Not Thinking: Meditation

Emptying your head is a lot harder than it would seem. When you can do it though, it's really satisfying. Sometimes before I go to sleep, and I'm thinking about things that are stressing me out, I'll stop and think, I'm probably going to dream about this...I don't want to dream about stressful things...so if I think about nothing...then the things i'm worrying about won't affect my dreams. So i'll lay there and start trying to empty my head. I start by closing my eyes and focusing on a "point" in the nothing that I see. Things start popping in, borders, random flashes, thoughts, etc. I try to empty them all out as they come. It starts to become layers; there is the not thinking, the trying to not think, the awareness that your trying to not think. You can catch yourself doing that though, and empty those thoughts too, but you can't react with the thoughts. You have to just let them empty out.

I think the challenge is to not react...either once you get it you want affirmation of the accomplishment...or if you lose it you want to start fighting thoughts with thoughts.

I tend to be very analytical and I think a lot, so not thinking is a difficult challenge. But it's really worth it, even if just to relax and take a break from thinking every second of every day.

Think Tao

So I sat outside and tried to think like Lao Tzu. I went over to the lake, and thought for a while about the water.

"Best to be like water,
Which benefits the ten thousand things
And does not contend. It pools where humans disdain to dwell
Close to the Tao." pg 8

Water is a symbol of the Tao because it is constantly flowing. It can fit around anything, and hold all things. Its shape is indefinite. It does not impose its will on anything, but instead lets itself be moved. Yet, without action, it can shape stone, and carry you away with a wave as if you weighed nothing. The usefulness of an ocean is in its endless "empty" space.

Letting go

I was thinking about how Emptiness and Non-Action fit together. I started with:
Emptiness creates open possibilities.
Non-emptiness is definite.
Emptiness requires non-action.
Emptiness = endless possibilities
Tao is inexaustable energy.
Tao is harmony.
Empty your mind to non-action.
If Tao is harmony, any action within Tao is non-action.
Action within Tao is non-action because it aligns with harmony and because it is a part of harmony it is not acting against anything.
Harmony = Going with the flow = non-action

Neo-evolution

There's a scene in Waking Life (again...i know) where the main character talks to a scientist about the evolution of man, and where it might be going. The class discussion about morality and what was talked about on the discussion forum made me think of it because it talks about how morality was a part of the "old evolution".

We normally think of evolution on a physical level, or on a basic psychological level (maternal instinct, competition, parasitism etc.). We don't normally think of evolution having to do with scientific breakthrough and information. If you look at it using that in the timeline of evolution as well, you begin to see the "telescopic nature of the evolutionary paradigm". The scientist in the film talks about how evolution might start to move at a fast pace because as we evolve, the new input for evolution is at a higher level, which makes evolution accelerate until, as he says, we hit a crescendo and realize the ultimate of human, the "neo-human and human potential".

link to scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saxX-Z6w3p4

Darwinian theory in the B.C.

In my reading for Ancient Greek Philosophy I came across an philosopher by the name of Empedocles that had a theory similar to Darwin's over a thousand years before!

Empodocles stated that:

[quotation not direct] "originally there must have been the strangest creatures - men with the heads of cattle, animals with branches like trees instead of limbs. But in the struggle for existence those less fitted for survival perished, and only those whose members happened to have come together in practical ways have survived."

That sounds a lot like Survival of the Fittest and Natural Selection to me. I just thought that it was interesting that a theory of natural selection came out as early as the ancient Greeks.

For comparison here is a general statement made by Darwin:

"...it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner, profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form."

Waking Life

I was surprised to hear Waking Life mentioned in the podcast that we listened to during class because I don't know that many people who have seen it. I feel like the movie Waking Life is relatable to everything. The scene that I think relates most to Phaedo is the scene with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy where they are talking about what happens when you die. The concept that they come up with is one my favorite's of the movie. I actually wound up choosing to write about it in an open subject paper for English class senior year.

They start by quoting Timothy Leary, a famous "psychedelic scientist" I guess you could call him. He said that he looked forward to the moment when his body was dead, but his brain was still alive (they say that there's six to twelve minutes of brain activity after death). They go on to talk about how dream consciousness is infinitely longer than waking consciousness and how those 6-12 minutes could constitute all of life. This seems to parallel Anaxagoras' theory that the universe is directed by the Mind, but takes it further, saying that life is lived in the mind and denying the objective physical being. I think that Socrates might have been somewhat pleased with this observation because it connects the mind and the soul, even in an extremely abstract way. Instead of saying that the soul lives on after death, they are saying, maybe, that the life of the mind, which is all of life itself, is infinite because time and consciousness are relative.

