Truth

The best Way to get to the Truth
Is indirectly;
Because in the light of Day,
All men stand to earn a reward.

Nicki Minaj’s “Lookin Ass Nigga”

If you haven’t heard the song discussed in this post here it is

Let me start out this post by reminding my readers that I tend to follow very contrarian thought paths, My ultimate objective isn’t to post any particular “point” aside from my philosophical beliefs, but to inspire thinking which falls outside of traditional convention AND the supposed “unconventional” thinking so widely purported across the internet.

Nicki Minaj released a new song this week, Lookin Ass Nigga and although the song itself is a hotbed of cultural issues, the biggest gripes across the Net is her choice of artwork: an image of Malcolm X taken for Ebony in 1964 (see below).

Now, as Twitterers rile up in typical myopic fashion proclaiming the abuse of Minaj’s usage of the picture, one should start seeing the genius behind mainstream media. I actually did not know about the song until today because a few of my friends were outraged about her excessive usage of the word “nigga”, the invidious lyrical content, and, of course, the controversial cover art. The mainstream machine is brilliant simply because it, just like the “system” it serves, is a natural eventuality of flawed human nature. If something was truly as horrendous as the outraged paint it to be, it would be quickly sequestered and avoided; or people would be bored by the typical marketing antics and allow it to die quietly in obscurity, much like Kreayshawn’s ill-fated album.

But lets get to the content.

I am not a fan of Nicki Minaj. She is an extremely beautiful woman with a delivery that rivals any rapper of the last 20 years; however, the fact that her career has necessitated the usage of gimmicks and shock value diminishes her stock in my eyes.

This song touches on a myriad of subjects, a couple of which I’d like to touch on.

Lookin Ass Nigga is a 3 minute diatribe about phony (and presumably black) men that dominate society. These men are indeed everywhere; they’re at the grocery store, on the internet, and probably playing basketball on a park court near you. They’re all over Instagram with pictures of shoes, club scenes, and Internet memes which oppose their status as phony. They are walking caricatures; delusional individuals who swear they despise the very same men they in actuality are. These denizens of urban culture are the definitions of insanity…

However, the preponderance of these fools is complicated by all of the social issues surrounding black culture in America; systematic oppression, removal of identity, social inequality amongst others.

With that stated, most of you know my stance on these cultural, socioeconomic, and other current issues. I for the most part choose to shirk the idiocy of human condition and focus more on the nature of man. Thus, I tend to see myself as a HUMAN first and worry about my ethnic makeup later. I am proud to be black, however, I am not defined by any condition aside of my being a human first. I am a Christian, a graduate of Loyola Marymount, a musician, a business owner, a political independent, a man over 6 feet, a person of Jamaican ancestry, a mystic, a philosopher and so forth. This mode of thinking has allotted me success that is antithetical to the problems faced by most black men. I didn’t experience racism at my predominantly white school. I have gotten hired at every job or internship I’ve applied to. Although I am very much black, I create an internal environment of equality and equity which is reciprocated in my external environment. I literally create my reality ala James Allen.

BUT, I understand that I must come back to earth from time to time and address these issues that confront our society at large.

I ain’t gotta check for y’all
But if I’ma check for y’all, I’ma need a check from y’all niggas

I get what she means. Trust me, I understand. However, first irony I see here is something my best friend brings to my attention frequently; this notion that many (NOT ALL) women carry that a man is supposed to be “doing things” for them, however, most of them are just as “worthless” as these men they claim to disdain.

Over the years the truly virtuous, worthwhile women I’ve known never actually consider what a man can “do” for them outside of basic security as a family. The are judicious about their choices in the macro sense, however, they are just as likely to want to work together with a man. That every human has some intrinsic value is widely understood, but it is absolutely obvious that value increases exponentially when a man and woman can come together and build something greater than the sum of their parts. (Emergence, Gestalt psychology, Synergy etc)

There is also disturbing turbidity surrounding the belief that a woman should be “independent”. In one breath you’ll hear an individual declare how independent she is, followed shortly by a statement in which a man should provide something for her. My stance is unwavering: I, Bryce Brown, am not independent have no wish for this style of independence and admit that I am strongly dependent on the woman I am involved with. I provide for her while she provides for me. Total Reciprocity What those provisions are (financial, emotional, spiritual, inspirational et al), for me at least, are irrelevant. As an entrepreneur there have been times when my finances were in utter disarray. I have emotionally down. I have been spiritually down. My significant other should be the individual I can count on in these moments.

Women of high caliber see the ambition and the character which leads them to support a man unconditionally.

Which leads to my next point regarding this song. The type of man addressed in this song have what I call hollow ambition; the type of veneered drive that looks good when the cameras are around, but he truly lacks the character fiber necessary to really be about something. From this angle, I completely support this song. I see these guys everyday. Hell, I teach kids that I have a terrible feeling will become these guys one day. From this perspective, I completely understand the misanthropic woman who denounces the slothfulness and the phoniness these men put forth. Regardless of color, there are men who just don’t seem to get it and the become leeches to women who actually have their best interest in mind.

