I press my face against the glass of my unbelief, the foggy pane clears and I see lucid emotions, wheeling wearily through my mind. Have I lost all sense of who I have been? Have these things that have tortured and rent my spirit been subdued, leaving me bored with my contentment?

Have I slacked off in my writing? Yes!

(Marcie’s Birthday – XVI).

Psalms 23. (NIV)

The lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

The Lord God has built a fence, a fence of barbs and electrons, tearing and electrocuting all evil that tries to trespass. I need not do anything at all, for the lord is my tender. Sheep are, a bit, like humans, a bit unpredictable and bizarre, unruly upon occasion for no particular reason, illogical. This confused mass cannot manage on its (their) own, so a shepherd (the Lord) tends them. It is a beautiful and meaningful relationship. Very binding… in a quirky sort of way. The shepherd is not needy, but still cares for his flock, which is needy and lost on its (their) own.

he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters

The Lord allows his sheep to lie, restful from a chaotic livelihood (oh! the entropic life of a sheep!), and leads his flock to waters for refreshment. Sustenance and rest are two of the most coherent branches that lead to “self-preservation.” It seems God provides for these freely and plentifully.

he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

The soul - also called the mind in so many ancient texts. These two words are so interchangable, even having the same translation in Aramaic and Hebrew. Frustration, anger, pain, any other degradative emotion of the mind is cleansed. The Lord restores the soul/mind, bringing peace. FOR HIS NAME’S SAKE, God guides his flock on to the path of righteousness, the path of good - His path. If he did not do so, his reputation would be in ruin. Who would believe in a God who does not hold the promises He makes? The paths of righteousness are within reach following the shepherd who, because it would be hypocrisy not to, tends his flocks with care.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and staff - they comfort me

These are metaphorical, or, symbolic, lines of the psalm. As stated earlier, the lord has a fenced pasture for his sheep, who are protected from the evils, the physical dangers, of the world.

The pensive sheep wanders, though, in his mind, upon occasion, through the “valley” of despair, sickness, psychological evil. The closer one strays to these darkensses, the deeper in the shadow they can be… a feeble sheep in mental anguish, mayhap from lost love, dead friends, or faulty footing has the road and staff hovering to drive those fears far from his mind. Turn to the Shepherd, and comfort shall be found. It is, because of this, possible to deny the murky black of evil and stare it in its pocked face until it melts to nothing with the Lord God’s Rod and Staff overhead, protecting.

Do not stray from the pasture! The psychological darkness is evil enough!

You prepare a table before me in the presense of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

The Shepherd stands before his sheep, a sheep full of pain and frustration, IN THE PRESENCE OF THESE ENEMIES, these psychological apparitions of hatred and fear, and load the table with sustenance divine. Your enemies shall be vanquished by God’s compassion.

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord -forever-.

Thus church ended…

                  --  B  O  O  M  --

Frustration – pounding my brain with its painful pickaxe, driving all rationality form my head. I can’t think! I cannot think! Try as I might, I am feeble. The shadows creep quickly over my eyes, blurring my sight and smothering my mind. Fuzzy images of clearer thoughts dance just within reach. I grapple with them to try to untangle the weave that squeezes tighter and tighter onto my brow. Limping, I grunt unintelligible, ugly remarks at passers-by, blinking at my arrogance, lost in their opulence. Memorizing names of cities and spaces on maps, places to dance and scream your revelation into empty air, only to hear the echoes years later without the meek applause.

Problems… things are created to solve problems. Frustration is prominent when you cannot formulate these problems into terms comprehensible to the end of a snazzy solution.

                          FILL THE PAGE!
                          FILL THE PAGE!

           With what
                    prattle blather meaningless jingling bells from
                                holidays
                                      forgotten

Thoughts on “self-preservation”:

Many human “goals” can be stretched, expounded on, then compressed back to the concept called ‘self-preservation’. Is this extremely simple yet powerful instinctive sense an integral part of most everything we do?

