Thursday, July 26, 2018

Without or With You


Determined for your response, (yes, yours,) I persist. Are we at a disconnect? You go your way, I mine. Life goes on. Your life has details, a daily dictum. So too for me. The dictionary of life gets heavy; keep it simple.

But we may forget one another. How ‘light’ is that? How very watered down picayune memory can become; or is that: the memory of picayune matters? Still, it’s not quite like forgetting Schroedinger, let alone the name of his cat. Ask Pavlov. Names can no longer ring a bell.


Let me not remain obtuse. Of what significance is the name of another if not knowing or recalling how it makes richer your life? Yet place names are often based on people. We do not necessarily know the origins. And all places have significance to someone. Some are generic: Peter’s Drive Inn; Andy’s Gonna-Bar; Carol’s Care Centre. To whom might these, specifically, refer? Yet, how can we possibly stay aware of the myriad milestones such names have left in people’s hearts? How may they demarcate any given memory? Places or people, we know so very many in our lives. And each, in some measure, has an impact. Indeed, others have learned lessons from us (as we have, from them) in how to be, (let alone how not to be!) We each glean from life according to our own proclivities. Surely, it’s better to keep as aware as we can of our impact on this world? A single phrase can be so upsetting. A small act can appear so puerile.


Letters to friends reveal much. When we do not refer to their last intimations it as though they remain unheard. So, in losing another’s letter, or accidentally misplacing it in the waste, or in inadvertently deleting it from one’s email account, the details disappear! Memory does not necessarily serve (me). Especially if not answered almost right away. And if one has very many friends, the recall of another’s details, especially for me, can be altogether too fragmenting. I shall surely get things wrong! As for my own immediate details, reporting them can be like a child’s; they can absorb so much of the here and now, excited only by the instant: “I wore my new blazer that I got from Tailor Maids, and my shirt that you saw me in the last time we met, and we went to the new movie, Momentary Madness; it was brilliant. So, as I was coming out there was this accident on the corner of Blind Spot and Intersection, but no one was hurt too badly, thank goodness! Next week we’re flying off to Tie-land, and I shall celebrate my birthday there. A pity you can’t come!”


So it goes. Manufactured truths can extend into reality. (How to be forgiven if, hoping that my recollection is right, I hazard at calling your brother, “Roy”?) One tends predominantly to be left or right brained. Left is rational, sequential, concrete. Right is abstract, metaphorical, random.


Point is, either way, maturational insight takes time. Compassion take time. Awareness is not always immediate, and like enlightenment, it is not so much a product as a journey. And so the details (for a right brainer) evolve predominantly into feelings (“which is all,” according to the poet, e.e. cummings). Yes, sparse details can devolve into the smudge of forgetfulness that mangles our clarity with each other. We each have so very many things, so very many other friends, so very many thoughts. And as the awkward dictum goes: talking (predominantly) about things is shallow; talking (predominantly) about people is hollow; and talking (predominantly) about ideas can be pompous. Best to incorporate a little of each; better to be comprehensive, inclusive, and integrative. (N’es pas?)


With or without you, life goes on. If you’re reading this and we have not personally connected over the last long while, then believe please that should I see you (given that we both may well still be alive) .... believe that I shall feel warmth and care and interest and well-wishes for you and yours, for your endeavours, for your proverbial hopes and dreams. But of details of your past, specifically, or even mayhap the recall of your very name, I shall perhaps be found remiss, forgetful, and abstract. With or without you, or me, life goes on. But.... is that enough?



Tuesday, July 24, 2018

With or Without You



We are at a disconnect. You go your way, I mine. Life goes on. Your life has details, a daily dictum of diurnal delectables. So too for me. The dictionary of life gets heavy; keep it simple.

But we may forget one another. How ‘light’ is that? How very watered down picayune memory can become; or is that: the memory of picayune matters? Still, it’s not quite like forgetting Schroedinger, let alone the name of his cat. Ask Pavlov. Names can no longer ring a bell.

