Sunday 5 April 2009

The Paradox Will Not Be Resolved.

The mind can be equated with the sense of self, the personality, all those things we hang onto existence. It is the story of brain function, the science so revered by those in the know, whose minds are well on their way to figuring it all out. There is no transcendent human experience, the latest research tells us; the brain has been scanned, and primitive parts of the brain light up along with the more well-respected cerebral chunks, working together when a difficult moral question is posed. It is a story within a story. The brain, the mind, is never, ever going to get this. There are too many requirements for the co-existence of mutually exclusive concepts. The research cited opines that perhaps there is less volition, less personal choice, fewer acts of will than is generally held to be the case. Science is getting there; there is no volition, no personal will; we are set up, by nothing, to apprehend nothing being something. For the mind to grasp there is nothing and something, both, "simultaneously", is impossible; the mind's job is to divide, and it does its job well, and has become something of a despot. Try telling the great scientific minds of the world that it's all just a funny story. They will regard you with derision and disdain. But those scientists that observe matter at its most fundamental level, peering deeper and smaller, not only observe nothing and something simultaneously, but realise that anything observed is changed by being observed. The fundamental structure, the matter that makes up the chair and the mountain and the microchip and the bones and the grey matter, the stars and the gasses, is elusive and unmeasurable. But all this misses the point, if there is one, and there isn't. What beauty there is, is this. The desire to understand it all, even what neurons fire up when we desire to understand it all, is just as it should be. Life strains and looks and seeks and never really finds. The thirst for knowledge is simply another way to play.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"simply another way to play"!!!

I seem to love that. Your insight are always aimed at the truth (seemingly) but sometimes they seem to be a bit sour.

This one is sweet.

I know a deep quantum physicist who knows the truth of which you speak. Nick Herbert worked at Stanford with the big particle colliders and found that there was nothing there when they looked close enough.

One day his buddies actually got him nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a goof, and he used my illustrations in his "acceptance speech".

Seem to enjoy this:

http://members.cruzio.com/~quanta/goldenrule.html

Namaste, little miss nothing!

No One In Particular said...

Seemingly sweet or apparently sour, it is all the same thing. There are many guises, but one source. Thanks for the comment!