Its no secret that social media really is changing everything.Clay Shirky on TED.com talks about the advances of media starting from: few-to-few, one-to-many, and finally into today’s many-to-many.
Mr. Shirkey says of our technological innovations that they “don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring”. Rather than the newest most up-to-date gadget on the market, it is that which becomes ubiquitous that fuels this revolution; the “largest increase in expressive capability in human history”.
This talk was given in less than a month ago and the events taking place in Iran (#IranElection) are only proving and expanding this theory.The many-to-many media (Twitter, SMS, and cellular technology) is besting the government’s efforts for censorship - while not only alerting the outside world but still functioning to organize, inform, and give voice to the people within Iran.
Will social media be the battleground for next “War on-”; the "war on networking"?
An early submission by A.M. titled On the Nature of the Universe & the 'Creator' deals with much the same subject matter; trying to delineate a spirituality compatible with science. My essay on Monistic Pluralism attempts to describe the presence of a unified singularity with legitimate individuals, minds or perceptions that function (though often ignorant of their connection) within that singularity. The notion of Interconnectivity of all things brings to my mind the provocative allegory of Indra's Net. I have been briefly introduced to Kabbalaistic thought which views the totality of creation as a single system [We Must Become a Part of Nature's System, We Are One Whole], quite similar to the philosophic approach I took to our integration with nature in the article As Humans... For me, the composite of all of this is currently crystallizing around some of George Santayana's thought as outlined in Santayana's Spirituality and investigated in more depth in Liberating the Spirit.
The following is an essay I wrote for a philosophy class:
Liberating the Spirit
George Santayana, a well known skeptical thinker and self-proclaimed materialist, created an in depth ontology which includes the realm of Spirit.This realm of spirit does not include the pseudo-religious way we commonly use the word to signify supernatural creators or death-surviving selves.Instead, “spirit is an awareness natural to animals, revealing the world and themselves in it (1).”This spirit may go by many other names including “consciousness, attention, feeling, thought, or any word that marks the total inner difference between being awake or asleep, alive or dead (1).”After recognizing the spirit we may move on to address the potential of liberation or salvation of the spirit; prospects which are so naturally ingrained in humans as evidenced by the rise of religions as well as the universal questions surrounding the meaning of life.
In order to understand Santayana’s realm of spirit we must first understand consciousness - which is a collection of units of momentary cognitive awareness or intuition, directing its attention at the essences which give form to objects.More basic than the spirit is the psyche – “the organic order and potentiality in a living body” and the animal force concerned with its own survival and other animal needs (2).The psyche is a more primitive form of intelligence, but is essential as a host for the creation and survival of the spirit.As “spirit is a product of the psyche” the two naturally share many affinities (2).However, the crucial difference remains: psyche is the pattern of self-maintenance and reproduction which holds its organism most valuable whereas spirit does not have persistence or potential (1) but is rather the transcendental “unattached spectator of all time and existence and the contemplator of every possibility (4).”
The Spirit wanders the world, always centered in the ‘now’ and always at the ‘here,’ observing the ways of nature and witnessing “the cosmic dance” that nature performs (1).Spirit may take on many interests.It may be “philosophical, absorbed in curiosity and wonder, impressed by the size, force, complexity, and harmony of the universe” or it may simply be a “station from which to survey the world (2).”
However, the spirit often has a hard time in realizing itself.It faces many hardships from its animal body and psyche that mitigate its transcendence.Santayana suggests that the spirit suffers torment out of sympathy for its poor lost psyche being put through the hardships of earthly life (1).The spirit wishes to see through this confusion to a vista of clarity and understanding.
Attachment is a great source of pain for both psyche and spirit.It is ignorant for a spirit to “attach itself absolutely to anything relative” – even its own life (2).This may be impossible for the psyche to accept graciously, but “the assurance that truth is eternal and that life and beauty may be perpetually renewed in other shapes” can comfort the spirit (2).The miracle of life is granted with a guarantee of death.In fact, in this cyclical pattern “life is a perpetual resurrection; and spirit too is continually being born again (2).”Spirit can rest assured of “the same rational light breaking out anew in some fresh creature (2).”
Santayana suggests we view our particular existences not as intentional occurrences planned by supernatural creators, but rather as accidents.This view, while being more scientific, also makes our happening more rare and more interesting.But we still seek salvation or liberation from the toils and troubles and pains our bodies and psyches must endure.Santayana claims that the spirit offers salvation “by shifting the centre of appreciation from human psyche to the divine spirit (2).”This salvation goes by many different names including Brahma, Nirvana, and accepting the Spirit of Christ; although it is often interpreted to include a false supernatural aspect.Instead of this external non-natural force, it is man himself “a human person assuming and adopting a divine nature (2).”
Humans may lapse in and out of touch with their spirituality, or they may choose to remain ‘enlightened’ through devotion.“Absorption in pure intuition, even if temporary, constitutes the spiritual life (3).”Necessarily, this life is “free of values and empty of striving,” because the enlightened knows not to attach to relative things (3).To live this spiritual life one must replace ideas, emotions, fears, and attachments with spontaneous, disinterested, pure intuition and thereby “detaching us from each thing with humility and humour, and attaching us to all things with justice charity and pure joy” enabling the enjoyment of truth and essence (2).
I have relayed Santayana’s view through this intellectual medium, but the actual attainment and realization of spirit would be better helped along by a poet, a painter, a songbird, or a sunrise.
“Awaken attention, intensify it, purify it into white flame, and the actual and unsubstantial object of intuition will stand before you in all its living immediacy and innocent nakedness (3).”
When that “supreme moment liberates us” we accept it without thinking or judging it and “feel withdrawn into an inner citadel of insight and exaltation (2).”
Works Cited
1)The Nature of Spirit from Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942 [1937]), pp. 555-572
2)Liberation from Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942 [1937]), pp. 736-767
3)Essence from Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942 [1937]), pp. 1-25
4)Stuhr, John J. (Ed.). (2000). Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy. New York, NY: OxfordUniversity Press.
The following is an essay I wrote for a philosophy class; what do you think? leave some comments.
Monistic Pluralism & Pole Dichotomies
The first of the seven characteristics of classical American philosophical thought is the ‘rejection of modern philosophy’ (Stuhr, 3).The reason for rejecting the prior pattern of thought was that it was “fundamentally dualistic” and attempted to answer philosophical questions in terms of dichotomies.These dichotomies are not actual categories that exist separate of the object we are describing but rather descriptions that we create to contrast one to another.We say ‘either/or’ in attempts to understand that thing’s essence; at least in terms of its relationships to idealized signs (Stuhr, 66).The pattern that emerges from this thought process is one of discrimination, separation, exclusion, and isolation where parts no longer constitute a whole but have an individuality that drives them apart.Philip Kapleau writes in the introduction to Zen Keys:
“We are deceived by our limited five senses and discriminating intellect (the sixth sense in Buddhism) which conveys to us a picture of a dualistic world of self-and-other, of things separated and isolated ...This picture is untrue because it barely scratches the surface. ... For if we could see beyond the ever-changing forms into the underlying reality, we would realize that in essence there is nothing but harmony and unity” (Hahn, 8).
This dualistic view of the world cannot give us a complete understanding because the mind does not function like a box with separate containers but more like a stream flowing with multidirectional currents (Stuhr, 149).
In opposition to this dualistic perspective, the classical American philosophy offers two seemingly opposite yet interrelated options: a monistic view and pluralistic view.The monistic belief is that the true nature of the universe is as a singularity; one wholeness that we are too limited to understand so we cling onto parts.Pluralism holds that because our experiences are unique to us as individuals that they are all equally valuable and equally real.As William James writes, “For pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every minimum of finite life” (Stuhr, 4). It is entirely possible for individuals to have pluralistically valid individual experiences while at the same time existing as part of an integrated whole.
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuro-anatomist explains how both dualistic and monistic thought are embedded within us.She presents a model where the left and right hemispheres of the brain have seemingly different personalities.While this lateralization of personalities within brain might be debated, her description of the left hemisphere fits with what William James calls The Tough-Minded while the right hemisphere is Tender-Minded.It is the left hemisphere, says Taylor, that is responsible for the ego and hence the duality of ‘I’ verses the ‘other’ while the right hemisphere has a tendency for a monistic view of being one with everything.Interestingly enough, she describes the ‘I’ to be solely concerned with past and future while the ‘we’ is solely in the now moment (Taylor).The ability to remember the past as a source of experience and foresee the future has very practical applications in terms of human survival. Unfortunately, this ability also leads to anxiety as we worry over possible outcomes.The ability to be ‘in the now’ can lead to internal peace and well-being.As James would agree, “we are actually multiple selves” functioning as one mutually interdependent being with “neurological unity” (Stuhr, 142).