Let me not remain obtuse. Of what significance is the name of another if not knowing or recalling how it makes richer your life? Yet place names are often based on people. We do not necessarily know the origins. And all places have significance to someone. Some are generic: Peter’s Drive Inn; Andy’s Gonna-Bar; Carol’s Care Centre. To whom might these, specifically, refer? Yet, how can we possibly stay aware of the myriad milestones such names have left in people’s hearts? How may they demarcate any given memory? Places or people, we know so very many in our lives. And each, in some measure, has an impact. Indeed, others have learned lessons from us (as we have, from them) in how to be, (let alone how not to be!) We each glean from life according to our own proclivities. Surely, it’s better to keep as aware as we can of our impact on this world? A single phrase can be so upsetting. A small act can appear so puerile.

Letters to friends reveal much. When we do not refer to their last intimations it as though they remain unheard. So, in losing another’s letter, or accidentally misplacing it in the waste, or in inadvertently deleting it from one’s email account, the details disappear! Memory does not necessarily serve (me). Especially if not answered almost right away. And if one has very many friends, the recall of another’s details, especially for me, can be altogether too fragmenting. I shall surely get things wrong! As for my own immediate details, reporting them can be like a child’s; they can absorb so much of the here and now, excited only by the instant: “I wore my new blazer that I got from Tailor Maids, and my shirt that you saw me in the last time we met, and we went to the new movie, Momentary Madness; it was brilliant. So, as I was coming out there was this accident on the corner of Blind Spot and Intersection, but no one was hurt too badly, thank goodness! Next week we’re flying off to Tie-land, and I shall celebrate my birthday there. A pity you can’t come!”

So it goes. Manufactured truths can extend into reality. (How to be forgiven if, hoping that my recollection is right, I hazard at calling your brother, “Roy”?) One tends predominantly to be left or right brained. Left is rational, sequential, concrete. Right is abstract, metaphorical, random.

Point is, either way, maturational insight takes time. Compassion take time. Awareness is not always immediate, and like enlightenment, it is not so much a product as a journey. And so the details (for a right brainer) evolve predominantly into feelings (“which is all,” according to the poet, e.e. cummings). Yes, sparse details can devolve into the smudge of forgetfulness that mangles our clarity with each other. We each have so very many things, so very many other friends, so very many thoughts. And as the awkward dictum goes: talking (predominantly) about things is shallow; talking (predominantly) about people is hollow; and talking (predominantly) about ideas can be pompous. Best to incorporate a little of each; better to be comprehensive, inclusive, and integrative. (N’es pas?)

With or without you, life goes on. If you’re reading this and we have not personally connected over the last long while, then believe please that should I see you (given that we both may well still be alive) .... believe that I shall feel warmth and care and interest and well-wishes for you and yours, for your endeavours, for your proverbial hopes and dreams. But of details of your past, specifically, or even mayhap the recall of your very name, I shall perhaps be found remiss, forgetful, and abstract. With or without you, or me, life goes on. But.... is that enough?