Jayson provides a few excellent examples, though I shall not elaborate exquisitely upon them. Simply: the avoidance of large, hairy beasts with sharp claws and pointed teeth. I suppose this may be a purer, unadulterated… or better yet, non-camouflaged instance of self-preservation than most which we experience.

My linear algebra professor, dubbed “Dr. Wilson”, makes an amusing and thought provoking comment occasionally which is on these lines: “Once I was like you: my purpose was to graduate [college] and eat.” Is the lengthy struggle to get an education so one can attain a good enough job to provide for oneself simple an extension of self-preservation? In a historical perspective, the norm was once not to go to such lengths for an education because it was not as difficult to provide for oneself without an elaborate series of pre-planned educational curricula as it may be in this, the “information”, age. I used the word “norm”. I meant this: The normal person chose the easiest path throughout history to the end of self preservation. Mayhap at one point, in archaic times, all that was needed was a good spear, careful (practiced) aim and a mediocre to good throwing arm plus some meager cooking abilities. The only “education” relevant was learning the ability to kill meat that could be eaten (and possibly sort out non-poisonous from poisonous fruits, berries, etc) and preparing that meant for a tasty eating process. As history progressed (as history surely does), or “lengthened” with time, man created a more complex society, one that allowed groups of different people to have different means that reached the end of “self-preservation”. These groups split into more and more until there were many different archetypes that all traced an exceedingly convoluted course to the same goal – to “eat”. So, the “easiest” course that the normal person could take became more complex with time, resulting in an educational hierarchy (or a “manual labor hierarchy”) that allowed the normal person to find one of the many means (his or her choice) to reach the goal… the only goal… “to eat”… to survive. Self preservation. What of the “un-normal” ones? Human intellect prospered in many, allowing them to find ways around the normal ways to “eat” (take a thief, for example) AND to explore other pursuits outside the realm of the instinctual “self-preserving” rule.

So this sketchy idea I have presented is surely full of holes that may or may not be easily patched, but no matter, it is surely food for more thought on the matter.

The point of the first draft of such an idea?

The NORMAL person leads a life in whatever “intellectual” pursuit they have close– which is, in reality, just an elaborate camouflage of the self-preservation instinct. Conclusion? Most people really do not grow intellectually beyond their inborn instincts.

A better way to state this might be…

They do not explore intellectually beyond that which leads them to the predetermined goal: “to survive”. One could speculate, however, as to what other instincts (if dissimilar instincts do, indeed, exist_ drive any other sort of intellectual diversity that my extend beyond that which can be traced back to the self-preservation base. If every mental endevour can be traced back to a foundation of instinctual behavior, it might be easy to come to the conclusion that intelligence or creativity, even is just a aftereffect of heredity. This may be a silly conclusion, though.

What of the need to find “meaning”, then? What of this need that drives some to seek walls to enclose them, urges others to break them down, and pushes still others to self-destruction? What primal force could, if any, this be distilled to? Or is this one of the elements that truly separates us from instinctual creatures? And might this, too, if that, be whittled down to a hereditary factor – the non-instinctive instinct. “The primal urge to question the validity of primal urges.”

Does a man who submits himself utterly to an ideology do so for sense of security? Surely he does. But security from what? Perhaps from harm… therefore a spawn of the “self-preservation” base, but I think not. the closest idea I have at present is that this man is seeking (and has found) security from unsanity. Unsanity! “Chaos”, big and evil, lurking behind self-imposed prison walls… he wishes to become “institutionalized”, for that is the way of the happy? Escapism comes in many forms, religion (whether true or not) can be one of them. Reading fiction perpetually could be another. The possibilities are endless, some safer than others – some with more security from the unsane, others just passing solace from the dangerous outside. This security is purely anti-intellectual. It prohibits all consideration of the world outside and sometimes even the knowledge of it. It becomes simpler, easier to live with a feeling of non-danger, non “sudden shifting of environment”, and occasionally even total refrain from change. So, the question remains still from the bygone Shawshank ponderings: Is it “right” to awaken these people – crash through their walls into where they are seemingly safe from knowledge – safe from thought? Or should they be left to live and die where they can manage best?

