#and ultimately i guess we'll see. it depends on what i end up doing outside the blog whether i end up having the time (or energy) for

[front-facing-pokemon]

[letterstodreams]

A Conversation with Possibility

I am going to indulge in a free-association ramble, because I think it might help keep my creative flame alive, to keep this blog alive, to lead it to its ultimate purpose. But I guess this might be a very idle, what's the point kind of post. I need to get them out of my system, sometimes, maybe. Sometimes they seem to have much more point and purpose in retrospect than I realized while writing, but we'll see.

I am afraid my writing isn't very good, but I don't want to worry too much about that. I seem to enjoy re-reading my writing sometimes, and other times not, and depending on my state of mind the same thing I wrote can appear good or awful. I wanted to create stories that are beautiful but I'm afraid that I won't have the focus, energy or time to do that. I wanted to be readable to others and enjoyable for them to read, if anyone ever read this. But it will be more like a journal type of thing, maybe something others can enjoy, but not the kind of things most people would probably usually read for fun, I guess.

And I wanted to write this in a way that would preserve my privacy, and to be able to appear as someone who won't be too judged too often. And as someone whose tastes and personality and lifestyle do not cause a bad taste in peoples' mouths, or make them think, meh, not for me, she's not like me, I'm not interested. Making them feel like they don't enjoy what I say, so much or at all, just because I'm not like them. I'm weird, tacky, dull, dumb, boring, or just too plain different than they are. My tastes, my style, my personality, all might appear annoying and odd or unrelatable to many, so I wanted to somehow make it appear ordinary, not because I think it's wrong as it is, but because it's not important to me to assert my personality or uniqueness, right here in this subject matter. The important thing is the lessons I can share, that go beyond personality or individuality, to something in common with many people, across many different sectors of reality and humanity. But I don't know if I can avoid bringing my oddness into it. It might be too difficult or impossible to pick it apart from the rest of it all.

I wanted to write about all the ways I think the characters in my mind might help me change my life. I wanted to make it into some inspiring story or some kind of fast-paced adventure, where I'm leaping into change, or at least planning how to do that, figuring it all out. I wanted to maybe talk of the tiny steps to take too, that will change my life until it's where it needs to be, somehow. These are the things I want to make into exciting or exhilarating stories for others, and for myself, too.

But I'm afraid no matter how I portray it, it will be just me, boring, odd, outsider, misunderstood, unpopular, alone, again. And if I am to be happy for what I can give, rather than what I can receive, this might work, but can I really be happy that way? Can I let go of the need for recognition or understanding, but just give what others want or need? Can I be content, or will it be enough for me? Can I be happy to change for my own self, to write all this for my own self? Or will that not work for me because I need understanding, help, insight, perspective, from others? But what if the perspective I need from others is something they just can't give? What if they can't see me clearly enough to give the perspective I need, whilst my own perspective is so very distorted too? We all tend to need others to help us even up, balance out, and clarify our perspective of things. But for some who are so far beyond the norm, it seems no one can see us, and we have no help seeing more clearly.

So I'm afraid this blog will end up going the way of so many of my other blogs- turning into something too distorted, too self-focused, too stagnant and lacking answers or solutions, lacking real action and direction. There was a good reason I took a break from blogging for a long time since losing the place where I felt a tiny bit more heard. I realized the need it served was questionable, to say the least. The need maybe was real, but whether it served the actual need effectively was a big question mark. It never felt real or clear just what was going on.

I don't even want to hear what others have to say about my writing. I've been profusely complimented on my writing before, especially by teachers in high school, but that was so long ago that maybe I've lost much of what I learned or whatever talent or creative flow that helped me write well, back then. But I've also seen plenty of writing criticism which I disagree with in writer's communities. Much of what others like or dislike reading is completely different from my own tastes. I only want writing criticism if it will create writing that I myself would like. So even the idea of wanting to write better just feels like a question that hangs there, can I even know what to do to write better in a way that I even care about? And if not, can I make this writing start to feel less like an endless string of words that is a burden sometimes to tangle through and extract the good ideas again, if there even are any such good ideas? What feels important one day can seem so insignificant or confusing the next, sometimes. What I thought was the solution to my problems can seem dull, ineffectual, impossible to implement. Some earth-shattering epiphany jotted down and reread can appear like jargon, incomprehensible and vague.