Friday, July 6, 2018

Incremental Intimations







Incrementally, we incriminate ourselves. The tabla rasa of birth, research shows, is no longer a blank slate. That old biblical indictment, "the sins of the forefathers shall be visited upon the sons," is a continual catch-clause in our family constellations. Yet at which juncture might one say that the buck stops here, and might the evolution of an individual, let alone a species, surpass all that clings to the heretofore? How do we ever overcome our great great great not so great grandfather, some three hundred years ago, whose weakness and selfishness and sickness may still be seen to plague us? And on the other side, how do we live up to our great great great grandmother who endured and triumphed over the inestimable odds of her time and race? When do we find ourselves sufficient unto ourselves, such that no anchor of the past, no shoreline or habitat or involvement holds us back from peace with ourselves at this present moment, or is the very vessel in which we travel always built up by the bulk of the constituents of our psychic time and place, let alone our geographic and genetic makeup?
Thing is, the journey of our cognizance can be repeated, like living within a perpetual loop, and we will see something new every time. (For myself, having driven an 1800 km journey back and forth, for several times a year over the course of 30 years, I still notice and discover and remark on things I never noticed, discovered, or remarked on before.) What if, like the AI, or artificial intelligence robots in a TV series called West World, we are in a perpetual loop of reincarnations in which we relive our circumstances, incrementally, adding to our conception of life, but also forgetting the past, except for those undeniable provocations of déjà vu. Hm? Certainly there are sufficient promulgators of such stories. What creative imagination! To what end? And were we here to insert that The Singularity is encroaching in order that we all may achieve a more coherent and effective symbiosis, then indeed, it would seem that the individual is entirely to be subsumed by the collective; there is no goal other than to contribute toward the health of the whole.
Yet, whose whole are we talking about?
"You want to make God!" was once levelled at Ray KurzweiL, the foremost proponent of artificial intelligence. He lifted his chin. "Isn't that what mankind imagined in the first place?" Yes. It's all very confusing, very disturbing, very unsettling. Yes, it's all out there, in some distant future. Yes, some of us may not live to see its inheritance, let alone its generalized inception, but we all, will he, nil He, are already in the grip of its sway. Incrementally, it advances. Skype. Wifi. Internet. Cell phones. Talking cars. Self parking cars. Self driving trucks. Replicators. Cloning. What would grandmother have thought! Imagine our great great forbearers in the cave!
Incrementally, we make mistakes. But we also learn. And if evolution may be defined as the ability to adapt to new survival needs, and intelligence may be defined as the ability to adapt to new challenges, then we are almost always at some new point on the continuum of the bell curve, caught up in the mass of mankind of our time period, or lagging behind, or perhaps even prodding at its forefront, edging on and egging on and egregiously hoping to do well. But how very different 'doing well' can be defined!
"Are you at peace with yourself," Morrie Schwartz asks, "are you trying to be as human as you can be?" It's a tall order. We seldom measure up. We are so very caught up in the increments of our existence, incriminating ourselves with 'faults', quite sure that somewhere out there, beyond here, lies yet more peace. Peace, when realized, is so very momentary. Rather, we are forever yearning, seeking, wanting, and exploring yet more and more and more. Thing is, how to be at peace with that. At peace with one's incremental incriminations; an attainment to have, indeed.

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    Comments
    Tracy B. Loeppky “This is how we completed the past.”
    Was one of the phrases I learned while training in Family of Origin Therapy.
    Acknowledging that which has been hidden.

    Love those who were so human they forgot their humanity.
    Sitting in our own work and to always be aware that we are never done our own work.
    Feel the trauma of ancestors so we may learn and see it in ourselves.

    And so much more.
    Not easy, and, simple.

    Our human existence and incarnation is to experience both the yin and yang of this earthly plane.

    Thank you for sharing. 🙏🏻 ❤️
    Derek John Jooste Great thoughts, soon all the current inventions will be routine, it's our consciousness that matters, are we kinder, less inclined to war? A I is like the wheel or the chipped rock..... and still the beat goes on, I think development is when people enjoy live music rather than when amazing things, preparing a meal for friends rather than winning an argument, writing a philosophical blog, like you do, rather than getting a bonus
    Richard Michelle-Pentelbury Derek, should you ever be in Canada do let me know. It'd be good to reconnect after all these 45+ years. And thanks so much for taking the time to write such a caring response. We can go to 'message' mail for more private reconnection, yes?

    Derek John Jooste That would be good Richard!
    Paul Smulders Well said. Worth putting some effort into thinking about what you have articulated so nicely!
    Sharon Barker Interesting essay. I heard a scary thing about AI the other day, and that is that as things progress, the best ones to continue to develop and design AI are the AI themselves. Humans can't keep up.
    Brittany Nichol Well said. Beautiful Mr P!
    Carolyn Courtright For you my dear daughter in law!
    Guido Guidetti Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, the thing we do not understand is "chaos". If the structure of culture is disrupted unwittingly "chaos" returns. We humans will do anything to prevents that return! As humans we have to move or act in the world. This requires us to make choices. Making choices (good or bad) means that we use our value system in order to select that move or that act. Its this movment or action which gives us meaning. Our culture and our value systems from which it is derived will determine our trajectory both as an individual and as a society