Richard Brodie writes:
> It's tough to argue with someone who lives in paradise and does the work he
> loves.
How are these things related? This doesn't make much sense to me...
("Paradise"? You gotta be kidding. When did you last pay $5 for a
gallon of milk, or travel for 5 hrs in a plane to get _anywhere_?)
> In my mind results speak, and so I respect your life and what you
> have to say. Nevertheless, the topic you are discussing is so critically
> important that I feel compelled to respond, even if I am, as I suspect,
> unable to come near to completely answering your distaste for anything whose
> rational basis is not immediately apparent.
Is it really so important?
> I also am fully behind you in
> what I see as an effort to expose muddy thinking or intellectual dishonesty.
> However, let me make a few points.
>
> Your straw-man description of enlightenment sounds singularly unattractive.
It was meant to be.
> Are you sure this is what people mean when they talk about enlightenment?
Often.
> To
> me, enlightenment is an order-of-magnitude increase in understanding,
> comprehension of life and reality.
This is a very general and unspecific description of the phenomenon,
assuming it exists at all. In fact, I suggest that it could be applied
to any experience of revelation, epiphany, education, disillusion, etc.
> This brings with in a commensurate
> increase in personal power and ability.
Not necessarily. Increased knowledge can disempower. Consider that
depressives are known to make better assessments of the outcomes of
real life situations than those who take a more optimistic approach
to life.
> No one is "enlightened";
> enlightenment is a process.
Hmm. And yet we discuss the _achievement_ of Nirvana...?
> The Zen masters said there were at least 18
> major enlightenments available and countless minor ones.
So what is the difference between an enlightenment and any
experience of increased knowledge (real or deluded)? Terminology?
> If you're arguing
> that there is no such thing as growth in understanding, I expect you would
> have trouble defending that pint of view to anyone else.
Define "understanding"? Personally I would suggest that it is
the incorporation into an internal world model (meme complex) of
further information derived from an apparently external reality.
(This, of course, requires a certain consistency of the information
in question with the meme complex, but not necessarily complete
agreement). This process is continuously ongoing with any human
being. Its consequence is a more complex internal world model
and, hopefully, one which is an increasingly better predictor
of the behaviour apparently external world. Most of us, if
not all, have a limit to the complexity we can handle, at which point,
new information presumably kicks out old...
I could perhaps handle the idea of "enlightenment" as the incorporation
of information (or reasoning) which allows a more complete world model
than was present before that information was included. That is, the inclusion
of an idea, or meme, (and perhaps the exclusion of others) which makes
the internal world model significantly better than it was before.
An "Ahah! Insight!" perhaps. I see nothing mystical or unsurprising
about this. Thus the concept of enlightenment is not needed, it
is redundant against other descriptions.
> If you're arguing
> that people who pursue personal growth are snobs, I would certainly have to
> disagree in my personal experience; academics are far more snobbish and
> closed-minded.
The implication being that academics are not interested in personal growth?
> Your warning against building a thought-prison on top of a rock-solid
> personal philosophy is exactly what I mean by Level 2, so there we are in
> complete agreement.
I confess to some ignorance of your ideas of different levels. Could you
elaborate, briefly? (Although I suspect that we shall still fail to
agree as I see no reason for such categorisation for any reason than
convenience of discussion which will, ultimately, provide little but
distraction from the truth of the matter. I see consciousness as a
phenomenon with a continuous spectrum. Dividing it into chunks
doesn't make the chunks real.)
> And as for your question, is this the best use I could find for memes, as
> camouflage for enlightenment? The answer is yes. I can think of no greater
> mission that to raise the consciousness of as many human beings as I can
> while there is still time.
Why? This presupposes some sort of underlying value structure. What,
specifically, is this structure? As a memeticist (?), I presume that
you recognise the essential dependence of the success of an organism
(or meme) on the process of natural selection. Thus there is only
fitness or unfitness. Is consciousness fit? I propose that you
cannot argue either way, there is only wait-and-see. On the other
hand, if it is your choice that consciousness is of value, then
sure, go ahead, raise consciousness. But then, you'd better be
sure that is precisely what you are doing, hadn't you?
> What better use did you have in mind? Multi-level marketing?
Actually, I'm not convinced of the usefulness of the meme concept as
anything more than an interesting analogy between biological
evolution and cultural. The problem is that biological evolution
has a traceable substrate (DNA), cultural evolution does not; or
rather it is infinitely more complex and therefore effectively
untraceable (meaning that language could be considered the DNA of
memes, or perhaps the range of concepts and functions available
to the human brain => instant combinatorial explosion).
Tim
http://www.alphacrucis.com/CriticalList
-- Timothy M. C. Abbott, Ph.D. http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/~tmca/ Resident Astronomer tmca@cfht.hawaii.edu Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Tel: +1 808 885 7944 Box 1597, Kamuela, HI 96743 Fax: +1 808 885 7288