Linda Ellinor, I apologize for not being more communicative. You offered to assist me, and we were planning to collaborate, and I may seem to have disappeared – except for an occasional weird post. I note your frequent, quality contributions to NCDD and about your Webinars on Climate Change.  I don’t function well in such audio dialogs. I continue to attempt sharing because I deeply believe that I have discovered some factors limiting our collective progress. The problem is that, if comprehended, my insights will motivate others to make basic changes, and such prospects are resisted. Yet, if we really are successful, we each can happily anticipate fundamental changes.  I will attempt to respond, below to your four concerns, expressed in your last email.

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nuet’s challenge is how to share these meta-meta conceptual schemes, when it’s pattern cannot be represented perceptually, or consciously experiencedEGADS, LARRY,  IF IT CAN’T EVER BE CONSCIOUSLY EXPERIENCED, THEN DO WE DREAM IT, DRAW IT, COMPOSE MUSIC TO EXPRESS IT?  WHAT IS YOUR SUGGESTION FOR GETTING IT OUT SO WE CAN WORK WITH IT?

 

What can you “experience consciously”
and
what can’t you “experience consciously”???

We only experience one specious present at a time. We can’t experience all of our lives past all-at-once. You can’t experience the “whole of Tucson”. Tucson from Windy Point is just Tucson viewed from a distance. You can’t see inside each room. You can’t experience everything you know about a topic simultaneously – or when in sequence, you don’t have all the earlier ideas in a “conscious” background.

“Meaning” (never adequately defined), I use as the semi-conscious context for the experientials we do experience.  If you focus on any part of your visual field you could name that part (including “un-named thing”) – but when we view we usually don’t experience these names it all – we couldn’t. Yet, this fact reveals how much our language influences our visual experiences. The phenomenology (philosophicalpsychologicalphenomenography is a studied field, neglected by most.

It is especially difficult because of the great personal diversity in our experientials.  Gestalt psychology attempted to point out the figure/ground distinction – but this is too simplistic. There are levels of ground, some part of the gestalt experience, but most not part of the experience – BUT are an essential scaffolding/context for the experience.  We know of behavior that is performed, but not experienced, even sub-conscious entrainment to gestures, now related to mirror neurons. We might use terms, perceptual ground vs sub-conscious context to make the distinction.

A well know, but frequently ignored FACT is: humans give far too much credit to the accuracy of their personal experiences. Social psychology has thousands of experiments that demonstrate the unreliability of experience, yet we continue to depend on the truth of our experiences.  Through dedicated, special practices a person can move the overall quality of their experience into astounding new domains (deep meditation, psychedelics )- which they often attribute to some universal reality.

Research has demonstrated that when we consciously make a decision to act, our brain has actually made that decision a short moment BEFORE we are aware of deciding to make the decision. I find this fact, actually very, very encouraging in relation to my agency.  There is never enough information in any momentary experience (specious present) for me to use in making wise decisions. Even emergency decisions for survival are make by our deeper (unconscious) beings. Knowing that there is much more active above consciousness give me strength.

I deeply believe that consciousness and experientials and “whole person agency” are very important. But, our misunderstanding of experience and making it “sacred” and all important is one of our fundamental problems.  The consciousness of self – which we share weakly with only a few species (not dogs, it appears) – is very new to Gaia and we have not yet adapted to this gift.

In using the terms sub-conscious, un-conscious, and non-conscious we attempt to base everything on consciousness. I use the analog of mental consciousness = leaf, with other parts of the mind/tree being sub-leaf, un-leaf, and non-leaf ) for branch, trunk and roots; to illustrate the fallacy of this approach.

Humans are primarily social beings. Because the social bond and relationships are not “material”, we assign them less reality than our “material” biology. But, humans can’t exist-over-time as isolated bodies. We, “experienced” as “persons”, are the organization of many experiences gained by our interacting with others (and our environments) throughout our lives. We participate in the organizing of these inputs, but even many of our organizing processes are learned from others.  Yet, we have the illusion that WE ARE SELF MADE.   Actually, we |ARE| “entities” in complementarity with the holons we are part of, and the holons that are our components, with a degree of autonomy.

|ARE|  >> I am not here claiming objective truth, an ultimate existence. Everything I say is hypothetical, a pattern in nuet. Unfortunately “most” human languages (I only know English) have syntax that implies absolute (instead of, relative) truth or claim for objective existence. [[Linda: The massive dialog of science vs Hindu theories/beliefs that I pointed to in my email, is an exemplar of this failure of language. I wasn’t recommending it as a dialog for your participation.]]

 

Linda, what you, I, and others do during the next few years and decades can’t be mapped out today. But, I believe the enormous knowledge humankind has acquired provides sufficient potential for us to do what needs doing.  It is a challenge / expedition / adventure well beyond our imaginations – but it can be real. Although we can’t map it our in detail, we do need a dynamic strategy for the long haul – which – to date – no one ever mentions.

Personal note: I don’t experience nuet. I can’t experience what I just wrote about. My whole is much more important and powerful than my conscious mind. Indeed, what has contributed to my insights has been my disabilities (lack of imagery and weak perception), so my consciousness is much less rich than most persons.  This has led me not to achieve in ways I might have in society. And today, my moment-to-moment consciousness is weakening.  I can still focus, as I am writing this sentence, but I have long forgotten what I wrote just above. I forget what I wrote yesterday and must look in my files to discover them.  I am puzzled by the literal hundreds of essays I have started in just the past year. Papers I wrote years ago I don’t remember writing; but I do recognize the ideas and can identify them as authored by Larry. Yet, nuet continues to have insight after insight. Nuet absorbs knowledge (assimilates) and then undergoes cascades of accommodations, as it emerges to greater and greater MSCC (Magnitude/Scope/Complexity/Compassion).  Larry never has managed nuet well, but Larry will not be able to manage nuet in a few years. Nuet can channel Larry’s conceptual output, but nuet has no control over the primate Larry. Larry needs help from a community for nuet to continue being productive.

 

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even though our knowledge and competencies with human systems hasn’t significantly improved in millennia.  THIS BROUGHT UP FOR ME ALL THE LEARNING FROM MY PHD IN PSYCHOLOGY.  I THINK WE DO KNOW A LOT ABOUT HUMAN SYSTEMS…OUR UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS AND WORLDVIEW AND HABITUAL PATTERNS ARE WHAT RUN THE WORLD.  WE CAN’T REALLY CHANGE MUCH BECAUSE, AS FREUD AND JUNG AND OF COURSE ALL THE OTHER THEORETICIANS HAVE TOLD US, IT IS OUR UNCONSCIOUS DIRECTING EVERYTHING EVEN THOUGH WE THINK WE ARE IN CONTROL CONSCIOUSLY WITH OUR DECISIONS.  THAT WAS WHY I FOCUSED ON BOHM’S DIALOGUE, AS IT WAS MEANT TO HELP US WITH THE HELP OF THOSE IN DIALOGUE WITH US, SURFACE THESE HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS AND BELIEFS SO WE COULD SEE HOW THEY WERE CREATING THE WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN.

Linda, what we both learned in our psychology (and other) studies was important. Thinkers and doers of the past have contributed greatly to our present situation (much positive, along with the negative). We have advanced over the centuries and decades – but it is impossible to project how far along our emergence we have come. To me, humankind is yet embryonic within Gaia, yet to be born as an infant HUMANITY (which I call NU). Over many millennia, NU will emerge through many stages (as we have, in analogy, from infants) and will seaf the uplift of Gaia – in preparation to interact with other Gaias in the universe. Gaia has gifted humankind with access to information free & liberated from embedment in matter/energy systems. This is a new FEATURE in our physical universe! And, it is a dangerous tool in the hands of embryos, blinded by their self-consciousness (probably necessary to utilize this new, liberated information).

Larry/nuet has just awakened, with the realization that the sci/tech of systems with humans as basic components is crude and primitive – orders of magnitude less accurate or consistent or by any other measures – than the sci/tech of systems where humans are not components. This is a fundamental insight, which I will be working on.

Bohmian Dialog remains an experimental process, in my terminology, to assist persons to mutually merge their “nuets”, to learn to dance at all levels of mind – beyond consciousness. This will be an essential process for team and crew formation. How it can apply for persons who don’t have extended time together, I am uncertain. With all the variety of platforms and modes of interactivity, we are just at the beginning of creating new systems/processes.  I deeply believe that this can best be done while uplifting NU, via Societal Metamorphosis, within a changing humankind – and not attempting to morph humankind into NU, which I believe impossible.

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BUT, we can quickly discover and learn “who we are”,sufficient to survive/thrive. The potential is there, in excess; but it’s actualization is blocked.  WHAT FOR YOU BLOCKS THIS?

My personal blocks are many, and personal blocks are different for others. I can’t motivate myself to do tasks I know are vital for me to do. To exercise 30 minutes a day is the most important thing for me to do for my health. I weekly do an hour+ of quality yoga stretch with Jamie over ZOOM – and video record. Yet, I can’t motivate myself to watch the video and do the practice – alone. PRACTICE, large, red, and bold stares at me daily, frequently, from my schedule. My fast/intuitive/emotional mind is not in harmony with my slow/conceptual/rational mind – possibly worse than for many.

