LastThursday

From the outset this journal has been a dumping ground for ideas. Really, just another way for me to introspect. I love symbols and writing and languages, so I wondered if there was a way to re-invent writing itself. The alphabet is truly a wonderous invention. The fact that it allows a faithful representation of spoken speech, or at least enough to capture most elements of it is astounding. For example written Spanish is very close to spoken speech. What it has in its favour is a small vowel inventory and straightforward consonants. These are relatively easy to transcribe - although there is a small amount of variation between Spanish speaking countries. Another wonderous invention is the Chinese character writing system. Its main feature being its compactness in print. However, it also has a large aesthetic component to it: it has partly evolved over time to be able to be drawn well in ink. As such each character is composed of a number of strokes taken from a small set. Another feature is that each character has to be able to be distinguished well enough to avoid confusion with other characters. This feature it shares with spoken language. Spoken words have to be distinct enough from each other so that they are not confused. I believe Chinese writing has a huge number of characters. But only around 2000 characters or so are needed to read a newspaper say. My main idea is can we better Chinese writing? Yes and no is the answer. One scheme would be to encode each spoken word in say English using a unique number. So for example "the" would be 23 and "cat" 127 and "dog" is 56. What's the best way to encode these numbers? Well, we could actually write the numbers in decimal: 23, 127, 56. But that's less efficient than just using an alphabet. Another way is to use a different number base, base 2 or binary. That would seem even less efficient: 10111, 1111111, 111000. But the idea is to assign one stroke to each binary digit position. Now we're getting somewhere. Imagine a square. This has four sides. You can remove sides in different combinations. There are 2x2x2x2=16 ways of arranging the four sides of a square. So one square alone can encode up to sixteen different words. Not too many, but there's more. If you join opposite corners of the square that would give two extra diagonal strokes: 64 words. So the last word in this list would look like a box with a cross in it and the first word would be a blank character with no strokes. Now, there is a minor point about ambiguity. How would you distinguish a word with one horizontal stroke (top of the box) from another (bottom of the box)? The simple solution is to place a dot in the middle of the box. Now you can tell which side of the dot a stroke is. We can use this dot to actually break up the two diagonal strokes into two parts each, so we increase our total inventory of strokes up to 8. This gives us 256 words. It's starting to be useful. The final piece is to stack two boxes with a gap between them. This would give up to 16 strokes (8 for each box). This would in fact give 65536 words. That is probably more words than most everyday speakers of English know. 16 strokes is probably less than some Chinese characters use (I'm happy to be corrected here). Again there might be some ambiguity when stacking boxes about which strokes are being represented. But some system of dots could be used to remove the ambiguity. In terms of actually using the system, I envisage more common words using less strokes. So the first 256 most common words only need up to 8 strokes. At a guess that's probably about 80% of words. Of course the system suffers from the same problem as Chinese characters in that it requires rote learning, but so do alphabetic characters and English spelling to a degree. It would also be possible to encode the IPA symbols in this system. So words of any language could be alphabetically spelt using my system. This reminds me of Japanese using both Chinese characters and Katakana. What the system lacks that the Chinese writing system does have is both aesthetics and an inbuilt semantic component (i.e. radicals). But it would be possible to map certain phonemes in English more closely to certain strokes for a hint at what the word might be - making learning slightly easier. It's a work in progress. I think it would be possible to use an evolutionary algorithm or neural network to both map more common words to use less strokes, but to also have some correspondence between different strokes and phonemes. Obviously with only eight strokes per box, mapping to 40 odd phonemes that's a tricky thing to pull off. But this is really only for hinting purposes.