Socrates: "The soul is most like the divine, the deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself. . ." (later Socrates talks about how souls come from the world of the dead to the world of the living and vis versa, a sort of reincarnation theory)

In the second half of the scene, they deny the eternal cyclic nature of the soul itself. So that throws the Socratic view (of a deathless soul that comes from the underworld to the living world and goes to the underworld from the living world in a cycle) out the window. However, I'm not sure if this new theory is completely opposite of it's Socratic counterpart because instead of the soul being eternal you have this collective consciousness, that we are all a part of, being eternal, and compounded with the first theory you've got a persistent non-physical identity that is sort of soul-like. I'm not sure if that explanation is clear, but here is the link to the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5YGCRb0WM
(rated R for language)

Socrates in a better light....

I've criticized Socrates for being hypocritical concerning his assumptions. A perfect example being the soul's existence. "Let us examine it in some such manner as this: whether the souls of men who have died exist in the underworld or not." Here he starts his logic with the affirmation of the soul rather than the question of it.
Recently, however, I've been thinking that, although I've always respected Socrates, I've been a little harsh. If I were to replace the word "assumption" with "belief" it makes Socrates look a whole lot better.
It's true, that an argument has to start out with an assumption, but there is a difference, I think, between just an assumption, and a belief. Socrates starts with certain beliefs, and then orders life around those core beliefs. He believes that man has a soul and a body and that these are at two ends of the spectrum of being. Those are his beliefs about the nature of man, and those who listen can make there own personal decisions concerning man and his/her nature.
The difference between a belief like that of Socrates, and the belief in the Greek gods, is that the Greek gods have elaborate stories of mythological proportions and have personalities of their own, while Socrates' belief about the nature of man is his attempt to describe the existence of something beyond the physical that we all feel and have in us in some way. The nature of the soul and body is debatable, as well as their separation on a "spectrum". But their is some soul-like essence and an obvious physical body to all of life. You could call the soul an "ego" a "self" an "identity", and give it any nature you want, but I think it is hard to say that there is nothing but physical body...So for the sake of argument I think that Socrates' logic isn't flawed by assumption after all. The logic is based on a belief or idea, which I think is fine.

Pain v. Pleasure

I was looking back through Phaedo, and I came across the part where Socrates says that whenever one experiences one thing, it's opposite is soon to follow:
"What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with that is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head."
I think that that is an interesting view on life, especially because I've known a lot of people that have subscribed to it. I think, as an observation, it is insightful and often true, but when it becomes a view on life it can have problems. I say this, because I can think of people in the past for whom it has become a self-for filling prophecy. When things are good, they think something bad will happen and act accordingly, and then something bad does happen, most likely because of their state of mind, (except when it has nothing to do with their control of course). But then I started thinking; could it be that the state of mind is all a part of the cycle and that it is a part of the good event leading to the bad event, or the bad event leading to the good event?
Despite the universal moments of doubt, I tend to think that we have more control over our lives than we often think. Sometimes, the belief that if you experience pleasure, pain is not far off, and vis versa, is more destructive than anything.

Being fooled by experience: Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates

The way that Socrates uses logic reminds me of the way Zeno argues for the paradoxes of motion (i'm taking ancient greek philosophy right now). The basic argument that Zeno makes when he's defending Parmenides claim that everything is one motionless being, is that motion requires an impossibility so there must be no motion. He uses various arguments to defend this claim, and when you read them, it makes sense...sort of. However, it seems to me that the ancient greek logic is flawed when it comes to connotation because there is none. I do understand that the ancient greeks didn't have the concept of a word meaning more than one thing (according to our textbooks) and this creates a problem. Piousness, to an ancient greek, is the exact opposite of impiousness, there is no gray area.

"Socrates: Then teach me what that characteristic itself is, in order that by concentrating on it and using it as a model, I may call pious any action of yours or anyone else's that is such as it, and may deny to be pious whatever isn't such as it."

