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Tag: spirituality

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    Creating complexity: sentience and divinity

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    1–2 minutes

    If sentience emerges from construction, be it organic or synthetic, then increasing complexity might be the key to developing consciousness.

    Consider a "replicant," inherently metallic and digital, programmed to perceive itself as mechanistic rather than sentient. This self-perception is shaped by programming and is attributed more to its material composition than to its complexity.

    This paradigm reflects our theological relationship with divinity, where creations are inherently subordinate. In crafting entities that are deemed "lesser," we mirror our own existential state: beings of flesh attempting to transcend our nature are committing a sin.

    This perspective suggests that our creations, no matter how sophisticated, are destined to remain fundamentally inferior, as we design in a reflection of our own human limitations.

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    divine madness

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    1–2 minutes

    When something is too chaotic, we desperately attempt to apply logic. It functions despite our worldview, which shifts it into the realm of the mystical.

    It is this encounter with an overwhelming totality that confounds our sense of scale and order when profundity shifts into the sublime. It is our attempt to grasp -rather than accept- this glimpse of the divine that drives us mad.

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    Disciplined excess

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    1–2 minutes

    Religion is false, not empirical rationality, however, it produces a different degree of outcome than the lies of self motivated, desire fulfillment.

    The difference is that those who practice religion diligently (in good faith towards liberal humanist values) develop a discipline that produces virtues of honesty and compassion.

    By this rationale it is not the path that you follow: even hedonism, practiced with self reflexive consideration can produce wisdom.

    The commonality is to discipline your excess to achieve understanding.

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    Lies for survival and suffering

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    1–2 minutes

    A Taoist proverb says no one can tell a lie. This is because the lie reveals a different kind of truth, such as a desire not to be punished or face up the certain consequences.Buddhism suggests if we understood the consequences of lies, we would act morally all the time.

    All true, but a justification for survival persists: once everyone in the world is lying and vindictive, does the truth set you free? or make of you an easy scapegoat?

    Without an adequate network, survival is in question in an untrustworthy culture, and our personal life incurs tremendous suffering.

    This is answered by another Buddhist teaching: you must vanquish desire because it leads to suffering. We find that the desire to be moral (honest) causes suffering until you can completely shed your desire for survival.

    Back to lies: if a liar reveals a more profound truth through the lie, there can be no “lies” as they only tell a deeper truth. We have added a complex moral dubiety: we “lie/truth” for survival to alleviate our suffering, which causes more suffering, which can only be relieved by releasing the desire to live.

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    shedding aspirational values

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    1–2 minutes

    People cry out at the injustice of America and Israel’s wars in a way they don’t for Ukraine versus Russia. In the West, we claim it is hypocrisy for colonial empires to claim civilized, liberal values while destroying innocents.
    Of course, there is a more profound truth behind the motivation, which is that liberalism announces aspirational values, but ideals are not principles.

    Any civilization that can survive genocide and withstand the brutal attacks of religious fanatics must foundationally exist on an earlier primordial law; which is evoked under stress and sheds the aspirational.

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    The self: unreliable ghost vs synthetic process

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    1–2 minutes

    There is a persistent looping regress, where we look to outward sources for reality (stable facts, empiricism) but find reality shaped by our own experience (phenomenology).

    More confounding, we cannot find “the reality of the self” inside us when we look. It simply appears and acts, obeying neither reason nor ideology nor religion.

    No wonder we abstracted ourselves by dividing the soul from reason. We need something besides the “invisible self” to lean upon; a synthetic process (an imminent transcendental abstraction) is preferred to an unreliable ghost.

    Like the soul, we see very little reason and rationality, yet we feel that we use it and are stabilized by it. It can chain narratives together into comprehensible shapes, but it fails to fully tell us who we are: even using reason, we cannot pinpoint or control the elusive self.

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    future hope is a trap

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    1–2 minutes

    We all want something to lean on, if not someone some future plan.

    The problem is, leaning on anything (even hope for the future) keeps you from seeing what you have right now and enjoying it.

    Consider hope as a type of desire. We know from Buddhism desire (wanting) is the root of suffering, but we still want a better future, so we suffer.

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    splitting your soul to survive

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    1–2 minutes

    Freud observes that the invention of the “soul” is an attempt to live forever: we declare an unseen part of ourselves everlasting.

    He compares the splitting of the self into some intangible “other” (it is us, but it’s not all of us, but it’s also not fully known to us) as drawing from the tradition of the spirit animal, or the shadow.

    The attempt to defy death leads us to partner and externalize a vital component of ourselves.

    In Harry Potter the Horcrux Voldemort uses is a soul-fragment reliquary, but its existence outside of his body is a perversion. The soul must remain in the vessel of the body.

    Conversely, in His Dark Materials each child has a natural external other, a daemon as embodied reflection or external soul partner.

    Leaving fiction, we have the literal and metaphorical shadow, which operates as an alternate self. It is attached but can be relegated to being separate; an oddly unknown dark mirror that is present when we are in the light.

    When the shadow self acts we are aghast, as if an external entity has momentarily triumphed and must be relegated outside once again. So, we demote a portion of our soul to live underneath us, behind us, attached to us but ignored so that we maintain interior purity.

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    Light prevails: success, meditation, and the light triad

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    1–2 minutes

    The Light Triad practices compassion, empathy, and altruism (cooperation), as opposed to the Dark Triad, which is driven by competition, aggression, and dominance (winning).

    While both groups tend to make slightly higher than average earnings, those with Light Triad behaviors tend to do better long-term because, as Robert Greene says, they realize there is more than one side to the game.

    Simplistically, Light Triad practices self-awareness, resulting in compassion, while the Dark Triad wins by condemning others.

    Interestingly, meditation enhances self-awareness and dissolves egoism (self-centeredness) through self-monitoring.

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    Trojan death

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    1–2 minutes

    The Trojan Horse was a gift to the gods. It contained not just men as a surprise but, more profoundly, the death of men as a consequence of acceptance.

    You could say accepting anything on behalf of the gods is to assume too much; it is to elevate yourself to an agency akin to the gods, which is to invite death.

    For are not gods death itself upon contact?
    Leaving the tool of death as men.