A Thought For Pause…
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In this post I’d like to show my own exploring of my identity through sound and vision. I put these short videos together in 2009 as an experiment, trying aesthetically express my sensibilities. Each of the three depicts a different aspect of me. As usual I am always grateful for peoples views and ideas.
Association Framework from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
Water from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
FIN from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
Tags: anxiety, associations, Belief, black and white, culture, Death, Design, drawing, Experience, happiness, Ideas, Images, Life, mind, picture, Poetry, sketches, Video
Living day to day we sometimes forget the significance of our brain are with respect to the ideas that make up our worlds. In our brain are a considerable number of neurons with significantly more connections. Odd as it may sound, there is nothing like the world in the brain, nor are there any clear ideas, just some gray and white mushy stuff. How your brain and my brain know a table is a table or an idea is an ideas is therefore puzzling.
Of course as science has progressed the questions have been framed differently. The way in which the questions have been framed has become and index for understanding how we relate to meaning in the world; understanding thought and the relationships ideas have to each other is important if we want to understand how we relate to our cultural environment. Knowing how our brains work will help us to frame ourselves in the conceptual world of memes and archetypes.
A good place to start to think about our dreams. In our dreams our experiences bear little resemblance to the actual world. But when we dream we are as good as conscience. For all intents and purposes we see, move and exist in a world, albeit a dream world. The question is how? A lot of work has gone into trying to explain ‘how matter becomes imagination’ (to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite scientists).
To start to understand we must return to when we are awake; there is distribution of activity going on in our heads. Memories encoded across regions of the brain are activated, not just to explicitly remember something, but to relate what we hear to the bank of information already encoded in our brains. Those semantic networks that become active reciprocally influence the way in which we encode the environment, we thus further perceive the world and our relation to it in relation to the memeories already banked up in our brains.
Priming offers a rather good illustration. If we are asked to study a list of words, and we are then given syllables and asked to complete them we are more likely to complete the syllables as the words that were in the list we studied. On a semantic level, if we are ‘primed’ with a word like doctor, we would be more likely to think ‘nurse’ than say ‘telephone’, why, because they are semantically related. Similarly, researchers have found that ‘priming’ people with aggressively related stimuli will get people to interpret others behavior during competitive games as more aggressive and will similarly trigger a more aggressive response than one would otherwise have seen.
One other important things about sleeping is that when we sleep our minds have a chance to encode and rehearse information that was important during the day, that is as well as process things that may have been on our minds. The same semantic networks that are active during the day are active in our sleep minus the real world to order them. Of course this is a rather simple account. But it’s the principle that’s important. The principle is that the world that we experience is related to active constellations of information in our brains, formed by the activity between neurons that structure and encode that information. That activity has an impact on how we act on the world, and of course that has an impact on our experiences, which further influences the world that influences us.
As human beings, as minds a significant part of that activity is ideational. A significant portion of our experience is formed through ideas, concepts and semantic activity. Things mean things (if I am permitted a circularity).
And that is the significance of meaning. The meaning we find in things drives us. We relate to meaning of things. Jung in his book The Science of Mythology drew this point out (albeit psychoanalytically), and if we think of the way in which we use representational mediums, like deserted islands (Deleuze), or the significance of a Brand in the modern world, we come close to understanding the significance of ideas in our lives. But they run deeper.
The concept of a schema is important in understanding the same point. Schema, or patterns that represent some part of the world don’t come in-built like the ability to recognize faces (or like the structures that contain the schemata). The concept of the archetype is of this form as is the concept of the meme. They share enough similarities to be synonyms for each other. That is they are both referents for ideas.
Combining all of the elements in this picture we can begin to form an understanding of our relationship with the world of ideas. Ideas, represented often as objects, have significance by virtue of our relation to them. The relationship between the objects we encounter, the ideas that we form them and the ideas we get learn in society act as referents, providing the environment with a sense of significance. That significance drives our relationship with our environment: pressing forward en-mass the development of ideas contained in that environment shape a shematic of ideational content pressing us with meaning. Thankfully this is a partial picture. One I hope develops the importance of ideas in the world as factors in our relationship with it. One that can help us better conceptualize why some ideas work and some don’t as we creativity develop an image of the world we’re in.
