Potentially infinite possibilities

[Age]

What is possible, imo, is based on our ignorance. Our ignorance is vast, so too, the potential possibilities.
I think we know very little about the scope of existence / reality, and all it has the capacity for.

We can learn from anything. Lessons reside all around.

Agreed. It has been my nature to observe and experiment

you say this as though 'your nature' is somehow different from other human beings 'nature'.

The 'nature' of absolutely every human being is 'to observe and experiment'. And, 'your nature' is certainly not any more nor beyond absolutely anyone else.

-- and through that, it has been my experience to notice connections and patterns.

Exactly like everyone else.

That has worked very well for me.

Again, people like 'this one' have not yet recognized their lack of 'critical thinking skills'.

Nature seems bursting with examples.

Yes.

Recognizing potential and possibilities for myself has expanded the world/reality that I've experienced.

But, and again, 'the world' and 'Reality', Itself, can not be expanded. However, and obviously, one's own perception and/or interpretation can be expanded, and always.

If a person believes that life (or anything) can only be a certain way, that's likely their experience.

What are you even 'trying to' say and claim, here?

Is not every thing 'believed' by 'a person', 'their experience'?

They might be capable of other experiences, but they will not open the door to anything else if they don't believe it's there.

Imagine saying 'this', while also at the exact same time believing, absolutely, that there are not 'other ways' from the 'one way' that they 'look at' and 'see' things/life.

'This one' could not be more contradictory nor be more hypocritical, here.

That's okay. I do not know what other people are capable of... or what they might be intent on experiencing.

'This one' speaks as though 'its way' is the 'best and/or only real correct way', in Life.

For me, considering indications of potential allows it to be so.

1. What even is 'it', exactly?

2. Imagine going through Life 'considering' just 'indications of potential'.

I recognize that there are people who aren't interested in doing that.

And, just as blatantly obvious is some recognize that 'you', "lacewing", go through Life not interested in being open at all, here.

you have shown and proved over and over that you have not yet even begun to consider 'the potential', here.

And, as 'I' have shown and proved 'you' are absolutely closed off from just 'considering the actual potential', here. you just keep ignoring, absolutely, the Fact that you are not at all open to any thing opposing your absolutely fixed and rigid belief, here.

Although there is much we do not know... recognizing that there are always other ways, and other possibilities to work with and experience, has been extraordinarily useful to me.

Yet, here you are proving how you are one of the most closed and rigid ones, here.

I have not limited myself to the restrictions or specifics that other people have taught or insisted upon.

Maybe not, but you are obviously absolutely limited by your very own restrictions and/or specifics. Which you obviously keep enforcing on "your" own 'self'.

That may truly represent their only reality -- I don't know.

you have quite a few of 'do not knows'.

I guess we all speak of what we experience.

If 'this' is what you guess, then okay.

I speak of potential that I experience, and my life is my 'evidence' for it -- but, granted, that may be meaningless to anyone else.

you speak as though others have not yet 'considered' that there is 'potential'.

I think you would be 'pressed', as some might say, here, to find absolutely any older human being who has not spoken of 'potential'.

Every older human being knows of, and/or speaks of, 'potential'. So, you are, actually, not really 'saying' any thing, here, at all.

But what you have been, actually, saying, and proving, is that there is absolutely no actual 'potential' of there even being any 'possibility' in relation to any thing contrary nor opposing what you believe is absolutely true and right, here. you keep on proving that you actually absolutely closed to 'potential', itself.

And, as always, if absolutely any one would like the irrefutable proof for this claim of mine, here, then let 'us' have a discussion.

[Phil8659]

Some considerations about reality...

Most of us are likely capable of noticing how many different 'realities' human beings can live in. If we contemplate the implications of that, what might we consider or conclude?

For me...

Perhaps there are potentially infinite possibilities that can be seen, imagined, and experienced -- collectively and individually -- each reality appearing as real or valid to each individual/collective who experiences it.

Further, how might broader realities/states organically reflect/inform individual reality/states? I've been thinking how little sense the current reality on the world stage makes to me. Recognizing the utter absurdity and chaos that is not worth entertaining inspires me in my personal life too, to put my energy toward other possibilities.

