mind

I've been feeling odd lately. Too odd to complete a blog post on time? maybe, maybe not, but I at least tricked myself into thinking that I could not do it when I should have. (in regards to last weeks blog, which I did not complete) In all honestly I've been feeling pretty damn sick over the past week. Odd symptoms mixed with nerves and panic over those symptoms. I'm not trying to make excuses for a missing blog here, I have a point. Over the past week I've been having some interesting experiences over the the minds power to create, or alternatively control or reduce symptoms. If you get some chest pain and start to think for even a second that you're having a heart attack, it's likely that your arm will all of a sudden start to hurt. A rather unfortunate confounding-effect, or maybe you actually are having a heart attack. Sometimes I feel like my heart could stop beating entirely, and as long as no body told me my heart had stopped, I would be fine. I just finished reading "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" which is basically all about the human mind. this also brings me back to TTTE in which a scenario in described in which a person is immersed in water that is the same temperature as the human body and then left in total darkness and silence. This apparently leads to the feeling of separation of mind from body. The passage also states that most people cannot stand it and ask to be let out quite quickly. I want to try it. I can see some problems, I myself am very familiar with water, all one would really have to do would be to kick around and splash up some water. In his short story, Dick basically creates a flawless version of what TTTE describes. Another thing I wonder is what brain activity would be like from the inside if all body activity was removed. It's said that when one sense is lost, others become stronger to compensate for that loss. spend one hour outside on a dark night and that statement proves itself. So I try to imagine what it would be like if all the senses were lost. would all that extra computing power be put to the remaining brain functions, which basically boil down to imagination and self meditation, or is the type of computing power that can only be put into sensations? Would it be lost without its intended use? is imagination a sense in itself? I tend to think it is and that all that brain power could lead to some interesting results. The closest I suppose I've ever been to this is a dream. I've even had a few experiences of somewhat lucid dreams in which in I have a supernatural control of my surroundings. The dreams are not as long as I would like them to be and often my control is flawed of fails all together. I've also always wanted to have a dream lasting a long time take place in one night. Time is very subjective in dreams, but mine have never seen to last more than a few hours (it seems) that I can remember.

Now, onward to something completely different, this is sort of related to Postsingular, but only in the way black is related to white.

I got a strange idea up in the woods on Saturday night, here's what happened. Me and a few of my friends walked up to the tower in the arboretum at about midnight with no flashlights or cellphones. we just walked and relied on our night vision and in few cases, I followed Seth purely by the sound of his footsteps, though he was about fifty feet in front of us, which is not something I believe I am capable of normally. Anyway we made it to the tower and there were a few other people up there enjoying the night. I couldn't see their faces, not tell their race. It was like they were shadows with voices. So the idea I got from it was a way to meet new people. Two people enter a pitch black room, not too big, but not claustrophobic. These people find each other, and my idea is that they hold hands in the middle, like a hand shake sort of, but frozen. Then these people just talk and get to know each other, no physical judgment would be possible, and those things are much easier to get past once you know someone by their character and personality. If you were feeling really bold, you could even get your friends to set you up on a "blind date" (har har). I ran the idea past my room mates and they brought up potential issues of trust, which is legitimate, so naturally you would want this to be a somewhat controlled environment. Any way, I had been thinking of that along side Postsingular where the orphidnet lets people see everything about each other. Black vs. White. Obviously it wouldn't be for everyone, but I would be willing to give it a try.

I guess that's it for the class-mandated section blog. It hasn't been easy for me, and I'm not real proud of most of my entries. I'll probably still post, but infrequently.

scribblings of little or no consequence.