Tags: analytical, associations, Belief, culture, Experience, Ideas, Logic, mind, musings, People, Psychology, Science, time, world
Overhead the earth is a miracle of magnitude. Removed from the immediate youth of all that is present. Embedded in the flesh we see with our eyes, we are narrowed to the compass of vision, trapped; if it were not for imagination. Trapped to the hunger and lust that are the anathema of civilization.
And at every level each age is closer to the physical character of being. Before we adulterate life children play with no thought of the concrete. The world is the world of imagination, it is the world we destroy. Possibility, unscathed by the meanings of everything, children free to imagine, the world they dream could be real. It could couldn’t it?
It is blank of the things to come; those things which daunt the prospects of every child.
One Sunday we were like children, playing in the fields, running after gazelle in the mist as they jumped from puff to dew. Our house traveled with light and warmth through the horizon as the world awoke to a jaded reality, and we lived a moment of innocent nothingness before that time. And soon the quicksand of being took us from the playground to the world; preoccupation faintly understood. But we were not disappointed.
And so from the world within to the world without, life was only told though stories, communicated at other times. Never twice the same.
On the kitchen floor a giggle signified the privacy of our experience. Shared, but not to be shared again. Like a nod between men, as full of meaning and companionship as any nod can be. We giggled like children.
How many freedoms? The mystic and the rational combine, if only in the innermost parts of the mind; at some level recognizing the sense of another reality, one disconnected from the occupation of the body, connected only with the imagination; we travel with each other infinitely in finite time remembering the the impossibility of the infinite in the expression of mind.
And we would be forgiven for thinking that beyond the concrete lies nothing but space. However, within the depth of our minds are the rhythms of meaning. That would be nonsense anywhere else. Yet they carry for each a significance not held by any other.
That is the power of nostalgia. A Time forgotten, a time only the passing bird sees. It is held in the spaces beyond quantification, to be understood to the longing for more than the void. There is a world we find within others when we smile, it is that single moment of creative insight that exists between people; the meanings of the worlds are resonant equally among us all at this time.
It is the essence of all human bondage. In a world that none but minds can acquiesce, can forget and can live on: The moment of belonging is the moment of genuine imagination.
But for those moments those worlds were there; between us and forever in our minds, our worlds to share. They were there to remind us that beyond here the world continues, devoid of the facts of the minds but full of a psychological reality. A real reality for us.
It is that world across the human that is the humanity. It was the fact of experience that meant the word and not misunderstanding or false interpretation monopolized existence. It was that which is all that matters, all that does matter.
From the mystical to the concrete we live, and we live on; with pleasure disguised as an opiate, the fallacy of misunderstanding that has left the possibility and the reality of all which is false to nothing; we continue to live, and our life remains in this world between us, between the concrete and the abstract, it is this world of interaction. Embedded we are and embodied we become.
Tags: associations, Belief, black and white, Death, Experience, happiness, History, image, Images, Living, mind, Music, musings, poem, Poetry, prose
I’ve not updated in a while and wanted to write a little update about some of the things I’ve been thinking about. Maybe some feedback from you guys will tip one idea over the edge from thought into writing and inspire the next post and/or essay. (hint hint….always great chatting with any and all of you…)
I should really start with the fact that I’ve had some interesting, some wonderful and some really insightful conversations with some of you out there in the world. The poll I put up about religious belief (you can find the poll here) has been churning round my head. What I say with it and how I interpret it will be hard going I think. Not least because I had hoped that everyone would tick more than one box but, I’m not sure I’d made it that obvious. All the same I want to do something with it and all the valuable feedback I’ve had has been important. I’ve also had some great feedback asking you all to tell me about your lives. A couple of stories in particular have really resonated for me, they’ve been wildly different from my lives but, as with many stories there is always a message, a sub-story deep down that makes them shine. I would like to do justice to them, and to the thoughts and memories of the people who have risen out of anonymity and written to me. Those of you have have contributed to one of these posts thank you, those of you who have left comments on my (we)blog (yes that is what blog comes from – web-log), I am sure you all know how great it is to get feedback so you know how much I’ve appreciated hearing from you. I am a slow churning thinker which means I act slowly, but despite that I can absolutely assure all of you that nothing you say to me goes to waste (even the guy who I had a little spat with on a previous blog…yes you know who you are…you’re somewhat high handed approach to commenting on blogs did have some very good thoughts, so thank you).