These men are absolute cancers to society. Deplorable creatures through and through. I can’t bring myself to hate anyone, but I dislike them to a frenetic degree. They make my life harder as they systematically erode the integrity of men everywhere.

My final thought is to the women. Just like I tell my students, make sure your shit is in order before you start vehemently cosigning on songs like this. Many of y’all are just as ain’t shit as the men you are haranguing, but you can’t see the truth due to your own cognitive biases. We live in a society where having a degree and talking the part just doesn’t cut it anymore. The bar is being continually set higher and higher. The character of these men is being called into question, but how is your character? Are you actually about something? Are you authentic or genuine or are you the type of girl with a $1,200 Louis V bag hoping to have a drink bought for her because you don’t have enough in your account? Are you an actual support system or do you harbor fruitless energy? Are you driven by things that are of substance? Are you a conduit for inflective thought? Or are you just another carbon copy tape recording who is a pain to be around?

In conclusion, urban culture tends to call simple people basic, the word I prefer is prosaic. I feel that Minaj used Malcolm X as an archetype of a man who was ABOUT HIS SHIT. Literally until his death. But as the upset internet avatars go, leave it to these prosaic minds to proffer up inchoate, foolish responses in the name of “unconvention”. Leave it to these same silly people to discuss this song without any truth reflective thought. This song touches on so many things; Minaj brought a rather panoptic view of a class of classless cretins who prefer to look the part rather than act it. Call them lazy, call them ignorant, call them whatever you like, they are out there in full force.

Songs like this continually act as mirrors which betray who we really are. You can get upset about everything surrounding this song, but it does not take away from the fact that we have some deep, deep issues. I have my methods which have worked for me, but the only place we can begin as a society is with ourselves. Make sure you are who you swear yourself to be or else you’re just as phony as the individuals spotlighted in this song.

bryce

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

Several weeks ago, while on site at one of the high schools I teach where I hold a contract, I began asking students in the career center a question that stopped most of them in their tracks. The looks of vexation were entertaining, but given the nature of the question also supremely disconcerting. The question, “what does it mean to be a human”, on the surface seems like it should be a very straightforward inquiry, but as the faces contorted in abstract contemplation, it was clear that this was anything but the truth.

At school, everyone understands what it means to be a student, therefore, rules, guidelines, and expectations can be laid out accordingly. A student is someone who attends an institution for the sake of learning.

At the office, people’s job are clearly (for the most part) understood so that, again, rules, guidelines, and expectations can be established and everyone in that environment can exist more or less in harmony.

However, when the lens is zoomed out all the way to achieve a macro view of being human, these clear delineations blur indefinitely and discourse on the topic breaks off into abstractions.

It seems to me that much of the drama in the world boils down to this problem, people have no earthly idea of what it means to be human. They can stab in the dark at it, sew together some tenuous struggle-logic, or hit you with one of those “man, you know what I mean” statements, but the generation of a cohesive statement about the nature of being really falls outside of most people’s thought cycles.

So what then? Are we doomed to a world of semi-conscious beings whose endless diversity and vapid sense of “hereness” fundamentally oppose any semblance of harmony? Hardly.

When one continues to toggle the objective lens further and further back, a curious trend does begin to form. I heard this morning a sound byte by Sheryl Sanberg, Facebook’s COO, about how society should encourage more women to be in leadership roles and how calling young girls ‘bossy’ was unacceptable. I then turned to the TV where pundits were discussing, with varying levels of exuberance, how wage inequality was monstrous and corporations should be held more responsible. I turned to my phone, accessed my Twitter feed and scrolled through articles upon articles about various topics: economic crises, opportunities in emerging markets, and what celebrity was what. On Facebook, my friends all explaining various feelings and convictions in their lives, posting ups and downs. Then the mysterious friend who never posts anything, pops up out of virtual obscurity to be warmly embraced by all of those who missed their presence.

On my various professional contracts, I plot and scheme how to get my initiatives to take root and produce profits. I engage and I cajole, hoping that this next meeting, this next client, will be something that puts zeros after integers in my bank account.

At home, I field a variety of personalities and conflicts, constantly making sure that the various pieces of my life don’t bleed over and create any additional or unnecessary conflict.

I stress over what I stress over, believe wholeheartedly in what I believe in, and beg repentance for any errors I’ve committed.

And thats when it hit me, a certain perspicuity washed over me…

Being human is about creating meaning.

This higher ordered mind we’ve been blessed with, all of our religions, philosophies, and contemplations about the cosmos outer and inner; all of our sciences, hard and soft, from medicine and physics to psychology and sociology; all of our creative expressions, music, visual art, and movements of our bodies; every single conviction, belief, epiphany, propensity, penchant, habit, addiction, preferences…

This is why we as a species combat each other so. Being human is about the ability to conceive, monitor, and adjust YOUR own meaning. This puts the microscope lens so far back that most individuals can barely even conceptualize it, instead sticking to more comfortable arenas such as religious or ethical stipulations. But those are encapsulated in a person’s ability to create meaning. If you are intensely pious, the meaning you have created is one steeped in your conception of God and His relation to you. Through all of the processes that brought you to this moment, your development, your genetic information, your experiences, you have arrived at a meaning that means the world to you…

But does not mean a damn thing to anyone else.

