Do we live in the matrix?

[Astral Monk]

Do we exist in a field of information? Yes. But 'information' here is as vague as 'energy' and could be synonomous.

 

Despite what some claim there is no way to know. Descartes' evil genius cannot be disproven. Just saying 'the world is objective' is not enough to overcome our inherent subjectivity. The western 'problem of other minds' cannot be answered--it can only be worked around through a bunch of suppositions that ultimately prop up the metaphysical view you want to assert. Bootstrapping.

 

The world of pure immanent sensation is something very different from what we experience through the lense of a mind. To uncover it requires a monumental reduction to pure being--easy to philosophise but hard to achieve. Its the same point where logic fails and requires you to go beyond--into the beyond. And it must necessarily be so, since logic is a product of a process that begins with the first spark of the mind forming impressions and coallescing these into represenations. As beings with minds we cant help but perceive a 'world' of our own making--a construct. And that construct is radically individualized. To 'see' reality 'as it is' is NOT perception at all and is not possible when a mind is active.

 

I'm going to say that yes, we do exist in a matrix because the rules governing cognition require that to be the case.

 

8)

[thelerner]

Course if you ignore the plotline an go with the basic world scheme then the normal awakened people are those who live in Zion.  Life is a little drabby but there's family friends jobs and occasional huge rockin orgies.  The Matrix is an artificial game people can plug into, its not real life.  Like a game you can create the illusion of stats and a spoon is not a spoon.  But in real life, in Zion, that's a question that'd be laughed at. 

 

Because they're real people not living in a fantasy game and they have things to do and life to live. 

Edited December 7, 2015 by thelerner

[3bob]

ok, if we go back to pre-historic times there is weapon and bone damage marks per such weapons type of evidence that points to a sometimes kill or be killed scenario among various gatherer and hunter tribes...

[Nungali]

Matrix  movie  is the hollywood  take & twist  on  Enlightenment.  Someone had creative juices flowing.

 

'The brothers' (writers) , they made it good  ,  they stayed on it and flogged the others that tried to make it  not as good  (like the dickhead Director of Photography   )   - they did a swift deal at the beginning with the producers , clever !  Not many people get big mega bucks movie producers over a barrel   ....    $ 63,000,000  .... that's a significant barrel ! 

 

(  I got  0.000571 %  of that     )  

Edited December 7, 2015 by Nungali

[Nungali]

ok, if we go back to pre-historic times there is weapon and bone damage marks per such weapons type of evidence that points to a sometimes kill or be killed scenario among various gatherer and hunter tribes...

 

You dont even have to go back that far ... here we have pre-agricultural people with that lifestyle up to fairly recent times . 

 

War, weapons, domineering groups and individuals, cruelty,  a fair bit of what Taomeow described.  

 

Going back further ???    Well .......  < shrug >   there is this     ; 

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2015 by Nungali

[Taomeow]

ok, if we go back to pre-historic times there is weapon and bone damage marks per such weapons type of evidence that points to a sometimes kill or be killed scenario among various gatherer and hunter tribes...

 

I don't doubt we killed, we were hunter-gatherers.  Did we kill each other?  Very unlikely.  Even today, or at least a couple decades ago, the most violent of tribes ever contacted, the Yanomame, resolved their inter-tribal conflicts by fighting one on one, like in our boxing or MMA -- in their scenario there's also an arena built for conflict resolution, surrounded by spectators from both sides, and two fighters take turns hitting each other with a stick.  The one being hit waits, then it's his turn to hit the opponent.  That's it.  One can suffer bone damage from this, but they don't fight to kill.  They fight to resolve and end the dispute.  I say this is superior to going to war.   

[Taomeow]

You dont even have to go back that far ... here we have pre-agricultural people with that lifestyle up to fairly recent times . 

 

War, weapons, domineering groups and individuals, cruelty,  a fair bit of what Taomeow described.  

 

Going back further ???    Well .......  < shrug >   there is this     ; 

 

Ah, movies.  What would we do without them if we wanted to imagine what things and people no one has ever seen really looked like.  Hollywood knows, of course.  Who else?

 

Some paleoanthropologists, however, are of the opinion that we were stunningly beautiful rather than disgusting the way Hollywood portrays our ancestry.  They base this assertion on skull measurements allowing for facial reconstructions, and on the  overall Fibonacci-perfect skeletal proportions which can be reshaped into that ugliest-of-apes-like monstrosity only by a moron. 

