knowing,

For the purpose of this blog I am going to work under the premises that knowing something is part of the human condition and therefore I am only going use the human condition to describe what knowing is. In other words, I am going with the assumption that we are not in some kind of matrix, even though I cannot prove we are not because I cannot immediately perceive it. I am going off the assumption that what we can perceive is what is real, and not the chance that what we can perceive is some kind of illusion.

So here goes nothing, my attempt at understanding some of what we have been talking about in class. One of the things that came up today was the idea of knowing. Tony went on ahead and filled us in on three primary types of knowing, leaving me, and hopefully not just me, in the dust wondering what knowing is. I'm not even sure how to tackle this one. What is knowing something? can we ever know something in its entirety? I figure it's maybe something like this: you can know a person, or to be more precise, select aspects of a person, not the entire person; I seriously wonder if you can even know everything about yourself, but I digress. You can also know facts such as what chemicals a desk is made up of, under the same category, you can also know somethings status, such as where someone is. You can know how to do something from experience although this is somewhat questionable since no two situations will be exactly alike, I still feel that there is something to be said about memory, but I guess it's really more of a system of estimating probabilities than actually knowing something, again, since no two situations will be alike.

That brings me to my next idea, which is the shit storm of the whole thing. We cannot know the future. nothing is certain people, or maybe everything is certain but to bad because we can't predict what will happen. I wonder about this human notion of choice all the time. Do other animals have choice or are they driven by instinct only? does choice even exist? if not, then what is the human idea of choice? If we had no notion of choice, assuming that it actually does not exist, what would our reality look like? I guess the idea of choice is probably integral to the human condition (what condition is our condition in?). Maybe the only difference between instinct and choice is the notion of choice. That of course would suggest that choice does not actually exist and is only an illusion, one either created by the human brain or created by the man to make us feel like we are in control, which in many cases, despite free will, we are not. In regards to the past: the past is subjective, no two events are ever exactly alike and no two people will perceive any event in the same way. I think its important to realize that what you "know" about the past is not equivalent to what you know at this very moment. the past only exists and peoples heads and in books and movies, which are extensions of people's imaginations. having a general knowledge of the past serves as a means to work out probabilities in the future, but keep in mind that they are not going to give you certainties. People who ignore history are more likely to repeat it is the way the saying ought to go. Not that I am trying to say that you should not study history, my advice is to just be critical of what you are taught because it is all always subjective. (I am going to politely avoid time travel in this blog. I honestly hope it never exists.)

Again I digress, with a somewhat adequate description of "knowing" on the table as well as reassuring that the future and the past cannot be completely known, we come to what you know right know, which is not all that much. all we "know" in the truest definition of the word is what we can immediately perceive. what does this mean? It means that everyone in the world that you cannot perceive with any sense at this point in time could be dead from swine flu. That this has happened is extremely unlikely, but just by admitting that it is unlikely we have to cede that it could happen. Since it could happen, and since we are not aware of the world outside of our perception we cannot dismiss that it has not happened. One of the beauties of our age is that technology allows us to increase the range of our perceptions, for instance after reading my example, and hopefully accepting it as a possibility, albeit a remote one, some one could simply turn on the T.V. or phone a friend and find out that not everyone is dead.

In the begining...

For starters, here's a rough pataphor that I came up with:

"The nanotext class ambled down the sidewalk on its many legs in a somewhat uncoordinated manner. This manner was its nature; though it betrayed the true strength and potential movement speed of the creature. A passing English 101 class waved politely although insincerely. Further ahead a beautiful and self-centered calculus class crossed the street without a glance. The nanotext class only laughed to itself and then, using one long and tentacled arm, pulled a picture from a billboard and drank the ink off of it. No sooner had the creature finished its drink came a loud ding from somewhere in its guts; words formed on the creature’s gleaming skin and fell to ground completing a short sentence. The words were devoured without hesitation and the nanotext class continued its stroll, smiling and swaggering."

I think that this idea of a pataphor somehow pertains to "The Invention of Morel"; however, I openly admit that at this point in time I have yet to make that connection, I simply figure it exists because of the emphasis Tony has point on them in class.

At any rate, the reason I attempted at the above should be obvious. what with all this talk about our class being a super organism I figured that in a pataphysical world our class would actually be some kind of creature, albeit a somewhat odd creature. Then, just to spice things up a bit, I threw in some other class organisms and turned the thing into a whole damn descriptive paragraph. I may have gone to far. Anyway, I'd love to get it read and find out you (my peers) think of it. I thought of posting the whole thing on plurk but I think I'd feel like too much off an ass.

In other news (and now I'll actually blabber on about Morel now)
I've been having some difficulty with the narrator's idea that the projections from Morel's invention are alive. I mean, just because they take up physical space and and can be perceived by each human sense, does that make something alive? Then again it seems that an objects status in physical has mo meaning in TIOM as an editor (who the hell is that guy anyway) points out in a footnote on page 99 "He neglected to explain one thing, the most incredible of all: the coexistence, in one space, of an object and its whole image. This fact suggests the possibility that the whole world is made up exclusively of sensations." This idea goes against my understanding of physics, but hey what the hell, not that I'm trying to point out the impossibility of Morel's machine, just trying to define the narrator's (and therefore the author's?) idea of what conditions must be met to call something "life". So, leaving out somethings identity in physical space we have senses, what can be perceived, and, though this is somewhat of an assumption, we have the interactions between these beings. Personally I think that there's more to being alive, especially to being human than that, but even if there's not, its all just a damn recording. Even if these recordings can think and feel, they are only acting on the world they were recorded in, they have no means to interact with anything new. then again maybe that's what life is if you don't believe that free will exists. maybe this idea of "new" is just an illusion.

And now on to plurk.
Recently, I posted: "Williamnot feels that nanotexts is slowly ripping away from me everything which once held meaning." This gained me a few interesting responses, the first of which was: "Mantra feels you should fight the entropy of meaning by introducing new meaning into the once closed system of your reality." At first I was a little offended that someone thought of my reality as "closed" I'm not even sure what this means. Am (or was) I an ignorant or self centered person? I of course don't like to think so, but I suppose its a possibility. The more I thought about it though; the more I began to wonder if it was even possible for some one's reality to be closed. Isn't the meaning present in any one's life there, in some part, due to others? I believe it is, so how is it possible for a reality to be closed. On the other hand, if I accept that my reality is or was closed, what has nanotexts done to open it up? If a allow new meaning into my life through nanotexts, how will that meaning be of better quality than meaning I had previously? Is it assumed that old meaning in my life was obtained foolishly and without thought given to what I was making important in my own life? I don't like that idea to much (I have examined my lifestyle a few times in my age), and frankly, no one in nanotexts knows enough about me to make that call. Also, to be fair, I didn't quite accurately state my feelings in the original plurk; I feel that it is also worth mentioning that the meaning in my life is being ripped away because nanotexts is making me wonder if any meaning has meaning. And if that is the case, who gives a shit if my reality is open or closed?