Ideas and Imagination

Ideas lie behind behind all our actions. Unfortunately many of the ideas many people live by have been enforced upon them and many people are unaware of holding the ideas that they do, which motivate the harmful actions that they make. Thus what I am trying to do on this blog and what I encourage other people to do is take hold of the power to imagine and promulgate ideas.

We have the ability to sing, imagine, realities into existence. In a sense the human race has sung and imagined itself into its current unhealthy state.

Behind such thinking as this is the notion that reality is not fixed or absolute, that reality is mutable, indeterminate, open, which I deem to be a highly positive and accurate notion.

I find it difficult to tolerate the pessimistic and deterministic attitude found in such phrases as "get real" or "dream on" or "that's just human nature and there's nothing we can do about it". These are destructive institutional ideas and attitudes that we are sadly singing into existence and that keep people down, that discourage people from waking up to and standing up for their individuality and worth.

Post 21

It is significant, by thinking clearly, thoroughly and intelligently, to get ones actions and decisions, ones practical and social life, in accord with ones emotions, intuitions and fundamental ideas. To achieve this aim, and concomitant with thinking clearly, we need to perceive beyond the abstract systems and ideologies that usually govern us and reconnect with our actual immediate experiences.

We are pushed around by ideologies and systems which disconnect us from raw experience. We clothe and mask the world with constructs, like spoken or written words, and confuse such constructs with the naked things they are intended to denote. We have come to do this on a massive scale to the extent that many of us are ruled by constructed systems which are usually charged with detrimental (patriarchal, for example) assumptions and opinions.

On a recent post I stated that one of the main solutions to the current cultural dilemma is to open the doors of perception, meaning that we must perceive beyond the languages and ideologies that come between us and reality in its raw state. The raw state of reality would include the rawness of our subjective inner life, of our intuitions and thoughts, and the rawness of our objective outer life, of our environment.

Sadly we are not usually encouraged to connect with naked experience. We are not taught to be properly aware. In fact it takes a (seemingly) subversive unorthodox individual to teach us to mistrust or let go of everything we've been taught and reconnect with immediate experience.

In educational institutions we certainly aren't encouraged to be properly aware. In educational institutions one must not answer back! One must submit, must submit their thoughts and experiences to established paradigms.

In the mainstream news media we aren't encouraged to be fully aware either, here select external events are presented in an ostensibly impartial manner, while they are actually highly subjective presentations with underlying agendas, this is something we simply aren't encouraged to be aware of.

We are being fed through mainstream media abstract solely external information and grow up to feel, due to improper education, that such information is the truth and is all there is, that this is where all our answers come from.

If we were encouraged to be aware of ourselves and our environment in a direct unmediated way then all the events we here of occurring in the world would affect us in much deeper more meaningful ways, they would not be just abstract images and words on a newspaper page, TV or computer screen and we would not simply say from the comfort of our living rooms "oh isn't that terrible" of some horrific happening and carry on as normal with our day to day lives.

I feel that if more people thought clearly and thoroughly about their lives and the world around them they would not go around thinking they were correct, imposing their views onto others; they would be considerate and aware of, they would work in cooperation with, nature, their neighbours, their environment; they would ultimately be far more in touch with their feelings, emotions, thoughts and surroundings.

Post 20

In order to be aware of experience and reality in the way that we are we need to isolate, divide and thus circumscribe aspects of it.

Take the experiences of space and time. We circumscribe areas of space and call them countries, towns, planets, solar systems, atoms - feeling that one area of space is closed off, separate, from all other areas, that one area of space is locally stuck and disconnected from other areas.

We divide time into minutes, hours, months, years and more broadly past, present and future - feeling that the past is separate from the present and future, that it has been and gone and has no more effect or existence.

We divide ourselves from each other too. We see ourselves as separate from our environment, from our neighbours, from our dead ancestors, and have done horrific things because of this.

These feelings we have of things being separate are just the result of us laying constructed abstract rigid grids over reality and not being aware of the effects such grids have on us.

When one thinks receptively and clearly all the constructed separating grids that we forcefully impress upon reality start to melt away, they may still be apparent in some superficial sense but you see far beyond them, understanding that nothing is actually separate or isolated.