But I'm going to try and see if I can somehow piece things together, turn them into a different angle and configuration and make them work and make more sense, even if it means that I must throw a lot of things out and change the whole plan or approach I thought that I was going to have. Truthfully though I have had many great insights and strides made in my life through my journals and blogs. But it needs to be more, or so I hope it can. My life crawls forward but circumstances sometimes surge ahead and I feel I might be stranded if I can't progress faster and further than I've been going for these so many years now, struggling to do all I can. But there's got to be a better way. Or, maybe there is, at least.

[sagebodisattva]

Rationalism and Solipsism

So continuing on in our meticulous analysis of solipsism, we come upon an implied commonality between rationalism and solipsism. Rationalism is the philosophical position that truth is best discovered by the use of reasoning and logic, rather than by the use of the senses (see Plato's theory of Forms). Solipsism, the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist, is also skeptical of sense-data. Hence, these two positions are said to have a loose correspondence.

To call the association between rationalism and solipsism "loose" is a bit of an understatement. And this kind of generalization is a representation of a larger misconception within philosophy in general; a type of lazy reasoning that is derelict of due diligence by imprudently conflating awareness with the intellect. This is a fundamental stumbling block, and if an existential explorer cannot discern the subtleties of these particularities, they will subsequently spend most of their time wandering around in a philosophical haze; twice removed from reality. The rationalist may think he is moving closer to the truth by focusing exclusively on logic and dismissing the sense data, but, like most things in the spectrum of conceptualization, this is only an abstraction in the mind of the rationalist, an idea fancied by his intellect, that is still nevertheless completely dependent on the senses of said rationalist to give his intellectual system a reference point, despite the idea in his head that he is dispensing with reliance on the unreliable perception and finding firmer grounds within the application of an ideological instrumentation. So there is very little actual equivalence in the proposed similitude between rationalism and solipsism. Rationalism's professed skepticism of sensory perception is merely an ideate. Solipsism's skepticism of the senses is based on a deeper clarity of mind, beyond the intellect, that is acutely aware of the variance between the content of perception, and that which is aware of it... and, from this clarity, seeing that, in fact, the intellect is also part of the stream of illusory phenomena in sensory experience.

