Monday 31 December 2012

I, Ego

In a plurality of patterns, blind,
Grasping onto strings,
Painfully weave and wind,
Fossils out of flux.

Little did I know, zero,
That one pattern brings forth
Two, two bring four.
And so on.

It isn’t just reflection, poor self,
So obsessed with coherence.
No, it projects and multiplies,
Transmits and interferes.

Map a course through the fog,
But you’re a ghost,
Lost in the fog,
Looking for a ghost.

Saturday 29 December 2012

Meta-life

The diagram below is an attempt to map out my life cycles for the last 14 years or so. It is probably a trivial exercise, for reasons I will discuss later, but I think it will be interesting to analyse these faux data nonetheless. The way I see my past in general, is being made up of cycles of understanding. There are periods where I feel that I am understanding a lot of things, and there are periods where I feel I do not understand anything. Sometimes things make sense, and sometimes they do not at all. The notion of understanding and making sense of things, seems to be my general constitution in life so far. My personality and subsequently my behaviour, are defined by the way I understand the world, and that way is very carefully and consciously constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed continuously. This ongoing process was fuelled by external events, that made me question or revise my mental models and connections in response to these events. Of course what I’m describing is something that happens to every person, we are all moulded by our experiences, our experiences define our personality and our behaviour and our mental models are in continuous flux. In my case though, and from an early age I actively engaged on the construction of these mental models, analysing them, trying to understand them and expand them. It could be called an existential constitution, because ultimately these models were about understanding why things happen, why things are. As an artist I wanted to channel these models and express them through different media. In fact it was more important for me to visualise these models, and communicate them out of my mind, into physicality. These internal models are effectively my subject matter.

In tandem with this mode in life, I also seemed to not have had a very happy life. The lack of happiness and the multitude of problems around me seemed to feed my creativity. Problems meant crises, and crises meant radical deconstructions and reconstructions of my internal models. New models meant new ideas, which resulted into intense creative inspiration. So a kind of cycle began, first very short, brief cycles, but as time passed and as the models grew larger and larger, the longer these cycles would take. The cycle was as such: a disruptive experience would occur, which would lead to all kinds of emotions. These emotions would then be internalised where they would come into conflict with certain models and belief systems. General understanding would then fall, confusion ensuing, negative emotion, isolation and sadness. This is the state of reductive transformation, where incompatible models and belief systems are rejected. It is a state of loss and despair, and thus a highly creative time as there is a need for it to be communicated. (Instead of communicating with people, I would communicate with myself through art.) Soon, perhaps with the aid of art, a positive integration starts occurring where the experience is assimilated and the loss of belief is accepted to a certain degree. After that, an accumulative transformation occurs, where new models and belief systems are considered, in light of the change that has occurred before.

Metalife is about the plurality of existence, there isn’t just one narrative that is your story but an infinite multiplicity of narratives. The multinarrative is the personal metanarrative. It is the most subjective narrative possible, it is the narrative of the individuate. The self, the ego does not deal well with multiplicities. This needs thought.






approx time spans:
1998-1999 accumulative transformation
2000-2001 negative integration
2002-2003 reductive transformation
2003-2004 positive integration
2005-2006 accumulative tranformation
2007-2008 negative integration
2009 reductive transformation
2010 positive integration
2011-2012 accumulative tranformation
2013 negative integration

one complete cycle: positive integration (birth)- accumulative transformation (growth - inspiration) - negative integration (plateau, closure, completion, individuation?, post-, meta-) - reductive transformation (death)

Each cycle has two peak points, the highest point of inspiration, plurality, acceptance and awareness, and the lowest point. These two peaks lead to transformation.They are the yin and yan of existence, they seem opposite yet they are the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_system