But where am I with some of my other pursuits? Well I’m glad that you asked. there are some things that have been on my mind for quite some time and I don’t really know where to go with them. I watched a couple of videos on TED. The first, this talk about the evolution of Technology has some amazing grains of insight. I still am not sure how to digest the parts of the talk I am interested in and the parts I want to chuck out. However, what has really been interesting for me is the form that the thought handled here takes. My own way of thinking has a similar form which, as you’ll see later in this post will be problematic for me. However, for me it’s the concept of origins, development, diversity and complexity that really interest me. The ideas juxtapose in a way that is just intuitive. Be great to know what some of you think. Most interestingly though for me is the approach that is taken toward understanding a phenomenon. The approach in this talk is not just analytical, it’s exploratory and there is a candid honesty about the exploration that is commendable.
Another thought talk that really got my thoughts churning was this talk about culture, inspiration, genius and what I think it would be fair to describe as the human condition.
I’ve now watched this talk over and over. Quite a few things from the talk stuck with me and ought to stick with anyone agree or disagree (I am…wait for it…yes on the fence right now).
What was said in this talk that stuck with me so much? It’s not just the impact of getting an account of peoples and cultures that is as informed as it is impassioned. I thought the idea that the value of a culture can be judged by the quality of its aspirations was perplexing. It sounds good but under scrutiny it just falls away. However, there is something to it, something I think worth thinking about. That is that as we have an absolutely abhorrent way of thinking of the groups in this talk as quaint. However, there is nothing quaint about them. They are fundamentally real, as real to them as our beliefs are to us. we believe that with science and technology we’ve somehow found a solution to the worlds problems but, in many respects we’ve only multiplied the issues that science and technology have to deal with. Not just that but, aspiring towards universal harmony or a better computer just don’t seem to tally with one another. A tough thought, many people I know very well would ask the simple question ‘which life would you choose’. the bells and whistles of my life are certainly the bells and whistles I am used to. That said, if i am to strip away all my own notions in life, can I answer who has the higher aspiration?
For me these two talks really sit nicely side by side with one another. In one talk technology is the phenomena to be understood, in the other technology is washed away and replaced with the values of a society and humanity needs to be understood for the common issues that are fundamental to all peoples.
I’ve also been thinking about memes for quite some time. These two talks do justice to memes.
Now here’s the thing. I find memes very difficult to stomach. That’s why I wanted to put these talks before I said anything about them. They are highly intuitive and if you read about them they become even more appealing. I think they are great place-holders for an even better idea, what that is I don’t know. However, for me here’s where the problem lies.
The first issue I have with them is that they don’t sit in my ontology, neither do words as Dan Dennett cleverly suggests. Yes we have words and we have ideas, but saying we have these things for me is just using words as place-holders for another description.
The other thing is that memes somewhat neutralize objective thinking. I appreciate the draw and value of a theory of everything, I appreciate the trend towards a theory that explains all things, memes are a form of theory that do just that (on the laurels of evolution). However, boiling all thought to memes also suggests to me that science is a form of meme, the scientific meme we could call it, and that meme, if it is a meme has to be proven, but if it’s proven to be true it can’t be true because it’s a meme, and science is concerned with the pursuit of the discovery of truth.
Let me put my objection another way. Measurement is important to science. We need, in order to practice science, to be able to agree that certain objective definitions count as a measurement in order for science to proceed. Centimetres, millimetres, litres and pounds, they are each important reflections of the real world. Of course to a certain extent we could multiply our measurements to the n’th degree down. However, we also need a standard that we agree on in the real world for scientific inquiry to proceed. Otherwise how can we validate and falsify, the two elements that are the crux of scientific inquiry.
