Your body treats meaning as a discretionary expense and cuts it first. The emptiness is a symptom, and it has an upstream cause. A two-week experiment, six steps, to turn the funding back on.
I think there are some basic conceptual issues built into the foundations of our culture that need to be addressed as a society.
Most basically, form versus energy. Our nervous system processes form/information, while our digestive system processes the energy and the circulation system distributes it. Steering, motor, transmission.
Yet we have constructed an entire culture around the information, because that's what the "smart" people focus on. So we end up with a bunch of hollow formalisms, as we constantly chase those markers and loose sight of all that goes on behind them. This current hullabaloo around AI being a prime example. "It from bit."
I think the clearest way to distinguish between energy and form is to examine our sense of time.
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so it is our experience of time that it is this narrative flow, from past to future, while the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
No time traveling around the fabric of spacetime, as it is more a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.
Energy is conserved, because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
The present goes past to future, as the patterns generated go future to past, because energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, as the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting consciousness manifests as energy.
As it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise, there does tend to be this cognitive focus on the patterns, the information, then trying to extract explanation from what is effect.
Given the entire edifice of human knowledge and learning is built on and revolves around this sequential process, where each generation builds on what it is given and passes it on, questioning the actual mechanics of reality runs up against a lot of inertia.
Yet we are reaching a point where all our boxed in lives are breaking apart in ways simply sticking another bandaid over the bullet wound will not solve. We really need to do a total reset.
Thank you Jan and thank you John. Your conceptualizations are most helpful. Be not discouraged; we “normies” (a blunt distinction) are overcoming a lifetime of indoctrination. But thoughts like yours are a source of light. I will soon be sixty-five. In case I’ve ever learned anything, it may be that our patience is a virtue. We persevere with love. Best to both of you. All the best, Clark in Florida
I have long subscribed to the practice of gaging my energy as the determinant for how I will spend my time. To underscore the author’s point, The Grip still finds its way. …I’ve already found my one change to make.
Keep in mind it isn't just "your" energy, but all that surrounds you.
In many ways this is not mysterious, so much as all encompassing.
The ways you interact and balance all the flows and sources, even to the point of the planet as a field. Gravity is what makes standing upright both necessary and a privilege.
When you really plug into it, it's like being a cell in a larger organism. Where you want to be a white blood cell, not a cancer cell.
Life is like a sentence. The end is punctuation. What matters, is how well you tie the rest of the story together.
The fuzziness that is dismissed as noise in our search for that elusive order is what connects the larger reality. The energy being traded around. The light you see reflected off the surfaces around you are the frequencies not absorbed by them.
So the node is synchronization. Everything on the same wavelength, functioning as one. While the network is harmonization. All the energies traded around, creating overall equilibrium.
As multicellular organisms, it is our nervous system that coordinates all the cells and organs into one fairly coherent entity. It is the circulation system that sustains harmony across this ecosystem of cells and organs.
Yes, it is a good reminder, not to forget inclusion of surrounding energy, with the node and network metaphor tying it all together, thank you. The nervous and circulatory systems’ descriptions make elegant, helpful sense, as well.
Since I am here, I will note that the endocannabinoid system includes regulation of both the circulatory and nervous system and is supported primarily by exercise and a diet inclusive of omega 3’s.
I tend to be 19th century about it, having grown up around more horses and cattle than people and working outside. So I'm a bit of a plant, in just taking the energy this current world feeds me and trying to sort and organize it as best as possible. Having made it to 66 and pushed the reset button on the nine lives a few times, I just go with the flow. Much of this world is toxic, but also educational.
I think there are some basic conceptual issues built into the foundations of our culture that need to be addressed as a society.
Most basically, form versus energy. Our nervous system processes form/information, while our digestive system processes the energy and the circulation system distributes it. Steering, motor, transmission.
Yet we have constructed an entire culture around the information, because that's what the "smart" people focus on. So we end up with a bunch of hollow formalisms, as we constantly chase those markers and loose sight of all that goes on behind them. This current hullabaloo around AI being a prime example. "It from bit."
I think the clearest way to distinguish between energy and form is to examine our sense of time.
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so it is our experience of time that it is this narrative flow, from past to future, while the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
No time traveling around the fabric of spacetime, as it is more a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.
Energy is conserved, because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
The present goes past to future, as the patterns generated go future to past, because energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, as the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting consciousness manifests as energy.
As it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise, there does tend to be this cognitive focus on the patterns, the information, then trying to extract explanation from what is effect.
Given the entire edifice of human knowledge and learning is built on and revolves around this sequential process, where each generation builds on what it is given and passes it on, questioning the actual mechanics of reality runs up against a lot of inertia.
Yet we are reaching a point where all our boxed in lives are breaking apart in ways simply sticking another bandaid over the bullet wound will not solve. We really need to do a total reset.
Thank you Jan and thank you John. Your conceptualizations are most helpful. Be not discouraged; we “normies” (a blunt distinction) are overcoming a lifetime of indoctrination. But thoughts like yours are a source of light. I will soon be sixty-five. In case I’ve ever learned anything, it may be that our patience is a virtue. We persevere with love. Best to both of you. All the best, Clark in Florida
I have long subscribed to the practice of gaging my energy as the determinant for how I will spend my time. To underscore the author’s point, The Grip still finds its way. …I’ve already found my one change to make.
Keep in mind it isn't just "your" energy, but all that surrounds you.
In many ways this is not mysterious, so much as all encompassing.
The ways you interact and balance all the flows and sources, even to the point of the planet as a field. Gravity is what makes standing upright both necessary and a privilege.
When you really plug into it, it's like being a cell in a larger organism. Where you want to be a white blood cell, not a cancer cell.
Life is like a sentence. The end is punctuation. What matters, is how well you tie the rest of the story together.
The fuzziness that is dismissed as noise in our search for that elusive order is what connects the larger reality. The energy being traded around. The light you see reflected off the surfaces around you are the frequencies not absorbed by them.
So the node is synchronization. Everything on the same wavelength, functioning as one. While the network is harmonization. All the energies traded around, creating overall equilibrium.
As multicellular organisms, it is our nervous system that coordinates all the cells and organs into one fairly coherent entity. It is the circulation system that sustains harmony across this ecosystem of cells and organs.
Yes, it is a good reminder, not to forget inclusion of surrounding energy, with the node and network metaphor tying it all together, thank you. The nervous and circulatory systems’ descriptions make elegant, helpful sense, as well.
Since I am here, I will note that the endocannabinoid system includes regulation of both the circulatory and nervous system and is supported primarily by exercise and a diet inclusive of omega 3’s.
I tend to be 19th century about it, having grown up around more horses and cattle than people and working outside. So I'm a bit of a plant, in just taking the energy this current world feeds me and trying to sort and organize it as best as possible. Having made it to 66 and pushed the reset button on the nine lives a few times, I just go with the flow. Much of this world is toxic, but also educational.
https://substack.com/@johnmerryman/p-193985079