Friday, March 28, 2008

I wasn't surprised at this remark by Mark Cuban. I've had the same impression myself to some degree. Mostly in regard to e-mail. It's my opinion that many people are realizing simultaneously that e-mail is too public for personal communications. You can't take it back once its in the servers, and then it's not so romantic anymore.

http://www.dailytech.com/Mark+Cuban+Claims+Internet+Is+Dead/article11287.htm

I recognize Mark Cuban's name from the media. He's gotta be more knowledgeable about the technology associated with the internet than I am. I didn't read the article all the way through. I don't think the internet itself is going anywhere. I think it has to adopt to the way the world changes just like all the technologies it replaced. I don't think the direction it does go will be to replace old technology with brand new gee whiz killer apps.

I think Apple has the right model with the iPhone and the iPod touch. By that i mean a small handheld unit that has all the features needed by the individual, and as a way to interact with larger systems. It seems to be already taking place with cell phones and their predecessors.

I don't like the idea of a national ID, and I sure don't know how such a thing could be implemented, but I have no doubt as to it's inevitability. That's as obvious to me as the fact that those little lapel communicators in the space shows on TV will turn up fairly quickly. I use to read comic books about Flash Gordon. Lots of the ideas that come true in technology derives straight from the old print media. The ideas that will manifest themselves in the future will come from the media people are exposed to now.

I suspect that if you wanted to predict the future and establish a reputation for being right a lot of the time, then you only have to figure out what the modern equivalent of comic books are today. I'm old. I don't give a damn. I won't be here even if I should live so long.

It's hard to say whether the degrading of the quality of life associated with the aging process has that much to do with my conclusions, but I'm fairly sure that living a very long time due to modern discoveries might not be that desirable.

I set out as a young seeker with a huge amount of curiosity and a keen desire to understand life as well as I could. I've been more successful than I could have ever dreamed. The result is that I'm more removed from life than ever. How much more deeply could I go inside without dumping the old body?

Sometime I write about abandoning and being abandoned by the families I once had. I'm not sure anything could have been done differently. In my own mind I ended up here living alone on the edge of town because that's what I wanted to happen. I wanted to be alone and without a real good reason not to spend a lot of time writing.

I really thought earlier that what I wanted as an end result of writing was to get some quality feedback from the world about the stuff I wrote. I have never submitted a manuscript for publication of any sort. Even I thought that odd. I never attempted to publish myself even though my youngest brother and next door neighbor has. I didn't understand why such was so until recently when I turned off the Settings that allowed people to make Comments.

That's when I realized I didn't write to get feedback. I don't write to acquire fame and fortune. I write to find out what's what with me. It's important for some reason for me to publish what I write on my blogs so that there is at least a chance someone might read what I write, but i just don't wanna know what they think about it. I don't want to have to answer and be held responsible for the kind of stuff I write here by saying what I see. I capture drifting thoughts by writing them down. I can't do that and verify their veracity or not in the process.

Most of the time I write to see what will show up on my computer screen. It's not automatic writing in the way I understand automatic writing, because I have a lotta say so during the time I'm composing, and even more so when I edit. Often, I call the source I reach for to write from "the cornucopia". Why reinvent the wheel?

I'm very attracted to Joseph Campbell's notion of there only being one real story, and every variation of it is dictated by environmental facticities. He writes about the process of what he calls The Heroes Journey. To me what he describes is the same sort of behavior I seem to display when I enter into composing mode. In attempting to say what I see using the English language as my medium is to enter the hero's path, and my effort to choose the words and expressions I feel will get me over the hump and reach a conclusion seems very much like taking a journey or making a quest or just plain sojourning.

I guess I'm guilty of using writing as a way of coping with the fact that I'm not a very reliable person as far as other people are concerned. I constantly make promises I can't keep, and worse, never intend to keep even if I swear to God on a stack of Bibles. In essence, I choose myself over the other. Why would I not?

I have to choose myself over the other to take the hero's journey. Why do you think the Knights of King Arthur's court in the grail parables each found their own path through the woods to seek the grail. They didn't have any choice, because that's what the grail demanded of them. Either come alone or don't come at all.

Any creative artist pretty much has to choose themselves over the other if they wanna express themselves through their chosen media. Powerful choices have to be made at every turn of an creative project that has devastating implications to the person who has chosen themselves. Many, many competent craftsmen decide not to, and get along as well or better as the ones who choose themselves.

I've never been able to justify my own behavior. It took a long time to realize I didn't have to. Nobody knows. I'm aware I've been writing "Nobody knows." for a while now. It disgusts me to no end to realize how absolute that is in my own trail of tears. As soon as I become aware that nobody knows or can, in real time, a feat I"ve gone to great lengths to bring to pass, I get the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach during the subjective experience of total hopelessness.

Experiencing hopelessness is like a process I'm always a part of that I can ignore for only so long. Eventually, the temples of my delusion come tumbling down. Then, it's mulberry bush city, and all fall down, I slowly realize what a fool I've been, and then immediately I"m rebuilding London Bridge with even more deluded fervor than previously.