Memes make the very epistemological foundations of that inquiry shaky, and it matters. If everything is a meme (idea), then there are some ideas that we share and some that we don’t. Maybe one day we’ll all share the same memes however, that said, sharing memes does nothing for their validity as descriptions and/or reflections or otherwise when we refer to the world we are trying to explain. They will remain memes in the mind with as much of a right to reality as any other meme, for who will we be to say that one meme has more sway over opinion than another. They could just be all coherant but wrong. And that’s the point.
I have two more qualms (the word qualm is important, I don’t have a better theory and think memes do a nice job while we look for one, should we decide ultimately that we do). One is practical. Memes don’t look anything like a virus or a gene. By look, what I mean is that they don’t share all the same properties. Sure there is propagation, mutation and the rest. However, a virus is not the same as a gene and people in memetics seem to interchange these two terms to suit their interests. In addition I would be interested to know how you could test for memes. Dan Dennett suggests a way in his book ‘Breaking the Spell’, however, I haven’t come heard of a way of testing the theory that is free from questions about what is really being tested, which would be the point of the test. Now for those of you who are not trained in scientific inquiry this is an important issue. Part of what makes science so fundamentally worthwhile is that it allows tests to be conceived that can verify and falsify an entire system of thought. But, if you can’t be tested you’re not scientific. You have to be ready to stand up to scrutiny in order to count as a science and if you don’t you’re no different an idea than archetypes and/or Gods.
My final qualm is that memes seem to multiply beyond necessity the number of things that have to fit into a respectable ontology. Basically what I mean by this is something very simple. Someone (a priest funnily enough) made the point some time ago that there was no need to multiply essences beyond necessity, the guy was called Occam and the tenet that you shouldn’t multiply beyond necessity became known as Occam’s Razor. The idea is essentially that the idea that explains the most, most simply that is, will do (I am bastardizing the idea; look it up here if you want a strict understanding).
Now simplicity is actually a very complicated idea. In essence though, suffice it to say that memes are not the simplest idea, their very existence is questionable in light of the fact that a) they don’t necessarily refer to anything and b) if they do refer to anything they’re not as clear by what they refer to as a competing theory that is clear, i.e. ideas in the brain. We don’t have to think that there are things called ideas floating around to talk about them and how the brain handles them in quite the same way that philosophers and scientists think there are these little packets of information, all with wildly different properties (some are very self defensive, others don’t care what people think and others are kind, but they could all have to do with Christianity) flaoting from person to person competing for space in the memosphere.
I’ve had another strand of thought that I am really in need to hashing out. I won’t do that here but I will mention it. It has to do with how to understand modern life, objectively, whilst at the same time being meaningful.
For me the size of cities, the way in which we all have to exist somewhere as an abstraction (from passports to health insurance). None of us are responsible for much other than the little bit of the abstraction we live in and I think we’d all agree to a certain extent that our own lives seem to be enough.
In addition I am more and more inclined to think that there is something to believing in something, if not from any other point of view that belief in something, it doesn’t have to be super natural, it could just be the 5th amendment, is important for our actions as people in a society. I would always welcome considered views on this.
I am concerned that we live in a straight jacket and I find that disquieting. As much as they are unpopular people like Erich Fromm or John Gray, René Dubos or even Hannah Arendt have all resonated with me in one way or another. I’m not interested in replacing the received wisdom of today but, I do think that despite seeing straight we’ve got blinkers on.
That said there is a fundamental pessimism in one, cynicism in another and both in the first that make their ideas difficult. However, all are worth reading because they point your thoughts in a way that ought to be considered. Not to be agreed with, more because their ideas have qualities that aren’t always considered. The way that we think is as important I think as what we think.
I’m sure as you can see I have some somewhat disconnected thoughts i need to muddle through and think about a bit more clearly. Just some of the things that have been on my mind.
Finally I have had some amazing e-mail exchanges with some of you out there. I hope those of you I’ve been in touch with continue to write.
