| The Rainbow Gathering |
[Jul. 5th, 2004|06:38 pm] |
Last night, i returned home from the Rainbow Gathering, which I would describe as a very huge camping festival where everyone tries to love each other and be supportive to one another. People come and give away many free services to one another, including healing sessions, poetry readings and other performances, and especially access to food, and participation in many kinds of stimulating and/or reverential activities including debates, campfire sing-alongs, juggling, games, bartering, spaces for praying, doing yoga, and meditating, and free classes.
Clothing is almost universally considered optional at the gathering, although most people were clothed most of the time, much of them in beatiful costumes. There was a period of silence from dawn till noon, one day, that almost everyone at least partially observed which was broken with a mantra and a huge cheer.
(unfinished post, to be continued) |
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| Meditation |
[Jun. 24th, 2004|06:20 pm] |
There is a certain kind of narrowness of interest which is definitely not a beneficial condition.
If i believe that all our passions originate in human needs (or ahrools), then I don't want to give up on a passion per se but traverse it closer to the root. But what if the traversal is difficult and unclear, then what? if I don't give up on the passion, it might end up harmful such as a narrow interest can be.
Some people claim meditating helps them reduce the intensity of feeling or want, and this sounds bad from the perspective of satisfying your need.. One of my favorite articles on the subject, which i found online, was written by Richard K.C. Foreman, you can find it at www.jcs.org. He suggests that meditating isn't to reduce your awareness but increase it in the following way: when you have lower intensity emotion there is more room in your consciousness, so you get more aware of various other passions you may have simultaneously...
But even that is not so much necessarily a good thing, would it be a better world if we were all passionless? We could aspire to be Vulcans like spock... On the other hand, it is certainly nice when we have enough room in our consciousness to actually listen to one another - unless maybe we are all listening at the same time and noone is saying anything..hah
Anyway, what would be cool is knowing techniques which reduce whatever it is that hinders the traversal toward ahrool and creates a tendency toward narrowness of strategy. |
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| Intrinsicly vs Extrinsicly Oriented Meme Complexes |
[May. 7th, 2004|10:15 pm] |
The pursuit of Ahroolian Consciousness, could be viewed as the pursuit of internalizing a new culture. A culture which is intrinsically oriented as opposed to extrinsically oriented. (terms which i borrow from Alfie Kohn.)
Since cultures can be viewed as being composed of meme complexes. It is interesting to look at memes and classify them to determine if they belong to an intrinsic or extrinsic oriented meme complex.
So here is what i'm thinking. At the heart of the matter, the difference is what is considered important and thus worthy of attention and consideration. Using an intrinsic orientation, the important matters are deep within human desire itself, ahrools, where as with an extrinsic orientation what is important is independent of human experience, it is external authorities, and punishments and rewards.
Now, lets look at some memes :)
Comparing Pairs of Memes:
Conceptions of God:
Extrinsic) There is a god who sits external and apart from our experiences, we know the will of god from scriptures, prophets, etc.
Intrinsic) The god or the gods are inside you, to know their will, know the cares of self, of humans.
Extrinsic) God will punish you or reward you for being good.
Intrinsic) The activity is its own reward, or suffering.
Conceptions of Timeless Importance:
Extrinsic) In a 1000, years its not going to matter to anyone, these current events, or what is happening to you in particular, put your attention on what is independent of human experience, this is timeless.
Intrinsic) For something to matter, by definition, it must have some link to inherent values known from human feeling. What is timeless is the universal within the personal. (Some define poetry as the expression of the universal within the personal in a novel way.)
Conceptions of Human Motivation:
Extrinsic) People are inherently lazy and cruel, punishments and rewards motivate them to be otherwise
Intrinsic) All true motivations are inherent and authenticity requires they be acknowledged as positive, desirable, by humans.
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| Just how its done... |
[Apr. 8th, 2004|10:56 pm] |
In "Punished by Rewards", Alfie Kohn spells out just how we come to be harmed by rewards. I have come to see more clearly how and why NVC is helpful to us.
The behaviorism conditions us to look at ourselves and others as not being the originators of our feelings and choices. Even if you believe in free will philosophically, you still have conditioning to do this from having been subjected to behaviorism. In NVC, we recover from this conditioning with the constant pursuit of the ahrool(need in nvc parlance) to see the world as we would have pre-behaviorism, as people being the originators of their own feelings, thoughts, and choices. |
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| Ahrools |
[Apr. 6th, 2004|11:33 am] |
Some ideas are so important that they warrant the invention of new vocabulary.
I've decided to invent some words. I invite you to join me in using them.
Ahrool - An intrinsic motivator or desire depending on the internal or biological make up of an animal, rather than upon external or context dependent factors.
Ahroolian consciousness - Awareness and appreciation of ahrools giving rise to feelings, desires, preferences, and/or choices. Also, generally awareness of relationships between events and ahrools and vice versa.