Right. Animals. Let's talk about animals. Animals as in the animals in the books we've been reading. Maybe by getting to know our fury friends we can learn a bit more about their less-hairy counterparts, or maybe, no the other hand, I'm just a bumbling idiot. Let's find out. If we follow Tony's handy syllabus we would get to "The Ticket that Exploded" before encountering any significant animal-characters. Morel seems only to have bugs (not to say that bugs are not important, they just are not particularly important to TIOM and therefore not entirely important to understanding the other characters.) and if there are any significant animals involved in Alterity that I am about to leave out, please forgive me, I still have a difficult time picking out the important parts of the book, but I do not think animals were invloved. At any rate, TTTE invloves several odd creatures, we could call them animals, actually I feel like we could call every character in that book an animal of sorts, with each one being almost as important to the plot as the next. Since I'm already on the subject of TTTE, let me go into the virus somewhat, as it seems unaviodable when TTTE comes up. this raises a potentially interesting question: does the virus make the characters in TTTE animalistic or were they that way before hand? (before-hand itself is an interesting concept in TTTE, one that I'm not sure I could describe, what was life like before the virus hit? did they live in a world like ours? Maybe its just the fact the world Burroughs has created is so incredibly different from our that it is difficult to compare it with anything we are familiar with) Animals and viruses both have that icredible desire to live and carry on that we only are aware of becuase we share it with the rest of them. Only two things have ever been so damn succesfull in doing so that they kick everyone else to the curb. I am of course referring back to viruses, as well as humans. Put the two of them together and you end up with machines telling men that they are viruses as well. TTTE gives us a world where everything seemingly has some version or mutation of the same virus, which is has either made the desicion not to, or is incapable of, destroying all life outright. Life therefore blunders on, and some of humanities more violent, animalistic tendencies have seems to come forward.
Next there's ribofunk, which although is also under complete control of the slightly different virus, the urb, has a distinct view of "animals" within its pages. The splices, or cultivars as they are also called, are main characters throughout the story, or rather stories. Of course to simply call them animals is rather ignorant of several of the main parts of the storyline in which these creatures are fighting for equal rights against there human creators. The splices hint at an ongoing struggle that has been occuring on this planet for quite some time. Di Filippo seems to be suggesting that even once humans have reached a tenative equality with thier own species, that they will simply create, or already have created, something else to subjecate. The fact the Di Filippo uses creatures that contain parts of human DNA make his take even more interesting. the most intruging example of these characters is little worker. (I personally wanted to learn more about krazy kat, but oh well) Little worker developed her own agenda somewhere down the line and accomplishes what she wants to with a combination of human wit and animal ferocity. I also feel the evnts that take place in "after school special" to be relevant here. We have two children who get "spikes" what we would call body alterations perhaps. this involves antlers for the boy and a column of coral for the girl, coral being of course a living thing. Even when they are inside the digital body learnig its anatomy they take the form of disney characters, many of which are based of animals. In a seperate chapter we have a girl who wants to become and giant cockroach. I find this desire to be animal-like among the Ribofunk human population very interesting when juxtapositioned beside the ferocity of the splices who are of less then fifty percent human DNA, which apparently makes them more animal like then the humans wish to become.

Thats all for now, allthough thats only two of the five books I still want to take a look at. If you actaully bothered to read this, I suppose you could expect more later.

Don't bother.

I need to give some credit to Drew Miller for this one. We were walking back from English on day last week and we started talking about the sounds of science videos we had watched that day (the octopus and similarities between length and time). We both thought that the octopus was pretty damn cool, but Drew decided, and I agree, that it is tougher for us to understand octopus than similarities between length and time (if that's not the correct title, I apologize). we figured that this is because the human brain understands linear relationships and ideas better than naturally occurring things, that is, the body of an octopus is not very linear, nor is say, the inner workings of the human body. We both found this pretty interesting since this idea of something being linear, measurable, or otherwise solved is a human idea that came about after human evolved the large brains we have come to love so well. I figure this adaptation to the linear must have been trained into the human brain over hundreds of years. Personally I figure it probably started at about the same time agriculture did, but I could be way off. What is the basis of linear thought though? In some senses I feel that its just a means to see the patterns of things in the natural world, those patterns build on each other and you end up with physics and calculus. If that is correct, than the human body certainly has pattern to its functionality. (patterns being something that can only be recognized after being seen repeated a few times. Otherwise its just a speculation). While humans are undoubtedly the most pattern obsessed creatures it seems to me that many other forms of life can recognize patterns. I think that Pavlov's dog is a good example of this. Indeed it seems that intelligence is judged by one's ability to learn and decipher patterns. Chimps are taught to count, numbers being yet another pattern, than they are put in front of a computer screen with numbers, say one through ten, on it. They get to look at it for a few seconds then the numbers go away and the chimp has to touch the blank squares on the screen where the numbers used to be, in order. Chimpy wins, chimpy gets a banana or a marshmallow or whatever, and most of them do it better than most humans too, which I find funny. In reality, I feel that our measures of "intelligence" are pretty absurd. These days I feel like its just another way for people to judge each other. As far as I can tell, intelligence is determined by two things, your grades, early in life, and your paycheck later in life. Grades are pretty nasty, everything you do is rated. I feel like in a lot of cases its just a way for the education system to force their ideas on you, tell you what is "correct" as they see it. In the best cases grades are used in the hopes to get students to improve themselves, but I have found said cases to be rare indeed. Then there is standardized testing, which is just wonderful. For those of you who don't know, that's where they line you up like robots and compare you to everyone else. If you don't function the way you're "supposed" to, well they don't kill you, yet, they just sort of pretend you don't exist. They are plenty of people out there, though, that are more than willing to "fix" you for a few bucks. What good does being able to regurgitate all your knowledge onto some damn scantron? Then you get older and if you manage to get a high paying job, people will think you are smart. If you end up doing what you actually want to do, despite a lower paycheck, society will most likely consider you a failure on some level. "look at him, he only owns one car, he must have done poorly an his SATs, quick kids, study study study, in fact why not just have schools teach soloey how to take this test, that will surely lead to success and intelligence." Washington had this problem with the WASL, but I think we got rid of it, not that the same problems don't occur with the SAT. Most highschool students pay extra to take prep classes for the SAT and the ACT... should that really be nessecary? Not that I'm saying I know a better way to run it, I think I'm more for abolishing it completely. Can't we just accredit our various education institutions and let the diploma's speak for themselves? I'll accept the current grading system as the lesser of two evils here; just that teachers should be wise about how they grade things, and not base classes on a few silly tests. than we're just back to the whole standardization process. So somewhere down the line, I guess this turned into quite a rant, and got way off topic from class. oh well.