Nothing fills me with the desire to lose myself in some self-assigned, make-work task like an unexpected encounter with the terror of hopelessness. I've understood the way it is with me and terror for a long time. I've spent a lifetime seeking it out in it's deepest lairs. The terror is time. Terror is the tie-to-me. Ti-me. Notice how I use the hyphen to divide and conquer. Is there another human strategy than divide and conquer? I'm not even from Missouri and you gotta show me.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

It's not unusual for me to underestimate how fast I'll learn something new. Especially if it's a process where the proof of the pudding is how quickly the new skill can become second nature. These days, it seems like my entire purpose for getting up in the morning is to write my blog entry, and to play the major and minor scales on my new digital piano. I think I've roughly memorized the mechanical aspect in the sense that I know which piano keys to press down on and in what order. My thetic consciousness is attempting to teach my non-thetic consciousness something it appears to assume it already knows. Why would it not?

I'm beginning to assume that my thetic (theoretical) consciousness obeys a set of rules of conscience it adopted for the more primitive non-thetic (actual) consciousness to abide by instead of mere instinct. It's a tricky business. To make this leap of faith actuate itself in real time, I have to act like the non-thetic mind is synonymous with Sartre's description of Being-in-itself. It lacks nothing. Nothing is missing from the in-itself, but where could it go? It's simple. Nothingness is not a possibility for homo sapiens. That is, until Being-for-itself upsurges into nothingness outside being-in-itself, as it's futile attempt to institute it's purported being as a separate reality. Not gonna happen.

The term "all" is the keyword for what I'm exploring here. Being-in-itself (as the plenitude) is sort of like a can of worms. Each worm assumes it has it's own separate reality. Why would it not? If it wiggles like a worm, then it's gotta be a worm, right? Jack this perception up another order of magnitude to the level of a whole can of worms and the individual worm can't actually be considered a separate reality because it doesn't control it's own fate. It could be chosen as the next fetching meal to be used as bait on a sharp hook. I find it difficult to imagine any particular worm is wiggling specifically to get away from or to position itself as the most likely choice or know it's involved in a process where it has no choice. It's a freaking worm. It wiggles.

Something upsurges from this cosmic soup of wiggling squiggles, but not just anything or everything. Bob Monroe called them "Curls" back in the last millennium. Some math types are now trying to call them "strings" as if they've come up with something new under the Sun.

The thetic consciousness gets where it goes by working a theory. It's theory appears to assume it's not like the other elements of being-in-itself. It upsurges into consciousness by denying it IS like the unaware others in the plenitude. It becomes aware of itself through denial. Terrible Twos? "NO!" Is that how knowing comes into ex-is-tense? Disagree with everything and something has got to come out of it. Obviously it could be anything or nothing, but a man gotta do... eh?

I get some of the lingo I use currently from reading Sartre, but many times it reminds me of mother and child. That may be the basis of the appeal of that Catholic gig. It's sort of like assuming the thetic consciousness is similar to a child being born to it's mother, and the ritualistic passage of being separated first physically, and then mentally, but then it calls for it's mother with it's last human breath. "Momma..."

This suggest Being-in-itself is entirely animalistic. We make up our spiritual life as a source of comfort. What else does the thetic consciousness ex-is for?

That IS different from the other elements of the plenitude, and it's doubt of it's sa-me-ness is what propels it into a consciousness of itself as being-for-itself. The other elements of the plenitude do not behave as if they do what they do "for" themselves. None of that multitudinous mass of non-individual elements have their own ground of being from which to claim they possess a separate reality as a foundation for being an individual monad. Boll weevils looking for a home?

Some say the nomad is mad,
but they don't understand,
that the nomad must travel
at the madman's command.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

I get little glimpses of it. I hear it in between the two notes I strike with the thumb and pinky fingers of my left hand to create the bottom end of a Bb chord. It always catches me off-guard, and by the time I react to it's presence, it's gone again. I see and hear it simultaneously, and yet I'm torn between deciding if that's okay or would it be better to isolate one from the other for the sake of Clarity.

It doesn't take so long any more to play all the major and minor chords using the Circle of Fifths as my guide to make sure i include all twelve keys. I still make a lot of mistakes. Some of the scales I play are smoother than others, but none of them are all that smooth. I don't always hit the keys straight on and my fingers slide off. It's gonna take a little longer than I first imagined, but working at it a little at a time will bring better results.

I've been trying to write about how the non-thetic mind does all the work if I just let it. I am presents it with what it wants to happen and gives it time, and the logos will eventually work it out as ti-me goes by. The logos is not the theoretical, abstract mind that constructs ideas. It doesn't need thought to supply it with entertainment. It just is. It takes wot's sot before it and does what it always does. The theoretical mind is that wot puts things before it. I just made this up. I wonder if it means anything?

This might have something to do with the Biblical sayings about seeking and knocking and asking and it shall be given. Asking well-formed questions of it will return startling answers. It doesn't matter who's me acts as the receptive.