Ahroolianism, Ahroolian Law - the philosophy or belief that strategies for order and or harmony are more successful if ahroolian consciousness is an integral part of them. Indeed, that an order is not truely order at all unles it may arise without the use of extrinsic motivators. In particular, ahroolianists wish to abolish the use of punishments and rewards which they believe are a detrimental distraction away from ahrools.
I'm currently reading "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn. |
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| thoughts that get out there |
[Mar. 30th, 2004|10:45 pm] |
There's something different between what I say to others, and what I keep to myself. I say "I", but i don't think this is unique to me of course. It feels different. It has something to do with the social aspect of our nature I think. The things we keep to ourselves seem less real, somehow. Something is said, it is as if released, and it takes on a life of its own, and doesn't require as much maintenance in a way. There is a need for self-expression.
I state the obvious. |
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| Culture & the Core of Desire |
[Mar. 3rd, 2004|10:39 am] |
Wherever there is a feeling or a choice, there is also a care, a value. For example, if a man chooses to prepare his own food rather than go out to eat, then it is because he cared about something that this choice is perceived to afford him, maybe he is caring at that moment about the freedom it provides him to do this himself. (Or if not this, he had some other care in the moment. There are many possibilities, maybe security of having more money for other things..)
Btw, right now, I'm reading "The Nature of Human Values" by Milton Rokeach. The sort of values Rokeach means are the ones you might associate with "value systems". They are cultural variants, in fact, you could almost look at them as the parts like memes which make up a culture. He saw values as cognitive representations or transformations of needs, and thought (like many did in 1973) that only humans had cultures so that only humans had values, where as all species have needs. We now know that there are other species in the animal kingdom which appear to have cultural variation, particularly tool using and even food seasoning apes. Rokeach saw humans as all having the same values, just to different degrees.
From my experience with NVC, I have come to value greater attention to cares or what Marshall Rosenberg calls universal human needs. Like Rokeach, Rosenberg sees values as ultimately derived from non culture specific needs, which he celebrates as inherently positive things. After all, what could these inborn desires be viewed as by any human if not as positive/desirable? In any case, it is these universal needs i have in mind when i referred to "the core of desire" in the title of this entry. In any case, the core then, is rooted in our biology, our make up, our body, and so does not change with particular culture or circumstances. Circumstances will however stimulate us to feel it or not, and determine which part is felt.
NVC is like a bag of conceptual tools which facilitate empathic connection. So when people say they practice NVC, they usually mean they practice empathy using NVC as an aid. Like others, I have found that in those times when I have empathized most successfully, it was difficult to determine if the universal need or care was the other person's or my own. Almost as if it belonged to neither of us but was just sort of floating out there for both of us to detect.
Suppose this "confusion" is indicative of reality, that would mean the core of my desires is not rooted in a body which ends at the surface of my skin, but rather in a body which is extensive to the degree that it even includes other people who are present. But then the core is no longer so immutable and stable. After all, now it would seem to depend on who else is present and surrounding circumstances. So one must recover, in what sense is this a core at all? Nevertheless, it is immutable in a given moment if we bar modifications of surroundings, and even if we allow modifications, the possibilities are limited by the possible arrangements of this extensive body; for example, the laws of physics place constraints. |
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| Science as a World View? |
[Mar. 3rd, 2004|09:58 am] |
There is an ancient fable which describes six blind men feeling an elephant, and making seemingly contradictory reports about what an elephant is like, depending on what part they feel. One says it is like a wall, another says it is like a spear, and yet another says it is like a snake, another a tree trunk and so on. (See this poem by John Godfrey Saxe.)
When forming our perspective on nature, the world, the elephant, some people think there is a superiority in the view which limits itself to what science can substantiate. But I think they over look something..
Science can be viewed as an endeaver to expand a certain kind of uncontroversal body of knowlege for which there is consensus. Speaking analogously, take that part of the elephant for which we all agree, create an understanding based on it, then procede to test that understanding by further observations which fit strict guidlines necessary to insuring that we all agree to admit them. And what of those observations which do not satisfy our requirement? They are not taken into account when formulating the "scientific" picture. But as a person with experiences all your own, you have these observations at your disposal. So which is the wholer view of the elephant? |
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| Birth of the Journal |
[Feb. 19th, 2004|10:00 am] |
Ah, so... it begins! :)
And here is a gem of my thought..
In my understanding, there is a conflict in philosophy, usually characterized as the conflict between materialism and idealism. It is nicely summed up in the following paradox.
We begin with pure experience void of abstractions. Then we partition experience into words, symbols, thoughts, things. In this way, things are made out of experience. Yet with the advancement of science, we come to see experience itself as born from things.
It is interesting to ponder if somehow both of these views could be true simultaneously. For the purposes of empathy, and health, and morality, I favor the idealist view in which all that is is experience. I think it is encouraging of helpful introspection.
It is not solipsist, or denying of the existence and importance of "things", its just saying that things are made out of experience, and that separation is an illusion, that all that is is being experienced. Others exist, people, animals and things, but it is an illusion that they are not part of you and you of them, and together all one pure experience of the one experiencer. |
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