Rationalism seemingly cannot grasp these distinctions; but envisions that it is somehow taking a more reliable pragmatic approach by imagining that it's organizational abstractions are a more well founded means to the truth then on the stream of experiential phenomena on which the abstractions are based. So, re-emphasizing what I have often said before: the truth is not found in the field of perception; nor in the knowledge that is based on the aspects in the field of perception. Rationalism imagines that there can be some type of knowledge independent from the senses, but this is folly, as every bit of the intellect is formulated on the information garnered through sensory perception. How does a rationalist think mathematics even got derived, if not for being based on the configurations established through the avenue of the senses? Without the field of perception imparting the visual experience of an appearance of separated objects, no mathematics can be initiated. Numbers are symbolic of objects, and the only way the numbers got established to represent objects in the first place is through the cognitive recognition of objects appearing in the field of perception. Then, after the senses give the intellect a framework to operate from and build knowledge around, the intellect then goes on to imagine that it's knowledge transcends the framework instituted by the senses. Yes, the intellect trims the fat. The idea that abstractions are more tight and organized then the sloppy senses. This is how abstractions become reality. It's reality by proxy. But we are not ruminating or postulating how the concept of truth itself may be an abstraction. No, we're not even dealing with that. We are searching for the truth with the standard that, any real truth, to be a truth, must hold true independent of the thoughts. What remains true when the intellect has become subdued? So to clear up any possible confusion related to Platonic idealism, it isn't that the truth is an abstraction, but that false chosen assumptions taken as truths are abstractions. The idea of a perfect triangle existing as an eternal ideal independent of the mind and it's phenomena, is just that: an idea. The awareness that is aware of the concept of a perfect triangle imagined to be existing eternally in an ideal quintessence, is the only absolute truth that is ever present, all pervading, and remains true beyond all appearances. It is awareness itself. Everything else is conditional. Thus, rationalism always takes it's cue from the information translated through the senses, no matter how you slice it. Yet, the rationalist still likes to think that there are significant ways in which concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. But see, that's the thing: he likes to think of it that way. In other words, it's all just abstractions. The notion that logic leads to a purer form of truth is just an idea, not a reality. If anything, logic leads to a more diluted form of the truth because it is not dealing with reality, but only with symbols and representations of reality in the intellect. And even these representations do not symbolize actual reality, but are in fact representing only illusory phenomena. Hence, taking the symbols and representations in the intellect as reality is how a delusional mindset is fostered. This is how something like Platonic idealism gained traction and perhaps unintentionally wound up being supportive of mind independent reality, despite it's strong basis in the realm of the mind; as Plato taught that ideals are ultimately real, and different from non-ideal things—arguing for a distinction between the ideal and non-ideal realm; proposing that universals exist independently of particulars. This emphasis on the idea of "real" and of existing particulars, ends up reinforcing a false dichotomy. And much the same can be said about rationalism; whose false dichotomy sets up a separation between perceptions and the intellect.

And this is a counter productive exercise, as it inevitably reinforces objectivity and realism rather then mind dependent reality and idealism. You wouldn't think so, based solely on it's face, as one might expect rationalism to be able to recognize it's own purely conceptual format... but ironically, it cannot, instead, it ends up founding it's abstractions on the faulty premise that the mind, the senses and physicality are separated factors; and this is a fortification of falsehood, not the truth. And this strikes to the heart of the real underlying issue at hand: realism vs. the inter connectivity of reality and the mind. The main difference being, realism is an assumption. Idealism is what's already the case before any assumption. If rationalism cannot trust the senses, then it certainly cannot trust physicality, as physicality is just an appearance expressed through the medium of the senses. So if the senses cannot be trusted, how can rationalism assume the outside world as a given? I don't think it can. Not even for the sake of argument. It has no grounded reason to do so. It makes much of it's choices seem very arbitrary. It chooses to discount feelings and emotions, and chooses to discount the senses, and yet also chooses to assume the existence of an external world? Based on what? Doesn't seem to be entirely consistent, as none of these aspects are islands unto themselves. And so, what might these chosen assumptions be established on? Surely not pure conceptualization, as pure conceptualization finds it's ground in a sort of symbiotic relativity with sensations and the stream of perception. So one has to wonder how rationalism justifies it's dismissal of the senses. The main reason why it probably does, is because rationalism so detests any knowledge that bases information on anything remotely associated with feelings and emotions. And while this might be a partially useful standard, to throw out the senses along with them is tossing the baby with the bath water, as there is no way to cognitively process reasoning and logic without the senses that allow the setting for such a system in the first place. So there's no way around it. The external world existing as a separated physical object, is a faith based belief founded on that which is undeniably conveyed through a mental medium. If you think logic is more reliable then the senses, then logic has to be twice as reliable then the perception of an external world, and logic should rightfully be just as skeptical about it. Rationalism is actually closer to idealism, and hence to solipsism, in the grand scheme of things. And the main reason why solipsism and rationalism should be said to have an association is because they are both positions within the spectrum of the mind, not because they both are skeptical about the senses. That's a secondary reason. So rationalism is adjacent to solipsism, yet for some reason still chooses to identify and associate itself with ideas like materialism, objectivity and realism. Why? I guess we'll never know. Rationalism is seemingly insecure. It's going through a bit of a confused identity crisis.