Man will never be unified, except through unnatural circumstances. Man can only work to be in harmony with those around him, but understanding that although his created meaning is of the utmost importance to his own person, it is a breathe in the wind of the collective organism around him.

Only from there can a man ever truly be happy, for happiness is having your created meaning be in harmony with all of the created meanings around you. My business partner puts it this way, happiness is expressing yourself authentically, while remaining in harmony with your environment.

Most folks are unhappy because they cannot express themselves harmonically and I’d wager to say that the reason is because they don’t understand how to be human. They have not created their own meaning of life, instead they are tossed back and forth in the winds of social normalcy, conformism, or some developmental anomaly they have never faced.

When one lets go of the corrosive propensities to see things only through themselves, the meanings they begin to create fall closer and closer to the Truth of objectivity. Unhappy people are those whose minds have atrophied (or never grown in the first place), who are solely concerned about the way they feel or experience life. Thus, the ignoble way to view being a human is through the self: a egotistic romp through a cosmos fashioned by unseen forces. This complete obsequence to subjective factors perfectly captures why our world is constantly at arms with one another. We cannot create any semblance of peace when any detraction from our view whats what burgeons in plain sight.

I see disheartening things everyday, think disheartening things myself, and I can’t help but chuckle at man’s inability to zoom back out to this ability to create one’s own meaning.

To be a human is to be a free moral agent capable of fashion his own view of the world; BUT, to create a flourishing society we must each set our minds on the discovery of those things that lie outside the self. We must seek out disappointment (success through failure) and interact with people who are absolutely different from us. One of the worst things that can happen to a young person is them finding success early; those early victories delude them into believing their way is “right”. When one seeks out failure through experimentation they open themselves to all new ways of viewing the world, pushing them closer and closer to the supreme truths that pervade outside of our limited consciousnesses.

bryce

My Meditative Place

I sit high atop a cosmic cliff,
With the heaven sprawled out before me.
A nebula dominates my anterior view.
God’s nebula.
The seat of creation.
In the midst of the nebula a gaping maw begins to swirl.
This celestial maelstrom emits a steady flow of unusual substance.
It swirls out towards me like the tail f a tornado.
As it approaches it’s pointed tip arches above my eyes and descends towards
My forehead.
My ajna lights up.
My eyes are full of light.
I am connected to the Source.
The Lord my God who sits high above the heavens.
His spirit appears above the celestial cone;
A white dove, flapping outside of time,
Perfectly poised, perfectly calm.
Wisdom flows forth like honey from a turgid comb.
Enlightenment through prayer.
Revelation trough meditation.

On Evolution

Humans have an obsession with generalization and categorization. These two activities lead to much cleaner results when contemplating the overwhelming complexity of life. Since every individual is a discrete set of probabilities, instead of trying to tediously evaluate each one, it makes much more sense to lump them into larger packets and search for deep connections to others. This tendency to look for patterns is one of the fundamental bases for complex social constructs, but it is also what tends to hold us back.

Imagine that we travel to a distant star system where we discover another species that is not quite as evolved as we are. They are sentient and dominate on their planet, yet their social structures are still tribal or even hunter gatherer. Now, lets say that these beings posses 7 senses as opposed to our 5, they have 2 extra glandular systems with appropriate physiological structures which allow them to sense things that we cannot.

How would a human be able to understand them describing that?

Its asking a blind person to describe what the color red is.

For the last few weeks I have been working on a thought framework called General Specificity in order to glean deep insight into the nature and condition of man. Most people think and learn in terms of analogy, if we can see create a parallel between this concept and that, then our ability to understand even the most abstract becomes all the more tenable. When looking at a neighborhood, one neighbor may judge the nature of his neighbor by their attention to their lawn, ascribing this correlation as a principle of character, “a person that takes care of their lawn takes care of their life.” And so on.

Yet, time and time again, we are reminded that any rubric we create is flawed from the start. These large generalizations, as easy and organic as they are, rarely paint a sustainable picture of human interactivity. The places where they break down tend to multiply into conflict quickly, just look at the political and religious arenas — although the differences between candidates or policies, priests or doctrines differ slightly, they turn into full on schisms and conflagrations as more people pour into those intellectual impasses.

When I listen to one person talk about another, what I tend to hear is that neither of these people really understand one another. There is no deep penetrating framework that allows for congruent, symmetrical analysis. Thus, the result is a world in which the eyes of the individual viewer create the cosmos and all things must be subject to them. Beauty is in the eye of this beholder. General Specificity is a tremendous undertaking which borrows from the natural ease of analogous thinking, but instead of creating loose categories, fights to lock in as much information into a statement as possible. In other words, its never “black people do this” or “why do women do that”, but instead a meaningful insightful observation into the varying identities at play in society.