Lee once said: “Religion is just an excuse to not think for yourself.” This statement, though I find much untruth in it, holds much relevance to my former discourse. RELIGION, I NOW know, after years of rejecting it, has many features, uses and intellectuality behind it and is just recently becoming a prevalent interest in my life. So, I shall change the quote of Lee’s by only one word: “Escapism is just an excuse to not think for yourself.”

Now I consider it correct in whole. Religion CAN be an escapist tactic, when twisted, as can many, many things, as I mentioned on the previous page. This is possibly the aspect of religion that Lee was observing (or not more “the aspect of religion,” but “the way some use religion”) when he made this statement.

To correlate, I suspect that escapism, coupled with the drive of “self-preservation” creates a more fluid world to survive in, and that is a frequent tactic of the normal person – to use escapism to help focus their life on the goal “to eat” and not be disturbed by the evil outside.

One more note on escapism:

Is it an instinctual drive to eliminate departure from instinct? Is it the drive to adhere only to primal desires? This seems very contradictory but at the same time insightful to me. I shall ponder.

I eagerly grasp at my intention to slip from productive pursuits to lethargy with hands that mean to strangle… I’m grappling with my will to get back to writing from the more alluring computer work that has filled my day. I sit pretentiously in Linear Algebra class filling this page with rhetorical dribble. I’ll pass an integral form of my psyche onto my surroundings just right after my left armpit develops the ability to, at will, create a different recipe for tapioka pudding thrice an hour. At least I have found my bitchin’ pen.

Further elaborating, actually – what is the point to writing if you have nothing to write about? To hone your skills? To entertain yourself at a later date with easy, virtually idea-less writing? Yup Yup…

The anchor must come free. Um, after class.

A few thoughts on “meaning”. Inspired by GEB.

There seem to be three levels in the search for meaning in any particular object:

• the realization that there is, in fact, meaning there to be found.
• the ideas, conceptions, thoughts and notions that allow the actual decoding of the message inherent to the object.
• the actual message.

These three “levels” are found in all types of “decipherings” throughout life, whether one realizes it or not. Suppose a steel box violently crashes through the roof of your house and smashes your new porcelain rutabaga. You could ignore it. You could pick it up, toss it in the nearest dumpster and carry on with your life. You COULD examine it a bit. Suppose you pick this last option. Picking it up, you hear something “clunk” inside. This allows you the first level in meaning mentioned above. You now recognize there is something to be sought. Then you may start contemplating a way to open the steel box. Suppose you decide to go down to the local hardware store, pick up a cutting torch, come home, read its instruction manual (because you should ALWAYS read the instructions) and decide this is a correct method of opening the steel box. You have now proceeded to the second level of meaning, the level that allows you to find the “message,” or in this case, open the box. Your new blowtorch is your decoding weapon. Once you cut the box open and find a package of Ritz crackers, you have the message that was inherent to the box.

Because this entire process was attainable by only two things - the box and your intellect - this box’s “meaning” is intrinsic within the box, but only in the context of human interaction…

Now the package of Ritz Crackers is an altogether new “object”. What if you had never seen a package of Ritz crackers before? Suppose you have never even known the concept of “eat” before, etc… you apply the same rules. GEB used the example of a note in a bottle. The first level of meaning is surpassed when you realize there is something other than a bottle containing a white piece of paper with scribbles. The second level is realized seeing the note is in a particular language, telling you the method of decoding. And, obviously, the message is the text itself. It is unique in that no matter who the decoder might be, and no matter the actual decoding method, the only actually translatable message will always be the same.