These are over-simplifications and are only separated intellectually so as to look at emerging patterns. They are all part of the same continuous spectrum of events. Cycles of roughly 2 years are observed, each cycle beginning with self-discovery and ending with recovery and recovery leads to self-discovery (they are sides of the same coin). Self-discovery is always followed by transformation – this is either a personal transformation or a transformation of a loved one, either way it leads to the transformation of all individuals involved. The transformation leads to a series of internal and external events that finally cause a disconnection or reconnection between the participating parties depending on whether this is perceived as a negative or positive transformation. In a negative cycle the events lead to a subsequent depressive routine. This is what I believe to be the re-emerging pattern that propagates these cycles. Delving into a routine whether a positive or a negative one, provides a sense of safety and certainty, and a surrender to inertia and procrastination. Routine is seen as favourable even at its most negative, depressive aspect. It gives way to denial and avoidance, and submission to the state of affairs instead of trying to change them. Only through the resulting disconnection, disappearance, fleeing or solitude do things finally change and allow for recovery and self-discovery. Recovery marks the end of a cycle and comes with a great release that leads to self-discovery and the subsequent transformation. It is obvious that a more pro-active approach has to be taken to break the cycle, we all need to become more fully aware, grounded in the now and not avoid or procrastinate responsibilities. Otherwise the fears will continue re-emerging in every cycle. They all need to be faced one by one.










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(disambiguation)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditio_humana


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenological_life


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyday_life


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeworld


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_(sociology)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_ecology


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-life_balance


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_(philosophy)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_(social_science)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Henry


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_system

Sunday 14 October 2012

Recap 2009-12

After my mother’s death, I fell into a deep existential state of mind. Although I always had an existential disposition, this was immensely amplified after her death. The various existential notions that I was exploring before went into overdrive, and I had found myself in an existential tunnel, a chain of meta after meta, that led from one aspect of reality to the other. It turned into an obsession of understanding reality, a kind of extended shock caused by the death as I lost my faith in everything I believed in. It has been my emotional-rational way of trying to understand what happened, the reaction to loss, meaninglessness and pain. After this 3 year-long existential journey, I find myself where I started; not knowing. There may never be an answer to any of these questions, be it because it is impossible for a human being to know them, or because the questions are simply irrelevant or human made, but the journey was full of discovery and meaning. Alongside this expansion of my worldview, creativity and inspiration were heightened beyond any level they had before. In fact, creativity was the very first sort of expression that came after the death. I have written, drawn, made, thought and conceptualised like never before. Her absence has been filled with creativity and inspiration to last me a lifetime. It is like my brain has gone under a sudden massive growth in neural synapses, a surge of neuroplasticity. The conceptual connections I have made are huge considering it’s been just 3 years. I truly feel I have reached some form of individuation, or at least I might have a better understanding of what individuation might entail. Jung does say that individuation is usually brought about as a reaction to a major life crisis, a shock that can lead a personality to dig within the depths of its own reality. Whatever it is, here’s a recap of the intellectual and creative journey I’ve been through these last 3 years:

Preface: Worldviews, absurdism, truth, metaphor, chaos and order, complexity
1. The Flow: creation story (both as a story of the past and a story of the present, the scientific narrative)
2. Archetypes: the discrete units of metanarratives, archetypes run through the cortex of the flow: eg. quantum archetypes, atomic archetypes, mathematical, molecular, biological, cellular, instinctual, emotional, rational, cultural
3. Meta-, Metanarratives
4. Individuation (conscious recognition of archetypes, shedding of cultural artifacts, integration of metanarratives, conscious creation of a post-meta-narrative)
5. Post-language, the metahuman
Epilogue: Meaning, Creativity, meaning permeates reality, creativity creates meaning, meaning expands creativity, Pure Land

Continuum, Flow, Supervenience, Emergence, hierarchies, complexity, networks, systems, creativity, flux, implicate order, integrative levels, categories, layers, big history


Lifeworld, Worldview, Folk Epics, Myth


Meta, Meta-narrative, meta-paradigms, post-metanarrative, Meta-ethics, post-culturalism, deculturalism, Post-structuralist, deconstruction, Post-postmodernism multi-narrative, amitabha buddha, meta-epistemology, Metaknowledge, Metatheory, meta-language, post-language, post-meta-human, Epistemological_anarchism, Epistemological_pluralism, Pluralism, Metahumanism, Metafiction , Metacognition, metamathematics


cultural archetypes, narrative archetypes, jungian archetypes, genetic archetypes, anima/animus, memetic archetypes, linguistic archetypes, social constructs, belief systems, metaphors, qualia, semiotics, biosemiotics, ontologies

individuation, self-remembering, thought patterns, robothood, unconsciousness, social/cultural conditioning/cleansing, cultural artefacts, belief system cleansing, self-deconstruction, projection, multi-narrative, personal meaning, self-integration, suffering/miserabilia/Dukkha, gnosiology, epistemology, knowledge. language, absurdism, Socially_constructed_reality, Essentialism, Perspectivism, Structuralism, Structuralism 2, Relativism, Two_truths_doctrine, Wisdom_in_Buddhism, meta-destiny, reflexivity, self-reflexivity, Ideation_(idea_generation), Rhizome_(philosophy), Syncretism, Chaos_magic, Thoughtform


post-language: hypertense, hyperperson, hypertime, post-meta-human, post-symbols, post-metaphors, hypersymbols, hypermetaphors, post-culturalism, trans-culturalism Grammatical category, Linguistic_determinism, Determinism, Linguistic_relativity, Historicism, Part_of_speech, Universal_grammar