just write they said...

Write I shall. Well I'm pretty damned stressed right now. I have this spectacularly lame speech outline due Wednesday. The speech is on the benefits of supporting local art. I need four non-internet based sources and its god damned tough to find them. not too many people give a shit about art and also want to write about why its cool. I also don't think there are too many hard facts on why supporting other people's expression is good for both parties, but I don't think I can get away with changing my topic this late in the game. I want to do this one justice as well. Shit. So there are basically two things I do when I'm stressed: I swear more and I listen to lodger. I swear plenty when I'm relaxed but this stressing really brings the sailor out in me, so forgive me if this blog gets vulgar. Lodger is this cool Finnish indie band that I discovered one day during my travels of the inter-network. They are pretty pessimistic but I dig the sound.
I will now be taking suggestions from the studio audience.
There seems to be a lot of talk on plurk about how class was operated today. For me it was really no big deal. I actually liked the old timey feel it had to it. I am in no way trying to say that I don't like all the media that Tony uses but I'm used to classes similar to the one we had today. I felt like it was somewhat easier to follow what direction the conversation in the room was going. I don't want every class to be like that, but it was cool. People were also saying that we didn't discuss the books as much as we ought to have. I find this odd. I feel that we did in fact discuss the reading, or that what we discussed was derived from the reading. Also I've have always been under the impression that if you want to discuss something in 238, just say so; especially if it has to do with assigned books. but what the fuck do I know.
Thats all I have to say about that.
I went to the Shins concert last Saturday. It was a great show. pretty damn rainy. The opening act was called Delta Spirit. they were good, I had never heard of them before; the lead singer kind of has a bob dylan/willie nelson voice, but he screams it out sometimes. they had a cool sound. Some people complained about the rain but I thouroghly enjoyed it. Rain doesn't bother me that much, I guess that makes sense with my choice to come to school here. For some reason I expected the lead singer in the Shins to somehow look different than he did. I don't really know why. It does not matter anyway, just odd the way our imaginations give us funny preconceptions isn't it?
Thats all I have to say about that...
I think I just figure out what I should have spent this entire blog talking about: this suggestion that aestetics makes us animals.

"Levinas used to recount that in the camp where he was a prisoner, in the living form of Bobby, a dog, some humanity was bestowed upon him. Marching back to the camp at night after having endured the plight of phisical labor, Levinas was suddenly greeted. Bobby came running up to him, recognising him, while the nazi guard treated him like an abhorred dog."

I'm not quite making the connection between aestetics ans animals at the momment, but I think what Kac and Ronnel are trying to get is that aestetics, which are undeniably important to Life Extreme, can put us into social groups we have not anticipated, as well as alienate us from those we do not necessarily want to be alienated from. I realize that the nazis are an odd example of the latter but that Bobby seemed to recognize Levinas as a dog seems to back up my idea. I also realize that of course Levinas did not want to be treated in a way that would allow a dog to identify with him, I think the point is that he was able to find some humane treatment and comfort despite the extremely poor conditions he was living in. A very optomistic view indeed. Perhaps the animal factor comes in in the sense that we have the tendency to form "packs" based on similar aestetic tastes. Packs lead to a pack mentalitiy and are often risky to less established members of society.

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?