And now something that frequently bothers me:

Let us call “music”, “movies”, “television”, “books”, etc.. MEDIA. I think there is an amazing paucity in my observation of the “coming to the conclusion” that the first level of meaning is evident in much of today’s media. Sure, there are possibly many meaningless (in every respect) instances, such as lyrics to the modern pop song (not all - some). Is it an environmental thing? Is the cause for this lack of sight the “context” of many people’s lives? I believe so. (since it is probably not transmitted hereditarily!)

So I shall use the song I fiddled with at another point in this journal, “A fool fancying cliches” … the lyrics this time. Perhaps this song is gaily bouncing out of a nearby amplification system and a passerby stops to consider it. She hears the words. Now, as in several examples above, she may simply walk away untouched, BUT, in an unguarded moment of speculation, she suspects something relevant to the words coursing forth from the speaker. She has identified that there is meaning, that is, the first level has been traversed. Suppose a page containing the words to “fool” is lying near the stereo spewing the song and, of course, that it catches her eye. Picking it up, she may now traipse on to the second level of meaning and attempt to grasp a decoding method. Now, the message is held not in the actual words, but in metaphor and allegory constructed by the words. Our eager subject must use her imagination coupled with any imagery the words inspire. She can then make connections (find similarities) between the images conjured and situations experienced / observed in her lifetime. She has decoded the message.

Is there enough meaning and message, image and allegory, enough representation of an artist’s psyche in his / her word(s) of art to, through sufficient (and this might be incredibly complex) decoding mechanisms, perceive the “meaning” of the artist him / herself? Of course, this would depend on the instance of art, since the artist may not have put “as much of him / herself” in all of his / her works. So, to rephrase: Is there, or could there be, enough meaning and message, image and allegory, enough representation of an artist’s psyche in his / her work (in a SINGLE instance of his / her work – an instance that was clearly NOT created for this or any related autobiographical purpose) to perceive the “meaning” of the artist? Say, in a Van Gogh Painting? A symphony by Beethoven … Etc.? Yes?

“My thoughts mearly drift among the oddities and quirks of how things are (as I seem them). I, humble observer of phenomena, plod along and puff my silly words into the air rather unspectacularly.” –The Tortoise.

I am quite amorous of that quote. At times, I feel like these writings are very insipid, banal and quite ignorant and uneducated, as I do now. What to do but keep plundering on, eh? Traipse through stimuli, I do, as most do, absorbing a little here, a little there, making my silly impressions, hoping someone will catch air of their message. I suppose this journal needs quite a number of levels of context - one being the language barrier, another being experience. One might find all of this myriad of meandering musings vapid as a newborn’s first excretion of bodily waste; another might have already thought through every concept I have approached, but still enjoys idle reading; yet another could be fascinated. I suppose I cannot please ’em all, nor, in fact, should the purpose of this be to do so, since it is a highly introspective work. 21 pages in 4 1/2 days is rather impressive (to me) for me, however.

Carrying on in the previous vein:

I just tangled in conversation with this idea, so I shall write it, no matter its relative wackiness. Say knowledge, in a way, is passed genetically, but not the knowledge itself, but only, as i mentioned on the last page, the ability to learn types of knowledge. Use types in the way a common university uses the word to divide knowledge: Chemistry, Physics, English, Photography, etc. A single mutation that slightly alters a few atoms gives or takes the ability (or increases/decreases) to absorb a certain type. This mutation happens infrequently, though often enough that when the whole world is populated from a few individuals, it creates an exceedingly wide variety of ability to or to not learn.

BUT! I’ve always, in the past, believed in the human ability to excel in almost anything by sheer will (I am speaking of intellectual feats, of course, not instances of telekinesis or muscle tone). This has been from my own point of view, however, and it might just be the case that I can intellectually prosper in most all of the subjects I have endeavoured in…. It is impossible to make a testable hypothesis, though, since I can very improbably tackle each and every subject matter in the universe during my lifetime. Unless I tackle the problem of mortality first, of course.

If a human being’s MEANING is not intrinsic, NOT found ONLY in itself, then, naturally, its meaning is derived from ITSELF and its lifelong context (no matter how convoluted). It would seem (to me, anyhow, and I know that is a fucking opinion, but I cannot see how else to express at this late hour), perhaps, that for a “thing” that cannot find meaning within itself to find meaning, and I am assuming that an encoded part of every (living) thing is a desire to find its “meaning”, it would have a goal that is (simply) to look for that meaning. I have many examples. I shall only illustrate one. I could perform this feat in one word: “religion”, which can be generalized out to the word “philosophy” and further out to “ideology.” Every man has an ideology. I believe I can safely make that generalization. To be absolutely positive, though, I shall define the word:

IDEOLOGY:

The manner of thinking OR The content (written or unwritten rules of self-behavior and self-modification) of thinking that any given individual characterizes.

A man or woman develops, seeks out, hybridizes, transforms, rejects, negates, or accepts an ideology to find meaning for his existence. If you want proof of this hypothesis, go visit your local Baptist Student Union.

Slainte Mhath!

Word for the day:

RECHERCHE:

exquisite or choice… also… overblown or pretentious.

Thought for the day:

“If anyone thinks that God will not give victory to His apostle in this world and in the world to come, let him tie a rope to the ceiling of his house and hang himself. Then let him ponder if his cunning has done away with that which has enraged him.” –The Holy Qur’an 22:15

Is metaphor, allegory creation in itself or just very carefully disguised plagiarism?

NEXT UNRELATED IDEA, PLEASE!

Egads! I have come upon an interesting notion that i shall attempt to distill into a (more) concise concept. Further reading in “Godel, Escher, Bach” has unearthed a view on meaning that is bizarre to expand into a new context. Meaning: is it inherent in an object itself, or is it derived from the object’s environment, including, of course, its onlookers? It is silly to say that each and every extant object is of exactly one of these natures of meaning, since it is hopelessly obvious that most “things” have meaning because of a combination of the two. For example, a pencil derives meaning for itself from itself by the elements of which it is made and by the shape in which it exists. It is made of graphite wrapped in wood, tapered to a point on one end and bearing a spiffy eraser (anti-pencil?) on the other.

AND: the pencil derives meaning from its “context” by the way it is employed (or by the way it is passively oriented in space: one could impale one’s foot on it accidentally). The “writing utensil” employment is possibly one of the most often used contexts, though a pencil could easily become a weapon or piece of an artistic mélange.

“Godel, Escher, Bach” takes this idea and asks the questions: Is DNA compete in itself, a complex code that can create an organism, or, more specifically, HAS THE ABILITY to create an organism devoid of any specific chemical context? Can all of the information dealing with the transformation from DNA to organism be found (upon whatever extensive research is needed) in the DNA itself? Using only a molecule and human intellect?

OR - is the DNA incomplete without its chemical environment that spawns proteins, replication, gradual cell differentiation, etcetera; incomplete in the sense that it, in itself, does not possess THE INFORMATION to see the epigenesis from molecule to organism?

This genetics discourse led me to ponder on a translation of this to the context of human personality. It seems quite obvious to me that the initial human being (meaning a human upon birth) has a devastating dearth of “things” that will form its personality. Or does it? I once read of a theory which is closely bounded to reincarnation. A human being has all of the knowledge that he will ever possess hidden in his mind, waiting to be unlocked. This would imply (quite blatantly) that a person’s meaning is completely defined by his/herself and all the information necessary for his/her lifetime is contained in the mind initially.

The numerous obvious loopholes in this theory literally pounce from the page, though, and one might be left with the impression that Bob is a daft couch potato in need of a new toy. I, who happen to be Bob, refuse to toss such a theory away so readily. Dampened and padded, this concept (referred to by me as “APERCU”) may hold a sagacious, contemplative idea.

Intellect is somewhat passed from parents to child via DNA. Physical features are taken from parents’ DNA. Balding… sickle cell anemia… average eyesight throughout a lifetime…. on and on.