Non-individuates follow external narratives and meta-narratives semi-consciously or subconsciously. The first step to achieving individuation is realising one’s own unconscious behaviour and conditioning from external narratives. The second step is a conscious cleansing of memetic behaviour, conditioning and unconscious belief systems. The third step is the conscious reconstruction of a metanarrative based on personal experiences, genetic conditioning and the very experience of the first two steps. After the 3rd step is complete, the individuate finally achieves individuation: an active never-ending process, the  continuous refinement of the personal meta-narrative and the spreading, sharing of this meta-narrative to inspire further individuation.

Thursday 6 September 2012

Our Big Story


Big history presents an overview of all that we know in a loosely chronological order. It presents human knowledge from a scientific and anthropocentric approach, and tries to include all that we know about how the universe around us came about but also how life begun and how culture radiated from life. It thus presents an intensely humanistic approach to the history of everything. This metanarrative is extremely powerful, and it has been slowly integrated into the collective unconscious of humanity since the beginning of culture but has greatly intensified over the last 100 years. 

Big history could soon become the prevailing metanarrative, and it could be the metanarrative that could lead us into transculturalism. History would have to be understood as an active process and not just a mere recording of past events. Just like modern historians look at the different ways history can be interpreted, so do big historians study the plurality of perspectives of big history. Physics and science similarly evolve as new discoveries and new theories are assessed. Big history is therefore not static, but an ever evolving multi-perspective narrative, whose students actively seek to redefine it, reinterpret it and refine it.

Language is based on archetypes that arise from biological drama such as the influx of sense data, birth, parenthood, sex, survival, nourishment, grooming, social behaviour, object interaction etc. These archetypes act as the basic units of symbols, based on which a primordial grammar arises. Symbols are put into order according to this grammar, creating larger congregations of meaning and thus more complex symbols and abstractions. Elaborate formulations of these symbols lead to stories largely based on observations of social relationships and natural phenomena, creating human drama. These stories evolved into myths that sought to explain various aspects of reality through an extremely imaginative and creative rethinking and reordering of symbol based language.   

A very obvious connection can be observed between nature, language and culture (human stories). Besides that one leads to the other in a linear manner, it is also self-reflexive in that human stories essentially are about understanding nature. (Human stories and culture are themselves extremely self-reflexive as illustrated by post-modernism.) Nature in this way can be seen as essentially creating the means to observe itself in ever more efficient ways, and potentially dramatically altering itself in the future through the abstractions of these observations. Myths thus provided a platform for intellectual contemplations that evolved into philosophical thinking. Both western and eastern philosophy, reinterpreted the myths and formulated a new level of understanding, that of the metanarrative. In the west, competing philosophies were like mini-metanarratives fighting for space and the shaping of consciousness. In the east, grand integrated metanarratives arose that were extremely comprehensive and complex. 

Big history could become a conscious metanarrative that includes all previous metanarratives into its own scheme of things, viewing them all as part of this bigger evolutionary process that stems from linguistic and genetic archetypes. This is how big history should be told, a story about a never ending story of stories, a story of all stories, but nevertheless, merely a story.

Breakdown:
metanarratives - religions, philosophies, sciences, big history
myths
stories - memes - human drama
symbols - language - code
archetypes - biological drama
instincts - a priori knowledge - neural patterns

Saturday 14 July 2012

Love-Life

You gave me life
You gave me love
You took your life
You took my love.


I say love,
I have no love.
It’s just a metaphorical,
Linguistic love.


Sick to my stomach,
I look at your pictures.
I am making a selection,
Of your happy moments.

Your smile makes me cry,
Your life makes me die.
What have you done?
What could have been...

I say you,
There is no you.
Just a fictional imaginary,
Literary You.

Plain vocabulary,
Mutually constructed pain.
Chemically induced,
Symbol-based strain.