 Michael Crichton, cheesy as he may be, did incorporate some genuine and juicy scientific tidbits in his novels, and in one of them an archeologist protagonist asserts that all sex Neanderthals had with our species (which they did, we now have genetic proof) was pity sex, because they were even prettier -- tall fair and handsome, Hollywood can only salivate over what they looked like but can't replicate this, with its midget pretty boys with peroxide-perfect hair and hundreds of thousands of dental work's worth in their mouths.        

Edited December 8, 2015 by Taomeow

[mostly_empty]

I don't doubt we killed, we were hunter-gatherers.  Did we kill each other?  Very unlikely.  Even today, or at least a couple decades ago, the most violent of tribes ever contacted, the Yanomame, resolved their inter-tribal conflicts by fighting one on one, like in our boxing or MMA -- in their scenario there's also an arena built for conflict resolution, surrounded by spectators from both sides, and two fighters take turns hitting each other with a stick.  The one being hit waits, then it's his turn to hit the opponent.  That's it.  One can suffer bone damage from this, but they don't fight to kill.  They fight to resolve and end the dispute.  I say this is superior to going to war.   

Terrible example!

1.  Lizot, Jacques. 1985.  Le Cercle des feux: Faits et dits des Indiens yanomami,(1976)

The Yanomami were still, despite this corrective reference, far more violent and prone to "war". Their methods are pretty extensive and up to the modern period about 50% of male mortality happens from direct violence. I will not go further with this because it is not like that have the massive industrialized dehumanizing "war" that european/western/modern cultures have achieved.

 

I suspect that their culture is not much like the archaic and paleo cultures of which you were probably thinking. 

Edited December 8, 2015 by mostly_empty

[3bob]

well it's interesting to me that  densely populated places like those in Japan for a long time had low violence rates among it's own people, whereas and in comparison more wide open spaces with spread out populations and good resources (throughout recorded history) still often had horrendous violence in their areas.   I'm not a student of history but I see there are many major factors at work among human beings in regards to the potential for violence.

Edited December 8, 2015 by 3bob

[Taomeow]

well it's interesting to me that  densely populated places like those in Japan for a long time had low violence rates among it's own people, whereas and in comparison more wide open spaces with spread out populations and good resources (throughout recorded history) still often had horrendous violence in their areas.   I'm not a student of history but I see there are many major factors at work among human beings in regards to the potential for violence.

 

Actually, historically, people from the densely populated places were every bit as violent toward their own, but also had a tendency to export this violence far and wide.  Just ask the residents of the former British colonies about their experience -- or the Chinese about their encounters with the Japanese.  

 

Do consider that we are so arranged that we learn via windows of opportunity that open and close very early on, and by imprinting that cannot be deleted since it shapes the lower and middle brain -- only the neocortex learns differently, but it's a late acquisition both ontogenically and philogenically and does not call the shots at all, contrary to what it believes about itself.  95% of everything we will ever learn we learn by imprinting in infancy and early childhood --each window of opportunity closed at that time can never be reopened.  We aren't even extreme at that -- puppies, e.g., die if the mother does not lick them within 30 minutes of birth, and missing this window can't be remedied even five minutes later -- but we are extreme enough too in this respect.  Our brains change more between birth and the age of 5 than they will change during the rest of our lives by 95% -- i.e. only 5% of the overall learning, conditioning, mind and soul shaping we undergo in a lifetime happens after this age.  Which is why the developmental history of a nation's childhood is the history of this nation.  

[Taomeow]

Terrible example!

1.  Lizot, Jacques. 1985.  Le Cercle des feux: Faits et dits des Indiens yanomami,(1976)

The Yanomami were still, despite this corrective reference, far more violent and prone to "war". Their methods are pretty extensive and up to the modern period about 50% of male mortality happens from direct violence. I will not go further with this because it is not like that have the massive industrialized dehumanizing "war" that european/western/modern cultures have achieved.

 

I suspect that their culture is not much like the archaic and paleo cultures of which you were probably thinking. 