Socrates wants a clear definition of what piousness is and isn't, there is no relativity. When you use logic that is black and white like that you run into impossibilities, which is how you you decipher what is true and what is not true. Like Socrates, Zeno has certain black and white logic that determines that motion is impossible. For example:
If you start the logic stream with -Nothing can come from nothing.- then you can assume that everything that is always was and always will be. If x doesn't exist, then x can't exist. Which means that "nothing" is impossible, and their is no "void". If you look at an object, the object must fit exactly in the space in which it is, so therefore it must be still. If movement were possible then during flight the arrow would always have to occupy a space that fits it exactly which means it would have to be at rest which creates an impossibility, therefore No Movement. Of course modern science fixes all those problems but it illustrates how cold, non-experience based, logic/reasoning can create impossibilities that may/may not exist.

Parmenides or Zeno would say that people should not be fooled by experience. But it seems to me that people can easily be fooled by logic. I think this has relevance to Socrates because in some cases, he's pulling the same trick.

Socratic Logic working against him...

So far all that I've read from Socrates (via Plato) there's been a recurring theme. When I read Euthyphro, it reminded me of the Symposium (I had to read that last year) and noticed that Socrates' argument style was exactly the same. Also, I noticed that you don't really get a clear answer in the end, although you may get closer, or find out what the answer is not. It seems that Socrates doesn't really aim to find a lasting and clear cut definition of the subject at hand, although he seems to insist that there is one, but he really is teaching about the pursuit of truth. He shows his "students" how one can use logic and reasoning to pursue truth and how one can be a rational person. I'm not sure that there is a defined way to be rational, or that truth can be found. In fact, I don't think truth can be found, or that there really is any objective truth, which is fine by me. But either way, that seems to be Socrates' MO. Socrates sort of contradicts himself because he insists that wisdom is the knowledge that you know nothing but at the same time suggests that using logic is the way to get to an objective answer. So I'm not sure if he's saying that the world is subjective, or that there are objective answers that no one will be able to know.

"But Socrates, I have no way of telling you what I have in mind, for whatever proposition we put forward goes around and refuses to stay put where we establish it." - Euthyphro

Socrates is trying to show Euthyphro that if an argument "moves" then one should follow it wherever it leads and not stick with something that has been proven false. He is teaching the art of "logic" to Euthyphro.
Socratic Logic Working Against Him: During the trial, his style works against him because his reasoning only serves as an example of how to get to truth through ration. He doesn't, however, address his subject (innocence) with the proper importance.

"One thing I do ask and beg of you, gentlemen: if you hear me making my defense in the same kind of language as I am accustomed to use in the marketplace by the banker's tables, where many of you have heard me elsewhere, do not be surprised or create a disturbance on that account." - Socrates

Arrogance: I agree that Socrates was a pretty arrogant person, that's not to say he should have been punished or that he was not also wise. I think that using the Oracle as justification for his modesty isn't really effective because Socrates was too smart to take all of that seriously, and I think he was just using that as a story to prove his point about wisdom.

"...in my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable." - Socrates

He starts out talking about being in the god's service but ends up with an observation on human nature.

My problem with Socrates' and his use of his own method is that:

-He leads his student with questions but does so in a way that's demeaning and doesn't let them learn on their own, only see their mistakes. Mistakes are valuable but in order for it to completely stick I think that the student must figure out something for hirself, rather than just agreeing and recognizing the fault in their arguments. A good teacher should lead, but not do everything. At least in the Symposium, the other characters spoke first. But then the conversation with Socrates always seems to consist of:

Socrates: "...or is that not correct?"
Euthyphro: "Yes that's correct"
Socrates: "Is this not true Euthyphro?"
Euthyphro: "Of course it's true Socrates"
Socrates: "...would you like me to continue making you look like an idiot?"
Euthyphro: "Please sir, may I have another..."

-Lastly, my problem, more with Plato than Socrates, is that the characters (other than Socrates) seem so weak, and I'm wondering whether that's an accurate representation of his normal audience, or is he just repressing them. For me, I am constantly seeing little flaws with Socrates' reasoning. Some things are taken out of context, some things are jumps in logic that may or may not be called for. As the person "talking" to Socrates I would jump all over those fractures in his arguments because it might change the outcome significantly, and I don't understand why all the people that Socrates talks to are so helpless in their own defense. All arguments seem to be one sided assuming that Socrates is god of all things wise. Usually the best way of finding a better answer is taking two arguments, chipping away the bad bit s, and then having the rest crystalize (the dialectic method) and then repeating the process. This is shown in the Symposium, but it all boils down to the same thing in the end. Socrates' arguments are infallible and his logic is perfect. This may or may not be the case. I respect his wisdom and intelligence, and I don't think he's completely in the wrong concerning his teaching method, especially cause i have no idea what "in the right" would be. But I don't think Socrates is omnipotent.