Comforting grammar,
Aggregations of words,

Signals with no meaning,
Perpetuate life.

I say life,
This is no life.
Just a compulsory,
Involuntary absurdity.



Wednesday 9 May 2012

Post-meta-paradigm

I’ve reached a state of psychological pluralism and post-structuralist psyche. I recognise the many meta-narratives that define me and I have constructed a post-meta-narrative (PMN) that includes these many meta-narratives. I recognise the fact that one can never be aware of all meta-narratives as they are simply infinite, and any attempt to do so would probably lead to schizophrenia. It’s the flip coin to absurdism. All is absurd because it is equally complex and chaotic. Chaos is synonymous to complexity.

If every paradigm is a local metanarrative, there is no way to achieve a state of that ideal all-encompassing post-metanarrative, but only create a metnaarrative that recognises and integrates a plurality of metanarratives. This post-metanarrative continuously evolves, absorbing and assimilating new meta-narratives as well as refining and evolving existing meta-narratives. I as well recognise that the metanarrative I have constructed for myself is highly personal and subjective and almost impossible to communicate. I also recognise that the very concept of meta-narratives and post-meta-narratives is also based on my own perspective and may not be recognised by other perspectives. But my personal concept of a post-metanarrative leaves room for other people’s narratives, and accepts them as entities in themselves that may or may not be assimilated by my own meta-narrative, nevertheless they are as valid as any of the meta-narratives that I have collected myself.


Still there seems to be an inherent need in me to organise these meta-narratives in a hierarchical structure and group them within a larger ever-growing post-metanarrative. There always needs to be an organising monadic force. Is this because of spiritual/scientific/genetic/linguistic conditioning or is there a natural movement towards a coherent singular post-metanarrative? It is very possible that it is a genetic defense mechanism to ensure there is a consistent understanding of the world. There is also the modernist conditioning which could be argued that it stems from the western Christian-Aristotelian metanarrative. Because of its post-structuralist/post-postmodern nature, the post-metanarrative (or more accurately the post-structuralist metanarrative) is not teleological, and cannot be a totalising, all-encompassing, categorical entity as understood in modernist terms. The PMN does not pose as a teleological entity as the modernist meta-narrative, but recognises the fact that is merely a progression of the meta-narratives that came before it, and that it is a pastiche of these meta-narratives in the postmodern sense.


Meta-narratives clearly have their own evolutionary game, they cooperate and compete to create complex networks and systems of meta-narratives. They can be thought in the flowic categorisation system of body-network-system. Their smallest units, simple narratives, can be likened to Jungian archetypes, archetypal myths and primal memes. As meta-narratives evolve into complex systems, they engulf each other increasing in sophistication. A fully grown meta-narrative is a cultural entity that defines the reality and understanding of millions of people. Examples of meta-narratives include, Christianity, Buddhism, Science, Modernism, Post-modernism, Platonism, Spiritualism, etc. A meta-narrative poses as the one truth, and people following (consciously and subconsciously) these meta-narratives are often unable to recognise the validity of other meta-narratives. But also as meta-narrative sophistication increases so does its integration of other meta-narratives grows, increasing its validity. Christianity assimilated Aristotelian (and others) metanarratives just like modernism assimilated Christian-Aristotelian-Industrial metanarratives, posing as a new all-encompassing narrative. The post-structuralist and post-postmodern metanarrative goes a step further to integrate all possible metanarratives including the seemingly opposite modernist metanarrative. At the same time it refutes any teleology or modernist totalising nature and replaces that with a multiplicity and plurality. Thus the post-structuralist metanarrative becomes a paradoxical all-encompassing totalising MN, by rejecting a teleological state and by accepting all metanarratives, or the possibility of integration of all metanarratives.


Because of its pluralist outlook, the PMN hints at the existence of more than one PMN. Many PMNs can arise starting a new evolutionary play, leading to post-post-metanarratives and so on. There are personal PMNs and there are communal, societal PMNs (eg. The Flow is my personal PMN which borrows from other people’s PMNs and MNs). They are inherently self aware of their intertextuality and composition of many metanarratives, that is their very definition and identity and that is what gives them a status higher than simple multinarratives. They are the evolved metanarratives that recognise personal truth as well as multiple truths. PMN integration leads to the formulation of truth entities. These are post-cultural paradigms that include many PMNs both personal and societal. In fact in a post-cultural state, personal and group truths are one and the same. In the post-cultural word, people converse in PMNs, they are the currency for understanding and constructing truths. This communication can only be achieved by an evolved meta-language whose grammar is able to grasp the complexities of multi-metanarrative intersections and PMN construction and deconstruction.



