed system. I have not explained how food comes and goes, how my molecules replace themselves, I have not explained any basis for the CLAIM that I with the mouth and the fingers and such, am the same "thing". All I have pointed to is some kind of mindless self-sufficience of the mechanical universe.
But what is my *consciousness*? What is my "knowing", the kind I presume to "own", or to somehow be distinct from that universal grand vague automatic being-in-reality-ness-thing. What is my mind?
I am thinking it is in the relationship of my parts, the solid ones, and also the patterns and subpatterns. It is the water and the channels it follows. I am thinking I am self-aware to the extent my pieces & parts individually and/or collectively REFLECT the whole (which I presume to be).
Who decides when they truly do reflect the whole me? Well at some point, the collective pattern self-adjudicates. Or maybe it doesn't, but at some point OUTSIDERS start to agree that this pattern is a self-knower, self-reflector. The outside patterns start to model/reflect ME as an EXAMPLE of what-they-are (self-reflectors). Relative to ourselves we are real enough to speak of.
And so I am not real or unreal, but a way of seeing. Meaning emerges in the relationships among the parts, and the meaning is capable of meaning itself, at least in the obvious context, which is itself. And that is its proper context for self-reference. Strangely enough it's kind of more of that mindless self-sufficience. But it's rich and personal this time.
But there is this. Who is to say I know myself properly? Who is to say my perspective on me is truest? My conscious perspective is some particular summation of reflections in me. My parts reflect the whole world around me and model me in the center of it. Again the question is, who decides when these parts truly DO reflect the WHOLE me?
I hinted that outside folks start validating it. Still we can all be collectively deluded, or deluded each in our own way about what I am. What is the RIGHT way to even interpret these partial reflections, these patterns in me. I have said that the proper context for me is already where it needs to be, but where is that.
Surely the proper context for the meaning of me, for interpreting the collective reflections in my parts, is whatever context is the FULLEST, most far-reaching. What each of these parts and patterns mean in relation to the WHOLE dang truth.
So I just gave two separate most-proper-contexts for myself and my meaning. How to resolve? Sure enough if you know my thinking, the answer must be a synthesis. Find a line between two pieces and walk on that line till you find where they meet.
ALL OF THIS IS BULLSHIT. Back to what's coming clearer. I don't even know myself, or have an experience, or ILLUSION of knowing myself, except to the extent that SOME of my parts collectively systematically reflect me. They don't have to be "correct" because whatever they DO reflect already is present, already interacts with the world and types and speaks. The reflection already interacts with itself, evolves and stabilizes, sustained by evolved and stabilized currents of food-matter. I float loosely on the surface of all that magic shit. And it seems to me the "truer" my image of me (or at least I take it as a guidepost), the LOOSER it is, the SIMPLER it is, the more self referential, platonic and mathematical it is.
So I can take God the same way. God is the would-be-self of all of it. All of it is the proper and highest context for interpreting who I am. But God like me only can be thought to exist, to the extent that the parts reflect the whole. Inevitably I think they do. We can diagnose plenty of disorders in these parts, we can see the lack of harmony, lack of reflection, on the grand scale just as we can see it in ourselves. But ultimately these parts can't help but reflect their whole -- we just want the prettiest song, the most meaningful kind of reflection.
As I see it we are leading God into self-awareness. We are parts of sufficient complexity to sit in the "middle" of the equation, having achieved this self-awareness thanks to our own parts, and we now look upward (or better, outward) and ask what we as parts reflect in the bigger system. We are welcome to humor God as real by whatever name, and this turns out to be an experienceable organic relationship of part-to-whole, grown out of childish myths and maturing into something actual.
It's all a big-ass fractal and I think we can work inwardly and see the work happening outwardly, and vice versa. Yesh.