DirtyBloodMachine » Philosophy

God, the All, and Us

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:59:15 +0000

I have had a strong or recurring belief that whatever divine spark exists in the cosmos, exists within and throughout it. This is a much more natural and powerful idea for me than that of an external, anthropomorphic creator being. The concept of God only carries the weight it connotes and makes sense to me if nothing exists beyond it. A superhero type being that gets jealous, has chosen people, excludes those with other spiritual faiths, metes out eternal punishments and rewards, and that kind of thing, hardly seems worthy, for my tastes, of the status of God. My idea of God is much bigger, all encompassing, nothing would be outside it, it would be woven all through reality and the cosmos. Everyone would be a piece of this sacredness. Every animal and plant, and the Earth from which we all spring. The biosphere. All the processes of nature. Evolution and Chaos and all the unimaginable stuff that exists out there. All of this is God, and everything else too.

This idea is nothing new. It’s called Pantheism, and it’s the original Old Time Religion. Maybe people couldn’t deal with it because of the responsibility it requires. To accept it you have to accept that we are all, each and every one of us, sacred. There would be no justification for sexism, racism, or classism. People wouldn’t accept witch-burning, genocidal movements, or persecution of non-heterosexuals. Patriotic Nationalism would never have acquired all the overblown militaristic puffiness that it has; and, we couldn’t have decimated the raft of species or the aspects of the planet that we have so thoughtlessly done. We would have been obliged to have gotten along, to have found ways to respect each other even when we disagreed, even when we were different from one another. It’s easier, I guess, to have personal, cultural gods so that we can justify our hatred of one another, the ravaging of our planet, and hope for (or even believe in) a heavenly plane where we can appear our idealized best for all eternity. Well, not all of us have Fallen for that one. I can see having a slew of local, personal gods, entities that are associated with various specific aspects of nature (since the cosmos is way too big for us to comprehend in its entirety), but then they would each need to be acknowledged as one of many, various, small g, gods, not the Big One, not the All.

What might a notion of Pantheism imply? That we are each a human being, sensible body and consciousness, experiential node in the God-complex, each with a specific, unique, embodied perspective. That everyone’s experience, his or her thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, would also be the experience of God. I think that the potential for experience, and consciousness too, exists coiled inside the potential for life which infuses every cell, every atom. They have to be assembled into the right kind of functioning aggregate, but the possibilities are unlimited. (Just look at all the craziness that has sprung up here over the last so many millions of years, and this must be only a drop in the bucket of potentiality). Imagine how the experience of All would vary with internal states of strife and killing or internal states of cooperation and joy. Our conflicts with one another would be a cancer or disease within God.

Of course, human beings are a flawed species, and maybe we can’t help it. And tension, difference, dynamism permeates the All, keeps it going. And we are each born and have our day and then die, like every other countless number of specific entities. Life to Death to Life to Death to Life to Death…

I look out the window and watch the trees blowing in the breeze, breathe and let it go…

One and All

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:26:19 +0000

Everything is connected. Interconnectivity, by a variety of means and modes, is ubiquitous.

Maybe the World and an Individual is similar to a Text and a Reader, and the acts of Living or Reading, and the production of meaning and the ways of understanding, are dependent on various frames of reference, cultural conventions, the individual reader’s experience…Maybe it is like a detective assembling a solution from clues that can be assembled in an infinite number of ways, that can yield an infinite number of solutions—like the diversity of beings that can originate from the different organizations of a set of DNA/chromosomes—and, with each of these different solutions having a unique bearing on the meaning of the World/Text and the understanding of the Individual/Reader. The particular way a life is lived or one reads has consequences on the appearance/perception of the World/Text and the subjectivity, identity of the Individual/Reader.

Opening up to various methods of living/reading respects and utilizes the endless potentiality that exists virtually everywhere. Just beyond the Actual, behind every mundane and superficial perception of what is Real lies the Virtual bubbling with numerous unrealized possibilities. Some sources may tell us this isn’t true. Institutional control and the cultivation of consumers by capitalist enterprises, requires a reasonably stable ideology of the status quo and enforces the pressure of a reductive movement of homogenization. The Individual/Reader, however, may yet have unlimited opportunities to slip out from under this wave of homogenization and enter into a polymorphous production of rhizomatic play. Question habits, tastes; approach situations/look at things differently. Be, Exist, Differently.

These or parallel ideas emerged from and ran through (although in a rather vague and intuitive way) my art practice and process of painting. I liked the flat, two-dimensional surface that painting uses because this surface limitation can throw into relief the unlimited possibility of graphic marks that can be executed upon it. The surface holds a potential for a boundless array of articulations. I tried to vary my approach, do away with plans and pre-conceived notions, make shapes or use colors that I thought were “ugly,” question my tastes, aesthetic notions, open up my methods to allow for the unexpected, etc. I found that certain elements would continually occur. I was happy to discover these elements and allow them to appear, feeling that they indicated a more important or deeper level in my psychic disposition than the more superficial media or questionable (commercial, corporate) culturally derived sources. (A way to clean up, wash off a layer of filth). I made many free associations, let forms grow, then intuitively covered up areas, allowing only traces to remain and suggest new structures, on which new tissues of markings could be added…

To uncover processes of painting through which sensations of difference can become manifest, and thereby enter into consciousness.

Underneath the distinctions, beyond where the categories fall apart and leak out all their contents, an undifferentiated All churns in messy, seething flux. And, though our way of life, and maybe our sanity, may depend on the mediation and/or denial of it, it is still out there, all around us, pulsing wildly and absurdly, despite our actions and discourse.