 

No, they are definitely an aberration -- however, by 1985 which you reference, many were converted to Catholicism, by Jesuit missionaries (one of the main engines of propagation of violence by many arcane and secretive methods in global history), and I've read a book that actually contains an account of how white "missionaries" and "researchers" actually provoked inter-tribal wars before reporting them.  E.g. the chief's son's head was cut off and nailed to the tree by a French dude who carefully and expertly framed someone in the tribe because he wanted to research how the Yanomame go to war.  What I was describing is also from that book -- traditional conflict resolution.  I offered an accurate picture per my source -- the story was narrated by the Yanomame shaman gone Catholic.      

[3bob]

there are exceptions to the averages, and the various numbers would take a lot of time and work to verify... so where is all this data?  (chronicled at)

[Taomeow]

there are exceptions to the averages, and the various numbers would take a lot of time and work to verify... so where is all this data?  (chronicled at)

 

Oh, pretty much everywhere -- if you focus on one possibility, you can verify it (or disprove it) by checking it against multiple sources. 

[Nungali]

Ah, movies.  What would we do without them if we wanted to imagine what things and people no one has ever seen really looked like.  Hollywood knows, of course.  Who else?

 

Some paleoanthropologists, however, are of the opinion that we were stunningly beautiful rather than disgusting the way Hollywood portrays our ancestry.  They base this assertion on skull measurements allowing for facial reconstructions, and on the  overall Fibonacci-perfect skeletal proportions which can be reshaped into that ugliest-of-apes-like monstrosity only by a moron. 

 Michael Crichton, cheesy as he may be, did incorporate some genuine and juicy scientific tidbits in his novels, and in one of them an archeologist protagonist asserts that all sex Neanderthals had with our species (which they did, we now have genetic proof) was pity sex, because they were even prettier -- tall fair and handsome, Hollywood can only salivate over what they looked like but can't replicate this, with its midget pretty boys with peroxide-perfect hair and hundreds of thousands of dental work's worth in their mouths.        

 

Thats wonderful Taomeow !  But first, I agree with your point about 'warfare', I have heard it first hand how some of the ancient people here had a 'war'  ( and still do traditional fighting,' law keeping' 'punishments',  at times ). Each has a different way and code, apparently a war is when two groups face off in two lines, one on one and each man only fights his partner, the line with more men left  standing in it wins.  

 

But there is also stories of   law breaking   ( perhaps one of our greatest story heroes , Pemulwuy - The Rainbow Warrior - was a result of law breaking ), treachery  ( Like ' 10 Canoes' -   this is an classic ! )  .... also just down the coast from me is the 'Cannibal Woman' story .  

 

Two things with paleontology ;  what you say about 'modelling' is something I presented at Uni as a paper. They hated it and failed it    .   I did some reconstructions  and made the later skulls brutish . Some examples of modern 'brutish  'lookers', a sample of a Cro-Magnon reconstruction (from some book) pictured with bright blue eyes,  conditioned hair blowing in the wind ... well, like a movie  star, questions about how they decide to depict an ear lobe.  Since then, I have seen some mainstream stuff now pointing out some issues there, and with Neanderthals .

 

A totally different slant on it,  years back I saw a doco on some loopy Paleontologist  that was blathering about a dream he had on site they were working, about a Neanderthal woman coming to him. He was stuck by her beauty, and the communication. He drew some pictures that were magnificent !  His fellow workers thought he was a  bit nutty,.

 

I haven't been able to track that down since though.

[Astral Monk]

Another point for the matrix as information is that we never experience anything directly. That is, we only grasp what appears on the sheen of our body. The body is the end of reality, its surface maps out to complete canvas of experience. And, if we can suspend cognition and bracket all perception to attain the presentation of pure sensation, we still do not find 'things' out there in 'a world', but rather an undifferentiated phenomenal manifold that only reveals itself--a fluid wash of sensation.

 

That undifferentiated manifold is the truth of reality and is the most direct access we have. It is necessarily non-cognitive but as it contains all possibilities for the development of perception (of particulars) we might look at it as a manifold of pure information--like a huge book that hasnt been opened yet. Cognition is the process of reading the book, but the whole thing is a chose-your-own-adventure because your starting point determines how the whole narrative will unfold.

 

Each individual cognitive being reads a peculiar set of passages unique to themselves. Between beings there is some overlap--the outline, table of contents, some chapter headings, etc., but no single being can read the whole book at one time. They can only experience the pure presence of the unopened book.