How much distinction/separation is there between the broader collective and the individual? Are we evolving and transforming collaboratively and in unison? Perhaps the outer shows us where we are... so the inner can inspire us as to where else we can go.

There is one - and only one - reality that we live in. The problem is that a very high percentage of humans do not live in that reality. In other words, they live in delusion. Even worse, the vast majority of those living in delusion, do not believe that they live in delusion. Part-and-parcel of that delusion seems to be the belief that those who do not share their delusion are the ones living in delusion. By and large, this is why so much of what's going on in this world makes little sense.

Perhaps the most perverse thing about all this is that self-delusion is so common that many consider it to be acceptable instead of something that needs to be eradicated. "It's normal".

Do you think that it is even possible to be literate, and delusional? Which is an oxymoron.

Good observation, however, what do you consider to be the foundation of living in reality?
For me, it is biological, as we are designed to process information for survival, that means we have to learn our Grammar Matrix to form correct human behavior.
What is the foundation you base your hopes on?

The claim of infinite realities is actually schizophrenic, does any other life support system function in different realities?

[ThinkOfOne]

Some considerations about reality...

Most of us are likely capable of noticing how many different 'realities' human beings can live in. If we contemplate the implications of that, what might we consider or conclude?

For me...

Perhaps there are potentially infinite possibilities that can be seen, imagined, and experienced -- collectively and individually -- each reality appearing as real or valid to each individual/collective who experiences it.

Further, how might broader realities/states organically reflect/inform individual reality/states? I've been thinking how little sense the current reality on the world stage makes to me. Recognizing the utter absurdity and chaos that is not worth entertaining inspires me in my personal life too, to put my energy toward other possibilities.

How much distinction/separation is there between the broader collective and the individual? Are we evolving and transforming collaboratively and in unison? Perhaps the outer shows us where we are... so the inner can inspire us as to where else we can go.

There is one - and only one - reality that we live in. The problem is that a very high percentage of humans do not live in that reality. In other words, they live in delusion. Even worse, the vast majority of those living in delusion, do not believe that they live in delusion. Part-and-parcel of that delusion seems to be the belief that those who do not share their delusion are the ones living in delusion. By and large, this is why so much of what's going on in this world makes little sense.

Perhaps the most perverse thing about all this is that self-delusion is so common that many consider it to be acceptable instead of something that needs to be eradicated. "It's normal".

Do you think that it is even possible to be literate, and delusional? Which is an oxymoron.

Good observation, however, what do you consider to be the foundation of living in reality?
For me, it is biological, as we are designed to process information for survival, that means we have to learn our Grammar Matrix to form correct human behavior.
What is the foundation you base your hopes on?

The claim of infinite realities is actually schizophrenic, does any other life support system function in different realities?

Not sure what you have in mind when you say "foundation of living in reality". Can you elaborate?

Also your post shows the following line as having come from an earlier post of mine. It isn't. Do you know what's going on there?

"Do you think that it is even possible to be literate, and delusional? Which is an oxymoron."

[Martin Peter Clarke]

There are infinite realities and none of them is absolute. That's absolute reality.

[Age]

There are infinite realities and none of them is absolute. That's absolute reality.

Which makes one wonder why?

[Fairy]

There are infinite realities and none of them is absolute. That's absolute reality.

Which makes one wonder why?

Because one cannot know why. “Why” questions are unknowable, beyond one’s perception. One cannot go beyond one’s perception.

One cannot release oneself from a limited, restricted, fixed self-conception, to find oneself Beyond Perception – beyond one's own subjective glasses. To realise: “I am not my thoughts, feelings, conditioning, problems, experiences, traumas, dysfunctionalities, identity neither form nor matter…”

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. There is no truth. There is only perception where infinite realities are perceived one frame at a time, forever, and never all at once, because our only experience is finite experience, known infinitely for eternity.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

The latter causes the former. Of course.

[Age]

There are infinite realities and none of them is absolute. That's absolute reality.

Which makes one wonder why?

Because one cannot know why. “Why” questions are unknowable, beyond one’s perception. One cannot go beyond one’s perception.