What I am attempting to create is a new sense and this is why I remain in abstract thought for so long. To bring things into gross terms undermines my ability to be imaginative in describing something I’ve never seen. My hopes are that I help rid people of natural bias and prejudice by expanding their understandings and contracting their frivolous words.

Evolution is a tricky concept because no matter how much one may believe they know whats going to happen next, the very nature of evolution is the emergence of something new. That new thing may be, like General Specificity, the amalgam of many previously understood concepts or it could be spontaneous occurence, a completely unfathomable occasion.

There are literally thousands of dimensions by which one could measure a human, psychological, economical, astrological, chronological, cultural, ethnic, developmental, emotional, physiological and so on. As you listen to people discuss things with one another, they jump from dimension to dimensional with wanton disregard for order or tractability, creating divergences between themselves and their environment. As their cognitive biases kick into overdrive, that human is intellectually blind to their alienation. They are now operating at peak inefficiency, yet deluding themselves to believe they are “right”.

That sets the stage for many pedantic discussions on the nature of ethics or “correctness”, but those ancillary conversations are nothing more than derivatives of discordant thought processes.

As I attempt to reconcile human nature and human condition, even if its the slightest movement towards the middle, I find myself connecting deeply with the cosmos at large. I have begun to understand God and Christ, I understand interstellar phenomena, and the massive concepts that cause most people to cower in intellectual defeat. I have begun to understand social structures as a whole, power dynamics and fluxes in information. Things have begun to be just a little less torpid

And thats amazing. It permits me the luxury of analyzing massive amounts of data and creating “couture” responses to problems, which is the definition of General Specificity. Big data set that can churn out specific responses in random, chaotic, or frontier environments as with humans. Humans are nonlinear, our responses are a uncertain mishmash of unpredictable and predictable outputs, therefore, any attempt at discussing concepts as generalizations or weak analogies is laughable.

Now, the goal of academia is specificity. If you are carrying out an experiment, you better damn sure well be coming up with specific, insightful studies. However, general specificity is as paradoxical as its namesake — I have no interest in the rigidity of physical, social, or commercial sciences. I am fully embracing the unknown and the known, adhering tightly to the principles of cosmic balance. The beautiful thing about yin and yang are that they aren’t just half black and half white, but that in the center of each half is a little piece of the other.

General Specificity is built for antimonious arguments and for overall contradiction, because the nature of man isn’t to be this or that. We must consciously hold on to all nascent possibilities, eschewing one while agreeing with it simultaneously.

That is an evolved way of thinking; notoriously difficult, yet amazing once one gets the hang of it

bryce

A Clearer Lens on the Nature of Human Interaction

In my last post I posited the antimonious opinion that life can only be understood by looking at multiple discrete entities, however, life can only be expressed through the lens of a single subjective entity. In other words, objectivity [multiple subjectives] lays out the appropriate framework for life as a whole, yet, that framework does not truly make sense until you it through a single subjective source.

In psychology the word “projecting” is thrown around a lot. An individual with extreme self-esteem issues or emotional trauma may find themselves projecting their diminished views onto others. They expect others to act like them or see the world as they do or sometimes judge people based exclusively on these distorted views of reality. This example paints the initial picture of my position about objectivity-subjectivity.

Our thoughts are the closest things to our souls, they are generated from within and even if we find ourselves thinking things we don’t fully understand, our proximity to these thoughts creates an intimacy and subsequently a sacrosanctity that set up our cognitive biases. Cognitive bias is also a well studied, frequently discussed phenomenon, but given my proclivity for metaphysics working in tandem with consciouses in a physical sense, I present them in a manner you probably won’t find in a textbook.

As we observe live in an outside entity, i.e. another human, many of us succumb to the intense gravity of personal opinion. Even if we are not directly critiquing or commenting, us “walking a mile in another’s moccasins” is a quasi transference of how we see things into the circumstances of others. “How we see things” is the definition of cognitive bias and cognitive bias is the progenitor of personal opinion or subjectivity. We access our sanctum sanctorum of personal belief so often that nothing outside of that thought matrix is even plausible and the only things that jar us out of long stated opinion are tableau scenes or some jolting introduction of previously unseen or misunderstood information.

As all of these independent containers of personal opinion (humans) interact with each other, it becomes painfully apparent that what one thinks or another thinks is really of no consequence; it is not until many of these discrete units agree that any semblance of “objective” or empirical truth comes to fruition.

Here’s where things get tricky, many things that are passed off as objective truth are nothing more than strongly stated opinions backed by reasonable, yet distorted facts. But separating objectivity and reasonable subjectivity is a rather Herculean task. The academic world is based around discovering the truth, yet even in these hallowed institutions, powerful personal beliefs retain experimental sovereignty.

To believe that our species, in its present state, will ever truly interface with pure objective truth is rather laughable right now. We, as my aforementioned position states, need subjectivity in order to express humanity, life as exhibited through Homo sapiens. The sheer amount of information present, our obsession with categorization, our need for proof, yet our nagging intuition are all compounded infinitely by the gift of independent cognition, which allows us to have differing opinions.

Thus, attempting to look through someone else’s eyes results more often than not in an abject exercise in mental projection.

And almost all projections are reasonable.

Outside of emotionally disturbed, intellectually challenged, or otherwise disabled persons, the thoughts and beliefs of those around you are not hard to understand, even when you vehemently denounce them. You may call them sheep or ignorant or just plain ineffiicient, yet, any exploration into their lifestyles and personal history clearly paints a picture of why they feel the way they do. Another dimension that few fail to truly grasp is the notion that something that is imminently important to you may not even register on the mind of another. Someone may come to this blog and say, “bryce, what I don’t understand is your fixation on some Objective Truth, its almost as if you want people to think exactly the same. Harmony can be created in other ways, such as the eradication of currency…….” The very problems that eat you alive, that you dedicate gargantuan efforts towards may be farcical to another. It literally means nothing to them or the solution you are one with is dross to another.

Therein lies the paradox of a being who must balance objectivity and subjectivity AND all the permutations that come with them. The most subjective, the most doggedly determined individuals do wind up changing the world’s condition, yet the fallibility of human nature merely reemerges under different circumstances. The most objective, philosophically inert people wind up wasting their time pondering the intangibles of the universe.

This is no clean cut dichotomy. There is no “either or” scenario here. The only way to understand life is to embrace as many opinions as you can, widening your horizons; YET, the only way to express life is to develop opinions of your own. It is for this very same reason that wisdom tends to contradict itself. There are countless examples, “question everything” juxtaposed against, “have faith”.

Life is not a straightforward task in the least. It is an all-pervasive, anfractuous, inter-dimensional wave of ever shifting probability.

bryce

The Meaning of Life

DOUBLETHINK AND THE JANUS THOUGHT

Our world is complex, comprised of an inextricable medley of opinion and concrete fact all competing for intellectual supremacy. There lies innumerable strata for a thinker to perch himself upon, he can fancy himself a physicalist, spiritualist, scientist, empiricist, or creative. He can venture into the bowels of extant thought through practically any vehicle he can surmise; this, of course, lays the foundation for the aberrant confusion in the world. For a man, or woman, or child, can fancy him or her self anything and create any existence per the delineations of their character.

Several posts ago, I enumerated one of my thought frameworks, Quantum Superposition, that posited that men and women are all things possible — intellectually, emotionally, characteristically, et. al — but our development and overall perception cause us to identify with a particular set of traits or normalcies that define who we believe ourselves to be. An example would be that every person at any given moment is happy, sad, anxious, relaxed, AND eager; yet, our conscious faculties function by choosing packets of information, per our “personalities” or current experience, which cause us to inwardly observe a particular emotion and display it outward.

This is the easiest way to calm a person down: if you can understand although that a person may be frustrated or anxious, they are also happy elsewhere in their conscious, you can dredge up the positive images that can override the negative inputs which are causing them distress.

Easier said then done, I know, but the principle remains the same.

Quantum Superposition, a tenuous allusion to the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, is amplified when you look at people one larger scales, especially open forums like social networks. What becomes increasingly evident is that people are not as concrete as they delude themselves to believe, many times the very same ideals they hold near and dear in one moment are diametrically opposed to their positions in the next. Over time an observer can see how a shift of “vantage point” or more precisely, a shift in information, can cause even the most conservative to become liberal.

There is no algorithm to predict this change in behavior nor am I positing that any sort of rigor is being applied to my observations. Moreover, if you have made it this far you already know exactly what I’m talking about. People tend to contradict themselves all the time.

I have also come to embrace the Orwellian paradox of “doublethink” as it so deftly explains the confusion that runs rampant in our species.

Many of us hold on to mutual exclusive belief systems, especially when we cannot see the corollaries between concepts in our mind. For instance, a person have a clearly defined ‘loyalty’ in their dealings with friends or family, but are perfectly accepting of disloyalty towards their spouse or significant other. They will eviscerate lies or dishonor in one arena then fully embody dishonor in another. Many of us understand cognitive bias, but our very understanding of cognitive biases are biased!

Man is such a peculiar creature as he can bring life to any concept, even one that is untrue. Therein lies the sole purpose of the sciences, to rectify and reconcile man with truth, yet, everyday we hear of some experiment that is beleaguered by the corrupted touch of opinion.

Look at the corruption that bothers us the most — deception and lying at high governmental or corporate positions. But one must ask themselves, why does this motif seem to replay itself? Is it that these people truly believe themselves above the law or is it that the very nature of man creates these abject inconsistencies that allow those with influence the power to supersede them

We are both corrupt and corrigible!

Man is both redeemed and unredeemed, positive and negative, per the principles of cosmic balance that many of us acknowledge and understand.

The societies we create exhibit this duality without fail; we cannot create anything that is eternally stable, for the vehicles which power us are fundamentally unstable. Although there is much good in the world, it is always offset by equal bad; although things may seem terrible, there is always that light at the end of the tunnel.

We vacillate between the dualities present in us and as we create social structures, those constructs are as shaky as the creatures, us humans, that created them.

Time, the spatiotemporal passing in the physical sense, is practically imperceptible as many of us are far too focused on what we believe to be occuring. Due to this myopic view of the universe, we create blinders which impair us from viewing things as they are. We fail to see the world for what it is and even as information repeats itself — as many of us clearly understand i.e. “history repeats itself — we still continue the traditions of flawed mindsets.

What happens over time is that the mind forgets the recurring objective and folds upon itself, especially in moments of high emotional or intellectual content. Our lives are happening and we can no longer ponder the infinite philosophical questions that have no value in a healthy society. Many of us abandon exploratory, inquisitive thought in favor of a honing in on “effective” thoughts. Thoughts that produce what we believe to be positive results. Our mind folds inward. That “folding” sets the individual up for a heavy reliance on subjectivity or their self-evident opinion. They are consumed by how they feel, how they think, and how they believe. As this folding continues, they are no longer concerned with opinions or viewpoints that don’t mirror theirs, they label these people as stupid or “blind” (irony intended). As they start to feel stronger and stronger about their opinions other social phenomena occur, inertia begins to pick up and others start to respond with dogma inevitably being forged.

That dogma becomes “right” in the eyes of the thinker.

Recall that man brings “life” to whatever he or she focuses on, ala James Allen As A Man Thinketh. What the vast majority of people do is become the summation of their self-absorbed thoughts, stoking the intellectual fires of their comfort, following lives of their liking, without truly understanding their greater position. I really don’t care what individual we are discussion about, from the mainstream “sheep” to the counterculture “conspiracy theorist”, they are self-possessed agents of their own egos. Whether inimical to the conventional or the very picture of orthodoxy, the assertion that one way of living is different than the next is the hallmark of egoic man.

The bulk of you have read this far and probably still have no idea what I’m really attempting to explain, as you have not become aware of doublethink and just how far its roots are in your very own mind.

Things are not this or that, they are both. How you choose to define them is a potentiality then eventuality of your mind. Outside of physical occurrences, which are in reality the distant, permutated offspring of conscious concepts, the world is comprised of eventualities of individual conscious experiences.

To feel THIS way or THAT way is irrelevant, life is THISTHAT, it is always, unendingly BOTH.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO CREATE MEANING FOR ONE’S SELF.

The nihilist in me states that because life is everything it is also nothing, therefore, it serves no greater purpose and is resolutely absurd. However, that would lead me straight to the nearest cliff, off of which I would promptly jump. Moreover, my response to something being intrinsically worthless is to ask where the source of the intrinsic factor was.

The only place that life makes sense is within a live body. The duality of objectivity is that if I constantly think of the world or the universe as a whole, I fail to actually create a discrete living entity. Without the subjective, there is no “life”, at least on this plane. Although we are a body of people, we do not share the same consciousness or conscious experience. Thus, the only place that makes sense to contemplate existence is within the confines of one’s own condition. A man creates his understanding of the universe through his own eyes.

A man creates his purpose of living, through the vehicles of his perception, which can be spiritual or intellectual, and his materail, his actual body.

But wait, bryce, you’re saying that the only way to understand life is to view it through the eyes of every conscious being, yet to do that renders life worthless; therefore I need to create intrinsic meaning through my own eyes, so that existence becomes purposeful?

Yes.

You are now beginning to understand doublethink.

Neither is more important than the other. Individual opinion is just as important and unimportant as aggregate consideration; together they form the Janus Thought.

Man is not solely logical, nor is he solely illogical. Let me put it in a way you have probably heard before, “man is not just body, he is also spirit.” Trying to observe a human as SOLELY this or SOLELY that, fundamentally undermines the reality of the infinitive conscious experience. If you are discussing yourself, then you can create the necessary illusions to convince yourself that YOU are solely body. If you are discussing yourself, then you can create the necessary illusions to convince yourself that YOU are solely spirit.

Yet, the moment you attempt to quantify the conscious experience of another, you offend the cardinal rule of existence, all things are all things and no things.

Doublethink.

bryce

Conversations on the Nature of Being II

The sheer immensity of the universe is positively spellbinding for me. Out of this terrifying awe of the macrocosm comes a version of absurdism, however, I have long since objected to the calcification of any particular way of thinking. In the past few weeks I have been perpending the principles of doublethink, the acceptance of two contradictory statements, as I view the relationships between man and man, man and nature, and speculatively, man and universe.

My deepest desire as a nascent being is to discover an optimized way of living — a putative effort, I’m aware — yet, I am constantly driven to this train of thought. As I burrowed deeper and deeper into this, I am interminably nagged by the realization that this “quest” I am on is no different than the quests that billions of people before me, concurrently with me, and after me will sojourn. As real as this optimized life is to me is as real as the other “holy grails” that add meaning to so many people’s lives.

I tailspin into nihilism.

The advent of technology has provided me something that many of my enlightenment forerunners did not have: the access to terabytes of data to analysis, weigh, and ruminate. I have a much broader view of the world than say Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Socrates. Yet, the fundamental inquiries into the nature of being remain the same.

The duality between the physical and the metaphysical, the meaning of this physical existence, and the roads to travel. No matter how far along we’ve come, we are still a relatively inchoate species; many of the answers we’ve been asking since the beginning of recorded history are still unanswered today.

To many, this document and its contents are quality foolishness, completely impractical and worthless to any extent. My response isn’t to refute nor affirm their position, but to point to their place on the larger map of human experience. The fact that we can exist as so many variations on one extant theme is both inspiring and maddening, sometimes I feel like I am being crushed under the weight of so many opinions. Opinions are the very crux of doublethink, as most humans are unabashed hypocrites. We hold on to stark antinomies , affirming something and also affirming its diametrical opposite, especially when life passes rapidly. We will say things like, “have faith in God” then turn around and say, “I’m the type to go get what I just prayed for.” That person is not acting in faith, yet their BELIEF in faith also provides some intangible substance which contributes to their overall fitness.

The response to the complexity of opinion is to then consummately do away with one aspect and commit wholly to the other, enter the atheist or hardline zealot. However, that is only if we are discussing matters of faith, as we shift the focus of life’s microscope, we continually find more and more inconsistencies in the expression of the human condition. You will have a man cry, “equality for all” and in the next breath he eviscerates the practices of a perceived cultural enemy. You’ll have a person swear that they are independent, yet they thrive on the welfare provided by their government.

Liberty seems much a farce as true freedom mimics either utter chaos or social apathy, both of which ignore pivotal needs of individual humans.

Information, while purportedly neutral, tends to be passed through subjective lenses, gobbled up by one fraction of the populace and derided by the other. Physical events are relegated to the parameters of the power players and that which is objective becomes tainted by the subjective.

All of that is fine, I can’t even really address those realities because I am far too consumed by the parasol which umbrellas these ancillary realities.

What strikes me as peculiar again and again, is that there CAN be this many variations on the single theme of living. That literally every moment provides heaps and heaps of more information which, after properly subjected to the filters of individual humans, then groups, then societies at large, reap even more packets of partially hydrogenated information. It isn’t that life is THIS or THAT it is life is THIS and THAT, THISTHAT, THIS and sometimes THAT, and every other version in between.

We exist, precariously might I add, in world where objective truth and subjective fallacies are indistinguishable from one another. This creates the very grounds for someone to read this post and say, “all of this is trivial”. Would they be right? In a sense yes. But then again, all manner of human expression is a version of pure frivolity as nothing we do is untainted by the trickery inherent to individual contemplation.

Some might posit that it is best then to do away with the “soft” sciences and opt for the stringent paths of math or science, yet, the frontier of these noble pursuits are always steeped in the theoretical and are constantly subrogated as the next generation of science creates more elegant ways to explore itself.

Moreover, science, magic, and spirituality are virtually indecipherable when one removes objective biases and views them with nothing more than faint curiosity. Science may hinge upon provability, yet, the principles of magic and spirituality are about exploration of the self, the intangible self, which varies from person to person and ergo needs no manner of empirical data to affirm the user. As one delves deep into the anomalous and downright wacky world of the unconscious, even more of these inconsistencies rear their ugly heads as people harbor secret motivations which directly contradict their everyday words and actions. We harbor doublethink, then inimically give way to doublespeak.

How complex this creature called man!

So we sue each other, we feel affronted, we feel varying emotional waves of this and that, in this partially understood world. We settle on one version of thinking or the other, we persecute and judge one another, we consume data and information, yet the ineluctable truth seems to evade us all:

Life is _________________________.

No matter how you answer that, your response is rife with subjection. It is a guttural response from your viewpoint and it is rendered virtually meaningless in the void that is shared reality. One can never truly intimate the meaning of life as any such concept would be lost in the translation from consciousness to brain, which would in turn have to rationalize it against what it already knows and has sensed. Albert Camus saw belief in God as ‘philosophical suicide’, as a sort of deus ex machina which provided an individual little more than a poison pill; I am not concerned with whether he is right or wrong, I merely gawk abjectly at the reality of this thing we call free choice.

It begs the question: is there any answer in free choice? Or does the ability to choose merely sustain itself? In other words, is there an objective truth to be found or does the immersion of our subjective reality, expressed as free choice through development, simply allow a person to continue thinking ad infinitum until they expire from this earth?

I divorce myself from trying to find any meaning in life and instead attempt to draw corollaries between my experience of existence and another human being. What I have come to find is that we are a rather species creature, full of creative merit and boundless energy, yet our advancement is still incunabula and unfortunately these answers remain out of reach in the dimensionless, inexplicable void of the Absurd.

bryce

Speculator’s Curse

No one said it would be easy, they also never really said what the “it” was either.
So I’m the embodiment of extant temerity,
Chock full of creative severity,
Because the “it” is leaving my mark on Reality.

Surreality is more like it, really,
Sometimes I wonder if I can teleport to Chantilly,
Or change the topography of somewhere hilly,
To the ultimate flat.

So I sit in my stultified flat,
Wondering how to unlock the intimate desires of my mind,
And perhaps find, a kind of sign that clearly delineates whats mine,
Or whats possible, or whats plausible, or whats logical..