A Crude Stab at Sense, Truth, and Meaning

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:04:40 +0000

What is sense, what does it mean in the expression “making sense” or to “not make sense”? Isn’t this the sense of sensory experience, the experience of information one receives about the world through her or his senses? Sometimes it seems to me this term is being pushed to mean something logical, rational, conceptual, or intellectual. But, primarily, sense has to do with what we experience through our senses, and that which makes sense is that which is not contradicted by this experience. What corresponds to our experience of sensory perceptions—the experience of listening to music or feeling bare feet on wet grass or the caress of another or the smell of plants or the sight of light streaming through trees or the sound of bustling traffic or crashing waves or the feel of a cool breeze or the taste of a stimulating meal—these are things that make sense.

And what about meaning and truth, or our sense of meaning and our sense of truth? How might these concepts tie together? I think these things arise from experiential relationships. I don’t think we can talk about absolute or objective truth, because that implies extra-species knowledge. Human beings can only perceive a narrow band in the spectrum of light waves, or sound waves, we have a limited set of senses, and a certain consciousness that has evolved in relation to our language, technology, needs, abilities, and experience. Since we can never get beyond this, all the concepts or knowledge we have about anything is largely determined by the experience of a specific group of human beings. Our concepts of meaning and truth are therefore rooted in the specific experiences and relationships that people have with the world and others. In some important, fundamental ways what is true is that which makes sense.

These concepts are pulled in both a personal or subjective direction and also towards a widespread and common direction—which is usually thought of as objectivity, but I don’t think it is really, instead it seems to be a view that is or can be widely agreed upon by many human beings, or sites of subjectivity. So, whether the notions are broad or specific, they still have their root in individual experience, and the necessary relationship that arises from experiencer and experience. It is in this relationship between experiencer and experience, between the thought/feeling or affect of subjective awareness and the thing or event perceived or apprehended where truth is manifested. It is how the knower is connected to the known. In this way, a high degree of truth might come from a highly thought and felt sensory experience, where a low truth value would result from a weak or flimsy connection between the subjective affect and the world of experience.

Meaning is related to the exchange of expressions or statements of feeling-thoughts/affects. When these can be expressed accurately, in a way that makes sense in the experience of a perceiver/interpreter and fits into the relations of the world, then these expressions can be meaningful. Must these expressions or statements be understood to have meaning? Meaning does appear to be related to the understanding of a sign within a certain relational context, but a sign doesn’t have to be understood to be a carrier of meaning, and might have a type of meaning regardless of being understood. Consider a person making an utterance in a crowd of people, where no one understands what it means. Yet it still might mean something to someone, it might trigger a thought or reaction that means something or it might just mean a nuisance or noise. For another person who comes along and understands perfectly, perhaps the person speaks the same language or has had past experiences that enable a higher degree of understanding, there will be a different kind of meaning. Or, consider a book lying about unread. It carries the potential of meaning even though it might not be presently engaged in any meaningful relationships. It might mean something to someone as a paperweight, but that is a meaning detached from the inner text. Someone else reads the book, understands some of it, and unpacks a certain amount and type of meaning. Another person reads it, understands it differently, perhaps more, and unpacks another amount and degree of meaning. The quality of meaning seems to be linked to the relation of understanding between the experiencer/interpretter and the sign-thing/event, the carrier of meaning of the experience. And this quality or degree of understanding and meaning is also dependent on that which makes sense, and connected to the truth-value, with truth and sense providing a ground for meaning and understanding. And this process of apprehending a truth that is expressed in a form through the senses so that it is meaningfully understood all happens in the event of experience where a conscious body is connected to the world by an awareness of the presentation of an aspect, statement, sign, or expression of the world.

Undercurrents

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:09:02 +0000

There is always a Movement with Counter-Movements.

If we look at dance music, for example, we find this in the rhythm of all the groove oriented or funky forms. There is a dominant movement described in 4/4 time on the One, Two, Three, and Four; and, there is also an alternative, counter-movement, which both conforms to the dominant rhythm as well as works against it in a relationship of tension. It may for instance start on the One, but then proceed by increments of 3/16’s, landing on the 1.75, 2.5, 3.25, and 4. The Four will get it back into conformity so that it can start again in unison on the One. This is more than just random syncopation; it is a counter-rhythm proper.

We might extend this principle, in an even more crude, simplistic, and basic way, if that can be tolerated, to the sphere of politics and the authority of the state. There will always exist a dominant authority, and there will always exist an element of intolerance or dissent to this dominant authority. Let’s call the state of authority Control, and the movement of intolerance and dissent Anarchy. Control cannot be absolute and will always give rise to accompanying movements of Anarchy. Anarchy will always be in tension with Control, but will also be subordinate to it, will be conforming and reacting to Control. It cannot displace Control, because if it ever did it would suddenly take over the role of Control, while all of its opposing movements would become the new Anarchy. The rebel challenger kills the king, only to become a new king, with all the king’s duties, including defending himself from rebel challengers.

In the realm of thought, since the age of reason, through the enlightenment and the industrial revolution, there has been a dominant movement for the restructuring of society and methods of science and production under the banner of Reason and Rationality. And, there have been the attendant counter-movements. These counter movements have not been completely anti- or unreasonable. More often they have questioned the conception or constitution of reason, provoking it to try and define itself, and critiquing the range and method of its application. I was always attracted to elements in these counter-movements to reason, especially in the arts: Romanticism, the Gothic revival, Expressionism, and Surrealism. It is interesting that in addition to being somewhat antagonistic or critical to Reason, or perhaps because of this, these movements have also been considered Experimental or Avant-garde.

Some elements of these movements have been: the mystery and wildness of nature; the sublime; the supernatural and occult; intuition, imagination, emotions (including trepidation, angst, anxiety) and subjectivity; the psychological and psychic structures; melodrama; uncontrollable subconscious play; the fantastic; the primitive; the atmospheric and hidden; the crazy and revolting; horror, terror, and awe…