One cannot release oneself from a limited, restricted, fixed self-conception, to find oneself Beyond Perception – beyond one's own subjective glasses. To realise: “I am not my thoughts, feelings, conditioning, problems, experiences, traumas, dysfunctionalities, identity neither form nor matter…”

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

And, what is unknown to 'you' is known to 'I', just like the hypocrisy and contradictions in your following two sentences.

There is no truth. There is only perception where infinite realities are perceived one frame at a time, forever, and never all at once, because our only experience is finite experience, known infinitely for eternity.

And, this last sentence is obviously not true, if the prior sentence is meant to be true.

[Alexis Jacobi]

For me...

Perhaps there are potentially infinite possibilities that can be seen, imagined, and experienced -- collectively and individually -- each reality appearing as real or valid to each individual/collective who experiences it.

Further, how might broader realities/states organically reflect/inform individual reality/states? I've been thinking how little sense the current reality on the world stage makes to me. Recognizing the utter absurdity and chaos that is not worth entertaining inspires me in my personal life too, to put my energy toward other possibilities.

I was listening to Harold Bloom comment on American literature (literary criticism being his forte) and he mentioned Whitman as one of the, and perhaps the most, original and (“”) important writers. Then I dug out the original (1855) edition reprint of Leaves of Grass to look over it (again). It is an amazing piece of visionary writing.

I was reminded of a few things that Bloom delved into in other essays: that America is a post-Christian nation and has an entire set of very original religious modalities that have largely separated from typical dogmatics. They say (they being some historians and American patriots) that America is a “Christian nation” but it might be more accurate to describe it as post-Christian and also deviant-Christian. Think of Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science and certainly Pentecostalism. These are radical reinventions and bold deviations.

I suppose so much of this must be latent in America’s radical revolutionary spirit, and that in the sense of having become divorced from The Olde World and subsumed into a New World where — here I will quote your word — reality could be redefined according to new terms and sensibilities.

Interestingly, parts of Leaves of Grass sound in places like Vedic shastras. A vision of life (manifest reality) that opens to multi-dimensional levels and perspectives. It is easy to see in Whitman and whatever “spirit” inspired him (who can really say?) a similar boldness and adventurism as is found in Kerouac, the Beat Poets and certainly in jazz innovation.

Take Sunflower Sutra as an example.

It’s temporally immediate, non-dogmatic, realistic, exploratory, yet faith-moved in an atypical way while also exploring or presenting a vision of what is there but which remains unseen because no one has “eyes to see” (like Jesus speaking about the ‘kingdom of heaven’).

Somewhere I read, about the Beats, that their object was to encounter genuine life and beauty while evading everything in America that seemed so cruel, regimented, violent, locked in vicious circles, stultifying & poisonous.

Perhaps it is corny but you can hear in so many American popular songs a similar imploring for new ways of feeling and being. As for example in America. Somewhat over-rendered here but uou get the idea.

[Lacewing]

They say (they being some historians and American patriots) that America is a “Christian nation” but it might be more accurate to describe it as post-Christian and also deviant-Christian. Think of Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science and certainly Pentecostalism. These are radical reinventions and bold deviations.

That's a good way to describe it.

I think believers/followers (of any sort) should truly investigate what they're believing/following and (even, possibly) worshipping. If we humans were to do that with open eyes, within our vast interconnected landscape of possibilities, specific/separatist views/illusions would surely dissolve... so it must be that we are wanting them to continue. Are we brave enough to ask why?

Much like the magnitude of exotic and prolific (and even seemingly unnecessary) variations seen all throughout nature, humankind's creative capability seems to have no bounds. Which can be wonderful, except for the distortions and divisions man creates to serve and idolize himself. Man is capable of shackling and imprisoning and blinding himself and others with his creations and adopted beliefs -- which is in contrast to the free, egoless, cooperative, and highly efficient flow of nature. And man might imagine himself as superior to nature for being able to do this (shackle, imprison, and blind).

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think believers/followers (of any sort) should truly investigate what they're believing/following and (even, possibly) worshipping. If we humans were to do that with open eyes, within our vast interconnected landscape of possibilities, specific/separatist views/illusions would surely dissolve... so it must be that we are wanting them to continue. Are we brave enough to ask why?

The radical posture that you are yourself proposing and investigating, if it is not merely and solely a personal, subjective stance taken by one person (you), would take shape within a cultural and national context. It would necessarily become a movement — similar to what did happen, and what is still happening, in America.

Your viewpoint, and what motivates you, is in the sense (to one degree or another) an expression of Americanism as a de-coupling from both historical trajectory and established dogmatics.

People ground themselves in and through their beliefs. And what you are asking and proposing is that they begin a process of ungrounding themselves from what has linked them to their place, their cultural traditions, and in this sense their destiny.

You and I have, in the past, conflicted when you noticed (rightly so) that I defended traditionalism and postures within traditionally understood metaphysics.

So you might see (through these present explanations) that your positions could be described as having connections to American radicalism. Am I saying this is something ‘negative’? No, that is not what I am after.

That is why I brought up radical reinterpretations of conventional modes like Kerouacian prose, jazz improvisation, and also the modifications and transformations of standard religious models in American culture. These happened nowhere else.

There are connections (for example) between the origins of post-Sixties New Age in the Burnt Over District of NY in the mid-1800s and the California radicalism that developed a century later.

Feed Your Head

[Age]

They say (they being some historians and American patriots) that America is a “Christian nation” but it might be more accurate to describe it as post-Christian and also deviant-Christian.

Think of Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science and certainly Pentecostalism. These are radical reinventions and bold deviations.

That's a good way to describe it.

I think believers/followers (of any sort) should truly investigate what they're believing/following and (even, possibly) worshipping.

'This' coming from one who is an absolute True 'believer' "itself".

If we humans were to do that with open eyes, within our vast interconnected landscape of possibilities, specific/separatist views/illusions would surely dissolve...

your most ridiculous and absurd belief, here, along with all of your other ones, could and would dissolve much quicker, simpler, and easier if you were just honest and open, and just wanted to question your beliefs, but because you will not do this, you will continue to remain a True 'believer'.

so it must be that we are wanting them to continue.

Yes, you really do want to keep your beliefs. This is blatantly obvious, as every time I have attempted to question and challenge you over 'your beliefs' you become dishonest, closed, and even 'try to' run, and hide.

As can be clearly seen, and proved absolutely True, above, here, in this forum.

Are we brave enough to ask why?

you might well just ask, Why? But, have you ever arrived at an answer?

Much like the magnitude of exotic and prolific (and even seemingly unnecessary) variations seen all throughout nature, humankind's creative capability seems to have no bounds. Which can be wonderful, except for the distortions and divisions man creates to serve and idolize himself.

you keep speaking about things you human beings do but as though you do not. Yet, here you are being the biggest offender of what you say, and/or expect, others do not do.

Man is capable of shackling and imprisoning and blinding himself and others with his creations and adopted beliefs -- which is in contrast to the free, egoless, cooperative, and highly efficient flow of nature.

Again, you keep speaking of the 'very thing' that 'you', "yourself", keep doing. Which as I keep explaining is the 'very thing' that keeps stopping and preventing you from learning and understanding, here.

And man might imagine himself as superior to nature for being able to do this (shackle, imprison, and blind).

[Lacewing]

I think believers/followers (of any sort) should truly investigate what they're believing/following and (even, possibly) worshipping. If we humans were to do that with open eyes, within our vast interconnected landscape of possibilities, specific/separatist views/illusions would surely dissolve... so it must be that we are wanting them to continue. Are we brave enough to ask why?

The radical posture that you are yourself proposing and investigating, if it is not merely and solely a personal, subjective stance taken by one person (you), would take shape within a cultural and national context.

Thank you for your response and the thoughtful discussion.

I understand how culture shapes so much of our experience, but haven't there been people in all cultures who question the beliefs of their culture and of humankind?

Which is more radical: to believe or to question something exclusive and unproven?

It would necessarily become a movement — similar to what did happen, and what is still happening, in America.

The goal isn't 'a movement', the goal is: clarity. Is clarity a movement? I'm not suggesting replacing one religion with another. I'm suggesting asking questions about that which we follow and believe. Isn't that a good idea?

We can also ask questions about whatever obstacles or limits we restrict ourselves with. Are they real or imagined? How much of our life is being lived in a mouse maze? If someone is content with that, great! But wouldn't it be a disservice to others to insist that the mouse maze is the one and only true way to live? What is our responsibility to not impede or limit others potential?

Your viewpoint, and what motivates you, is in the sense (to one degree or another) an expression of Americanism as a de-coupling from both historical trajectory and established dogmatics.

Yes, I've been influenced by my environment, but I think such questions are naturally asked as humankind continually seeks to go further.

People ground themselves in and through their beliefs. And what you are asking and proposing is that they begin a process of ungrounding themselves from what has linked them to their place, their cultural traditions, and in this sense their destiny.

I am not asking people to unground themselves. I'm suggesting they evaluate what they think they're grounded to. Maybe they'll discover their 'reality' can be bigger than that. (Isn't that what we do as we 'grow up' from being children? Why do we stop?)

Are we truly so fragile as adults that we can't question ourselves? What are we actually protecting ourselves from? Is there an appropriate time/pace to evolve/expand thinking and traditions -- perhaps between the generations which have already seeded the next one?

Anyone can see for themselves how beliefs and practices have changed over the course of humankind's history, sometimes faster than at other times. We didn't cease to exist or go mad for doing so. Actually, we seem to go mad the more entrenched we become, and the more we disassociate with others.

I look forward to the insights from your perspectives.

[henry quirk]

AJ...

The lil butterfly is just settin' things up so she can whine-quit the conversation becuz another...

bad man won't let her do what she wants.

...don't say you weren't warned/reminded.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I understand how culture shapes so much of our experience, but haven't there been people in all cultures who question the beliefs of their culture and of humankind?

Yes, I would say, but every cultural position operates from a defined metaphysics. So, you and I must be operating from a description of what the world is, where and why it is, how it came to be and for what, if any, purpose. Every previous culture on the planet had answers to those questions. We (i.e. we of Christendom) used to have such a picture, but now it has all been collapsed into a scientific description offering us no explanatory outline. Ours, the one defining our present, is definitely unique.

If I understand your position, I think I could fairly describe it as post-Christian in the sense of a particular US church interpretation of Christianity that became ultra-restrictive for you and from which it was necessary to escape. (If I remember well descriptions you have given).

But the interesting question to ask — for you & me & all of us — is what is our description of ‘the world’? I mean: the cosmos. Existence. Being. Is your model the scientific-anthropological model? (Amoeba to Man by way of blind, purposeless evolution in a universe of exploding energy/matter that just happened to occur, somehow?

Or, is there some overarching or undergirding metaphysics? Some Consciousness that set things in motion? Why? To what end?

Obviously, what interests me is how our beliefs intersect with culture. Take Paul Simon’s lyric: though she sleeps he states to someone: himself? “Cathy I’m lost; I’m empty and wasted and I don’t know why.” It is that emphatic confession that sums up the mood of the search (and the song). I can say this: I doubt if people in other times would have expressed that mood in that way. It is entirely bound-up in Americanism; in Postwar sentiments.

See for example Waldo Frank in The Re-Discovery of America, 1929.

The pattern and process of the development of European thought is so radical, and so destabilizing, to the entire framework of metaphysics that those on the cutting edge of that process have really lost the ground under their feet. And I can also say fairly that America and Americans (Americanism) have a peculiar relevancy in these processes. Both of disintegration and coming undone, as well as reformulation.

The time we are in now is unquestionably strange, momentous & bizarre. These are outcomes that require a detailed explanation and a “master metaphysician” to weave an explanatory story together.

If we have no “explanatory story” how can we move forward? If we don’t know where and why we are, how could we plot a course? Toward what?

You seem to me to be a person who seeks an ‘operative philosophy’ and in some sense you have discovered or seek a means to move in Reality in new and different way. Sort of an existential idea-technology not unlike how magic is conceived by some: inexplicable intelligence in interaction with inexplicable ‘what is’.

The Half-Remarkable Question