I think I've mentioned before in this journal that I'm not big on schemes for living life; because it's too rigid. Saying that even I have a loose set of values, guiding principles and foundations. Some nominalisations are: Respect Minimalism / Simplicity Automation / Routine Self reliance Openness / Approachability Optimism Pragmatism Intuition By themselves the above don't mean much. Even if were to explain them from my relative standpoint, it still wouldn't mean much to you. So you are free to fill in and interpret the list above. I can say that these ways of approaching life have been picked up over time. Although a few such as optimism and openness I feel I've always had. I have also probably taken all the above to extremes at one point or another in my life. So mostly its been a struggle to regulate all these things so that I'm not too minimalist for example. They can all be bad or addictive taken to extreme. Sometimes I've had to learn the hard way, too much openness can put people off or being too optimistic goes against being pragmatic. I think a large part of my maturity is due to my improved ability to keep all my built in tendencies in check. To do that requires some amount of negative feedback learning and also to be aware enough of my own internal state to stop myself going too far or being impulsive. But at times self-regulation can fly out of the window, and so I've learnt to have better coping mechanisms in the aftermath of bad decisions or extreme behaviour. In turn this has improved my social skills and emotional intelligence. I still have some way to go with the list of my guiding principles. Some need their setpoint adjusting up or down; say, a bit more optimism, or being more open to help and advice from others. Other aspects I would dearly love to add: leadership and organisational abilities and strong motivation. I can step up and do these things when needed (such as at work), but they have never sat with me comfortably. My only friend here is more experience in these areas.

A few things to note: The Universe is outside of time. "Nothing" is the same as "Something". Self awareness is the Universe. If you like, a new Universe is coming (or unfolding) into existence fully formed in every moment. Existence is a synonym for self awareness. The Universe comes from nothing and goes back to nothing in every moment - there's no time line.

People surprise you. For example on this forum people I thought were shallow and looking for attention and could hardly put a sentence together, suddenly come out with well structured and thoughful prose. I'm guilty of the same. I spent a big part of my life dumbing myself down to fit in. I have to keep reminding myself that first impressions or even second impressions are not always correct. Just a few seconds of contemplation should make this obvious. Imagine you are thirty one years old today. But everyone thinks you are shallow, needy and uninteresting. One day, someone who cares enough asks you to recount every day you have lived. Wow. How much depth is that? Thirty years of depth. And that's just what you did. What about what you thought and felt as well? See, we are all exactly like that. What makes us shallow, needy and uninteresting is purely an opinion, not an actuality. Being patient and unjudgemental from the moment you meet someone new, gives them breathing space to show you just how deep and interesting they are. It's a prerequisite for loving others both equally and unconditionally. But you should also love yourself unconditionally, and that means not dumbing yourself down to fit in and be loved. Love is being able to express and expose your hidden depths and letting others do the same.

The thing doing the observing, is the same as the thing being observed. That's how you get something for nothing. To have something you need to be able to distinguish it from everything else. Imagine that the full black page is able to observe itself or more accurately be aware of itself. What is its experience of awareness? Who knows. But clearly it's aware of something, because being able to distinguish something is implicit to being aware. However, the full black page has no distinguishing features, a.k.a. nothing. So the page is both the observer and the observed, both nothing and something. Pay attention to the bold bit. Because, there is no restriction to what the black page is aware of, it is completely free to distinguish and be aware of anything it likes. And, because it's unrestricted that is an infinity right there! It is literally aware of an infinite number of somethings. It seems like a circular thing to say that something is aware of itself, but that inbuilt relativity is what generates everything.

Smoking is an excellent example. You know what you want: to be a smoke free. That is the decision, no? How many times do you have to make that decision? Just once. Yes, you could re-affirm the decision regularly if you like, but it makes no difference, it's the same decision - why suffer? What makes the difference is what happens after you make the decision: you either do something or you do nothing. Until you actually start doing something, you are effectively doing nothing. So why suffer about doing nothing? Hopefully, you can see that the suffering is caused by an anxiety about when exactly you will start acting on the decision (the procrastinator's dilemma). The decision itself is nearly irrelevant in the scheme of things. The doing nothing is also not causing you suffering. It's the uncertainty of exactly when you are going to act on your decision that is causing anxiety. The only cure for removing uncertainty, is certainty. In this case breathing air the way nature intended every waking moment. The beauty about giving up smoking is that all the time you are not smoking, you have effectively stopped. Build up your resilience, stop for longer and longer each day until it hits 24 hours and then 7 days and then 12 months. But I feel your pain it took me six years to give up smoking on and off.

It's not the decision which counts. It's the moment you start creating when it matters. Why suffer? Make a decision then let it go.

"How to make a guy squirt" (?)

I'm clearing my schedule - if I had one.

