TODAY IS

(at Delphi)

Thursday, November 27, 2008

On the origin of species...

"I believe that the human brain may be capable of perceiving the nature of true-reality, what some might refer to as God, but I am doubtful that we as a species are evolved enough to utilize this capacity. I will make allowances for the possibility that some individuals, through random evolutionary mutation, are born with an innately greater ability to perceive true-reality, but contend that even if this is the case, the limits of human language prevent one from conceptualizing such perceptions in words, and attempts to do so invariably lead to intellectual oppression through the destructive tendancies of religious dogmatism, and are thus, in effect, counter-productive to the goal of perceiving true-reality in the first place. I will also make allowances for the possibility of psycho-active chemicals activating the portions of the brain that enable one to make such perceptions, though whether psycho-active chemicals actually allow one to perceive true-reality, or merely mimic the effects of doing so is presently indeterminate."

"Natural selection dictates that as a species we evolved, over monumental passages of time, from increasingly simple and primative forms of life, and this goes for our sensory capabilities as well. At some point in our evolutionary history, our ancestors were without the benefit of the senses that we rely upon in order to effectively perceive our reality, the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In all of these instances, the human brain had the evolve these abilities. For an Amoeba floating in a pool of primordial ooze, the concept of sense-perception does not exist, and having never known the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the environment, such a lifeform does not miss, nor can it even conceive of an environment any different to that which it has known it's entire lifespan. It would be naive to assume that the human species has reached the end of evolution, that we can perceive all there is to perceive, especially when logic dictates that the human-animal necessarily remain ignorant of anything beyond our limited biological capacities."

"What separates the human-animal from established evolutionary tendencies is the unique ability of the human-animal to affect their environment, to affect their own evolution. We have reached a point, not the necessarily end of evolution, but a point where we can choose, as a society, to mitigate the effects of the environment upon our evolution. This means that we have reached the point where we can now choose to continue, or embrace, the course of biological evolution, or we can choose to resist biological evolution, through manipulating the degree to which the human-animal is forced to reckon with the natural environment."

"As such, the inability of the human-animal to perceive the nature of true-reality must necessarily be seen as only a temporary-condition in terms of our biological evolution. There is no reason to assume that the limits of what we can perceive through recourse to our sensory organs are congruent to the limits of true-reality. To do so would be equivalent to the man who, born deaf, assumes reality itself is without sound. However, only once the human-animal, as a society, begins to foster and encourage a dialog with the unknown will there ever be the possibility of developing the necessary physical apparatus to effectively perceive that which exists beyond the temporary limits of human perception."

5 comments:

grisom said...

I'm not sure what is meant by "true-reality" here, but it seems to me that it is different from what I would mean by those words.

Tezcatlipoca said...

what would /you/ mean by true-reality? I'm certain it's supposed to refer to the reality that is "true", or beyond petty human individuality. The ineffable reality, as it were. Mm. Ineffable isn't quite the right word (but it isn't quite wrong either) another phrase that, I think describes the same phenomenon would be "actual-reality" but that's stolen from RENT. How about "transcendent-reality", or maybe "sublime-reality"? (but then again, that's just the influence of Baudelaire peeking it's head out)

grisom said...

I guess what I would mean by "perceiving the nature of true-reality" is whatever the hell these Buddhists are always on about when they say things like that, and while I sure don't know what that is, I do know that:
- it is part of the everyday experience of a very large number of ordinary human beings, including many people I know personally;
- obviously it doesn't require any special "physical apparatus".

Tezcatlipoca said...

I suppose I'm also referring to the biological ability to perceive what is beyond the four-dimensions that human beings are presently able to perceive, y'know, the other 7 dimensions of super-string theory.

grisom said...

Hmm. Well, let's see... assuming the extra-dimension theory is right, I guess it would amount to being able to perceive very, very, very tiny things.

I think it would be neat to develop the necessary mental apparatus to have an intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics.

Maxims and minims for the wise and the foolish

  • I think that historians are talking nonsense, because they don't write their essays in Coq. — Umunmutamku
  • LANGUAGE IS A HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY
    A GOVERNMENT OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — Tezcatlipoca
  • Whoever fights against the empire, becomes the empire. [or something along those lines] — Philip K. Dick [as told to Tezcatlipoca]
    • We’re not fighting the empire! We are the empire! Go away, or we'll smack you with this stick! — Tezcatlipoca
  • You don't have to be straight to shoot straight. — Barry Goldwater
    • Indeed, we must prevent life, which is frequently fatal. — Umunmutamku
      • There are also a number of legitimate scientific reasons for it as well (though I don't know what they are) — Tezcatlipoca
  • Instead of thinking of Scripture as a manual, I try to think of the Bible as ‘a boyfriend’. — punkrainbow
    • Your feelings are lying to you. — Jer 17:9
  • READ A BOOK, I'M SURE IT'S IN ONE OF THEM. — Tezcatlipoca
    • Books are full of bullshit and lies! — Tezcatlipoca
      • We will lie to you but we will lie to ourselves as well. You will, however, see through our lies and grasp the shining truth within. — The KLF
  • A Gnostic is by definition a knower, and since knowledge supersedes belief, a knower cannot very well be a believer. — Stephan A. Hoeller
    • talking about the great unknown is ridiculous. it’s THE GREAT UN-FUCKING-KNOWN — Anonymous
      • The enemy knows the system. — Claude Shannon

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