So, can there, could there, might there, is there… any knowledge passed from parent to child by DNA? For sure a capacity for knowledge, but now about limits to what KIND of knowledge a person can learn? Is that plausible? Might mutations expand or contract at random? This all ties to the human mind being incomplete… not having the ability - the FULL ability - to realize its meaning without environmental context. But HOW incomplete? What does one know (how much meaning - self meaning) without context?

Also, to conclude these jumbled conceptions….

What does it mean to realize one’s meaning? Most things don’t have this particular problem. Example - a pencil has no ability to realize its meaning, no matter its construct (this is possibly only (of course) if the pencil’s makeup stays within the bounds of the typical definition of “pencil”). Once could tie in numerous religious implications to this question, and, as a matter of fact, this question may be at the heart of many religions. I shall not draw any more conclusions at this time.

A theme from “The Shawshank Redemption” that I found especially alluring was the concept of a person becoming “institutionalized.” The sense in which this word was initially used was this:

A man is convicted of a crime at a rather young age (young being between twenty and thirty), and imprisoned. He spends fifty years of his life inside a world that is controlled in a perfectly measured way, giving him no way of knowing how to act if he is suddenly shoved into “reality” - reality being the world outside of prison. I shall draw an analogy which happens to also draw an analogy between this otherwise independent discussion and previous pages.

A score of music begins in the key of D. Now, taking the ideas which were dabbled with earlier (in the journal) and Bach’s XXYY nigh-cliche, this tone center of “D” may easily wander to A, the dominant. The listener “pushes” the “D” onto his/her mental stack and enjoys the current tone center of A knowing full well (as most listeners of music surely consciously do) the piece shall soon return to D. So it doesn’t, though. The A holds fast for, say… 9/10 of the suite… long enough for Mr. Musical to get quite lost in it. “A” is all there is until, suddenly, for the last three bars of the piece… there is D again! Well! We didn’t expect that, now, did we? Should the composer have included these final few measures or were they purely “incidental”?

Let us try another level. What if, after playing around in A for quite a time, the new dominant, E, is introduced and then clearly made the tone center? What of this? The listening guinea pig puts the A away for another day, or at least until Mr. “E” has lost his sway. Again, though, as you (the surely quite omniscient reader) probably figured, the gayly funster of a composer lets E whirl and twirl through its own musical maelstrom for such a time that it would seem odd to reintroduce the A, and by quite an act of outward heresy to drop two full semi-tones to D!

In a technologicesque methodology, it becomes an act of recursive enumeration. Not recursion as in something calling itself, but recursion in the sense of one thing spawning other similar things that are built upon itself.

The piece of music may sound more sensible to, after all of the meandering and longevity after each, resolve to the tonic in which it spent the longest time, in this case, E. (I did stick a “B” in there, I realize, but this simply illustrated a recoverable (or, shall I say “sensibly recoverable”) modulation.)

He ends up killing himself for lack of comprehension of the world he, indeed, came from but no longer can understand. Might he have been better off, or “happier”., or would it have been more “sensible”, to live out his days in prison?

But. What of those who become “institutionalized” in a more abstract sense? What of the man who seeps deep into a religion, lets his only life be a job as a teacher in a Christian School and involvement in church activities? Isn’t this person, too, “institutionalized”? Is he not oblivious to the reality beyond the walls he has found for himself? Does every person, to an extent, find their own personal prison, their own fortress that shields them from the outside world? Should these people … should all people … be awakened in a analogous manner as the old man in “The Shawshank Redemption,” after spending FIFTY years of his life in prison, was? How about those that have walls within walls? What could it take to regain the tonic? Or, in fact, is the tonic worth regaining?

One might ask if there is a wall that can surround that anyone can find that is the “correct” wall, as most religious think of their imprisoning fortress. Is, then, the hypothetical “LEAP OF FAITH” a bound over the enclosure and into this NIRVANA?

Have I gallivanted in a rambling sort of way from the specific to the vague? Hell, yeah!