Post 19

We are conditioned to automatically and unconsciously think and perceive in certain ways. I believe the individuals who implement and maintain such conditioning are themselves largely unaware of what they are doing, for they themselves were and are conditioned. Thus the vast majority of people are caught, stuck, in negative imprinted thought patterns, unable to perceive beyond the limits imposed on them by culture.

A powerful thought revolution or paradigm shift occurs in culture and society when individuals directly express ideas, insights, that go beyond and thus challenge the picture of reality impressed upon them. I thus find that largely what I am trying to do is think beyond what and how I have been taught to think. I feel like I am constantly trying to think on a level or plane different, alien, to the level I have been encouraged to think on, trying to find words or ideas to ground and become more aware of my particular ways of perceiving reality. This is a difficult task but one which is necessary for development and growth.

Post 18

Realities are made consciously intelligible through and by the development of systems of symbolic representation. Our raw experiences of reality or realities are translated into abstract constructed mediums, allowing for our unique ability to consciously reflect. This is a fundamental observation that ought to be taught, along with its numerous significant implications, from a young age and kept in mind as much as possible. It is coded symbolic information that maintains conscious reflection and civilisation.

Post 17

Every idea and and observation represents, primarily, an individual's attempts at coming to terms with, understanding, the world in which they live. This is all thinking and philosophizing has ever been, a record of people sorting out and interpreting their experiences. There are thus no ends, resolutions or conclusions in thinking and understanding. In this respect my writings, too, should be seen as gropings, as evidence of an individual attempting to understand the world in which they live, as records of a continual inconclusive process.

Post 16

Theories involve explanations. To formulate a theory, say, on aesthetics or poetics, is to try and explain what aesthetic and poetic processes are, as though their essences could be explicated and simply "understood". It should be clear that one cannot simply arrive at a final and literal explanation or theory regarding what the aesthetic or poetic process is, or what anything is.

The full beauty and meaning of things and events derives from the fact that they are fundamentally mysterious and indeterminate. One cannot absolutely pin anything down with words, categories and concepts. To think that one can is an immensely common human confusion that leads to much unnecessary negativity.

Post 15

I would never want to be right, wrong, true or untrue. Such words mean very little to me. I aspire to be perceptive, insightful, perhaps prescient, receptive, keen and aware.

Post 14

Even though it may be argued that there exists no objective or absolute reality, in the sense that there is no reality without a perceiving subject, I believe we have to assume that there exists some absolute universal stuff which is, fundamentally, the same for everyone.

When two people experience an object they will undoubtedly experience it in different ways, ways which are relative to how each person has been brought up to view reality. But the basic fundamental stuff or substance of which the object is composed and constituted remains the same for each individual.

All the objects of our conscious experience are coloured by our past, by our cultural and social upbringing. We thus abstract from the universal substance, of which everything is composed, and structure our own realities, including our own views and ideas of what reality is. To keep this in mind, to internalize this view, is to my mind exceedingly important, for it encourages individuals not to impose their views of what reality is onto other people. All dogmatic, absolutist and essentialist attitudes are alleviated by keeping this relativistic insight in mind.

Post 13

When one has fully internalized the view that language, mainly written and spoken language, provides an environment which if not causes then maintains conscious understanding and awareness, then one realizes that everything we consciously experience is shaped and molded, is structured, by language.

We cannot conceive of a world without language, if for no other reason than that the very ability to conceive, to employ conceptual thought, is maintained by language. One of the implications of this view is that if we change the language we use then we will change the way we perceive and apprehend reality. Thus reality as we know it will, in a sense, shift and change with our shifts and changes of language.

Post 12

I believe that a democratisation and fair distribution of knowledge and awareness is very important. This is one reason why I don't like the attitude, found in certain academics and  academic traditions, that if one is not institutionally educated in a particular field, if one has simply read the literature and taught themselves certain ideas and disciplines, then one's opinions and observations are somehow less valid than those of specialist academics.

We have reached a stage where we cannot inhibit the opinions and observations of certain individuals simply because they do not have the credentials. We have reached a stage where we cannot separate and close off certain fields of knowledge from others. Any boundaries that still exist between academic fields and disciplines, and an individual's access to such fields and disciplines, ought to be dissolved. We are learning more and more that we live in an interconnected world where most events affect most other events.