 

This is why A=A is not an ontological principle (pertaing to what 'really is'), but merely an epistemological one (pertaining to the structure of our knowledge through perception). Or, put another way, A=A can only be applied to the unopened book itself, because that undifferentiated manifold is the sum total of reality and the only true 'thing' relative to consciousness. Being is being because there is nothing else outside of it (thanks, Parmenides). Every other 'thing' is a construct, a product of a cognitive process. And all of these are ultimately empty.

 

"Listen Shariputra, form is emptyness, emptyness is form, form does not differ from emptyness, emptyness does not differ from form. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness." --Avalokita, Heart Sutra

 

This is an unavoidable fact. When we look into a 'thing', any 'thing' you like, we soon find there is nothing substantial in it. What we have is not a thing whose objective reality we directly sense, but a moment in an ongoing constructive process of perception valid only for a limited scope and application and stage of knowing.

 

There are no true atoms in nature, hence A=A is not valid ontologically as pertaining to the essence of 'things'. It can only reveal the functional structure of our knowledge, which itself is nothing more than a narrative we chose to selectively assert from our limited reading of the great book of reality.

 

Information is outside of timespace because it is just a pattern of a possible reading. When we read reality we bring to light layers upon layers of information, all connected by our random starting point--eg, what page the book opens to when we flip the cover.

 

Are we just brains in vats or brains in space? Even those things are empty constructs!!

 

Oh, Shariputra!!

 

8)

Edited December 8, 2015 by Astral Monk

[Taomeow]

 

A totally different slant on it,  years back I saw a doco on some loopy Paleontologist  that was blathering about a dream he had on site they were working, about a Neanderthal woman coming to him. He was stuck by her beauty, and the communication. He drew some pictures that were magnificent !  His fellow workers thought he was a  bit nutty,.

 

I haven't been able to track that down since though.

 

He may have been loopy, but in your neck-of-woods they do take "dreamtime" seriously, don't they?.. 

 

A lot of my own hopelessly politically unsavvy views are derived from dream-visions of the way things used to be a long, long time ago.  I can't offer them as "proof" of anything.  All I know is, I have my proof in my genetic memory, and in all senses whenever they briefly awaken to those memories. 

 

Occasionally "modern science" throws me a bone, in the shape of "proof" of something I know via those unscientific direct-access pathways.  Most of the time, however, the bones it supplies are plastic, gypsum, or otherwise inedible for someone whose senses and sensibilities are operational. 

 

A recent "proof" came my way in the form of a discovery by the scientific community of a powerfully psychedelic honey known to the locals high in the Himalayas.  It is not accessible to people unless they are top level climbers, know where to look, know how to protect themselves, etc. -- this honey is one of the most expensive substances on the planet.  Well, I wrote about it some fifteen years ago, though I never heard of it then and neither did the "scientific community."  I remembered it...  I remembered ceremonies where it was used, I remembered a sister mixing it with some paint and applying it to my face.  As clearly as I remember today.  Anyway...  per my unscientific direct sources, our prehistory was paradise.  Maybe not always and not everywhere and not everybody's.  Mine was.        

[3bob]

honey in the high mountains?  That would mean bees high in the mountains to?  And above so many feet up there are no plants or flowers for those bees?  (besides being to cold for them to get established and last) 

[Taomeow]

honey in the high mountains?  That would mean bees high in the mountains to?  And above so many feet up there are no plants or flowers for those bees?  (besides being to cold for them to get established and last) 

 

https://www.sociedelic.com/these-himalayan-bees-make-psychedelic-honey/

 

Edited December 8, 2015 by Taomeow

[Nungali]

He may have been loopy, but in your neck-of-woods they do take "dreamtime" seriously, don't they?.. 

 

'Loopy' .... for a qualified paleontologist .    'Dreamtime' ?  ...  thats a very misunderstood term .   But yes, most indigenous people the world over see dreams as significant .. as westerners did too not that long ago (relatively) ... even the terminology has changed , it is usually now ' I had a dream' ...  it used to be 'I  was given a dream' . 

 

I was given an interesting dream the other night ... I have no idea at all why 'I '  would 'have had' that dream .  

 

 

A lot of my own hopelessly politically unsavvy views are derived from dream-visions of the way things used to be a long, long time ago.  I can't offer them as "proof" of anything.  All I know is, I have my proof in my genetic memory, and in all senses whenever they briefly awaken to those memories. 