Our primary blocks are systemic, and I believe require truly collective action to overcome. Few individuals can significantly change themselves significantly, and those that do may not change in the way they “should”, or had even initially intended.  I believe no person today can properly know what they have the options to become. Yet, our self-learning systems tend to amplify premature ambitions.

Our primary block is blocking our attending to our blocks.

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Our current mistaken belief in human nature/change renders success impossibleWHAT IS OUR CURRENT MISTAKEN BELIEF?  YOU ALMOST SPELL IT OUT, BUT DON’T QUITE, SO I DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT?

We are not the free, “conscious”, individuals we believe ourselves to be. Yet, this realization is good, because who we really are is better – even if we don’t yet know “who we are”. That must be learned – collectively.

Re Climate Change: We can’t solve climate change by researching how to change Gaia and by just changing how we interact with Gaia – and ignoring how we must change ourselves.  I don’t mean by learning to conserve and not destroy – but how we change our governments and economies and schools so we can make the right decisions (we don’t have adequate decision making processes to make the needed decisions – think the USA) to be able to actually implement all the plans that our current efforts may compose.

Most believe that the best of our educational systems are adequate (only gradual improvement necessary) and all others should attempt to emulate them. I know this is a false assumption. UPLIFT cannot be accomplished by any transformation of existing educational systems.

Most believe we are all basically similar and need to differ only in ways that permit us all to be friends.  In analogy, your neurons can’t relate to your stomach cells.  The cognitive diversity of humans is so great that many will not enjoy the company of others. That will be OK, so long as each values the others ,even though they don’t want to engage them personally. Example, people who eat in formal settings may not like to eat with people who are raucous while eating (as was the practice, to an extent, in the urban commune I lived in — attending dinner was a filter for new members).

Today our primary focus is on jobs and economies. Employment came in with the industrial revolution, and is on the way out. Robotics and automation will make the production of basic physical needs no longer requiring many “workers”.  Economic theory is based on value being transitive: If A prefers B, and B prefers C, then A must prefer C. This doesn’t hold for human values, yet all our economic systems are based on it.  There are other mathematical processes used by economists (and educators) that is invalid, but are used anyway.

We confuse the social with the societal.  The societal is no more observable than the quantum world. Governments and corporations aren’t things, to be treated as complex objects. Tribes were social, persons interacting with persons. Societies are information based structures which enable and constrain human interaction. They have grown so large and complex that they are out of our control.  UPLIFT will develop new societal systems that can be “managed”, in analogy with how our bodies “manage” trillions of radically different cells, tissues, organs, and functional subsystems.

We don’t appreciate the enormous and vast difference between “natural” living systems (from molecular organelles to biomes) and even the most complex systems created by humans. Wonder at a flower blooming, a bird flying, or the organelles in your cells interacting with the dance of your chromosomes.  A chromosome is literally feet long, if unwound and stretched. Yet, they coil & coil & coil & coil until they are small enough to be a small part of each of your cells.  Much of their gene-gene interaction is with genes near them in the coiled knot, even though they may be feet apart on the DNA double spiral. Yet, this can unwind and separate during mitosis. Humans are not creating artificial life. They are splicing pieces of life together in new ways – as life always has done through mating. Life creates life.  Life continues at birth, it doesn’t begin. Living eggs merge with living sperm to remain a living cell, which divides. Anti-abortionists must act to insist on all eggs and all sperms be preserved and eventually united. That there are more sperm than eggs causes a problem.

 

WHY DON’T WE FEEL BAD ABOUT THE DEATH
OF A CELL, OR LEAF, OR WEED?

 

When I was very young I once went out with a group of boys who shot out street lights with their sling-shots. I couldn’t shoot and never went with them again, because I felt sorry for the light bulbs.  I also felt sorry for a lone pea on my plate the was forgotten and had to eat it.  Later I realized that when we eat fresh fruit and veggies their cells are living as they enter the acid bath of our stomachs.  I will carry some insects outside and not kill them.  But, I have killed insects, with foot and spray, as I’ve killed weeds. I’ve never intentionally killed an animal (no mammals, birds, reptiles – but some fish and sea creatures).  I eat the flesh of living beings, after they have died.

When you come to know about the fantastic structure/processes within living cells, they are such intricate beings that to kill them is like killing life itself.  And some single cell creatures are quite complex, with distinct parts. – they are not all like blobs.  Many of our cells die in an organized and scheduled way for the health and growth plans of the organism.

All animals must eat the remains of living cells to live.

 

……. wandering minds …………