Because what if what’s logical is what’s magical,
And what’s actual is actually what’s radical,
How impractical it would be for a fellow to navigate,
Such a world to which one can only speculate….

Quest for Objective Truth: An Introduction

I hold on to a belief that beneath all of the subjectivity of this world there is an all pervasive objective truth.

Albert Einstein famously quoted, “perception is merely an illusion, albeit is a very persistent one.” That illusion has been described in a myriad of ways throughout the years: Hindus call it MAYA, science, specifically in the West, has attributed it to the brain and its activities, Judeo-Christian systems often consider these images the “wiles of the Devil”.

Given that I believe this entire physical existence to be “soft”, that nothing is really fully known, I am not incredibly concerned with categorizing or chronicling the illusions. More than enough has been said about them. Furthermore, any cogent description of them further immerses a person in them; language, a fundamental agreement to transfer information from one thing to another, is limited to the parameters of the communicators, effectively expanding the vast scape of illusory reality.

In layman’s terms, language does not free one from the unreality of perception; it only tightens its grip.

Everything a person experiences, everything one has ever been taught, every decision one makes within the matrix of these illusions pulls them further from objective truth. Since anything in existence has infinite dimension, a subjective stance has more than enough information to justify itself.

Thusly stated: anything can be “true”.

I am not in contention with science, nor am I in contention with spirit, to adhere or deny one is to adhere or deny the other; I am merely positing the inconsistency intrinsic to human cognition. It isn’t whether or not one is “true” and the other “false”, but it is a question of why man has even created this dichotomy in the first place, especially since anything we think in this virtual reality is rarely a process of empiricism, but the patience to gather enough “real” data to justify one’s claim.

The universe is nothing more than a giant canvas, whose surface will bring forth the will of the artist. Will, as we all know, is purely subjective.

Science attempts to weed out the imprecision of spirit by posing itself as concrete; however, in an infinite universe perceived through subjective eyes, even those most consistent results are elegant speculation. The very basis of the scientific method is not to prove anything; it explicitly states that it can only disprove things, uprooting less consistent concepts.

Human condition and nature, behaving asymptotically, come infinitely close to objectivity without directly experiencing it. Thus, a conundrum is created: how can we perceive objective truth when we cannot touch objective truth through our commonly understood senses? And if we must rely on “soft” unprovable senses like intuition, how can we ever confirm them to be true at all?

Therein lies one of the most confounding principles of being. The common solution is to absolve any reliance on metaphysical and build a world simply on the “hard” facts of science, morality, and social order. This is not an inherently bad plan and out of it will come beautiful things; some of the leading scientific universities are the originators of breathtaking speculations into the universe.

Unfortunately, it will never be truly satisfactory to a species whose sentience goes beyond the limited scope of modern science. No matter how “hard” the facts may be, no matter how consistent the results, many humans feel a prickly sensation that their conscious extends far beyond the reaches of this tangible universe; science may provide the mechanisms for how things work here on this plane, but that does not rule out the affect of the spirit. Quite frankly, it simply provides how the spirit may or may not “work” on the body. Neuroscience may show that schizophrenia is viral, however, it cannot show that the virus is a mechanism via the unseen worlds.

Concordantly, the Spirit, is a common avenue to escape the sarcophagus of “reality”. However, the spirit is highly individuated and subjective, as no two people will experience this unseen realm the same. There may be some common themes, however, because of the duality between objective spirit and subjective physicality, no system can really be created. Systems are too easily exploitable, just as they create fixes, they create their own ultimate demise.

The spirit, as many contend, may bring man closest to God, however, with no cogent way to explain the spirit to one another, with nothing more than individuation, discourse on the spirit becomes implausible (refer back to my statement on the limits of language). The spirit, as many contend, brings intense personal power, but to turn around and create a systematic approach to it is laughable; it does not need a system. The spirit needs no physics, no math, no syntax, it simply is.

Science lays the framework for power through validity; spirit lays the framework for power through individuation.

Man is then brought repeatedly to the ultimate crossraods: flee the imprecision and interpretive chaos of spirit for science and limit one’s self to the principles of social order or tap the spirit and be released into worlds unprovable and mostly non-interfaceable by the physical self.

Tracing world history, one can see how man has oscillated between these concepts; ages of reason versus ages of faith.

But if perception is reality, what has actually been going on?

I possess spiritual components and I possess scientific components, I hold neither above the other. The net effect has been a state of being that is rather inert to the world around me. Like a noble gas, I am not swayed this way or that.

This is neither good nor bad, as those concepts are illusion.

My ultimate goal is to break through the wall of infinitude that is subjective reality and to taste the ambrosia of objective truth. Many before me have longed for the same thing, they practiced alchemy, meditation, the scientific method, data surveys, prayer, ascetic lifestyles, and astute observation in laboratories.

I see humans as clusters of probability, therefore, I see no difference between the efforts of researchers and the efforts of monks, they wish to find the same things.

Science seeks agreement, social inertia which assuages even the most skeptical person’s keenest observation; spirit seeks harmony, intangible inertia which brings them closer to the origins of all life.