 

Occasionally "modern science" throws me a bone, in the shape of "proof" of something I know via those unscientific direct-access pathways.  Most of the time, however, the bones it supplies are plastic, gypsum, or otherwise inedible for someone whose senses and sensibilities are operational. 

 

A recent "proof" came my way in the form of a discovery by the scientific community of a powerfully psychedelic honey known to the locals high in the Himalayas.  It is not accessible to people unless they are top level climbers, know where to look, know how to protect themselves, etc. -- this honey is one of the most expensive substances on the planet.  Well, I wrote about it some fifteen years ago, though I never heard of it then and neither did the "scientific community."  I remembered it...  I remembered ceremonies where it was used, I remembered a sister mixing it with some paint and applying it to my face.  As clearly as I remember today.  Anyway...  per my unscientific direct sources, our prehistory was paradise.  Maybe not always and not everywhere and not everybody's.  Mine was.        

 

Its relative ; good times, good country ; about 2 -4 hrs a day needs to be spent on necessities , the rest is for fun, culture ( costume making, decorating, dancing, ceremony, education / story telling  )  family, etc.   Central desert , totally different ! 

 

I am still waiting for reality to deliver that 'liquid ecstasy '  I dreamed about drinking that night      (and the woman I dreamed I was drinking it with      )  

[Taomeow]

 

I am still waiting for reality to deliver that 'liquid ecstasy '  I dreamed about drinking that night      (and the woman I dreamed I was drinking it with      )  

 

Someone I know?

[mostly_empty]

@Taomeow

 

Is this it?

Kopenawa Davi et Bruce Albert, La chute du ciel. Paroles d’un chaman yanomami

If so I am happy to follow up. 

[Taomeow]

@Taomeow

 

Is this it?

Kopenawa Davi et Bruce Albert, La chute du ciel. Paroles d’un chaman yanomami

If so I am happy to follow up. 

 

It's very likely, but I don't remember exactly.  Sorry about that.  I just read too much too fast...  whenever a subject piques my interest, I might grab every single book on that subject from the library, throw on Kindle the ones they don't have, and buy others -- and read them all more or less in a gulp, the result being that I educate myself on the subject but forget authors' names and book titles.  (I'm studying for myself, not for a test, that's why. )  This one was not part of an investigation into the Yanomame or the matrix or any of this particular thread's subjects, it was, rather, one of many on a topic I was investigating at that particular point -- the Amazon in general and Amazonian shamanism in particular.       

[gendao]

And who amongst you understands why:

The red pill = cinnabar (丹 dan) = magical elixir?

What does it represent and why is it red?

[3bob]

Taomeow,  I haven't watched the video yet but I did some searching and found that some of those bees can make it all the way to around 11,500 foot elevation which is getting up there!  although they (or certain species of them) also move or migrate with the seasons to lower elevations.  Interesting info.  I also came across accounts of bees that were using poisonous flowers as part of their honey production which people then ate of and were also poisoned.  (in Turkey)

[Taomeow]

It would only be fair if bees poisoned people with their chemicals for a change of pace.  But I don't think anything stands a chance against our puppeteers, the master poisoners. 

 

I caught a next-door-neighbor once spraying pesticides on my all-organic little vegetable garden, on the sly.  When I politely inquired what the fuck he thought he was doing, he said that he "thought" he saw poison ivy.  It was my cucumbers, actually.  Talk about the matrix.  He couldn't sleep at night knowing that someone is not using poisons like normal matrix-integrated  people do.  She has to pay for this aberration...  she's bound to be breeding poison ivy, poisonous snakes, the ten biblical plagues -- otherwise, if she is not using poisons and gets away with it, the whole matrix is threatened, the cognitive dissonance is just unbearable!..  And mine were the best vegetables and flowers on the block.  Everybody asked what I use, all the time.  I honestly said, nothing -- well, water -- I have healthy earthworms in the soil, very many of them, because I don't poison them, so they do all the fertilizing for me.  Everybody was disappointed by this answer no end, they thought I was keeping a secret.  Some special poisonous concoction that I wouldn't reveal.

 

It's like that with everything.  As I said before...  bad matrix, and the carefully installed resentment of the blue-piller majority  against the red-piller minority is part of its overall lousiness.