Hegel is quoted as saying, “The aim of knowledge is to divest the objective world of its strangeness and to make us more at home in it” (Stuhr, 153).But this raises the question of how do we become more comfortable in a world where increasing knowledge leads to greater separation and distinction and we become stranger and farther away from the world we live in.To use an analogy, it is as if we began to take a clock apart to see how it works.We began studying and cataloguing all the parts and even figuring out how they relate to one another, but we became so engrossed in our work that by time we put the clock back together we forgot what its purpose was.Hegel speaks about this process:
“[the object is] a totality in itself, while at the same time (as this identity is only the implicit identity of its dynamic elements) it is equally indifferent to its immediate unity. It thus breaks up into distinct parts, each of which is itself the totality. Hence the object is the absolute contradiction between a complete independence of the multiplicity, and the equally complete non-independence of the different pieces” (Hegel).
I think this idea was at least in part represented when Charles Sanders Peirce critiqued the Cartesian method of doubt- for to be absolutely certain of everything we know and feel would divest the universe of its purpose and meaning (Stuhr, 45).
The act of drawing boxes within our minds to categorize information can be a useful way to establish facts, however if we are not careful we may forget that we have the option to view the world as a unified whole.It is quite possibly because of an imbalance in the dichotomic equilibrium with the human character that we are facing the world crises we see today (although it could possibly also be accredited as to why we are around today).The aim is for the observing mind to see the universe as a unified whole while simultaneously being able to make the distinctions that enable survival.Such a method combining monism with pluralism may lead to the ability for a richer understanding.
Works Cited
Hahn, Thich Naht. Zen Keys. Garden CityNY: Doubleday, 2005.
Hegel, Georg. "Hegel, The Notion, Part B. The Object." Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. 13 Mar 2009 .
Stuhr, John J. (Ed.). (2000). Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy. New York, NY: OxfordUniversity Press.
Taylor, Jill Bolte. "My Stroke of Insight." TED 229Mar 2008 13 Mar 2009 .
Searching today’s Google Trends USA (around 11:45AM) I noticed that 5 of the top 10 most searched words are related to a NASCAR wreck that took place in Talladega.
Of only slightly less importance is the outbreak of swine flu with flu and CDC related searches taking 3 of the top 10 spots. Ranking in at number 2 overall is “morris code” – a very popular reference to “morse code” most likely motivated by Google’s celebration of Samuel Morse’s birthday. Other popular topics include football, the fate of our auto companies, cell phone plans, free chicken, and of course celebrities - with “britney spears tampon” being the 32nd most interesting thing happening in the USA today.
I sincerely hope that these search trends are not indicative of what people truly care about (with some exception for the swine flu because although we should not fear it, the sharing of information is playing a vital role in preventing/containing a pandemic).
An interesting side note: this article titles “Save the Earth: Ban NASCAR” highlights some of the eco-unfreindly attributes of America’s most popular sport.
The concept behind Earthships is to build environmentally sustainable and self-sufficient housing. Earthships recycle materials such as old tires, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles as building materials. Reusing materials like this saves on the energy that is required to recycle. These tires are filled with earth or clay serve as great insulators – naturally maintaining a comfortable living temperature. Partially burying the building, along with orienting it toward or away from the direction of light can maximize energy efficiency.
In addition, Earthships are often outfitted with solar panels or wind turbines for energy, and rainwater collection systems for much of the water needed. Water is recycled through various stages using plants to absorb and filter the water.
By utilizing modern advances in technology and our understanding of systems and design, we may create a way to live a better more integrated and sustainable lifestyle.
Not all 'green' homes need to be made in the Earthship design. Here is an example of another home with low
In honor of Earth Day I am posting information regarding environmental sustainability. First I will mention that every day should be Earth Day. We have a responsibility to take care of ourselves through taking care of our one and only beautiful blue and green planet. Attending the Fairleigh Dickinson University Green Day celebration just the other day opened my horizons. Most notably to the concept of permaculture, which is an approach to designing our lifestyles to be in harmony with nature – most effectively done by mimicking some of the natural systems that already exist. Permaculture and Agroforestry are both forms of agro-ecological design theory.
For anyone in the New Jersey area particularly interested in business, Green Ventures, and sustainable business practices, FDU is offering a few seminars on these topics:
Posts