Sometimes events happen that suddenly change your worldview. Or at least destabilizes it until it re-adjusts itself. You may have held a particular worldview for decades or a good part of your life. After some time it seems like you don't hold a particular worldview, instead you think you have a neutral standpoint on how you orient yourself to the world - but it's just autopilot. The trigger for the change can be the sudden removal of tension or worry or expectation. For example when I graduated from university the constant need to study and the duty to turn up for lectures suddenly evaporated. Instead of feeling instant relief, I felt a strong disorientation for a few months. I would get pangs of anxiety about needing to be studying something, and then immediately realise there was nothing to do and feeling a kind of loss or emptiness. You could call it a bereavement of sorts, but it wasn't exactly like that; I had become accustomed to the stress of being at university. I have had the same disorientation a number of times since. It never gets easier because each time it's about different circumstances or triggers. But each time after the period of disorientation ran its course I would see the world in a different light. The peculiarity is, the change in worldview itself often precipitates a drastic re-organisation of circumstances. So the process is something like: trigger -> change in worldview -> re-organisation of world. From this the realisation comes that the view of the world you hold, moulds the circumstances in which you find yourself; this can be both mental and physical. The other realisation is that yes, the change happens because of the trigger, but the change itself is organic and usually uncontrollable. The most common trigger is changing jobs. Work takes up a huge chunk of waking life. It takes up both mental space and also the daily logistics of preparing for work, and of interacting with colleagues, let alone doing the work itself. In a sense it forces a certain perspective, dependent on the factors and people involved. When you change jobs, you are suddenly exposed to the worldview you held (company culture) and it becomes apparent that it was just an illusion: and you are not that person anymore. I've learned to just let the period of disorientation run it course without forcing anything. It can often be quite unpleasant and you want it to end as quickly as possible, but being stoic about it is best. Eventually a new perspective on the world asserts itself, and all is good again. But just remember you are not that perspective, it will pass and another comes along; you are something else, something without a perspective or worldview.

@Preety_India it's definitely a useful exercise to pick out other's blindspots, if only just to hold a mirror up to yourself. Here's some I've noticed, mostly from YouTube videos: Mooji Not engaged with explaining the many aspects of reality - one trick pony. Wants to use self awareness and "noticing" as a "cure" for everything. Which is fine and all, but there's more effective ways sometimes and a lot more to reality. Sadhguru More well rounded. But says some whacky and probably some personally unverifiable things. Only has a simplistic understanding of science, but likes to talk a lot about it. Has a bit of a "showbiz" side to his character which doesn't gel in my eyes. Jim Newman He's good, but again a one trick pony. He is like a walking advertisement for it's like to be enlightened, nothing sticks to him. But this makes it hard to get any juice out of him. Rupert Spira Again more well rounded. Good at explaining enlightenment related stuff, but seemingly lacks breadth in other areas. He is super placid, but this makes him seem aloof and otherworldly - so doesn't have the dynamic range in his character to engage you - and if he does, then he's doing it on purpose for effect. Leo Gura The best of the lot in terms of breadth of knowledge and appearing to be "normal" in appearance. Somewhat impulsive and non-diplomatic - perhaps for effect. Bit of an aloof attitude and holier than though attitude without realising it. Naturally contrary. Appears a little misogynistic without realising it. Ok, that's enough character assassination.

@Tim R interesting take on things by Terence. I think before the invention of writing, language always would have had a visual component. In face to face conversation it still does. So in one sense the invention of writing hugely narrowed down the bandwidth of communication. Indeed writing has to be taught explicitly, whereas speech and gesticulation is learned tacitly. And most likely, before writing, a good memory and recall was a must. Writing was a triple whammy of badness. Writing is of course completely visual, but it is also highly abstract. But the benefits of writing are obvious: it's semi-permanent and is able to be copied and shared to a larger number of people. This is what overcame it's bad points. For much of its early history, writing was done by and for the elites in society. So all that is happening, is now that we have the technology to do so, the less abtract visual component of language is making its way back. Now we can capture visual language for mass distribution, the same way writing did when it was first invented. But even before TV there were plays: visual language for mass consumption. And there has probably always been some form of sign language. So the change is not one of ever increasing visuals, but just in ways of delivering it. Language has always been more than just words.

I made a list of these Free Will posts on my Journal. Just sayin' :

The problem goes much deeper than labelling and using words. Notice in your direct experience the difference between the first line and the second line: Are they different? And shouldn't they be the same? See how conceptualising goes deeper than language? You'll only get this when you have a direct experience without conceptualising.