And that’s it. Running over this I think there are strands that connect all of the things here. I just don’t know what they are yet and as I ponder I hope some of you will have ideas you’ll want to share.
Tags: analytical, associations, Belief, Death, Design, developing, Experience, History, Ideas, mind, musings, People, photography, Psychology, socialism, society, story, time, Video, world
You’d have to know something about how I grew up to understand the goggles I’ve got on. My goggles change colour frequently, with the world and with me. They’re sort of Chameleon goggles, only they’re self serving, not bothered with the world as I ought to possibly see it.
You see, I grew up in the Middle East, I’m half Russian, went to a German school until I was ten (in the Middle East) and then went to (more than one) boarding school in the UK. Holidays were spent travelling home to Saudi while weekends, from the age of 16, were not the studious kind they ought to have been. Instead my ‘friends’ and I were all experimenting with the limits of our aptitude for a selfish quest to masturbate our visions of rebellion into an ecstasy of conquest, and when rebellion became serious quest and no longer fun…lights out, the fun stopped short and the few of us that pass by now stop with a nostalgia….
“would you do it again” someone said to me today, someone I love from then and still now.
“yes” I said, “and I’d do it better, I wouldn’t let myself take things so seriously”.
“But we have to do it the way we did” she said, “I’m hard now, and I can only be the person I am, but it was nice being soft for a while at lest, I just got so very upset”.
I was at school with people who didn’t know there was a future, I didn’t either, and who wanted it to come when we were having so much fun now. At weekends we’d meet in the car park outside my boarding house and drive to London, party all weekend and sleep till Monday afternoon huddled in someone’s flat, I was 17 and it was exciting. Or we’d here about a party in a forest and all go, dancing to the light of the moon through the cracks in trees with people twice our age.
Then there were the girls, both in England and abroad, girls who would turn up at your boarding house with a small piece of cotton wrapped around their chest, a sheer white skirt and a g-string. Of course sex was awfully disappointing at 16, as much for her for myself, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that we felt sexy at the time. Midnight strolls walking through Parker’s Piece in Cambridge without a clue in the world, jumping naked into what we though was a lake in Winchester (and turned out to be swamp), and then, never feeling bad about the nights before because we all loved each other so much.
There were very many bright lights in those days and they were captivating. They were lights that we saw driving down the corniche in Al Khobar, going to smoke hubbly bubbly and drink mint tea before going to a house party wher we would chug sidiqi a homebrew strong enough to strip paint, and hallucinate.
We thought we were the world, sophisticated and privileged because we were able to have an experience that was real, that was the point for us then, the experience was as real as it could be; immediate, no future, till now. You see to an adult now dancing round the dining room of a farm in the middle of rural England doing the funky chicken may seem silly, a bit odd maybe, but then it was the dance of love.
And I know what I’m supposed to say, and it is true, that the home brew hangovers last longer, they do. But I don’t want to say it know as much as I didn’t then, because the nostalgia is affected by the same idea that we were a family of children living in our own world of fairies and made up Kings and Queens, with melodrama to boot, and the strings attached were the strings of time, they are as present today as they were then.
And so we would, drift off one by one the future came and with it came the knowledge that the air would be different. Our twenties would be start of something else, our adulthood.
University was what it was for anyone. For me something different than what it was for someone else. I started to settle at university, outwardly anyway. But I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine that you’re in the passenger seat of a car, and to your left is sand, a lot of sand above you it is pitch black except for the stars and it is hot and humid. The airconditioning of the car is like water on your throat, to your right in the distance buildings and lights, lots of them and a lot of life, varied and exciting. The driver is playing whatever music you give him and in the back your friends are laughing their heads off. You know you’ll not be back.
Next moment your in the same passenger seat of a car, it’s just turned 2000, and you spent the night before in the country side getting caked with your friends in the country, you look out the window, you’re friends are laughing in the back and you know as you pass trees and trees that you’ll never see them again.
Then, and then after living, life begins. And here I am.
Tags: associations, Death, developing, Experience, Family, happiness, Ideas, image, Images, Living, Love, Me, mind, musings, picture, story, time, world