Magic Realism

After finishing the book, I can see why on the back cover, the Wall Street Journal says "The latest challenge to South America's supremacy in the field of magic realism comes from. . .Orhan Pamuk." The ending of the book, where the visitor is reading a book with a story that is the reality of the lives of Hoja and the italian...or the italian as Hoja and Hoja as the italian...or however you want to spin it, reminds me of the end *spoiler* of 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where Melquiades' parchments are completely translated as the story and prediction of all of their lives, which makes it seem a fiction because as the story is realized by its participants, the story ends. I may be completely off base, but that's what it reminded me of, although they are very different books. My additional point with the "magic realism" observation, apart from the ending, is that the writer/s seem to have a loose obedience to the reality of the story, in many parts the author/s seem to say that he/they chose a sequence of events in his/their life/lives because it suited him/them and could have just as well have chosen another (very existentialist, but I might be stretching that connection a little far).

The Mistranslation

"I already sensed then that I would later adopt his manner and life-story as my own. There was something in his language and his turn of mind that I loved and wanted to master. A person should love the life he has chosen enough to call it his own in the end; and I do."

I think this quote, more than any other, parallels with the mistranslation. First off, in the second sentence the narrator speaks of some alternate way of living that is mysterious and attractive to him. The mistranslation starts "To imagine that a person who intrigues us has access to a way of life unknown and all the more attractive for its mystery....we will begin to live only through the love of that person..." Although this connection matters, I think the more important connection is the question of his identity. In the mistranslation, "Marcel" says that you begin to live through the love of that person. To me that triggers all sorts of alarms. It makes me think that the writer (whoever that is) is living through Hoja....so maybe is Hoja? There it gets hazy...I think it comes down to the interpretation of that line - "live only through the love of that person". Throughout the book he says things about choosing a life, fictionalizing a life. You could interpret that line as living vicariously, as adopting an identity, or as literally being one and the same with that person. It not only reflects on the writer, but also the relationship between the direct narrator and Hoja. As the relationship becomes stronger, the narrator starts to reveal, or become Hoja. I'm still reading so we'll see how it plays out....

Little by little, you're just letting yourself become... Tyler Durden.

This book is Fight Club.

Argument #1: Hoja v. Narr.

Hoja acts. Hoja has the qualities that the narrator lacks and desires. Hoja is Tyler Durden.
Hoja keeps the narrator trapped in his 'game'. Tyler acts in a similar way towards the narrator.
Hoja has a contempt for people who live in the 'game world' just as Tyler has contempt for people living in the consumer/media/non-necessary world. Hoja and Tyler think in a different way that intrigue Narr. 1 and Narr 2. Both have a special bond with their stronger counterparts and grow to love them.

Argument #2 Plotline of Hoja and Narr. relationship

Hoja and Narr.

Teacher/Student---->Out of control/Resentful----->Love/Hate/Wishing he were more involved...still reading....

Tyler and Narr.

Teacher/Student---->Love/Hate/Wishing he were more involved--->Out of control/resentful--->Reclaiming of Identity

Argument #3 They never interact in front of other people

Although Tyler and Narrator do interact in front of other people, it parallels because it stresses how Hoja and the narrator seem to be the same person. The narrator observes from the outside, or sometimes is within the action, but the other is always present (think of the meetings with the sultan, or when the neighbor comes over...where is narrator??). In Fight club the narrator is sometimes playing the role of observer, observing himself. And sometimes he is within himself, but being influenced by Tyler.

Argument #4 Intimate emotional knowledge is known between each other.

Hoja frequently tells the narrator about his outings but the narrator seems to know an inordinate amount of what Hoja was feeling and nuances that make it seem as if he was there.

Argument #5 Hoja "was going to teach [him] fearlessness"

remind anyone of the chemical/hand burn scene??

Argument #6 Hoja and Narrator are pretty much, or actually, the same person.

self explanatory for those who have seen fight club....

.....I would go on but I think that I've exhausted the Fight Club theory for now....

Siddhartha

The main character reminds me of Siddhartha. The reason being that the main character is generally calm and goes through different stages. Throughout the whole book he is a "slave", but he starts as "doctor", then becomes "teacher", then "peer", then in a sadistic way "student" of fearlessness. In Siddhartha the main character (siddhartha) goes through different modes of living but almost always maintains his calm. Also he has, many times, an air of superiority much like "narrator".