References:
“narrative lifestyle”

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/blf10/Links/stories.html
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/blf10/Links/structuralism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism
It holds that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_pluralism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(philosophy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-narrative

Replacing grand, universal narratives with small, local narratives
According to the advocates of postmodernism, metanarratives have lost their power to convince – they are, literally, stories that are told in order to legitimise various versions of 'the truth'. With the transition from modern to postmodern, Lyotard proposes that metanarratives should give way to petits récits, or more modest and "localized" narratives.[citation needed] Borrowing from the works of Wittgenstein and his theory of the "models of discourse,"[5] Lyotard constructs his vision of a progressive politics that is grounded in the cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated language games. Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints"[6] rather than grand, all-encompassing theories.

Is poststructuralism a metanarrative?
Lyotard's analysis of the postmodern condition has been criticized as being internally inconsistent. For example, thinkers like Alex Callinicos[7] and Jürgen Habermas[8] argue that Lyotard's description of the postmodern world as containing an "incredulity toward metanarratives" could be seen as a metanarrative in itself. According to this view, post-structuralist thinkers like Lyotard criticise universal rules but postulate that postmodernity contains a universal skepticism toward metanarratives; and this 'universal skepticism' is in itself a contemporary metanarrative. Like a post-modern neo-romanticist metanarrative that intends to build up a 'meta' critic, or 'meta' discourse and a 'meta' belief holding up that Western science is just taxonomist, empiricist, utilitarian, assuming a supposed sovereignty around its own reason and pretending to be neutral, rigorous and universal. This is itself an obvious sample of another 'meta' story, self-contradicting the postmodern critique of the metanarrative.[citation needed]

Thus, Lyotard's postmodern incredulity towards metanarratives could be said to be self-refuting. If one is skeptical of universal narratives such as 'truth', 'knowledge', 'right', or 'wrong', then there is no basis for believing the 'truth' that metanarratives are being undermined. In this sense, this paradox of postmodernism is similar to the liar's paradox ("This statement is false.") Perhaps postmodernists, like Lyotard, are not offering us a utopian, teleological metanarrative, but in many respects their arguments are open to metanarrative interpretation. They place much emphasis on the irrational, though in doing so apply the instruments of reason.[original research?][citation needed].
But of course, that is only from a modernist perspective, since such an argument against postmodernism is an attempt towards making a totalizing metanarrative of postmodernism, an attempt to deconstruct postmodernism using totalizing criticisms of a supposed a priori of postmodernism, assuming that postmodernism follows the linear categorical logic of modernism, when postmodernism really uses the categories of logic in a contingent fashion, in an incredulity while taking in account of the multiplicitous nature of language-games and their limitations in ascent to a discovery of a higher truth of paralogy.[original research?]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideation_(idea_generation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism
This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This is often taken to imply that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true", but does not necessarily entail that all perspectives are equally valid.

Perspectivism rejects objective metaphysics as impossible, and claims that no objective evaluations can transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. This means that there are no objective facts, and that there can be no knowledge of a thing in itself. This separates truth from a particular (or single) vantage point, and means that there are no ethical or epistemological absolutes.[1] This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives.[2] "Truth" is thus formalized as a whole that is created by integrating different vantage points together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_scheme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)
pluralism, multiplicity

post-post-modernism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic
Some chaos magicians like to operate in what is sometimes called a meta-paradigm. This is much akin to syncretism but with the consideration that flexibility of belief is a means of personal power and freedom. A more or less syncretic reality tunneling. Even more removed from this, being a post-meta-paradigmatic view, or an abstention from the notion of any view being absolute, compare Nietzsche's Perspectivism.

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/02/18/hypersigils-reconsidered/

mrk: hypersigils are in effect personal meta-narratives, (similar to the multi-narrative concept of that book metaphors we live by? is that where I read that from) the difference being that the hypersigil adds a manifestation dimension to it, so it is not just a mere re-interpretation and clarification of a personal meta-narrative, it is a conscious re-ordering and transformation of the narrative that leads to conscious manifestation of will. It is manifestation of thoughtforms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtform