Against Dogma

 In the end, we are a large mass of multiple conflicting interests, all with disproportionate shares of power and the ability to shape. With repetition, structures develop: in the brain, in social mores and understanding, in routine. In this way, there is a larger path of human progress that really no group of people can influence completely. It’s simply a great mass that we are all chipping away at in order to shape it in the manner we deem right. And so let’s forget utopia; these ideals can lead to rigid, totalitarian rule. You can’t bend people past their capacities to align them with ideals; they’ll probably snap back eventually. The best we can do is work as hard as we can to make the greatest dents in the greater shape, and hope that the form itself catches on. 

Social Tension

Social circumstances lead to our individual behaviors, putting our social compositions into “states.” For example, if multiple people engage in selfish behavior, then non adherents have to revert to that sort of behavior to survive, lest they fall behind and lose out on resources. But if the society as a whole is in a cooperative state, then it is the selfish actors that are censured and excluded from the social product. It takes a certain critical threshold from one state to snap to another. It is the social connection and the reciprocation between connections that provides the tension that keeps the state coherent and stable. If you take a few high energy individuals that project a certain amount of energy that is a certain quality to enough nodes, it spreads through the network in a sympathetic manner. 

Ideology in Time and Space

Each individual performs a function in accordance with what he or she believes is right. What he or she believes is right is in the end, something that he or she must simply do. This is what could be referred to as destiny: simply the overriding impulse above all other impulses to take a certain course of action, which has its roots in the individual’s conception and development, whose roots extend into environment and heredity and so on.

So as each individual performs a function, he or she proceeds to either build something, help build something else, challenge what is being built or even destroy something in the process. So we have ideologies, anti-ideologies, and all sorts of alliances in between. All of these activities end up producing various states of affairs that are based on ideologies, and these states of affairs hold up if the ideologies are strong or appropriate to the environment and represented by strong enough individuals and are not challenged by strong enough individuals. And there are multiple ideologies, all producing multiple states of affairs, with all of their adherents advocating their own views and combating those that they disagree with. Whatever holds up amid this tumult of human activity ends up being what is. This is aggregate human reality.

Is it that whatever survives persists because of blind luck? Did it happen to be the strongest ideology that led to the most resilient societies to subsist on the planet? Or is there something correct about these ideologies, something harmonious, given the current constitution of not only the planet but human social reality?

So what is to happen now? Well, all ideological systems produce societies that in turn change the constitution of the very citizens that are processed within their logic, so that in turn, a society is forced to implement incremental changes along the way to conform to the topography, until of course a major crisis forces the society to revise its very ideology, which can create significant pressures. 

Dialogue

When we enter a dialogue, we submit to each other a constructed, self-contained body of logic for each-other to operate within. We are encouraged to operate within a peer’s offered body of logic, and in a healthy reciprocal conversation, we construct a new body of logic in turn for the other person to consider and base their construction on, and so on. This can break down when one of the conversationalists insists on maintaining their own framework, though some frameworks can be better than others, and if both in the dialogue recognize this, the conversation can move forward.

But our pleasure out of a conversation, and our willingness to extend a conversation, depends on whether the participants not only allow each other space to advance their own opinion, but whether each interfaces with the submitted opinion. So we gain pleasure out of not only creating, but having others interact with our creations and experiencing others creations in turn. 

Breather

So I've just posted a succession of heady spurts. No I didn't actually smoke meth and spend the last couple of days marathon writing, I've just been dumping a number of the writings I've been sitting on for the past 2-4 years.

Even 2 years can make a difference. I feel like some of these writings are a bit manic and abstract, and that some of them are even a bit naive or confused. Many of my notes I've simply jettisoned because they were either unacceptable or they were stepping stones to some better writings I've already done. However I have been wanting to get this stuff up for some time. This blog was part of an ambitious project and I suppose I've dropped the ball on this one, but at least I can get a lot of this stuff posted and just let it sit and see what happens. And maybe provide some palliative for my raging OCD.

I do intend to continue with my project, but given my own standards and habits of sharp self-criticism, I feel that I have much more work to do, and growth to do as a writer, philosopher, and simple living being. Back at it then. Plenty more to come.

Progression of an Idea

So ideas can shape our environments and the way we interact with one another. Ideas seem to gain currency with not only logical consistency, but harmonization with the surrounding reality in accordance with the collective mental structures of those that support the idea, and this all when you have bottom-up generation. When power centralizes around a certain body of ideas, institutions form under it and it seems that a state arises along with law and security to maintain a logically consistent system.

This state of affairs progresses to a top-down administration of ideological realities, where the ideology is no longer necessarily prized on its consistency or harmonization, but because it is the dominant discourse and the “main game in town” so to speak.

The ideology, and the power structure that forms around it, becomes progressively calcified. Power, with more to lose, takes more extreme measures to protect its gains. Those who have more want more, those who have less get less. And so social problems increase and force is increased to account for that. 

Aperture of Awareness

As a new idea or worldview is being born (perhaps out of the ashes and the crisis of a dying one) the mind’s aperture is blown wide open and there is a vivid awareness of cosmic frameworks and long term causal chains. Perhaps with every new generation however, there is less of an urgency to improve, and the mind’s aperture closes further and further, focusing more on self-gratification, leading to short-term thinking.