[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The New Global Myth and The Event andthe Story

[Bill Schlesinger]

I'm finding David Brooks' The Social Animal rather fascinating around the
issue of consciousness (he focuses a lot on the function of unconscious
thought and its ability to synthesize wider data streams).  Consciousness
there is compared to the 'flashlight' function with focused illumination on
a small sample of reality.  The interconnectedness of the mind both
biologically and subconsciously with its social environment is incredibly
powerful.  Without recapping his book (still in process of reading it) he
suggests components that are blended in different ways in different streams.
Worth a look if you have a chance.

 

Bill Schlesinger

Project Vida

3607 Rivera Avenue

El Paso, TX 79905

(915) 533-7057 x 207

(915) 533-7158 FAX

 <mailto:pvida at whc.net> pvida at whc.net

www.projectvidaelpaso.org

  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Rod Rippel
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 6:08 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community; Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The New Global Myth and The Event
andthe Story

 

Keenan

 

            Your guild's topic, consciousness, is certainly a current
cutting edge concern of philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, poets
and the thinking-curious in general.  Neuroscientists especially are very
interested in the phenomenon of consciousness and its relationship to our
brains and the mind.  I hope your group is reading everything you can get on
the subject.  Here are a few random thoughts.

 

            I like Gene Marshall's first paragraph where he uses poetry to
address the issue of consciousness and goes on to say we don't know anything
about what it is.   All we human beings have is our language and we are both
enabled and frustrated by it.  It sets the possibilities and the limits of
our thinking and expressing our thoughts.  It (language) has shaped our
culture, sciences, and how we find and express meaning.  It does this
through the stories and metaphors which have become attached to words,
metaphors being the inherited baggage each word carries which relates that
word ultimately to some concrete object or sense perception.  The word
becomes a shorthand code for all its attached stories and relationships.
Overtime we have become used to using the word for complex meanings and
abstract concepts without referring back to the concrete metaphorical
underpinnings.  Take for example the word 'justice,' or fairness.  We don't
have to repeat the story of the Vineyard Owner and the Day Laborers each
time we use those words.

 

            My point is this:  Consciousness is a word, an experience,
without an adequate metaphor or none at all.  No one has any idea what
consciousness is in itself.  Using another word doesn't help.  Awareness is
just another word.  It doesn't describe the nature of consciousness, its
origin, how it arises, its essence, if you will.  We are very adept at
describing our awarenesses and the impact they have on our lives, behaviors
and interpretations but all this tells us nothing about the nature of
consciousness itself.  Like fish in the ocean we use it without any idea
what it is.

 

            Neuroscience works on what part of our brains is consciousness
associated with.  How do we measure consciousness?  Does cognition precede
our consciousness?  Does consciousness create the external world we perceive
exclusively, or just to some degree?  Why is the perception of our
individual consciousness so apparently uniform?  Are there degrees of
consciousness (say between H. Sapiens and other animals)(is it arrogant to
say we have a higher degree)?  Is there a reality external to our
perceptions (thoughts)?  Are we creating our world totally?  New models and
hypotheses are possible every day.

 

            Poets and artists are the experts at tweaking new metaphors out
of their media (ie. Words, paints, sounds, etc..).  They are coming at this
from their angle.  Poetry may be a great avenue!  New myths will emerge.

 

            This is not the first time humankind has been confronted with
the Mystery (or as DHL has said, the unknown unknown).  This is a diversion:
but I think of the ancients who 'invented' the character of YHWH and began
to tell stories of their encounter with this One.  This irascible, jealous,
intemperate, flamboyant, arbitrary, demanding, judgmental, merciful,
hands-on warrior-god who changes his mind and makes bargains.  Imagine later
when they looked back at their stories and they said,  "How creative of us,
we have made YHWH in our own image, we have chosen Him and He has made us
His chosen people!"  The entire Tanakh (Old Testament) has become a
meta-metaphor about God (The Mystery) a meta-metaphor which can hold meaning
even in the face of such an Unknown Unknown.   "Let us covenant and agree to
tell This Story, it shall be our Reality, and we will remember it and tell
it to our children, and observe it with feasts and dancing and singing and
cleaving to it, forsaking all else."

 

            Such is the nature of mythology.  And how did it collapse.
Someone had the idea that it was literally the truth!  

 

            Myth is so deep that we know it true but we must Decide that
truth and not rob it of the Mystery. 

Rod Rippel

 

 

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