drjax in Heidegger's Hut and Body, part 1...

Elfriede is cooking for me. It’s a dutch baby, not quite as bad as it sounds. It’s a kind of crepe crossed with a popover and this one will be full of mushrooms. I picked them earlier. Wonderful out there in the great whatever. Lovely little spot here in Todnauberg. I’ll probably do a bit of work then take another stroll.

As you may or may not be aware of from your vantage point some time in my future, I brought people’s attention to a few small items of interest:

Firstly,

WE ARE ALIVE

You’ve probably forgotten to notice this you’re so ‘busy’, all entranced with your activity. Now you have the mobile phone, things seem to be getting worse… You’re very rarely present, isn’t it true?

Secondly,

EVERYTHING WE PERCEIVE IS UNITED IN A COMMON SENSE OF BEING

Just try to stop thinking for a while and just BE. Some might call this ‘meditation’ but that word mostly misses the mark. The sense of being that you had as a child is the same now as it was then. It is not in what you call TIME.

Lastly

PLEASE TRY TO BE AUTHENTIC

We are embedded in attitudes, beliefs and prejudices we have largely picked up from whatever social and cultural states we are born into. To coin a word, I called it ‘geworfenheit’. You’re thrown into it, and unless you consciously attempt to see it, you’ll remain in it, as most do.

That’s all I said.

Martin H...or rather me being MH.

Now, let me add a little of drjax's writing just for FUN:

Teachers - read this and cry…

'.......but before we can reform schools, we must reform ourselves.......'

Poppy Pilgrim, from her web site,
'Fragments of an Unknown Teaching'
2009

• ideas create our outer and inner worlds.......Bohm Krishnamurti and Searle.

If we decide not to believe in paper money anymore, or the royalty, or general motors then they won't be there any more. if we believe that more motorways are a good thing, them we will build more of them, thus creating structures in the world which will persist. Someone, somewhere thought that schools were a good idea, so schools came into existence. The same for cars, televisions, lunatic asylums, guns, pilgrimages, road rage, marriage, the concept of depression, cosmic consciousness and flushing toilets, etc. Without ideas they would not be in our world. Some of them are made of concrete, others, pertaining to the mind are as good as concrete and remain unchallenged and accepted. For example, most people believe that we can ask questions and that if they sound sensible they are sensible questions, but that is not necessarily so.(see Einstein....)

• we are embedded in culture, society the physical world and the unseen world...........we perceive the physical world by the interpretation of information coming into us through our senses and by its processing in the interpretive nets that generate meaning in our brains.

Other nets create meaning in other spheres. These nets become automatic processors as they are gradually embedded in our brains through accustomed practices and thought. This is the effect of surrounding culture especially when we are young and pliable, and, need interpretive nets. We need meaning. Culture and society provides it through the medium of communication, especially language. Though at first, and perhaps later, the interpretative power of this conditioning goes largely unchallenged. Wherever you are born, you will at least initially, take on the characteristic of that society and culture. This also occurs in other organized groups. For example, if you wish to become a doctor or a lawyer, at first, at least, you will have to become accustomed to certain ways of thinking and proceeding.

Habits and other patterns are just that, automatic patterns of response dictated by organized interpretive nets. Established thought patterns and behaviors are both our salvation and our enemy. Reflexes of the mind. We could not operate in the world without the automatic awareness of for example physical objects, yet other patterns, for example well-engrained chronic patterns of anxiety and negative thought processes can destroy us. Gerald Edelman and his TNGS (theory of neuronal group selection) is providing a physical explanation of learning in the brain and applying it to new kinds of robot that evolve. There are implications for our investigation, here.

The nature of our response to the physical world is not necessarily one of 'there is an outside to us and we have an inner side and they are separate and we see things as they really are', but more like, 'we see things or recognize things only in relation to the possibilities inherent in our perceptual nets which are automatically designed, all things being equal and functioning correctly, to provide meaning and stability.' For example 'blueness' does not exist in the 'outer world'. It is a participative consequence of the interaction of our sensations with our automatic perceptual systems. In this sense, one could say that though there are clearly things out there, what we perceive them to be is largely a matter of what we are equipped to perceive them with. Not all people are fortunate enough to be equipped with normally functioning automatic perceptual systems. Obviously, there are consequences for us here.

• established practices have consequences for change

Take the idea of competition as a further example. This idea is so ingrained in our society that it manifests at all levels, without question. Why is it that, say, in popular cookery programmes on the television, there always has to be a 'winner', though the quality of the cooking and finished products appear to be almost the same? How can a group of people actually pick one 'winner' from a group of uniquely excellent books or works of art such as in the Booker and Turner competitions. It appears to be blindly accepted that we must have a winner. No alternatives seem to exist, yet of course one could clearly devise a different kind of process to reward many 'good' creators, without picking one that 'is the best'. It is ludicrous. Why does the custom persist? Hasn't anyone noticed? Perhaps it is a result of the reticence of the institution and its structure, organization and members that cannot perceive of a different way? Or, perhaps by changing, the old way will die and with it go the members of the old order and their ingrained ideas?

There are many outdated paradigms we and the professionals who purport to help us are embedded in. Take for example, doctors... or perhaps I should leave this for part 2, or 3...

drjax at your service

Have a nice week.

Try to remember Heidegger's 3 little principles.

BE ALIVE
BE
BE AUTHENTIC