Just saying it as it is. You can bet there's a big difference between someone who wins the lottery and someone who works for that same money. Anyway, the chance of actually winning the lottery is pretty much zero. And that's the trouble with chasing pleasure and hedonism, it distorts reality. I'd plump for the second, both for the self actualization journey and its benefits and for the chances being bigger than zero.

You wake up and find yourself here. There's a rushing stream of sensation, tick tick, every second. None of it makes sense at first, but bit by bit there's a seeming clarity. Years pass and things are crystal clear: you are a person in this ape body, living in a society of apes all chattering at each other. Not only that but there is this immensity that you're suspended in. Everything is big and so so complicated and intricate and it all runs by itself. You're so good at chattering that you have lead all your life believing in it. See, not only are you in the middle of seeming infinity, but you - the entity - are able to conjure up different worlds and dramas and dreams, and magically deliver these enchantments to the other apes. You just love to confuse yourself and blur the lines between what you sense and what you dream: it's something to get lost in a spiritual drug you're addicted to. You imagine a giant machine of parts is running the show. You imagine an ineffable supernatural ape is running the show and call it God. You imagine hundreds of Gods. You even imagine yourself to be both real and unreal and alive and dead and a thousand other things. You think yourself to be all alone and pine for company, and dream yourself to be in a world of 7 billion other apes and fancy yourself hiding from them all. You know that you are part of all that is happening, yet want and know yourself to be separate from it. You marvel at the strangeness of it all, and how bloody unbelievable it is that you're on a pin-prick of a planet in an infinite cosmos, without any other other pin-pricks to talk to. No other animal walks on two legs, no other animal communicates like you, no other animal inhabits all places on this planet. No other animal dresses to impress, makes televisions and flies to the moon. Surely, this is all some hugely elaborate joke? What the hell is going on?

Isn't pleasure just the bodily manifestation of reward? It's like a pat on the back or thumbs up for doing something positive. So eating is pleasurable, sleeping is, and being in love is, and so on and so forth. These are all healthy pleasures. They're healthy because you have to put effort in to get the reward. The feeling of pleasure is an emotional reminder to do the same thing next time. Hedonism lacks the effort and/or positivity. It's all reward and no work. So you get pleasurable feelings for drinking alcohol or taking hard drugs or having easy sex with many people or breaking the law or whatever. I'm not talking morality here, just the buzz you get from the behaviours. The behaviours are low effort or potentially physically damaging; a lot of hedonic pleasure is reward that reinforces negativity. In a way, the immorality of hedonism comes out of recognising this negativity - although there's a strong element of religion attached here too. It would seem like pleasure is not the goal, but actually behaving in a positive way is, and putting effort into things. Positivity here is relative to survival.

Use the DE force Luke. Go look at your hands for a bit. Then repeat the word "hands" for a few times out loud. Heck say it in Spanish for clearer effect: "manos". If you like, I'll do the same but I'll say the word "truth" instead.

As soon as you put anything down in writing it becomes philosophy, and philosophy is serious work. Unless I'm missing something, truth is that which is not false, i.e. certain, undeniable, 100% evident. But all truth has a framing associated with it, which makes truth relative to its framing. This Absolute Truth business is supposedly special though? It doesn't have a framing, because if it did it wouldn't be absolute. That is except for these three framings: nothing and everything and itself. So, Direct Experience, does it have a framing? Is DE couched in nothing, everything or itself or something else? My point is, Direct Experience is a concept and as such it's philosophy and as such its truthfulness is framed, which means from a different frame (viewpoint) it could be false. I can't experience my hands, because "hands" is purely a concept. But I'm not so thick as to not understand what you are pointing to. It's just that anything I or you say about the experience of it is false.

Bingo. Only permanence can be Truth.

Ok, so Direct Experience is an indivisible whole? And in being such an unchanging unity it is therefore Truth? (Two levels of indirection). The fact that it changes constantly is simply an unchanging attribute of DE?

Ah, one level of indirection, I like it. So perception itself isn't Truth, just the fact that it's constantly changing?

Would one objection to perception be: how can something be Truth if it's always changing?

I don't have my own visuals to add, but the scene in the video with the guts, kind of reminds me of the Philip K. Dick story The Electric Ant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Ant Where the man/robot tampers with his own internal workings and changes his reality: a metaphor for psychadelics I reckon.

Great. You won't regret it. Sign here in blood...